A little more from Selidor (so clean):

"However, the Varangians are just part of the question of Origin, a part, in a certain sense, independent of the very recognition of Rus'. What is Rus'? If this is an ethnic group, then where is it localized, why did it break up and has such a vast geography, what is the difference between its culture and language , for example, from the Slavs? If an ethnonym (tribe), again, what caused such dispersion (see maps); what explains their use of not only different dialects, but also different languages ​​(Slavic, Scandinavian); what caused their adaptation to different ethnic groups ( Swedish RHOS and East Slavic Rus')? Let's try to answer.
First, let's define the original concept denoted by this term. In Sanskrit, the language of Neolithic Europe, arusa means "(red)". Here is one of the Vedic images, formed in close unity with the concept of “(red)” - Rudra (in Slavic paganism it corresponds to Ruevit). I quote from the Mythological Dictionary (M., publishing house “Soviet Encyclopedia”, 1991): “He lives in the north... young, fast, strong, invulnerable; he smiles like the sun, at the same time he is fierce and destructive, like a terrible beast, he is the “red boar of the sky.” He has a chariot, in his hand is a lightning bolt or a club, a bow or arrows... Rudra arose on Indo-Aryan soil.” Before us is the image of a warrior god.
It was not by chance that I remembered Rudra, just as the connection with the color red was not accidental. It was this that was used by Russian squads as the main one in the coloring of shields, banners, and sails on boats. Hence, in fact, the Slavic name of Pontus Euxine - the Black Sea (and not the Black Sea, as it became after the reformation of the language. Remember the famous dispute about the color of the princely banner on the Kulikovo Field). This name is associated with the identifying color of the Russian fleet - the basis of campaigns against Byzantium in the 10th century. Detachments of thousands of ships under red sails with red sides from exposed shields represented a single moving mass. (Back in the 8th century, the Byzantine chronicler Theophano (d. 817) mentions Russian hellands - ships). Red color in pagan symbolism means the military principle, white - priestly, gold - princely, royal, black - demonic. Let's try to trace how the “military principle” is intertwined in semantic terms with the common Aryan root “rus” and, accordingly, the color red, using the example of modern English, French, German and Spanish words:
* English –Roast– cook, fry, burn; Russet – brown, red; Roster - military order; Rousing – exciting, strong, cruel; Crush - to destroy (comparative similarity with the Russian “crush” - “crumb”);
* French –Rotir – fry, burn, scorch; Rosser - to beat, pound, beat; Rouge – red, angry; Rush - desire, pressure, pressure;
* German –Rosten – fry, dry, burn; Rustung - weapons; Rustigkeit – vigor, health;
* spanish –Rostir – fry, heat; Rosguero – badass; Rusiente – red-hot; Rostro a rostro – face to face; Rugir - growl, shout warlike (compare with Russian “knight” - roar, roar).
By the way, “rostra” is a figure on the bow of a ship, literally “going ahead”, and Normanists translate the Greek “ta rousia” as “red”.
Thus, “Rus” is a military man. An interesting excerpt from the Book of Vles, attributed by many researchers to the Slavic-pagan written culture: “Se bo Ore father ide prendny a Kie Vende for Rus and Shchek winde tribes svea Khoriv horvs svea and zem bo gradenz na toa yakve se we nushate bgve...” It is not easy to translate while preserving the true meaning. I’ll try to do this in accordance with the pagan tradition of genealogy: “Here Or the father goes before us, and Kiy leads Rus', and Shchek leads his tribe, and Horeb leads his Horvs, and the land is within those borders, since we are the grandchildren of the gods...” Grandchildren of the gods... How can one not remember “Dazhdboz’s grandchildren” from “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”! Yarilin's grandchildren... Volesov's grandchildren... Before us is the class-caste division of Slavic society! Similarly: among the Greeks - the son of Zeus, the son of Poseidon; the name of Pharaoh Ramesses is translated as “son of the god Ra”: the title of the Chinese emperors is “Son of Heaven”...
The exodus of Orya in a certain sense can be identified with the transition of the Indo-Aryans, led by Indra, to the southeast. Let me remind you that the warrior caste always traditionally marches ahead of the tribe. Among the Indo-Aryans, these are kshatriyas. By the way, the division of society into four main classes logically follows from the tribal affiliation of the Slavs: Perun’s grandchildren, Yarilin’s grandchildren, Dazhdbozh’s grandchildren, Volesov’s grandchildren. The Indo-Aryans have Kshatriyas, Brahmins, Vaishyas, Shudras. However, at the time of the exodus, the Indo-Aryans had only three main varnas: warriors, priests, and farmers. Traders appeared later, after settling down. Therefore, it seems logical to reinforce the agreements of the Slavs with Byzantium with the words: “And swearing by their weapons, and by Perun - their god, and by Voles - the cattle god” (907). In this case, the class division of the army into a squad (Perun’s grandchildren) and an army consisting mainly of farmers (Voles’ grandchildren).
The military branches of Rus' are completely isolated. They lead tribal unions, transferring their name to entire geographical areas: Ruziland, Prussia (Porussia), Ruthenia and others. Their dominant role is based on the military, caste position of Rus'. This situation was justified by the social system of the Slavs and Germans - military democracy. Among the Germans, ancestral ties began to collapse earlier than among the Slavs. Feudalization began to absorb the clans of Germanic Rus' (Maros, Cherusci, Dews - as the Roman historian of the 1st-2nd centuries Publius Cornelius Tacitus calls them), and they mixed with the military class. This happened during the unification of the tribes into the Frankish state under Otto I."
Slavic Rus' was still balancing between concepts: social stratum, caste and people, ethnicity. Why? Probably, Rus' entered the unification of tribes. She could not feed herself, except through war booty and exchange. Hence the mention of Russian merchants: “The Rus and the trading city of Rusa on the shores of the Baltic Sea were mentioned back in the 4th century. BC e. The Greek Pytheas, who visited these places in 320, writes about this. After this, Scandinavian historians speak about the Baltic Rus on the basis of ancient chronicles: Torpheus (Norwegian), Johannes Magnus (Swedish), Saxo Grammaticus (Danish)” (Savelyev E. P. Ancient history of the Cossacks, vol. I, reprint edition, 1915, p. 12.). It is characteristic that there is no mention at all of the Russian farmers in the primary sources. But the ancient texts speak vyingly about the Russian warriors: “In the 2nd century. Gother, the son of the Swedish king Godbrod, died in a battle with Boy, the son of the Russian princess Rynda. The son of Gother and his successors had many wars with the Rus throughout the entire 2nd century" (Saxo Grammaticus). “In the 3rd century, under Froton III, the Rus and Huns attacked Denmark. The Tsar of the Rus Olimer commanded the fleet, and the Tsar of the Huns commanded the ground forces" (Savelyev E.P. Ancient...).
How the Rus fought can be judged by the statement of one of the eminent Germanic aumlungs, a statement addressed to his prince-king: “You often said that King Attila was very brave, a good knight, brave in battle. But it seems to me that he should not be either a fighter or a brave man, rather, it seems to me, the greatest dog, for when we came to Rus', King Valdemar came out against us, and when we prepared for battle, the Russians came out against us and fought very bravely, and during a stubborn battle, when we had to move forward together, then that nasty dog ​​King Attila fled and let the banner of his banner fall... so we suffered defeat and shame in Rus' "(The Saga of Thidrek of Berne)."

From the book Slavic-Goritsky struggle. Origin. - Belov Alexander Konstantinovich (Selidor)

On November 21, 2011, a unique sword from the 10th century, which was discovered near the site of the death of Prince Svyatoslav, was presented at the Museum of the Zaporozhye Cossacks in Ukraine. The author of the sensational find was a Zaporozhye fisherman who made his wonderful catch in the area of ​​Khortitsa Island.

Zaporozhian resident Sergei Pyankov did not even expect that such a large fish would bite his hook. Almost like in a fairy tale, having thrown the gear twice, he was already starting to get ready to go home. I threw it in for the third time, before leaving, and couldn’t believe my eyes. Using an ordinary spinning rod, he fished out a real treasure from the bottom of the Dnieper - an ancient sword dating back to the tenth century.

“In my concept, it was very difficult to stick into this sword with hooks that are directed upwards. Apparently he had already spent time lying on the bottom, he needed to show himself,” said fisherman Sergei Pyankov. Cossack Piankov donated the find to his native museum, although collectors offered a lot of money for it. “I understood that this was a thing that should belong to Khortytsia, because I myself love Khortytsia. Even the thought did not arise, although there were proposals,” says fisherman Sergei Pyankov.

Scientists from all over Ukraine came to Zaporozhye to see such a valuable catch. According to scientists, the sword with gold and silver trim could belong to the Grand Duke of Kyiv Svyatoslav Igorevich, who died on the Dnieper rapids in 972. Scientists from Kyiv and Zaporozhye said that the find is of international importance. “The probability that this sword belonged to Prince Svyatoslav is so great that it is not particularly possible to doubt it,” says Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Andrey Avdienko. Scientists say the weapons' thousands of years of storage in fresh water were likely aided by a natural sarcophagus of silt and sand.

Sword length - 96 centimeters, weight - about a kilogram .

“The handle of the meter-long sword is equipped with a rich finish of four metals, including gold, silver, and copper. The fact that the artifact was well preserved after lying in fresh water for 1,100 years is an incredible event. The weapon has almost completely retained its shape. You can see that the find is an item of an elite level, which could have been in the arsenal of very noble warriors of the Kievan Rus army or directly with the prince,” said Maxim Ostapenko, general director of the Khortitsa National Nature Reserve.

According to the historian, the sword was found near the island where, according to ancient chronicles, in 972 the battle between the army of Prince Svyatoslav and the Pechenegs took place. “In 1928, during the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station, on the territory of the former Dnieper rapids, 5 swords of ancient Russian warriors, lost during the war, were found,” the scientist recalled. According to researchers, there were many interested in the elimination of Svyatoslav, one of the founders of Kievan Rus, so such a find is simply priceless.

For reference : in 972, Prince Svyatoslav and his retinue, returning from a campaign near Dorostol, fearing an attack by the superior forces of the Pechenegs, returned to Beloberezhye - the Danube delta and wintered there, suffering a great famine. In the spring of 972, he went on boats to Kyiv and was attacked by Pecheneg troops of “Prince” Kuri while transporting across the Dnieper. In a battle with the Pechenegs, Prince Svyatoslav died along with most of his warriors. According to legend, “Prince” Kurya ordered a cup to be made from Svyatoslav’s skull and drank from this cup at his feasts. The semi-legendary death of Prince Svyatoslav was largely confirmed when swords from the mid-10th century were found in the area of ​​the Dnieper rapids, already in modern times, at the site of the prince’s death declared by chroniclers.

Let us recall that in 1928 the swords were found on the left bank of the Dnieper opposite Kichkas, that is, below the rapids (Chernyshev N.A. On the technology and origin of the “Frankish” swords found on the Dnieprostroy in 1928 // Scandinavian collection. Vol. VI. Tallinn, 1963. P. 212). It was the place near Kichkas and the island of Khortitsa that was considered the most dangerous on the way “from the Varangians to the Greeks.” One Byzantine writer noted that the river here is quite narrow, “and the height of the bank, which the eye sees from below, is such that an arrow fired from there just hits the swimmers...”. Probably, the steppe nomads, who loved to lie in wait for rich caravans here, also knew about this. The Varangian warriors of Svyatoslav, who fell at the Krariyskaya crossing, could most likely belong to the magnificently ornamented northern swords found on Dneprostroy, as suggested by B.A. Rybakov (Rybakov B.A. Russian applied art of the X-XIII centuries. L., 1971. P. 383).

Two of the swords found in 1928 were marked with signs in the form of crutch crosses, and on the blades of the other 3 swords Vladislav Iosifovich Ravdonikas then read the same word, embossed in Latin letters: “ULFBERHT” - “ULFBERT” (Ravdonikas V.I. Inscriptions and signs on swords from Dneprostroy // News of the State Academy of History of Material Culture. M.; Leningrad, 1933. Issue 100. pp. 598-616). It was a name, but it did not belong to the owner of the sword, but to the gunsmith who made the sword. However, the name Ulfbert itself is not at all Varangian and not Scandinavian at all. It's Frankish. And the swords made a complex journey both in space and in time - from Ulfbert’s workshop, located on the middle Rhine, through Scandinavia and the Dnieper to the Dnepropetrovsk Museum.

Only 87 swords of the so-called Scandinavian type (more precisely, Frankish-made blades with hilts ornamented in the “Scandinavian” tradition) were found on the territory of the former USSR (more than 1,500 of them were discovered in Norway alone), and a significant part of them were recovered from the burial mounds of the Baltic states, the rest are concentrated on the outskirts of ancient Rus' - in the Ladoga region, the Dnieper region and the Volga region (Dubov I.V. New sources on the history of Ancient Rus'. L., 1990. P. 107-108). The most common are swords with the mark of the Ulfbert workshop (15 such blades were found).

