17. On the Threshold of Empire, Rus 2 Russia
With the pacification of the Streltsy uprising began the open rule of Sophia, who relied on the Miloslavsky clan. Prince Vasily Vasilievich Golitsyn, a favorite of the ruler, became the government.
[This will be the last section of this book “from RUS to Russia”. I hope that you have enjoyed all the medieval art. At first I thought it would be a real chore to include it, but it prove not difficult at all. (Substack is a good platform.) We have plenty of great material from Gumilev; his two greatest works, the historical, Ancient RUS and the Great Steppe, which recounts the story of Russia and the Mongols. And his theoretical book, Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere, both of which are enormous works 278 thousand words, and 214 thousand words. We’ll see where this Library will go from here. I’ll post some further reflections before I make any decisions.]
In a sacred league.
An educated man, an excellent diplomat and politician, Prince Golitsyn was a fierce supporter of Russia's participation in European affairs on the side of Catholic countries: Austria, Rzeczpospolita and Venice. But this policy was not just unpopular in the country, for the majority of Russian people, it was incomprehensible and unaccustomed. Not long ago, under Patriarch Filaret and Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, under Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Russian foreign policy attitudes were the opposite. Russia opposed Poland, and in its person the entire Catholic West, striving for the "triumph of Orthodoxy. Apart from being supported by the Ukrainians and Belarusians, this Russian policy was also quite orthodox from a Christian standpoint. The more cruel treatment of the Orthodox believers by the Catholic Church could not be compared with the treatment of Balkan Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
Moscow at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries.
Vasily Vasilievich Golitsyn
The Turks, who owned most of the Orthodox countries of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Moldavia, Wallachia, - as well as Syria and Egypt, where there was a large Christian population, treated Christians rather mildly. Of course, Christians could not serve in the army and carried arms only in exceptional cases; they could only make a great career by accepting Islam. But those who did not want to make a career and did not want to convert to Islam could live and work freely, go to Christian churches, read and even publish orthodox liturgical books. Freedom of conscience was seen as one of the principles of the state structure of the empire, because the Turks of the XVII century sensibly believed that it was better to collect an additional tax from Christians than to incite a civil war in their country. And the Turks needed the money to maintain their troops: the Ottoman Empire had enough foreign wars.
The armed struggle between Catholic countries and Turkey in the 16th-17th centuries was almost uninterrupted. In the second half of the 17th century the Ottoman Turks, despite several serious defeats by European powers, retained Podolia and part of Hungary, and in 1683 they launched an offensive against the Austrian Empire and laid siege to Vienna. The Polish King Jan Sobieski, deciding that it was too dangerous to leave Austria in such a position, took an active part in the defense of the city. According to European sources, the Turkish troops near Vienna numbered about 200 thousand men, including "service personnel". Undoubtedly, the number of combat units was significantly lower. Against the Turks came the forty thousand Austrian army and twenty-six thousand Polish Hussars of Sobieski. With these forces the Turks were utterly defeated. The defeat was so crushing that the sultan had his grand vizier executed. But the success of Austria and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was achieved solely through the heroism of the Polish knighthood, and it cost Poland dearly.
Map of the Ottoman Empire
Continuation of the struggle against the Turks required the unification of the European states, and in 1684 the Holy League was created, which included the Austrian Empire, the Commonwealth of Poland, the Republic of Venice and the Order of Malta. The participants in this coalition sought to involve Russia in the struggle against Turkey in order to shift the burdens of war on the Wild Field.
(It is reported that there were about 380,000-plus deaths in the Holy League wars, 1683 - 1699)
There is no doubt that the idea of an alliance of Christian nations against the Mohammedans was just a disguise: as early as 1676 the Rzeczpospolita, on the eve of yet another Turkish incursion into Ukraine, successfully betrayed Russia and hurried to make peace with the Sultan. Russia, which had briefly interceded for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and demanded that the Ottomans cease their attacks on Poland, was confronted by a hundred thousand Turkish-Tatar troops. Only at the cost of heroic efforts of the Streltsy militia and Cossack detachments did the Russians manage to defend Kiev and the Left Bank Ukraine.
Table of distances between different capitals and Moscow. Early 18th century. (Sorry I could have left this one out, since nothing is readable.)
All this was well understood by clever people in Russia. When the clerk of the Posolsky Prikaz Yemelyan Ukraintsev informed hetman Samoilovich of Golitsyn's decision to join the coalition of European Catholics against Turkey, the hetman rightly remarked that to fight for the interests of their enemies was foolish, there was no reason to break the peace with the Turks and Tatars, and the hopes of capturing the Crimea were completely illusory. Of this, no doubt, both Sophia and Vasily Golitsyn knew. Nevertheless, they gave in to the entreaties of the Jesuit Poles, against the opinion of such an experienced military leader as Samoilovich. In 1686 Russia joined the Holy League and in exchange for the participation in the war it had promised to make "perpetual peace" with Poland, it was given permanent possession of Kiev (in the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667 Russia received it for two years, but it was never returned to the Poles).
