The Mongol-Tatar yoke existed. Tatar-Mongol yoke: aggressive campaigns

Everyone knows about the conquest of Rus' by the Mongols. They also know that the Russian lands have paid tribute to the Horde for more than two centuries. "Russian Planet" will tell you how this tribute was collected and how much it was in rubles.

“And sochtosha in number, and began to imati tribute on them”

The events of 1237-1240, when Batu's troops captured most of Rus' and ravaged two-thirds of Russian cities, were simply called "Western Campaign" in the capital of the Mongol Empire, Karakorum. Indeed, the Russian lands captured by Batu were then very modest trophies in comparison with the largest and richest cities in China, Central Asia and Persia.

If on the eve of the assault by the Mongols in 1240, Kyiv, which remained the largest city of Rus', had about 50 thousand inhabitants, then the capital of the Jin Empire, located in the north of China, captured by the Mongols in 1233, accommodated 400 thousand inhabitants. At least 300 thousand people lived in Samarkand, the largest city in Central Asia, captured by Genghis Khan in 1220. After 17 years, his grandson Batu got a more modest booty - according to archaeologists, the population of Vladimir and Ryazan ranged from 15 to 25 thousand people. For consolation, we note that the main city of Poland, Krakow, captured in 1241 by Batu, had less than 10 thousand inhabitants. Not captured, but eventually subordinated to the Mongols, Novgorod was then inhabited by about 30 thousand.

The population of the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality is estimated by historians at a maximum of 800 thousand people. In general, the ancient Russian lands during the “Batu invasion” from Novgorod to Kyiv, from Vladimir-Volynsky in the west of the future Ukraine to Vladimir-Zalessky in the center of the future Muscovy, totaled about 5-7 million inhabitants.

For comparison, let's cite the population of other countries captured by Genghis Khan, his children and grandchildren - the state of Khorezmshahs, which included Central Asia and modern Iran, inhabited about 20 million, and the population of all of China, then divided into several states and empires (Xi-Xia, Jin, Song), successively captured by the Mongols, already exceeded 100 million.

But for the Russian people, such modesty and relative poverty did not make it any easier. In the first years of the conquest, the Mongols, in addition to capturing military booty during the hostilities, levied military indemnity from the conquered lands. About the tithe "in everything, in princes and in people and in horses", as the demand of the Mongols at the very beginning of the conquest, tells the Moscow Chronicle.

However, the Mongols of the era of Genghis Khan differed from all other conquerors in their systematic approach in everything - from the organization of the army to a well-thought-out scheme for robbing the conquered. Almost immediately after the completion of the campaigns of 1237-1240, they, not limited to one-time robberies, began to introduce their taxation system in Rus'.

"The battle between the Mongols and the Chinese in 1211" from the historical work "Jami at-tavarih", 1430

It is customary to date the beginning of the payment of regular tribute to 1245, when an entry appears in the Novgorod Chronicle about the first actions of the Mongols after the conquest: “And counted in number, and started imati tribute on them.” In the following 1246, the Italian monk Plano Carpini, sent by the Pope to the Mongol emperor, passed through Kyiv and wrote in his diary that at that time "one Saracen, as they said from the Batu party" was sent to "Russia", who "counted all population, according to their custom", "that everyone, both small and large, even a one-day-old baby, either poor or rich, should pay such a tribute, namely, that he should give one skin of a bear, one black beaver, one black sable and one fox skin."

It is clear that in the first years after the conquest, this system was in its infancy and covered only part of the Russian lands, where the Batu garrisons, which remained in Eastern Europe at the end of the “Western campaign”, were located nearby for winter quarters. Most of the Russian lands, having survived the raids of the steppe cavalry, evaded paying regular tribute.

In 1247, 10 years after the start of the conquest, Prince Andrei Yaroslavich, the younger brother of Alexander Nevsky, went to bow to the new authorities in Mongolia. There, from the hands of the great Khan Guyuk, he received a label to reign in Vladimir, becoming, at the behest of the distant eastern overlord, the Grand Duke of Vladimir. In addition to the label for reigning, Andrei received from Guyuk an order to conduct a detailed census of the population in his lands in order to impose a systematic tribute on it in favor of the Genghisid empire.

However, the "capital city" Vladimir from the Mongolian headquarters in Karakorum was separated by almost five thousand kilometers and half a year of travel - returning to reign with a label, Andrei Yaroslavich ignored the order to conduct a census, especially since the great Khan Guyuk died a year later. A systematic tribute from northeastern Rus' to Mongolia did not go.

"Looking for the whole land of Suzhdal and Ryazan ..."

This was a common phenomenon - many outskirts of the Mongol empire, having experienced a devastating conquest, tried to evade paying tribute after the departure of the conquering army. Therefore, the new Great Khan Mongke, at the same congress-kurultai of the Mongol commanders, who elected him head of state, decided to conduct a general census of the empire's population in order to create a unified tax system.

In 1250, such a census began in the part of China subject to the Mongols, in 1253 - in Iran, in 1254 - in the part of the Caucasus conquered by the Mongols. The order for the census arrived in Rus' in 1252 together with the “bitekchi” detachment Berke. “Bitekchi” (translated from Turkic as a clerk) was the title of the position of the first civil officials in the empire of Genghis Khan. In the Russian chronicles, they were called "numerals", whose task was to calculate - the census of the population and property, the organization of the tax system and control over its successful activities.

The Grand Duke of Vladimir Andrei Yaroslavich, and indeed the entire population of Rus', already knew how reverently the Mongols were about the fulfillment of their orders - according to the laws set forth in the "Yase of Genghis Khan", the death penalty was due for failure to comply with orders. Ordinary people were beheaded, and noble people, such as Prince Andrei, had their backs broken. But the people who had just survived Batu's campaign did not want and could not resist the Mongols either.

Diorama "Heroic defense of Old Ryazan from the Mongol-Tatar troops in 1237" in Oleg's palace, Ryazan. Photo: Denis Konkov / poputi.su

"Schilennik" Berke was accompanied by a force resource in the form of a Mongolian detachment of about a thousand horsemen under the command of the Mongolian officer Nyuryn. He was the grandson of Temnik Burundai, Batu's deputy during the conquest of Rus'. It is known that in 1237-1240 Nyuryn himself participated in the assault on Rostov, Yaroslavl and Kyiv, so he knew the Russian theater of military operations well.

In the Russian chronicles, Nyuryn appears as Nevryuy. Therefore, the events of 1252 in Rus' are called the "Nevryuev army" - the detachment of Nyuryn, accompanying the "numerary" Berke, unexpectedly for the Russians, went to Vladimir and defeated the squad of Prince Andrei. The Grand Duke Vladimir himself hastily fled through Novgorod to Sweden. The Mongols appointed Alexander Nevsky as the new grand duke, and the bitekchi enumerator Berke tried to start a population census.

However, here the census ran into sabotage not by the Russians, but by the Mongols - Khan Batu, who ruled the western outskirts of the empire, clearly did not want taxes from Rus' to go past him to distant Mongolia. It suited Batu much more to receive an unfixed tribute to his personal treasury directly from the Russian princes than to create an all-imperial tax system, which was controlled not by him, but by the headquarters of the great khan in Karakorum.

As a result, Batu and Berke, a census in Rus' in 1252, did not take place, which caused the anger of the disciplined Nyuryn, who left for Mongolia with a complaint about Batu. In the future, this man, known to the Russian chronicles as "Nevruy", will become well known to the chroniclers of China - it will be he who will command the Mongol corps, which will finally conquer the south of the Celestial Empire. This, by the way, well illustrates the scope of the Mongol Empire, whose generals acted throughout Eurasia, from Poland to Korea, from the Caucasus to Vietnam.

The headquarters of the great khan in Mongolia was able to organize a census of Russian tributaries only after the death of the too independent Batu. In 1257, the same Bitekchi clerk Berke again appeared in Rus', but this time accompanied by a controller sent from Mongolia, who was appointed a “daruga” (authorized) named China or Kitat, a distant relative of the Genghis Khan family. The Russian chronicles call this pair of Mongolian tax officials “the raw-eaters of Berkai and Kasachik.” Medieval Chinese chronicles call the second - "Kitat, son of the son-in-law of Kaan Lachin, darug for appeasement and protection of order among the Russians."

The most complete story about the census in North-Eastern Rus' was preserved in the Laurentian Chronicle in the records for 1257: Toliko not chtosha abbots, Cherntsov, priests ... ".

The Mongolian tax authorities introduced in Rus' an all-imperial taxation system developed by Yelü Chutsai, the first civil official of Genghis Khan. Born in the north of modern China, this son of a Mongol and a Chinese woman, served as secretary to the governor of Beijing on the eve of the conquest of the city by the troops of Genghis Khan. It was Yelü, based on the experience of the great Chinese empires of the past (Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song), who developed for the Mongols the entire system of taxation and civil administration in their vast empire. In the winter of 1257-1258, the Mongols forcibly transferred this Chinese experience to Russian lands.

"We are darkness, and darkness ..."

The words of the annals “setting tenants, and centurions, and thousandths, and temniks” means that the mechanism for recording and collecting tribute was based on the decimal system. The unit of taxation was the peasant economy, the yard (in the Russian terminology of that time, “smoke” or “plough”). Ten peasant farms united into a dozen under the control of a foreman, and then this simple but effective system grew upwards - a hundred, a thousand and "darkness" (ten thousand), existing in parallel with the princely power and the former divisions into cities, lands, clans and communities.

"Strife of Russian princes in the Golden Horde for a label for a great reign", Boris Chorikov, 1836

Foremen, centurions and thousanders were appointed from the local population. At the head of a thousand and "darkness" were placed Mongolian officials, authorized-darugs ("daruga" in literal translation - "pressor of the seal", "an official who puts a seal on documents"). Russian chronicles call such commissioners "Baskaks" - a Turkic term that literally corresponds to the Mongolian "daruga".

Since it was the “darugs” (in the writing of some ancient Russian documents - “roads”) that ensured the creation and functioning of the “pit chase”, horse relay races, a permanent system of transport and communication, from the city of Vladimir to the capital in Khanbalik (Beijing), a number of researchers believe that that the very term “road”, denoting a travel path, took root in the Russian language in this meaning precisely because of the Mongolian “darugs” and the routes organized by them.

The chief tax inspector responsible for the entire Grand Duchy of Vladimir is referred to in the Russian chronicles as the "great Baskak", his residence was located in Murom. Each Baskak, in order to maintain order and discipline in his area, had a detachment of troops, from Mongolian, Turkic and Russian soldiers. From the annals it is known that in 1283 there were "more than 30 people" in the detachment of the Kursk Baskak Akhmad Russians. In fact, the Baskak combined in one person the functions of a tax inspector, head of the state post office and military commissar - on orders from the headquarters of the great khan, he was responsible for sending auxiliary Russian detachments to the Mongolian troops.

Baskak, its officials and "siloviki" were housed in separate courtyards, some of which eventually became settlements that have survived to this day. On the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Vladimir and today there are almost two dozen settlements with the name Baskakovo or Baskaki.

The Ustyug chronicle even contains a romantic story of the Baskak Buga and the Russian girl Maria, whom he made his concubine, taking as a tribute from his peasant father (“violence for yasak,” as the chronicler says). The girl converted the Mongol pagan Bugu to Christianity, telling him that the order had come from the prince to kill all the Tatars. As a result, the baptized Buga took the name Ivan, married Mary, became a righteous Christian and erected a church of John the Baptist in the city of Ustyug. Later, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized this married couple as saints - "Righteous John and Mary of Ustyug". So Russian Christianity has even one holy tax collector, the Mongolian Baskak, in its assets.

In total, on the territory of Rus' by the end of the 13th century, there were 43 tax “darknesses” - 16 in Western Rus' and 27 in Eastern Russia. According to the Mongolian division, Western Rus' consisted of the following “themes” (the plural declension of the term “darkness” accepted in historical science): Kyiv, Vladimir-Volynsky, Lutsk, Sokal (now the regional center in the Lviv region), three “darknesses” in Podolia in the south -west of modern Ukraine, Chernihiv, Kursk, the so-called "Darkness of Egoldea" south of the Kursk region, Lubutsk (now a village in the west of the Kaluga region), Ohura (in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bmodern Kharkov), Smolensk and the Galician principality in the very west of modern Ukraine as part of three "themes".