Statue of Svyatoslav Igorevich on horseback with a defeated Khazarian. Sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov. The monument was erected in 2005 in the village of Kholki, Belgorod region .

It is also impossible not to remember that in November 2005, the Moscow Patriarchate insisted that Vyacheslav Klykov not hold the congress of the “Union of the Russian People” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: http://expertmus.livejournal.com/87344.html

The founding congress of the Union of the Russian People (RUN) was supposed to take place on November 20 in the Hall of Church Councils of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (CCS). About a thousand delegates and guests from many regions of Russia and abroad were invited to the forum. The chairman of the organizing committee of the congress of the Union of Russian People is the famous Russian sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov. On Saturday, November 19, as reported by the media, the organizing committee of the convention received a fax from the Foundation of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the following content: “We inform you that your event cannot take place in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior for technical reasons, you will be able to receive money for this event ". As the forum organizers found out, The Foundation made this decision after a persistent request from the Moscow Patriarchate .

The congress was moved to the Gorbunov Palace of Culture on the outskirts of Moscow - widely known among young people as "Gorbushka" - a cult meeting place for rock musicians. The gathering of delegates to the CSU was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. on November 20, so it was impossible to warn most of them. By this time, buses had arrived at the CSU, transporting delegates to Gorbushka. All delegates managed to relocate to the Palace of Culture named after. Gorbunov only for lunch.

Such a drastic change in the position of the Moscow Patriarchate is associated with the scandal unfolding around the monument to the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav, built in Belgorod to commemorate the 1040th anniversary of the defeat of the Khazar Kaganate . The author of the scandalous monument in Belgorod, which was supposed to open on November 22, 2005, was Vyacheslav Klykov. The scandalousness of the situation lies in the fact that Prince Svyatoslav is depicted riding a horse, trampling the hooves of a Khazar warrior. The Khazar shield has a large image of the Star of David. Historians claim that only the top of the Khazar Kaganate accepted Judaism some time before the collapse of this state. Since the hall of the Gorbunov Palace of Culture accommodates about 650 people, the founding congress of the “Union of the Russian People” had to be held in a much less solemn and comfortable atmosphere than it was supposed to be in the Hall of Church Councils of the CSU. In addition to Vyacheslav Klykov, the presidium of the founding congress of the RNC included several State Duma deputies, including General Leonid Ivashov, Sergei Baburin, Sergei Glazyev. The congress began with a prayer service in the hall, which was performed by about 10 priests, including Abbot Peter (Pigol), Archpriest Vissarion Apliaa - head of the Diocesan Council of the Sukhumi-Abkhaz diocese, Abbot Kirill (Sakharov), rector of the Church of St. Nikola on Bersenevka. Opening the congress, Vyacheslav Klykov stated: " We have gathered in this hall, having felt the repression of the authorities! " Among the greetings, V. Klykov read out a blessing to the RNC congress from the former Metropolitan of Kursk and Rylsk Juvenaly (Tarasov), who in his message wished to strengthen the unity of the Russian people in the fight against genocide against them.

The speeches of many who spoke at the founding congress of the RNC sounded bewildered at such an unexpected downgrade of the status of the congress and the action of the Moscow Patriarchate. In this regard, mention was made of the recent canonization of the new martyrs in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, among whom were members of the pre-revolutionary Union of the Russian People: http://rublev-museum.livejournal.com/254149.html?thread=128965#t128965

TRIUMPH OF PRINCE SVYATOSLAV

“Unsuccessfully resisted Khazaria at the beginning of the 10th century. and Kyiv. We remember that the attempt of the Rus to capture Samkerts and establish themselves on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov caused a retaliatory campaign by the commander Pesach and placed Kyiv in the position of a tributary of the Itilian Rakhdonite merchants. While collecting tribute for the Khazars in the Drevlyansky land, Igor, the prince of Kiev and Olga’s husband, was killed (944). Resistance to the Khazars, and not the war with Byzantium, became the main problem for Kyiv. And therefore, Princess Olga of Kiev, who ruled under her young son Svyatoslav, tried to acquire a strong ally in the Greeks: she went to Constantinople, where she was baptized, choosing Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus as her godfather.

... Returning to the solid ground of established facts, we are convinced of the reality of Svyatoslav’s campaign against the Khazars. The young prince, who turned out to be an energetic commander, began it in the summer of 964. Svyatoslav did not dare to go from Kyiv to the Volga directly through the steppes. This was very dangerous, because the tribe of northerners who lived on this route between Chernigov and Kursk were supporters of the Khazars. The Russians climbed the Dnieper to its headwaters and dragged the boats to the Oka. Along the Oka and Volga, Svyatoslav reached the capital of Khazaria - Itil.

Allies of Svyatoslav in the campaign of 964-965. The Pechenegs and Guzes came out. The Pechenegs, supporters of Byzantium and natural enemies of the Khazars, came to the aid of Svyatoslav from the west. Their path most likely ran near the current village of Kalachinskaya, where the Don approaches the Volga. The Guzes came from the Yaik River, crossing the expanses of the Caspian region covered with dunes. The allies met safely at Itil.

The capital of Khazaria was located on a huge island (19 km wide), which was formed by two Volga channels: the Volga itself (from the west) and Akhtuba (from the east). Akhtuba in those days was the same deep river as the Volga itself. In the city there was a stone synagogue and a king's palace, as well as rich wooden houses of the Rakhdonites. There was also a stone mosque, because Muslims were treated politely there.

Svyatoslav's warriors cut off all routes from Itil. But its inhabitants probably knew about the approach of the Russians, and most of the Khazar aborigines fled to the Volga delta. The Volga delta was a natural fortress: only a local resident could understand the labyrinth of channels. In summer, the incredible clouds of mosquitoes that appeared at sunset would defeat any army. In winter, the Volga was frozen, and the delta became inaccessible to boats. The delta islands were covered with Baer mounds - huge hills the height of a four-story house. These hillocks gave refuge to the real Khazars.
The Jewish population found itself in a different situation. There was no point in studying the Volga channels for Jewish merchants and their relatives: this is why they created their monopoly of foreign trade and usury in order to live in the comfort of an artificial landscape - the city. The Jews were alien to the indigenous population - the Khazars, whom they exploited. Naturally, the Khazars, to put it mildly, did not like their rulers and were not going to save them.

In the besieged city, the Jews had nowhere to run, so they went out to fight Svyatoslav and were completely defeated. The survivors fled through the “black” lands to the Terek and hid in Dagestan. (The lands north of the Terek were called “black” because, due to the winter with little snow in this area, strong winds easily raised dust with snow, and “black” blizzards arose.)

Svyatoslav also came to Terek. There stood the second large city of Khazar Jews - Semender. There were four thousand vineyards in the city and its surroundings. (Nowadays this is the space between the villages of Chervlennaya and Grebenskaya; it is described by L.N. Tolstoy in the story “Cossacks”.) Semender had a quadrangular citadel, but it did not save the city. Svyatoslav defeated Semender and, taking horses, oxen, and carts from the population, moved across the Don to Rus'. Already on the way home, he took another Khazar fortress - Sarkel, located near the current village of Tsimlyanskaya. Sarkel was built by the Byzantines during their short friendship with Khazaria, and it was created by the Greek architect Petrona. In Sarkel, Svyatoslav met a garrison consisting of mercenary nomads. The prince won, destroyed the fortress, and renamed the city Belaya Vezha. Immigrants from the Chernigov land later settled there. The capture of Sarkel ended Svyatoslav’s victorious campaign against Khazaria.

As a result of the campaign 964-965. Svyatoslav excluded the Volga, the middle reaches of the Terek and part of the Middle Don from the sphere of influence of the Jewish community. But not all military-political problems were solved. In the Kuban, in the northern Crimea, in Tmutarakan, the Jewish population under the name of the Khazars still retained their dominant positions and retained financial influence. However, the main achievement of the campaign, undoubtedly, was thatKievan Rus regained its independence "(From the book by L.N. Gumilyov "From Rus' to Russia").

From the creation of the world, bloody quarrels began among the Northern Slavs. “And there was no truth among them, and generation after generation rose up, and there was strife among them, and they began to fight with themselves.

And they said to themselves: “Let’s look for a prince who would rule over us and judge us by right.” And went overseas to the Varangians? to Rus'. Those Varangians were called Rus, just as others are called Swedes, and some Normans and Angles, and still others Gotladians - that’s how these were called.

The Chud, Slavs, Krivichi and all said to Rus': “Our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it. Come reign and rule over us." And three brothers volunteered with their clans, and took all of Rus' with them, and came to the Slavs, and the eldest, Rurik, sat in Novgorod, and the other, Sineus, on White Lake, and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk."

This is exactly how the formation of statehood in Rus' is described in The Tale of Bygone Years. Since, apart from the chronicle, there is no other data about Rurik’s calling, domestic historians have been waging a fierce war among themselves on this issue for two centuries. Those who believed the chronicle were called Normanists, and those who considered the calling of the Varangians to be a fiction, and Prince Rurik as a mythological character, began to be called anti-Normanists.

Back in the 19th century, the dispute between historians acquired a political overtones. The fact is that several Germans who were in Russian service had the imprudence to hint that without Europeans the Russians could not create their own state. The “leavened” patriots stood up against them. We ourselves, with a mustache, don’t even know your Rurik, they say, but our history begins with the Slavic princes Oleg and Igor. There were historians, the first among whom was V.N. Tatishchev (1686-1750), who invented Rurik’s grandfather - the Slav Gostomysl, who lived either in Novgorod or in the Slavic Pomerania. The historical disputes between Normanists and anti-Normanists would not fit into even the thickest volume. We will present the most plausible version of those ancient events.

Let's start by finding out who the Varangians are. It is customary for us to identify the Varangians with the Vikings - Scandinavian sea robbers. In the 8th-10th centuries, the Vikings (Normans) were a threat to all countries of northern Europe and even the Mediterranean Sea. In the 9th century, Viking ships reached Iceland, and in the 10th century - Greenland and Canada (Labrador Peninsula). Viking leaders (konungs) seized lands in Western Europe and often settled there. Some of them later became princes, counts, barons and even kings.

The Vikings came to the lands of the Eastern Slavs in a somewhat different capacity decades before Rurik appeared there. Raids on the lands of the Slavs and robberies certainly took place, but they were not the main activity of the Vikings. Here they most often acted as merchants and mercenaries.

Flotillas of Norman ships (longships) easily moved along the northern coast of Europe and plundered the local population along the way, and then entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was a very long but relatively easy journey. But the passage “from the Varangians to the Greeks” along Russian rivers and portages was much shorter, but getting through there by force was difficult, most likely impossible. So the Normans had to get along with the local population, especially in the portage areas. For the Slavic population, portage became a trade, so residents of the surrounding settlements dredged rivers, dug canals, and specially kept horses for portage and the corresponding “specialists.” Naturally, the Normans had to pay for this.

Along the way “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” detachments of Slavs joined the Vikings, and then the united Slavic-Norman army went to Byzantium, either to fight a war or to be hired into the service of the Byzantine emperor. That is why the Slavs called the Vikings Varangians. Varangian is a corruption of the Norman word "Vaeriniar", which the Normans, in turn, borrowed from the Greeks. The Greek “joisegatoi” means “allies,” or more precisely, “mercenary allied soldiers.” Note that Varangians do not appear among the proper names of the Scandinavian tribes, and not a single people of Western Europe gave the Normans such a name. The word “Varangian” reflects the specifics of exclusively Slavic-Norman relations.

Having dealt with the Varangians, let us turn to the personality of Rurik. A number of historians, including B.A. Rybakov, identifies the chronicle Rurik with Rorik of Jutland, a small Danish king who owned the town of Dorestad in Friesland. Rorik is mentioned several times in Western chronicles. It says that in the 50s of the 9th century the Vikings took Dorestad from Rorik.

And since 862 his name disappears from the chronicles. In 870, Rorik appears for a short time in the kingdom of the Franks, and then disappears again. According to our chronicle, Rurik died in 879. Therefore, with a high degree of probability we can accept the version that Rorik of Jutland accepted the offer of the Slavs around 862 and actually reigned with them until 879.

But his “brothers” Sineus and Truvor are the fruit of the chronicler’s imagination. Perhaps he had some kind of document, Slavic or Norman, where he found the incomprehensible words “sineus” (sine hus - his kind) and “truvor” (thru varing - faithful squad). Apparently, it was said about Rorik that he arrived with his relatives and loyal warriors. The illiterate chronicler turned both of them into Rurik’s brothers. Having no information about the activities of Truvor with Sineus and about their offspring, the chronicler killed both “brothers” shortly after their “arrival”, in 864.

Now the last question remains, what kind of “Rus” did Rurik bring with him? The book by English authors “Vikings”, published in Moscow in 1995, says: “The Slavs called the Vikings Rus, so the territory where the Rus settled was called Rus (later - Russia).” (Philippa Wingate, Anne Millard, “Vikings”, M., “Rosman”, 1995, p. 40.)