Western European states made every effort to engage the Russians in a war not with Turkey but rather with its ally, the Crimean Khanate, because the Austrians and Poles feared not the regular Turkish army but rather the impetuous raids of Tatar cavalry. The Crimean khanate had to divert the Russian troops.
Thus, Russia had to enter the war without any guarantees of acquiring lands in the Balkan Peninsula in case of victory. However, Russia had to fulfill its obligations. And in 1687 a hundred thousand Russian troops, led by Prince Golitsyn, undertook a campaign to the Crimea. The veterans of the steppe wars, nobles and Cossacks, were well aware of the adventurous nature of Sophia's favourite's venture. Golitsyn had no leadership talents, and his huge army had to march in summer through dry, waterless steppes from Poltava to Perekop, and, not having a reliable rear, to take a heavily fortified isthmus. Not surprisingly, this Crimean campaign, as well as the next (in 1688) ended in disgraceful failure. Vasily Golitsyn got off lightly: his intimate relations with Sophia saved the prince from disgrace. Golitsyn, with the help of Ivan Mazepa's intrigues, blamed Samoilovich, who was the least responsible for the failure and had initially opposed Golitsyn's adventure. The hetman was deprived of his position and exiled to Siberia on trumped-up charges, and the hetman's mace, as we have already mentioned, was given to Golitsyn's protégé, Mazepa.
On the eve of reforms
Failures of the Crimean campaigns caused ferment and growth of discontent in the country. Even before, most of the common people had been surprised by the manners and customs of the royal court. Seeing the ruler in Polish clothes, her favorite - in Polish kuntusha or hearing the Polish language and Latin nobles, people were perplexed. (Polish had by that time become firmly established in fashion and was used very widely in the Kremlin.) And after the subordination of Russian foreign policy to the interests of Austria, Poland and even Venice, the introduction of heavy taxes and useless sacrifices, the government lost all popularity. The hostility towards it was also increased by its extremely cruel policy towards the Old Believers. In 1685, the notorious "Twelve Articles" were issued against the Old Believers - one of the most ruthless laws in Russian punitive practice. (Incidentally, the same year Louis XIV repealed the Edict of Nantes on religious tolerance. In both cases, the role of instigators was performed by the Jesuits.)
The denouement came in 1689, on Golitsyn's return from the Crimea. It began with rumors. There was talk that the Streltsy, at the instigation of Sophia and the head of the Streltsy Department Feodor Shaklovity, were once again planning to murder Peter and the Dowager Tsaritsa Natalia Kirillovna. Frightened by this news, the seventeen-year-old Peter flees at night from his residence in the village of Preobrazhenskoe to the protection of the walls of the Trinity Sergius Monastery. The confrontation between the Naryshkins and the Miloslavskys, between Peter and Sophia, took on an undisguised character. However, the Streltsy units this time behaved very passively, the alarm bell did not sound, and the government had no supporters. The patriarch, who left to negotiate with Peter, never returned to Moscow. Following the patriarch stretched boyars, leaving in formation with unfurled banners on foot and horseback regiments. Simply no one wanted to support Sophia and Golitsyn, and Streltsy readily gave up Peter Shaklovity. In the end Shaklovity was beheaded, Golitsyn was exiled, and Sophia was imprisoned in a monastery.
К. V. Lebedev. Peter's Potechny Troops
К. V. Lebedev. Peter the Great's teaching by foreigners
К. V. Lebedev. Peter's visit to the Trinity-Sergius monastery on August 8, 1689
An engraving by I.E. Repin. Tsarevna Sophia in the Novodevichy Convent during the massacre of the Streltsy in 1698. fragment
Thus, the Naryshkin party came to power, rising on the crest of national discontent with Western influence. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire country, together with his party and entourage, had placed the future Peter the Great on the throne. Their proclaimed policy of national rebirth, if it may be called so, lasted a long time - from 1689 to 1701. This was the time when Patriarch Joachim, the Tsarina Dowager, her brother Lev Naryshkin, Peter's grandmother's relative Tikhon Streshnev, the Tsar's uncle Prince Boris Golitsyn and, later, Prince-Cesar Feodor Romodanovsky, who became head of the Preobrazhensky Office came to power.
