In what century were the Slavic states. How states arose among the Slavs: assumptions about the Varangians

Long before the formation of Russia, the ancient Slavs had one of the largest state formations, which, according to scientists, existed from 1600 to 2500 thousand years and was destroyed by the Goths in 368 AD.

The chronicle of the ancient Slavic state was almost forgotten thanks to the German professors who wrote Russian history and aimed to rejuvenate the history of Russia, to show that the Slavic peoples were supposedly pristine, not tainted by the deeds of the Russians, Antes, barbarians, vandals and Scythians, whom the whole world remembered very well .

The goal is to tear Russia away from the Scythian past. On the basis of the works of German professors, a national historical school arose. All history textbooks teach us that before the baptism, wild tribes lived in Russia - "pagans".

This is a big lie, because history has been repeatedly rewritten to please the existing ruling system - starting with the first Romanovs, i.e. history is interpreted as beneficial to the ruling class at the moment. Among the Slavs, their past is called Heritage or Chronicle, and not History (the word “Let” preceded, introduced by Peter the Great in 7208 years from S.M.Z.Kh., the concept of “year”, when instead of the Slavic chronology they introduced 1700 from supposedly Christmas). S.M.Z.H. - this is the Creation / signing / of the World with the Arim / Chinese / in the summer, called the Star Temple - after the end of the Great World War (something like May 9, 1945, but more significant for the Slavs).

Therefore, is it worth trusting textbooks, which even in our memory have been copied more than once? And is it worth trusting textbooks that contradict many facts that indicate that before baptism - in Russia there was a huge state with many cities and towns (Country of cities), a developed economy and crafts, with its own original Culture (Culture = Culture = Cult of Ra = Cult of Light). Our ancestors who lived in those days possessed vital Wisdom and a worldview that helped them always act according to their Conscience and live in harmony with the world around them. This attitude to the World is now called the Old Faith ("old" - means "pre-Christian", and earlier it was simply called - Faith - Knowledge of Ra - Knowledge of Light - Knowledge of the Shining Truth of the Most High). Faith is primary, and Religion (for example, Christian) is secondary. The word "Religion" comes from "Re" - repetition, "League" - connection, association. Faith is always one (there is either a connection with God, or it is not), and there are many religions - as many as the people of the Gods have or how many ways intermediaries (popes, patriarchs, priests, rabbis, mullahs, etc.) come up with to establish with them connection.

Since the connection with God, established through third parties - intermediaries, for example - priests, is artificial, then, in order not to lose the flock, each religion claims to be "Truth in the first instance." Because of this, many bloody religious wars have been and are being waged.

Mikhailo Vasilyevich Lomonosov fought alone with the German professorship, who argued that the history of the Slavs is rooted in antiquity.

The ancient Slavic state RUSKOLAN occupied the lands from the Danube and the Carpathians to the Crimea, the North Caucasus and the Volga, and the subject lands seized the steppes of the Volga and South Urals.

The Scandinavian name of Russia sounds like Gardarika - the country of cities. Arab historians also write about the same, numbering hundreds of Russian cities. At the same time, he claims that there are only five cities in Byzantium, while the rest are “fortified fortresses.” In ancient documents, the state of the Slavs is referred to, among other things, as Scythia and Ruskolan.

The word "Ruskolan" has the syllable "lan", present in the words "hand", "valley" and meaning: space, territory, place, region. Subsequently, the syllable "lan" was transformed into the European land - country. Sergey Lesnoy in his book “Where are you from, Rus?” says the following: “With regard to the word “Ruskolun”, it should be noted that there is also a variant “Ruskolun”. If the latter option is more correct, then you can understand the word differently: “Russian doe”. Lan - field. The whole expression: "Russian field". In addition, Lesnoy makes an assumption that there was a word "cleaver", which probably meant some kind of space. It also occurs in other contexts. Also, historians and linguists believe that the name of the state "Ruskolan" could come from two words "Rus" and "Alan" after the name of the Rus and Alans, who lived in a single state.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was of the same opinion, who wrote:
“The Alans and Roxolans are of the same tribe from many places of ancient historians and geographers, and the difference lies in the fact that the Alans are the common name of the whole people, and the Roksolani is a saying composed from their place of residence, which is not without reason produced from the river Ra, as among ancient writers reputed to be the Volga (Volga)."

The ancient historian and scientist Pliny - Alans and Roxolans together has. Roksolane, by the ancient scientist and geographer Ptolemy, is called alanorsi by portable addition. The names Aorsi and Roksane or Rossane in Strabo - “the exact unity of the Russians and Alans is confirmed, to which the reliability is multiplied, that they were wallpaper of the Slavic generation, then that the Sarmatians were of the same tribe from ancient writers and therefore they are of the same root with the Varangians-Rosses.”

We also note that Lomonosov also refers the Varangians to the Russians, which once again shows the fraud of the German professors, who deliberately called the Varangians a foreign, and not a Slavic people. This juggling and the born legend about calling a foreign tribe to reign in Russia had political overtones so that once again the “enlightened” West could point out to the “wild” Slavs their denseness, and that it was thanks to the Europeans that the Slavic state was created. Modern historians, in addition to adherents of the Norman theory, also agree that the Varangians are precisely a Slavic tribe.

Lomonosov writes:
"According to Gelmold's testimony, the Alans were mixed with the Kurlandians, who were of the same tribe as the Varangians-Russians."

Lomonosov writes - the Varangians-Russians, and not the Varangians-Scandinavians, or the Varangians-Goths. In all documents of the pre-Christian period, the Varangians were classified as Slavs.

Further, Lomonosov writes:
“The Rugen Slavs were abbreviated as wounds, that is, from the Ra (Volga) River, and Rossans. This, by their resettlement to the Varangian shores, as follows, will be more detailed. Weissel from Bohemia suggests that Amakosovia, Alans, Vendi came from the east to Prussia.

Lomonosov writes about Rugen Slavs. It is known that on the island of Rügen in the city of Arkona there was the last Slavic pagan temple, destroyed in 1168. Now there is a Slavic museum.

Lomonosov writes that it was from the east that the Slavic tribes came to Prussia and the island of Rügen and adds:
“Such a resettlement of the Volga Alans, that is, the Russians or Ross, to the Baltic Sea took place, as can be seen from the above authors’ testimonies, not once and not in a short time, which, according to the traces that have remained to this day, it is clear that the names of cities and rivers are honored must"

But back to the Slavic state.

The capital of Ruskolani, the city of Kiyar, was located in the Caucasus, in the Elbrus region near the modern villages of Upper Chegem and Bezengi. Sometimes it was also called Kiyar Antsky, after the name of the Slavic tribe Antes. The results of the expeditions to the site of the ancient Slavic city will be written at the end. Descriptions of this Slavic city can be found in ancient documents.

"Avesta" in one of the places tells about the main city of the Scythians in the Caucasus near one of the highest mountains in the world. And As you know, Elbrus is the highest mountain not only in the Caucasus, but also in Europe in general. "Rig Veda" tells about the main city of the Rus all on the same Elbrus.

Kiyar is mentioned in the Book of Veles. Judging by the text, Kiyar, or the city of Kiy the Old, was founded 1300 years before the fall of Ruskolani (368 AD), i.e. in the ninth century BC.

The ancient Greek geographer Strabo, who lived in the 1st century. BC. - the beginning of the 1st c. AD writes about the temple of the Sun and the sanctuary of the Golden Fleece in the sacred city of the Ross, in the Elbrus region, on the top of Mount Tuzuluk.

On the mountain, our contemporaries discovered the foundation of an ancient structure. Its height is about 40 meters, and the diameter of the base is 150 meters: the ratio is the same as that of the Egyptian pyramids and other religious buildings of antiquity. There are many obvious and not at all random patterns in the parameters of the mountain and the temple. The observatory-temple was created according to a "standard" project and, like other cyclopean structures - Stonehenge and Arkaim - was intended for astrological observations.

In the legends of many peoples there is evidence of the construction on the sacred mountain Alatyr (modern name - Elbrus) of this majestic structure, revered by all ancient peoples. There are mentions of him in the national epic of the Greeks, Arabs, and European peoples. According to Zoroastrian legends, this temple was captured by Rus (Rustam) in Usen (Kavi Useinas) in the second millennium BC. Archaeologists officially note at this time the emergence of the Koban culture in the Caucasus and the appearance of the Scythian-Sarmatian tribes.

Mentions the temple of the Sun and the geographer Strabo, placing in it the sanctuary of the golden fleece and the oracle of Eeta. There are detailed descriptions of this temple and evidence that astronomical observations were made there.

