25. Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe, Gumilev

Part six. By grain XXIV. In the ulus of Juchiev, 164. CHANGE OF ETHNIC DOMINANT

[I have attached a music video at the end. Many “Mongolian music videos” are reshot in the open space and show the immense views of Mongolia. This one also shows their ancient costumes, and horsemanship, and falconry. I think the views are the same as 1,000 years ago. The music is stimulating too.]

Patriotism is a sincere love for an ethnic or superethnic tradition, with the difference that at the level of an ethnic group there is a community based on signal heredity, and at the level of a superethnos there is a community of culture, even if borrowed, but accepted sincerely and voluntarily.

At the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries, Russians, despite the political fragmentation of the country, realized their systemic unity in relation to Poles, Swedes, Hungarians, Germans, but not to Greeks, Bulgarians, Georgians. Catholicism was an indicator of one superethnos, and Orthodoxy of another. Of course, the Suzdalians or Volynians knew that they were not Byzantines or Bulgarians, the difference with them was an order of magnitude greater than the difference between Russians in different principalities, but the difference with Catholics and Muslims was two or three orders of magnitude greater. Ethnic sympathy (positive compliment) caused sympathy in Russia for the Greeks in 1204, for the Bulgarians in 1205, for the Polovtsians, who intermarried with the Russians, in 1223, and for the Izhorians in 1240.

Conversely, the victories of Alexander Nevsky in 1242 on Lake Peipsi and Daniil Galitsky under the fortress of Yaroslav in 1245 were perceived as the joy of all Russia insofar as the inertia of the passionate tension of the ethnic system has not yet died down.

But the string of troubles listed above indicated the direction of the ethnic process. By 1252-1257 entropy had triumphed. Although the wars did not stop, but they were no longer for Russia [1], which turned for a century into the arena of the struggle against three different and hostile to each other superethnoses: Catholic, Muslim and steppe; the main dominant of the latter was not religion, but the Yasa (law) of Genghis Khan.

Batu's grandiose campaign in 1237-1242 made a stunning impression on his contemporaries. But it was just a big raid, not a planned conquest, for which the entire Mongol Empire would not have enough people. In fact, the Mongols neither in Russia, nor in Poland, nor in Hungary did not leave garrisons, and did not impose a permanent tax on the population, did not conclude unequal treaties with the princes. Therefore, the expression "conquered but unconquered country" is completely wrong. The conquest did not take place, because it was not planned to be. Batu had the task to disperse the Polovtsians, which he did, and to conclude an acceptable peace with settled neighbors, from whom one could not expect a counterattack. And there he did not succeed.

Catholic Europe was in the akmatic phase of ethnogenesis. The passionate overheating tore it apart, which prevented the conquests, although they still took place. In 1250, the head of the Ghibellines, Emperor Frederick II, died, the empire collapsed, and Pope Innocent IV was able to consider himself the head of the "Christian world". It was then that Daniel Galitsky accepted the royal crown of Little Russia from the hands of the pope. For this, he had to fight against the Mongols and carefully prepare a union with Papism. Galicia turned from a citadel of Orthodoxy into a small European kingdom, a vassal of the Throne of St. Peter.

In other words, Little Russia was forced to fight not for its own, but for other people's interests. It ended with the defeat of 1259, when the Mongol Noyon Burundai forced Daniel to demolish his fortresses and give his army as reinforcements for a campaign against Poland.

The alliance with the West led Galicia and its people to disaster. After 80 years, i.e. in 1339, the Polish King Casimir the Great "without a single shot" annexed Galicia to Poland.

How independent North-Eastern Russia felt is evident from the fact that in 1248, the legitimate heir of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir, Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich, the brother of the deceased Yaroslav, who was confirmed on the throne by Batu, was expelled by Mikhail Yaroslavich of Tver, having spent less than a year. He ended his days in the Horde, vainly seeking justice. But it was not Batu who was to blame for his fate, but the central government in Karakorum, where Guyuk's widow, naimanka Ogul Gaimysh, ruled. She gave power in Russia to the children of the poisoned Yaroslav: Alexander - the Grand duchy and the destroyed Kiev, and Andrew - the rich Principality of Vladimir [2].

This section was based on another female frivolity. Andrey was a "Westerner". He became related to Daniel Galitsky and was preparing an alliance with Europe against the Mongols. For Russia, this meant, even in case of victory, ruin, since a war was to take place on its territory, the introduction of the union, i.e. the destruction of national culture, and in the end the conquest of the Vladimir and Novgorod lands by Crusader knights, similar to what happened in the Baltic States. It is difficult to say whether Prince Andrew understood the inevitability of the consequences of his policy? Daniel's golden crown blinded him. But Prince Alexander, who ruled in Novgorod, perfectly understood the ethno-political situation, and he saved Russia.

In 1251, Alexander came to Batu's horde, made friends, and then fraternized with his son Sartak, as a result of which he became the 2nd-son of a khan and in 1252 brought a Tatar corps to Russia with an experienced Noyon Nevry. Andrey fled to Sweden, Alexander became the Grand Duke, the Germans suspended the offensive on Novgorod and Pskov.

Helping Alexander, Batu was by no means disinterested. He himself had an extremely difficult situation. In 1253, the kurultai, a combined arms assembly, was to meet in Mongolia to elect a new khan. Passions heated up so much that the losing side did not just risk its head, but had to lose it. The forces were almost equal, and each extra friend could tip the scales in one direction or another.