Eastern Rus', following the results of the tax reform of the Mongols, included 15 “themes” in the Vladimir principality, five “themes” each in the Novgorod land and the Tver principality, and two “darknesses” that made up the Ryazan principality. The concept and division into "darkness" during the period of Mongol rule was so rooted in Russian society that the name of the Novgorod land as "five-time" or "five" appears even two centuries later in the official documents of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. For example, “five of Novgorodskaya” is used in an agreement between the Moscow prince Dmitry Shemyaka and the Suzdal princes in the middle of the 15th century, in the era when the Baskaks had long been forgotten and they stopped paying regular tribute to the Horde.

“And the priests from us were granted according to the previous charter ...”

The establishment of the Mongolian tax system in Rus' took several years. The Novgorod chronicle describes the beginning of 1258 as follows: “And often go around the streets, writing peasant houses ...” Novgorod responded to the census attempt with an uprising, which was suppressed by Alexander Nevsky.

"Baskaki", Sergei Ivanov, 1909

In the west of Rus', in Galich and Volhynia, the census was carried out only in 1260 after the punitive expedition of the temnik-general Burundai (the grandfather of the above-mentioned Nevryuy, who at that time was already at war in southern China). In 1274-1275, a second census was carried out in Eastern Rus', and also for the first time in the Smolensk principality.

These were the first per capita censuses in Rus'. And also for the first time in the history of Russian civilization, all people and all categories of the population were included in the tax system with one single exception. Earlier, before the Mongol conquest, the obligation to pay direct taxes, denoted by the universal term "tribute", extended only to certain categories of personally dependent peasants and artisans. The bulk of the population of Ancient Rus' entered into financial relations with the state indirectly, through indirect taxes and communal authorities. Since 1258, the situation has fundamentally changed - so that the income tax that all citizens of the Russian Federation now pay can be safely considered the legacy of the Tatar-Mongol yoke.

An exception in the tax system of Genghis Khan was provided only for priests and church property: they were exempted from any extortions and taxes, they were granted protection and immunity in exchange for the only obligation - to officially and publicly pray for the Mongol leader and his power. This was a completely conscious policy of Genghis and his descendants - religious structures in all the countries conquered by the Mongols, whether they were Buddhists, Muslims or Orthodox, with this approach, did not become inspirers of resistance, but quite loyal intermediaries between the Mongol authorities and the conquered peoples.

The oldest of the Khan's labels that have come down to us about the exemption of the Orthodox Church from taxes is dated August 1267 and was issued by Khan Mengu-Timur, the grandson of Batu. The document has been preserved translated from Mongolian into Russian in a manuscript of the 15th century: “Chinggis the king decreed that if there is tribute or food, then let them not touch the church people, but with a sincere heart pray to God for us and for our tribe and bless us ... And subsequent kings granted priests in the same way... And we, praying to God, did not alter their charters... Whatever the tribute, let them not demand or give; or if something belongs to the church - land, water, a garden, mills, winter quarters, summer quarters - let them not hush it up. And if they took it, let them give it back. And church masters - falconers, pardusniks - whoever they are - let them not be taken away. Or that, according to the law, they—books or something else—should not be taken away, seized, torn apart, or spoiled. And whoever blasphemes their faith, that person will be guilty and will die... And the priests were granted from us according to the previous charter, so that they would pray and bless God. And if anyone prays for us with an insincere heart, that sin will be on you ... "

As for the rest of the population, it had to pay tribute in full. At the same time, the structure of taxes was well thought out and varied. The main direct tax, "yasak", was collected from the rural population, initially it was a tenth of "everything" and was paid in kind, including the supply of living goods, people, to Mongolian property. Over time, this tithe was regularized, and tribute was paid from the annual harvest or silver or specially specified goods. For example, in the Novgorod land of the XIV century, such a tribute was called "black forest", since initially it was paid with the skins of black martens. Unlike such "black" payments, silver payments were called "white".

In addition to this main tax, there was a whole group of emergency and special taxes. So in 1259, the Novgorod chronicler wrote: "And there was great confusion in Novgorod, when the damned Tatars gathered a crowd and caused much harm to people in the countryside." The term "Tuska" - comes from the Turkic concept tuzghu, which meant "offerings as a gift to visiting rulers or envoys." Novgorod "tuska" became a fine for the revolt of the townspeople during the 1258 census.

"The murder in the Horde of the first Grand Duke of Moscow Yuri Danilovich" by an unknown artist, second half of the 19th century

The Mongols also levied a special tax on the maintenance of horse-post stations, the structure that would later be called the “pit service” in the Muscovite state. This tax was called “yam”. There was an emergency military tax, "kulush", it was collected in those years when they did not take recruits to the Horde

The main tax from the cities was called "tamga", it was paid by merchants and merchants. In both Mongolian and Turkic languages, the term "tamga" originally denoted the emblem of the clan, the family brand, which was used to mark horses and other types of property belonging to the clan. Later, with the advent of the state among the Mongols, "tamga" became a stigma, a seal, which marked goods received as tribute.

"Tamga" was paid annually, either from the amount of capital or from turnover. It is known that in the first case the tax rate was approximately 0.4% of the capital. For example, Persian and Central Asian merchants annually paid one dinar out of every 240 dinars of their capital to the Mongolian treasury. In the case of payment of "tamga" from the turnover, the amount of tax in different cities varied from 3 to 5%. It is known that in the cities of Crimea, merchants paid 3%, and in the city of Tana (modern Azov at the mouth of the Don) "tamga" was 5%.

Unfortunately, the exact rates of the “tamga” tax for various Russian cities are unknown, but it is unlikely that they were higher than the Crimean or Asian ones. But it is known that the Mongols levied a tax (now they would say excise duty) of 40% from the Hanseatic merchants who bought raw skins in Novgorod, but when supplying European goods to the Volga region, the Hanseatic merchants were exempted by the Mongolian authorities from paying taxes and tolls.

"Tamga" was paid in gold, or at least counted in gold. The richest merchants (in Russian - "guests") were taxed individually, and the merchants were more simply united in associations that jointly paid "tamga". In modern Russian, the term "customs" comes from the word "tamga".

Stolen Tribute and Deacon Dudko's Mare

At the end of the 13th century, the Mongols, in an effort to save on the tax apparatus and get precious coins in bulk, practiced outsourcing tax collection from Rus' to rich Muslim merchants from large cities of Central Asia. As the Russian chronicler writes: "Take off the tribute from the Tatars." Farmers contributed tax amounts in advance to the Mongol treasury, after which they received the right to collect tribute from certain regions of Rus' in their favor.

Although such a system was extremely cheap for the conquerors, it gave rise to constant problems - the tax-farmers sought to collect taxes as much as possible, receiving revolts from the local population in return. As a result, by the beginning of the 14th century, the authorities of the Golden Horde gradually switched from the direct collection of tribute by the Baskaks and the practice of farming out to the simplest, most convenient and cheapest scheme - from now on, tribute to the conquerors, the “Horde exit”, was collected by the Russian princes themselves. With this approach, the amount of tribute received decreased, control became nominal (“per capita” censuses were no longer carried out), but this method of receiving tribute did not require any costs from the Horde.

Among other things, the banal shortage of personnel affected here - in the constant conquests throughout Eurasia and in several internal wars, the Mongols undermined their mobilization potential by the XIV century, there were barely enough people to control China and Central Asia, to the distant and relatively poor northwestern outskirts of the empire they were no longer enough. At the same time, such a transfer of tribute collection into the hands of the Russian princes allowed the latter to accumulate considerable funds, which ultimately led to the strengthening of Moscow and the emergence of a centralized Russian state in the future.

In the west of Rus', direct tribute collection lasted a little longer. It is known that the Horde Baskak with a detachment sat in Kyiv until 1362.

The last major incident with the Horde Baskak in the east of Rus' just contributed to the rise of Moscow. In 1327 (that is, exactly one century after the beginning of the conquest of the Russian principalities by the Mongols), Chol Khan, a cousin of the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek, arrived in Tver to collect tribute. Chol Khan (in the Russian chronicles "Shevkal" or even "Shchelkan") settled in the palace of the Tver prince and began to extort tax arrears from the population. In response, on August 15, 1327, an uprising broke out in Tver, the Horde taxman was burned with guards and retinue right along with the princely palace. The reason for the uprising was the attempt of the Tatars from the retinue of Chol Khan to take away the mare from a certain Tver deacon Dudko ...

The harsh actions of Chol Khan that provoked this uprising, in turn, were provoked by the corruption machinations of the Tver and Moscow princes around the Horde tribute. The fact is that in 1321, the Tver prince Dmitry transferred the Horde tribute from the entire Tver principality to the Moscow prince Yuri, who at that time had a label for “great reigning” and therefore was responsible for delivering tribute to the Horde. But Yuri, instead of sending the Tver tribute to its destination, took it to Novgorod and, through intermediary merchants, put the amount intended for the Horde Khan into circulation at interest. The size of this amount is known - 2000 silver rubles (about 200 kilograms of precious metal).

The clashes between Dmitry of Tver, Yuri of Moscow and the Horde Uzbek around the tribute went on for several years - the matter was complicated by the fact that Yuri was a relative of Khan Uzbek, the husband of his younger sister. Without waiting for the completion of the investigation on the issue of tribute, at a meeting in Saray, the capital of the Golden Horde, in 1325, the Tver prince hacked to death the Moscow one. And although the Horde Khan morally approved the murder of a financial schemer from Moscow, he acted according to the law and executed the Tver prince "for arbitrariness", and sent his cousin to Tver for a new tribute. It was there that the story happened with the mare of deacon Dudko, which eventually directed the entire history of the country in a new direction ...

The events were taken advantage of by the younger brother of the murdered Moscow Prince Yuri, Ivan Kalita, also a financial schemer, but, unlike his brother, more cautious and subtle. He quickly received a label from the enraged Khan Uzbek for a great reign and, with the help of the Horde troops, defeated the Tver principality, which had previously competed with Moscow for leadership in the north-east of Rus'. Since that time, Tver has not recovered and began a gradual increase in Moscow's influence throughout the region.

In many ways, this growth of the future capital was ensured precisely by the central role of Moscow in collecting the “Horde exit”, tribute to the Horde. For example, in 1330, the Moscow troops, on the orders of Khan Uzbek, knocked out tax arrears from the Rostov Principality - as a result, the Muscovites not only collected the Horde tribute and hanged the boyar Averky, the chief among the Rostovites, but also annexed half of the Rostov lands to Moscow. Part of the funds collected for the Horde imperceptibly, but constantly settled in the bins of Ivan Kalita. It is no coincidence that his nickname "Kalita", from the Turkic "Kalta", meant in the Russian language of that century a pocket or purse.

"And give them Novgorodians 2000 silver..."

So how much did Rus' pay the Horde? According to the results of the last Horde census in the north-east of Rus', which took place in 1275, the tribute was "half a hryvnia from a plow." Based on the standard weight of the ancient Russian silver hryvnia of 150-200 grams, historians have calculated that in that year Vladimir-Suzdal Rus' paid about one and a half tons of silver to the Horde. The amount for a country that did not have its own silver mines is very impressive, even huge, but not fantastic.

It is known that the Golden Horde (aka “Ulus of Jochi”), as part of the Mongol Empire, for some time received tribute not only from the principalities of Rus', but also from three distant provinces in the north of modern China: Jinzhou, Pingyan-fu, Yongzhou. Every year, 4.5 tons of silver were sent from the banks of the Huang He River to the banks of the Volga. The Song empire, not yet conquered by the Mongols, which occupied the southern half of China, paid off the Mongol raids with an annual tribute of 7.5 tons of silver, not counting large volumes of silk. Therefore, one and a half Russian tons do not look extremely huge against this background. However, judging by available sources, in other years the tribute was smaller and paid with long delays.

As already mentioned, the territory of Rus' according to the Mongolian tax system was divided into tax districts - "darkness". And on average, each such "darkness" in the north-east of Rus' in the middle of the XIV century paid 400 rubles of tribute, "the Horde exit." So the Tver principality and the Novgorod land were divided into five such tax districts each and paid 2,000 rubles of tribute. The above-mentioned machinations of the Moscow princes with 2000 Tver rubles in 1321 were recorded for history by the Moscow Chronicle. The Novgorod chronicle for 1328 writes: “And they sent Tatar ambassadors to Novgorod, and gave them 2000 silver from Novgorod and sent their ambassadors with them with many gifts.”