The Temple of the Sun was a true paleoastronomical observatory of antiquity. The priests, who possessed certain knowledge, created such observatory temples and studied stellar science. There, not only dates for agriculture were calculated, but, most importantly, the most important milestones in world and spiritual history were determined.

The Arab historian Al Masudi described the temple of the Sun on Elbrus as follows: “In the Slavic regions there were buildings revered by them. Between others they had a building on a mountain, about which philosophers wrote that it was one of the highest mountains in the world. There is a story about this building: about the quality of its construction, about the location of its heterogeneous stones and their different colors, about the holes made in its upper part, about what was built in these holes to watch the sunrise, about the precious stones placed there and signs marked in it, which indicate future events and warn against incidents before their implementation, about the sounds heard in its upper part and about what comprehends them when they hear these sounds.

In addition to the above documents, information about the main ancient Slavic city, the temple of the Sun and the Slavic state as a whole is in the Elder Edda, in Persian, Scandinavian and ancient German sources, in the Book of Veles. If you believe the legends, near the city of Kiyar (Kyiv) was the sacred mountain Alatyr - archaeologists believe that it was Elbrus. Next to it was the Iriysky, or the Garden of Eden, and the Smorodina River, which separated the earthly world and the afterlife, and connected Yav and Nav (that Light) Kalinov Bridge.

This is how they talk about two wars between the Goths (an ancient Germanic tribe) and the Slavs, the invasion of the Goths into the ancient Slavic state, the Gothic historian of the 4th century Jordan in his book “The History of the Goths” and “The Book of Veles”. In the middle of the 4th century, the Goth king Germanareh led his people to conquer the world. This was a great commander. According to Jordanes, he was compared with Alexander the Great. The same was written about Germanarekh and Lomonosov:
"Ermanarik, the king of the Ostrogoths, for his courage in conquering many northern peoples was compared by some with Alensander the Great."

Judging by the testimonies of Jordan, the Elder Edda and the Book of Veles, Germanareh, after long wars, captured almost all of Eastern Europe. He fought along the Volga to the Caspian, then fought on the Terek River, crossed the Caucasus, then went along the Black Sea coast and reached Azov.

According to the “Book of Veles”, Germanareh first made peace with the Slavs (“drank wine for friendship”), and only then “went with a sword against us”.

The peace treaty between the Slavs and the Goths was sealed by the dynastic marriage of the sister of the Slavic prince-king Bus - Swans and Germanarekh. This was a payment for peace, for Germanarekh was then many years old (he died at 110 years old, but the marriage was concluded shortly before that). According to Edda, the son of Germanareh Randver wooed Swan-Sva, and he took her to his father. And then Jarl Bikki, adviser to Germanarekh, told them that it would be better if the Swan went to Randver, since both of them are young, and Germanarekh is an old man. These words pleased Swans-Sva and Randver, and Jordan adds that Swans-Sva fled from Germanarekh. And then Germanarekh executed his son and Swan. And this murder was the cause of the Slavic-Gothic war. Having treacherously violated the "peace treaty", Germanarekh defeated the Slavs in the first battles. But then, when Germanarekh moved into the heart of Ruskolani, the Ants stepped in to Germanarekh. Germanareh was defeated. According to Jordan, he was struck in the side with a sword by the Rossomons (Ruskolans) - Sar (king) and Ammius (brother). The Slavic prince Bus and his brother Zlatogor inflicted a mortal wound on Germanarekh, and he soon died. Here is how Jordan, the Book of Veles, and later Lomonosov wrote about it.

“The Book of Veles”: “And Ruskolan was defeated by the Goths of Germanarekh. And he took a wife from our generation and killed her. And then our leaders flowed against him and Germanarekh was defeated.

Jordan. “History is ready”: “The unfaithful family of Rosomones (Ruskolan) ... took advantage of the following opportunity ... After all, after the king, driven by rage, ordered a certain woman named Sunhilda (Swan) from the named family for the insidious departure from her husband to break, tying to ferocious horses and prompting the horses to run in different directions, her brothers Sar (King Bus) and Ammii (Gold), avenging the death of their sister, struck Germanarekh in the side with a sword.

M. Lomonosov: “Sonilda, a noble Roxolan woman, Yermanarik ordered to be torn apart by horses for her husband's escape. Her brothers Sar and Ammius, avenging the death of their sister, Ermanarik was pierced in the side; died of a wound a hundred and ten years"

A few years later, a descendant of Germanarekh, Amal Vinitary, invaded the lands of the Slavic tribe of Ants. In the first battle, he was defeated, but then "began to act more decisively", and the Goths, led by Amal Vinitar, defeated the Slavs. The Slavic prince Busa and 70 other princes were crucified by the Goths. This happened on the night of March 20-21, 368 AD. On the same night that Bus was crucified, there was a total lunar eclipse. A monstrous earthquake also shook the earth (the entire Black Sea coast shook, destruction was in Constantinople and Nicaea (ancient historians testify to this. Later, the Slavs gathered their strength and defeated the Goths. But the former powerful Slavic state was no longer restored.

“The Book of Veles”: “And then Russia was again defeated. And Busa and seventy other princes were crucified on crosses. And there was great turmoil in Russia from Amala Vend. And then Sloven gathered Russia and led it. And at that time the Goths were defeated. And we didn't let the Sting go anywhere. And everything got better. And our grandfather Dazhbog rejoiced, and welcomed the soldiers - many of our fathers who won victories. And there were no troubles and worries of many, and so the land of the Gothic became ours. And so it will be until the end"

Jordan. "History is ready": Amal Vinitary ... moved the army into the borders of the Antes. And when he came to them, he was defeated in the first skirmish, then he behaved more bravely and crucified their king, named Boz, with his sons and 70 noble people, so that the corpses of the hanged would double the fear of the conquered ”

The Bulgarian chronicle “Baradj Tarihy”: “Once in the land of the Anchians, the Galidjians (Galicians) attacked Bus and killed him along with all 70 princes.”

The Slavic prince Busa and 70 princes were crucified by the Goths in the eastern Carpathians at the sources of Seret and Prut, on the current border of Wallachia and Transylvania. In those days, these lands belonged to Ruskolani, or Scythia. Much later, under the famous Vlad Dracul, it was at the place of the crucifixion of Bus that mass executions and crucifixions were held. They removed the bodies of Bus and other princes from the crosses on Friday and took them to the Elbrus region, to the Etoka (a tributary of the Podkumka). According to Caucasian legend, the body of Bus and other princes was brought by eight pairs of oxen. Busa's wife ordered a mound to be built over their grave on the banks of the Etoko River (a tributary of the Podkumka River) and, in order to perpetuate the memory of Busa, ordered the Altud River to be renamed Baksan (Busa River).

Caucasian legend says:
“Baksan (Bus) was killed by the Goth king with all his brothers and eighty noble Narts. Hearing this, the people gave way to despair: the men beat their breasts, and the women tore their hair on their heads, saying: “Dauov’s eight sons are killed, killed!”

Who carefully read “The Tale of Igor's Campaign remembers that it mentions the long-gone Busovo Time” in 368, the year of the crucifixion of Prince Bus, has an astrological meaning. According to Slavic astrology, this is a milestone. On the night of March 20-21, 368 moves, the Aries era ended and the Pisces era began.

It was after the story of the crucifixion of Prince Bus, which became known in the ancient world, that the story of the crucifixion of Christ appeared (was stolen) in Christianity.

The canonical gospels nowhere say that Christ was crucified on the cross. Instead of the word "cross" (kryst), the word "stavros" (stavros) is used there, which means a pillar, and it does not talk about crucifixion, but about pillaring. Therefore, there are no early Christian images of the crucifixion.

The Christian Acts 10:39 says that Christ was "hanged on a tree." The plot with the crucifixion first appeared only after 400!!! years after the execution of Christ, translated from Greek. The question is why, if Christ was crucified, and not hanged, Christians for four hundred years wrote in holy books that Christ was amused? Somehow illogical! It was the Slavic-Scythian tradition that influenced the distortion of the original texts during translation, and then the iconography (for there are no early Christian images of crucifixes).

The meaning of the original Greek text was well known in Greece itself (Byzantium), but after the corresponding reforms in the modern Greek language, in contrast to the former custom, the word "stavros" took on the meaning of "pillar" and also the meaning of "cross".

In addition to the direct source of the execution - the canonical Gospels, others are also known. In the closest to the Christian, in the Jewish tradition, the tradition of the hanging of Jesus is also affirmed. There is a Jewish “Tale of the Hanged Man” written in the first centuries of our era, which describes in detail the execution of Jesus precisely by hanging. And in the Talmud there are two stories about the execution of Christ. According to the first, Jesus was stoned, and not in Jerusalem, but in Lud. According to the second story, because Jesus was of a royal family, the execution by stones was also replaced by hanging. And this was the official version of Christians for 400 years!!!