Batu needed a reliable rear. Daniel deceived him. He believed Alexander, and he did not betray him. Batu won: his friend Mongke became the great khan, and Batu became the head of the Borjigin clan. In fact, these two divided the empire: Batu ruled in the west, Mongke ruled in the east. And Alexander?

The conclusion is that Daniel and Alexander are worth each other. One adored the Germans, the other the Tatars. And who was for the Russians?

At that time there were also principalities with ancient Russian traditions - between the Dnieper and the Western Bug, between Pripyat and Dvina. These so-called White and Black Rus [3] did not obey either the Germans or the Tatars. And what did they do, how did they glorify their name, how did they defend their freedom from their Lithuanian neighbors? No way! Homeostasis preserves people who are considered normal. The descendants of the Krivichi, Dregovich, and Radimichi plowed the land every year, harvested crops, wove shirts, and sometimes ports, and did not allow the thought that their lives could change. So they lived until the XIV century, when an event occurred that marked the beginning of a new round of ethnogenesis.

165. THE SAME AT THE MASS LEVEL

In those decades when rulers chose advantageous allies for themselves, their peoples chose friends with whom they could live together and not wage endless and unnecessary wars. This problem was most urgent for the Mongols, who won the victory, but failed to take advantage of it. Most of the winners returned home, and already in 1243 Batu's forces were negligible[4].

According to Genghis Khan's will, his eldest son, Jochi, received 4 thousand Mongol soldiers [5] with permission to replenish the army at the expense of the population of the conquered countries. The eldest son of Jochi Khan, Orda-Ichen, had a stake on the banks of the Irtysh and by law received one thousand soldiers. It was the White, i.e. the eldest, horde. Orda-Yicheng refused power. The third son, Sheiban, roamed from Tyumen to the Aral Sea with a Blue Horde, he had another thousand at his disposal. Batu, the head of the Great or Golden Horde, accounted for only 2 thousand: Khins (mobilized Jurchens)[6] artillery, i.e. the service of military vehicles, and manguts.

The militia was added to this core, the number of which N. Veselovsky apparently correctly determined at 25 thousand [7]. It is clear that such an ulus could not exist for 240 years without loyal friends. Who were the supporters of the Khans of the Golden, Blue and White Horde? - Kipchaks.

The most subtle and clever one should recognize the brief description of the ulus of Juchiyev El-Omari: "In ancient times, this state was the country of the Kipchaks, but when the Tatars took possession of it, the Kipchaks became their subjects. Then they mixed and intermarried with the Kipchaks, and the earth prevailed over their natural and racial qualities, and they all became exactly Kipchaks, as if of the same kind with them"[8]. This can be called geographical determinism, but after all, the rigid connection of the ethnos with the landscape through the methods of economy is indisputable.

Being in an absolute minority, the Golden Horde Mongols did not have the opportunity to create a despotic regime. Therefore, the Horde headed a confederation of local ethnic groups held within the state by the threat of attack. "Circassians, Russians and Yases are unable to resist the sultan of these countries and therefore (live) with him as his subjects, although they have kings. If they turned to him with obedience, gifts and offerings, then he left them alone, otherwise he raided them and embarrassed them with sieges"[9].

The Mongols dealt much more abruptly with their Asian opponents, who lived on both sides of the Ural Ridge. Julian, a Hungarian monk who witnessed the conquest of the Urals in 1236, reports: "In all the conquered kingdoms, they kill princes and nobles who inspire them with fears. They, having armed the warriors and villagers fit for battle, send them ahead of themselves into battle against their will. Others... they are left to cultivate the land... and oblige those people to henceforth be called Tatars"[10]. So the ethnonym "Tatars" received an expanded, superethnic meaning.

Such cruel measures are probably explained by the bitterness that accompanies any protracted war. The Merkits continuously fought with the Mongols from 1201 to 1216, and the Bashkirs - from 1220 to 1235, for a total of 34 years, while the march through Russia took only 3 years, and already in 1243 a peace acceptable to both sides was achieved. Frequent trips to the Golden Horde of Russian princes began [11], from where they brought Tatar wives. Alexander Nevsky's suppression of the attempt to move to the camp of the hostile West led to that system of ethnic contact, which should be called symbiosis. This phase lasted until 1312 . - before the Uzbek Khan adopted Islam as the state religion.

From various places they went to the Horde and entered the service there to make a military career, which was unattainable for ordinary warriors and smerdov in their homeland [12]. Intrigues were going on in the Golden Horde all the time, and in 1273-1299 an internal war was burning between the usurper Nogai and the legitimate Genghisids. The Russian princes took the most lively part in it. One son of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry, and the son of Daniel Galitsky, Lev, supported Nogai [13], and Andrei Alexandrovich and his uncle Vasily Yaroslavich – supported the legitimate khans. In the conditions of this intense war, the Russian principalities had the opportunity to break away from the Horde, but they did not do it[14]. On the contrary, independent Smolensk asked to be accepted into the ulus of Juchiyev in order to receive assistance against the encroachments of Lithuania, and for a while became a shield of Russia. Tatar aid stopped the onslaught from the west.

But it was not easy in the east either. In the XIII century . The Volga was not yet a "Russian river". Nizhny Novgorod became the border city of Russia in 1220, erected on the site of the Mordovian fortress, taken by assault. From the mouth of the Oka to Derbent and Khorezm stretched a Muslim country conquered by the Mongols. The brilliant culture of Islam seduced many Mongol khans and Baturs, which greatly influenced the policy of the ulus of Juchiev. The first Muslim on the throne of Sarai was Batu's brother, Berke, who went to war with his cousin, the Ilkhan of Iran, Hulagu. However, he did not dare to quarrel with Alexander Nevsky and even allowed in 1260 to establish an Orthodox bishopric in Sarai. But he oppressed the Nestorians mercilessly.