The new government, though embroiled in a war, would have to continue it, and Peter, leaving the "mars fun", undertook with the Don Cossacks two campaigns in 1695 and 1696 to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov, which blocked the way from the Don to the Sea of Azov. Azov was a well-fortified outpost of the Turks. Peter, who did not have a fleet, should not have dreamed of taking the fortress, the garrison of which received a decent reinforcement. But the young tsar and his friends were confident that the siege of Azov would be no more difficult than the "sea campaigns" at Pereyaslavl lake or the storming of a toy fortress near a village near Moscow Kozhukhovo. Naturally, the first campaign of 1695 ended in failure. Having lifted the siege, the Russians withdrew. All winter Peter spent in Voronezh building the fleet and preparing the second campaign. Several tens of thousands of people were driven to the new Voronezh shipyards, and at the cost of untold hardships for the people and the cost to the treasury by spring several large ships were built. Ukrainian and Don Cossacks and Kalmyk cavalry also marched to Azov together with the Russians. It should be noted that the success of the second assault on Azov was ensured not by the newly built large ships, but by the small maneuvering boats of the Don Cossacks. The mobile Cossack boats suddenly attacked the Turkish ships and scattered them and allowed the Russian fleet to leave the Don to the Sea of Azov unhindered. The fate of the fortress was decided, and after two months of siege the Turks left Azov on terms of honorable surrender.
However, the very need for the capture of Azov was more than questionable. The Sea of Azov is connected with the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait, and Kerch and Taman were in the hands of the Turks and Tatars. Thus, having captured Azov, it would be logical to start recapturing the exit from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea, that is, like Golitsyn, to try to capture the Crimea. But even having conquered the Crimea and gained access to the Black Sea, Russia would not have become a Mediterranean power. For real competition in the Mediterranean with the Venetians and the British, the Russians had to get the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, that is, no less than to capture Istanbul. This was out of the question at the end of the 17th century.
The outcome of the Russo-Turkish war was not brilliant for our country. Austria made peace with Turkey, leaving Russia alone to pay for all the failures, because she herself had already acquired a rich Hungary. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth got Podolia, which it needed and which became a barrier on the way of the Turks to the internal regions of Poland. Russia annexed the Wild Field from the Don to Zaporozhye. As we have already mentioned, this land was indeed a constant battlefield between the Nogai Tatars who were raiding the Russian and Polish Ukraine and the Cossack detachments who were coming from the north to attack the Turkish and Tatar possessions. Both Cossacks and Tatars were terrible cutthroats, and of course, it was impossible for Russia to settle and cultivate these fertile lands. The Europeans were well aware of the conditionality of this acquisition and did not hesitate to consider the Wild Field as Russian.
Assault of Azov on July 18, 1696.
Shipbuilding.
Thus, all right-thinking people could see the negative results of the Holocaust alliance with the Catholics. Probably not without the influence of his closest advisors, Peter decided to change the priorities of his foreign policy and tried to establish contacts with other European states. In 1697 the young Russian tsar himself traveled to Europe with the "Great Embassy" which included incognito under the name of "Uriadnik Peter Mikhailov". The embassy traveled primarily through the Protestant countries of Northern Europe: Courland, Brandenburg, Holland, and England.
From this journey, during which negotiations (albeit unofficial) with European monarchs took place, Peter brought to Russia a new idea of Russian foreign policy - an alliance not with Catholic, but with Protestant states. It should be said that for Peter's favorite Holland and trading Britain, the most urgent task at the time was the fight against Catholic France and its political ally Sweden. European politicians tried to use Peter against Sweden, just as they had previously used Golitsyn and Sophia against Turkey.
As we see, with the replacement of Sophia by Peter, Russian foreign policy did not acquire the independent character that had been lost during Sophia's reign. It was simply refocused on a different group of Western European states.
The young Peter, who was deeply impressed by the orderly, comfortable life in Holland, was seized by grand plans: to turn Russia into a "civilized" power, build the same kind of navy and develop commerce. True, in order to realize the tsarist dream, it was necessary to start a war with Sweden for access to the Baltic Sea, but this was seen as a timely and noble task.
From an ethnological point of view, the emergence of Peter's dream is quite natural. Like his comrades-in-arms, Peter belonged to his own ethnos, which in the 17th century was going through a maximum of passionarity, an accustomed phase that was not very favorable to the life of ordinary people, riddled with conflicts and all kinds of outrages. To a man who had seen as a child the bloody reprisals of the strelets, heard fierce disputes about faith, forced to constantly fight for his life in palace intrigues, the quiet, peaceful life of Holland, which was in the inertial phase, must indeed have seemed like a fairy tale. Peter's desire in late seventeenth - and early eighteenth-century Russia to imitate the Dutch is reminiscent of the act of a five-year-old girl who puts on her mother's hat and paints her lips to resemble her beloved mother. But just as a hat and lipstick do not make a child into a grown woman, so borrowing European manners could not change the phase of Russian ethnogenesis. The history of the "Great Embassy" also confirms this: Peter could not visit Venice as he had planned. He was forced to leave everything behind and urgently return to Russia, where another, and this time the last, Streltsy uprising broke out.