Even throughout the Muslim world, it is generally accepted that Christ was not crucified, but hanged. The Koran, based on early Christian traditions, curses Christians who claim that Jesus was not hanged, but crucified, and those who claim that Jesus was Allah (God) himself, and not a prophet and the Messiah, and also denies the crucifixion itself. Therefore, Muslims, respecting Jesus, do not reject either the Ascension or the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ, but reject the symbol of the cross, as they rely on early Christian texts that talk about hanging, not crucifixion.

Moreover, the natural phenomena described in the Bible simply could not take place in Jerusalem on the day of the crucifixion of Christ.

In the Gospel of Mark and in the Gospel of Matthew it is said that Christ endured passionate agony on the spring full moon from Good Thursday to Good Friday, and that there was an eclipse from the sixth to the ninth hour. The event, which they call an "eclipse," occurred at a time when, for objective astronomical reasons, it simply could not occur. Christ was executed during the Jewish Passover, and it always falls on a full moon.

First, there are no solar eclipses on a full moon. During a full moon, the Moon and Sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, so there is no way the Moon can cover the Earth's sunlight.

Secondly, solar eclipses, unlike lunar eclipses, do not last three hours, as it is written in the Bible. Maybe the Judeo-Christians had in mind a lunar eclipse, but the whole world did not understand them? ...

But solar and lunar eclipses are very easy to calculate. Any astronomer will say that there were no lunar eclipses in the year of the execution of Christ and even in the years close to this event.

The nearest eclipse accurately indicates only one date - on the night of March 20-21, 368 AD. This is an absolutely accurate astronomical calculation. Namely, on this night from Thursday to Friday, March 20/21, 368, Prince Bus and 70 other princes were crucified by the Goths. On the night of March 20-21, a total lunar eclipse occurred, which lasted from midnight to three hours on March 21, 368. This date was calculated by astronomers, including the director of the Pulkovo Observatory, N. Morozov.

Why did Christians write from the 33rd move that Christ was hanged, and after the 368th move they rewrote the “holy” scripture and began to claim that Christ was crucified? Obviously, the plot with the crucifixion seemed to them more interesting and they once again engaged in religious plagiarism - i.e. simply by stealing… That's where the information appeared in the Bible that Christ was crucified, that he endured torment from Thursday to Friday, that there was an eclipse. Having stolen the plot with the crucifixion, the Judeo-Christians decided to supply the Bible with the details of the execution of the Slavic prince, not thinking that people in the future would pay attention to the natural phenomena described, which could not have been in the year of the execution of Christ in the place where he was executed.

And this is far from the only example of the theft of materials by the Judeo-Christians. Speaking of the Slavs, the myth of the father of Aria, who received a covenant from Dazhbog on Mount Alatyr (Elbrus), is recalled, and in the Bible, Arius and Alatyr miraculously turned into Moses and Sinai ...

Or the Judeo-Christian rite of baptism. The Christian rite of baptism is one third of the Slavic pagan rite, which included: naming, fiery christening and water bathing. In Judeo-Christianity, only the water bath remained.

We can recall examples from other traditions. Mitra was born on the 25th of December!!! 600 years before the birth of Jesus!!! December 25 - the day after 600 years, Jesus was born. Mitra was born a virgin in a barn, a star rose, the magi came!!! Everything is one to one, as with Christ, only 600 years earlier. The cult of Mithras included: baptism with water, holy water, faith in immortality, faith in Mithra as a savior god, the concepts of Paradise and Hell. Mitra died and resurrected in order to become an intermediary between God the Father and man! Plagiarism (theft) of Christians is 100%.

More examples. Immaculately conceived: Gautama Buddha - India 600 BC; Indra - Tibet 700 years BC; Dionysus - Greece; Quirinus is a Roman; Adonis - Babylon all in the period from 400-200 years BC; Krishna - India 1200 B.C.; Zarathustra - 1500 B.C. In a word, whoever read the originals knows where the Judeo-Christians took materials for their writing.

So modern neo-Christians, who are trying in vain to find some mythical Russian roots in the native Jew Yeshua - Jesus and his mother, need to stop doing stupid things and start worshiping Bus, nicknamed the Cross, i.e. Busu Cross or what would be completely clear to them - Busu Christ. After all, this is the real Hero from whom the Judeo-Christians wrote off their New Testament, and the one invented by them - the Judeo-Christian Jesus Christ - turns out to be some kind of charlatan and rogue, to say the least ... After all, the New Testament is just a romantic comedy in the spirit of Jewish fiction, allegedly written by the so-called. "apostle" Paul (in the world - Saul), and even then, it turns out - it was not written by him himself, but by unknown /!? / disciples of the disciples. Well, they had fun though ...

But back to the Slavic chronicle. The discovery of an ancient Slavic city in the Caucasus no longer looks so surprising. In recent decades, several ancient Slavic cities have been discovered on the territory of Russia and Ukraine.

The most famous today is the famous Arkaim, whose age is more than 5000 thousand years.

In 1987, in the South Urals in the Chelyabinsk region, during the construction of a hydroelectric power station, a fortified settlement of the early city type, dating back to the Bronze Age, was discovered. to the time of the ancient Aryans. Arkaim is older than the famous Troy by five hundred to six hundred years even older than the Egyptian pyramids.

The discovered settlement is a city-observatory. In the course of its study, it was established that the monument was a city fortified by two circles of walls, ramparts and ditches inscribed in each other. The dwellings in it had a trapezoidal shape, closely adjoined each other and arranged in a circle in such a way that the wide end wall of each dwelling was part of the defensive wall. Every home has a bronze casting oven! But in Greece, according to traditional academic knowledge, bronze came only in the second millennium BC. Later, the settlement turned out to be an integral part of the most ancient Aryan civilization - the “Country of Cities” of the Southern Trans-Urals. Scientists have discovered a whole complex of monuments belonging to this amazing culture.

Despite their small size, fortified centers can be called proto-cities. The use of the term “city” to the fortified settlements of the Arkaim-Sintashta type is, of course, conditional.

However, they cannot be called simply settlements, since the Arkaim “cities” are distinguished by powerful defensive structures, monumental architecture, and complex communication systems. The entire territory of the fortified center is extremely saturated with planning details, it is very compact and carefully thought out. From the point of view of the organization of space in front of us is not even a city, but a kind of super-city.

The fortified centers of the Southern Urals are five or six centuries older than Homer's Troy. They are contemporaries of the first dynasty of Babylon, the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and the Cretan-Mycenaean culture of the Mediterranean. The time of their existence corresponds to the last centuries of the famous civilization of India - Mahenjo-Daro and Harappa.

Site of the Museum-Reserve Arkaim: link

In Ukraine, in Trypillya, the remains of the city were discovered, the age of which is the same as that of Arkaim, more than five thousand years. It is five hundred years older than the civilization of Mesopotamia - the Sumerian!

At the end of the 90s, not far from Rostov-on-Don, in the town of Tanais, settlement cities were found, the age of which even scientists find it difficult to name ... The age varies from ten to thirty thousand years. The traveler of the last century, Thor Heyerdahl, believed that from there, from Tanais, the entire pantheon of the Scandinavian Gods, led by Odin, came to Scandinavia.

Slabs with inscriptions in Sanskrit, which are 20,000 years old, have been found on the Kola Peninsula. And only Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, as well as the Baltic languages ​​coincide with Sanskrit. Draw your own conclusions.

The results of the expedition to the site of the capital of the ancient Slavic city of Kiyara in the Elbrus region.

Five expeditions were carried out: in 1851,1881,1914, 2001 and 2002.

In 2001, the expedition was led by A. Alekseev, and in 2002 the expedition was carried out under the patronage of the Shtenberg State Astronomical Institute (GAISh), which was supervised by the director of the institute, Anatoly Mikhailovich Cherepashchuk.

Based on the data obtained as a result of topographic, geodetic studies of the area, fixing astronomical events, the participants of the expedition made preliminary conclusions that are fully consistent with the results of the expedition of 2001, following the results of which, in March 2002, a report was made at a meeting of the Astronomical Society at the State Astronomical Institute in the presence of members of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, members of the International Astronomical Society and the State Historical Museum.
A report was also made at a conference on the problems of early civilizations in St. Petersburg.
What exactly did the researchers find?

Near Mount Karakaya, in the Rocky Range at an altitude of 3,646 meters above sea level between the villages of Upper Chegem and Bezengi on the eastern side of Elbrus, traces of the capital of Ruskolani, the city of Kiyar, were found, which existed long before the birth of Christ, which is mentioned in many legends and epics of different peoples of the world, as well as the oldest astronomical observatory - the Temple of the Sun, described by the ancient historian Al Masudi in his books as the Temple of the Sun.