By the way, it was the need to pay the Mongol tribute that prompted the Novgorodians and Vladimir-Suzdalians in the 13th-14th centuries to begin expansion to the northeast, into the forest lands of the White Sea and the Urals, to the “Biarmia” and “Great Perm”, so that due to the imposition of fur extortions on the natives offset the tax burden of the Horde. Later, after the collapse of the Horde yoke, it is this movement to the northeast that will develop into the conquest of Siberia ...

The amounts of tribute from various destinies of North-Eastern Rus' during the reign of Dmitry Donskoy are known in relatively detail. The tribute from the Grand Duchy of Vladimir was 5,000 rubles. The Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal principality in the same period paid 1,500 rubles. The tribute from the territories of the Moscow Principality proper was 1,280 rubles.

For comparison, only one city of Khadzhitarkhan (Astrakhan), through which in those centuries there was a large transit trade, gave 60 thousand altyns (1800 rubles) of taxes annually to the treasury of the Golden Horde.

The city of Galich, now the regional center of the Kostroma region, and then "Galich Mersky", the center of a rather large principality with rich salt mines by the standards of Vladimir Rus', paid 525 rubles of tribute. The city of Kolomna with its environs paid 342 rubles, Zvenigorod with its environs - 272 rubles, Mozhaisk - 167 rubles.

The city of Serpukhov, or rather the small Serpukhov principality, paid 320 rubles, and the very small principality of Gorodets paid 160 rubles of tribute. The city of Dmitrov paid 111 rubles, and Vyatka "from cities and towns" 128 rubles.

According to historians, all North-Eastern Rus' during this period paid about 12-14 thousand rubles to the Horde. Most historians believe that the silver ruble was then equal to half the "Novgorod hryvnia" and contained 100 grams of silver. In general, all the same one and a half tons of precious metal are obtained.

However, the periodicity of such a tribute is not clear from the surviving annals. Theoretically, it should have been paid annually, but in practice, especially during the period of civil strife between the Russian princes or the Horde khans, it was not paid or was paid partially. Again, for comparison, we point out that at the time of the heyday of the Mongol Empire, when the descendants of Genghis Khan owned all of China, only tax collections from Chinese cities gave ten times more silver to the Mongol treasury than the entire tribute from northeastern Rus'.

After the battle on the Kulikovo field, the “exit” of tribute to the Horde continued, but on a smaller scale. Dmitry Donskoy and his heirs paid no more than 10 thousand rubles. For the Moscow ruble at the beginning of the 15th century, you could buy 100 pounds of rye. That is, the entire "Horde output" in the last century of the Tatar-Mongol yoke cost as much as 16 thousand tons of rye - in modern prices, such a volume of rye will cost a ridiculous amount on a national scale, no more than 100 million rubles. But six centuries ago, these were completely different prices and other conditions: then 16 thousand tons of rye could feed about 100 thousand peasants or a solid medieval army of 10-15 thousand horsemen during the year.

Studying the history of monetary relations between Rus' and the Horde, we can conclude that the Horde tribute was a well-thought-out financial measure of the conquerors. The tribute was not monstrous and totally ruinous, but over the centuries it regularly washed out the funds necessary for development from the country and its economy.

OUR C A L E N D A R

November 24, 1480 - the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke in Rus'

In the distant 1950s, the author of this article, then a graduate student at the State Hermitage, took part in archaeological excavations in the city of Chernigov. When we reached the layers of the middle of the 13th century, terrible pictures of the traces of the Batu invasion of 1239 were revealed before our eyes.

Ipatiev Chronicle under. 1240 describes the storming of the city as follows: “Obstupisha (“Tatars” - B.S.) the city of Chernigov is heavy in strength .. Prince Mikhail Glebovich came to foreigners with his own, and the battle was fierce at Chernigov ... But Mstislav was defeated and a multitude of howls (warriors - B.S.) were beaten by him. And they took the hail and lit it with fire ... ". Our excavations have confirmed the accuracy of the chronicle record. The city was devastated and burned to the ground. A ten-centimeter layer of ash covered the entire area of ​​one of the richest cities of Ancient Rus'. Fierce battles went on for every house. The roofs of houses often bore traces of heavy stones from Tatar catapults, the weight of which reached 120-150 kg (In the annals it is noted that four strong people could hardly lift these stones.) The inhabitants were either killed or taken prisoner. The ashes of the burnt city were mixed with the bones of thousands of dead people.

After graduating from graduate school, already as a museum researcher, I worked on the creation of a permanent exhibition “Russian culture of the 6th-13th centuries.” In the process of preparing the exposition, special attention was paid to the fate of a small ancient Russian fortified city, erected in the 12th century. on the southern borders of Ancient Rus', near the modern city of Berdichev, now called Rayki. To some extent, its fate is close to the fate of the world-famous ancient Italian city of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD. during the eruption of Vesuvius.

But the Rayki were completely destroyed not by the forces of the raging elements, but by the hordes of Batu Khan. The study of material material stored in the State Hermitage Museum and written reports on the excavations made it possible to reconstruct the terrible picture of the death of the city. It reminded me of pictures of Belarusian villages and towns burned down by invaders, seen by the author during our offensive during the Great Patriotic War, in which the author took part. The inhabitants of the city desperately resisted and all died in an unequal struggle. Residential buildings were excavated, on the thresholds of which lay two bones each - a Tatar and a Russian, killed with a sword in his hand. There were terrible scenes - the skeleton of a woman covering a child with her body. A Tatar arrow stuck in her vertebrae. After the defeat, the city did not come to life, and everything remained in the same form as the enemy left it.

The tragic fate of Raikov and Chernigov was shared by hundreds of Russian cities.

Tatars destroyed about a third of the entire population of Ancient Rus'. Considering that at that time about 6 - 8,000,000 people lived in Rus', at least 2,000,000 - 2,500,000 were killed. Foreigners passing through the southern regions of the country wrote that Rus' had practically been turned into a dead desert, and such a state was on the map Europe is no more. In Russian chronicles and literary sources, such as "The Word of the Destruction of the Russian Land", "The Tale of the Devastation of Ryazan" and others, the horrors of the Tatar-Mongol invasion are described in detail. The tragic consequences of Batu's campaigns were largely multiplied by the establishment of an occupation regime, which not only led to the total plunder of Rus', but dried up the soul of the people. He delayed the forward movement of our Motherland for more than 200 years.

The Great Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 inflicted a decisive defeat on the Golden Horde, but could not completely destroy the yoke of the Tatar khans. The Grand Dukes of Moscow were faced with the task of completely, legally eliminating the dependence of Rus' on the Horde.

November 24 of the new style (11 of the old style) marks a remarkable date in the history of our Motherland on the church calendar. 581 years ago, in 1480, “Standing on the Ugra” ended. The Golden Horde Khan Akhma (? - 1481) turned his tumens from the borders of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and was soon killed.

This was the legal end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. Rus' became a fully sovereign state.

Unfortunately, neither the media, nor in the minds of the general public, this date was not reflected. Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that on that day the gloomy page of our history was turned, and a new stage in the independent development of the Fatherland began.

It is necessary, at least briefly, to recall the development of events of those years.

Although the last khan of the Great Horde stubbornly continued to consider the Grand Duke of Moscow his tributary, in fact, Ivan Sh Vasilyevich (reigned 1462 - 1505) was actually independent of the khan. Instead of regular tribute, he sent insignificant gifts to the Horde, the size and regularity of which he determined himself. In the Horde, they began to understand that the times of Batu were gone forever. The Grand Duke of Moscow became a formidable adversary, not a silent slave.

In 1472, the Khan of the Great (Golden) Horde, at the suggestion of the Polish King Casimir IV, who promised him support, undertook the usual campaign for the Tatars against Moscow. However, it ended in complete failure for the Horde. They could not even cross the Oka, which was the traditional defensive line of the capital.

In 1476, the Khan of the Great Horde sent an embassy to Moscow, headed by Akhmet Sadyk, with a formidable demand to completely restore tributary relations. In Russian written sources, in which legends and reports of true facts are intricately intertwined, the negotiations were of a complex nature. During the first stage, Ivan III, in the presence of the Boyar Duma, played for time, realizing that a negative answer meant war. It is likely that Ivan III made the final decision under the influence of his wife Sophia Fominichna Paleolog, a proud Byzantine princess, who allegedly declared to her husband with anger: “I married the Grand Duke of Russia, and not a serf of the Horde.” At the next meeting with the ambassadors, Ivan III changed tactics. He tore up the khan's letter and trampled on the basma with his feet (basma or paiza-box filled with wax with an imprint of the khan's heel was issued to the ambassadors as a credential). And the ambassadors themselves were expelled from Moscow. Both in the Horde and in Moscow, it became clear that a large-scale war was inevitable.

But Akhmat did not immediately move to action. In the early eighties, Casimir IV began to prepare for war with Moscow. There has been a traditional alliance of the Horde and the Polish crown against Russia. The situation in Moscow itself escalated. At the end of 1479 there was a quarrel between the Grand Duke and his brothers Boris and Andrei Bolshoy. They rose from their destinies with their families and "yards" and headed through the Novgorod lands to the Lithuanian border. There was a real threat of uniting the internal separatist opposition with the attack of external enemies - Poland and the Horde.

Given this circumstance, Khan Akhmat decided that the time had come to strike a decisive blow, which should be supported by the invasion of the Russian borders of the Polish-Lithuanian troops. Having gathered a huge army, the khan of the Great Horde at the end of the spring of 1480, when the grass needed to feed his cavalry turned green, moved to Moscow. But not directly to the North, but bypassing the capital, from the southwest, to the upper reaches of the Oka, towards the Lithuanian border to connect with Casimir IV. In the summer, the Tatar hordes reached the right bank of the Ugra River, not far from its confluence with the Oka (Modern Kaluga Region). Moscow was about 150 km away.

For his part, Ivan III took drastic measures to strengthen his position. His secret services established contact with the enemy of the Great Horde, the Crimean Khan Mengly Giray, who attacked the southern regions of Lithuania and thus prevented Casimir IV from coming to the aid of Akhmat. Towards the Horde, Ivan III moved his main forces, which approached the northern left bank of the Ugra, covering the capital.

In addition, the Grand Duke sent an auxiliary corps along the Volga to the capital of the Horde - the city of Sarai. Taking advantage of the fact that the main forces of the Horde were on the banks of the Ugra, the Russian landing defeated it, and, according to legend, plowed up the ruins of the city, as a sign that the threat to Rus' would never come from this place (Now the village of Selitryany is located on this place) .

Two huge armies converged on the banks of a small river. The so-called “Standing on the Ugra” began, when both sides did not dare to start a general battle. Akhmat waited in vain for Casimir's help, and Ivan had to deal with his brothers. As an extremely cautious person, the Grand Duke took decisive action only in those cases when he was sure of victory.

Several times the Tatars tried to cross the Ugra, but met with powerful fire from Russian artillery, commanded by the famous Italian architect Aristotle Fiorovanti, the builder of the Assumption Cathedral in 1479, were forced to retreat.

At this time, Ivan III, having abandoned his troops, returned to Moscow, which caused excitement in the capital, since the threat of a breakthrough by the Tatar troops had not been eliminated. The inhabitants of the capital demanded action, accusing the Grand Duke of indecision.

Rostov Archbishop Vassian in his famous “Message to the Ugra” called the Grand Duke “a runner” and urged him to “harrow his fatherland”. But Ivan's caution is understandable. He could not start a general battle without a reliable rear. In Moscow, with the assistance of church hierarchs, on October 6, he made peace with his brothers, and their squads joined the grand duke's army.

Meanwhile, the favorable situation for Akhmat changed dramatically. Occupied with the defense of the southern borders, the Polish-Lithuanian troops did not come to the aid of Akhmat. Strategically, the khan had already lost the failed battle. Time passed towards autumn. Winter was approaching, the Ugra river was frozen, which gave the Tatars the opportunity to easily cross to the other side. Accustomed to warm winters on the shores of the Black and Azov Seas, the Tatars endured the cold weather worse than the Russians.

In mid-November, Ivan III gave the command to retreat to winter quarters to Borovsk, located 75 km from Moscow. On the banks of the Ugra, he left a "watchman" to watch the Tatars. Further events developed according to a scenario that no one in the Russian camp could have foreseen. On the morning of November 11, old style - 24 new, the guards unexpectedly saw that the right bank of the Ugra was empty. The Tatars secretly withdrew from their positions at night and went south. The swiftness and well-camouflaged retreat of the Khan's troops were perceived by the Russians as a flight that they did not expect.