Peter I in Saardam. The hostess reprimands the tsar-employee
Tsar Peter at the Saardam Shipyard
The government of Prince Romodanovsky removed Moscow's streltsys from the capital and exiled them to the frontier. The streltsys did not like military service, full of dangers and hardships. They preferred to live in Moscow and tend their own households. In 1698 forty thousand of them left the border and headed for the capital. The Moscow garrison, commanded by General Patrick Gordon, consisted of only five thousand men. General Gordon, pointing his cannons at the streltsys, came out to meet them and offered to stop the outrage. But instead of turning back into a fighting order, retreating or finally surrendering, the archers began to quarrel with Gordon across the river. The quarrel angered the general, and he ordered a volley. After the first volley, the streltsys ran amicably and capitulated - forty thousand streltsys in front of five thousand regular troops!
Peter the Great in Holland.
Returning from abroad, a furious Peter ordered a new search and subjected a large number of Streltsy units to excruciating torture and execution. The Streltsy men treated the execution with complete submission, and there was no question of any resistance, for the Streltsy army's passionariness had been exhausted. This was not surprising. The most energetic Streltsy men were killed during any revolt: the instigators were consecutively killed first by Sophia and Shaklovitch, and then by Peter and the terrible Prince-Cesar Romodanovsky. It is not by chance that during the rebellion of 1698, facing the troops of Gordon, the streltsy army behaved exactly as the forty thousand passionate Novgorodians did in 1478 at the battle of Shelon, when they were confronted by a force of only five thousand mounted troops from Moscow. The same causes lead to the same consequences.
After the outrage of 1698 the Streltsy army left the historical scene, although formally it was abolished later. This was the end of the Streltsy consortium's life: from a group of people united by a common fate, it was transformed first into a conviction - a group bound by a common way of life - and then destroyed, before becoming a sub-ethnos, as the dissenters were, or an ethnicity, as the Cossacks were.
Peter's legend
The defeat of the Streltsy uprising of 1698 is generally considered the last date in the history of Moscow Russia, which then began its rapid transformation into the Russian Empire. And under Catherine II, the legend of Peter the Great was born, the legend of a wise reformist tsar who had opened a window to Europe and exposed Russia to the only valuable Western culture and civilization. Unfortunately, this legendary version, which became official at the end of the 18th century, was not disproved in the 19th or 20th centuries. The propagandistic fiction of a Russian tsarina of German origin, who usurped the throne, is still accepted by the vast majority of people as historical reality.
В. I. Surikov. The Morning of Streletsky Execution
The boyars come back from Tsar Peter, who had cut off their beards.
In fact, this was not quite the case, or rather, not at all. Despite all the decorative innovations that Peter introduced when he returned from Holland - shaving, smoking tobacco, wearing German dress - none of his contemporaries perceived him as a breaker of tradition. Ivan III, Ivan the Terrible, Alexey Mikhailovich and Nikon liked to break traditions in Russia, and they broke them all the time. Russia's contacts with Western Europe had never been interrupted, at least since Ivan III. The recruitment of foreign specialists by Peter the Great was generally perceived by Russians as something quite normal. Knowledgeable foreigners were lured into Russian service as early as the 14th century - at that time they were Tatars. And in XV century Germans were employed, and quite a few of them. But as in the XV-XVII centuries, and under Peter all the key positions in the state were Russian people.
Germans received a good salary, worked successfully, enjoyed the patronage of the tsar, but no one thought to allow them to power. Russian people of the 18th century, even wearing caftans and wigs, remained just themselves. Also, Tsar Peter's attitude towards Europe, for all his enthusiasm, remained somewhat, if I may say so, consumerist. There is a famous phrase of the tsar: "We need Europe for a hundred years, and then we will turn our back to it. But Peter was wrong here. Russia needed Europe for 25-30 years, because Russians took over all European achievements with stunning ease. By the mid-18th century, it had become possible to "turn back", which was done by Peter's own daughter Elisabeth in 1741.
All Peter's reforms were essentially a logical continuation of the reform activities of his predecessors: Alexei Mikhailovich and Ordin Nashchokin, Sophia and Vasily Golitsyn - and he solved the same problems. Peter's main difficulty in domestic politics, as with his father and half-sister, remained the passionate outskirts.