Mengu-Timur, who succeeded him, was a follower of the traditional Mongolian Bon religion, just as Telebuga and Tokhta were opponents of Nogai, who was a secret Muslim. Nogai made his career due to the fact that Khan Tam-Mengu, who ascended the throne in 1280, was mystically inclined and in 1283 turned into a Sufi dervish [15], releasing power from his hands.

Finally, Tsarevich Uzbek poisoned Khan Tokhta in 1312, defeated the khan of the White Horde Ilbasmysh (1313-1320) and declared Islam the state religion of the Golden Horde. The princes and Noyons who refused to betray the faith of their fathers were executed. The obligation to change religion did not apply to Russians, which indicates a certain independence of Russia. Pagans who lived in the Russian principalities were also not forced to accept Islam. From all this it follows that the Mongols, the steppe superethnos, won the military victory, and the Muslims won the ideological one.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Uzbek reform. He turned the steppe ulus into a merchant sultanate; thus, the Volga ethnic groups entered the Muslim superethnos. The Uzbek's mainstay was the population conquered by Batu, the townspeople, who in the XIII century were called the "Sartoul people", and the Polovtsy who survived the massacre, who made up the Nogai army. Of course, not everyone obeyed the new regime. The passionate part of the Mongols said to the Uzbek: "You expect us to be submissive and obedient, but what do you care about our faith and confession and how will we leave the law and yasa of Genghis Khan and convert to the faith of the Arabs?" [16]. In response to this, the executions of Noyons, Bakhshi and magicians followed. The Great Steppe, which had never known religious persecution, faced this disgusting manifestation of civilization, because in the organization of the "Inquisition" Muslims were not inferior to Catholics.

Those who wanted to preserve freedom of conscience had to flee. Where to? In Iran, Ghazan Khan converted to Islam back in 1295. In Egypt and Syria, the Mamluks - Cumans dominated, sold there by the Mongols and seized power, getting into their hands for the Horde hero, it was worse than death. Western Europe was in a state of constant cold war with the Horde. It was practically impossible to get to China, where the tolerant Yuan dynasty ruled, because of the distance and difficulty of the routes.

The only place where the Tatars, opponents of Islam, could find shelter and friendliness were the Russian principalities [17], with which the zealots of the ancient tradition (many of them were born from mixed marriages) were connected for half a century of living together. So these Tartar names appeared in Russia... Aksakov, Alyabyev, Apraksin, Arakcheev, Arsenyev, Akhmatov, Babichev, Balashov, Baranov, Basmanov, Baturin, Beketov, Berdyaev, Bibikov, Bilbasov, Bichurin, Boborykin, Bulgakov, Bunin, Burtsev, Buturlin, Bukharin, Velyaminov, Gogol, Godunov, Gorchakov, Gorshkov, Derzhavin, Epanchin, Ermolaev, Izmailov, Kantemirov, Karamazov, Karamzin, Kireevsky, Korsakov, Kochubey, Kropotkin, Kurakin, Kurbatov, Milyukov, Michurin, Rachmaninov, Saltykov, Stroganov, Tagantsev, Talyzin, Taneev, Tatishchev, Timashev, Timiryazev, Tretyakov, Turgenev, Turchaninov, Tyutchev, Uvarov, Urusov, Ushakov, Khanykov, Chaadaev, Shakhovskoy, Sheremetyevo, Shishkov, Yusupov[18].

This list only partially reflects the scope that the Russian-Tatar mestization has acquired. Many ordinary soldiers settled on the south-eastern outskirts, were enlisted in border detachments and formed a class of noblemen-odnodvorets [19] - a kind of Polish "prison gentry". Only Catherine II, who simplified the system of the Russian Empire, transferred them to the estate of state peasants. The area of odnodvorets became the boundary between two newly formed ethnic groups - Great Russian and Tatar, and, moreover, between two superethnoses - Orthodox and Muslim.

166. FACTS AND ESTIMATES

The enumeration of events in their connection and sequence is the necessary foundation of history - without this foundation, no building can stand, but even mice will not live in the foundation. People need walls with windows, a roof and interior decoration of rooms. In history, the role of the latter is occupied by analysis, i.e. the detection of causes and effects, and synthesis - reproduction of the epoch relative to us - the descendants who study it. And these reproductions are diverse, although by no means equivalent.

In the middle of the XIII century . at the zenith there were two mighty systems: 1) the theocracy of Pope Innocent IV, who defeated the sworn enemy of the papacy of Emperor Frederick II and achieved the disintegration of the German Empire, and then finished with the Sicilian Kingdom - the last stronghold of the Ghibellines (1250-1266); 2) The Mongol ulus of the descendants of Genghis, in 1260-1264, split into parts from internal passionate tension. And between these giants, two small ethnic groups emerged, to which the future belonged: Lithuania [20] and Great Russia [21].

Unforgettable names are associated with their conception, not even their birth: Mindovg and Alexander Nevsky. People remember them to this day, and for good reason.