Ivan III Vasilievich, Grand Duke of Moscow and All Rus', as a winner, returned to Moscow.

Khan Akhmat, who had no reason to return to the burned Saray, went to the lower reaches of the Volga, where on January 6, 1481 he was killed by the Nogai Tatars.

Thus the Tatar-Mongol yoke was liquidated, which brought innumerable disasters to our people.

November 24 of the new style is one of the most significant dates in Russian history, the memory of which cannot be dissolved for centuries.

It is noteworthy that the epithet "settled" is most often attached to myths.
This is where the root of evil lies: myths take root in the mind as a result of a simple process - mechanical repetition.

WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS

The classical, that is, the version of the "Mongol-Tatar invasion of Rus'", "Mongol-Tatar yoke" and "liberation from the Horde tyranny" recognized by modern science is quite well known, but it would be useful to refresh it in memory once again. So... At the beginning of the 13th century, in the Mongolian steppes, a brave and devilishly energetic tribal leader named Genghis Khan put together a huge army of nomads, soldered by iron discipline, and set out to conquer the whole world, "to the last sea." Having conquered the nearest neighbors, and then seized China, the mighty Tatar-Mongol horde rolled to the west. After passing about five thousand kilometers, the Mongols defeated the state of Khorezm, then Georgia, in 1223 they reached the southern outskirts of Rus', where they defeated the army of Russian princes in the battle on the Kalka River. In the winter of 1237, the Mongol-Tatars invaded Rus' with all their innumerable troops, burned and destroyed many Russian cities, and in 1241, in fulfillment of the precepts of Genghis Khan, they tried to conquer Western Europe - they invaded Poland, the Czech Republic, in the southwest they reached shores of the Adriatic Sea, but turned back, because they were afraid to leave in their rear ruined, but still dangerous for them, Rus'. And the Tatar-Mongol yoke began. The huge Mongol empire, stretching from Beijing to the Volga, hung like an ominous shadow over Russia. The Mongol khans issued labels to the Russian princes for reigning, attacked Rus' many times in order to rob and rob, repeatedly killed Russian princes in their Golden Horde. It should be clarified that there were many Christians among the Mongols, and therefore individual Russian princes established rather close, friendly relations with the Horde rulers, even becoming their sworn brothers. With the help of the Tatar-Mongol detachments, other princes kept on the "table" (ie on the throne), solved their purely internal problems, and even collected tribute for the Golden Horde on their own.

Having grown stronger over time, Rus' began to show its teeth. In 1380, the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Horde Khan Mamai with his Tatars, and a century later, in the so-called "standing on the Ugra", the troops of the Grand Duke Ivan III and the Horde Khan Akhmat met. The opponents camped for a long time on opposite sides of the Ugra River, after which Khan Akhmat, finally realizing that the Russians had become strong and he had every chance of losing the battle, gave the order to retreat and led his horde to the Volga. These events are considered "the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke."

VERSION
All of the above is a brief summary or, speaking in a foreign manner, a digest. The minimum of what "every intelligent person" should know.

... I like the method that Conan Doyle gave to Sherlock Holmes' impeccable logic: first, the true version of what happened is presented, and then the chain of reasoning that led Holmes to the discovery of the truth.

That is exactly what I intend to do. First, to state your own version of the "Horde" period of Russian history, and then, over a couple of hundred pages, methodically substantiate your hypothesis, referring not so much to your own feelings and "insights", but to the annals, the works of historians of the past, which turned out to be undeservedly forgotten.

I intend to prove to the reader that the classical hypothesis briefly outlined above is completely wrong, that what happened actually fits into the following theses:

1. No "Mongols" came to Rus' from their steppes.

2. The Tatars are not aliens, but residents of the Volga region, who lived in the neighborhood with the Russians long before the notorious invasion.

3. What is commonly called the Tatar-Mongol invasion was in fact a struggle between the descendants of Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest (son of Yaroslav and grandson of Alexander) with their rival princes for sole power over Russia. Accordingly, Yaroslav and Alexander Nevsky act under the names of Genghis Khan and Batu.

4. Mamai and Akhmat were not alien raiders, but noble nobles, who, according to the dynastic ties of the Russian-Tatar families, had the right to a great reign. Accordingly, "Mamay's Battle" and "standing on the Ugra" are episodes not of the struggle against foreign aggressors, but of another civil war in Rus'.

5. To prove the truth of all of the above, there is no need to turn on its head the historical sources we have today. It is enough to re-read many Russian chronicles and works of early historians thoughtfully. Weed out frankly fabulous moments and draw logical conclusions instead of mindlessly taking on faith the official theory, whose weight lies mainly not in evidence, but in the fact that the "classical theory" has simply been settled for many centuries. Having reached the stage at which any objections are interrupted by a seemingly iron argument: "Forgive me, but EVERYONE KNOWS this!"

Alas, the argument only looks ironclad... Only five hundred years ago "everyone knew" that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Two hundred years ago, the French Academy of Sciences in an official paper ridiculed those who believed in stones falling from the sky. Academicians, in general, should not be judged too harshly: in fact, “everyone knew” that the sky is not a firmament, but air, where stones have nowhere to come from. One important clarification: no one knew that it was stones flying outside the atmosphere that could often fall to the ground ...

We should not forget that many of our ancestors (more precisely, all of them) had several names. Even simple peasants had at least two names: one - worldly, under which everyone knew the person, the second - baptismal.

One of the most famous statesmen of Ancient Rus', Prince of Kyiv Vladimir Vsevolodich Monomakh, it turns out, is familiar to us under worldly, pagan names. In baptism, he was Vasily, and his father was Andrei, so his name was Vasily Andreevich Monomakh. And his grandson Izyaslav Mstislavich, according to his and his father's baptismal names, should be called - Panteleimon Fedorovich!) The baptismal name sometimes remained a secret even for loved ones - there were cases when in the first half of the 19th (!) Century, inconsolable relatives and friends only after the death of the head of the family recognized that a completely different name should be written on the tombstone, with which the deceased, it turns out, was baptized ... In church books, for example, he was listed as Ilya - meanwhile, he was known all his life as Nikita ...

WHERE MONGOLS?
Indeed, where is the "better half" of the expression "Mongol-Tatar" horde that has stuck in the teeth? Where are the Mongols proper, according to other zealous authors, who constituted a kind of aristocracy, cementing the core of the army that rolled into Rus'?

So, the most interesting and mysterious thing is that not a single contemporary of those events (or who lived in fairly close times) is unable to find the Mongols!

They simply do not exist - black-haired, slanted-eyed people, those whom anthropologists, without further ado, call "Mongoloids". No, even if you crack!

It was possible to trace only the traces of two Mongoloid tribes that certainly came from Central Asia - the Jalairs and the Barlases. But they did not come to Rus' as part of the army of Genghis, but to ... Semirechie (a region of present-day Kazakhstan). From there, in the second half of the 13th century, the Jalairs migrated to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bpresent Khujand, and the Barlases to the valley of the Kashkadarya River. From Semirechye they ... came to some extent Turkified in the sense of the language. In the new place, they were already so Turkicized that in the 14th century, in any case, in the second half of it, they considered the Turkic language their native language "(from the fundamental work of B.D. Grekov and A.Yu. Yakubovsky" Rus' and Golden Horde" (1950).

All. No matter how they struggle, historians are unable to detect any other Mongols. The Russian chronicler among the peoples who came to Rus' in the Batu Horde puts in the first place the "Kumans" - that is, the Kipchaks-Polovtsy! Who did not live in present-day Mongolia, but practically next door to the Russians, who (as I will prove later) had their own fortresses, cities and villages!

Arab historian Elomari: "In ancient times, this state (the Golden Horde of the 14th century - A. Bushkov) was the country of the Kipchaks, but when the Tatars took possession of it, the Kipchaks became their subjects. Then they, that is, the Tatars, mixed up and intermarried with them, and they all definitely became Kipchaks, as if they were of the same genus."

The fact that the Tatars did not come from anywhere, but from time immemorial lived close to the Russians, I will tell a little later, when I detonate, honestly, a serious bomb. In the meantime, let's pay attention to an extremely important circumstance: there are no Mongols. The Golden Horde is represented by Tatars and Kipchaks-Polovtsy, who are not Mongoloids, but normal Caucasian types, fair-haired, light-eyed, not at all slanted... (And their language is similar to Slavic.)

Like Genghis Khan with Batu. Ancient sources depict Genghis as tall, long-bearded, with "lynx", green-yellow eyes. Persian historian Rashid
ad-Din (a contemporary of the "Mongolian" wars) writes that in the family of Genghis Khan, children "were born mostly with gray eyes and blond." G.E. Grumm-Grzhimailo mentions a "Mongolian" (whether Mongolian?!) legend, according to which the ancestor of Genghis in the ninth tribe of Boduanchar is blond and blue-eyed! And the same Rashid ad-Din also writes that this very generic name Borjigin, assigned to the descendants of Boduanchar, just means ... Gray-eyed!

By the way, the image of Batu is drawn in exactly the same way - fair-haired, light-bearded, light-eyed... The author of these lines has lived all his adult life not so far from those places where allegedly "created his innumerable army of Genghis Khan." I have seen enough of someone, but the primordially Mongoloid people - Khakasses, Tuvans, Altaians, and the Mongols themselves. There are no fair-haired and light-eyed among them, a completely different anthropological type ...

By the way, there are no names "Batu" or "Batu" in any language of the Mongolian group. But "Batu" is available in Bashkir, and "Basty", as already mentioned, in Polovtsian. So the very name of Genghis's son definitely did not come from Mongolia.

I wonder what his fellow tribesmen wrote about their glorious ancestor Genghis Khan in the "real", present-day Mongolia?

The answer is disappointing: in the 13th century, the Mongolian alphabet did not yet exist. Absolutely all the chronicles of the Mongols were written no earlier than the 17th century. And consequently, any mention that Genghis Khan really came out of Mongolia will be no more than a retelling of ancient legends recorded three hundred years later ... Which, presumably, the "real" Mongols really liked - no doubt, it was very pleasant to suddenly find out that your ancestors, it turns out, once went with fire and sword to the very Adriatic ...

So, we have already found out a rather important circumstance: there were no Mongols in the "Mongol-Tatar" horde, i.e. dark-haired and narrow-eyed inhabitants of Central Asia, who in the XIII century, presumably, peacefully roamed their steppes. Someone else "came" to Rus' - fair-haired, gray-eyed, blue-eyed people of European appearance. And in fact, they came and not so far away - from the Polovtsian steppes, no further.

HOW MUCH WAS "MONGOLO-TATARS"?
In fact, how many of them came to Rus'? Let's start to find out. Russian pre-revolutionary sources mention "a half-million Mongol army".

Sorry for the harshness, but both the first and second figures are bullshit. Since they were invented by the townspeople, cabinet figures who saw the horse only from afar and had absolutely no idea what cares it takes to keep a fighting, as well as pack and marching horse in working condition.

Any warrior of a nomadic tribe goes on a campaign, having three horses (as a minimum, two). One is carrying luggage (a small "dry ration", horseshoes, spare bridle straps, every little thing like spare arrows, armor that is not necessary to wear on the march, etc.). From the second to the third, you need to change from time to time so that one horse is a little rested all the time - you never know what will happen, sometimes you have to engage in battle "from the wheels", i.e. with hooves.

A primitive calculation shows: for an army of half a million or four hundred thousand fighters, about one and a half million horses are needed, in extreme cases - a million. Such a herd will be able to advance at most fifty kilometers, but it will not be able to go further - the advanced ones will instantly exterminate the grass over a vast area, so that the rear ones will die of starvation very quickly. No matter how much oats you store for them in toroki (and how much can you store?).

Let me remind you that the invasion of the "Mongol-Tatars" into the borders of Rus', all the main invasions unfolded in winter. When the remaining grass is hidden under the snow, and grain has yet to be taken away from the population - besides, a lot of fodder perishes in burning cities and villages ...