Ukraine rebelled: the Ukrainian hetman Mazepa, having deceived Peter, betrayed Charles XII. The Don revolted, angered by the arbitrariness of Peter's officials, who wanted to take runaway peasants from there. "No extradition from the Don," declared the ataman Kondratii Bulavin and resisted for two years, until he was forced to put a bullet in his forehead at the besieged Cherkassk. The Bashkirs rebelled, and it took four years to deal with them. In general, the violent population of the southeast of the country gave Moscow a lot of trouble, just as it had done during the Time of Troubles.
Once again, the alliance of the Russians with the steppes proved effective in this situation. Peter negotiated with the Kalmyk Khan Ayuka, who stood in the rear of the Bashkirs and the Don Cossacks, and with his help the uprisings were suppressed. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Kalmyks had practically stopped the Nogai raids on Russia: as masters of steppe warfare, they quickly constrained the Nogai and forced them to switch from attacking to defending themselves.
Great's Decree introducing a new chronology in 1699.
Н. Dmitriev-Orenburgsky. Assembly under Peter I.
And yet Peter's reforms, being in essence a continuation of the Westernization policy in Russia, of course, turned out to be deeper than all previous ones, in their influence on the Russian stereotypes of behavior, because in the early 18th century the level of passionarity of Russian super-ethnos was already much lower than in XVI-XVII centuries. But under Peter, too, in a sense, the Russian tradition of the seventeenth century was continued. When he came to power in 1689, the Naryshkin boyar clique led by Peter could only govern the country in the way they knew how to do it. And there was only one way of governing in Russia, known since the times of Shuisky and Glinsky: The Tsar carried out his policies relying on the loyal troops and government officials, and therefore the entire Russian state was a set of estates, somehow connected with the "sovereign's service".
After the Streltsy uprisings the privileged Streltsy troops were destroyed, because the fall of the Streltsy passion and degradation made them the opposition to the existing power. So, Peter needed his own army to preserve his throne and his life. And who could he attract to his side? Mobilizing the Bashkirs after the defeat of the uprising.
There was nothing to think about. In the Ukraine, there were no extra forces either. After the rebellion of Bula-Vin, the Don ceased to be a mainstay of the throne. As a result, Peter, who started the war with Sweden, had few combat-ready troops. Therefore, the young King Charles XII was able to easily inflict a crushing defeat on the Russians at Narva and decided that no thought could be given to Russia, for its entire army had been destroyed.
Peter was left with only one option: to increase the number of troops of foreign structure, namely the foot soldiers and horse dragoon regiments. Consequently, Peter's main reform - military - was forced. The number of regular troops had been increased from 60 to 200 thousand people, but it had to start "recruitment". From the nobility were taken peasants and serfs in the soldiers for 25 years, that is, virtually forever. Recruits were trained harshly, perhaps even brutally, guided by the principle "kill seven, learn one". Of course, professional soldiers were very capable and strong in combat, but the declining passionarity of the ethnos did not allow this army to be self-sustaining, as was the case with the noble cavalry or the Streltsy. If only the soldiers were allowed to get their own food, looting and robbery would begin, as a soldier whose home was a barracks was not inclined to feel pity for the people who were strangers to him - the inhabitants. Foreign regiments, unlike the Sagittarians, were no longer in any way connected with the feeding landscape and therefore needed to be fully supplied. It is clear that these regiments were very expensive for the treasury: they needed military camps, provisions, stores, bulky carts. Military costs weighed heavily on the population, and the Russian people fled.
When the army needed cannons, Russians quickly mastered the technology to produce them, especially since there were deposits of iron ore necessary for casting cannons near Tula and in the Urals, where the construction of factories was led by the merchant Demidov. Demidov's factories produced cannons no worse than the Swedish ones, and Swedish iron and weapons were considered the best in the world at that time. But there was a shortage of workers. Therefore, entire villages were assigned to Demidov's factories. Their inhabitants were ordered to contribute their labor to the common cause - the war. The solution was unsuccessful: the peasants did not so much work as walk to the place of work and back, because the villages were located far from the factories, and the travel time was counted in the total period of conscription.
Lefort
Я. J.V. Brus.
The decline in the overall level of passionarity also had an impact on the "chicks of Peter's nest. The new people who came with Peter to run the country were careerists and embezzlers. Bribes and corruption under the "reformer" reached such a scale, which in the 17th century the boyars could not even imagine. Suffice it to mention Peter's favorite, the talented military leader Alexander Menshikov. When the new capital, St. Petersburg, was being constructed, the magnificent building of the Twelve Collegia, which was to adorn the Neva embankment, was facing the river only because Governor-General Menshikov of St. Petersburg decided to build his palace on the site of the government building. Money for the construction, of course, was withdrawn from the treasury.