The location of the found city exactly matches the indications from ancient sources, and later the Turkish traveler of the 17th century, Evliya Celebi, confirmed the location of the city.

On Mount Karakaya, the remains of an ancient temple, caves and graves were found. An incredible number of settlements, ruins of temples have been discovered, and a lot of them have been preserved quite well. In a valley near the foot of Mount Karakaya, on the Bechesyn plateau, menhirs were found - high man-made stones similar to wooden pagan idols.

On one of the stone pillars, the face of a knight is carved, looking straight to the east. And behind the menhir is a bell-shaped hill. This is Tuzuluk ("Treasury of the Sun"). At its top, the ruins of the ancient sanctuary of the Sun are really visible. At the top of the hill is a tour that marks the highest point. Then three large rocks that have undergone manual processing. Once a gap was cut in them, directed from north to south. Stones were also found laid out like sectors in the zodiac calendar. Each sector is exactly 30 degrees.

Each part of the temple complex was intended for calendar and astrological calculations. In this it is similar to the South Ural city-temple Arkaim, which has the same zodiac structure, the same division into 12 sectors. It is also similar to Stonehenge in the UK. It is closer to Stonehenge, firstly, by the fact that the axis of the temple is also oriented from north to south, and secondly, one of the most important distinguishing features of Stonehenge is the presence of the so-called “Heel Stone” at a distance from the sanctuary. But after all, at the sanctuary of the Sun on Tuzuluk, a landmark-menhir was installed.

There is evidence that at the turn of our era the temple was plundered by the Bosporus king Farnak. The temple was finally destroyed in IV AD. Goths and Huns. Even the dimensions of the temple are known; 60 cubits (about 20 meters) in length, 20 (6-8 meters) in width and 15 (up to 10 meters) in height, as well as the number of windows and doors - 12 according to the number of signs of the Zodiac.

As a result of the work of the first expedition, there is every reason to believe that the stones on the top of Mount Tuzluk served as the foundation of the Temple of the Sun. Mount Tuzluk is a regular grassy cone about 40 meters high. The slopes rise to the top at an angle of 45 degrees, which actually corresponds to the latitude of the place, and, therefore, looking along it, you can see the North Star. The axis of the foundation of the temple is 30 degrees with the direction to the Eastern peak of Elbrus. The same 30 degrees is the distance between the axis of the temple and the direction to the menhir, and the direction to the menhir and the Shaukam pass. Considering that 30 degrees - 1/12 of a circle - corresponds to a calendar month, this is not a coincidence. The azimuths of sunrise and sunset on the days of the summer and winter solstices differ by only 1.5 degrees from the directions to the peaks of Kanjal, the "gate" of two hills in the depths of the pastures, Mount Dzhaurgen and Mount Tashly-Syrt. There is an assumption that the menhir served as a heel stone in the temple of the Sun, by analogy with Stonehenge, and helped predict solar and lunar eclipses. Thus, Mount Tuzluk is tied to four natural landmarks by the Sun and is tied to the Eastern peak of Elbrus. The height of the mountain is only about 40 meters, the diameter of the base is about 150 meters. These are dimensions comparable to those of the Egyptian pyramids and other places of worship.

In addition, two square tower-like tours were found on the Kayaesik pass. One of them lies strictly on the axis of the temple. Here, on the pass, there are the foundations of structures, ramparts.

In addition, in the central part of the Caucasus, at the northern foot of Elbrus, in the late 70s and early 80s of the XX century, an ancient center of metallurgical production, the remains of smelting furnaces, settlements, burial grounds were discovered.

Summing up the results of the work of the expeditions of the 1980s and 2001, which discovered the concentration of traces of ancient metallurgy, deposits of coal, silver, iron, as well as astronomical, cult and other archaeological objects within a radius of several kilometers, we can confidently assume the discovery of one of the most ancient cultural and administrative centers of the Slavs in the Elbrus region.

During the expeditions of 1851 and 1914, the archaeologist P.G. Akritas examined the ruins of the Scythian Temple of the Sun on the eastern slopes of Beshtau. The results of further archaeological excavations of this shrine were published in 1914 in the Notes of the Rostov-on-Don Historical Society. There was described a huge stone "in the form of a Scythian cap", installed on three abutments, as well as a domed grotto.
And the beginning of major excavations in Pyatigorye (Kavminvody) was laid by the famous pre-revolutionary archaeologist D.Ya. Samokvasov, who described 44 mounds in the vicinity of Pyatigorsk in 1881. Later, after the revolution, only some mounds were examined; only initial exploration work was carried out on the settlements by archaeologists E.I. Krupnov, V.A. Kuznetsov, G.E. Runich, E.P. Alekseeva, S.Ya. Baychorov, Kh.Kh. Bidzhiev and others.

At the end of the first quarter of the 7th c. the Alpine and Moravian Slavs rebelled against the Avar yoke, which had weighed on them for more than half a century. The need to join forces in the fight against a common enemy led to the creation of the vast state of Samo in Central Europe.

Unfortunately, extremely scarce information about this state formation has come down to us. Uncertainty reigns primarily in the question of the origin of the Self. In the chronicle of Fredegar, the main source on the history of the state of Samo, this man is named as a native of the Sens district of the Frankish kingdom. The author of the anonymous Salzburg treatise The Conversion of the Bavarians and the Karentans speaks no less definitely about the origin of Samo, who, however, calls him a Slav and the prince of the Karantan Slavs (Horutans). The district of the city of Sens, located southeast of Paris, was one of the most ethnically mixed areas of Northern Gaul. The Franks, Burgundians, Alemanni lived within its borders, but the predominant population was the Gallo-Romans, in whose hands trade was entirely (documents of the Merovingian era are silent about Frank merchants). Meanwhile, according to Fredegar, Samo was a merchant. In the early Middle Ages, the concept of an individual's ethnicity (natio) often had only a geographical and legal meaning, denoting the place of birth of a person and the system of law prevailing in this territory. Therefore, Samo's birth in the district of Sens, strictly speaking, means only that he was a Frankish subject.

At the same time, it seems very likely that Samo, even without being a natural Frank, at least at the beginning of his stay with the Slavs, relied on the support of the authorities of the Frankish kingdom or even carried out their direct diplomatic missions.

According to Fredegar, in 623 Samo "dragged along many merchants" and went "to trade with the Slavs." The latter then once again rebelled against the power of the Avar Khagan, and, therefore, Samo's trip can be regarded as military assistance - merchants from the Frankish state sold mainly weapons and horse harness items in the Slavic lands. Moreover, Samo did not limit himself to selling weapons to the Slavs, but took a personal part in their campaign against the Avars, during which he showed brilliant military leadership and organizational skills: “... in dealing with the Avars, he was so useful that it was surprising, and a huge number of them (Avars. - S. C.) was exterminated by the sword of the Vinids (Slavs. - S. C.)».

Having learned Samo's prowess, writes Fredegar, the Slavs elected him "king". During his 35-year reign, the Slavs had to repeatedly fight the Avars in order to defend their independence, and each time, thanks to the military talents of their leader, they prevailed.

The Franks and Lombards also encroached on the independence of the state of Samo. One of the major clashes took place near the Vogastisburg fortress (its exact location has not been established), where the main forces of the Slavs settled. The three-day battle ended with the complete defeat of the troops of the Frankish king Dagobert, the long-haired Merovingian. Later, the Slavs, on the orders of Samo, invaded Thuringia and the Frankish kingdom several times, plundering and devastating their territory.

We do not know the exact borders of the state. In all likelihood, it included the former Principality of Carantan, Moravia, the Czech Republic and the lands of the Lusatian Serbs. However, the territory to which Samo's power extended did not remain unchanged: it increased or decreased in accordance with how some Slavic tribes joined the anti-Avar alliance, while others, on the contrary, left it. In essence, the power of Samo was a temporary confederation of Slavic tribes, united by a common military threat and the personal prowess of one person. This union was sealed by dynastic marriages of the Slavic "king" with local princelings. According to Fredegar, Samo was a polygamist: his 12 wives were, presumably, the daughters of Slavic leaders who recognized Samo's authority over themselves. Nevertheless, he failed to establish a dynasty, and after the death of Samo in 658, his power fell apart.