They may object: the Mongolian horse is perfectly able to get food for itself from under the snow. Everything is correct. "Mongols" are hardy creatures that can live all winter on "self-sufficiency". I saw them myself, I once rode a little on one, although there was no rider. Magnificent creatures, I am forever fascinated by Mongolian horses and with great pleasure would exchange my car for such a horse, if it were possible to keep it in the city (and, alas, there is no opportunity).

However, in our case, the above argument does not work. Firstly, ancient sources do not mention horses of the Mongolian breed, which were "in service" with the horde. On the contrary, experts in horse breeding unanimously prove that the "Tatar-Mongolian" horde rode Turkmens - and this is a completely different breed, and looks different, and it is not always able to soak in winter without human help ...

Secondly, the difference between a horse allowed to roam in the winter without any work, and a horse forced to make long transitions under a rider, and also to participate in battles, is not taken into account. Even Mongols, if there were a million of them, with all their fantastic ability to soak in the middle of a snow-covered plain, would die of hunger, interfering with each other, beating off rare blades of grass from each other ...

But they, in addition to the riders, were also forced to carry heavy prey!

But the “Mongols” also had rather big carts with them. The cattle that pulls the wagons must also be fed, otherwise they won't pull the wagon...

In a word, throughout the twentieth century, the number of "Mongol-Tatars" who attacked Rus' dwindled like the famous shagreen leather. In the end, historians with gnashing of teeth stopped at thirty thousand - the remnants of professional pride simply do not allow them to go lower.

And one more thing... The fear of admitting heretical theories like mine into Great Historiography. Because, even if we take the number of "invading Mongols" to be thirty thousand, a series of sarcastic questions arises ...

And the first among them will be this: isn’t it enough? No matter how you refer to the "disunity" of the Russian principalities, thirty thousand cavalrymen is too meager a figure in order to arrange "fire and ruin" throughout Rus'! After all, they (even the supporters of the "classical" version admit this) did not move in a compact mass, leaning en masse one by one on Russian cities. Several detachments scattered in different directions - and this reduces the number of "innumerable Tatar hordes" to the limit beyond which elementary distrust begins: well, such a number of aggressors could not, no matter what discipline their regiments were soldered (torn off from the supply bases, as if a group of saboteurs behind enemy lines), "capture" Rus'!

It turns out a vicious circle: for purely physical reasons, a huge army of "Mongol-Tatars" could not maintain combat readiness, move quickly, and inflict those very notorious "indestructible blows". A small army would never have been able to establish control over most of the territory of Rus'.

Only our hypothesis can save us from this vicious circle - that there were no aliens. There was a civil war, the enemy forces were relatively small - and they relied on their own forage stocks accumulated in the cities.

By the way, it is completely unusual for nomads to fight in winter. But winter is a favorite time for Russian military campaigns. From time immemorial, they went on a campaign, using frozen rivers as “roadways” - the most optimal way of waging war on a territory almost completely overgrown with dense forests, where it’s damned difficult for a more or less large military detachment, especially cavalry.

All chronicle information about the military campaigns of 1237-1238 that has come down to us. they draw the classic Russian style of these battles - the battles take place in winter, and the "Mongols", who seem to be supposed to be classic steppe dwellers, act with amazing skill in the forests. First of all, I mean the encirclement and subsequent complete destruction of the Russian detachment on the City River under the command of the Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich ... Such a brilliant operation could not have been carried out by the inhabitants of the steppes, who simply had no time, and no place to learn to fight in the thicket .

So, our piggy bank is gradually replenished with weighty evidence. We found out that no "Mongols", i.e. for some reason there were no Mongoloids among the "horde". They found out that there could not be many “aliens”, that even the meager number of thirty thousand, on which historians entrenched themselves, like the Swedes near Poltava, could in no way provide the “Mongols” with establishing control over all of Russia. We found out that the horses under the "Mongols" were by no means Mongolian, but these "Mongols" fought for some reason according to Russian rules. And they were, curiously, fair-haired and blue-eyed.

Not much to start with. And we, I warn you, are just entering the taste ...

WHERE DID THE "MONGOLS" COME TO Rus'?
That's right, I didn't mess anything up. And very quickly the reader learns that the question put in the headline only at first glance seems to be nonsense ...

We have already talked about the second Moscow and the second Krakow. There is also a second Samara - "Samara Grad", a fortress on the site of the present city of Novomoskovsk, 29 kilometers north of Dnepropetrovsk...

In a word, the geographical names of the Middle Ages did not always coincide with what we understand today as some kind of name. Today, for us, Rus' means all the then land inhabited by Russians.

But the then people thought a little differently ... Every time, as soon as you read about the events of the 12th-13th centuries, you must remember: then "Rus" was called part of the regions inhabited by Russians - Kiev, Pereyaslav and Chernigov principalities. More precisely: Kyiv, Chernihiv, the river Ros, Porosye, Pereyaslavl-Russian, Seversk land, Kursk. Quite often in the ancient chronicles it is written that from Novgorod or Vladimir ... "were going to Rus'"! That is - to Kyiv. Chernihiv cities are "Russian", but Smolensk cities are already "non-Russian".

Historian of the 17th century: "...Slavs, our ancestors - Moscow, Russians and Others..."

Exactly. Not for nothing on Western European maps for a very long time Russian lands were divided into "Muscovy" (north) and "Russia" (south). last name
lasted an extremely long time - as we remember, the inhabitants of those lands where "Ukraine" is now located, being Russians by blood, Catholics by religion and subjects of the Commonwealth (as the author calls the Commonwealth, which is more familiar to us - Sapfir_t), called themselves "Russian gentry."

Thus, chronicle reports like "such and such a year the horde attacked Rus'" should be treated taking into account what was said above. Remember: this mention does not mean aggression against all of Rus', but an attack on a specific area, strictly localized.

Kalka - a ball of mysteries
The first clash of the Russians with the "Mongol-Tatars" on the Kalka River in 1223 is described in some detail and in detail in the ancient domestic chronicles - however, not only in them, there is also the so-called "Tale of the Battle of the Kalka, and of the Russian princes, and about seventy heroes".

However, the abundance of information does not always bring clarity ... In general, historical science has long denied the obvious fact that the events on the Kalka River are not an attack by evil aliens on Rus', but Russian aggression against their neighbors. Judge for yourself. The Tatars (the Mongols are never, never mentioned in the descriptions of the battle on the Kalka) fought with the Polovtsians. And they sent ambassadors to Rus', who quite friendly asked the Russians not to interfere in this war. The Russian princes ... killed these ambassadors, and according to some old texts, not just killed - "tortured". The act, to put it mildly, is not the most decent - at all times the murder of an ambassador was considered one of the most serious crimes. Following that, the Russian army sets out on a long march.

Leaving the borders of Rus', it first of all attacks the Tatar camp, takes prey, steals cattle, after which it moves into the depths of foreign territory for another eight days. There, on Kalka, a decisive battle takes place, the Polovtsian allies flee in panic, the princes remain alone, fight back for three days, after which, believing the assurances of the Tatars, they surrender. However, the Tatars, angry with the Russians (that's strange, why would that be?! They didn't do any special harm to the Tatars, except that they killed their ambassadors, attacked them first ...) kill the captured princes. According to some sources, they kill simply, without any fuss, according to others, they pile on tied boards and sit down to feast on top, scoundrels.

It is significant that one of the most ardent "Tatarophobes", the writer V. Chivilikhin, in his almost eight hundred-page book "Memory", oversaturated with abuse against the "Horde", somewhat embarrassingly bypasses the events on Kalka. He mentions briefly - yes, there was something like that ... It seems that they fought a little there ...

You can understand it: the Russian princes in this story do not look the best. I’ll add on my own: the Galician prince Mstislav Udaloy is not just an aggressor, but also a uniformed bastard - however, more on that later ...

Let's get back to the riddles. For some reason, the same "Tale of the Battle of the Kalka" is not able ... to name the enemy of the Russians! Judge for yourself: "... because of our sins, unknown peoples, godless Moabites came, about whom no one knows exactly who they are and where they came from, and what their language is, and what tribe they are, and what faith. And they call them Tatars , while others say - taurmen, and others - Pechenegs.

Extremely strange lines! I remind you that they were written much later than the events described, when it seemed to be necessary to know exactly who the Russian princes fought on Kalka. After all, part of the army (albeit small, according to some sources - one tenth) nevertheless returned from Kalka. Moreover, the winners, in turn chasing the defeated Russian regiments, chased them to Novgorod-Svyatopolch (not to be confused with Veliky Novgorod! - A. Bushkov), where they attacked the civilian population - (Novgorod-Svyatopolch stood on the banks of the Dnieper) so and among the townspeople there should be witnesses who saw the enemy with their own eyes.

However, this adversary remains "unknown". Those who came from it is not known from what places, speaking God knows what language. Your will, it turns out a certain inconsistency ...

Either Polovtsy, or Taurmen, or Tatars... This statement further confuses the matter. By the time described, the Polovtsy were well known in Rus' - for so many years they lived side by side, then fought with them, then went on campaigns together, became related ... Is it a conceivable thing not to identify the Polovtsy?

The Taurmens are a nomadic Turkic tribe that lived in the Black Sea region in those years. Again, they were well known to the Russians by that time.

Tatars (as I will soon prove) by 1223 had already lived in the same Black Sea region for at least several decades.

In short, the chronicler is definitely disingenuous. The full impression is that for some extremely good reasons he does not want to directly name the enemy of the Russians in that battle. And this assumption is not far-fetched. Firstly, the expression "either Polovtsy, or Tatars, or Taurmen" in no way agrees with the life experience of Russians of that time. And those, and others, and the third in Rus' were well known - everyone except the author of the "Tale" ...

Secondly, if the Russians had fought on the Kalka with the "unknown" people, seen for the first time, the subsequent picture of events would have looked completely different - I mean the surrender of the princes and the pursuit of the defeated Russian regiments.

It turns out that the princes, who had settled in the fortification of "tyna and carts", where they repelled enemy attacks for three days, surrendered after ... a certain Russian named Ploskinya, who was in the enemy's battle formations, solemnly kissed his pectoral cross on what the prisoners won't do any harm.

I cheated, you bastard. But the point is not in his cunning (after all, history gives a lot of evidence of how the Russian princes themselves violated the "kissing of the cross" with the same cunning), but in the personality of Ploskin himself, a Russian, a Christian, who somehow mysteriously turned out to be among the warriors of the "unknown people". I wonder what fate brought him there?

V. Yan, a supporter of the "classical" version, portrayed Ploskinya as a sort of steppe tramp, who was caught on the road by the "Mongol-Tatars" and with a chain around his neck was led to the Russian fortification in order to persuade them to surrender to the mercy of the winner.

This is not even a version - this is, excuse me, schizophrenia. Put yourself in the place of a Russian prince - a professional soldier, who in his life fought to his heart's content with both Slavic neighbors and nomadic steppe dwellers, who went through fires and waters ...

You are surrounded in a distant land by warriors of a completely unknown tribe. For three days you repel the attacks of this adversary, whose language you do not understand, whose appearance is strange and disgusting to you. Suddenly, this mysterious adversary drives some ragamuffin with a chain around his neck to your fortification, and he, kissing the cross, swears that the besiegers (I emphasize again and again: hitherto unknown to you, strangers in language and faith!) will spare you if you surrender. ..

What, will you give up under these conditions?

Yes, completeness! Not a single normal person with a little bit of military experience will give up (besides, I’ll clarify, you recently killed the ambassadors of this very people and plundered the camp of his fellow tribesmen to their heart’s content).

But the Russian princes for some reason surrendered ...

However, why "for some reason"? The same "Tale" writes quite unambiguously: "There were roamers along with the Tatars, and their governor was Ploskinya."

Brodniki are Russian free combatants who lived in those places. The forerunners of the Cossacks. Well, this somewhat changes the matter: it was not a bound captive who persuaded to surrender, but a voivode, almost an equal, such a Slav and a Christian ... One can believe this - that the princes did.

However, the establishment of the true social position of Ploskin only confuses the matter. It turns out that the roamers in a short time managed to agree with the "unknown peoples" and got close to them so much that they hit the Russians together? Your brothers in blood and faith?

Again, something doesn't add up. It is clear that the wanderers were outcasts who fought only for themselves, but anyway, somehow very quickly found a common language with the "godless Moabites", about whom no one knows where they came from, and what language they are, and what faith .. .

Strictly speaking, one thing can be stated with all certainty: part of the army with which the Russian princes fought on the Kalka was Slavic, Christian.