For half a century there was a victorious crusader offensive against the Baltic ethnic groups and in 1250 it was crowned with a seemingly decisive success: Prince Mindovg of Lithuania was baptized according to the Latin rite, which formally made him an ally of the pope. In the same year, Daniel Galitsky received the royal crown from the pope, becoming the prince of Little Russia (Rex Russae minoris). One might have thought that the road to the east was open; the pope's ambassadors tried to persuade Alexander of Suzdal and Novgorod to their side, but... all the successes turned out to be ephemeral. Having been baptized and thereby lulling the pope's vigilance, the Lithuanian prince assisted the pagan zhmudi in the war with the order, and after a decisive victory over the knights at Lake Durbe in 1260, he renounced the Catholic faith and killed the Catholics who were at his court [22].

Moreover, Alexander and Mindovg made an alliance against the German iron onslaught to the east. Alexander went to the Horde and negotiated an alliance with Khan Berke, Batu's brother and his heir. The Livonian Order was threatened with defeat, but... in the same year, 43-year-old Mindovg was stabbed to death and his peer Alexander died. The campaign against the order did not take place.

Yes, apparently, the Germans had a good agency. Daggers and poison worked a second time, after the death of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, and again at the right moment. Livonia survived, but was forced to go on the defensive. Novgorodians under Rakovor, and Lithuanians under Karusen won battles against crusading knights. The German feudal lords began to refuse to go to Livonia [23], because the war was dangerous and hopeless. And then, back in 1261, the Nicene Greeks returned Constantinople, and the Egyptian Mamluks began to take fortress after fortress in Palestine. Colonial expansion under the banner of the Latin cross choked both in the north and in the south.

This turn of events, somewhat unexpected for contemporaries, aroused keen interest among later researchers. The literature review of the issue was made by V.T. Pashuto, highlighting two points of view: his own and the "wrong" one. Among the defenders of the latter, he noted the Polish historian I. Uminsky and the German - A.M. Ammann.

I. Uminsky writes that Pope Innocent IV "did everything to help Daniel - he wrote to the Tatars again, tried to use knights of the sword and crusaders, stopped Czech-Hungarian disputes, baptized and crowned Mindovg of Lithuania, started correspondence with Alexander Nevsky of Suzdal, designed a crusade from the Czech Republic, Moravia, the Zapolabian Pomerania and Poland, appointed a special legate to preach the crusade"[24].

Ammann believes that Alexander Nevsky made a mistake when he rejected the alliance with the papacy and submitted to the power of the Tatars. This position "put a limit to Western cultural influence for many decades." Ammann attributes to Alexander "a complete aversion to the West," as well as an unwillingness for "Russia to become a pre-European fortress in a defensive battle with the Tatars." The Pope intended to include the whole of Russia in the defensive front, and when this failed, he called on everyone he had influence on to fight the Tatars and their allies, i.e. the Russians. The active activity of the Curia in 1230-1260 led to the union with Rome of Lithuania with the Western Russian lands and the Galician-Volyn country. Then there was a rupture - a retaliatory blow from the East hostile to Rome, which predetermined the fate of Northern Russia and the lands that it would later "collect"[25].

V.T. Pashuto condemns this concept, rightly pointing out that it is anti-Russian. But there is a legitimate perplexity: what could Russians expect from a German Jesuit and a Polish nationalist historian? Russian heroes, from the historians point of view, were quite logical, wanting the last Russian heroes to lay down their heads defending the Catholic idea; and the survivors could be hanged by chance, as has already been done in Estonia. V.T. Pashuto does not believe in the sincerity of the papal legates who tempted the Russian princes to accept the disinterested help of the West [26], and he right! But for some reason he also condemns the reverse concept, expressed in 1925 by G.V. Vernadsky, who wrote that "Alexander Nevsky, in order to preserve religious freedom, sacrificed political freedom, and two feats of Alexander Nevsky - his struggle with the West and his humility before the East - had the only goal - to preserve Orthodoxy as a source of moral and political strength of the Russian people"[27].

Both concepts are logical, but Pashuto calls the first one "falsification", although it is frank to the point of cynicism, and the second one "obscurantism", obviously assuming that Alexander Nevsky had to learn historical materialism and pass it with the help of a "time machine".

And Pashuto himself, summing up, states that Alexander Nevsky's war with the West - fortunately, with the East - would be desirable, and it would be best if Southwestern Russia played a leading role in world politics[28]. Yes, it would be interesting to see Daniil Romanovich as the head of the country from the Yellow Sea to the Bay of Biscay! But it is better to refrain from discussing this prospect.

In Soviet historiography, B.Ya. Ramm devoted his research to the topic of Catholic aggression in the East. As one would expect, his assessments are diametrically opposed to those that we have seen from Catholic historians. Having thoroughly analyzed many individual statements in various sources, Ramm comes to the conclusion that in 1245 "a plan was developed in the papal curia, according to which it was decided to negotiate in two diametrically opposite directions: with both Russians and Tatars"[29]. The goal was to subjugate Russia to Rome by persuading the Tatars to agree to such a deal. Ramm looks for evidence for his hypothesis in the analysis of the negotiations that the papal ambassadors conducted in Karakorum in 1246 and 1253.

Ramm's version seems somewhat far-fetched. The fact that papal ambassadors praised the pope and his church is natural, but it does not mean anything. They just had no right to say anything else. The Mongols and Russians knew this and did not attach importance to attempts to preach. After all, the Mongols themselves, guided by the diplomatic etiquette of that time, offered the pope to submit to the Eternal God and his son, Genghis [30]. This text should not be taken literally, because it was compiled in 1253, 26 years after the death of Genghis.