St. Emeram, who preached in Bavaria around 680, wrote about the southern regions that were part of the state of Samo, that the populated and rich cities turned into ruins, the whole country is a desert, and it’s scary for a traveler to set off on the road because of the abundance of wild animals.
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My book is out

SLAVES, Europe's largest group of kindred peoples. The total number of Slavs is about 300 million people. Modern Slavs are divided into three branches: eastern (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians), southern (Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Croats, Slovenes, Muslim Bosnians, Macedonians) and western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lusatians). They speak the languages ​​of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family. The origin of the ethnonym Slavs is not clear enough. Apparently, it goes back to the common Indo-European root, the semantic content of which is the concept of "man", "people", "speaking". In this meaning, the ethnonym Slavs is registered in a number of Slavic languages ​​(including the Old Polabian language, where "Slavak", "Tslavak" meant "man"). This ethnonym (Middle Slovenes, Slovaks, Slovenes, Slovenes of Novgorod) in various modifications is most often traced on the periphery of the settlement of the Slavs.

The question of ethnogenesis and the so-called ancestral home of the Slavs remains debatable. The ethnogenesis of the Slavs probably developed in stages (Proto-Slavs, Proto-Slavs and the early Slavic ethnolinguistic community). By the end of the 1st millennium AD, separate Slavic ethnic communities (tribes and unions of tribes) were formed. Ethnogenetic processes were accompanied by migrations, differentiation and integration of peoples, ethnic and local groups, assimilation phenomena, in which various, both Slavic and non-Slavic, ethnic groups took part as substrates or components. Contact zones arose and changed, which were characterized by ethnic processes of various types in the epicenter and on the periphery. In modern science, the views according to which the Slavic ethnic community initially developed in the area either between the Oder (Odra) and the Vistula (Oder-Vistula theory), or between the Oder and the Middle Dnieper (Oder-Dnieper theory) have received the greatest recognition. Linguists believe that Proto-Slavic speakers consolidated no later than the 2nd millennium BC.

From here began the gradual advance of the Slavs in the southwestern, western and northern directions, coinciding mainly with the final phase of the Great Migration of Nations (V-VII centuries). At the same time, the Slavs interacted with Iranian, Thracian, Dacian, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and other ethnic components. By the 6th century, the Slavs occupied the Danubian territories that were part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, about 577 crossed the Danube and in the middle of the 7th century settled in the Balkans (Moesia, Thrace, Macedonia, most of Greece, Dalmatia, Istria), penetrating partly into Malaya Asia. At the same time, in the VI century, the Slavs, having mastered Dacia and Pannonia, reached the Alpine regions. Between the 6th-7th centuries (mainly at the end of the 6th century), another part of the Slavs settled between the Oder and the Elbe (Labe), partially moving to the left bank of the latter (the so-called Wendland in Germany). Since the 7th-8th centuries, there has been an intensive advance of the Slavs to the central and northern zones of Eastern Europe. As a result, in the IX-X centuries. there was an extensive area of ​​Slavic settlement: from the North-East of Europe and the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean and from the Volga to the Elbe. Along with this, the Proto-Slavic ethno-linguistic community was disintegrating and the formation of Slavic language groups on the basis of local pra-dialects and later, the languages ​​of individual Slavic ethno-social communities.

Ancient authors of the 1st-2nd centuries and Byzantine sources of the 6th-7th centuries mention the Slavs under different names, either calling them generally Wends, or singling out among them the Antes and Sclavins. It is possible, however, that such names (especially "Vendi", "Antes") were used to refer not only to the Slavs themselves, but also to neighboring or related to other peoples. In modern science, the location of the Ants is usually localized in the Northern Black Sea region (between the Seversky Donets and the Carpathians), and the Sklavins are interpreted as their western neighbors. In the VI century, the Antes, together with the Slavs, participated in the wars against Byzantium and partially settled in the Balkans. The ethnonym "Antes" disappears from written sources in the 7th century. It is possible that it was reflected in the later ethnonym of the East Slavic tribe "Vyatichi", in the generalized designation of Slavic groups in Germany - "Vends". Starting from the 6th century, Byzantine authors increasingly report the existence of "Slavinia" ("Slavius"). Their occurrence was recorded in different parts of the Slavic world - in the Balkans ("Seven clans", Berzitia among the Berzites, Draguvitia among the Draguvites, etc.), in Central Europe ("the state of Samo"), among the eastern and western (including Pomeranian and Polabian) Slavs. These were unstable formations that arose and again disintegrated, changed territories and united various tribes. So, the state of Samo, which developed in the 7th century to protect against the Avars, Bavarians, Lombards, Franks, united the Slavs of the Czech Republic, Moravia, Slovakia, Lusatia and (partially) Croatia and Slovenia. The emergence of "Slavinia" on a tribal and intertribal basis reflected the internal changes of the ancient Slavic society, in which the process of formation of the propertied elite was going on, and the power of the tribal princes gradually developed into hereditary.

The emergence of statehood among the Slavs dates back to the 7th-9th centuries. The founding date of the Bulgarian state (the First Bulgarian Kingdom) is considered to be 681. Although at the end of the 10th century Bulgaria became dependent on Byzantium, as further development showed, the Bulgarian people had already acquired a stable self-consciousness by that time. In the second half of the VIII - the first half of the IX centuries. there is a formation of statehood among the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes. In the 9th century, the Old Russian statehood was formed with centers in Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod and Kyiv (Kievan Rus). By the 9th - beginning of the 10th centuries. The existence of the Great Moravian state, which was of great importance for the development of common Slavic culture, is related - here in 863 the educational activities of the creators of Slavic writing Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius began, continued by their students (after the defeat of Orthodoxy in Great Moravia) in Bulgaria. The boundaries of the Great Moravian state at the time of its highest prosperity included Moravia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, as well as Lusatia, part of Pannonia and Slovenian lands and, apparently, Lesser Poland. In the 9th century, the Old Polish state arose. At the same time, the process of Christianization proceeded, with the majority of the southern Slavs and all the eastern Slavs found themselves in the sphere of the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Western Slavs (including Croats and Slovenes) - the Roman Catholic. Some of the Western Slavs in the XV-XVI centuries had reform movements (Husism, the community of Czech brothers, etc. in the Czech Kingdom, Arianism in Poland, Calvinism among the Slovaks, Protestantism in Slovenia, etc.), largely suppressed during the counter-reformation period.

The transition to state formations reflected a qualitatively new stage in the ethno-social development of the Slavs - the beginning of the formation of nationalities.

The nature, dynamics and pace of formation of the Slavic peoples were determined by social factors (the presence of "complete" or "incomplete" ethno-social structures) and political factors (the presence or absence of their own state-legal institutions, stability or mobility of the borders of early state formations, etc.). ). Political factors in a number of cases, especially at the initial stages of ethnic history, acquired decisive importance. Thus, the further process of development of the Great Moravian ethnic community on the basis of the Moravian-Czech, Slovak, Pannonian and Lusatian tribes of the Slavs that were part of Great Moravia turned out to be impossible after the fall of this state under the blows of the Hungarians in 906. There was a break in the economic and political ties of this part of the Slavic ethnos and its administrative-territorial separation, which created a new ethnic situation. On the contrary, the emergence and consolidation of the Old Russian state in the east of Europe was the most important factor in the further consolidation of the East Slavic tribes into a relatively single Old Russian nationality.

In the 9th century, the lands inhabited by tribes - the ancestors of the Slovenes, were captured by the Germans and from 962 became part of the Holy Roman Empire, and at the beginning of the 10th century, the ancestors of the Slovaks, after the fall of the Great Moravian state, were included in the Hungarian state. Despite the long resistance to German expansion, the bulk of the Polabian and Pomeranian Slavs lost their independence and were subjected to forced assimilation. Despite the disappearance of their own ethno-political base among this group of Western Slavs, separate groups of them in different regions of Germany remained for a long time - until the 18th century, and in Brandenburg and near Lüneburg even until the 19th century. The exception was the Lusatians, as well as the Kashubians (the latter later became part of the Polish nation).

Approximately in the XIII-XIV centuries, the Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Czech and Polish peoples began to move to a new phase of their development. However, this process among the Bulgarians and Serbs was interrupted at the end of the 14th century by the Ottoman invasion, as a result of which they lost their independence for five centuries, and the ethno-social structures of these peoples were deformed. In 1102, Croatia recognized the power of the Hungarian kings due to outside danger, but retained autonomy and the ethnically Croatian ruling class. This had a positive impact on the further development of the Croatian people, although the territorial disunity of the Croatian lands led to the conservation of ethnic regionalism. By the beginning of the 17th century, the Polish and Czech nationalities had reached a high degree of consolidation. But in the Czech lands, included in 1620 into the Habsburg Austrian monarchy, as a result of the events of the Thirty Years' War and the counter-reformation policy in the 17th century, significant changes occurred in the ethnic composition of the ruling strata and townspeople. Although Poland maintained its independence until the partitions of the late 18th century, the general unfavorable domestic and foreign political situation and the lag in economic development hampered the process of nation formation.