Maybe not a part? Maybe there were no "Moabites"? Maybe the battle on the Kalka is a "showdown" between the Orthodox? On the one hand, several allied Russian princes (it must be emphasized that for some reason many Russian princes did not go to Kalka to rescue the Polovtsy), on the other, wanderers and Orthodox Tatars, neighbors of the Russians?

It is worth accepting this version, everything falls into place. And the hitherto mysterious surrender of princes - they surrendered not to some unknown strangers, but to well-known neighbors (the neighbors, however, broke their word, but how lucky ...) - (That the captured princes were "thrown under the boards" , reports only "The Tale". Other sources write that the princes were simply killed without mocking, and still others that the princes were "captured". So the story of the "feast on the bodies" is just one of the options). And the behavior of those residents of Novgorod-Svyatopolch that it is not clear why they came out to meet the Tatars pursuing the Russians fleeing from Kalka ... with a procession!

Such behavior, again, does not fit into the version with the unknown "godless Moabites." Our ancestors can be reproached for many sins, but there was no excessive gullibility among those. In fact, what normal person would come out to appease some unknown stranger, whose language, faith and nationality remain a mystery?!

However, as soon as we assume that the fleeing remnants of the prince's armies were being chased by some of their own, long known, and that, most importantly, the same Christians, the behavior of the city's inhabitants instantly loses all signs of madness or absurdity. From their own, long known, from the same Christians, there really was a chance to defend themselves with a procession.

The chance, however, did not work this time - apparently, the horsemen, excited by the chase, were too angry (which is quite understandable - their ambassadors were killed, they themselves were attacked first, cut down and robbed) and immediately flogged those who came out to meet with the cross. I will especially note that this also happened during purely Russian internecine wars, when the enraged winners chopped right and left, and the raised cross did not stop them ...

Thus, the battle on the Kalka is not at all a clash with unknown peoples, but one of the episodes of the internecine war waged between Christian Russians, Christian Polovtsians (it is curious that the chronicles of that time mention the Polovtsian Khan Basty who converted to Christianity) and Christians- Tatars. The Russian historian of the 17th century summarizes the results of this war as follows: “After this victory, the Tatars completely ruined the Polovtsian fortresses and cities and villages. today it is called Perekop), and around Pontus Evkhsinsky, that is, the Black Sea, the Tatars took it by their hand, and settled there.

As you can see, the war was for specific territories, between specific peoples. By the way, the mention of "cities, and fortresses, and Polovtsian villages" is extremely curious. We were told for a long time that the Polovtsians are nomadic steppe peoples, but nomadic peoples have neither fortresses nor cities ...

And finally - about the Galician prince Mstislav Udal, or rather, about why he deserves the definition of "scum". A word to the same historian: "... The brave Prince Mstislav Mstislavich of Galicia ... when he ran to the river to his boats (immediately after the defeat from the "Tatars" - A. Bushkov), having crossed the river, ordered all the boats to be sunk and chopped , and burn, fearing the Tatar chase, and, filled with fear, on foot reached Galich.Most of the Russian regiments, running, reached their boats and, seeing them to a single sunk and burned, from sadness and need and hunger could not swim across the river , there they died and perished, except for some princes and warriors, who swam across the river on wicker meadowsweet sheaves.

Like this. By the way, this scum - I'm talking about Mstislav - is still called Udaly in history and literature. True, not all historians and writers are delighted with this figure - a hundred years ago, D. Ilovaisky listed in detail all the mistakes and absurdities committed by Mstislav as the prince of Galicia, using the remarkable phrase: "Obviously, in old age Mstislav completely lost his common sense." On the contrary, N. Kostomarov, without hesitation, considered Mstislav's act with the boats as a matter of course - Mstislav, they say, by this "did not allow the Tatars to cross." However, excuse me, they still somehow crossed over, if "on the shoulders" of the retreating Russians they rushed to Novgorod-Svyatopolch?!

The complacency of Kostomarov in relation to Mstislav, who, in fact, killed most of the Russian troops with his act, however, is understandable: Kostomarov had only the “Tale of the Battle of the Kalka” at his disposal, where the death of soldiers who had nothing to cross was not mentioned at all . The historian I have just quoted is definitely unknown to Kostomarov. Nothing strange - I will reveal this secret a little later.

SUPERMEN FROM THE MONGOLIAN STEPPE
Having accepted the classical version of the "Mongol-Tatar" invasion, we ourselves do not notice what a bunch of illogicalities, or even outright stupidity, we are dealing with.

To begin with, I will quote an extensive piece from the work of the famous scientist N.A. Morozov (1854-1946):

“Nomadic peoples, by the very nature of their life, should be widely scattered over a large uncultivated area by separate patriarchal groups, incapable of general disciplined action that requires economic centralization, i.e. a tax that could support an army of adult single people. peoples, like clusters of molecules, each of their patriarchal groups is repulsed by the other, thanks to the search for more and more grass to feed their herds.

Having united together in the number of at least several thousand people, they must also unite with each other several thousand cows and horses and even more sheep and rams belonging to different patriarchs. As a result of this, all the nearest grass would be quickly eaten up and the whole company would have to be scattered again by the former patriarchal small groups in different directions in order to be able to live longer without moving their tents to another place every day.

That is why, a priori, the very idea of ​​the possibility of organized collective action and a victorious invasion of settled peoples by some widely scattered nomadic people feeding on herds, such as the Mongols, Samoyeds, Bedouins, etc., must be discarded a priori, as a pure fantasy. except in the case when some gigantic, natural catastrophe, threatening general destruction, drives such a people from the perishing steppe entirely to a settled country, like a hurricane drives dust from a desert to an adjacent oasis.

But after all, even in the Sahara itself, not a single large oasis was forever covered with surrounding sand, and after the end of the hurricane it was again reborn to its former life. Similarly, and throughout our reliable historical horizon, we do not see a single victorious invasion of wild nomadic peoples on sedentary cultured countries, but just the opposite. This means that this could not have happened in the prehistoric past. All these migrations of peoples back and forth on the eve of their appearance in the field of view of history should be reduced only to the migration of their names or, at best, rulers, and even then from more cultured countries to less cultured ones, and not vice versa.

Gold words. There are indeed no cases in history when nomads scattered over vast expanses would suddenly create, if not a powerful state, then a powerful army capable of conquering entire countries.

With one single exception - when it comes to the "Mongol-Tatars". We are offered to believe that Genghis Khan, who allegedly lived in present-day Mongolia, by some miracle, in a matter of years created an army from scattered uluses that surpassed any European army in discipline and organization ...

Curious to know how he did it? Despite the fact that the nomad has one undoubted advantage that keeps him from any whims of the settled power, the power that he did not like at all: mobility. That's why he's a nomad. The self-styled khan did not like it - he assembled a yurt, loaded horses, seated his wife, children and an old grandmother, waved his whip - and moved to distant lands, from where it is extremely difficult to get him. Especially when it comes to the boundless Siberian expanses.

Here is a suitable example: when in 1916 the tsarist officials did something especially torturing the nomadic Kazakhs, they calmly withdrew and migrated from the Russian Empire to neighboring China. The authorities (and we are talking about the beginning of the twentieth century!) simply could not stop them and prevent them!

Meanwhile, we are invited to believe in the following picture: the steppe nomads, free as the wind, for some reason dutifully agree to follow Genghis "to the last sea." With the complete, we emphasize and repeat, Genghis Khan's lack of means of influencing the "refuseniks" - it would be unthinkable to chase them along the steppes and thickets stretching for thousands of kilometers (certain clans of the Mongols did not live in the steppe, but in the taiga).

Five thousand kilometers - approximately this distance was covered by the detachments of Genghis to Rus' according to the "classical" version. The armchair theorists who wrote such things simply never thought about what it would cost in reality to overcome such routes (and if we recall that the "Mongols" reached the shores of the Adriatic, the route increases by another one and a half thousand kilometers). What force, what miracle could compel the steppes to set off into such a distance?

Would you believe that Bedouin nomads from the Arabian steppes would one day set off to conquer South Africa, reaching the Cape of Good Hope? And the Indians of Alaska one fine day showed up in Mexico, where, for unknown reasons, they decided to migrate?

Of course, all this is pure nonsense. However, if we compare the distances, it turns out that from Mongolia to the Adriatic, the "Mongols" would have to go about the same distance as the Arabian Bedouins - to Cape Town or the Indians of Alaska - to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not easy to pass, let’s clarify - along the way, also capture several of the largest states of that time: China, Khorezm, devastate Georgia, Rus', invade Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary ...

Are historians asking us to believe this? Well, so much the worse for historians... If you don't want to be called an idiot, don't do idiotic things - an old worldly truth. So the supporters of the "classic" version themselves run into insults ...

Not only that, the nomadic tribes, which were not even at the stage of feudalism - the tribal system - for some reason suddenly realized the need for iron discipline and dutifully dragged after Genghis Khan for six and a half thousand kilometers. Even in a short (damn tight!) time, the nomads suddenly learned how to use the best military equipment of that time - wall-beating machines, stone throwers ...

Judge for yourself. According to reliable data, the first major campaign outside the "historical homeland" Genghis Khan makes in 1209. Already in 1215, he allegedly
captures Beijing, in 1219, with the use of siege weapons, takes the cities of Central Asia - Merv, Samarkand, Gurganzh, Khiva, Khojent, Bukhara - and twenty years later destroys the walls of Russian cities with the same wall-beating machines and stone-throwers.

Mark Twain was right: well, ganders do not spawn! Well, swede does not grow on a tree!

Well, a steppe nomad is not capable of mastering the art of capturing cities using wall-beating machines in a couple of years! Create an army superior to the armies of any states of that time!

First of all, because he does not need it. As Morozov rightly noted, there are no examples in world history of the creation of states by nomads or the defeat of foreign states. Especially in such a utopian timeframe, as the official history slips us, uttering pearls like: "After the invasion of China, the army of Genghis Khan adopted Chinese military equipment - wall-beating machines, stone-throwing and flame-throwing guns."

That's nothing, there are pearls and cleaner. I happened to read an article in an extremely serious, academic journal: it described how the Mongol (!) Navy in the 13th century. fired at the ships of the ancient Japanese ... with combat missiles! (The Japanese, presumably, responded with laser-guided torpedoes.) In a word, navigation must also be included among the arts mastered by the Mongols in a year or two. Well, at least not flying on devices heavier than air ...

There are situations when common sense is stronger than all scientific constructions. Especially if scientists are led into such labyrinths of fantasy that any science fiction writer will open his mouth admiringly.

By the way, an important question: how did the wives of the Mongols let their husbands go to the end of the world? The vast majority of medieval sources describe
"Tatar-Mongol horde" as an army, and not a resettling people. No wives and little kids. It turns out that the Mongols wandered in foreign lands until their death, and their wives, never seeing their husbands, managed the herds?

Not bookish, but real nomads always behave in a completely different way: they quietly roam for many hundreds of years (attacking occasionally on their neighbors, not without it), it never occurs to them to conquer some nearby country or go halfway around the world to look for the "last sea". It simply would not occur to a Pashtun or Bedouin tribal leader to build a city or create a state. How does not come to his mind a whim about the "last sea". There are enough purely earthly, practical things: you need to survive, prevent the loss of livestock, look for new pastures, exchange fabrics and knives for cheese and milk ... Where can one dream of an "empire for half the world"?

Meanwhile, we are seriously assured that the nomadic steppe for some reason suddenly became imbued with the idea of ​​a state, or at least a grandiose conquest campaign to "the limits of the world." And in a short period of time, by some miracle, he united his fellow tribesmen into a powerful organized army. And in a few years I learned how to handle rather complex machines by the standards of that time. And he created a navy that fired missiles at the Japanese. And he compiled a code of laws for his vast empire. And he corresponded with the pope, kings and dukes, teaching them how to live.

The late L.N. Gumilyov (not the last historian, but sometimes overly fond of poetic ideas) seriously believed that he had created a hypothesis that could explain such miracles. We are talking about the "theory of passionarity". According to Gumilyov, this or that nation at a certain moment receives a certain mysterious and semi-mystical energy blow from the Cosmos - after which they calmly turn mountains and achieve unprecedented achievements.