The real thing was that the khans Guyuk and Mongke and Prince Alexander Nevsky [31] refused to contact the West in the person of the pope, as they would have rejected the person of the German emperor if he had won. The complementarity of the Romano-German superethnos with its eastern neighbors was negative. The Mongols accepted Orthodoxy, Islam and theistic Buddhism, but not Catholicism. Their choice was prompted not by the search for benefits, but by sympathy lying in the sphere of the subconscious, i.e. in nature.

167. FACTS WITHOUT ESTIMATES

The axiological, i.e. evaluative, approach has been adopted by many historians, and for a very long time. He seduces with the ease of interpretation and selection of facts; creates the illusion of a complete understanding of very complex problems, because always in conflict situations one can sympathize with one of the parties, and to the question: "Why did you make this choice?" - to answer that this side is better, more progressive, fairer, and most importantly - I like it better. In fact, such a historian expresses himself through the material he has selected and thereby forces the reader to study not Alexander and Darius, but the view of Belokh, Droysen, Kalistov or Arrian and Nizami. But we are not interested in the authors, but in the cause-and-effect relationships of ethnic processes, and they do not have a category of value. Consequently, axiology (study of origins) does not help, but hinders understanding the essence of natural phenomena, such as ethnogenesis.

Let's go back to the XIII century. Eight million inhabitants of Eastern Europe submitted to four thousand Tatars. Princes go to the eastern Barn and stay there to return with their slanted wives, they pray for the khan in churches; smerdas (regiments) abandon their masters and join the Baskak regiments, skilled craftsmen go to Karakorum and work there for a high fee, dashing border guards together with steppe baturs gather in robber gangs and rob caravans. National enmity is being fanned with all its might by "Westerners", of whom there have always been many in Russia. But the success of their propaganda is negligible, because the war continues to go on: in the Carpathians - with the Hungarians, in Estonia - with the Germans, in Finland - with the Swedes.

This system of Russian-Tatar relations, which existed before 1312, should be called a symbiosis. And then everything changed…

The negative attitude of Russian politicians and diplomats of the XIII century to the Germans and Swedes did not mean their special love for the Mongols. They would have been happy to do without the Mongols, as well as without the Germans. Moreover, the Golden Horde was so far from the main ulus and so loosely connected with it that it was not difficult to get rid of the Tatar "yoke" after the death of Berke Khan and the strife excited by the temnik Nogai. But instead, the Russian princes continued to go to the Horde, and who to the Nogai headquarters and ask for support against each other. Alexander's children, Dmitry and Andrey, plunged the country into a brutal strife, with Dmitry keeping his Feet, and Andrey supported Tokhta, thanks to which he won the label for the grand duchy.

As long as Islam in the Golden Horde was one of the tolerant confessions, and not an indicator of belonging to a superethnos other than the steppe, in which Eastern Christians made up the majority of the population, the Russians had no reason to seek war with the Tatars, as previously with the Polovtsians. Tatar policy in Russia "was expressed in aspiration... to prevent consolidation in every possible way, to support the discord of individual political groups and principalities"[32]. That is why it corresponded to the aspirations of the disintegrating power, which had lost the passionarity of the ethnos. This process, as it was shown above, began in the XII century and ended, as we know from public history, in the XIV century, when the era of "collecting" lands came. It is quite obvious that here it was not the weak Tatar khans of the eastern Barn, but a new explosion of passionarity.

Thus, the merit of Alexander Nevsky was that with his far-sighted policy he saved the nascent Russia in the incubation phase of its second ethnogenesis, figuratively speaking, "from conception to birth." And after her birth in 1380 on the Kulikovo field of new Russia, she was no longer afraid of any enemy.

And finally, in order to put an end to the secondary, i.e. historiographical, theme, it is necessary to dispel another myth. In Mongolia, after Ogedei's death, two parties were created, extremely hostile to each other. The first was headed by the tsarevich, and since 1246 by Khan Guyuk, the second was headed by Batu and the children of Tului (Tolui), the eldest of whom - Mongke - was a friend of Batu. Mongke was supported by Nestorians, Guyuk sought an alliance with the Orthodox.

Mongolia had two strong enemies: the Caliph of Baghdad and the pope.

The strength of the Mongols was in mobility. They could win a maneuver war, but not a defensive one. Therefore, the question arose sharply: who to go to? To the pope, in alliance with the Russians and Greeks, or to the Caliph, with the support of Armenians and Persian Shiites?

Batu secured the throne of Mongke, thereby turning the forces of Mongolia to Baghdad and freeing Western Europe from the threat. He believed that friendship with Alexander Nevsky reliably protects him from an attack from the West, and he was right. Russians, therefore, have developed the course of events in favor of the "Christian world", but not because of the "heroic resistance of the Russians", which is unnecessary to the Russians[33], but because of its absence. The Abbasid dynasty perished, and if not for the intervention of the Crusaders who betrayed the Mongol-Christian army, Jerusalem would have been liberated.

The Mongols did not have enough passion for the second onslaught, which was squandered in a half-century internecine war (1259-1301). So, the Mongol campaigns of 1201-1260. there is a history of a passionate push or, more precisely, an energy explosion extinguished by entropy. Therefore, the search here for the right and the guilty or the good and the evil is meaningless, like any moral assessment of natural processes. They only make it difficult to understand the mechanisms of changes in cause-and-effect relationships in complex variants of superethnic contacts.