The ethnic history of the Slavs in Eastern Europe had its own specific features. The consolidation of the Old Russian people was influenced not only by the proximity of culture and the similarity of the dialects used by the Eastern Slavs, but also by the similarity of their socio-economic development. The peculiarity of the process of formation of individual nationalities, and later - ethnic groups among the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians) was that they survived the stage of ancient Russian nationality and common statehood. Their further formation was a consequence of the differentiation of the ancient Russian people into three independent closely related ethnic groups (XIV-XVI centuries). In the XVII-XVIII centuries, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians again found themselves in one state - Russia, now as three independent ethnic groups.

In the XVIII-XIX centuries, the East Slavic peoples develop into modern nations. This process proceeded among the Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians at a different pace (the most intensive - among the Russians, the most slow - among the Belarusians), which was determined by the peculiar historical, ethno-political and ethno-cultural situations experienced by each of the three peoples. Thus, for Belarusians and Ukrainians, an important role was played by the need to resist Polonization and Magyarization, the incompleteness of their ethno-social structure, formed as a result of the merger of their own upper social strata with the upper social strata of Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, etc.

Among the Western and Southern Slavs, the formation of nations, with some asynchrony of the initial boundaries of this process, begins in the second half of the 18th century. With a formation commonality, in a stadial relationship, there were differences between the regions of Central and South-Eastern Europe: if for the Western Slavs this process basically ends in the 60s of the XIX century, then for the southern Slavs - after the liberation Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78.

Until 1918, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks were part of multinational empires, and the task of creating national statehood remained unresolved. At the same time, the political factor retained its significance in the process of formation of the Slavic nations. The consolidation of Montenegrin independence in 1878 created the basis for the subsequent formation of the Montenegrin nation. After the decisions of the Berlin Congress of 1878 and the change of borders in the Balkans, most of Macedonia turned out to be outside the borders of Bulgaria, which subsequently led to the formation of the Macedonian nation. At the beginning of the 20th century, and especially in the period between the first and second world wars, when the Western and Southern Slavs gained state independence, this process, however, was contradictory.

After the February Revolution of 1917, attempts were made to create Ukrainian and Belarusian statehood. In 1922, Ukraine and Belarus, together with other Soviet republics, were the founders of the USSR (in 1991 they declared themselves sovereign states). The totalitarian regimes that were established in the Slavic countries of Europe in the second half of the 1940s with the dominance of the administrative-command system had a deforming effect on ethnic processes (violation of the rights of ethnic minorities in Bulgaria, ignoring the autonomous status of Slovakia by the leadership of Czechoslovakia, aggravation of interethnic contradictions in Yugoslavia, etc. .). This was one of the most important reasons for the nationwide crisis in the Slavic countries of Europe, which led here, starting from 1989-1990, to significant changes in the socio-economic and ethno-political situation. Modern processes of democratization of the socio-economic, political and spiritual life of the Slavic peoples create qualitatively new opportunities for expanding interethnic contacts and cultural cooperation, which have strong traditions.

The largest Slavic state in terms of area is currently Russia (Russian Federation). It covers an area of ​​17,075,400 square kilometers, which is 76% of the area of ​​the former USSR. More than a third of the country is located in Europe, the rest is in Asia. The general geographical position of the country is defined as the northeast of Eurasia. Russia borders on China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Norway, has access to the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian, Chukchi, Bering, Okhotsk , Japanese, Caspian, Black and Baltic seas.

The population is about 150 million people, among them 76% - urban population, 24% - rural. In addition to Russians, representatives of more than a hundred other nationalities live in Russia, including Slavic ones (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles).

The state language is Russian.

Russia is currently a federal republic. The state is headed by a president.

Moscow the capital.

Brief outline of history

On the territory of modern Russia (Russian Federation), various state formations were located at different times. The earliest of them is, which arose at the end of the 8th century and united the Eastern Slavs for more than three centuries. By the 12th century, Kievan Rus was in decline and disintegrated into several independent principalities at war with each other: Polotsk, Galicia-Volyn, Turov-Pinsk, Kiev, Pereyaslav, Novgorod-Seversk, Chernigov, Muromo-Ryazan, Smolensk. The strongest among them are Vladimir-Suzdal Principality and Novgorod Republic. The specific principalities are constantly waging internecine wars, very cruel and bloody. The neighbors of the Russians take advantage of these wars, and in the 13th century the Novgorod principality had to constantly repel the attacks of the Swedes and Germans (the Battle of the Neva in 1240 and the Battle of the Ice in 1242). The eastern principalities are subject to the Tatar-Mongol invasion and for almost two hundred and fifty years they are subject to the khans of the Golden Horde; Western principalities become dependent on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland. Novgorod lands retain their independence. Feudal fragmentation leads not only to the political weakening and disintegration of the state, but in terms of language it also brings an increase in dialect differences between dialects, which ultimately served as the basis for the formation of three independent East Slavic peoples and their languages.

Russian principalities in the 12th century (according to Golubtsov; borders are generalized)

Among the East Slavic lands, the importance of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality is gradually growing. Andrei Bogolyubsky, son of Yuri Dolgoruky, makes Vladimir the capital of the principality and begins to unite the Russian lands around him. Some time later, he moved the capital to Moscow, and since the 14th century there has already been a strong centralized Moscow State, whose formation actually ended in 1547, when Ivan IV the Terrible was crowned tsar. With the creation of a single centralized state, the emergence of Great Russian people. In the XVI-XVII centuries, Russia expanded its borders, and the Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia - in the east, some territories previously captured by the Commonwealth - in the west became part of the Russian kingdom. This turns Russia into a great multinational power vast in territory. It begins to play an important role in European affairs and attracts more and more attention from Western countries.

In the middle of the 17th century, Alexei Mikhailovich, the first of the Romanov dynasty, who ruled the state until 1917, became Tsar of Russia. At the end of the 17th century, his son, Peter I, ascended the throne of Russia, whose reign radically changed the fate of the country. Following the model of European states, factories and manufactories are being opened in Russia, a fleet is being built (Russia received access to the Baltic Sea), and a regular army is being created. The state administration also underwent fundamental changes: instead of the boyar duma and orders, the Senate and subordinate collegiums were established. In 1722, it was introduced, according to which all civil and military ranks were divided into fourteen degrees, or ranks. It was necessary to start the service from the lowest, fourteenth rank, regardless of the origin of the employee. Promotion in ranks was directly dependent on the personal success of each. A number of changes also affected the church. In 1721, the patriarchate was destroyed in the country, and it was replaced by the Holy Governing Synod, headed by a secular person - the chief prosecutor. The Church, thus, submits to the power of the civil, is made dependent on it. For a clear delineation of secular and ecclesiastical literature, civil type was introduced, after which only theological and liturgical books were printed in the old type. In 1721 Russia was proclaimed an empire.

heyday Russian Empire considered to be the reign of Catherine II the Great. At this time, huge steps are being taken along the path of enlightenment, Moscow University is opening.

Of the most significant events before 1917, the Patriotic War of 1812 should also be noted; the reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom in Russia; the revolution of 1905, which led to the creation in Russia of the first parliament - the Duma, which lasted until 1918.

By the beginning of the twentieth century (1914), the Russian Empire occupied about twenty-two million square kilometers. It includes Eastern Europe, the Grand Duchy of Finland, most of Poland, the Caucasus, Siberia, and part of Central Asia.

Among the most significant political events of the 20th century are the February and October revolutions of 1917; civil war; formation of a new state Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which included Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR); collectivization; repressions of the 1930s; Great Patriotic War; the period of the "Thaw" of the early 60s and the period of stagnation that followed it. After the collapse of the USSR in December 1991 Russia (Russian Federation) became an independent state.

A Brief Outline of Culture

The Russian cultural tradition originates in the culture of Kievan Rus and, deeper, in the culture of the Slavic and non-Slavic tribes that made up the Old Russian nationality. Over the centuries, it not only developed independently, but also experienced the influence (sometimes significant) of the peoples who in one way or another interacted with the Russians (Finno-Ugric, Norman, Baltic, Turkic tribes); pagan and Christian ideology, which contributed to the development of architecture, sculpture (idols carved from wood and stone), painting, and writing.

The pre-Christian architectural tradition was mostly wooden. Some forms of wooden construction later entered stone architecture and became a hallmark of Russian architecture. Few pre-Christian cultural monuments have survived to this day, however, the main pagan motifs have been present in the ornamentation of not only secular, but also religious buildings for a long time. For example, in stone carvings on the walls of the Christian Cathedral of the Intercession on the Nerl (Vladimir), in addition to traditional Christian symbols for places of worship, floral ornaments are intertwined with images of lions, griffins, and mythical man-beasts.