To put it mildly, this is the wild fantasy of the learned ladies Philippa Wingate and Anne Millard, as well as other foreign and domestic historians.

The fact is that in Scandinavia there has never been not only a Varangian tribe, but also a Rus tribe. The Normans were called Rus (or Rus) only in Eastern Europe.

Some historians associate the word "ros" ("rus") with the geographical and ethnic terminology of the Dnieper region, Galicia and Volyn, arguing that it was there that the "ros" or "rus" tribe existed. But, alas, this version does not correspond to either the chronicles or the facts.

The author adheres to the opinion of those historians who believe that the word “Rus” is close to the Finnish word “routsi”, which means “rowers” ​​or “sailing on rowing ships”. It follows that Russia was originally called not a tribe, but a squad moving on the water. By the way, the Byzantine Simeon Logofet wrote that the word “Rus” or “Rus” comes from the word “ship” (!).

So, at first the Slavs and Byzantines called the squads of Normans and Slavs, traveling on rowing ships, Rus. A few decades later, this word became associated with the squad of the Kyiv prince, and even later - with his possessions and his subjects.

As for the Varangians who settled in Rus', they, as a rule, became Russified already in the second generation. There are peoples prone to rapid assimilation, and vice versa, there are cases where individual tribes for centuries do not want to assimilate among the local population. Typically, such cases end in serious ethnic conflicts, the responsibility for which has now become fashionable to shift the responsibility from the sick to the healthy, that is, to the indigenous population, who make up the absolute majority. The Normans very quickly assimilated, and not only in the Slavic lands, but also in England, France, Italy, in short, everywhere.

If the Normans were superior to the Slavs in the art of war, in other respects they were at a lower level of development, so they easily adopted elements of Slavic culture. The Normans in Byzantium and Western Europe quite quickly changed their religion to Christianity, and in Novgorod and Kyiv - to the Slavic gods. By the way, the pantheons of the Scandinavian and Slavic gods were very similar. It is characteristic that in the treaties with Byzantium, the Varangian prince Oleg, Rurik’s closest associate, swears not by the Scandinavian gods Odin and Thor, but by the Slavic Perun and Beles.

The low cultural level of the Norman Varangians and their rapid assimilation gave powerful trump cards to anti-Norman historians. We can agree with the latter that the Varangians had practically no influence on the life, customs, culture, religion and language of the Slavs. However, in politics, and especially in the military history of the Slavs, the Varangians played a very significant role.

In the 60s of the 9th century, while Rurik ruled in Novgorod and Ladoga, two Varangian kings, Askold and Dir, ruled in Kyiv. According to Russian chronicles, Askold and Dir, together with Rurik, arrived in Novgorod in 862, and then asked for leave with a detachment of Varangians to serve in Byzantium. However, a number of scientists, not without reason, believe that this is an invention of the chronicler who tried to justify the actions of Prince Oleg (Olgerd), but in fact both kings ruled Kiev earlier than 862.

Askold and Dir gathered a fairly large army consisting of Slavs. According to Byzantine sources, in 860 200 Rus' longships approached Constantinople. For a week the city was under siege, after which Emperor Michael began negotiations with the Russians and concluded a peace treaty with them. The campaign against Constantinople was led by Askold and Dir. Byzantine sources say that the leader of the Rus converted to Christianity. Apparently, it was Askold; it was not for nothing that the Church of St. Nicholas was subsequently built on Askold’s grave. Askold and Dir made several successful campaigns against the Khazars, thereby ensuring the safety of their possessions from attacks by steppe nomads.

After Rurik's death, Prince Oleg (Olgerd), a relative of Rurik, began to rule the northern Slavic lands, since Rurik's son Igor was still a child. In 882, Oleg gathered an army of Varangians and Slavs and moved on boats across the water in a southerly direction. As it is said in the chronicle, “I came to Smolensk and came to the city and planted my husbands, from there I went down and took Lyubech, planted my husbands.” This, apparently, should be translated as follows: Smolensk surrendered to Oleg without a fight, but Lyubech had to be stormed, and Oleg left his garrisons in both cities.

Approaching Kyiv, Oleg ordered the boats to be disguised as merchant ships. Some of the warriors pretended to be oarsmen, while the majority lay on the bottom of the boats. The boats landed near the Ugrian Mountain, from there Oleg sent messengers to tell the Kyiv princes that they were Varangian merchants and were sailing from Novgorod to Constantinople. Askold and Dir with a small retinue left the city to inspect the goods. When they approached the boats, the Varangians jumped out and killed both princes. After this, Kyiv surrendered to Oleg without resistance. This murder was an act of unification of the northern and southern East Slavic lands, resulting in the emergence of a state later called Kievan Rus.

The lands of Kievan Rus had rather weak political and economic ties both with the capital and among themselves. However, this is typical for all European states at the end of the 9th century, for example, for the West Frankish and East Frankish kingdoms, the Great Moravian state, the Bulgarian kingdom and others. However, until 1991, no serious historian had any doubt that all the Slavic tribes that were part of the Old Russian state had a common language (of course, with local dialects), common beliefs, and they were one people. As for the Varangian element in the Kiev state, the majority of the Varangians assimilated, and the rest, having served for several years with the Kyiv prince, went to serve in Byzantium, or sometimes returned to their historical homeland.

In 907, the Kiev prince Oleg (Olgerd), with a squad consisting of Slavs and Varangians, besieged Constantinople (Constantinople). After a short siege, the Greeks sued for peace. Oleg received a large indemnity and signed an agreement on trade and navigation that was beneficial for Kyiv. According to legend, Oleg nailed his shield to the gates of Constantinople. The Byzantines kissed the cross in observance of the treaty, and Oleg and his husbands swore by weapons and the Slavic gods Perun and Beles. It is curious that both in 907 and four years later, when ambassadors from Kyiv came to confirm the treaty, out of fourteen people only two had Slavic names - Velemudr and Stemir, and the rest - Scandinavian: Karl, Rulav, Ruald, Truan, Farlaf and etc. But both times all the ambassadors swore by the Slavic gods.

After Oleg's death in 912, Igor, the son of Rurik (?-945), ascended the Kiev throne. In the summer of 941, Igor undertook a naval campaign against Constantinople. On July 11, at the entrance to the Bosphorus Strait, Russian boats met with the Byzantine fleet. The enemy used “Greek fire”, and the Russian flotilla, having lost several ships, retreated. Having been defeated at Constantinople, Igor's flotilla moved to the shores of Vinifia and began to devastate the coast. However, the Russians soon saw the Byzantine squadron of Theophanes and were forced to flee. Feofan decided to block the Russians’ path home and blocked the Dnieper-Bug estuary. Therefore, Igor and his squad had to return back through the Kerch Strait.

In 944, Igor decided to take revenge. This time he gathered a large army and divided it into two parts: the foot Slavs and Varangians went by sea, and the mounted Slavs and Pecheneg mercenaries moved by land. Igor himself went with a horse army, but he only managed to reach the Danube, where he was met by the emperor's ambassadors.

The Greeks offered Igor a much larger tribute than Oleg took. Igor took the money and valuable fabrics and moved back. The following year, 945, an agreement was concluded with Byzantium. It is curious that during the adoption of the new treaty in Kyiv, some of the Slavs and Varangians did not swear allegiance to Perun, but kissed the cross in the Church of St. Elijah. By the way, during the years of peace with Byzantium, Russians (that is, Slavs and Varangians) willingly entered the imperial service. For example, in 949, during the fighting of the Byzantine fleet off the island of Crete, the fleet included nine Russian ships and more than six hundred Russian soldiers.

In 946, Prince Igor was killed by the Drevlyans while trying to collect additional tribute from the city of Korosten. Igor's son Svyatoslav was a child, and for several years after Igor's death his mother, Princess Olga, ruled on behalf of Svyatoslav.

The years of Svyatoslav's reign were marked by campaigns in the Volga region, the North Caucasus and Bulgaria. Much has been written about Svyatoslav’s campaigns, but, alas, historians have not yet fully explored them, but we are forced to skip Svyatoslav’s campaigns, since they do not correspond to the topic of our work. Let’s just say that in Svyatoslav’s troops the Varangian element was extremely small in number. In 972, Prince Svyatoslav, returning along the Dnieper from Bulgaria to Kyiv, was taken by surprise by the Pechenegs on the island of Khortitsa and killed.

There were no established laws of succession to the throne in Kievan Rus. The children and grandchildren of Svyatoslav had to resolve this issue by force. The Varangians became the decisive force in the struggle for the Kiev throne at the end of the 10th – beginning of the 11th centuries.

Chapter 2.

Varangian sword - the last argument of Vladimir the Saint and Yaroslav the Wise

Prince Svyatoslav had sons Yaropolk and Oleg from his wife Preslava and another son Vladimir from the housekeeper Malusha. It must be said that polygamy was widespread among the Slavs in the 9th-10th centuries, and princes, as a rule, had several wives. There is an opinion that with the adoption of Christianity, polygamy disappeared automatically. In fact, individual princes even in the 11th-12th centuries had several wives in parallel.

For many years, historians have debated whether Malusha was Svyatoslav’s wife or simply a concubine. According to the author, the latter statement is more likely. Another question is whether Malusha was a commoner? It can be assumed with a high degree of probability that she was the daughter of the Drevlyan prince Mal, who killed Prince Igor in 946. In revenge for the death of her husband, Princess Olga ordered Korosten to be burned and the noble people of the city to be enslaved. Malusha was taken as a child to the prince's mansion, where she later became the housekeeper.

Svyatoslav left Yaropolk to reign in his place in Kyiv, and appointed Oleg as governor of the Drevlyan lands. He sent the young Vladimir as governor to distant Novgorod.

After the death of Svyatoslav, the peace between the brothers did not last long. In 977, the Varangian governor Sveneld convinced 16-year-old Yaropolk to attack the Drevlyan lands. Not far from the city of Ovruch, the armies of Yaropolk and Oleg met. Note that the latter was only 15 years old. Oleg's troops were defeated, and he himself decided to take refuge in Ovruch. However, on the bridge spanning the ditch to the city gates, a stampede began, people pushed each other into the ditch, and Oleg was pushed as well. Horses also fell into the ditch and crushed people.

Ovruch surrendered to Yaropolk, who ordered to find his brother. Dead Oleg was found littered with human and horse corpses at the very bottom of the ditch. Yaropolk burst into tears over his brother’s body and said to Sveneld: “Rejoice now, your wish has come true.” The Drevlyansky land came under direct subordination to the Kyiv prince. Vladimir, having learned about Oleg’s death, feared for his life and fled to Sweden. After this, Yaropolk sent his governors to Novgorod.

But three years later (in 980) Vladimir returned to Rus' with the Varangian squad, captured Novgorod and began to prepare for a campaign against Kyiv. As an ally, he tried to attract a vassal of Kyiv, the Polotsk ruler Rogvolod.

It is hardly possible to establish where Rogvolod came from. Many historians agree with the chronicle that he was a Varangian and “came from overseas,” while others consider Rogvolod to be a descendant of local princes who ruled Polotsk even before Oleg.

Vladimir invited Rogvolod to seal the alliance by marriage with his daughter Rogneda. However, Rogneda had already been betrothed to Yaropolk and categorically refused to marry Vladimir, proudly declaring: “I don’t want to take off the shoes of a slave’s son, I want to marry Yaropolk.”

Then Vladimir gathered an army of Varangians, Slavs, Chuds and Ves and moved towards Polotsk. I don’t want to debunk yet another legend (about the beautiful and proud Princess Rogneda), but the truth is more precious. Vladimir and his Varangian entourage were very little interested in Rogneda herself. Much more important were the portages controlled by the Polotsk prince. However, the Greeks, two thousand years before the events described, besieged Troy not because of Helen the Beautiful, but for the sake of control over the Dardanelles.

Without capturing the portages on the way “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” Vladimir’s river flotilla would not have been able to reach Kyiv. Vladimir took Polotsk by storm. According to legend, Vladimir raped Rogneda in front of her father, mother and two brothers, and then killed all her relatives in Rogneda’s presence. Then Vladimir took Rogneda among his many wives. Rogneda bore him a son, named Izyaslav.

The chronicle has preserved an interesting legend. One day Rogneda tried to stab the sleeping Vladimir with a knife, but he suddenly woke up and grabbed her hand. Then she began to say to him: “I felt bitter: you killed my father and filled his land for me, and now you don’t love me and my baby.” In response, Vladimir ordered her to dress in a princely dress, as she was dressed on her wedding day, sit on a rich bed and wait for him - he wanted to come and kill his wife. Rogneda fulfilled his will, but gave the naked sword into the hands of her seven-year-old son Izyaslav and punished him: “Look, when your father comes in, you come out and tell him: do you think that you are alone here?” Vladimir, seeing his son and hearing his words, said: “Who knew you were here?”, threw down his sword, ordered the boyars to be called and told them how it all happened. The boyars answered him: “Don’t kill her for the sake of this child, but restore her fatherland and give it to her and her son.” Vladimir built a city, named it Izyaslavl and gave it to Rogneda and his son. Later, Vladimir made Izyaslav his governor in Polotsk.