It is only natural that spending on the army and navy and corruption caused a constant deficit in the state budget. (Peter did, however, leave his heirs a very decent financial position, without a penny of public debt.) And in 1714 the reformers introduced a terrible law about the per capita fee: they imposed a tax on all the people living in Russia for the fact that they existed. But it was impossible to collect this tax. People refused to pay under various pretexts. Then Peter did not stop at the introduction of a round robin. The population of every town and parish was written down; the amount of tax paid by each town and every parish was determined, and the town fathers and the wealthiest citizens were declared responsible for its timely arrival to the treasury. They were obliged to raise money and get the necessary amount of money from the poor, and in the event of arrears, they were to answer with their own property. There was no way out: the tsarist troops garrisoned the cities.
Я. F. Dolgorukov
А. D. Menshikov
Б. P. Sheremetev
It would seem that it was not worth taking a per capita tax from the landlords. After all, the peasants served the landed gentry, and the nobility in the era of Peter, served in the army no less than 40 years. (True, under Peter's successors this term was shortened.) But the landlords were also declared responsible for the receipt of tax from the peasants. In response to the numerous complaints of the landlords about the impossibility to collect taxes at the same time as performing their duties, the "advanced" Petrine government advised them to involve their relatives and not to be too shy in the choice of means for extorting money from the unfortunate peasants.
From the decree on the per capita fee was born that hideous, abominable form of serfdom, which was abolished only in 1861. As you can see, the "window to Europe" had two faces. However, not all the consequences of Peter's reforms had an immediate impact. Some of their results were felt not so much by Peter's contemporaries as by their descendants. Throughout the 18th century, neighboring nations inertially perceived Russia as a country of national tolerance - the way the Moscow state had established itself in the 15th-17th centuries. And so, everyone wanted to get "under the hand" of the Moscow tsar, to live peacefully, according to their own customs and the laws of the country. What the Ukraine, which spared no blood for the sake of joining Russia, gained in the XVII century, the Kazakhs, and the Buryats, and the Georgians, who suffered from the raids of their neighbors, received without any effort. In this way, the old Moscow tradition attracted a number of ethnic groups that organically became part of a single Russian super-ethnos stretching from the Carpathian Mountains to the Sea of Okhotsk.
Alexander Nevsky Lavra
The eighteenth century was the last century of the acmatic phase of Russian ethnogenesis. In the next century, the country entered an entirely different ethnic time - a phase of fracture. Today, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, we are close to its final phase. It would be presumptuous to speculate about an era of which we ourselves are a part. But if the assumption we made is correct, and if we do not know of any facts to contradict it, it means that Russia still has to go through the inertial phase - 300 years of the golden autumn, the era of harvesting fruits, when ethnos creates a unique culture that will remain for generations to come! If new passionary impulses manifest themselves on the vast territory of our country, our descendants, though a bit unlike us, will continue our glorious traditions and those of our worthy ancestors. Life is not over...
fini
Instead of an afterword
We have traced the logic of the main events of the ethnic history of Rus and Russia. It is easy to see that the presentation of this logic is not at all like the narrative of social history. The ethnic history of any country, that is, the history of its peoples, cannot be viewed in the same way as we view economic relations, political collisions, or cultural and intellectual history. Nor is the ethnic history of Russia an exception: it cannot be presented as a linear process from Rurik to Gorbachev. The events of the ethnogenesis of the peoples of our Fatherland form the historical canvas of the life of at least two different super-ethnoses. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish the history of Ancient Kievan Rus (from IX to XIII century, including the history of Novgorod until its fall in XV century) and the history of Moscow Rus (from XIII century up to our days). At the same time, the key periods for understanding the national historical destiny are three centuries: XIII, XIV and XV, - when the Russian reality was formed as a result of interference (superposition) of two different processes of ethnogenesis. The final phase of ethnogenesis of Kievan Rus' combined with the initial, incubation period of the history of future Russia, and this combination gave such a tragic coloring to the time of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitriy Donskoy and Vasily the Dark.
Did the contemporaries of these great sovereigns know that they were living in an era of changing traditions? Of course not! The collapse of Old Russian statehood, princes' strife, Lithuanian and Tatar raids, the need to pay the khan's "yield" and the princely duties... It seemed as if the time could not be harder. Such a domestic perception of the era remained fixed in the literary sources of the 13th century and was passed on to the following historical works. This was correct from the point of view of traditional historiography, but the point is that no other conclusion could be drawn using methods of the humanities. When a historian draws his conclusions from what is written in the texts he is studying, he draws conclusions that summarize the views of the author of that text. In order to reach a generalization of the facts of historical reality, it is necessary to consider them "in their purest form," detached from literary sources and subjected to comparative historical criticism. Such a method belongs no longer to the humanities, but to the natural sciences. It is precisely this method that the historical and geographical science of ethnoses - ethnology, which is based on the passionary theory of ethnogenesis, applies.