There is a significant flaw in this beautiful theory, which benefits Gumilyov himself, but his opponents, on the contrary, complicates the discussion to the limit. The fact is that any military or other success of any nation can easily be explained by a "manifestation of passionarity". But to prove the absence of a "passionate blow" is almost impossible. This automatically puts Gumilyov's supporters in better conditions than their opponents - since there are no reliable scientific methods, as well as equipment capable of fixing the "flow of passionarity" on paper or pleg.

In a word - frolic, soul ... Let's say, the Ryazan governor Baldokha, at the head of a valiant rati, attacked the Suzdalians, instantly and brutally defeated their army, after which the Ryazanians arrogantly abused the Suzdal women and girls, robbed all the stocks of salted mushrooms, squirrel skins and honey , finally, at the neck of an inopportunely turned up monk, and the winners returned home. All. You can, narrowing your eyes meaningfully, say: "The people of Ryazan received a passionary impetus, but the Suzdal people lost their passionarity by that time."

Half a year has passed - and now the Suzdal prince Timonya Gunyavy, burning with a thirst for revenge, attacked the Ryazan people. Fortune turned out to be fickle - and this time the "Ryazan skewbald" broke on the first number and took away all the goods, and the women with the girls were cut off the hem, which was before the voivode Baldokha, they mocked him to their heart's content, shoving a hedgehog that turned up inopportunely with his bare backside. The picture for the historian of the Gumilyov school is clear through and through: "The people of Ryazan have lost their former passionarity."

Perhaps they didn’t lose anything - it’s just that the hungover blacksmith didn’t shoe Baidokhin’s horse in time, he lost the horseshoe, and then everything went according to the English song in Marshak’s translation: there was no nail, the horseshoe was gone, there was no horseshoe, the horse limped. .. And the main part of Baldokhin's rati did not take part in the battle at all, since they were chasing the Polovtsians a hundred miles from Ryazan.

But try to prove to the orthodox Gumilyov that the problem is in the nail, and not in the "loss of passionarity"! No, really, take a chance for the sake of curiosity, only I'm not your friend here ...

In a word, the "passionary" theory is not suitable for explaining the "phenomenon of Genghis Khan" because of the complete impossibility of both proving it and refuting it. Let's leave mysticism behind the scenes.

There is one more piquant moment here: the same monk, whom the Ryazanians so imprudently hit on the neck, will compile the Suzdal chronicle. If he is especially vindictive, he will present the Ryazans ... and not the Ryazans at all. And some "nasty", insidious Antichrist horde. No one knows where the Moabites emerged, eating foxes and gophers. Subsequently, I will give some quotations showing that in the Middle Ages this was sometimes the case ...

Let's return to the reverse side of the medal of the "Tatar-Mongol yoke". Unique relations between the "Horde" and the Russians. Here it is already worth paying tribute to Gumilyov, in this area he is not worthy of scoffing, but respect: he has collected a huge amount of material, clearly indicating that the relationship between "Rus" and "Horde" cannot be described in any other word than symbiosis.

To be honest, I don't want to enumerate these proofs. They wrote too much and often about how Russian princes and "Mongol khans" became brothers, relatives, sons-in-law and father-in-law, how they went on joint military campaigns, how (let's call a spade a spade) friends. If desired, the reader himself can easily get acquainted with the details of Russian-Tatar friendship. I will focus on one aspect: that this kind of relationship is unique. For some reason, in no country defeated or captured by them, the Tatars did not behave like this. However, in Rus' it reached an incomprehensible absurdity: for example, the subjects of Alexander Nevsky one day beat the Horde tribute collectors to death, but the "Horde Khan" reacted to this in a strange way: when news of this sad event did not
only does not take punitive measures, but gives Nevsky additional privileges, allows him to collect tribute himself, and in addition, frees him from the need to supply recruits for the Horde army ...

I'm not fantasizing, but just retelling Russian chronicles. Reflecting (probably contrary to the "creative intent" of their authors) very strange relations that existed between Russia and the Horde: a uniform symbiosis, brotherhood in arms, leading to such an interweaving of names and events that you simply stop understanding where the Russians end and the Tatars begin. ..

And nowhere. Rus' is the Golden Horde, have you forgotten? Or, to be more precise, the Golden Horde is a part of Rus', the one that is under the rule of the Vladimir-Suzdal princes, descendants of Vsevolod the Big Nest. And the notorious symbiosis is just a reflection of events that is not completely distorted.

Gumilyov did not dare to take the next step. And I'm sorry, I'll take the risk. If we have established that, firstly, no "Mongoloids" came from nowhere, that, secondly, the Russians and Tatars were in uniquely friendly relations, logic dictates to go further and say: Rus' and the Horde are simply one and the same. And the tales of the "evil Tatars" were composed much later.

Have you ever wondered what the word "horde" itself means? In search of an answer, I first dug into the depths of the Polish language. For a very simple reason: it was in Polish that quite a lot of words that disappeared from Russian in the 17th-18th centuries were preserved (once both languages ​​were much closer).

In Polish "Horda" means "horde". Not a "crowd of nomads", but rather a "big army". Numerous army.

We move on. Sigismund Herberstein, the "Caesar" ambassador, who visited Muscovy in the 16th century and left the most interesting "Notes", testifies that in the "Tatar" language "horde" meant "multitude" or "collection". In Russian chronicles, when talking about military campaigns, the phrases "Swedish horde" or "German horde" in the same meaning - "army" are calmly inserted.

At the same time, Academician Fomenko points to the Latin word "ordo", meaning "order", to the German "ordnung" - "order".

To this we can add the Anglo-Saxon "order", meaning again "order" in the sense of "law", and in addition - the military system. In the navy, the expression "marching order" still exists. That is - the construction of ships on a campaign.

In modern Turkish, the word "ordu" has meanings, again corresponding to the words "order", "sample", and not so long ago (from a historical point of view) in Turkey there was a military term "orta", meaning a Janissary unit, something in between between battalion and regiment...

At the end of the XVII century. on the basis of written reports of explorers, the Tobolsk serviceman S.U. Remezov, together with his three sons, compiled the "Drawing Book" - a grandiose geographical atlas covering the territory of the entire Muscovite kingdom. The Cossack lands adjacent to the North Caucasus are called ... "Land of the Cossack Horde"! (Like on many other old Russian maps.)

In a word, all the meanings of the word "horde" revolve around the terms "army", "order", "legislation" (in modern Kazakh "Red Army" sounds like Kzyl-Orda!). And this, I am sure, is not without reason. The picture of the "horde" as a state that at some stage united Russians and Tatars (or simply the armies of this state) fits into reality much more successfully than the Mongol nomads, who surprisingly inflamed with a passion for wall-beating machines, the navy and campaigns for five or six thousand kilometers.

Simply, once Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and his son Alexander began a fierce struggle for dominance over all Russian lands. It was their army-horde (in which there were really enough Tatars) that served the later falsifiers to create a terrible picture of the "foreign invasion".

There are a few more similar examples when, with a superficial knowledge of history, a person is quite capable of drawing false conclusions - in the event that he is only familiar with the name and does not suspect what is behind it.

In the 17th century in the Polish army there were cavalry units called "Cossack banners" ("horugv" - a military unit). There were no real Cossacks there - in this case, the name meant only that these regiments were armed according to the Cossack model.

During the Crimean War, the Turkish troops that landed on the peninsula included a unit called "Ottoman Cossacks". Again, not a single Cossack - only Polish emigrants and Turks under the command of Mehmed Sadyk Pasha, who is also a former cavalry lieutenant Michal Tchaikovsky.

And finally, we can recall the French Zouaves. These parts got their name from the Algerian Zuazua tribe. Gradually, not a single Algerian remained in them, only purebred French, but the name was preserved for subsequent times, until these units, a kind of special forces, ceased to exist.

This is where I stop. If you're interested, read on here

Rus' under the Mongol-Tatar yoke existed in an extremely humiliating way. She was completely subjugated both politically and economically. Therefore, the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus', the date of standing on the Ugra River - 1480, is perceived as the most important event in our history. Although Rus' became politically independent, the payment of tribute in a smaller amount continued until the time of Peter the Great. The complete end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke is the year 1700, when Peter the Great canceled payments to the Crimean khans.

Mongolian army

In the XII century, the Mongol nomads united under the rule of the cruel and cunning ruler Temujin. He mercilessly suppressed all obstacles to unlimited power and created a unique army that won victory after victory. He, creating a great empire, was called by his nobility Genghis Khan.

Having conquered East Asia, the Mongol troops reached the Caucasus and Crimea. They destroyed the Alans and Polovtsians. The remnants of the Polovtsians turned to Rus' for help.

First meeting

There were 20 or 30 thousand soldiers in the Mongol army, it has not been precisely established. They were led by Jebe and Subedei. They stopped at the Dnieper. Meanwhile, Khotyan was persuading the Galich prince Mstislav Udaly to oppose the invasion of the terrible cavalry. He was joined by Mstislav of Kyiv and Mstislav of Chernigov. According to various sources, the total Russian army numbered from 10 to 100 thousand people. The military council took place on the banks of the Kalka River. A unified plan was not developed. performed alone. He was supported only by the remnants of the Polovtsy, but during the battle they fled. The princes of Galicia who did not support the princes still had to fight the Mongols who attacked their fortified camp.

The battle lasted for three days. Only by cunning and a promise not to take anyone prisoner did the Mongols enter the camp. But they did not keep their words. The Mongols tied the Russian governor and the prince alive and covered them with boards and sat on them and began to feast on the victory, enjoying the groans of the dying. So the Kyiv prince and his entourage perished in agony. The year was 1223. The Mongols, without going into details, went back to Asia. They will return in thirteen years. And all these years in Rus' there was a fierce squabble between the princes. It completely undermined the forces of the Southwestern Principalities.

Invasion

The grandson of Genghis Khan, Batu, with a huge army of half a million, having conquered the Polovtsian lands in the south in the east, approached the Russian principalities in December 1237. His tactic was not to give a big battle, but to attack individual units, breaking them all one by one. Approaching the southern borders of the Ryazan principality, the Tatars demanded tribute from him in an ultimatum: a tenth of the horses, people and princes. In Ryazan, three thousand soldiers were barely recruited. They sent for help to Vladimir, but no help came. After six days of siege, Ryazan was taken.

The inhabitants were destroyed, the city was destroyed. It was the beginning. The end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke will take place in two hundred and forty difficult years. Kolomna was next. There, the Russian army was almost all killed. Moscow lies in ashes. But before that, someone who dreamed of returning to his native places buried it in a treasure trove of silver jewelry. It was found by chance when construction was underway in the Kremlin in the 90s of the XX century. Vladimir was next. The Mongols spared neither women nor children and destroyed the city. Then Torzhok fell. But spring came, and, fearing a mudslide, the Mongols moved south. Northern swampy Rus' did not interest them. But the defending tiny Kozelsk stood in the way. For nearly two months, the city resisted fiercely. But reinforcements came to the Mongols with wall-beating machines, and the city was taken. All the defenders were cut out and left no stone unturned from the town. So, the whole North-Eastern Rus' by 1238 lay in ruins. And who can doubt whether there was a Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus'? From the brief description it follows that there were wonderful good neighborly relations, right?

Southwestern Rus'

Her turn came in 1239. Pereyaslavl, the Principality of Chernigov, Kyiv, Vladimir-Volynsky, Galich - everything was destroyed, not to mention smaller cities and villages and villages. And how far is the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke! How much horror and destruction brought its beginning. The Mongols went to Dalmatia and Croatia. Western Europe trembled.

However, news from distant Mongolia forced the invaders to turn back. And they didn’t have enough strength to go back. Europe was saved. But our Motherland, lying in ruins, bleeding, did not know when the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke would come.

Rus' under the yoke

Who suffered the most from the Mongol invasion? Peasants? Yes, the Mongols did not spare them. But they could hide in the woods. Townspeople? Of course. There were 74 cities in Rus', and 49 of them were destroyed by Batu, and 14 were never restored. Artisans were turned into slaves and exported. There was no continuity of skills in crafts, and the craft fell into decay. They forgot how to pour dishes from glass, cook glass for making windows, there were no multi-colored ceramics and decorations with cloisonne enamel. Stonemasons and carvers disappeared, and stone construction was suspended for 50 years. But it was hardest of all for those who repelled the attack with weapons in their hands - the feudal lords and combatants. Of the 12 princes of Ryazan, three survived, of the 3 of Rostov - one, of the 9 of Suzdal - 4. And no one counted the losses in the squads. And there were no less of them. Professionals in military service have been replaced by other people who are used to being pushed around. So the princes began to have full power. This process later, when the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke comes, will deepen and lead to the unlimited power of the monarch.