From Polotsk, Vladimir moved with a large army towards Yaropolk. Yaropolk did not have the strength to resist Vladimir in open battle and locked himself in Kyiv, and Vladimir settled in the town of Dorogozhichi. Yaropolk's weakness is easily explained. Many Kyiv warriors died 8-10 years ago during Svyatoslav’s campaigns in Bulgaria and on the island of Khortitsa, and Vladimir had a large army, the main striking force of which were the Varangians. However, Vladimir could not take the well-fortified Kyiv. Then the governors of Vladimir bribed the main Kyiv governor, a certain Blud. Allegedly, Vladimir ordered to tell him: “Help me. If I kill my brother, you will become my father and will receive great honor from me.” Fornication had a great influence on Yaropolk (let's not forget that the prince was only 19 years old). Blud did not allow the prince to make forays out of the city and said: “The people of Kiev are exiling Vladimir, calling him to attack, promising to betray you to him. It’s better to run out of town.” Yaropolk obeyed, left the city and locked himself in the city of Rodna at the mouth of the Rhea River. Vladimir occupied Kyiv and then besieged Yaropolk in Rodna. There was such a famine in Rodna that the proverb remained for a long time: “Trouble is like in Rodna.” Then Blud began to say to Yaropolk: “Do you see how many troops your brother has? We can’t overcome them, make peace with your brother.” Yaropolk agreed to this too, and Blud sent to tell Vladimir: “Your wish has come true: I will bring Yaropolk to you, and you give orders how to kill him.”

Blud managed to persuade Yaropolk to capitulate and come to his brother with the words: “What you give me, I will take.” Yaropolk with a small retinue went to the prince's tower in Kyiv. Along the way, the beloved warrior Varyazhko persuaded Yaropolk: “Don’t go, prince, they’ll kill you. Better run to the Pechenegs and bring an army from them.” But Yaropolk did not listen and entered the tower. Before the prince had time to enter the hallway, two Varangians stabbed him with swords, and Blud held the doors so that the retinue could not help their prince. By the way, Varyazhko and several warriors paved their way with swords and went to the Pechenegs. So Vladimir became the ruler of all Rus'.

Prince Vladimir constantly fought in the west with the Moravians and Poles, in the south with Byzantium, in the southeast with the Pechenegs, but he never went north with his army, since relations with the Scandinavian countries were mostly peaceful.

Since the time of Prince Oleg, Novgorod paid tribute to the Varangians, but its size was insignificant - only 300 hryvnia per year. With this money in those days it was possible to hire two or three Norman longships with a crew of 150-200 people for a year. Thus, it was not a tribute from one state to another, but a payment to one or more kings for providing security to merchants on Lake Ladoga, on the Neva River and in the Gulf of Finland.

However, it was not possible to avoid raids on Rus' in the 10th century. They were inevitable, if only because it was physically impossible to come to an agreement with all the kings. So, in 997, the Norwegian king (earl) Eirik, the son of Hakon Cold-earl, attacked Gardarik (Rus) and destroyed the city of Ladoga. It was a typical Norman raid - a surprise attack and a quick retreat before the enemy had time to gather a large army. On the way back, Eirik's drakkars attacked three Viking ships in the Gulf of Finland, perhaps the same ones that the Novgorodians hired to guard the Neva mouth. Eirik killed their crews, and included the ships themselves in his flotilla.

Next, Eirik attacked the northern coast of Estonia (Estonia) and the island of Ezel, and then went to Denmark. By the way, at that time Estland was a vassal territory of Kievan Rus. For example, the saga of Olaf Trygvassons tells how Sigurd came to Estland, “having been sent from Valdamar (Vladimir), the king of Holmgard (Prince of Novgorod), to collect tribute in the country...”.

However, the Norman raids on Rus' cannot be compared in scale to the Viking campaigns in Western Europe. Eirik's attack in 997, against the backdrop of the great wars of Prince Vladimir, looked so insignificant that it was not even included in Russian chronicles.

The author is not inclined to burden the reader with a multi-page analysis of the reliability of the mentioned historical sources. However, a few words will have to be said about the sagas. Scandinavian sagas compare favorably with Western European chronicles and Russian chronicles in the absence of later interpolations and political bias. Among the Scandinavian skalds, rewriting the saga word for word was considered an inexorable law. Primitive bias occurred only among the direct authors of the sagas and was limited to slight exaggerations in the description of the exploits of the kings - the heroes of the sagas. In the 18th-19th centuries, many historians considered the sagas about the kings’ campaigns in Iceland, Greenland and North America to be myths. However, in the 20th century, archaeological excavations irrefutably proved the truth of these sagas.

But let’s return to the “Red Sun”, Prince Vladimir. At the beginning of his reign, Vladimir tried to reform the pantheon of Slavic gods and make paganism the state religion. Having failed in this, the prince converted to Christianity in 988 and is said to have baptized Rus'. In fact, the Christianization of Rus' dragged on for at least two centuries. Nevertheless, for the initiative in this enterprise, Prince Vladimir was canonized by the Russian Church.

Alas, the moral character of the fratricide saint was far from ideal. Thus, in the “Tale of Bygone Years” it is clearly said about him: “He loved wives and all kinds of fornication.” The famous historian S.M. Soloviev (1820-1879) wrote: “In addition to five legal wives, he had 300 concubines in Vyshgorod, 300 in Belgorod, 200 in the village of Berestovo.”

However, Russian sources mention not five, but eight legal wives of Vladimir: Scandinavian Olva, Polotsk Rogneda, Bohemian Malfreda, Czech Adil, Bulgarian Milolika, Greek Predlava, Byzantine Anna and even the unknown daughter of the German emperor, whom he allegedly married after Anna’s death in 1011.

The number of sons of the loving prince varies even more significantly. Nikiforov Chronicle, V.N. Tatishchev and N.M. Karamzin is called ten, S.M. Soloviev - eleven, Novgorod and Kiev vaults - twelve, and the genealogy of Catherine II - thirteen sons (Boris, Vysheslav, Vsevolod, Vyacheslav, Gleb, Izyaslav, Mstislav, Pozvizd, Svyatopolk, Svyatoslav, Stanislav, Sudislav, Yaroslav). And the Ipatiev Chronicle also mentions the fourteenth - Oleg.

The “Life of Boris and Gleb” says: “Vladimir had 12 sons. The eldest among them was Vysheslav, after him was Izyaslav, the third was Svyatopolk, who planned this evil murder. His mother, a Greek, was formerly a nun, and Vladimir’s brother Yaropolk , seduced by the beauty of her face, undressed her, took her as his wife, and conceived this accursed Svyatopolk from her. Vladimir, at that time still a pagan, having killed Yaropolk, took possession of his pregnant wife. So she gave birth to this accursed Svyatopolk, a son two fathers-brothers. That's why Vladimir didn't love him, because he wasn't from him. But from Rogneda, Vladimir had four sons: Izyaslav, and Mstislav, and Yaroslav, and Vsevolod. From another wife there were Svyatoslav and Mstislav, and from his wife - Bulgarians - Boris and Gleb.

It is curious that not a single source says which Bulgarian was Vladimir’s wife - Danube or Volga (that is, from Bulgaria). Fanna Grimberg assumed that the Bulgarian was from the Volga, and that her name was Adil (the name is not Czech at all, but eastern), and not Milolika. Moreover, such a name (Milolika) is not recorded in any name book of actually existing Slavic names. Accordingly, the names Boris and Gleb are also eastern.

Perhaps the reader will be surprised by the author’s attention to the personal life of St. Vladimir, but alas, there are no trifles in the personal life of rulers. Therefore, let's try to remember such a little thing as the origin of Boris and Gleb, it will be useful to us later.

Somewhere between 980 and 986, Vladimir divided the lands between his sons. He sent Vysheslav to Novgorod, Izyaslav to Polotsk, Svyatopolk to Turov (Pinsk is indicated in the chronicle), Yaroslav to Rostov. It should be noted that Vladimir made his sons not sovereign rulers of appanage principalities, but merely his governors.

Between 1001 and 1010, Vladimir’s two eldest sons, Vysheslav and Izyaslav, died of natural causes. In 1010, Vladimir made a second distribution of cities. To: Novgorod he sent Yaroslav from Rostov; to Rostov, supposedly, Boris from Murom, and in his place Gleb. Svyatoslav went to the Drevlyans, Vsevolod to Vladimir-Volynsky, Mstislav to Tmutarakan (Crimea). Polotsk was left to the son of the deceased Izyaslav, Bryachislav. But the Turov prince Svyatopolk ended up in a Kyiv prison along with his wife and her confessor Reinberg. Svyatopolk was married to the daughter of the Polish Grand Duke Boleslav I the Brave.

The German chronicle of Thietmar of Mersenburg, who died in 1018, says that Boleslav, having learned about the imprisonment of his daughter, hastily entered into an alliance with the German emperor and, having gathered a Polish-German army, moved to Rus'. Boleslav took Kyiv and freed Svyatopolk and his wife. At the same time, Thietmar does not say under what conditions Svyatopolk was released. According to his version, Svyatopolk remained in Kyiv and began to rule together with his father. We can only guess whether Svyatopolk was an adviser to Vladimir, or vice versa, Svyatopolk ruled the country on behalf of his father.

It is curious that, with the exception of Thietmar, there are no other reports about Boleslav’s campaign against Kyiv in 1013, either in Russian chronicles or in Western chronicles. Moreover, Russian chronicles are generally silent about the last twenty years of Vladimir’s reign (from the 90s of the 10th century to 1014). Apparently, based on the chronicle of Thietmar, and taking into account other direct and indirect data, it can be argued that from the beginning of the 11th century, the power of Prince Vladimir greatly weakened. Apparently, the Polotsk boyars took advantage of this and, without Vladimir’s consent, installed Bryachislav as prince.

Yaroslav (978–1054), who ruled in Novgorod, did not sleep either. He married Ingigerd, the daughter of the Swedish king Olaf Shetkonung (in Russian chronicles her name was Irina) and began to recruit a large Varangian squad. However, hiring Varangians, as we already know, was not cheap. The only way out was not to pay taxes to Kyiv, where, according to a long-standing agreement, Yaroslav was supposed to send two-thirds of the income, which is two thousand hryvnia. In fact, such a decision meant the exit of the Novgorod lands from the Kyiv state. So Yaroslav (later nicknamed the Wise) became the first separatist in Russian history.

Novgorod did not pay taxes for 1014. After this, preparations began in Kyiv for the campaign against Novgorod. But in the spring of 1015, Vladimir fell ill and died on July 15. Vladimir's natural successor was Svyatopolk. On the one hand, he was now the eldest of his living sons, that is, the legal heir to the throne (as stated above, two older brothers had died). On the other hand, Svyatopolk had been Vladimir’s co-ruler for several years. But then incredible events happened.

According to “The Tale of Boris and Gleb,” Boris was returning from a campaign against the Pechenegs when he was caught by the news of his father’s death. The campaign was started by order of Vladimir, but Boris allegedly did not meet the Pechenegs at all and decided to return to Kyiv. According to legend, Boris honored his elder brother Svyatopolk “as his father.” But Boris’s army stops for a halt on the Alta River near Kyiv. And then for some reason it seemed to Boris that his brother wanted to kill: “I feel that he cares about the vanity of the world and is plotting my murder. If he sheds my blood and decides to kill me, I will be a martyr before my Lord. I will not resist, for it is written: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Then Boris dismissed the army to their homes and began to pray in anticipation of the killers.

Meanwhile, “the devil, the primordial enemy of all that is good in people,” finally advised Svyatopolk to kill his brother. Svyatopolk summoned the boyar Putsha and gave the order to kill his brother. Putsha and several warriors arrived at Alta at night. The killers quietly crept up to the tent where Boris had been praying all night, burst in and stabbed the prince to death.

Then Svyatopolk decided to kill his brother Gleb and summoned him to Kyiv: “Come here as soon as possible: your father is calling you, he is very sick.” Gleb and his small squad immediately set off on the road. Near Smolensk, Yaroslav’s envoy from Novgorod caught up with him: “Don’t go,” Yaroslav ordered him to tell him, “your father died, and Svyatopolk killed your brother.” But for some reason Gleb stubbornly longed for death and also resignedly waited for the killers. Naturally, he was eventually stabbed to death.

For this double murder, domestic historians called Svyatopolk the Accursed. However, the descendants of Rurik were no strangers to killing brothers. Svyatoslav killed Udeb’s brother, Saint Vladimir - Yaropolk, so Svyatopolk only continued the traditions of his father and grandfather, whom for some reason no one called “cursed”.