The natural-scientific methodology allows us to see something inaccessible to the eyes of our contemporaries - the true character of this or that epoch. It is revealed to the researcher when looking at a long series of events from a known temporal distance. Evaluating the cut of Russian history XIII-XV centuries, we can make sure that it is in this era that are truly the initial layers of our history. In relation to them all the preceding is a complete historical tradition of Slavic ethnogenesis, and all the subsequent - the trans-formation of once arisen behavioral stereotypes and cultural dominants.
Peasants of Zemlyansky District at home
Analyzing the ethnic history of Rus-Russia, it is necessary to take into account the ethnogenesis of all the peoples of our homeland. Each of these ethnoses, possessing its ethnic age and corresponding passionary potential, had a powerful influence on the course of ethnogenesis of the entire super-ethnos. Only by taking into account the full range of ethnic contacts and their social consequences can we come closer to a true understanding of the Fatherland's past.
Using the main characteristic of ethnic history - the level of passionary tension, it is easy to summarize the differences between Kievan and Moscow Russia, and point to two different streams of Russian history. - Russia only in the XX century comes to those final phases, in which the entire history of Kievan Rus' passed. Moscow did not continue the traditions of Kiev, as Novgorod did. Instead, it destroyed the traditions of Veche freedom and princely feuds, replacing them with other norms of behavior, largely borrowed from the Mongols - a system of strict discipline, ethnic tolerance and deep religiosity. To the untrained reader, the presentation of the concept of ethnic history must seem extravagant to the point of obscenity, and there are indeed some reasons for this view.
All phenomena of the surrounding world pass through the prism of consciousness and are reflected in the works of the mind and hands of man: philosophical treatises, paintings, scientific discoveries and technical achievements. It is in what man has created that cultural tradition, that is, the sum of knowledge and beliefs transmitted over time from ethnos to ethnos, lives. It is as a cultural tradition that the works of ancient Russian scribes and beautiful temples, preserved in Chernigov, Kiev and Bogolyubov have reached us. Since the cultural tradition, based on Orthodoxy, was basically borrowed by Moscow from Ancient Russia, and changed only formally, the historical continuity was fully preserved for the people of the XVIII-XX centuries. For us the heritage of Kievan Rus' and the achievements of Muscovite Rus' merged together, and this is what allows us to speak of a progressive course of Russian history from the ninth to the twentieth century.
Indeed, if we have in mind culture, that is, all created by people, then we can agree with the thesis of continuity with a sin half and half. But if we are talking about ethno-genesis, then this thesis does not apply to it at all. Unlike cultural tradition, ethnic tradition is not a continuity of dead forms created by man, but the unity of behavior of living people supported by their passionarity. As for the stereotypes of human behavior in Kievan Rus' and in the Moscow state, they, as we have seen, were quite different.
Of course, in the formation of culture passionarity plays a role, but it is not the role of the rudder, nor the engine. Human feelings relating to the manifestations of nature are also reflected in the deeds and creations of men, whether they be political institutions or works of fine literature.
It is notoriously difficult to draw or compose well. With some ability, one can, of course, learn the craft of a poet or artist, but the craft will remain a craft: without creative insight, it is impossible to cross the boundaries of imitation or copying. But even a creative emotional outburst is not enough, for without the persistent pursuit of a goal it is impossible to create a finished work. Art requires sacrifice from its creators, and the ability to sacrifice oneself for an ideal is a manifestation of passionarity. Consequently, every human creation contains a combination of three elements: craftsmanship, the passionarity of the creator, and cultural tradition. Thus, any creation of human hands is, to a certain extent, the crystallized passionarity of its creators.
Historians, of course, deal with cultural phenomena in the broad sense of the word - monuments of various properties. This is where the possibility of substitution of notions hides: human creations are directly identified with those who created them, and the inseparability of cultural tradition is directly transferred to the ethnic tradition. But if we think about it, it becomes obvious that cultural monuments do not tell us everything about the people who created them. For example, when we admire truly admirable statues and paintings of the Renaissance, we lose sight of many things. In particular, the fact that all the cultural content of the Renaissance was created by the work of several dozen talented artists and humanists fascinated by antiquity at a time when manslaughter was a daily occurrence for Western Europeans and took on massive proportions. But neither Raphael's Sistine Madonna nor Michelangelo's David will tell historians anything about the atrocities of the Borgia papal family or the violence perpetrated by the Sforza dukes. Therefore, for a person interested in what really happened, it is preferable not to confuse works of culture and the system of behavior of the ethnos that created this culture.