Russian princes and the Golden Horde

After 1242, Rus' fell under the complete political and economic oppression of the Horde. So that the prince could legally inherit his throne, he had to go with gifts to the "free king", as our princes of khans called it, in the capital of the Horde. It took quite a long time to be there. Khan slowly considered the lowest requests. The whole procedure turned into a chain of humiliations, and after much deliberation, sometimes many months, the khan gave a "label", that is, permission to reign. So, one of our princes, having come to Batu, called himself a serf in order to keep his possessions.

It was necessary to stipulate the tribute that the principality would pay. At any moment, the khan could summon the prince to the Horde and even execute the objectionable in it. The Horde pursued a special policy with the princes, diligently inflating their strife. The disunity of the princes and their principalities played into the hands of the Mongols. The Horde itself gradually became a colossus with feet of clay. Centrifugal moods intensified in her. But that will be much later. And in the beginning its unity is strong. After the death of Alexander Nevsky, his sons fiercely hate each other and fiercely fight for the throne of Vladimir. Conditionally reigning in Vladimir gave the prince seniority over all the others. In addition, a decent allotment of land was attached to those who bring money to the treasury. And for the great reign of Vladimir in the Horde, a struggle flared up between the princes, it happened to the death. This is how Rus' lived under the Mongol-Tatar yoke. The troops of the Horde practically did not stand in it. But in case of disobedience, punitive troops could always come and start cutting and burning everything.

Rise of Moscow

The bloody strife of the Russian princes among themselves led to the fact that the period from 1275 to 1300 Mongol troops came to Rus' 15 times. Many principalities emerged from the strife weakened, people fled from them to more peaceful places. Such a quiet principality turned out to be a small Moscow. It went to the inheritance of the younger Daniel. He reigned from the age of 15 and led a cautious policy, trying not to quarrel with his neighbors, because he was too weak. And the Horde didn't pay close attention to him. Thus, an impetus was given to the development of trade and enrichment in this lot.

Immigrants from troubled places poured into it. Daniel eventually managed to annex Kolomna and Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, increasing his principality. His sons, after his death, continued the relatively quiet policy of their father. Only the princes of Tver saw them as potential rivals and tried, fighting for the Great reign in Vladimir, to spoil Moscow's relations with the Horde. This hatred reached the point that when the Moscow prince and the prince of Tver were simultaneously summoned to the Horde, Dmitry of Tver stabbed Yuri of Moscow to death. For such arbitrariness, he was executed by the Horde.

Ivan Kalita and "great silence"

The fourth son of Prince Daniel, it seemed, had no chance of the Moscow throne. But his older brothers died, and he began to reign in Moscow. By the will of fate, he also became the Grand Duke of Vladimir. Under him and his sons, the Mongol raids on Russian lands stopped. Moscow and the people in it grew rich. Cities grew, their population increased. In North-Eastern Rus', a whole generation has grown up that has ceased to tremble at the mention of the Mongols. This brought the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus' closer.

Dmitry Donskoy

By the time of the birth of Prince Dmitry Ivanovich in 1350, Moscow was already turning into the center of the political, cultural and religious life of the northeast. The grandson of Ivan Kalita lived a short, 39 years old, but bright life. He spent it in battles, but now it is important to dwell on the great battle with Mamai, which took place in 1380 on the Nepryadva River. By this time, Prince Dmitry had defeated the punitive Mongol detachment between Ryazan and Kolomna. Mamai began to prepare a new campaign against Rus'. Dmitry, having learned about this, in turn began to gather strength to fight back. Not all princes responded to his call. The prince had to turn to Sergius of Radonezh for help in order to assemble the people's militia. And having received the blessing of the holy elder and two monks, at the end of the summer he gathered a militia and moved towards the huge army of Mamai.

On September 8, at dawn, a great battle took place. Dmitry fought in the forefront, was wounded, he was found with difficulty. But the Mongols were defeated and fled. Dmitry returned with a victory. But the time has not yet come when the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus' will come. History says that another hundred years will pass under the yoke.

Strengthening Rus'

Moscow became the center of the unification of Russian lands, but not all princes agreed to accept this fact. Dmitry's son, Vasily I, ruled for a long time, 36 years, and relatively calmly. He defended the Russian lands from the encroachments of the Lithuanians, annexed the Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod principalities. The Horde was weakening, and it was considered less and less. Vasily visited the Horde only twice in his life. But even within Rus' there was no unity. Riots broke out without end. Even at the wedding of Prince Vasily II, a scandal erupted. One of the guests was wearing Dmitry Donskoy's golden belt. When the bride found out about this, she publicly tore it off, causing an insult. But the belt was not just a jewel. He was a symbol of the great princely power. During the reign of Vasily II (1425-1453) there were feudal wars. The prince of Moscow was captured, blinded, his whole face was wounded, and for the rest of his life he wore a bandage on his face and received the nickname "Dark". However, this strong-willed prince was released, and the young Ivan became his co-ruler, who, after the death of his father, would become the liberator of the country and receive the nickname Great.

The end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke in Rus'

In 1462, the legitimate ruler Ivan III took the throne of Moscow, who would become a reformer and reformer. He carefully and prudently united the Russian lands. He annexed Tver, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Perm, and even the obstinate Novgorod recognized him as sovereign. He made the emblem of the double-headed Byzantine eagle, began to build the Kremlin. That is how we know him. From 1476, Ivan III stopped paying tribute to the Horde. A beautiful but untruthful legend tells how it happened. Having received the Horde embassy, ​​the Grand Duke trampled on the Basma and sent a warning to the Horde that the same would happen to them if they did not leave his country alone. Enraged Khan Ahmed, having gathered a large army, moved to Moscow, wanting to punish her for her disobedience. Approximately 150 km from Moscow, near the Ugra River on the Kaluga lands, two troops stood opposite in autumn. Russian was headed by the son of Vasily, Ivan Molodoy.

Ivan III returned to Moscow and began to carry out deliveries for the army - food, fodder. So the troops stood opposite each other until the early winter approached with starvation and buried all the plans of Ahmed. The Mongols turned around and left for the Horde, admitting defeat. So the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke happened bloodlessly. Its date - 1480 - is a great event in our history.

The meaning of the fall of the yoke

Having suspended the political, economic and cultural development of Rus' for a long time, the yoke pushed the country to the margins of European history. When the Renaissance began and flourished in all areas in Western Europe, when national self-consciousness of peoples took shape, when countries grew rich and flourished in trade, sent a fleet in search of new lands, there was darkness in Rus'. Columbus discovered America in 1492. For Europeans, the Earth grew rapidly. For us, the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus' marked the opportunity to get out of the narrow medieval framework, change laws, reform the army, build cities and develop new lands. And in short, Rus' gained independence and began to be called Russia.

In the 12th century, the state of the Mongols expanded, their military art improved. The main occupation was cattle breeding, they bred mainly horses and sheep, they did not know agriculture. They lived in felt tents-yurts, they were easy to transport during long-distance wanderings. Every adult Mongol was a warrior, from childhood he sat in the saddle and wielded weapons. Cowardly, unreliable, he did not fall into the warriors, he became an outcast.
In 1206, at the congress of the Mongol nobility, Temujin was proclaimed the great khan with the name Genghis Khan.
The Mongols managed to unite hundreds of tribes under their rule, which allowed them to use alien human material in the troops during the war. They conquered East Asia (Kyrgyz, Buryats, Yakuts, Uighurs), the Tangut Kingdom (southwest of Mongolia), Northern China, Korea and Central Asia (the largest Central Asian state of Khorezm, Samarkand, Bukhara). As a result, by the end of the 13th century, the Mongols owned half of Eurasia.
In 1223, the Mongols crossed the Caucasus Range and invaded the Polovtsian lands. The Polovtsy turned to the Russian princes for help, because. Russians and Polovtsy traded with each other, entered into marriages. The Russians responded, and on June 16, 1223, the first battle of the Mongol-Tatars with the Russian princes took place. The army of the Mongol-Tatars was reconnaissance, small, i.e. the Mongol-Tatars had to scout out what kind of lands lie ahead. The Russians came just to fight, they had little idea what kind of enemy was in front of them. Before the Polovtsian request for help, they had not even heard of the Mongols.
The battle ended in the defeat of the Russian troops due to the betrayal of the Polovtsy (they fled from the very beginning of the battle), and also due to the fact that the Russian princes failed to combine their forces, underestimated the enemy. The Mongols offered the princes to surrender, promising to save their lives and release them for a ransom. When the princes agreed, the Mongols tied them up, put boards on them, and sitting on top, began to feast on the victory. Russian soldiers, left without leaders, were killed.
The Mongol-Tatars retreated to the Horde, but returned in 1237, already knowing what kind of enemy was in front of them. Batu Khan (Batu), the grandson of Genghis Khan, brought with him a huge army. They preferred to attack the most powerful Russian principalities - and. They defeated and subjugated them, and in the next two years - the whole. After 1240, only one land remained independent - because. Batu had already achieved his main goals, it made no sense to lose people near Novgorod.
The Russian princes could not unite, so they were defeated, although, according to scientists, Batu lost half of his troops in the Russian lands. He occupied Russian lands, offered to recognize his authority and pay tribute, the so-called "exit". At first, it was collected "in kind" and made up 1/10 of the crop, and then it was transferred to money.
The Mongols established in Rus' a yoke-system of total suppression of national life in the occupied territories. In this form, the Tatar-Mongolian yoke lasted 10 years, after which the prince offered the Horde new relationships: the Russian princes entered the service of the Mongol Khan, were obliged to collect tribute, take it to the Horde and receive a label for a great reign there - a leather belt. At the same time, the prince who paid more received the label for reigning. This order was provided by the Baskaks - the Mongol commanders, who with the army bypassed the Russian lands and monitored whether the tribute was being collected correctly.
It was the time of the vassalage of the Russian princes, but thanks to the deed, the Orthodox Church was preserved, the raids stopped.
In the 60s of the 14th century, the Golden Horde split into two warring parts, the border between which was the Volga. In the left-bank Horde there were constant strife with the change of rulers. In the right-bank Horde, Mamai became the ruler.
The beginning of the struggle for liberation from the Tatar-Mongol yoke in Rus' is associated with the name. In 1378, sensing the weakening of the Horde, he refused to pay tribute and killed all the Baskaks. In 1380, the commander Mamai went with the entire Horde to the Russian lands, and a battle took place with.
Mamai had 300 thousand "sabers", and since. the Mongols had almost no infantry, he hired the best Italian (Genoese) infantry. Dmitry Donskoy had 160 thousand people, of which only 5 thousand were professional soldiers. The main weapons of the Russians were clubs bound with metal and wooden horns.
So, the battle with the Mongol-Tatars was suicide for the Russian army, but still the Russians had a chance.
Dmitry Donskoy crossed the Don on the night of September 7 to 8, 1380 and burned the crossing, there was nowhere to retreat. It remained to win or die. In the forest, he hid 5 thousand combatants, behind his troops. The role of the squad was to save the Russian army from being bypassed from the rear.
The battle lasted one day, during which the Mongol-Tatars trampled the Russian army. Then Dmitry Donskoy ordered the ambush regiment to leave the forest. The Mongol-Tatars decided that the main Russian forces were coming and, without waiting for everyone to leave, turned and began to run, trampling the Genoese infantry. The battle turned into a pursuit of a fleeing enemy.
Two years later, a new Horde came with Khan Tokhtamysh. He captured Moscow, Pereyaslavl. Moscow had to resume paying tribute, but it was a turning point in the fight against the Mongols-Tatars, because. dependence on the Horde was now weaker.
After 100 years in 1480, the great-grandson of Dmitry Donskoy, stopped paying tribute to the Horde.
Khan of the Horde Ahmed came out with a large army against Rus', wanting to punish the recalcitrant prince. He approached the border of the Moscow principality, to the Ugra River, a tributary of the Oka. He also came up there. Since the forces turned out to be equal, they stood on the Ugra River in spring, summer and autumn. Fearing the impending winter, the Mongol-Tatars left for the Horde. This was the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, because. the defeat of Akhmed meant the collapse of the power of Batu and the acquisition of independence by the Russian state. The Tatar-Mongol yoke lasted 240 years.