Another question is the motives for the murder of Boris and Gleb. As we know, Vladimir fought a battle with Yaropolk for Kyiv, in fact, for the possession of Russia, and by killing his brother he stopped the war. Vladimir was a usurper, Yaropolk was the legitimate heir to the throne. Leaving him alive meant constantly having a sword over your head.

Svyatopolk found himself in a completely different situation. Novgorod and Polotsk actually separated from the Kyiv state. Yaroslav gathered enemy squads and prepared for a campaign against Kyiv. Brother Mstislav pursued a cunning policy in Tmutarakan; at best, he could have remained in a position of armed neutrality. Only the younger brothers Boris and Gleb strictly obeyed Svyatopolk and “honored him as a father.” I specifically emphasize that Boris and Gleb were younger brothers. This means that the Kiev throne would not shine for them in the event of the death of Svyatopolk. According to the law, it was supposed to be occupied by the eldest of the brothers - Mstislav, Yaroslav, etc. Svyatopolk began his reign with the murder of... two loyal allies. The only winners were the separatists Yaroslav and Bryachislav, who from rebels turned into avengers for their murdered brothers. It seems that Svyatopolk touched his head.

And the brothers Boris and Gleb behaved like they were insane or suicidal. On the one hand, they did not try to resist or flee to Novgorod, Polotsk, Tmutarakan or “over the hill”; on the other hand, they did not try to explain to their brother, to tell him that he was surrounded by enemies and they were his only faithful vassals.

Unfortunately, both pre-revolutionary and Soviet historians are distinguished by their inability and unwillingness to understand complex and controversial situations and dull loyalty to their labels. They have labeled historical characters as “saint” and “wise”, and they have been singing hosannas to them for a thousand years. The church canonized the brothers Boris and Gleb in 1072, they became the first Russian saints.

The cult of Boris and Gleb took root. In Rus', people love holidays: atheists drink on Easter, democrats drink on November 7, etc. And for the powers that be, the new saints have become a godsend. It was a powerful ideological weapon against any competitors in the struggle for power. It's funny that events that happened thousands of years ago are still used in political games. Heads of government lay flowers at the monument to Yaroslav the Wise in Kyiv, and the former secretary of the regional committee laid the foundation for the temple of Boris and Gleb in Moscow. I wouldn’t be surprised if the remains of Boris and Gleb are soon “miraculously” found (they disappeared after the capture of Vyshgorod by the Tatars in 1240). Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, and later Alexander I, made unsuccessful attempts to find the relics of Boris and Gleb. But there are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks, even former ones, would not take - they can find anything. Recently they found the remains of the Moscow prince Daniil Alexandrovich, whose grave was lost back in the 14th century, they found the “remains of the royal family”...

Everything would be fine, but the Varangians, who served the Russian princes, had a bad habit of talking about their campaigns to the skalds - the Norman chroniclers. Among other ancient texts, the Norwegian State Archives preserves Eymund's Saga. The manuscript dates back to 1150-1200.

In 1833, the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries published in Copenhagen a small edition (only 70 copies) of Eymund's Saga in Old Icelandic and in a Latin translation. Eymund is the great-great-grandson of the Norwegian king Harald Fairhair and the commander of a detachment of Varangians who served in the service of Yaroslav the Wise. Naturally, the saga interested Russian historians, and St. Petersburg University professor O.I. Senkovsky translated the saga into Russian. The saga horrified the venerable historian.

It simply tells the story of the campaigns of the Norwegian king Eymund. He and his retinue were among the Varangians hired by Yaroslav to fight his father. Eymund demanded that Yaroslav (in the saga he appears as Yarisleif) pay each king an airir of silver, and the helmsmen on the ships another half an eurir plus free food. Yaroslav began to bargain and said that he had no money. Then Eymund offered to pay in beavers and sables. That's what they decided on.

So, "Saga" dots all the i's. Boris did not make a joke about disbanding the army and waiting for the killers, but, as expected, sided with his older brother. Moreover, Boris hired detachments of Pechenegs. It is quite possible that his Eastern origin (through his mother) helped him here.

Boris (in “Saga” – Burisleif), together with his Russian squad and the Pechenegs, goes to meet Yaroslav’s army. In November 1016, the armies converged on the banks of the Dnieper near the city of Lyubech. The outcome of the battle was decided by the Varangians. Eimund's squad crashed into the center of the enemy army, where Boris-Burisleif was. The Varangians dismembered Boris's army, confusion arose in the ranks of the Pechenegs, and from somewhere a rumor arose that Boris had been killed. The Pechenegs began to flee. So Yaroslav won an impressive victory. The path to Kyiv was open.

It is curious that both “The Tale of Bygone Years” and “The Saga of Eymund” surprisingly agree on the details of the battle of Lyubech. It is surprising because compilation is excluded, because the author of the Tale did not know about the Saga, and vice versa. There is only a small discrepancy in the date of the battle and a fundamental one in the name of the enemy Yaroslav. In the Tale this is Svyatopolk, and in the Saga it is Boris-Burisleif. Svyatopolk is not mentioned at all in the saga. This is understandable, the saga is not dedicated to the civil war in Rus', but to the actions of a separate Varangian detachment that did not participate in the battles with Svyatopolk.

After the Battle of Lyubech and the capture of Kyiv by Yaroslav, Svyatopolk runs to his father-in-law, the Polish king Boleslav, and Boris to the Pechenegs. After a short time, relying on allied troops, brothers from the west and east attack Yaroslav. As we see, all the brothers are worth each other: one brought the Varangians, the other brought the Poles, the third brought the Pechenegs. It is curious that Russian chronicles present Svyatopolk as ubiquitous - either among the Poles or among the Pechenegs. Well, did he fly like a bird through Yaroslav’s troops?

As for Gleb, he was in all likelihood on the side of Yaroslav, but was soon killed by his subjects, the Murom residents. From the Tale of Bygone Years it is known that even during the life of Vladimir the Saint, the residents of Murom did not allow Gleb into the city, and the civil war completely untied their hands.

In the summer of 1017, the Pechenegs, led by Boris, managed to break into Kyiv, but they got carried away with robbery, and Eymund’s Varangians drove them out of the city. The following summer, Boris-Burisleif again moved with the Pechenegs to Kyiv. In such a situation, Eymund turned to Yarisleif: “There will never be an end to strife while you both live.” Yaroslav turned out to be truly “wise” and slyly replied: “I will not blame anyone if he (Boris) is killed.”

Then Eymund, his relative Ragnar and ten other Varangians dressed in merchant clothes and moved towards the Pecheneg army. Eymund found a clearing convenient for a camp near the Alta River on the road. In the center of the clearing there was an oak tree. By order of Eymund, the Varangians bent the top of the oak tree and tied a system of ropes to it - a primitive lifting machine disguised in the branches. As Eymund foresaw, the Pechenegs stopped in this very place. A large princely tent was pitched under the oak tree. In the center the tent was supported by a high pole, decorated with a gilded ball on top. At night, six Varangians remained to guard the horses, and the rest, led by Eymund, headed to the tent. The Pechenegs were tired on the hike and drank heavily before going to bed. The Varangians unhindered approached the tent, threw a loop of rope tied to an oak tree over the top of the pole, and then cut the rope holding the bent top. The tree straightened up, tore off the tent and threw it to the side. Eymund rushed to the sleeping prince, killed him with a spear and quickly beheaded him. Before the Pechenegs came to their senses, the Varangians were already running to the horses.

Upon arrival in Kyiv, Eimund brought Burisleif's head to King Yarisleif (Prince Yaroslav): “Here! Here's your head, sir! Can you recognize her? Order that your brother be buried decently.” Prince Yaroslav answered: “You have done a reckless thing, and it weighs heavily on us. But you must also take care of his burial.” Eymund decided to return for Boris's body. As he correctly calculated, the Pechenegs did not really understand anything and were amazed at the death of the prince and the disappearance of his head. It is clear that there was an evil one. In any case, they fled in panic, leaving the prince’s body in the clearing.

However, with the death of Boris, the war in the Kiev state did not subside. Svyatopolk the Accursed with the Polish king Boleslav took Kyiv. But soon the son-in-law quarreled with his father-in-law and fled abroad. Somewhere between Poland and the Czech Republic Svyatopolk died mysteriously. But this did not mark the end of the war. Yaroslav is now at war with other brothers - Izyaslav, who ruled in Polotsk, and Mstislav, who ruled in Tmutarakan.

Almost immediately after the murder of Boris, Prince Yaroslav stopped paying salaries to Eymund’s detachment. Either the prince was overcome by greed, or he wanted the unwanted witnesses to go home or somewhere to Byzantium. But the Varangians are not miners or teachers, they did not come out with banners: “We demand that January salaries be paid in November.” Eymund went to Yaroslav and said: “Since you don’t want to pay us, we will do what you least want - we will go to King Vartilav, your brother. Now be well, sir.” The Varangians boarded boats and sailed to Polotsk, where Prince Bryachislav (Vartilav) paid them generously.

The grandson of Vladimir the Saint, Prince Bryachislav Izyaslavovich maintained neutrality in the war between Yaroslav and his brothers. He was most satisfied with the mutual exhaustion of the parties. Bryachislav himself set his sights on strategic red tape on the way “from the Varangians to the Greeks” in the area of ​​Usvyat and Vitebsk, and in the future he also aimed at the Kiev throne.

Having received the Varangian squad, Bryachislav became bolder and in 1021 took Novgorod. Then Yaroslav gathered an army and marched against his nephew. According to Russian chronicles, in the battle on the Sudomir River, the Polotsk army was completely defeated, and Bryachislav fled to Polotsk. Soon Yaroslav and Bryachislav made peace. According to his conditions, Vitebsk and Usvyat went to Bryachislav, as if he had won at Sudomir.

In Eimund's Saga these events are presented in a completely different way. There was no battle on Sudomir at all. The squads of Yaroslav and Bryachislav stood against each other for a week without starting a battle. And here again Eymund’s “special forces” played a decisive role. A group of Varangians led by Eymund kidnapped Yaroslav's wife Ingigerd at night and delivered her to Bryachislav. After this, Yaroslav had to make a humiliating peace with his nephew. What a wonderful theme for a fiction writer - for the sake of his beloved wife, the prince gives up two cities. But our story is strictly documentary, and we must believe only the facts, and they force us to assume that Yaroslav would prefer to see his wife killed rather than taken hostage. Ingigerd was not a Russian reclusive princess of the 14th-15th centuries. On the contrary, she was a warrior and would give many points ahead to some Joan of Arc.

When Eymund was leaving Yaroslav for Bryachislav, Ingigerd tried to kill the king, and only an accident saved him. According to the saga, Ingigerd’s capture occurred at night on the road along which she was galloping somewhere, accompanied by only one warrior. In the battle near Ingigerd, a horse was wounded. Moreover, from the very beginning of the war Ingigerd had a large detachment of Varangians at her personal disposal. Unlike Eymund's squad, these Varangians did not obey Yaroslav at all. It is not difficult to guess that in such a situation Yaroslav simply had no choice.

In the early 20s of the 11th century, Yaroslav became generous and gave Ingigerd the city of Ladoga and its surroundings. Either out of great love for his wife, or the Varangian squad Ingigerd forced him to do this. It is clear that the second option seems more plausible. On behalf of the princess Ladoga, her relative, Earl Rognvald, began to rule. De facto and de jure this region fell away from Kievan Rus.

Rognvald soon not only left the subordination of Ingigerd, but also made his power hereditary. After Rognvald's death, Ladoga was ruled by his first son Ulv, and then by his second son Eiliw. The third son of Rögnvald Steinkiel was called from Ladoga to Sweden in 1056, where he was elected king and became the founder of a new Swedish dynasty. Only at the end of the 11th century did the Novgorodians manage to expel the Varangians from the city of Ladoga.

Having made peace with his nephew (Bryachislav of Polotsk), Yaroslav the Wise decided to deal with another of his brothers, Mstislav of Tmutarakan. Before this, Mstislav did not take part in the wars between Yaroslav and his brothers. Either he did not want to get involved in their quarrels, or he was distracted by continuous wars with the Khazars, Kasogs and other nomadic tribes.

The chronicles present Mstislav to us as a fabulous hero and an experienced commander. During the war with the Kasogs, their prince, the hero Rededya, suggested to Mstislav: “Why destroy the squad, we will fight ourselves, you will overcome, you will take my estate, wife, children and my land, I will overcome, I will take everything that is yours.” Mstislav killed Rededya and imposed tribute on the Kasogs.

The beginning of the war with Mstislav was unsuccessful for Yaroslav. In 1023, Mstislav besieged Kyiv, but could not take it, and settled in Chernigov. Yaroslav traditionally fled to Novgorod, from where he sent messengers to Sweden for help. Soon peacekeepers arrived from Sweden - King Yakul the Blind (One-Eyed) and his retinue.