It was the new system of behavior created on the old ideological basis - Orthodoxy - that allowed Russia to say its word in the history of Eurasia.16 This continent for the historically observable period was united three times. First, it was united by the Turks, who created the Khaganate, which covered the land from the Yellow Sea to the Black Sea. Mongols came from Siberia to replace Turks. Then, after a period of complete disintegration, the initiative was taken by the Eurasian which here refers not only to the vast continent, but also to the super-ethnos formed in the center of it, with the same name.
Russia took the initiative: from the 15th century onwards, the Russians moved eastwards and reached the Pacific Ocean. The new power emerged as the "heir" of the Turkic Kaganate and the Mongol ulus.
United Eurasia, led by Russia, was traditionally confronted by Catholic Europe in the West, China in the Far East, and the Muslim world in the South. In contrast to the landscapes of Western Europe, the landscapes of Eurasia are very diverse. And for any people, the relationship with the native landscape which determines the system of economy, is extremely important. Ethnos is adapted to its landscape, it is comfortable in it. If the landscape changes radically, the ethnos also changes radically. When the landscape changes, exceeding a certain critical threshold, a new ethnos appears in place of the old one.
The diversity of landscapes in Eurasia had a beneficial effect on the ethnogenesis of its peoples. Everyone found a place acceptable and pleasant to him: Russians developed river valleys, Finno-Ugric peoples and Ukrainians - watersheds, Turks and Mongols - steppe strip, Paleo-Asians - tundra. And with a great variety of geographical conditions for the peoples of Eurasia unification has always been much more favorable than disintegration. Disintegration deprived strength and resilience; to disunite in Eurasia meant to put oneself in dependence on neighbors, not always unselfish and merciful. Therefore, in Eurasia, the political culture has developed its own, original vision of the ways and goals of development.
The Eurasian peoples built a common statehood based on the principle of the primacy of the rights of each people for a certain way of life. In Russia this principle was incarnated in the concept of sobornost and was strictly observed. In this way the rights were also provided of the individual. Recall, for example, that after the accession of the Volga region, the Urals and Western Siberia in the army of the Moscow tsars, along with foreign regiments Streltsy and noble cavalry, appeared "grassroots forces. The nomads serving in the army had almost no money spent on them, they lived off their spoils and were quite successful in maneuvering wars. With their help, Alexei Mikhailovich liberated the Ukraine from Poland and thus saved it from destruction.
Historical experience has shown that as long as each nation retained the right to be itself, united Eurasia successfully withstood the onslaught of Western Europe, China, and the Muslims. Unfortunately, in the 20th century we abandoned this sensible and traditional policy for our country and began to be guided by European principles-we tried to make everyone the same. And who wants to be like everyone else? The mechanical transfer of Western European traditions of behavior to Russian conditions has yielded little good, and this is not surprising. After all, the Russian super-ethnos emerged 500 years later. Both we and West Europeans always felt, and realized this difference, and didn't consider each other as "our own". Since we are 500 years younger, no matter how much we studied the European experience, we will not be able to achieve the prosperity and morals characteristic in Europe now. Our age, our level of passionarity, presupposes quite different imperatives of behavior.
A windmill in the village of Kudashikha, Nizhny Novgorod Province. Photo of 1901.
Н. F. Nekrasov. Novgorod trade
This does not mean that one should reject someone else's experience. One can and should study other experiences, but it is worth remembering that this is exactly the experience of others. The so-called civilized countries belong to a different super-ethnos, the Western European world, which used to be called the "Christian world”. It emerged in the ninth century and within a millennium had come to the natural end of its ethnic history. That is why we see in West Europeans a highly developed technology, a well-ordered life, and the rule of order based on law. All this is the result of a long historical development.
One can, of course, try to "enter the circle of civilized nations", that is, one's own super-ethnos. But unfortunately, nothing is free. One must realize that the price of Russia's integration with Western Europe, in any case, will be a complete rejection of native traditions and subsequent assimilation.
The only way to reach this seemingly simple conclusion is to start from the right starting point. But for some reason we simply refuse to recognize the obvious: the basis of ethnic relations lies beyond the realm of consciousness, in emotions: sympathies versus antipathies, love versus hate. And the direction of these sympathies-antipathies is quite conditioned for each ethnic group. You can evaluate this phenomenon as you like, but it does not become any less real.
It follows that we should study the history and geography of human behavior in the same way as we study, for example, the history of diplomacy or the geography of transportation. Based on this conviction, the author has attempted to write this book about the ethnic history of Russia in a concise and accessible form. How successful this attempt is is for readers to judge.
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