Saint Sophia Cathedral. Kyiv

After the baptism of Kievan Rus, ancient Russian culture was strongly influenced by the Byzantine artistic and literary tradition. It is no secret that when Prince Vladimir chose Orthodoxy, an important role was played by the cultural and aesthetic criterion mentioned in "Tales of Bygone Years". The envoys of the Russian prince attended a solemn service in the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople and were shocked both by the beauty of the church itself and by the splendor and harmony of the rite they saw. With the baptism of Russia, church Byzantine art was accepted and reworked under the influence of local traditions by the Russians.

The chronicles say that soon after the baptism in Kyiv, Byzantine craftsmen erected a stone Church of the Tithes. We cannot say exactly what this building was, since it was destroyed by the Mongol-Tatars in 1240, but in 1037 - 1054, the St. Sophia Cathedral was erected in Kyiv by Russian and Greek masters, the beauty of which we can admire to this day. The design of the 11th century was significantly different from the one presented now, after the reconstruction of the cathedral in the 17th - 18th centuries, when baroque motifs were introduced into the general appearance of the structure. Five apses protruded from the eastern facade, reflecting the internal five-aisled structure; open galleries surrounded the cathedral from the north, west and south.

The cathedral was crowned with thirteen hemispherical domes covered with lead. Two asymmetrically placed stair towers on the western façade led to the choir stalls. At the eastern end of the northern gallery was the grand ducal tomb (here were the stone sarcophagi of Yaroslav the Wise, Vsevolod Yaroslavich, Vladimir Monomakh and other political figures of Ancient Russia).

The cathedral is built of dark red rubble stone, interspersed with layers of thin bricks (plinths), the masonry is based on pink cement mortar. Initially, the masonry was open, but at the turn of the 17th - 18th centuries, the walls of the cathedral were plastered and whitewashed. The first renewal of the frescoes (1) also dates back to the 17th century, which was repeated several times during the 18th – 19th centuries. Of particular value is the mosaic (2), covering about two hundred and sixty square meters of the walls of St. Sophia Cathedral. The mosaic has survived to this day almost unchanged.

From the middle of the XII century, the Byzantine influence in architecture was weakening, but in painting it continued to be preserved for a long time.

Sophia Cathedral. Veliky Novgorod

Elements of Western European culture began to penetrate Russia from the middle of the 11th century and especially intensified in the second half of the 12th - early 13th centuries, during the heyday of the Romanesque style and the weakening of Byzantine influence in Russia. Elements of the Romanesque style can be found in the architecture of St. Sophia Cathedral in Veliky Novgorod. One of the Western European elements of the temple is its location on a hill, which emphasizes the elevation of the divine above the earthly. In addition, as a Romanesque building, St. Sophia Cathedral has massive walls, narrow window openings, recessed portals, which give the building a special solemnity and power. An obligatory and important architectural element of the Romanesque style is the presence of towers. Sophia Cathedral, according to the traditions of Romanesque construction, is a system of simple stereometric volumes (cubes, parallelepipeds, prisms, cylinders), the surface of which is divided by blades, arched friezes and galleries.

The appearance of Novgorod Sophia preserved its original appearance better than other pre-Mongolian churches. Initially, according to the ancient Russian tradition, the cathedral was made of wood, later the wooden walls were replaced with brick walls made of local white stone, which were fastened with lime mortar. It must be said that the use of local building material is also a tradition of the Romanesque style.

Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral served as a model for the construction of Antoniev (1117 - 1119) and Yuriev (1119) monasteries, St. Nicholas Cathedral (1113).

New Novgorod buildings are four-pillar cubic temples with one dome and three apses. Churches of the Annunciation in Arkazhy (1179), Paraskeva Pyatnitsa at the Market (1207) and others built in the Novgorod Republic with the money of parishioners are small and very simple in design. This is also due to the fact that churches in the Novgorod Republic were often used as warehouses for goods, a place for storing citizens' property.

The architecture of Pskov (the Church of the Savior in the Mirozhinsky Monastery, the middle of the 12th century) is distinguished by the absence of pillars, three-domed structures. In general, the ancient Russian architecture of this time (especially the Vladimir-Suzdal school) is distinguished by the interweaving of proper Russian traditions with the traditions of the Romanesque Western European school. A distinctive feature of Russian churches is architectural plasticity, filled, in contrast to the Romanesque style, with life-affirming forces.

In the XII-XIII centuries, local schools of painting were formed. The most formed among them are Novgorod, Pskov and Vladimir-Suzdal, which differed in skill and way of transferring characters. Novgorod fresco painting is characterized by simplification of artistic techniques and expressiveness in the transfer of human faces. The images presented in the Pskov school are distinguished by their simplicity and psychological intensity. The faces of saints painted in the Rostov-Suzdal school can be said to be lyrical and warm.

The Mongol-Tatar invasion weakened the rise of Russian culture. Many cities were destroyed, monuments of writing, painting, architecture were destroyed, and along with them some artistic traditions were lost. During internecine wars, which caused no less damage to culture than the Tatar-Mongols, it was not easy to restore what was lost. A new upsurge of culture in Russia begins only with the emergence of a new strong political center, which becomes first Vladimir, and then Moscow, that is, from the middle of the 14th century.

In the architecture of the XIV-XVI centuries, the traditions of the regional architectural schools of Russia, which had developed before the XIII century, receive a new direction of development. At the turn of the 13th-14th centuries, stone construction resumed in Novgorod and Pskov. Novgorod buildings, as before, are made at the expense of individual citizens (boyars, merchants) and collectives of "convicts". New buildings are distinguished by lightness, an abundance of light. Churches of a new type - Spas on Ilyina Street (1374) and Fyodor Stratilat (1360 - 1361) - are decorated with decorative niches, which are filled with fresco paintings, sculptural inset crosses, triangular depressions (Spas on Ilyina).

Conducted in Novgorod and civil construction. Stone chambers with box vaults are being built. In 1302, a stone citadel was laid in Novgorod, which was subsequently rebuilt several times.

Pskov architecture is developing in the direction of building fortresses. So, in 1330, Izborsk, one of the largest military structures of that time, was surrounded by Pskov stone walls; A large stone Kremlin was built in Pskov. Pskov architectural structures are distinguished by their austere appearance, conciseness, and almost no decorative decoration is used in them. Pskov masters are developing a special system of overlapping the building with crossed arches, which makes it possible to abandon pillars during the construction of the temple.

Russian architects in 1367 erected a white-stone Kremlin in Moscow, and at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century, masters Pietro Antonio Solari, Aleviz Novy and Mark Ruffo, ordered from Italy, put up new red-brick walls and towers. By this time, the Assumption Cathedral (1479) had already been erected on the territory of the Kremlin by the Italian Aristotle Fioravanti, the Palace of Facets (1487–1489) was built by Novgorod builders, and the Annunciation Cathedral (1484–1489) was built next to it by Pskov craftsmen. A little later, the same Aleviz Novy completes the Cathedral Square ensemble with the Archangel Cathedral, the tomb of the Grand Dukes (1505–1509). Behind the Kremlin wall on Red Square in 1555-1560, in honor of the capture of Kazan, the nine-domed Intercession Cathedral (St. Basil's Cathedral) was erected, crowned with a high multifaceted pyramid - a tent. This detail gave the name "roof" to the architectural style that arose in the 16th century (the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye, 1532).

Painting of the second half of the 14th-15th centuries is the time when Feofan the Greek and Andrei Rublev create. The murals of the Novgorod (Savior on Ilyin) and Moscow (Annunciation Cathedral) churches of Theophanes the Greek and Rublev’s icons (“Trinity”, “Savior”, etc.) are turned to God, but they tell about a person, his soul, moral perfection, about the search for harmony and ideal. Painting of this time in Russia in terms of themes and genres (icon painting, frescoes) remains deeply religious, but in it there is an appeal to the inner world of man, gentleness, philosophy, humanism.

In the middle of the 15th century, Byzantium, which had been a stronghold of Orthodoxy for a long time, finally fell. In this regard, in the Muscovite state, from that time on, the dogma “Moscow is the third Rome” arises, which in art is embodied in the attraction to everything magnificent, big, “great”. At the end of the 16th century, Andrei Chokhov cast the Tsar Cannon, which did not fire a single shot, a little later, under Anna Ioannovna, Motorina's father and son created the huge Tsar Bell (1733–1735).