168. BY GRAIN

The dialectic of natural phenomena presupposes a mandatory combination of life and death. According to the law of negation of negation, death is a necessary condition for the continuation of any process of life, and when short periods of linear time were in the field of view of the observer, this thesis was not in doubt even among the ancient Greeks.

However, they treated long periods of time differently. "Only the mountains are eternal, and no one will move the Polar Star," said the hero of the ancient drama, so smart that even the Olympians considered mortal or, more precisely, originated and finite. The Romans were simpler and called their capital the "Eternal City", and their cultural heirs, the Europeans, believe linear progress is eternal and are very angry with those philosophers of history who talk about the decline of civilizations. The layman, even within the walls of academies, is ready to admit that someone will disappear, but not he and his institute.

Nevertheless, dialectics is right. For the continuation of any process, including ethnogenesis, breaks and perestroika are the same element of development as periods of smooth accumulation of values. Since ethnoses are taxonomically located between biological categories - species and organisms, the period of their existence cannot be determined visually - it is too long, but on the scale of cultural studies it is very short. The question arises: what is a finite and mortal subject if the pyramids and the Acropolis survived the Egyptians and Greeks, and people multiply and humanity is constantly being renewed? The answer is simple: an ethnos system that disappears due to entropy. And its elements - people - are sometimes rebuilt into new systems, and sometimes they become stiff in the state of relics.

To define and describe the initial and final phases of ethnogenesis, we need a wide coverage of "time years", long intervals of linear time for our eyes, which otherwise merges into solid lines, of course. How difficult it can be to determine the "beginning" of an ethnic group, and its "end". With an accuracy of one year, this is generally impossible; with an accuracy of one lifetime, too; but with an accuracy of one and a half or two centuries, it is possible, and this is enough.

As mentioned above, Byzantium and the Slavic world were the same age. Hence, their aging went synchronously. In the XIII century . Byzantium got rid of the French and Venetians by a grandiose effort, extending its existence until 1453 as a persistent, and then the remainder of the Byzantines - a relic - dragged out existence in Muslim Istanbul until it was cut out in 1827 by order of the sultan in revenge for the uprising in Morea. This is how the ethnosocial system ended, although the descendants of the surviving "Romeans" are still found in Southern Russia.

The Russians were threatened with a worse fate: they mixed with the Meri, Mordvins, Murom, Yahwyags and Cumans, so that they were expected to turn into an ethnic chimera, and then annihilation. But at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries, a powerful negentropic impulse, or a passionate push, was noticeable, and then became obvious (of course, for historians, and not for contemporaries - because of the aberration of proximity).

The axis of this shock passed from Pskov to Broussa and further south, to the Abyssinian Highlands, where the ancient Aksum has already turned to dust. Unfortunately for the Greeks, the axis of the shock passed east of Constantinople; In Asia Minor, the population, fascinated by the mystical teachings of Jalal ad-Di-na Rumi (died in 1273), departed from Orthodoxy, so that his fervor and passion went to the defense of Islam. There is no need to be surprised: passionarity determines strength, and dominant (mentality) determines its direction. But our ancestors were lucky: passionarity, as a catalyst, soldered a loose mass into a monolith - Russia.

The ancient ethnos can and should be called the one that escapes renewal, no matter how it goes, whether it is a passionate push, or the import of passionarity from neighbors, or mestization, in which once living traditions are inevitably lost. Thus, the axis of the IX century passion push passed Britain, but the Normans and the French brought passion genes there in the XI-XII centuries, and a mixed ethnic group under the rule of the Plantagenets was able to carry out a difficult Hundred Years' War, covering itself with glory.

Great Russia was renewed at the expense of Christian Mongols and baptized Lithuanians, Little Russia - at the expense of the Polovtsians, but the Belarusians remained a "pure" Old Russian tribe. They were not affected by the Horde of chambuls (raiding detachments), nor by the small Lithuanians who presented the descendants of their knights to Moscow and Warsaw, nor by the German knights who were repulsed at Grunwald in 1410. Belarus lived, as an old Russian reserve, to its memorial phase, and as such it was described by an educated Belarusian writer of the XX century. You can trust him, although he speaks on behalf of the character:

"And yet we are a restless people... This shameful trade of the motherland for seven centuries! At first they were sold to Lithuania, then, as soon as the people managed to assimilate it, to the Poles, to everyone who is not lazy... Poor Belarus! Kind, complaisant, condescending, romantic people in the hands of such filth (their gentry. - L. G.) ... will give their best sons, the best poets to strangers, call their children, their prophets strangers, as if they are very rich. He gives his heroes to prey, and he sits in a cage over a bowl of bulba and rutabaga and blinks his eyes"[34]. The author feels sorry for his people. And for good reason!

In Eastern Europe, a passionate push raised two ethnic groups to historical life: Lithuanians and Great Russians. At the start, they were in different positions. The ancient Balts were in a state of homeostasis. They, like the North American Indians, courageously defended themselves against the colonizers, often defeated the knights, but they could not defeat the organized ethnosocial system. The fate of the Prussians and the Polabian Slavs awaited them, if people capable of overstrain, such as Gedimin, Keistut, Vitovt, Olgerd, had not appeared in their midst. The first of the people of this new warehouse was Mindovg, the same age as Alexander Nevsky. Both were born in 1220, and if we assume that the reason for the push worked at that time, then it took more than 100 years to become a factor in ethnic history. For Lithuania, it was so.

Russia did not start from scratch, but from the negative values of a degenerate civilization. Therefore, it lagged behind Lithuania, however, by one generation, but it turned out to be enough for Gediminas, Olgerd and Vitovt to become masters of the entire former Kievan Rus, with the exception of Galicia, which was taken over by the Poles. If the Lithuanians managed to merge with the conquered majority of the cultural population of their state, they would become a great power. But this was prevented by a sweet temptation - Catholic Poland, which has already absorbed a fair share of European civilization. "There is no queen in the world more beautiful than a Polish maiden," Adam Mickiewicz wrote. Lithuanian knights could not resist the charm of a developed culture that had already reached the Renaissance, and half of Lithuania was drawn into the Western European superethnos.

And Russia was isolated. It inherited the culture from Byzantium, but it did not merge into a single superethnos with it. The Eurasian small ethnic groups were close to the Russians. Landscape, methods of management, demonology (for few people understood the subtleties of Christian dogmatics) related the population of a single forest-steppe region. But the victory of the neighboring Muslim superethnos, which took possession in 1312. The Volga region and the Black Sea region, caused a centuries-old war, which many historians have tried to extrapolate into the past.

Great Russia, in order not to perish, was forced to become a military camp, and the former symbiosis with the Tatars turned into a military alliance with the Horde, which lasted for more than half a century - from Uzbek to Mamai. During this period, the Great Russian ethnos was going through an incubation phase. He lost even the general name for a while. Then and for a long time afterwards we talked: "Muscovites, Tverites, Ryazan, Smolyans, Novgorodians", and only in 1380 Russians went to Kulikovo field. And although Moscow, having annexed the Grand Duchy of Vladimir to its possessions in 1362, became the recognized capital of Russia, in order for the population to feel like an ethnos, it took a feat that became the moment of birth of both the state, and the nationality, and culture, and the military spirit, which allowed the descendants of the knights of the XIV century to live and win, focusing on themselves. The Russian people had enough strength, because it was new strength, a new reserve of energy.

And it is curious that a similar rise is observed in Turkey, with the exception of the eastern part of Asia Minor, which was outside the band of the passion push. The Turkmens of Karaman, Diar-Bekr and Azerbaijan were not inferior to the Ottoman Turks in bravery, horsemanship, or loyalty to the sheikhs, but they fell victim to the Ottomans, who in the XIV-XV centuries were capable of more.

The same fate befell the Golden Horde, which included the ancient ethnic groups of the Middle Volga region and "inclusions" into their environment from Mongolia and Dzungaria. They were not affected by the passion thrust, as they were located east of its range. Therefore, they did not merge into a single ethnic group, despite the social and linguistic closeness and even the unity of the culture they perceived from Muslim countries, with which they were connected by international trade.

The Golden Horde was a chimera, while the White Horde became the core of the formation of a new independent ethnic group - the Kazakhs.

Did the Russian princes of the XIV century understand this? Perhaps because they demanded and received military assistance against the West for the tribute they paid and had a strong barrier that protected them from the impending attacks from the East. It was worth paying for it, and, curiously, after the death of the "good tsar Janibek", when the "great jam" began in the Horde - a series of murders of khans and a massacre between their nuhurs, the Russian princes continued to travel to the Horde with tribute, maintaining the established order that suited them. But this "order" was unstable. The social structure without an ethnic basis was split into separate ethnic groups, the superethnic name of which was "Tatars". Kazan Tatars - descendants of Bulgarians, Astrakhan Tatars - descendants of Khazars, Nogai Tatars - descendants of Guzs, Crimean Tatars - a mixed ethnos from many peoples, Siberian Tatars - a fragment of the Blue Horde, Lithuanian Tatars recruited by Vytautas, and some relics: Kumyks, Akkerman, Ochakov, etc. In Great Russia, the Tatars easily assimilated - mutual compliment was positive - and helped the Moscow princes in their centuries-old war with Lithuania, and the khan of the Crimean Tatars became a vassal of the Turkish sultan. Turkey was in the same phase of recovery as Great Russia and Lithuania.

And after all, what is important and especially interesting: the passionate push of the XIII-XIV centuries passed between Vilna and Smolensk, through Minsk and Kiev, and Tver and Moscow were on the eastern periphery of its area. So why did they manifest themselves as the regions most capable of development, and the indigenous lands of Ancient Russia, not affected by Batu's campaign, fell victim first to Lithuanian, then Polish aggression? Let's try to figure it out.

XIII century - incubation phase. Therefore, the history of the XII century does not make it possible to highlight the moments of the future take-off. They were simply not recorded by contemporaries who wrote chronicles. Russian Orthodoxy successfully competed with Lithuanian paganism, but already at the beginning of the XIV century. The state of Gediminas was called Lithuanian-Russian, and Russian Orthodoxy successfully competed with Lithuanian paganism. The profession of a particular religion is like a litmus test for describing the processes of ethnogenesis.

And yet at the end of the XIV century . Pagan Lithuania with King Jagiello joined the West, and the opposition, led by Princes Vitovt and Svidrigailo, was defeated. The borders of the western superethnos have advanced to Polotsk and Smolensk, and political domination - to Vyazma and Kursk. Russian population's extremely weak resistance to White, Black and Scarlet Russia [35] is indisputable, but why 80 years after Batu's campaign, which by the way did not affect Western Russia, in 1321 Prince Gediminas defeated the Russian princes at the Irpen River and took Kiev, and in 1339 The Polish King Casimir occupied Galicia without firing a single arrow? Where has the ancient Russian valor gone and where is the new passionarity?

Overcoming the inertia of an ancient, albeit weakened, system is always difficult. Therefore, new ethnic groups arise on the borders of ethnic areas, where the original substrates are labile and unstable. So, the passionaries had to look for the use of their forces on the borders of their homeland. Some of them went to serve in polyethnic Great Russia, preserving their faith and culture, others - to Poland, having lost their religion, but leaving their native land to their descendants, and others - to the southern border, devastated by disorderly clashes between groups of steppe Turks and Russian vigilantes left without princes. And there, mixed with the baptized Polovtsians, they created a new ethnic group - the Little Russians (the old name that has been preserved), or the Cossacks (the Turkic name of people without superiors), or the Ukrainians (the Poles called them that).

This ethnic group showed incredible heroism, because it returned the abandoned land - brought it out of desolation, preserved its cultural dominance and obtained political freedom with a saber. Even after joining the Moscow state, Ukrainians found an ecological niche in it, taking positions from officials and officers to the chancellor (Bezborodko) and the husband of the tsarina (Razumovsky), since the community inherited from Ancient Russia - book culture and Byzantine Orthodoxy - did not prevent northern and southern Russians from living in symbiosis, and Tatar the admixture, equal in both, only complicated the behavioral stereotype of the new Russia, which was good for her.

So, in the change of superethnoses, there is not continuity, but, in the language of mathematics, "attitude". The Russians as an ethnos treated the ancient Rusichs as the French treated the Gauls or the Italians of the Renaissance treated the Romans of the time of Caligula, and "desolation" and "yoke" are the "watershed" between the two ethnogenies. Let's conclude: Russians are not a backward, but a young ethnic group relative to Western Europe.

NOTES:

[1] This refers to the Old Russian ethnic integrity.

[2] According to Mongolian law, the youngest son was considered the owner of his father's ulus, although he had to obey his elder brother in political affairs. It was assumed that the older brother would have time to acquire property, and the younger one should be provided for.

[3] White Russia is the territory of the Polotsk and Turov-Pinsk principalities; Black Russia, i.e. conquered by neighbors, is the neighborhood of Grodno.

[4] See: Tizengauzen V.G. Collection of materials related to the history of the Split Horde (hereinafter: Tizengauzen).T. 1. 1884, Vol. II. 1941.

[5] See: Tiesenhausen. Vol.II .P.33.

[6] See: Gumilev L.N. The Search for a fictional kingdom.Pp.313- 314.

[7] Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. Vol. 24. pp. 633-635.

[8] Cit.by: Tizengausen. T.I. S.325.

[9] Ibid., p. 231.

[10] See: Anninsky S.L. Decree. op.p.87.

[11] See: Poluboyarinova M.D. Russians in the Golden Horde. M. , 1978.

[12] See: Gumilev L.N.. Decree.soc.pp.398- 399.

[13] See: Pashuto V.T. Essays... pp.296- 297.

[14] See: Nasonov L.I. Mongols and Rus.Pp.69-75.

[15] In fact, Sufism was not at all like militant Islam - Sunnism, but Sufis called themselves Muslims and were tolerated in the countries of Islam.

[16] Tiesenhausen. T.I. S. 197, 385, 510; T. II. S. 100, 104.

[17] See: Gumilev L.N. Decree.soc.S.401- 402.

[18] See: Baskakov N.L. Russian surnames of Turkic origin. M.,

[19] See: Kucheev L.M. Traces of the Turkic element in odnodvorets (according to the language and personal onomastics, (naming) of the population Usmansky district of the Lipetsk region)//Reports of the department and the Commission of the Geographical Society of the USSR. No. 15. L., 1970. pp.127-134.

[20] Lithuania is one of the tribes of the Baltic group, spread from the Baltic Sea to the left bank of the Dnieper. The Balts mastered this region immediately after the melting of the glacier and, therefore, are the oldest of the aborigines of Eastern Europe. For a long time they were in homeostasis and retained the ethnic features characteristic of their ancestors.

[21] Great Russia was previously called the Zalessky Ukraine and was located in the Volga-Oka interfluve. The population is a mixture of Meri and Krivichi with the inclusion of Vyatichi and Murom, and since the XIII century - Turkic elements. Small, i.e. indigenous, Russia lay on the right bank of the Dnieper; Slavic and Turkic (Polovtsy and Torki) substrates predominated here.

[22] See: Pashuto V.T. Decree.soc. p. 248.

[23] Ibid. p. 249.

[24] Ibid. p. 239.

[25] Ibid. p. 239-242.

[26] Ibid. p. 275.

[27] Vernadsky G.V. Two exploits of Alexander Nevsky//The Eurasian Time Book. Vol. IV. Berlin, 1925. pp. 227 and 335. Cit. by: Pashuto V.T. Decree. op. p. 276.

[28] See: Pashuto V. T. Decree. op. p. 277.

[29] Ramm B.Ya. Panstvo and Rus. M., L., 1959. p.151.

[30] See: Travels to Eastern countries...pp. 171-173.

[31] The Life of Alexander Nevsky (see: Begunov Yu. K. Monument of Russian Literature, v. S. 175-176).

[32] Nasonov A.N. Mongols and Rus.P.5.

[33] Ibid., chapter 1.

[34] Korotkevich Vl. The wild hunt of King Stakh. Minsk. 1984. pp. 412-413.

[35] Scarlet Russia - Galicia.

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