Yaroslav and Yakul moved towards Chernigov. The brothers' troops fought near the city of Listven (at the beginning of the 20th century, Listven was a village 40 km from Chernigov). At Listven, Yaroslav decided to repeat the tactical technique that brought him victory at Lyubech seven years ago. In the middle of the army he placed his striking force - Yakul's squad, and at the edges - Slavic warriors. But in front of him was not the inexperienced Boris, but the cunning Mstislav, who, on the contrary, placed his selected squad on the flanks, and placed the recently conquered northerners in the center. Even before dawn, Mstislav’s army attacked the enemy. The formidable Varangians counterattacked the northerners and cut a wedge into their ranks. Most of the northerners died, but the rest stubbornly resisted and killed many Varangians.

At this time, Mstislav's cavalry easily defeated Yaroslav's squads on the flanks, and then attacked the Varangians from the rear and flanks. I don’t presume to judge whether Mstislav heard about Hannibal, but Listven turned out to be nothing worse than Cannes. Here both Yaroslav’s squad and almost all the Varangians died. As the chronicle says, in the afternoon Mstislav drove around the battlefield and said: “How can you not rejoice? Here lies a northerner, here is a Varangian, and my squad is intact.”

Yaroslav and Yakul fled from the battlefield. At the same time, Yakul, in order not to be recognized, threw off his golden vestment - “luda”. Yaroslav ran to Novgorod, and Yakul took his breath away all the way to Sweden. After Listven, Mstislav could easily take possession of both Kiev and Novgorod, but he acted nobly, almost like in chivalric novels. Mstislav sent a letter to Yaroslav: “Sit down in your Kyiv, you are the elder brother, and I will have that side,” that is, the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper. But Yaroslav did not dare to go to Kyiv and kept his mayors there, while he himself lived in Novgorod. Only in 1025, having gathered a large army, Yaroslav came to Kyiv and made peace with Mstislav at Gorodets. The brothers divided the Russian land along the Dnieper, as Mstislav wanted. He took the eastern side with the throne in Chernigov, and Yaroslav took the western side with Kiev. “And they began to live peacefully, in brotherly love, strife and rebellion ceased, and there was great silence in the Earth,”

- says the chronicler.

Between 1020 and 1023, the Novgorodians demanded a special charter from Yaroslav for their support (according to other sources - “Pravda”, in modern language, a constitution). The text of Yaroslav's letter did not reach us; it was destroyed by the Moscow princes. But from constant references to it in later documents, it is clear that the charter contained tax benefits for Novgorod, expansion of the rights of the people's assembly (veche) in comparison with other Russian cities, as well as significant restrictions on the power of the Kyiv prince and his governors in Novgorod.

Thus, it was not Svyatopolk the Accursed, but Yaroslav the Wise who unleashed the civil war in Rus'. During the ten-year war, Yaroslav not only did not unite Kievan Rus, as they still write in school history textbooks, but on the contrary, the country was dismembered. The Principality of Polotsk had already separated forever from Kievan Rus. The Principality of Ladoga was given by Yaroslav to the Varangians, and the remaining lands were divided between Mstislav and Yaroslav. Meanwhile, Yaroslav was awarded the “honorary title” Wise, and at the same time he was canonized, like Prince Vladimir.

In 1036, Yaroslav was unexpectedly very lucky - the hero Mstislav died while hunting. Mstislav had an only son, Eustathius, but he died in 1032. In this regard, the lands of Mstislav peacefully went to Yaroslav. Yaroslav ruled for a long time and died in 1054. He fought a lot, built a lot, had a lot of children. Of his entire long reign, we examined only aspects related to relations with our northern neighbors.

During the reign of Yaroslav, there were generally good relations with the Normans (Swedes, Norwegians and Danes). In 1029, the Norwegian king Olaf the Saint fled to Kyiv to Yaroslav, expelled from the country by rebellious subjects. Returning to his homeland in 1030, Olaf left his little son Magnus in the care of Yaroslav and Ingigerd. The prince and princess surrounded him with care. When in 1032 the Norwegian leaders came to Kyiv to ask Magnus to become their king, Yaroslav and Ingigerd released him, but took an oath from the Norwegians to be faithful to Magnus. So Magnus became the Norwegian king.

In 1031, the half-brother of Saint Olaf, the famous Harald Gardrad, arrived in Rus'. Yaroslav appointed Harald as second commander in the Russian army fighting the Poles. If you believe the "Saga of Harald", he had many battles and Yarisleif (Yaroslav) treated him very well. But, in the end, Harald got tired of Kyiv, and he and a large detachment of Varangians moved to Byzantium for gold and adventure. Harald entered the service of the Byzantine Empress Zoe and participated in many battles in Africa, Sicily, Greece and Asia Minor. It is curious that Harald sent gold and other valuable loot to Yaroslav in Kyiv for storage. In the end, Harald did not get along with the Byzantine authorities, blinded some important dignitary, kidnapped Maria, the granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor, and tried to escape from Constantinople in two galleys.

The Strait of the Golden Horn was blocked by the Greeks with a chain, but Harald found an ingenious way to overcome this obstacle. When the galleys encountered a chain, Harald ordered all the warriors who were not sitting on the oars to move to the stern and drag all the cargo there. Thus the galley ran over the chain. Then Harald ordered the warriors with the loads to move to the bow. The galley fell over the chain, but the second galley broke. When Harald's galley entered the Black Sea, he ordered the imperial granddaughter to be put ashore and sent to Constantinople. Harald was a gallant knight - they walked for the night and went home, not like our Stepan Razin - he stabbed the parents of the Persian princess, raped her, and when he got tired of it, he drowned her in the river.

Apparently, fearing the pursuit of Byzantine ships, Harald did not go to the Dnieper-Bug estuary, but to the Sea of ​​Azov and this way reached Kyiv. There he took, as the saga says, “a lot of his gold, which he had previously sent from Byzantium.” Apparently, he gave part of the gold to the stingy Yaroslav, and he gave his daughter Elizabeth, whom the Varangians named Elisiv, to Harald. Together with his young wife, Harald set off along the path “from the Greeks to the Varangians” to Norway, where he soon became king.

Yaroslav, on the one hand, maintained good relations with the Scandinavian kings, and, on the other hand, began to colonize lands in the northwest, north and northeast of Rus'. Let us immediately note that this colonization came both from above (from the prince and his governors) and from below (merchants, individual warriors and simple smerds acted, so to speak, on their own initiative). Moreover, in some cases it is not possible to separate these two types of colonization.

In 1032, governor Uleb and his retinue went from Novgorod to the Iron Gates, that is, to the land of Chud Zavolotsk, to the Northern Dvina. Historians S. Soloviev and V. Mavrodin consider this campaign unsuccessful, since the chronicle says that few people returned from it, but it can be assumed that Uleb left his garrisons on the Dvina.

In 1042, Vladimir Yaroslavovich, whom his father sent as governor to Novgorod, went on a campaign against the Yam tribe in the Northern Dvina region, defeated him, but on the way back he lost many horses from pestilence.

Even earlier, in 1030, Yaroslav the Wise himself led a campaign to Estland. There Yaroslav founded the city of Yuryev. The city was named in honor of Yaroslav, who, in addition to the Slavic name, also had the Christian name George, that is, Yuri (Gyurga). In 1224, the Danes renamed the city Dorpat, in 1893 Emperor Alexander III returned the city's historical name Yuryev, but in 1919 Estonian nationalists renamed it Tartu. By the end of Yaroslav's reign, most of Estonia was part of the Kyiv state.

On February 20, 1054, Yaroslav the Wise died. His two sons - Ilya and Vladimir - died during his father’s lifetime, five more sons - Izyaslav, Svyatoslav, Vsevolod, Igor, Vyacheslav - were already at a respectable age. The eldest son Izyaslav succeeded his father. He also owned the Turovo-Pinsk land and Novgorod. Svyatoslav, who was previously sitting in Volyn, received Chernigov, the lands of the Radimichi and Vyatichi, that is, the entire Northern Land, Rostov, Suzdal, Beloozero, the upper reaches of the Volga and Tmutarakan. Vsevolod received Pereyaslavl, Igor - Volyn, and Vyacheslav - Smolensk. Yaroslav’s grandson, Rostislav Vladimirovich, was imprisoned in the “Chervenskie grady”, in the Galician land. Now almost all of Rus' belonged to the children and numerous grandchildren of Yaroslav. All the other children and grandchildren of Prince Vladimir the Saint died or were killed.

The exception was Sudislav Vladimirovich, who spent many decades in prison, imprisoned there by his brother Yaroslav. Izyaslav transferred his uncle from prison to a monastery, where he died in 1063. Moreover, Vladimir’s great-grandson, Prince Vseslav Bryachislavovich, nicknamed the Magician, was in Polotsk. In the Principality of Polotsk, power became hereditary - in 1044 Bryachislav died and was succeeded by his only son Vseslav.

Yaroslav's grandchildren began strife back in 1063-1064. But then the Polotsk Sorcerer intervened in their affairs, who captured Novgorod in 1066. Then the children and grandchildren of Yaroslav united and went as an army against the offender. They managed to storm the city of Mensk (Minsk), whose population was completely killed. But in March 1067, the bloody battle on the Nimiga River ended in a draw. As it is said in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: “The bloody shores of Nemiga were not sown with goodness - they were sown with the bones of Russian sons.”

In July 1067, Izyaslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod sent to invite Vseslav to their place for negotiations, kissing the cross that they would not harm him. For some reason, Vseslav believed them, and not alone, but with two sons, without proper security, sailed across the Dnieper on a canoe. During the negotiations, Izyaslav ordered the capture of the Sorcerer and his sons. They were sent to Kyiv and put in an underground prison. So to speak, a special operation in the best traditions of the Wise Yaroslav.

However, the Polotsk princes were saved by the appearance of the Polovtsian horde. Yaroslavich's three brothers came out to meet them. In the battle on the Alta River, the Russians suffered a complete defeat.

The defeat overflowed the patience of the people of Kiev, who had long been fed up with the rule of the Wise Yaroslav and his children. At the Kiev auction, a council gathered, which demanded that Prince Izyaslav Yaroslavovich distribute weapons to the people to fight the Polovtsians. The prince refused. Then the townspeople besieged the princely court. The brothers Izyaslav and Vsevolod Yaroslavich had no choice but to flee Kyiv. Moreover, Izyaslav was afraid to remain within Rus' and fled to Poland.

The people of Kiev freed the Polotsk prince Vseslav the Magician from prison and elected him prince of Kyiv. But Vseslav managed to sit on the Kiev throne for only 7 months. In the spring of 1069, a large Polish army led by King Boleslav P. marched towards Kyiv. The horde was led by Izyaslav Yaroslavovich. Vseslav moved towards the Poles, but near Belgorod, having learned about the great numerical superiority of the enemy, he left with his squad for Polotsk.

Kyiv had to capitulate to the Poles. A punitive detachment led by Mstislav, the son of Izyaslav Yaroslavovich, entered the city. 70 townspeople were executed, several hundred were blinded. Izyaslav again found himself on the Kiev throne. However, after this, the next civil war in Rus' not only did not subside, but flared up with renewed vigor.

Izyaslav with his squad and Poles moved to Polotsk and captured it. Vseslav the Magician, as always, managed to escape. Izyaslav appointed his son Mstislav as governor in Polotsk, and after his death another son, Svyatopolk. However, Polotsk remained under Kyiv's rule for only four years. In 1074, Vseslav the Magician regained the Principality of Polotsk forever, and Svyatopolk fled shamefully. Meanwhile, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod Yaroslavich began a war for the Kiev throne with their older brother Izyaslav Yaroslavich.

So Izyaslav Yaroslavich, returning to Kyiv, sat on the Kiev throne as if on hot coals. To top it all off, in 1071, the Magi appeared in Kyiv, openly preaching about the coming universal cataclysms. In such a situation, a cool propaganda trick is urgently required.

And so in 1072, Izyaslav organized a solemn event - the transfer of the remains of princes Boris and Gleb to a specially built stone temple in Vyshgorod near Kyiv. Naturally, miraculous signs and healings of the sick began to happen near the graves. Boris and Gleb were declared saints, and Svyatopolk was anathematized.

It is curious that in 1050, that is, during the life of Yaroslav the Wise, his grandson, the son of Izyaslav, was named Svyatopolk. That is, in 1050, no one remembered or did not want to remember the story of Boris and Gleb. As we remember, the Varangians killed Boris secretly, after which they all either died or left for their homeland. Over 50 years in Kyiv, power changed by force twenty times, and many events inevitably got mixed up in the heads of the old people. However, even from the chronicle it is clear that the canonization did not go entirely smoothly. Thus, during the reburial of the brothers, the head of the Russian church, Metropolitan Georgy, “I couldn’t believe my faith in him,” that is, he doubted very much, but “then he fell on his face.” Boris was buried first, but there was a hitch with Gleb. The chronicle says: “The coffin already stopped at the door and did not pass. And they commanded the people to cry out: “Lord, have mercy,” and the tomb passed.” I wonder why the chronicler would include this detail in his brief description of the burial? Maybe he wanted to say in Aesopian language that Gleb had serious reasons not to lie next to Boris?

Before the translation of “Eymund’s Saga” into Russian, no one paid attention to the inconsistencies in the chronicle. But then our historians began to literally shake. Having completed the translation of “Saga”, Professor O.I. Senkovsky realized that its publication could end in a long journey to Solovki. Then he found an unwitty, but the only possible way out of the situation - he declared Burisleif Svyatopolk. The tsarist government arranged this forgery. And under the Soviet regime there was a struggle against the Norman theory, and everything connected with the Varangians fell into oblivion.

Only with the beginning of perestroika did the controversy about the murderers of Boris and Gleb intensify again. In 1990, a book by G.M. was published in Minsk. Philista: “The History of the “Crimes” of Svyatopolk the Accursed”, containing an analysis of the “Saga of Eymund”, other Russian and foreign sources proving that Boris was killed by Yaroslav. In 1994, a book by T.N. was published in Moscow. Jackson, Icelandic Royal Sagas in Eastern Europe. This lady, “without delving into polemics,” supports Senkovsky’s version, saying that the name Burisleif in the “Saga” should be read as Svyatopolk, and not as Boris. It is clear that there is clearly no need to engage in polemics with this lady; you can only ask her one rhetorical question: why was it necessary to write a 250-page book and devote only two paragraphs - less than half a page - to the most interesting and only politically pressing issue?

Official historians took a neutral position in the dispute. On the one hand, the arguments of “Saga” supporters are more than convincing, and challenging them in the absence of official censorship can lead to general ridicule. But it’s scary to call Yaroslav a murderer - you’ll have to rewrite all the textbooks and come into conflict with the church. That’s why schoolchildren still cram from textbooks: Yaroslav – the Wise, Svyatopolk – the Damned. Alas, historical cliches are not afraid of revolutions or changes in economic formations. Even earlier, in 1986, A.S. Khoroshev, in the book “Political History of Russian Canonization (XI-XVI centuries)” on page 23, outlined in detail the version of “The Tale of Boris and Gleb” and “The Saga of Eymund” and ... brilliantly avoided expressing his own opinion on this issue. Remember the Soviet-era joke: “Do you have your own opinion? “I have an opinion, but I fundamentally disagree with it.”

The canonization of Boris and Gleb did not help Izyaslav Yaroslavovich; after a few months he and his sons had to flee to Poland again. His brother Svyatoslav Yaroslavich sat on the Kyiv throne. But the strife still continued. In 1097, the grandchildren and great-grandsons of Yaroslav the Wise came to the city of Lyubech on the Dnieper “to establish peace.” After much debate, the princes came to Solomon’s decision: “Let each tribe maintain its homeland.” That is, the collapse of a single state was officially announced. There was a statement of the existing order of things. Note that Vseslav the Charodey did not go to the Lyubech Congress - Polotsk already belonged to his dynasty.

In Lyubech, having “settled”, the princes kissed the cross: “If now one of us rises up against another, then we will all stand up against the instigator and the honorable cross will be against him.” After this, the princes kissed each other and went home. But, alas, nothing has changed, internecine wars began again. But historians received a starting point - the Lyubech Congress - for a new paragraph in the textbook “The Feudal Fragmentation of Rus'”.

Chapter 3.

Northern campaigns of the Novgorodians in the 11th-12th centuries

After 1066 (the conquest of England by the Normans), Norman campaigns in the countries of Western Europe almost ceased. In the 10th-11th centuries, early feudal states arose in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. At the end of the 10th - beginning of the 11th century, Christianity became the state religion there. These processes were accompanied by numerous feudal wars, and the Normans simply had no time to attack their southeastern neighbors.

In Rus' in the 11th-12th centuries, the economic and political importance of Lord Novgorod the Great grew steadily. The Novgorodians gradually made the position of prince elective. Of course, the choice takes place not among the citizens of Novgorod, but among the extremely multiplied Rurik princes, or more precisely, the descendants of Yaroslav the Wise. The rights of the prince were constantly limited, and by the 12th century the prince became just the leader of the mercenary troops defending the city, and he had no right to interfere in the affairs of Novgorod and the lands subject to it.

Novgorodians intensively colonized the western, northern and eastern lands in the 11th-12th centuries. In Estland, the Russians founded the city of Kolyvan (from 1219 - Revel, from 1917 - Tallinn). The first mention of Kolyvan in Russian chronicles dates back to 1154.

In the 11th-12th centuries, Novgorodians settled not only the banks of the Volkhov and Luga rivers, but also the banks of the Neva right up to its mouth. According to the Novgorod “old books,” the villages that arose on the right bank of the Bolshaya Neva belonged to the Spassko-Gorodensky churchyard of the Orekhovsky district, and the villages on the left bank belonged to the Nikolo-Izhorsky graveyard of the Novgorod district. On the Okhta River there were five villages of Timofey Evtikhievich Gruzbva with 32 courtyards and up to ten villages of other owners, each with no more than two courtyards. Fomin Island (the current St. Petersburg side) had 30 courtyards and was classified as part of the Lakhta volost, which was held by the governors of the city of Oreshka.

The area on the left bank of the Neva opposite Fomin Island (the current Admiralty part) had three villages with eight courtyards. Vasilyev Island (present-day Vasilievsky) according to “old books” is shown to be jointly owned by two mayors, Alexander Samsonov and Elevfery Ivanovich Vyazgunov, with 12 yards each, partly arable, partly fishing. The areas along the Izhora and Slavyanka rivers were even more densely populated than the Neva Delta; there were many villages, although sparsely populated.

The Swedes made occasional raids on the banks of the Neva. So, according to the chronicle, in 1142 a Swedish prince with 60 augers (rowing ships) approached the mouth of the Neva. But these were not conquerors, but ordinary robbers. They attacked three merchant ships, presumably German, coming from Novgorod. The merchants fought back, killing 150 Swedes, after which the surviving augers went home.

Finnish tribes (Em, Sumy and others) showed stubborn resistance to Novgorod colonization. So, in the same year 1142, an army came from Finland and “fought the Novgorod region.” According to the chronicle, the Novgorodians killed them all. Then the Ladoga residents searched for him and killed 400 people. In 1143, the Karelians made a campaign against it.

In 1149, she raided the Novgorod parish of Vodnaya Pyatina. The Novgorodians sent a detachment of 500 people against them. All Finns who took part in the raid were killed or captured.

As we can see, the Novgorodians easily coped with the Finns. Therefore, it is not surprising that at the beginning of the 12th century, most of the tribes living in the territory of modern Finland and Karelia paid tribute to Veliky Novgorod.

After the death of King Stenkiel in 1066, wars of feudal lords for power began in Sweden, aggravated by the struggle between Christians and pagans. Relative stability in Sweden came around 1160 with the accession of Karl Sverkerson to the royal throne. Only after this were the Swedes able to begin offensive operations against the Russians.

In 1164, the Swedish flotilla passed through the Neva to Lake Ladoga. The Swedish army besieged the city of Ladoga. The Ladoga residents burned their settlement, and they themselves and the mayor Nezhata locked themselves in a stone fortress and sent to Novgorod for help. The Swedes tried to take the Kremlin by storm, but were repelled with heavy losses. Then they retreated to the mouth of the Voronaya River and set up a fortified camp there. Five days later, soldiers of the Novgorod prince Svyatoslav Rostislavovich and the mayor Zakhary approached the Swedes’ camp. The attack by the Russian army came as a surprise to the Swedes. Most of the Swedes were killed or captured. Of the 55 augers, only 12 managed to escape.

In 1188, Novgorod youths went to Central and Northern Finland under the leadership of the governor Vyshata Vasilyevich and “came home in good health, having obtained a full load.” In 1191, the Novgorodians went to war with the Karelians, “they fought and burned their land, they killed their cattle.” In 1227, Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich went with the Novgorodians to Central Finland, “they fought the whole land, they brought back countless numbers.”

The next year, 1228, she decided to take revenge, came on ships to Lake Ladoga and began to devastate the Novgorod possessions. The Novgorodians, having learned about the raid, boarded ships and sailed along the Volkhov to Ladoga, but the Ladoga residents with their mayor Vladislav did not wait for help from Novgorod, they themselves chased the ship in boats, overtook them and entered into battle, which ended only by nightfall. At night, messengers from Emi came to ask for peace, but the Ladoga residents did not agree. Then the Finns, having killed the captives and abandoned the boats, fled into the forest, where most of them were exterminated by the Karelians.

The Russians dealt the strongest blow to the Swedes during a mysterious campaign against the Swedish capital of Siggun in 1187. A flotilla of ships with Novgorod, Izhora and Karelian warriors secretly passed through the Swedish skerries to Siggun. The Swedish capital was stormed and burned. During the battle, Archbishop Ion was killed. It must be said that both Russians and Karelians had reason to deal with this clergyman, who “fought for 9 years with the Russians, Izhoras and Karelians for the sake of God and the holy faith.”

The Russian-Karelian army returned home safely. The Swedes did not restore the destroyed Siggun, but began to build a new capital, Stockholm. Stockholm was founded by the widow of Archbishop Jonah and Earl Birger from the Folkung family. (The reader should not confuse this Birger with his namesake, an opponent of Alexander Nevsky; this Birger died in 1202.)

Why is the campaign of 1187 called mysterious? The fact is that there is no mention of him in Russian chronicles, and everything said is taken from the Swedish “Chronicle of Eric”. It should be noted that both Swedish and domestic historians consider the “Chronicle of Eric” to be completely reliable. And in Russia, material evidence of the campaign has been preserved - gates decorated with bronze bas-reliefs. The Novgorodians took these gates from Siggun and attached them to the entrance to the Novgorod Church of St. Sophia. They are still there, a copy of them is in the Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin in Moscow.

So, the Russians destroyed the enemy capital to the ground and took away many valuables. Why are our chronicles silent about this? Yes, because the chroniclers literally recorded every step of the princes, while they preferred not to notice the campaigns of the daring Novgorod freemen. It was like that later. How much did our chroniclers write about the victories of the Ushkuiniks over the Horde?

Let us draw attention to the fact that the “well done Novgorod men” turned out to be not only brave warriors, but also experienced sailors who knew the Swedish skerries well. Obviously, the campaign of 1187 was not the first debut of the Novgorod freemen. Let us also pay attention to the support provided to the Novgorodians by the Karelians, Izhora and other Finno-Ugric tribes in the fight against the Emyu (Tavasts) and the Swedes. The Karelians went with the Novgorodians not only in 1191, when the chronicle speaks of this, a similar campaign is known back in 1143, and in 1228 they, together with the Izhora, took an active part in repelling the raid on Lake Ladoga.

Russian colonization of the Finno-Ugric peoples was fundamentally different from German and Swedish colonization. It can be called soft, in contrast to the hard Western one. To simplify the situation somewhat, we can say that hard colonization amounted to the construction of fortresses (castles) on the territory of conquered tribes, where knights and their retinue lived. The surrounding population became serfs of these knights and were forcibly Christianized. Natives who later abandoned Catholicism were hanged, burned at the stake, etc.

Soft colonization was carried out quite differently. Naturally, things could not have happened without armed clashes between Russians and Finno-Ugric tribes. But in general, colonization took place peacefully. The Russians did not suppress the native tribes, but, as it is now fashionable to say, occupied an empty ecological niche. The weak settlement of the northern lands allowed the Russians to penetrate almost painlessly. The Russians did not turn the natives into their serfs or slaves, and the tribute imposed on them was small. Let us note that in the 11th-13th centuries the Novgorodians fundamentally did not build fortresses and castles in the area of ​​the Neva River, in Karelia and Southern Finland. And finally, the Russian Orthodox Church conducted missionary activities relatively sluggishly and only through peaceful means. It could not have been otherwise - great religious tolerance reigned in the Novgorod lands, a significant part of the Novgorodians themselves in the 11th-13th centuries remained pagans or worshiped both Christ and Perun.

Sveneld, according to the chronicler, warned the prince: “Go around, prince, the rapids on horseback, for the Pechenegs are standing at the rapids. And Svyatoslav did not listen to him, and went in boats.”

On November 21, 2011, a unique sword from the 10th century, which was discovered near the site of the death of Prince Svyatoslav, was presented at the Museum of the Zaporozhye Cossacks in Ukraine. The author of the sensational find was a Zaporozhye fisherman who made his wonderful catch in the area of ​​Khortitsa Island.

Zaporozhian resident Sergei Pyankov did not even expect that such a large fish would bite his hook. Almost like in a fairy tale, having thrown the gear twice, he was already starting to get ready to go home. I threw it in for the third time, before leaving, and couldn’t believe my eyes. Using an ordinary spinning rod, he fished out a real treasure from the bottom of the Dnieper - an ancient sword dating back to the tenth century.

“In my concept, it was very difficult to stick into this sword with hooks that are directed upwards. Apparently he had already spent time lying on the bottom, he needed to show himself,” said fisherman Sergei Pyankov. Cossack Piankov donated the find to his native museum, although collectors offered a lot of money for it. “I understood that this was a thing that should belong to Khortytsia, because I myself love Khortytsia. Even the thought did not arise, although there were proposals,” says fisherman Sergei Pyankov.

Scientists from all over Ukraine came to Zaporozhye to see such a valuable catch. According to scientists, the sword with gold and silver trim could belong to the Grand Duke of Kyiv Svyatoslav Igorevich, who died on the Dnieper rapids in 972. Scientists from Kyiv and Zaporozhye said that the find is of international importance. “The probability that this sword belonged to Prince Svyatoslav is so great that it is not particularly possible to doubt it,” says Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Andrey Avdienko. Scientists say the weapons' thousands of years of storage in fresh water were likely aided by a natural sarcophagus of silt and sand.

Sword length - 96 centimeters, weight - about a kilogram .

“The handle of the meter-long sword is equipped with a rich finish of four metals, including gold, silver, and copper. The fact that the artifact was well preserved after lying in fresh water for 1,100 years is an incredible event. The weapon has almost completely retained its shape. You can see that the find is an item of an elite level, which could have been in the arsenal of very noble warriors of the Kievan Rus army or directly with the prince,” said Maxim Ostapenko, general director of the Khortitsa National Nature Reserve.

According to the historian, the sword was found near the island where, according to ancient chronicles, in 972 the battle between the army of Prince Svyatoslav and the Pechenegs took place. “In 1928, during the construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric station, on the territory of the former Dnieper rapids, 5 swords of ancient Russian warriors, lost during the war, were found,” the scientist recalled. According to researchers, there were many interested in the elimination of Svyatoslav, one of the founders of Kievan Rus, so such a find is simply priceless.

For reference : in 972, Prince Svyatoslav and his retinue, returning from a campaign near Dorostol, fearing an attack by the superior forces of the Pechenegs, returned to Beloberezhye - the Danube delta and wintered there, suffering a great famine. In the spring of 972, he went on boats to Kyiv and was attacked by Pecheneg troops of “Prince” Kuri while transporting across the Dnieper. In a battle with the Pechenegs, Prince Svyatoslav died along with most of his warriors. According to legend, “Prince” Kurya ordered a cup to be made from Svyatoslav’s skull and drank from this cup at his feasts. The semi-legendary death of Prince Svyatoslav was largely confirmed when swords from the mid-10th century were found in the area of ​​the Dnieper rapids, already in modern times, at the site of the prince’s death declared by chroniclers.

Let us recall that in 1928 the swords were found on the left bank of the Dnieper opposite Kichkas, that is, below the rapids (Chernyshev N.A. On the technology and origin of the “Frankish” swords found on the Dnieprostroy in 1928 // Scandinavian collection. Vol. VI. Tallinn, 1963. P. 212). It was the place near Kichkas and the island of Khortitsa that was considered the most dangerous on the way “from the Varangians to the Greeks.” One Byzantine writer noted that the river here is quite narrow, “and the height of the bank, which the eye sees from below, is such that an arrow fired from there just hits the swimmers...”. Probably, the steppe nomads, who loved to lie in wait for rich caravans here, also knew about this. The Varangian warriors of Svyatoslav, who fell at the Krariyskaya crossing, could most likely belong to the magnificently ornamented northern swords found on Dneprostroy, as suggested by B.A. Rybakov (Rybakov B.A. Russian applied art of the X-XIII centuries. L., 1971. P. 383).

Two of the swords found in 1928 were marked with signs in the form of crutch crosses, and on the blades of the other 3 swords Vladislav Iosifovich Ravdonikas then read the same word, embossed in Latin letters: “ULFBERHT” - “ULFBERT” (Ravdonikas V.I. Inscriptions and signs on swords from Dneprostroy // News of the State Academy of History of Material Culture. M.; Leningrad, 1933. Issue 100. pp. 598-616). It was a name, but it did not belong to the owner of the sword, but to the gunsmith who made the sword. However, the name Ulfbert itself is not at all Varangian and not Scandinavian at all. It's Frankish. And the swords made a complex journey both in space and in time - from Ulfbert’s workshop, located on the middle Rhine, through Scandinavia and the Dnieper to the Dnepropetrovsk Museum.

Only 87 swords of the so-called Scandinavian type (more precisely, Frankish-made blades with hilts ornamented in the “Scandinavian” tradition) were found on the territory of the former USSR (more than 1,500 of them were discovered in Norway alone), and a significant part of them were recovered from the burial mounds of the Baltic states, the rest are concentrated on the outskirts of ancient Rus' - in the Ladoga region, the Dnieper region and the Volga region (Dubov I.V. New sources on the history of Ancient Rus'. L., 1990. P. 107-108). The most common are swords with the mark of the Ulfbert workshop (15 such blades were found).

Statue of Svyatoslav Igorevich on horseback with a defeated Khazarian. Sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov. The monument was erected in 2005 in the village of Kholki, Belgorod region .

It is also impossible not to recall that in November 2005, the Moscow Patriarchate insisted that Vyacheslav Klykov not hold the congress of the “Union of the Russian People” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior:

The founding congress of the Union of the Russian People (RUN) was supposed to take place on November 20 in the Hall of Church Councils of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (CCS). About a thousand delegates and guests from many regions of Russia and abroad were invited to the forum. The chairman of the organizing committee of the congress of the Union of Russian People is the famous Russian sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov. On Saturday, November 19, as reported by the media, the organizing committee of the convention received a fax from the Foundation of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the following content: “We inform you that your event cannot take place in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior for technical reasons, you will be able to receive money for this event ". As the forum organizers found out, The Foundation made this decision after a persistent request from the Moscow Patriarchate .

The congress was moved to the Gorbunov Palace of Culture on the outskirts of Moscow - widely known among young people as "Gorbushka" - a cult meeting place for rock musicians. The gathering of delegates to the CSU was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. on November 20, so it was impossible to warn most of them. By this time, buses had arrived at the CSU, transporting delegates to Gorbushka. All delegates managed to relocate to the Palace of Culture named after. Gorbunov only for lunch.

Such a drastic change in the position of the Moscow Patriarchate is associated with the scandal unfolding around the monument to the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav, built in Belgorod to commemorate the 1040th anniversary of the defeat of the Khazar Kaganate . The author of the scandalous monument in Belgorod, which was supposed to open on November 22, 2005, was Vyacheslav Klykov. The scandalousness of the situation lies in the fact that Prince Svyatoslav is depicted riding a horse, trampling the hooves of a Khazar warrior. The Khazar shield has a large image of the Star of David. Historians claim that only the top of the Khazar Kaganate accepted Judaism some time before the collapse of this state. Since the hall of the Gorbunov Palace of Culture accommodates about 650 people, the founding congress of the “Union of the Russian People” had to be held in a much less solemn and comfortable atmosphere than it was supposed to be in the Hall of Church Councils of the CSU. In addition to Vyacheslav Klykov, the presidium of the founding congress of the RNC included several State Duma deputies, including General Leonid Ivashov, Sergei Baburin, Sergei Glazyev. The congress began with a prayer service in the hall, which was performed by about 10 priests, including Abbot Peter (Pigol), Archpriest Vissarion Apliaa - head of the Diocesan Council of the Sukhumi-Abkhaz diocese, Abbot Kirill (Sakharov), rector of the Church of St. Nikola on Bersenevka. Opening the congress, Vyacheslav Klykov stated: " We have gathered in this hall, having felt the repression of the authorities! " Among the greetings, V. Klykov read out a blessing to the RNC congress from the former Metropolitan of Kursk and Rylsk Juvenaly (Tarasov), who in his message wished to strengthen the unity of the Russian people in the fight against genocide against them.

The speeches of many who spoke at the founding congress of the RNC sounded bewildered at such an unexpected downgrade of the status of the congress and the action of the Moscow Patriarchate. In this regard, mention was made of the recent canonization of the new martyrs in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, among whom were members of the pre-revolutionary Union of the Russian People: http://rublev-museum.livejournal.com/254149.html?thread=128965#t128965

TRIUMPH OF PRINCE SVYATOSLAV

“Unsuccessfully resisted Khazaria at the beginning of the 10th century. and Kyiv. We remember that the attempt of the Rus to capture Samkerts and establish themselves on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov caused a retaliatory campaign by the commander Pesach and placed Kyiv in the position of a tributary of the Itilian Rakhdonite merchants. While collecting tribute for the Khazars in the Drevlyansky land, Igor, the prince of Kiev and Olga’s husband, was killed (944). Resistance to the Khazars, and not the war with Byzantium, became the main problem for Kyiv. And therefore, Princess Olga of Kiev, who ruled under her young son Svyatoslav, tried to acquire a strong ally in the Greeks: she went to Constantinople, where she was baptized, choosing Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus as her godfather.

... Returning to the solid ground of established facts, we are convinced of the reality of Svyatoslav’s campaign against the Khazars. The young prince, who turned out to be an energetic commander, began it in the summer of 964. Svyatoslav did not dare to go from Kyiv to the Volga directly through the steppes. This was very dangerous, because the tribe of northerners who lived on this route between Chernigov and Kursk were supporters of the Khazars. The Russians climbed the Dnieper to its headwaters and dragged the boats to the Oka. Along the Oka and Volga, Svyatoslav reached the capital of Khazaria - Itil.

Allies of Svyatoslav in the campaign of 964-965. The Pechenegs and Guzes came out. The Pechenegs, supporters of Byzantium and natural enemies of the Khazars, came to the aid of Svyatoslav from the west. Their path most likely ran near the current village of Kalachinskaya, where the Don approaches the Volga. The Guzes came from the Yaik River, crossing the expanses of the Caspian region covered with dunes. The allies met safely at Itil.

The capital of Khazaria was located on a huge island (19 km wide), which was formed by two Volga channels: the Volga itself (from the west) and Akhtuba (from the east). Akhtuba in those days was the same deep river as the Volga itself. In the city there was a stone synagogue and a king's palace, as well as rich wooden houses of the Rakhdonites. There was also a stone mosque, because Muslims were treated politely there.

Svyatoslav's warriors cut off all routes from Itil. But its inhabitants probably knew about the approach of the Russians, and most of the Khazar aborigines fled to the Volga delta. The Volga delta was a natural fortress: only a local resident could understand the labyrinth of channels. In summer, the incredible clouds of mosquitoes that appeared at sunset would defeat any army. In winter, the Volga was frozen, and the delta became inaccessible to boats. The delta islands were covered with Baer mounds - huge hills the height of a four-story house. These hillocks gave refuge to the real Khazars.
The Jewish population found itself in a different situation. There was no point in studying the Volga channels for Jewish merchants and their relatives: this is why they created their monopoly of foreign trade and usury in order to live in the comfort of an artificial landscape - the city. The Jews were alien to the indigenous population - the Khazars, whom they exploited. Naturally, the Khazars, to put it mildly, did not like their rulers and were not going to save them.

In the besieged city, the Jews had nowhere to run, so they went out to fight Svyatoslav and were completely defeated. The survivors fled through the “black” lands to the Terek and hid in Dagestan. (The lands north of the Terek were called “black” because, due to the winter with little snow in this area, strong winds easily raised dust with snow, and “black” blizzards arose.)

Svyatoslav also came to Terek. There stood the second large city of Khazar Jews - Semender. There were four thousand vineyards in the city and its surroundings. (Nowadays this is the space between the villages of Chervlennaya and Grebenskaya; it is described by L.N. Tolstoy in the story “Cossacks”.) Semender had a quadrangular citadel, but it did not save the city. Svyatoslav defeated Semender and, taking horses, oxen, and carts from the population, moved across the Don to Rus'. Already on the way home, he took another Khazar fortress - Sarkel, located near the current village of Tsimlyanskaya. Sarkel was built by the Byzantines during their short friendship with Khazaria, and it was created by the Greek architect Petrona. In Sarkel, Svyatoslav met a garrison consisting of mercenary nomads. The prince won, destroyed the fortress, and renamed the city Belaya Vezha. Immigrants from the Chernigov land later settled there. The capture of Sarkel ended Svyatoslav’s victorious campaign against Khazaria.

As a result of the campaign 964-965. Svyatoslav excluded the Volga, the middle reaches of the Terek and part of the Middle Don from the sphere of influence of the Jewish community. But not all military-political problems were solved. In the Kuban, in the northern Crimea, in Tmutarakan, the Jewish population under the name of the Khazars still retained their dominant positions and retained financial influence. However, the main achievement of the campaign, undoubtedly, was thatKievan Rus regained its independence "(From the book by L.N. Gumilyov "From Rus' to Russia").

Posted on Nov. 23rd, 2011 at 09:54 pm | | | |