In the 17th and especially the 18th centuries, the process of “secularization” of culture continued. The church is losing its former role in the dissemination of cultural values, which is gradually moving into secular circles. At this time, attempts are made to comprehend and systematize the accumulated scientific knowledge. Various kinds of “Herbals” and “Healers” containing descriptions of herbs and their properties, instructions for healing various diseases are widely used. Athanasius Kholmogorsky in his work "Shestodnev", based on the geocentric theory of Ptolemy, describes the structure of the world, representing the Earth as a ball. Many scholars are attempting a geographical, toponymic and historical description of various places in Russia. So, around 1640, “Painting to Siberian cities and prisons” appears; in 1667 - "Godunovsky drawing", named after the Tobolsk governor P.I. Godunov; in 1701 - "The Drawing Book of Siberia" by S.U. Remezov.

In church architecture, the traditions of tent architecture, which appeared in the 15th century, continue to develop, but churches are becoming more and more like secular buildings - palaces. Such, for example, are the Trinity Church in Murom, the Trinity Church in Nikitinki (Moscow).

Chambers of the Duma Clerk Avery Kirillov

Stone residential houses appear in the possession of nobles and wealthy merchants. A characteristic feature of these buildings is the rich decorative design of the facades. So, when decorating the chambers of the Duma clerk Averky Kirillov on Bersenevskaya Embankment, elegant tiles with a blue pattern on a white background were used. Similar residential buildings appear in Kaluga, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod.

At the turn of the 17th - 18th centuries, during the reign of Peter I, a new style appeared in Russian architecture, called the "Naryshkin Baroque", or "Moscow Baroque", in which the Western European "fancy" (3) style is intertwined with Russian decorativeness, airiness. "Moscow baroque", transforming elements of the Western European style, still remains dominant. The main decoration of sacred and secular buildings are decorative lace, which came to this style from folk craft - woodcarving. White-stone carving, baroque curvilinear lines, elements of an architectural order (4) give this style a life-affirming, bright beginning. In addition to the Church of the Intercession in Fili (1693), the Trinity Church in the Novogolutvin Monastery in Kolomna (1680s), the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra (1686), the cell building with the chambers of the Naryshkins in the Vysokopetrovsky Monastery in Moscow (1690) were built in the Naryshkin style. ), the Church of the Annunciation in the Nikitsky Monastery in Pereslavl-Zalessky (1690), the Church of Stefan in the Mirozhsky Monastery in Pskov (the end of the 17th century), the bell tower of the Church of John the Baptist in Tolchkovo in Yaroslavl (1700), the bell tower of the Transfiguration Cathedral in Uglich (1730) and others secular and ecclesiastical structures.

Church of the Intercession in Fili (1693)

The "Naryshkin baroque" completes the development of ancient Russian architecture and begins its new stage.

Under Peter I, Russia becomes a mighty empire, and extensive construction of cities and individual structures for various purposes is carried out throughout the territory. New types of buildings appeared: shipyards, arsenals, hospitals, theaters, museums, libraries. The architecture of the Petrine era affirms the power of Russia. Conventionally, this period is called "Peter's baroque", but it must be borne in mind that elements of classicism are often found in the works of Russian and invited foreign masters.

Significant transformations in the architecture of Russia are associated with the construction of a new capital. The first project of St. Petersburg was drawn up by the Frenchman A. Leblon, but the radial layout of the city, proposed by Russian architects P.M. Eropkin, M.G. Zemtsov and I.K. Korobov. Nevsky Prospekt became the main beam, the beams of the three main highways converged at the Admiralty (the first building of the Admiralty was built according to the project of I.K. Korobov in the early 20s of the XVIII century). In 1703, the Peter and Paul Fortress was laid in St. Petersburg, in 1704 - a shipyard, in 1708-1711 the stone Summer Palace of Peter was built (architects M.G. Zemtsov, N. Michetti, A. Schluter.

The leading types of buildings in St. Petersburg are not churches, but public buildings, urban and suburban palace and park ensembles with a symmetrical layout of objects. The buildings are built in the spirit of French classicism.

Russian architecture of the 40-50s of the 18th century is called Russian, "Elizabeth", or "Rastrelli" baroque. The Italian Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli arrived in Russia together with the famous architect Bartolomeo Carlo Rastrelli at the invitation of Peter I in 1715. Together with him, they created wonderful architectural ensembles and palaces during the time of Peter the Great and the reign of Anna Ioannovna, and also built two palaces on the territory of the Duchy of Courland for Biron. But the real flowering of creativity FB Rastrelli falls on the reign of Elizabeth. In the 1950s and 1960s, according to the design of the chief architect, the palace in Peterhof, the Winter Palace were built, the palace in Tsarskoye Selo and other buildings were rebuilt. The master introduced his own distinctive features into the Baroque style - he decorates all the facades of the building, and not just the main one, as was customary in Western architecture, he makes extensive use of shell-shaped decorative details. In the traditions of ancient Russian architecture, Rastrelli actively uses the possibilities of color, openwork plastic.

With the coming to power of Catherine II, the "Elizabethan" baroque was replaced by classicism - a strict style using classical order forms. Not only administrative buildings were built in this style (Academy of Arts - A. Kokorinov, V. Delamotte, Marble Palace - A. Rinaldi), but also landowners' estates, merchant houses, palaces of petty nobility. V. Bazhenov (Pashkov's house, Kamennoostrovsky Palace of Catherine II), M. Kazakov (the building of the Moscow Senate in the Kremlin, Moscow University), I. Starov (Tauride Palace) create in the style of late classicism.

Distinctive features of classicism are uniformity, consistency, order, the creation of the illusion of harmony and rationality of the monarchy, the policy of enlightened absolutism. The buildings are distinguished by a clear layout, post-and-beam tectonic scale. New in the methods of architectural composition of the times after the Patriotic War of 1812 was the free use of the forms of the colonnade, arcade, portico and their combinations in contrast to the large field of a smooth, often lightly rusticated wall; the use of forms of the Doric order in order to create a heroic appearance of architecture; the use of light-colored facades in combination with white reliefs. Decorative sculpture was also used in a new way, reflecting the triumphal and heroic themes: molded wreaths, medallions, military paraphernalia.

Since the 40s of the 19th century, a departure from Russian classicism has been visible. The development of architecture is influenced by the need to build industrial buildings - large buildings of factories, plants - and apartment buildings, which housed a large number of apartments. In the construction of these structures, new materials are also used: cast iron, rolled iron, reinforced concrete.

By the end of the 19th century, a new style was being created - Art Nouveau, in which the pretentiousness of lines, emphasized asymmetry are combined with stylized floral ornaments (lilies, orchids, irises are used as decor) and soft colors of facades. An example of a building made in the Art Nouveau style is the Ryabushinsky mansion (1900, architect F. Shekhtel).

There are four stages in the architecture of Russia in the 20th century:

1) 1917 - 1932 - a period of innovation, attempts to move away from traditional architectural forms (the building of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station in Zaporozhye - 1929 - 1932, V. Vesnin; the mausoleum of V.I. Lenin - 1929 - 1930, A. Shchusev; four-five-story apartment buildings sectional residential type, kitchen factories, department stores, workers' clubs);

2) 1933 - 1954 - return to the classical heritage (Palace of Soviets in Moscow - 1939, V. Gelfreikh, B. Iofan, V. Shchuko; metro - from 1935; apartment buildings from large blocks; enlarged residential areas; from 1947 – construction of high-rise buildings as a symbol of victory in the Great Patriotic War;

3) since the mid-1950s - architecture aimed at solving the problems of industrialization, reducing the cost of objects;

4) from the late 70s - early 80s, individual design of buildings is gradually returning, which becomes especially noticeable in the late 90s, when the country's economy begins to rise.

Literature

Bulakhov M.G., Zhovtobryuh M.A., Kodukhov V.I. East Slavic languages. M., 1987.
All countries of the world. Encyclopedic reference book / Authors-comp. I.O. Rodin, T.M. Pimenova. M., 2003.
Gromov M.N., Uzhankov A.N. Culture of Ancient Russia / History of the cultures of the Slavic peoples. In 3 vols. T.1: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. M., 2003. S. 211-299.
Gumilyov L.N. From Russia to Russia. M., 1995.
Janitor F. Slavs in European history and civilization. M., 2001.
Zezina M.R., Koshman L.V., Shulgin V.S. History of Russian culture. M., 1990.
Architects of St. Petersburg XIX - early XX century. SPb., 1998.
Trubetskoy N.S. Story. Culture. Language. M., 1995.
Notes

1. Fresco - a drawing made with water-based paints on wet plaster.
2. Mosaic - images typed from multi-colored smalt cubes.
3. Baroque - from Italian. barocco, fr. baroque - strange, wrong, bizarre.
4. Order - a combination of load-bearing and carried parts of a rack-and-beam structure, their structure and artistic processing. The order includes a column with a capital, a base, a pedestal, as well as carried parts: archi-grass, frieze and cornice. The classical order system developed in Ancient Greece (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian).