26. Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe, Gumilev

XXV. The Transformation of Russia into Russia, 169. LOCAL ETHNOGENESIS AND THE ECUMENE, disorganization, of the Christian Church of the XIII-XIV centuries.

I THANK YOU FOR “HANGING IN THERE”. I acknowledge this is a very long book. We started uploading on Aug 11, and I hope to be finished this month. Here I put three shorter sections together, but we are still only at 83%. I was ready to upload this in the autumn of 2023. But I was then uploading “From RUS to Russia”, and there was too much overlap of similar material. So I waited one year. This is the third time I have read this book. That is because, when I upload anything, I read it carefully as the last edit. (And I do find typos.) I still find this one interesting. But YES, I ALSO WISH TO MOVE ON, at least to relax a little bit. Let’s finish with it. Thanks.

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The whole world in the XIII century was shaken by truly grandiose events, but natural phenomena, in particular ethnogenesis, went according to programmed patterns. So during stormy events - wars, revolutions, changes of style (in literature, art, morals) and worldview (reformation) - an old man sits on the threshold of his house, listens to the news and, groaning, retires to his bed, where he will breathe his last. Ethnic groups age like people, and also weaken. Only their life cycle is much longer.

Byzantium, already in the "second wind", expelled the Latins from Constantinople in 1261, but its further vegetating was a vivid picture of the phase of obscuration, which lasted until 1453. Russia was at the same age. She was constantly losing the remnants of communal and tribal life, on which the strength of the Slavic tribes was once based. The sense of the integrity of the ethnic system disappeared along with the fragmentation of the principalities, which turned from estates into fiefdoms. Princes from sovereigns became large landowners. It came to the point that the great-grandson of Vsevolod III gave Yaroslavl to a Smolensk prince as a dowry for his daughter - an example unprecedented before. The value of the capital - first Kiev, then Vladimir - is falling. The capital passes from hand to hand of rival princes who solve problems not by law, but by the sword. The ability to resist foreigners is weakening, eaten up by the unrestrained egoism characteristic of subpassionaries, such as princes, boyars and smerds have become. The passionaries had only one place to use their powers – in the monastery. But in the monasteries they launched such activities that determined the cultural and political development of Russia for more than 200 years. Russian Russian Orthodox Church as a public institution has become an expression of the hopes and aspirations of all Russian people, regardless of their sympathies for individual princes, not Moscow, not Tver, not Novgorod, but the Russian Orthodox Church as a public institution.

170. CONFESSIONS AND ETHNOGENESIS

Let's agree on the terms.

Speaking about the role of the church in ethnic history, it is necessary to note its three hypostases: (underlying reality), religious, social and mental. In the aspect of religion, the church is the guardian of dogmas, the place of theological debate and the bearer of tradition. This specific area is the property of very few thinkers, erudite philosophers and people obsessed with the thirst for truth. There are always just a few of them, and their role in history is unstable: during periods of high passionarity, they find themselves students and rivals, in the inertial phase they are alone, and with obscuration their death becomes extremely likely.

In the social aspect, prelates (clergymen), and heresiarchs take the place of dreamers. They lead the communities of the already converted, monitor the order of worship and establish relations with secular rulers, sometimes appropriating their prerogatives. Thus, the Roman bishop - pope and the vicar of the prophet - Caliph became secular sovereigns; secular rulers were called differently: king or sultan. Possessing actual power and strength, secular sovereigns considered prelates. Thus, the medieval church occupied a certain place in the feudal hierarchy, which allowed it to attract thinkers and dreamers, whose authority was such that even kings had to reckon with it, forced to give money to schools and universities, and not only to cathedrals, mosques and pagodas. The social hypostasis ensured the stability of religious consciousness, preserving the Teaching in books and paintings, or, more precisely, in libraries and museums, without which culture would be short-lived.

In the emotional aspect, each religion is a form of a certain attitude. After all, in addition to the mind and body, there is a feeling, the very one that creates the positive or negative compliment. The overwhelming majority of sincere believers do not know how to understand dogmatic disputes and guide the policy of their community. They simply feel the phenomenon of the worldview of a particular religion and choose the version of it that meets their psychological mood. They cannot be persuaded by logical arguments that they do not understand; they ignore the order of their superiors, without entering into arguments, but remaining at their own, that is, despite the fact that it seems to them true without proof. Confession is a mode of attraction, an unconscious attraction to objects of adoration. And since one or another mentality is always brought up from childhood, then all ethnic groups have it, which is recorded by ethnographers.

Therefore, the most common religions - Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Tengrianism, or the worship of Heaven, Mithraism - are inevitably variable. Christianity in the X-XIII centuries was divided into Roman and Greek confessions and ceased to represent unity, although it is unlikely that the problem of filioque (the father and the son), was known to the Provencal barons or the Asia Minor Acrites. After all, neither of them knew Latin. Their irreconcilability lay not in the sphere of theology, but in ethnopsychology. This is the only reason why so-called religious wars take on such a tragic scale, and therefore there is no need to look for motives of monetary gain or political calculations to explain them, although both are important for conflicts of a different type. The "faithful sons of the Catholic Church" are opposed by "schismatics" - Orthodox and "pagans" - Tatars and Lithuanians [1]. In Galicia, Papism won. In 1323, the last schismatic princes died: in Galich - Andrew, in Volhynia - Leo.

It was shown above that the systems functioning in history necessarily have one or another social structure. Most often these are states, but in the pre-class era, structures are clothed in the forms of tribal unions, for example, Kazakh juss, and in the feudal era, merchant unions arise - Rakhdonites, Hanseats - or even spiritual extraterritorial polyethnic integrity.

For example, Christian churches: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Nestorian, Monophysite; and in Islam - Sunni, several Shiite, Kharijites, Karmats, Ismailis and many small and short-lived confessional communities. Buddhism is also heterogeneous, and there are more internal differences there than in Christianity, Islam and even in so-called paganism [2].

It is through such structures that the interaction between the social and natural forms of the movement of matter is carried out, and therefore they are by no means indifferent to our topic.

Having noticed this, we will focus on the organization, or rather disorganization, of the Christian Church of the XIII-XIV centuries, since ignoring it, it is impossible to understand the collision of changing levels of passion tension on the territory of the Eurasian continent, despite the fact that the formation was feudal everywhere, and only the ages of ethnosystems differed.

The first universal structure of the Christian Church was formed, or rather, it was established in 325 in Nicaea. Then the Emperor Constantine, who had not yet been baptized, was admitted to the meetings of the council. In order for the church canon to be observed, the emperor was granted the rank of deacon, because lay people were not allowed to attend the council. Thus the union of the throne and the altar was established: the spiritual power concluded an agreement with the secular.

The need for this structure was obvious. Heresies and schisms shook Byzantium (the Eastern Roman Empire), although they were very weakly felt in Hesperia (the Western Roman Empire), and even then, only when the natives of Syria and Egypt moved to Rome or Carthage, and the East Germans - Goths, Vandals, Burgundians - moved to Gaul and Spain. It is impossible not to see the connection between the passionate impulse of the first century and the intellectual seething on its axis.

The resulting structure was called Caesarean Papism, but it was she who provided Byzantium with stability, thanks to which Christianity of the eastern model spread from Ireland to China, where it did not hold, and to Uyguria and Mongolia. But with the spread in space, the structure of the church organization has changed. The relations of spiritual and secular power changed, because in most cases the rulers were not Christians, and Christians became heretics: Nestorians and Monophysites.

The Nestorian patriarch lived in Baghdad, the Monophysite patriarch in Alexandria, the Armenian Catholicos in Echmiadzin: all these were Muslim lands. Naturally, the patriarchs did not receive any help from the caliphs, except for tolerance. Hence, one should have hoped only for his flock and, consequently, to reckon with it. This is how the democratic version of Christianity developed, which was formulated by a Moscow boyar in the XVII century.: "God is higher than the tsar!" And Alexey Mikhailovich, himself a Russian man, agreed with him.

The opposite situation developed in the West, where the pope considered himself entitled to give and take away thrones, to resolve crimes against the law and throw nations into crusades. The structure of the Western church was based on the monarchical principle. For the wars with the Gentiles, for the desire for expansion, characteristic of the akmatic phase, it was very convenient, but it was difficult for the peoples of Europe. Rome demanded money from the flock, and the British, Germans and French did not like to pay. Then began the long war of the emperors with the popes, the Ghibellines with the Guelphs, the parliament with the King of England and the struggle for the Gallican Church. The Popes defeated the Hohenstaufen, but became "Avignon prisoners" of the French kings. This turmoil saved Moscow from the fate of Jerusalem (1099), Constantinople (1204) and Kiev (1340). Moscow did not remain in debt to history: on the Moscow land, Russia became Russia.

If we focus exclusively on social structures as directions of political dominants, then it would be logical to assume that Ancient Russia was a natural ally of the Ghibellines, but this was not the case. The Teutonic Order enjoyed the support of Frederick II, who approved of his massacres of Lithuanians and Western Slavs, and the Ghibelline Aragon fought with Muslims and Greeks (the "Great Catalan Company"). Social contradictions were important within their superethnos, and Lithuania and Russia were beyond its borders and were considered as an object of expansion. Therefore, they had to take care of themselves.

171. AND WHY MOSCOW?

According to the estimates of historians of the XIX century, in Great Russia around 1300, ✓Tver was the strongest principality, ✓Ryazan was the most militant, ✓Rostov-Suzdal was the most cultured, and the ✓Novgorod Republic was the richest. By the end of the century, the situation had changed radically - Moscow became the main city of Great Russia, which annexed the capital city of Vladimir to its possessions in 1364.

Extensive literature is devoted to the reasons for the rapid rise of Moscow, which it is advisable to reduce to several versions by analyzing each of them:

1 . "Geographical" version. Moscow was practically in the center of the Russian land, and a trade route passed through it, and since the land near Moscow was scarce, "iron characters, practical people" were developed here [3], the Moscow princes were the same.

I disagree! Moscow lay on the border of the Vladimir and Ryazan principalities, constantly at war with each other. The trade route along the Volga is more convenient than along the Moscow River, as a result of which the Volga cities were much richer than Moscow. Apparently, happiness is not in money. The "poverty" of the nature of the Moscow region is the result of the activities of Muscovites who have been reducing the forest for 500 years in order to build and renovate the city. In the XIV century the nature there was no less charming than on the Valdai and in the Volga region. And finally, if the population of the Moscow Principality consisted of clerks, speculators and "hoarders"[4], then how was the Battle of Kulikovo won?!

But not only that, modern geography, unlike the old one, takes into account the age-old fluctuations in the moisture content of natural areas. The natural hygrometer in Eastern Europe is the Caspian Sea, 4/5 fed by the water of the Volga. Consequently, the transgression of the Caspian Sea indicates an increase in moisture in the Volga basin, in particular in the Volga-Oka interfluve. At the beginning of the XIV century. the level of the Caspian Sea reached an absolute level of minus 19 m, the highest in the historical period [5]. This means that rains fell very often around Moscow, shallow, nasty, swampy lowlands, i.e. the places most suitable for farming, in winter there were frequent snowfalls and thaws, and in spring high floods are common, during which the banks are eroded. Thunderstorms, heavy rains and other manifestations of strong cyclonic activity are recorded in the sources. And it lasted until the end of the XV century, after which the cyclone trough moved to the north, the White Sea melted, and the level of the Caspian Sea dropped to minus 23.83 m[6]. (almost 5 meters down), So, in the decisive XIV century for Moscow, the geographical conditions there were extremely unfavorable; therefore, it is obviously wrong to look for the reason for the rise of Moscow and its economy in the climate.

2. Social version. The final decline of ancestral life... The right to the great reign is given by the grace of the Sarai Khan... Vladimir lost the importance of a capital city, and Tver, Kostroma and Moscow competed for it. Allegedly, there was no strife in Moscow, because the princely family was small and direct succession to the throne was established, which is why the clergy and boyars preferred to serve the Moscow princes as stronger.

Historians of the last century came to a general conclusion about the displacement of ancestral relations first by patrimonial, and then by state ones. S.M. Solovyov, followed by V.O. Klyuchevsky and S.F. Platonov believed that "a historian has no right to interrupt the natural thread of events from the half of the XIII century... insert the Tatar period and bring it to the fore... Tatar relations, as a result of which the main phenomena must be closed" [7] and their causes.

The opinion of the townsfolk and amateurs is diametrically opposed: the Tatars stopped the progressive development of Russia; if only the cultural West... etc. And the fact that Galicia and Belarus submitted to this very West, that Novgorod became an incomplete member of the Hansa and that the Lithuanians reached Mozhaysk, Vyazma and Kursk, without making their inhabitants happy with the introduction to high culture, generally ignored. After all, it is absurd, but it is necessary to argue, because the task of Science is to fight ignorance.

The weakness of the position of scientists in comparison with the philistine dilettante was in their perfect knowledge of the sources of the XIII-XVI centuries. And the chroniclers did not know the words "energy", "entropy", "adaptation in the landscape" and "systematic approach". Therefore, scientists described "what happened", but did not answer the questions "why?" and "what's what?". In the XX century. this problem is solvable.

It can be solved by the dialectical method with the law of negation of negation, a systematic approach and the doctrine of the biosphere. In practice, they are often ignored, although not disputed. According to the law of negation of negation, life and death, and in history - ups and downs, must alternate; therefore, the concept of progressive movement, or progress, is not applicable to such natural phenomena as egnogenesis. It is not that there has been no progress at all, but it takes place only in the social form of the movement of matter and in technology, which determines the development of productive forces. Both are outside of natural influences and biospheric system integrity [8]. These latter arise as a result of micromutations and are inevitably destroyed by entropy. So Ancient Rus, captured by Lithuania, disappeared, and in place of the "Zalessky Ukraine" in the XIV century. Russia arose.

3. Political version. It is known that Moscow was an opponent of Tver, Ryazan, Suzdal (with Nizhny Novgorod) and the whole of Southwestern Russia, i.e. the ancient Russian land, which preferred to submit to Lithuania and Poland. The Novgorod Republic generally separated from Russia. However, the Moscow princes defeated everyone and united the Russian land. Where they got such a rush from is beyond explanation. Maybe it was an accident [9]?

Is that so? But in any case, this is a statement of fact, not an explanation of it. Something is missing here. Maybe the princes - "collectors" of the Russian land possessed administrative talents that allowed them to defeat and conquer all other principalities, even stronger and richer?

A very conscientious and knowledgeable historian V. Sergeevich spoke about this. According to him, the founder of Moscow power Ivan Danilovich Kalita was "deprived of the qualities of a sovereign and a politician." His predecessor Yuri Danilovich showed himself only in intrigues and denunciations of Mikhail Tversky, executed thanks to the efforts of Yuri in 1318 in the Horde. Simeon Ivanovich, with his firmness and integrity, earned the nickname Proud, without committing any military exploits, and his brother Ivan Krasny was distinguished only by his comeliness. Political success was achieved only under Dmitry Ivanovich in 1362-1364, when the Vladimir Principality became the patrimony of the Moscow princes and Rostov, Galich and the Starodub Principality were subordinated. But Dmitry was 9-11 years old in those years, so obviously it's not about him.

But if so, then it would be possible to attribute the success of Moscow, and hence the unification of Russia, to a happy occasion [10]. M.N. Pokrovsky quite rightly equates this decision with issuing himself (i.e., the researcher) a "certificate of poverty"[11].

172. Is IT IN MOSCOW?

These versions, or rather groups of versions, testify to the predilection of scientists of the XIX century for determinism, whether it is geographical, social or personal. This cannot be blamed on them, since probability theory has not yet penetrated into the humanities. If we apply the doctrine of ethnogenesis, then the very formulation of the problem will change and the solution will become achievable.

In the area of the passionate push, people appeared super-energetic, sacrificial, initiative. Lithuanian passionaries found their use in the war with the Livonian order. The dominant was understandable and close to their weakly passive tribesmen, who were ready to support their leaders. Therefore, Gedimin, Keistut and Algirdas did not struggle with the inertia of homeostasis, but used natural militancy to expand the state. The unification of Lithuania with White Russia complicated the ethnic system, and the spread of the culture of Orthodoxy cemented it.

It was worse in Great Russia. The dilapidated traditions inherited from Ancient Russia satisfied the majority of the population, from princes and boyars to smerds. Passionate people were not needed: they interfered with everyone. Therefore, they could find use for their talents only in the system of the Orthodox Church.

In the second half of the 13th century, the numerical ratio of the Christian and pagan population steadily changed in favor of Orthodoxy. There were several reasons for this. Thus, the Mongols willingly accepted Russians into their service and equipped them with a corps that fought in the Song Empire. Pagan passionaries went to them, for whom it was impossible to make a career with Orthodox princes[12]. And vice versa, Orthodox passionaries stayed at home, defending "Holy Russia". For 100 years, such a process has borne fruit. The Russian land became Christian with elements of dual faith that had no socio-political significance. Even such a citadel of Ugro-Finnish paganism as Rostov, where Bishop Leonty was killed by a mob in 1071 [13], turned into a center of Christian education in the north-east of Russia.

Of considerable importance were the peripheral position of Rostov and the mixing of Slavs with Meri in it. As has been noted more than once, the diversity of landscapes and ethnic groups in one region contributes to the intensity of ethnogenic processes, the formation of a new system at the junction of several old ones. In addition, Rostov has never suffered from the Tatars. Gradually, they became the mainstay of the Horde trade and the influence of the Tatars in the Upper Volga region. It was in Rostov that the disgraced nephew of Khan Berke, who was baptized and took the name Peter, found shelter; in the XIV century, noble Tatars who died in Russia were buried here[14].

The appearance of Tatar wives in princely chambers in the second half of the XIII century had important consequences, but not noted by anyone. According to the Christian canon, all brides had to be baptized, and before that they were taught the principles of Christian teaching. Not knowing the Russian language, they studied with their Nestorian priests, with whom the Jacobites [15] (Monophysites) united in 1142. The bearers of both confessions did not pay attention to the dogmatic differences, but they all hated the Greek church, which had expelled their ancestors from their homeland. However, it was clearly impractical to transfer these theological subtleties to the students. Therefore, together with the Tatar wives, not Nestorianism came to Russia, but a new worldview, rooted due to a combination of circumstances: the decline of Byzantium and the disintegration of Russia into sovereign principalities.

The first Russian hierarchs adopted the Byzantine "Caesarean papism". Metropolitan Hilarion was a member of Yaroslav, the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk, Lavra Theodosius was an ardent supporter of Izyaslav, and his contemporary Anthony was Svyatoslav [16]. Monks and princes in a country steeped in pagan cults clung to each other. But when by the XIV century the majority of the population became Orthodox, a new situation developed, far from the Greek prototypes.

173. THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY

In 1299, the "thunderstorm" era in the Black Sea region ended. The rebel Nogai, the "enemy of the Greeks" and a secret Muslim, lost his head along with the ulus. The winner, the legitimate Khan Tokhta, was tolerant and benevolent. The countries under his control enjoyed peace. In Russia, after the death of Grand Duke Andrei Alexandrovich, the label for the Grand duchy was awarded in 1304 to Prince Mikhail Yaroslavich of Tver, a truthful and noble man. Tokhta appreciated these qualities.

Finishing off the last supporters of Nogai on the banks of the Dniester and Bug was delayed because they were descendants of the Polovtsians - they were at home and defended their country. During these troubled years, Metropolitan Maxim, "impatient of Tatar violence," left Kiev and in 1300 moved the metropolis with all the clergy to Vladimir. The metropolitan vicar remained in Kiev, and perhaps this year should be considered the "end" of Kievan Rus, although its agony dragged on for another half century.

The transfer of the metropolitanate to Vladimir was a kind of demonstration of the loyalty of the Russian Church to the Golden Horde Khan because Metropolitan Maxim supported Mikhail Tversky, who had an active rival - Yuri Danilovich of Moscow. The Khan's label and the blessing of the lord decided the dispute in favor of Tver. The next day, in 1305, Maxim died, and the question of his successor acquired unprecedented acuteness.

The union of the "throne and altar" (the Greek model) seemed so tempting to Prince Mikhail that he nominated his confidant, Hegumen Gerontius, as a candidate for metropolitan. In response, Prince Yuri Lvovich of Volhynia sent the abbot of the Ratsky monastery Peter to Constantinople in order to somehow compensate for the loss of the Galician Principality of ecclesiastical power. Patriarch Athanasius and Caesar Andronikos, who did not want a split in the Russian Church, made Peter metropolitan. If not for this decision, the Prince of Volhynia, married to a Polish woman, could easily have sided with the pope and torn Galicia and Volhynia from Orthodoxy. But Grand Duke Mikhail thought least of all about the distant Carpathians, because the Russian land had ceased to be a whole at all.

Metropolitan Peter was modest in everyday life, very conscientious in carrying out duties and principled in matters of faith, his sermons were intelligible. He was not power-hungry, greed and sensuality were also not peculiar to him (his favorite occupation was painting - in his spare time he painted icons).

Therefore, it is clear that he did not justify the hopes of the politicians who wanted to use him. Mikhail Tverskoy, Yuri Volynsky, and even Patriarch Athanasius, who found the Russian metropolitan too independent, were dissatisfied with him. And if so, then denunciations of Peter were given a course.

The denunciations were the most common: a penniless and ascetic was accused of the sin of simony, trading in church posts. It must be assumed that the informers themselves, if they had the opportunity, would have tried to enrich themselves, and that there are people of a different mental attitude, they simply had no idea. The success of the intrigue seemed to them certain.

And then something unexpected happened: the people intervened in the matter, demanding that a council be convened to examine the charges brought against the metropolitan. The Grand Duke was forced to agree with public opinion, although he himself was hostile to the metropolitan. But the people were not the same as before. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the baptized Tatars, as well as their comrades in children's games, hunting and field work, have adopted the Asian mentality - a way of perceiving and evaluating their ideology. Religion concerned them as well as the bishops, because it was a matter of their conscience, whose voice is louder the higher the passionarity of the ethnic system. Here, by the behavior of the Russian people of the Vladimir Principality in 1311, one can see the difference with what was a stereotype 100 years before.

A cathedral was opened in Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, where Bishop Andrei of Tver and Bishop Simeon of Rostov made accusations against Metropolitan Peter. Contrary to the canon, hegumens, monks, priests and even secular persons came to the cathedral. The latter showed the greatest activity. The wrangling was stormy and ended with Peter's complete acquittal. The accusers lost their pulpits [17], and the Grand Duke lost his authority. This turned out to be fatal for him, because a year later, in 1312, his patron Khan Tokhta died, and Tsarevich Uzbek, a fanatical Muslim, seized the throne of the Horde. Mikhail Yaroslavich found himself in disgrace, and his rival, Yuri Danilovich Moskovsky, who married the Uzbek's sister, Konchak (baptised Agafya), became a close friend of the khan.

It was this marriage alliance that ensured Moscow's victory over the stronger Tver. In one of the battles in which Mikhail defeated Yuri, Konchaka - Agafya was captured by the Tverites and died for an unknown reason. Of course, a rumor was immediately started about the poisoning of the khan's sister, which hardly corresponded to reality, and was disastrous for the Tver prince, and as it turned out later, for the entire Tver Principality.

Let's digress for a moment and ask the question: can the accidental death of one woman change the course of historical events? It is impossible to answer this question, because it is posed incorrectly. Any event, i.e. the rupture of one of the system connections, can either go unnoticed if the system has sufficient inertia of self-development, or affect the nature of cause-and-effect relationships if two or three systems are in unstable equilibrium. Here the second option is observed. In the Horde, the order was shaken by the change of the state religion, and thereby inevitable changes both in the camp of allies and among the enemies of the regime. Uzbek, who became a Muslim sultan from the steppe khan, was actively supported by merchants and townspeople of the Middle Volga region, and the steppe dwellers of the White Horde resisted him, which ended with the death of Khan Ilbasmysh, after which the names of the khans become Muslim. And since the religious reform did not extend to Russia, it turned out to be possible to maintain contact between the Horde and Russia. The Uzbek gave Metropolitan Peter a label confirming the immunity and privileges of the church, and since Peter, offended by Mikhail Tversky, often came to Moscow, personal bitterness from the death of his sister and political calculation combined. Yuri Moskovsky benefited from this.

Yuri was not distinguished by cleanliness in politics. In 1318, according to his denunciation, Mikhail Yaroslavich was executed in the Horde. Mikhail's son, Dmitry the Terrible Eyes, hacked down the informer and paid for it with his head. After that, anti-Tatar sentiments intensified in Tver, resulting in the pogrom of the Horde embassy, for which Tver was destroyed... but not Tatars, but Muscovites.

During this time, the Lithuanian Prince Gediminas (1316-1341) subdued Polotsk, Turov, Pinsk and Vitebsk, and made Kiev a dependent possession. Lithuania became a counterweight to the Horde, and Tver from 1327 began to focus on Lithuania. So two coalitions were created: the Moscow-Tatar and Lithuanian-Tver [18]. The Golden Horde steadily weakened, the Lithuanian Principality strengthened. Gediminas successor, Algirdas, captured Seversk Rus, Novgorod-Seversky, Kiev and supported Tver against Moscow. Even in Novgorod there was a pro-Litovsk party. It seemed that the Gediminovichi, replacing the Rurikovich, would revive Ancient Russia. To do this, they only had to take Moscow, because the Suzdal and Ryazan princes had neither the strength nor the desire to fight the victorious Lithuanians, and in the Horde from 1359 a "great jam" began - a turmoil that paralyzed all the forces of this chimeric state. But it didn't work out that way. Why?

174. INSTABILITY

The beginning of a passionate ascent is inevitably associated with the breaking of outdated structures and behavioral stereotypes. This was not avoided even by the superbly debugged administrative system of Diocletian, whose successors were forced to capitulate to the passionate consortia.

In Russia, the process of lifting went more smoothly. The princes "kept their fiefdoms", and people freely changed their places of residence, and thereby the rulers. The right to "leave" was used not only by smerdas, merchants and boyars, but also by princes, or rather, younger brothers of grand dukes. The growth of passionarity made submission a voluntary matter, and the concept of high treason was absurd, since people considered themselves free, and the rulers did not have the strength to curb the freedom-loving Russians.

However, there was a force that cemented the emerging system - the Orthodox Church. Apostasy was considered as an exit from the system, as treason, and therefore it is not accidental that the ancient Aryan word "smerd" (from the Persian "mard" - husband) was replaced with the term "peasant", i.e. Orthodox Christian, in relation to the Russians. The princes were vassals of the "Besermensky" sultan, therefore, they could not be quoted as the highest authority. But the metropolitan enjoyed universal recognition, including the Khan of the Golden Horde, who did not tax church property. Therefore , the church of the XIV century sometimes called a "corporate feudal lord"[19], sometimes - a theocracy, not of the Western model. But then which one? Is it really nomadic, Nestorian?

And why not? The legend of the tsar-high priest John was a fiction of the Crusaders of the XII century, but for the steppe nomads-Nestorians it was a dream. For the sake of this dream, they supported the princes Arig-bug (1260-1263) and Nayan (1287) in East Asia and Sartak, the son of Batu (1256), on the Volga. They lost the war, and the few who managed to escape brought their ideals to the Russian land. Of course, ordinary soldiers did not understand the theological nuances, but it was even good, because there were no religious disputes. But their mood allowed them to easily spread among the Russians, fragmented between separate principalities. The unity, so necessary for a growing ethnic group, was carried out through the common veneration of the church, as they would say in the XX century - the unity of ideology, which was respected by the supreme ruler himself - the Khan of the Golden Horde.

And Khan acted, from his point of view, reasonably. There were many princes, they behaved differently and did not inspire confidence. The western border of the ulus was under constant pressure from Lithuania, where the princes were fleeing from the khan's disgrace. And the position of the metropolis was firm, so it was possible to negotiate with it and it was worth supporting.

The mistake of Mikhail Tversky, who undeservedly offended Metropolitan Peter, pushed the latter to friendship with Prince Ivan of Moscow, and he was very restrained and tactful. Peter went to Moscow to die, and his relics consecrated this city. So, quite unexpectedly, the dream of the kingdom of Prester John came true, which was voluntarily served by princes and boyars, vigilantes, townspeople and villagers, all who became peasants from "husbands".

From such a statement of the question, the solution to the problem of borders naturally followed: all lands inhabited by Orthodox should obey the Grand Duke of Vladimir, and self-government was not abolished, and the relationship between the principalities was determined by treaties. The situation is typical for the emerging superethnos.

Subtle ecclesiastical diplomacy established the union of Orthodox Russia with the Muslim Horde, stipulating mutual obligations that excluded military conflicts. The eastern border was calm before the start of Mamai's activity, we will talk about him below. But there was unrest on the western border.

Lithuania's activity increased and was restrained only by a constant war with the Livonian Order, an irreconcilable enemy of both Lithuania and Russia. The lightning strikes of Gedimin and Algirdas caused more damage to the Russians than Batu's campaign. The worst thing was that, unlike the Tatars, the Lithuanians occupied the territories they conquered by the end of the XIV century. they took possession of all the lands of Kievan Rus, with the exception of Novgorod, but an anti-Moscow party was created there, which means there was a pro-Moscow party. The connection of the Novgorod land with Great Russia was weakening. The idea of an Orthodox theocracy was completely rejected in Novgorod.

And finally, not all Russian principalities sought unification at the cost of losing their independence. Tver and Ryazan preferred an alliance with Lithuania to subordination to Moscow. Suzdal was ready to challenge the right to the Great Table. Even Prince Boris of Nizhny Novgorod married the daughter of Algirdas, hoping for the help of his father-in-law. Ancient customs resisted the new superethnic dominant.

And suddenly Nature intervened in History: the "black death" - the plague - fell on the Russian land.

175. TROUBLE

The anger of Nature manifests itself in various ways. Floods, earthquakes, eruptions, droughts can pose a threat to all living things, but the biosphere itself creates no less cruel zigzags, disastrous for unprepared anthropocenoses. In the middle of the XIV century. rumors about the plague in India and China did not cause fervent emotions in Europe. Even when the epidemic appeared in Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor, the Europeans were sure that it did not concern them. But people began to die in the Crimea.

It is said that Khan Janibek, besieging Kafu (Feodosia), ordered the corpse of a man who died of the plague to be thrown over the wall of this Genoese fortress. So the infection penetrated into the impregnable stronghold. The Genoese hastily evacuated and moved home, but on the way they stopped in Constantinople and in Messina in 1347. The plague struck Byzantium and Sicily. In 1348-1349, the epidemic devastated Italy, Spain, France, Hungary, England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, was brought on ships to Iceland and Prussia, after which it subsided in Western Europe, but in 1351 it moved to Pskov. In 1353, having devastated the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the evil infection went to the south, to the steppes, without affecting Nizhny Novgorod. Moscow and the Moscow region were temporarily deserted.

Deaths from the epidemic, according to unverified information, reached 30% of the population; in Paris in 1349, up to 800 people died every day. But in one place, the epidemic lasted from four to six months, after which the survivors could consider themselves safe and mourn their dead relatives. However, they preferred other activities: restoring a normal life.

Strangely enough, the plague epidemic bypassed the Czech Republic and Poland, as well as, apparently, Lithuania. The population of these countries did not decrease, and therefore they turned out to be the strongest states in Europe at that time, until the demographic rise brought back the military and political power of France, England, Castile and Germany.

But during this time, the former fiefs of the German Empire turned into kingdoms with French dynasties: Luxemburgs (French-born Germans) ruled in the Czech Republic, and in Poland - Angevins - Louis of Hungary and his daughter Jadwiga. Germans, taking advantage of the patronage of the kings, began to settle in the cities of the Czech Republic and Poland and study at universities founded in Prague (1348) and in Krakow (1364). With German education, Western fashions and Magdeburg law came to Slavic countries, which ensured the privileges of citizens. The Czechs and Poles, with the exception of the nobles, became a taxable estate in their own lands, and Silesia was completely settled by the Germans.

It is difficult to say which turned out to be more disastrous: a short-term plague, after which life and social order were restored, and a demographic explosion made up for the losses, or a gradual numbing, distorting the culture and worldview of the Western Slavs. Looking ahead, let's say that the Czechs responded to this with Hussite wars, and the Poles found salvation in union with passionate Lithuania. But for our topic, Russia and the Horde are more important.

176. UPDATE

The devastating plague raid across Europe claimed about a quarter of the population, but did not affect either the feudal structure of society or the brilliant culture of the Middle Ages. This is not surprising. Natural factors do not affect the social form of the movement of matter, and the population, which was in the akmatic phase of ethnogenesis, quickly recovered. The most affected countries - France and England - have not even stopped the Hundred Years' War.

This is also understandable. The original culture, which developed from the 9th century (from the Carolingian Renaissance), cemented a superethnic system, the slender building of which was stable and suffered a sudden blow, as it would have suffered a frosty winter or a hurricane. It would be another matter if such or similar misfortune befell an ethnic group at the junction of phases, when it is vulnerable, like a snake changing its skin. There the consequences would be unpredictable.

The plague came to Russia from the Baltic, appearing in Pskov in 1351. In 1353, Grand Duke Simeon the Proud and his entire family died of this disease, with the exception of his younger brother, Ivan Ivanovich the Red, who had no political or military abilities, but was very modest and accommodating. Knowing Ivan's character, Simeon bequeathed the reins of government not to him, but to Metropolitan Alexei, the godson of his father, Ivan I Kalita. Metropolitan Alexey headed the government until his death in 1378. Over the past period, there were few bright events, but there were many changes. In place of the confederation of vassals of the Golden Horde Khan, the state of Moscow arose, the grain of great Russia, and the Horde turned from Golden to Blue - it was not the same thing.

It is noteworthy that religion, culture, way of economy, household life and even family ties have not changed in the XIV century, but the two-hundred-year decline, aptly called the "destruction of the Russian land", was replaced by a rise that turned a small principality (Moscow) into a great power. Since the explanations of this indisputable phenomenon have already been considered by us and rejected as unsatisfactory, we will try to apply the theory of ethnogenesis.

As it was noted, at the beginning of the XIV century. the passion push raised the Lithuanians, Russians and Ottoman Turks, but the further destinies of these ethnic groups had significant differences. The Turks drew into their composition the descendants of the daring Byzantine Akrites (border guards), and then they were replenished with gazias from Anatolia and Diarbekr, janissaries (slave army) from Macedonia and Bulgaria and hired pirates, who then swarmed the Mediterranean Sea. In short, they gathered under the banner of the crescent all the passionaries who changed their faith for a career. This determined the speed and short duration of their successes.

Part of the Lithuanians embraced the culture of the conquered Ancient Russia, but the other part was drawn into Poland. What happened next is known.

Russian passionaries were most hampered by their own sub-passionaries, which constrained their initiative. But there was nowhere to put them, and therefore Lithuania won the duel. And suddenly - the "black death", which mercilessly mowed down people of all passion levels. And then, after 1353, despair from the loss of loved ones, from loneliness in extinct villages, from hopelessness. Only very passionate people could overcome despair. They restored life, dispersed the gene pool across the population, and after 25 years the rise began.

It should be noted that the ethnic map of the Volga-Oka interfluve of the XIV century was motley. Tverichi, Muscovites, Suzdalians, Ryazanians, Smolyans, not to mention Novgorodians, differed from each other at the ethnic level, and Meryans in the Moscow Principality, Murom in Ryazan, Veps in the Novgorod Republic were subethnoses. Numerous baptized Tatars and children of Tatars assimilated into the indigenous population, because high passionarity increases behavioral plasticity. At the same time, different ethnic substrates included in ethnogenesis were carriers of different worldviews, which were synthesized into a new one during the passionate ascent. Therefore, the Orthodox Great Russians believed orthodoxically, felt belonging to religion in an original way and transferred the existing mentality to the organizational functions of the church, respecting it more than the state.

On a personal level, the dominant of the process coincided with the dominant ethnic. Ivan Kalita's godson studied with Metropolitan St. Peter and, becoming metropolitan after the Greek Theognost, continued his teacher's political line. Circumstances contributed to this. In 1355 The Kiev metropolitanate was received by the "son of the boyar of Tfer" Roman[20], a supporter of Algirdas and an opponent of Alexei, who was appointed metropolitan of "all Russia" in 1354 [21], in fact, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, i.e. Byzantium, divided the Russian Church by this appointment and supported Lithuania.

Alexey did not call for the division of the metropolis, but he did not break with Constantinople, thanks to which he dispensed with the church schism. However, the differences between the Greek and Russian worldview, which generates an original type of culture, have deepened.

The union of the metropolis with the Moscow Principality, ruled by the "old boyars" - relatives of Vladyka Alexei [22], was equally necessary for both of them. The Church mediated between the Vladimir land and the Golden Horde in those terrible years when Algirdas captured city after city. The "Good Tsar Janibek" was the only worthy opponent of Lithuania interested in repelling aggression. The Tatars had already been defeated on the Blue Waters and lost the lower reaches of the Dnieper. Tver and Ryazan were pulled towards Lithuania. Moscow was next in line. Without a powerful ally, she had no chance to survive, but she not only survived, but also won. Let's look at how this could happen.

177. "THE LION AND THE LAMB TOGETHER WILL REST" [23]

The position of the Regent of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir was so difficult that it seemed hopeless. Even the most skillful diplomacy will not make up for the lack of manpower - people animated by ethnic dominance, state idea, patriotism. The plague devastated the country in 1353, and it took at least a quarter of a century for the population to reproduce. During this difficult period, the active life of Vladyka Alexei passed, who was for Russia what Abbot Sugerius was for France, Gregory VII for the Roman Church, Solon for Athens, Zarathustra for Iran and Tsongkhava for Tibet and Mongolia. Such figures are remarkable for the fact that they were able to find a way out of a hopeless situation without sinning either against their country or against their conscience.

Khan Janibek was a wise and strong-willed ruler, but no one can defeat the pattern of ethnogenesis. The massacre committed by his Uzbek father and the introduction of Turkmen customs of succession to the throne instead of Yasa turned the Juchi ulus into a chimera. The Horde became a bizarre combination of Volga cities, numerous "fragments" of the Polovtsians, Alans, Circassians and Karaites - in the west and the ancestors of the Kazakhs, Siberian Tatars, Bashkirs, Kama Bulgarians and Chuvash - in the east of the possessions. These ethnicities were different in culture, religion (because Islam was obligatory, and its propaganda was inconsistent), economy and political aspirations. The term "Tatars" turned from an ethnonym into a politonym, and in the XV century it also lost this meaning. Only Khan's willpower kept this conglomerate from disintegrating, but, as it turned out, not for long.

The most tragic consequence of the chimerization of the ulus of Dzhuchiyev was the change in the order of succession to the throne. Yasa (Genghis law), prescribed the choice of the supreme khan by the army, in fact, the president for life, obliged to follow the law and observe customs. In feudal Europe, the eldest son was considered the heir. In Russia, the grand reigning was given a khan's label, which is why the appanage princes exhausted their wealth on bribes to influential murzas. And among the Western Turks, all the sons of the khan had equal rights to the throne, which caused fratricide with each change of ruler. Janibek also stepped over the corpses of two brothers. He could not have done otherwise, because if not, he would have been killed himself.

From the point of view of biology, this custom was unnatural, because it stimulated negative selection, because in addition to the princes, their emirs and nuhurs died. He was asocial, as he shook the state system, brought nervousness and uncertainty about the future into it. He was immoral, as he led to the death of innocent people. The ethnic system was becoming unstable.

Janibek understood all this perfectly well, but he could not do anything. He tried to please the Volga merchants and for the sake of their interests made a trip to Persia, where a tyrant seized power, robbing his subjects and thereby interfering with trade. Janibek executed him, but managed without conquest.

The alliance with the metropolitan was also beneficial to him, because he could trust him. Honesty is the best policy! But the death came from his native home: Khan Janibek fell ill and lay in a tent; the eldest beloved son, Berdibek, was allowed to him, who killed his father, then his brothers and in 1357 became khan. However, the fiend issued a label to the metropolitan for church property. The union has not been broken yet.

The parricide Berdibek did not sit on the throne for long. He was killed, and the "great jam" began - a change of khans, many of whom ruled for less than a year. The friendship of the "lion" with the "lamb" ended by itself, because the "lion" died and decomposed from 1357 to 1380. During this period, the Horde did not represent political integrity. In the east, the khan of the White Horde, Urus, fought with Prince Tokhtamysh, who used the support of Emir Timur. By 1376, Tokhtamysh had won and claimed the remnants of the Golden Horde, but met opposition from temnik Mamai, who commanded in the Crimea and the Black Sea region. Under Mamai there were almost exclusively anti-Horde uluses and ethnic groups - Polovtsy, Yasi, Kasogi, Crimean Jews, but especially valuable for him was the alliance with Genoa, which had colonies in the Crimea.

Mamai cannot be considered a Horde member or even an ally of the Horde in any way. He was a rebel, although he did not show it, preferring to portray a loyal subject so that it would be easier to kill those princes who trusted him. And the Russian princes continued to carry tribute to the Barn, because they valued the alliance with the state that saved them from the Lithuanian onslaught.

And during the same period, the "lamb" grew horns. Metropolitan Alexei annexed Rostov, Galich, Solikamsk and even Vladimir to Moscow, defeating Dmitry Konstantinovich of Suzdal, the pretender to the Grand duchy, in 1362-1364. Even deprived of Tatar support, the metropolia was able to turn Moscow into the capital of a renewed state, which should already be called Russia.

So, the very formulation of the question of the reasons for the rise of Moscow in the XIV century is incorrect. After the "black death", Moscow became the point of application of the forces of the metropolis, i.e. the organized passionate elite of Great Russia. This, oddly enough, was facilitated by the very mediocre abilities of the Moscow princes, however, who had the tact that allowed their very talented and strong-willed employees - boyars and monks - to conduct a subtle and far-sighted policy of acquiring land and attracting intelligent and energetic people. The Church as a social organization gave these passionaries a dominant - the protection of Orthodoxy, which could be served sincerely, and not for profit. Bought friends are always unreliable. Resistance to the new ethno-social system was provided by the supporters of separatism - Tver, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, who tried to find support in pagan Lithuania. The princes were energetic and brave, but they defended themselves and their entourage, not the idea; in other words, they opposed their personal interests to the "ideal", i.e. a distant forecast. Therefore, after the conclusion of the peace of Moscow with Lithuania in 1371 , all the Great Russian princes recognized themselves as "henchmen" of Moscow, i.e. Metropolitan Alexei.

It is impossible to consider the political line of the Metropolitan and the Grand Duke led by him, who were friends with the Horde, as capitulatory, conciliatory and unpatriotic in any way. The output, or tribute, had to be paid, but this tax was not burdensome. It was estimated that even in the difficult 1389 Dmitry Donskoy paid 5 thousand rubles of tribute, which, when recalculated by the number of settlements, amounted to half a ruble from the village[24]. Our princes spent much more money on bribes to the Tatar emirs, because intrigues without bribes were doomed. But this phenomenon is not so much order as disorder, and both sides are guilty of it.

Of course, there could be no question of merging the two peoples into a single ethnic group after the atrocities of the Uzbek. Yes, it was also impractical, since the areas of residence of Russians and Tatars were different, the methods of farming were also different, and ideologically Orthodox and Muslims got along with each other, but did not seek to unite at all. This is called symbiosis. Contact with Catholics was much more intense. It was fully felt by Western Russians two centuries later, although at the end of the XIV century. They had a hard time [25]. Otherwise, Novgorod, Tver, Ryazan and the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod Principality would have joined them, but this did not happen!

The Lithuanian Prince Olgerd took advantage of the coming collapse of the Horde. In 1362-1363, he occupied Podolia, Kiev and Chernigov, opening the road to Great Russia, and in the same 1362, having defeated the Tatar princes at the Blue Waters (the Sinyukha River, the left tributary of the Bug [26]), he drove the Tatars beyond the Dnieper and Danube, to Dobrudja. Lithuania has received a trump card that could help it win hegemony in Eastern Europe.

But time worked against Algirdas. Moscow resisted because... "Moscow's political ideology was ecclesiastical... the tsar of Moscow was thought of by his subjects not so much as a national sovereign, but as the tsar of Orthodox Christianity of the whole world"[27]. Such a thing was possible only in the phase of passionate ascent, when the leading consortium grows like a snowball, absorbing all the ethnic substrates left over from the fading antiquity. The metropolitans served Tverichi, Ryazan, Smolyans, Suzdalians, Kievans, Belarusians, baptized Tatars and baptized Zyryans, Karelians and Izhorians, Novgorodians and Pskov. And Moscow - only Muscovites. But since Metropolitan Alexei lived in Moscow and supervised the young Dmitry, all the efforts of the pagan Algirdas were in vain. The Lithuanians won often, but never definitively. And even when two great rivals died - Prince Algirdas (1377) and Metropolitan Alexei (1378), the balance of power was such that there could be no question of a victory for one side.

178. STAB IN THE BACK

The building of the Orthodox theocracy, erected by Metropolitan Alexei with the help of the abbot of the Trinity Lavra, Sergius of Radonezh, began to be strengthened during the lifetime of His Eminence. As often happens, the reason for this was not enemies, but friends.

In 1375, Patriarch Philotheos of Constantinople restored the Kiev Metropolitanate and put the Bulgarian Cyprian at its head. By this act, the Russian Church was divided into Great Russian and Lithuanian, which from the position of the church must be recognized as reasonable. With constant clashes between Lithuania and Moscow, the management of both parts of the church was impracticable. Vladyka Alexei took the accomplished fact calmly, but the reverse position was taken by Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich [28].

This seemingly insignificant fact has attracted the attention of many historians [29], but it is not indifferent to the ethnologist. Prince Dmitry turned from a child into an enterprising politician; the generation born after the plague also matured. The prince and his peers found themselves able to solve state problems better than the old monks, for the passionate level of the ethnos was increasing, which means that the eternal problem of "fathers and children" arose. The young men no longer went to monasteries, but to the service of the Grand Duke, because the territorial growth of the state provided vacancies for those who wanted to make a career. It was easier in the prince's palace than in the courtyard of the bishop.

Since Metropolitan Alexey has grown old, the question of his successor has arisen. Dmitry Ivanovich nominated his confessor Mityai, in 1376 he organized his tonsure and "began to bore" the metropolitan to bless Mityai as his successor. Alexey refused and before his death on February 12, 1378, he put his cross with relics on Sergius of Radonezh. Sergius accepted the cross "in the name of monastic obedience", but refused the pulpit, seeing the disagreement of the Grand Duke with his candidacy. In 1379 there was a break between the church and the secular authorities: Sergius of Radonezh and Dionysius, Bishop of Suzdal, rejected Mitya, violating the will of the Grand Duke. The union of the throne and the altar broke up [30].

In the same years, the conflict between the Russian Church and Mamai broke out. In Nizhny Novgorod, on the initiative of Dionysius of Suzdal, Mamai's ambassadors were killed. There was a war that went on with varying success, which ended with the Battle of Kulikovo and the return of Genghisid Tokhtamysh to the Horde. In this war, which was imposed by the Church, two coalitions participated: the chimeric power of Mamaia, Genoa and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, i.e. the West, and the bloc of Moscow with the White Horde - a traditional alliance, which was initiated by Alexander Nevsky. Tver declined to participate in the war, and the position of Prince Oleg of Ryazan is unclear. In any case, it was independent of Moscow, because in 1382, like the Suzdal princes, he was fighting on the side of Tokhtamysh against Prince Dmitry.

These are the facts that we have to interpret. From the standpoint of state expediency, changing the political line was stupid. The theocracy has made Moscow the capital of Russia for 20 years without shedding a drop of blood. In 1365, Sergius of Radonezh forced Nizhny Novgorod to compromise by threatening to close the churches, and a year later the "war of the two Dmitrii" ended with the dynastic marriage of Dmitry of Moscow to the daughter of Dmitry of Suzdal. The Novgorod Republic confirmed its unity with Great Russia through the metropolia. When in 1375 Metropolitan Cyprian of Kiev wanted to include Novgorod in his diocese, he was refused. "They were going to the Grand Duke to Moscow," the Novgorodians replied, "and if he accepts you as a metropolitan to Russia, then this metropolitan will also accept us"[31].

It would seem that you can only change a winning policy for the worse, but passionaries are always active, although not always smart. The Grand-princely opposition [32] prevented the church from uniting the Russian land, not because it aspired to a different goal, but because its representatives did not realize the consequences of their actions. Mityai acted against Sergius and Alexei simply because they interfered with his career; at the same time, he hardly thought about patriotism and the protection of Orthodoxy from pagans, Basurmans and Latins; Mityai only interfered with the strengthening of the Russian land and its might, and they got rid of him. Russia was worth saving.

But the very fact of the appearance of the second passionate consortium, secular and courtly, indicates the growth of passionate tension in Russia. The system has become more complicated, which, on the one hand, has increased its energy (combat and economic) potential, and on the other hand, has shaken the ethno-social dominant. The opponents of the old order did not have their own political program, they simply tried to do the opposite. Metropolitan Cyprian directly stated this to Dmitry Donskoy: "Now many have surrounded you like dogs, they are trying in vain and in vain"[33]. But this position of Cyprian was supported by Sergius of Radonezh, Dionysius of Suzdal, Fyodor Simonovsky and almost all the heirs of the idea of the late Metropolitan Alexei.

The idea was simple: an Orthodox theocracy based on the sympathy of the people and leading the princes. The very idea that the crusading myth-makers described as a formidable reality, whereas in Asia it was only a dream of the "kingdom of Prester John".

Given the properties of the human psyche, one can not be surprised at Dmitry's dislike of Vladyka Alexei. Before going to Mamai , the prince bowed to the shrine of St. Peter, but passed by Alexei's coffin[34]. Apparently, even at this critical moment, he could not forgive the fact that the blow in the back of the lord, conceived by his friend Mitya, missed the target. The Orthodox Church resisted and corrected the political miscalculations of the young and not very talented prince, but the canonization of Alexei and Sergius was postponed for a long time - until 1447[35].

At the same time, it is noteworthy that the church has not suffered materially or morally and the course of events has not changed. A ridiculous blow fell on the political line - the tradition of Alexander Nevsky. The people paid for the prince's frivolity with thousands of Russian corpses on Kulikovo Field. Had it not been for Mitya's intrigues and Dmitry's quarrel with Alexei, the losses in the war would have been less, and the result would have been greater, because it is unlikely that Yagailo would have been able to entice Orthodox subjects to war with their revered metropolitan.

No, this is not the place to tell for the hundredth time about the birthday of Great Russia on the banks of the Nepryadva River on August 8, 1380. Repetitions of the known only lead away from understanding global processes.

Everyone knows that the Russian army defeated Mamai's crowd, but in order to realize the significance of this great deed, we need to look at it from a new side, because in History all phenomena are not contradictions, but polygons.

Here ends the sphere of competence of the historical and philological method, which has stumbled upon an insurmountable obstacle - a discussion about the war against the Tatars, for the liberation of Russia. This dispute is unnecessary and, moreover, pointless, since there was no Tatar unity anymore. The talented and energetic temnik Mamai came from the Kiyan family, hostile to Temujin and who lost the war in Mongolia back in the XII century. Mamai revived the Black Sea power of the Polovtsians and Alans, and Tokhtamysh, leading the ancestors of the Kazakhs, continued the ulus of Juchiev. Mamai and Tokhtamysh were enemies. The tradition of Russia was an alliance with the Horde, therefore, with Tokhtamysh, which means that the opposition had to seek an alliance with Mamai, but if so, then peace with Lithuania, Mamai's ally. The church party had to quarrel the Grand ducal party with Mamai... and they did it with incredible skill.

Mamai strove with all his might for an alliance with Dmitai and Mityai, letting the latter through his possessions by the shortest route - along the Don - to Constantinople. After the death of Mityai and the exile of another member of the grand ducal group, Pimena, Sergius and Dionysius regained their influence, and the power of things pushed Dmitry to the Kulikovo Field, and Mamai into the clutches of the Genoese traitors who poisoned an unnecessary friend.

The tragic death of Mamai is very instructive in the aspect of ethnology. Mamai was a steppe man. He believed that it was possible to kill opponents, but traitors were necessary, but friends should not be offended, because it was so bad that it could not even occur to him. This was the worldview of the Mongol-Turkic superethnos, which experienced a breakdown in 1369 and was heading for disintegration, because it was corroded by foreign cultural influences: Chinese, Tibetan, Muslim (Iranian) and European.

The Genoese had a different ethic. They believed that the main thing in life is profit, that Mongols and Turks are almost not people, but an object for commercial operations. When they are strong, they should be used, when they are weakened, they should be thrown out. In fact, it was the psychology of nascent capitalism.

Ethics based on capitalist social relations were not sympathetic to either Russians, Tatars, or Byzantine Greeks. The economic interests that prevailed in the conditions of the formation that originated in Romano-Germanic Western Europe were incomprehensible to them, their manifestations caused disgust. Even Khan Janibek, having learned that the Genoese took advantage of the mass death of cattle that had occurred in the Black Sea steppes, which caused famine, to buy children from the Tatars for the slave trade at a cheap price, was indignant and moved the army to Kafu. It was simply incomprehensible to him how one could use a neighbor's misfortune for easy enrichment. From his point of view, it was very bad.

With the Tatar army, the "black death" came to the Crimea - a plague that devastated Europe. Nature itself opposed the predation of Genoese merchants.

Mamai was not so prudent and became an ally of the Genoese merchants. It never occurred to him that he was considered inferior, not loved, but used. And he became a victim of contact at the superethnic level. But his children, who managed to leave for the Lithuanian Ukraine, survived.

I repeat again, moral assessments for the natural process - ethnogenesis - are invalid. In the XIV century, Western Europe was in the final stage of the akmatic phase, the passionate tension of which gave rise to colonial expansion. The "Mongol sphere", which had squandered its passionarity in internecine wars, was entering a phase of fracture. Its disintegration was inevitable, despite the presence of rich lands, increased moistening of the steppes, which allowed to increase grazing, and a lot of valiant heroes loyal to their natural khans.

Where the miasma of decay came from is still unclear. Therefore, we will step back onto the scale of linear chronology in order to expand the range of view and see the phenomenon more fully, and thereby more accurately.

NOTES:

[1] Letter of Pope John XII (1325).Cit. by: Shabuldo M.F. Lands of Southwestern Russia as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Kien, 1987. pp.31-33.

[2] The Slavic word "pagans" is a translation of the Greek term "ethnos". Consequently, "paganism" is the cult of tribal gods. With this interpretation, the "God of Israel" - Yahweh - also falls into this "society", but not Elohim - a cult that precedes the veneration of the Jewish tribal god.

[3] Traychevsky A. Textbook of Russian History. Ch.I.SPb., 1900.pp.146-147.

[4] Ibid., p. 146.

[5] See: Gumilev L.N.//Vesti. LSU. 1966. No. 18. p. 87.

[6] The map of 1500 shows the island of Chechnya (see: Apollov B.D. Fluctuations in the level of the Caspian Sea//Proceedings of Inta Oceanology. Vol. XV. M., 1956. p. 227).

[7] Cit. by: Solovyov S.M. History of Russia ... Book 1. Vol.11. pp.646- 647.also see; Platonov S.F. Lectures ... p.94.

[8] See: Kalesnik S.V. A few more words about the geographical environment //Izv. VGO. 1966. No. 3.

[9] See: Sergeevich V.I. Antiquities of Russian Law. T III. St. Petersburg, 1909. pp. 65 and 72.

[10] Ibid., p. 69.

[11] Pokrovsky M.P. Russian History. T. I. P. 173.

[12] See: Gumilev L. N. The Search for a fictional kingdom. p. 399.

[13] See: Khoroshev L.S. The political history of Russian canonization (XI- XVI centuries.). M., 1986. p. 61.

[14] Ibid. p. 125.

[15] See: Bartold V.V. On Christianity in Turkestan... pp.11-23.

[16] See: Khoroshev L.S. Decree. op. pp.36-41.

[17] Ibid., p. 94.

[18] See: Pokrovsky M.N. Decree.op.S.186-187.

[19] Khoroshev L.S. Decree. op. P. 108.

[20] Ibid., p. 136.

[21] Ibid., p. 98.

[22] Alexey (in adolescence - Elefery Pleshcheev) was the son of the Chernigov boyar Fedor Byakont, who entered the Moscow service at the end of the XIII century.

[23] PSRL. Vol.IX. P.33.Cit.by: Khoroshev A.S. Decree.op.C.109.

[24] Roublev Michel. The periodicity of the mongol tribute as paid by Russian princes during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries // Forschungen zur osleuropaischen Geschichle. Band !5. Berlin. 1970. S. 7.

[25] Golobutsky V.A. Zaporozhye Cossacks. Kiev. 1957.pp.23-26.

[26] See: Egorov V.L. Historical geography of the Golden Horde in the XIII-XIV centuries, Moscow, 1985. p. 51.

[27] Pokrovsky M.P. Decree. op. Vol. 1.pp.180-181.

[28] See: Prokhorov G.M. Novella about Mitya.L., 1978.P.51.

[29] See: Khoroshev L.S. Decree. op. p. 111. Quotes are given from V.O. Klyuchevsky, L.E. Presnyakov, S.V. Pakhrushin, M.N. Tikhomirov, D.S. Likhachev and L.V. Cherepnin, who do not disagree in assessing the merits of Vladyka Alexei.

[30] Mityai died on the way to Constantinople. Pimen, the archimadrite of Pereyaslav, who was ordained metropolitan, was not accepted in Moscow. The Grand Duke exiled Pimen, and in 1381 invited Cyprian, who was supported by Sergius of Radonezh (see: Prokhoron G.M.Decree.op.c.137 et seq.). Dmitry, suspecting Pimen of poisoning Mitya, took off his white hood and imprisoned him (see: Traichevsky A. Textbook of Russian History. Ch.I. P. 161).

[31] Khoroshev A.S. Decree. op. p. 112.

[32] Ibid., p. 112; cf.: Prokhorov G.M. Decree. op.

[33] Khoroshev A.S. Decree. op. p. 115.

[34] Ibid., p. 114.

[35] Ibid., p. 121

XXVI. Panorama

179. CHANGING THE COLOR OF TIME

10. Eurasia in the XIII-XIV centuries (233 KB)

At the beginning of the XIV century, after the troubles, the possessions of the descendants of Genghis Khan were the most extensive and most powerful power in the Oikumen. Divided into four large ulus: the ✓Yuan Empire in China and Mongolia, the ✓Ilkhan kingdom in Iran, the ✓Jagatai Khanate in Central Asia and the ✓Juchi Ulus, which included the Golden Horde, the White Horde on the Irtysh and the Blue Horde - nomads from Tyumen to the Aral Sea, it seemed to have no dangerous enemies and worthy rivals. But by the end of the XIV century, this "Mongol sphere", as G.V. Vernadsky called it, collapsed almost without a trace. A fragment that did not lose its viability turned out to be a small ethnic group of the Durban-Oirats, which lasted until the XVIII century. They were exterminated by the Chinese in 1759 .

How did the "Mongol sphere" disappear? And most importantly, why? The first question was answered by history, the second should be answered by ethnology. Therefore, it is advisable in historical research to limit ourselves to an overview of the course of events (without being distracted by the analysis of details) and focus on considering their connections, both systemic and visual. Surprises await the reader here, all the more significant because they are supported by rigorous evidence obtained through research based on the synthesis of the humanities and natural sciences. In geography without history, as in history without geography, "there is a piercing," as noted by the thinker of the XVIII century I.N. Boltin. Ethnology is a science that fills the crack between history and natural science, so that the crack does not turn into a chasm.

As already mentioned, the Mongolian round of ethnogenesis began in the XI century. In the phase of the rise, the Mongols made their conquests and dispersed their passion among the Chinese, Turks, Persians and Russians, which contributed, on the one hand, to the weakening of Mongolia itself, and, on the other, to the strengthening of the outskirts of the "Mongol sphere". The brutal civil war of 1259-1301 took away the best part of the Mongol Baturs, the grandchildren of "people of long will", and in the XIV century the political unity of the Mongol Empire was held only by inertia. In Mongolia itself, many Persians, Turks, Russians and Chinese appeared, both women and men: artisans, merchants and scientists, not at all passionate, but mixed with the Mongols. Historian Omari noted that in the ulus of Juchiev, the Mongols dissolved among the Kipchaks. In Iran, the Mongols partially survived, but became Muslims and lost their leading importance. And in Central Asia, Mongolian passionarity stimulated the regeneration of military prowess and Turkic-language literature, i.e. Muslim culture, lost in the XII century. Tolstov wittily remarked that the power of Timur became a copy of the sultanate of Khorezmshahs, with the only difference that the capital was moved from Gurganj to Samarkand[1].

And in the same XIV century. a new passionate push raised Ottoman Turkey in place of Byzantium, and in Eastern Europe - Lithuania and Russia. The critical period for changing the "color of time" was the end of the century. Let's look at some details of this segment of the story related to our topic.

Trivial historiography for the studied plot is not just useless, but harmful. In-depth study of the details deprives the study of the necessary perspective and obscures the events indirectly but organically related to the activities of Khan Tokhtamysh.

Therefore, let the reader not complain, let's get closer to the topic gradually. First, a review of the superethnos - the entire "Mongol sphere", then - the ethnos, i.e. the ulus of Juchiev and his contact with the Grand Duchy of Vladimir - the core of the emerging Russia, then - subethnoses in complex combinations: the disintegrated Golden Horde and rival Russian principalities, because at the end of the XIV century. neither Tatar nor Russian independent ethnic integrity, or nation, existed, and finally, let's move on to the personal level - the consideration of the figures of this era in relation to the events in which they took part. The path of research is difficult, but only it is fruitful.

First of all, it is necessary to get rid of the aberration of familiarity. When we were students, we perceived Western Europe as something motley and diverse, and Asia as a gray mass. In fact, Europe west of the Vistula was a single superethnos, and its multicolour is the result of a large approximation, when even only small differences are recorded. Conversely, Asia was viewed from afar, and therefore the details of different cultures merged, which created the illusion of unity.

If we accept a single scale, then there were not one, but five superethnoses in Asia, conventionally called ✓China, ✓Japan, ✓India (non-Muslim), the ✓old Muslim world, the worst enemy of ✓Ottoman Turkey - a new integrity that arose from a passionate push, like Moscow, and the "Mongol sphere" - the legacy of the Genghisids. In addition to these grandiose wholes, there were chimeric variations of outlying ethnic groups, as well as relics.

180. TRECENTO

In the same years, or rather decades, when the "Mongol sphere" was disintegrating and the previously defeated peoples were liberated in Iran (1353), Central Asia (1364), China (1368) and the Kipchak steppe (1371-1372), other processes of ethno - and cultural genesis were going on in the West. Since both superethnoses collided in 1399 and then in 1402, it will be useful to pay some attention to the Mediterranean, at least by "side vision".

Since the history of Western Europe and Asia Minor has been described repeatedly and in great detail, it makes no sense to repeat the research done. For our purpose, we should raise the question of the correlation of ethnogenesis (at the superethnic level) and the development of cultural traditions, which are much more conservative and inert. Both types of processes interact depending on the phases of ethnogenesis and the initial principles inherited by the new superethnos from one or another previous culture. Such generalization makes it possible to view at once the whole picture of the interactions that make up the content of ethnohistorical processes, or, what is the same, the paleogeography of the ethnosphere, in stereoscopic aspect.

The oldest ethnic groups at that time were the Greeks and Slavs. They arose in the II century A.D. and entered the phase of obscuration in our period, partly into the phase of regeneration. The Romano-Germans, who began their difficult journey in the IX century, were at the end of the akmatic phase. They still had an excess of passionate tension, but they spent their energy on mutual destruction within their ethno-cultural system, which greatly facilitated the growth of the young ethnic groups: Lithuanians and Ottoman Turks. The Italians resurrected antiquity, the Greeks - earlier Christianity, and the Ottomans - Sunnism, which caused their wars with the Shiites of Mesopotamia and Azerbaijan and did not put up with Timur, who regenerated the old Muslim culture due to the incorporated Mongolian passionarity.

In the "Christian" (Catholic) world in the XIV century the leading ethnos were the French. French dynasties ruled both in the French kingdom and in England, Naples, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland; French feudal lords fought for Greece with the Aragonese and the Florentine banker Achaioli, and in Castile they helped the bastard prince Henry Trastamare to overthrow the tyrant Pedro the Cruel. The emperors of Germany were Bohemian kings, French-born Luxemburgs, and the kings of Navarre were the descendants of Joan, the granddaughter of Philip the Beautiful. But ethnic proximity did not interfere with the wars, one of which was called the Centennial.

181. BYZANTIUM AND THE SLAVS

Constantinople was ruled by the Paleologians, who inherited from the Latin Empire (1204-1261) feudalism and impoverishment of the country, deprived of most of the original population. Asia Minor, the birthplace of Orthodoxy, was invaded by the Turks, Greece by French and Catalan adventurers. The Genoese colony of Galata was located inside the capital itself. Thessalonica was devastated by the atrocities of the Zealot sect, and Albania and Macedonia by the militant Serbs who dominated the Balkan peninsula.

In this hopeless situation, the Paleologists sought help in the West, but the Catholics did not love the Greeks, but used them. The last citadel of Orthodoxy was not the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but the Athos Monastery.

It would seem that the Orthodox empire should have been saved by the Southern Slavs, but they were in the same phase of ethnogenesis as the Greeks. Strife crushed the Serbian tribes, and even the attempt of unification made by the Serbian king Stefan Dusan around 1350 did not save the people. After his death, strife resumed, and in 1389 the Serbian army fell victim to the Ottomans. The Turkophile princes maintained a semblance of independence for some time, but in 1459 the remnants of Serbia were turned into a Turkish pashalyk. The laws of ethnogenesis, like any natural phenomenon, are inexorable.

Historians who adhere to the evolutionary theory, or the so-called "religion of progress", believe that the Serbs lost the war with the Turks due to their backwardness. Strong zhupans and rulers spent time in strife, which was allegedly a relic of the ancestral way of life, and the mores were distinguished by primitive (?!) rudeness. Against this background, the reign of Stefan Dusan was an exception, like the empire of Charlemagne[2].

Is that so? In the seventh century, the Obodrit Serbs from the mountains of modern Saxony "moved" their surplus population to Illyria and conquered its northern part, leaving the Illyrians only the inaccessible mountains of modern Albania. In the IX century, at the same time as the Bulgarians, the Serbs converted to Christianity, and the northern part of them - the Croats - fell into subjection to Rome, but most of them were connected with Constantinople, not only in religious terms. The Serbs kept their political independence from both Byzantium and Hungary. "Primitive rudeness" did not bother them at all. Only at the end of the XII century Manuel Komnenos incorporated Serbia into the Byzantine Empire, and then only for a short time. In the XIII century, the Serbs were liberated and began the struggle for hegemony on the Balkan peninsula, which ended in 1389 on the Kosovo field.

So, the Serbs lived through all the phases of ethnogenesis as part of the Slavic-Byzantine superethnos: the break - the conquest of Illyria, the inertial phase - the introduction to Christian culture, obscuration and an attempt at regeneration in the XIII-XIV centuries, interrupted by an external invasion, and the memorial phase in Montenegro (because all other Serbian subethnoses were subordinated to the Turks or Austrians), which existed before the XX century. What kind of "backwardness" is there! And from whom?

It was worse for the Czechs. The close proximity to Germany, which was in political disintegration at the end of the XIII century, tempted the last Premyslovich - Ottokar II - to seize Austria, which he immediately lost in 1272 along with the life and Slavic tradition of his people. Already under him, the Kingdom of Bohemia became a province of the German Empire. The German language began to dominate not only in government papers, but also in literature and in private life. The throne passed to the Luxembourg family, and Charles IV founded a university in Prague in 1348, in whose academic council 3/4 of the seats belonged to the Germans. Orthodox communion from the chalice was strictly prohibited[3].

The same penetration of German culture is observed in Poland under the last Piast - Casimir III the Great. He willingly attracted Germans to Poland, who settled at the court and in the cities (they received the profitable "Magdeburg law"), and Jews who took over the country's economy. He suppressed the oppositional aristocracy, patronizing the claps and students of the University of Krakow, founded in 1364. Poland became numb, like the Czech Republic.

After his death in 1370, the throne of Poland passed to the Angevin dynasty that ruled in Hungary, but already in 1371 Louis of Anjou died, and his daughter Jadwiga ascended the Polish throne, elected "king of Poland". The West drew Poland into its superethnos, and the fate of the Czech Republic awaited it, if not for the unexpected intervention of nature: a passionate push raised Lithuania and Ottoman Turkey, and the balance of forces changed. The German "civilizers" did not have time to get to Moscow and the remnants of Kievan Rus.

182. LITHUANIA

The last peaceful conquest of the Western world was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Talented and strong-willed princes Gediminas, Algirdas and Keistut stopped the aggression of the Teutonic Order, which rendered a great service to the papal see. The Teutonic Order was transferred from Palestine to Prussia by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and consistently supported the Ghibellines, not hesitating to quarrel with the Riga Episcopate. Therefore, the popes did not sympathize with the "knights of God" in any way.

But the Lithuanians also behaved extremely independently. In the middle of the XIII century, when the rise of passionate tension was marked on the territory of Eastern Europe, the Lithuanians switched from defense to attempts to attack the Germans. In 1250 Mindovg adopted the Catholic religion, but "his baptism was flattering," and by 1263 Alexander Nevsky and Mindovg planned a joint campaign against the order. In the same year they both died young.

For half a century, the Lithuanian land was torn apart by troubles and fratricide, which is characteristic of the incubation period of ethnogenesis. Passionarity grows without finding a way out, because there is no new culture, i.e. no effective system of prohibitions and goals prompted by a new or updated worldview, because the old no longer inspires anyone, like any cult without creative dogmatics. It was necessary to accept someone else's culture, and the choice was simple: Orthodoxy or Catholicism.

The Order and Poland were ready to resist the Lithuanian pagans, while the Russian princes preferred surrender.

Gedimin, the heir of Prince Viten, was a typical passionary of the ascent phase. During Viten's lifetime, he subdued the Berestey land and launched an offensive against Volhynia and Galicia, where the schismatics ruled - Princes Lev and Andrey Yurievich. By 1323 Volhynia was conquered by the Lithuanians, those princes disappeared from the pages of history.

In 1321 Gediminas defeated a coalition of Russian princes near the Irpen River and took Kiev, leaving a vassal prince there. But since the Russian princes, if necessary, turned to the Golden Horde for help, Gediminas decided to balance the forces. He agreed to the baptism of Lithuania into Catholicism and made peace with Livonia, Riga and Denmark, and a year later, under pressure from the pope, and with the Teutonic Order [4]. By doing this, he unleashed the hands of the West to attack Russia.

Tver was a rival of Moscow and, therefore, an ally of Lithuania, but Metropolitan Theognost sided with the Muscovite-Tatar alliance against Lithuania. Around 1327, Prince Alexander of Tver fled to Lithuania.

Gediminas' son Algirdas (1341-1377) achieved great success. He subordinated Kiev, Bryansk, Rzhev, and Seversk Rus to Lithuania, while his brother Keistut defended Zhmud and Lithuania from the German knights. Thus a mighty power with a Lithuanian dynasty, with a predominantly Russian population and a bizarre mixture of Western and ancient Russian cultures was formed. The Great Russians held on only with Tatar support [5]. But Algirdas in 1358 formulated his program, stating to the ambassadors of Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg: "All Russia should belong to Lithuania", and made unacceptable proposals to them: the return of the lands seized by the Order to Lithuania, the transfer of crusaders to the steppe to fight the Horde and the refusal of the order of the "right to Russians" [6].

In response to this brazen statement, the Crusaders besieged Kovno in 1362. After all, the order was essentially the springboard of all European chivalry and could find replenishment in all European countries. The Germans, the French, the British and the Italians, clad in chain mail, fell on Lithuania[7]. Algirdas and Keistut with Lithuanian-Russian troops came to the rescue of the besieged fortress, but did not dare to engage in battle. Kovno Castle has fallen.

This episode showed that even such a militant ethnic group cannot live without friends. There were supporters of Orthodox Russia and its opponents in Lithuania. These forces tore Lithuania apart, as two large planets tear apart a comet flying between them. The situation was further complicated by the active policy of the Horde. Where the prince and the city entered into an alliance with the Tatars, the Lithuanians were unsuccessful, and vice versa, the Russian lands, united with Lithuania, voluntarily rejected the alliance with the Horde. As long as there was an order in the Horde that the "good king Janibek" was able to maintain, the situation seemed solid. But the socio-ethnic system of the Golden Horde was extremely unstable, and that's why.

183. PEOPLES AND KHANS

Not only among amateurs, but also among professional historians, there is a philistine and quite false opinion that in the XIII-XIV centuries the will of the khan determined the country's policy, both external and internal, and the people obediently followed the khan's whims. It would have been possible if the khans - the Genghisids - had real power to pacify popular unrest, but there was no such power, and there was nowhere to take it. In the ulus of Jochi and Jagatai there were 4 thousand Mongol warriors [8], devoted to their khan. And the number of warriors in the Large, i.e. Golden, Horde alone reached 200 thousand [9] horsemen, despite the fact that the natives of the Far East - Manguts and Khins (Jurchen) - numbered only 2,000 warriors [10].

It is obvious that the khans of the Golden Horde could rule their country and sit on the throne only with the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of their subjects. Of course, there are always the dissatisfied, but they are not always willing to risk their heads for the sake of ephemeral benefits when the government changes.

However, the Mongol campaigns mixed up all the ethnic communities that existed before the XIII century and seemed so integral and stable. Some have only names left, while others even have names disappeared, replaced by the collective term - Tatars. Thus, the Kazan Tatars are a mixture of ancient Bulgarians, Kipchaks, Ugrians - descendants of Magyars and Russian women, whom the Muslims captured and made legitimate wives - inhabitants of harems. However, Russian adventurers also caught Tatar beauties and started families with them, protected by church law. Ethnicity in the contact zones is determined not by origin, but by a stereotype of behavior, and at that time - and confession (faith).

The Crimean Tatars were a completely different ethnic group. Their core was the Polovtsians, but they mixed with various inhabitants of the Mountainous Crimea willingly, which greatly influenced their mores and customs. They were extremely hostile to the Volga Tatars, especially the Golden Horde.

Although the Mongol dynasty ruled in the Golden Horde, but by the beginning of the XIV century the Mongols mixed with the Kipchaks and forgot their language and customs. The Uzbek ceased to be a khan, but became "the sultan of the Mongols, Kipchaks and Turks"[11]. His settled subjects in the cities on the Volga were ardent adherents of Islam, which they had learned from the Bulgarians [12]. But the major population of the Volga region kept their ancient beliefs. The supreme deity was called Tengre. The man had two souls: the original soul - "cat" and the evil soul - "orek". The earth was worshipped as a mother, the Sun and fire were revered. They revered good spirits: the mother of water, the owner of the forest, the house, the barn - and feared evil spirits - the Uburs and Albasts [13]. Islam in this system was an administrative phenomenon, not an organic one. It was recognized, and they did without it.

This sharp difference in ethnic psychology was much more significant than the unity of state power. The conversion of the Golden Horde to Islam gave rise to a double faith, the same as it was in Russia and Scandinavia, which in Hungary caused violent internal wars. The soldiers and advisers surrounding Khan Tokhtamysh, according to Sheref ad-Din Yazdi, were "infidels"[14], as, perhaps, the khan himself. They were listed as Muslims after the terrible order of the Uzbek in 1312, but they did not become them at all. On the contrary, they hated the authorities who forced them to be hypocritical and "ignore" the executions carried out for the sake of the triumph of the new faith. Then they remained silent, but remained themselves, although Islamization was actively carried out in the XIV century[15].

And in Central Asia, i.e. in the Jagatai ulus, everything went in the opposite direction. The pagan Mongols lost the war with the Muslim Turks, whose ancestors converted to Islam back in 1000. The passionarity scattered throughout the population by the Mongols of the XIII century poured additional energy into the population, but could not affect either culture or ethnic dominance. Residents of Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv, Balkh and Khorezm became more energetic and active, but did not turn into Mongols and Kipchaks. On the contrary, they attacked the nomads with greater fury, avenging the destruction of Otrar and Khojent, as well as their cities.

In short, in 1383-1395 the war of 1219-1231 was repeated, but with different results. This war was of great importance not only for the Tatars, but also for the Russian land, transformed into Russia.

NOTES:

[1] See: Tolstov S.P. In the footsteps of vanished civilizations. M.; L., 1948. pp. 318- 319.

[2] See: Traychevsky A. Decree. op. p. 120.

[3] The Hussite war, which broke out in 1419, showed how unpleasant the Czechs were to German expansion. The fierceness of the war is evidenced by the fact that the population of the Czech Republic has decreased from 3 million to 800 thousand over 200 years (Trajchevsky A. Decree. op. p. 120).

[4] See: Shabuldo F.M. Lands of Southwestern Russia as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. p. 10.

[5] Ibid. p. 38.

[6] Ibid. p. 9, 55.

[7] Ibid. p. 66.

[8] Rashid-ad-Din Vol. 1. Book 2. p. 275.

[9] In 1251 Batu sent 30 thousand soldiers to Mongolia to support his cousin Mongke Khan, and during the battle between Tokhta and Nogai in 1299, allegedly about 900 thousand soldiers fought (Rashid-ad-Din. Vol. II.P.86) is a clear exaggeration (by 9-10 times). See: Munkuyev N.Ts.//Tatar-Mongols and Asia and Europe. M., 1970. pp. 370-371.

[10] Half of the regular army was in the headquarters of the Khans of the White Horde (Horde-Yichen) and the Blue Horde (Sheibanz).

[11] Khalikov A.X. The origin of the Tatars of the Volga region and the Urals. Kazan, 1978. p. 90.

[12] Ibid. p. 90-91.

[13] Ibid. p. 23.

[14] Tiesenhausen. Vol. II. p. 151.

[15] See: Khalikov A.X. Decree.op. p.9

________________

XXVII. Empirical generalization

184. IMAGES OF THE LOST

Looking at the described past with a single glance, we will notice that in the 1st millennium, as, indeed, before and later, there was no universal culture. The passing pagan Antiquity, the triumphant Christian Byzantium, the rapidly spreading World of Islam, the emerging Western Middle Ages and Ancient Rus firmly standing on its land, surrounded by ancient Balts from the west, Finno-Ugrians from the north, and scattered nomads of the Great Steppe from the east - all these superethnic wholes were very different from each other. This dissimilarity contributed not so much to cultural exchange as to the development of original cultures, of which only fragments remained.

And this is not accidental. Any author creates for a certain viewer or reader, i.e. for those close to him in spirit. Strangers do not understand and do not need his masterpieces. Therefore, they are ignored or broken. Only in rare cases, when there is a consonance of ethnic cultures, borrowing is possible, but it is localized only in a few subethnoses, not extending to most of the ethnos. So, Byzantine icon painting in Russia flourished behind the stone walls of cities and monasteries, and pagan dances were going around, old women were conjuring, people were sacrificed to the evil gods of the magi. One culture overlapped with another, and they merged much later.

The fate of the monuments left by these cultures was different. Although the frescoes partially survived, the icons and chronicles were repeatedly rewritten and reached the descendants, the church music repeated amazing Byzantine melodies every year. And what was created in the steppe and forest tracts was forgotten or rotted in the ground. And for a long time, the missing was considered non-existent.

Our roundabout path through the history of events showed that the described epoch was creative, tense and tragic, and that it was not the sterility of the soul and mind that determined the observed emptiness, but on the contrary, the burning of hearts and passions incinerated what could burn, gorenje. But still some debris survived.

Over the past 200 years, archaeologists have done everything they could. Many fragments of art objects of the 1st millennium from China to the Atlantic have been collected and published several times. However, it is very difficult to get a general idea of these publications.

And this is no accident! The explosion of passionarity first burns out the place where it originated. At the same time, not only weak people who can only admire the masterpieces inherited from their ancestors die, but also the masterpieces themselves. We see this in the examples of Rome and Parthia, the Han and Gupta empires, the Scythians, Sarmatians and Huns.

So, archeology (i.e., the science of monuments) and the history of material and spiritual culture create a deliberately incomplete, and thereby distorted view of the past of mankind. The necessary clarification can be obtained by referring to ethnology, where the processes of ethnogenesis are considered as statistical, which are a function of fading passionarity, understood as a local fluctuation of the biosphere. And even if this is not a random disturbance, but a phenomenon with a causal basis, then the matter does not change: the process arises and fades.

Statistics of events of the same level - superethnic, ethnic or subethnic - turns out to be more reliable material for comparing epochs and peoples than a scrupulous description of fragments of monuments or fragments of texts. To interpret both, the researcher must descend to the level of human knowledge, for example, the tenth century, i.e. abandon all the achievements of science for a thousand years. This is clearly impractical. But, having taken as a unit of study the verified information about the event, reliably dated, and having collected a sufficient number of them, it is possible to obtain, by examining the accuracy of events, an objective idea of the processes of ethno - and cultural genesis. Having done this work, it is possible to raise the question of the objective characterization of these processes. The answer will suggest itself: the processes going on over time are entropic and inertial, but since they are constantly interrupted by creative outbursts that create new ethnic groups and cultures, the end of the world does not come.

Consequently, the history of culture is a struggle of Creative Force (energy) with Chronos (entropy); this is the manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics in the historical process.

Books are also mortal! In the eternal struggle of energy with entropy, the Biosphere has found a way out in constant renewal. But Culture - the creation of people's hands and minds - has become a victim of the statistical process of entropy carried out by people's hands. This process is most clearly reflected in beautiful things and books, because many serious studies have been devoted to the latter, which have shown that the opinion about the savagery of our ancestors, which prevailed in the XVIII - XIX centuries, was biased and is now outdated. But it was precisely on this bias that the doubt about the authenticity of the "Word about Igor's Regiment" was based, since the fact of its existence contradicted the idea of the primitiveness of the ancient Rus in comparison with the petimeters of the[1]. XVIII century. It was a kind of conceit of semi-educated people who uncritically assimilated the concept of progress, which is by no means applicable to all phenomena in history.

According to new research, "apparently, only a fraction of a percent of the former book wealth of Russia of the XI- XII centuries survived"[2], because fires raged in ancient wooden cities[3], which arose either through the negligence of the inhabitants, or during internecine wars, but foreigners also worked a lot. In 1224, the Germans burned Yuryev. In 1382, when Tokhtamysh invaded Moscow, the Kremlin churches were full "to the rafters", i.e. to the top, with books and icons; everything burned down! In 1547, a fire in Moscow destroyed many manuscripts. In 1612, the Poles burned Moscow to the ground, and in 1812, the civilized French. This is not a complete list of fires that destroyed manuscripts. But valuable items made of sustainable materials, even steel weapons, also died[4].

Wars and fires can be considered as natural disasters. But what is the behavior of the keepers of libraries and archives of the late XVIII - mid XIX century? Monks, then considered "scientists", burned manuscripts as "unnecessary trash", drowned in Volkhov, rotted in damp basements[5]. It's too painful to write about it here.

If even in Russia, where the presence of stone buildings created favorable conditions for the storage of masterpieces, there was a steady process of loss of cultural heritage, then how much more intense it should have been in the Great Steppe, where Chronos, devouring his children, acted without any restrictions.

Birch bark, on which poems were written, is less stable than parchment, furs and silk briefly outlived their owners, gold and silver bowls with bas-reliefs poured into ingots, the weapons of the fallen soldiers rusted, the memory of the past and songs disappeared with the change of language. And it was this tragedy of losses that European scientists declared "savagery", because they considered the non-preserved to be non-existent. This is the logic of dead erudition, meaningless, uncreative science.

But even in the presence of such a deliberately defective approach, we can conclude. People cherish what they consider "their own" in spatial and temporal aspects. And they neglect what was or has become alien to them. There are exceptions to this rule - these are the humanists of the XV century, collectors of manuscripts and art monuments for the Hermitage and the Louvre, keepers of the lists of the Koran or Tripitaka and the like, but, alas, against the general background of history, these are units. These are the individual swallows that do not make spring, because their labors are gradually devoured by Chronos. And Life goes on, because only she knows how to overcome Time.

185. APOCRYPHA

(Biblical texts included the Septuagint)

While working at the State Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR in 1949, the author came across a strange text written in the Uighur alphabet in a language unfamiliar to the author. The text was accompanied by a translation into Russian on a separate sheet of thick paper, written in ink in compliance with pre-revolutionary spelling. The text and translation were in the same room of the museum, where many exhibits, undescribed and unregistered, apparently drafts, were dumped during the blockade.

The author managed to copy the translation of the text without observing the spelling, hoping then to find time for a detailed study of this document, but when he returned to Leningrad in 1956, he found that some of the items had been transferred to the Hermitage, and some of the exhibits were missing. Thus, only a copy of the translation, made by an unnamed scientist before 1917, and several of his notes, which the author managed to copy, have been preserved. These circumstances force us to consider the published text unreliable, but the thoughts of the ancient Oriental author are so extraordinary that familiarization with them may interest the modern reader.

An unknown translator perceived the ancient text as a series of consecutive theses and numbered them, which made it easier to read and understand the original. The author has added a short comment to the translation and is responsible only for it. "This strange teaching boiled down to the following[6]: 1. God, who created the world, is a person, but by no means an Absolute. (The term used is a generalization of the Pleroma [7] of the Gnostics, the Prajni [8] of the Mahayanists and the Element of Light of the Manichaeans[9]. Consequently, the author of the text is an opponent of these three doctrines [10], which allows us to determine a very approximate date of the creation of the treatise - from the III to the XVI century.)

2. God, having created a space outside himself, limited himself, because He Himself is outside the space created by Him. Therefore, God is not omnipresent.

3. Having created time, an independent phenomenon, God has limited himself, because He cannot make the former non-existent. Therefore, He is not omnipotent.

4. Having created souls endowed with free will, God cannot predict their actions, otherwise the will would not be free. Therefore, He is not omniscient.

5. This is so because He is good, for if He were omnipresent, He would be both in evil and in sin, but this is not.

6. This is so because He is merciful, for if He were omnipotent and would not correct the evil of this world, it would not be compassion, but hypocrisy.

7. This is so, because if He were omniscient, He would know the evil thoughts of people who are ready to commit sin consciously; but people could not avoid sin and act differently, so as not to violate His will. But then He should be responsible for all actions, and not people, who are just performers.

8. God is good, which means that the world He created is good. And the alternation of birth and death is not evil, but good. The eternal soul (atman) [11] is reborn, forgetting the grievances and grief suffered by it in the previous life. The chain of rebirth is continuous. But then where does evil come from?

9. If God is innocent of the evil of this world, then the source of evil is Satan[12]. But if Satan was created by God, then God is to blame for his deeds. Since this cannot be (it contradicts the first principle), then it means. Satan is the product of non-existence and is non-existence itself (shunyata)[13].

10. Satan is acting, so non-existence can become active. Non-existence envelops particles of Light (photons) and affects the free will of people through lies, through the irreversibility of time and through gaps in space. Evil comes into the world from nothingness, and woe to those through whom it comes.

11. Those people, animals, demons [14] who freely accepted the seductions of Satan, turned into undead and lost the highest benefits: death and resurrection; for one who does not live can neither die nor rise again.

12. Creator God (maybe Adi-Buddha or Brahma) he saves people through their prayer by giving them the strength to overcome evil and suffering, thereby displacing Satan "into outer darkness" (in relation to the material world). Praise His Name."

The interpretation of the quoted philosopheme is extremely difficult. It cannot be called dualistic, since there is no symmetry of the two principles and the act of creation limits the Creator's capabilities. Metaphysical evil is considered as the influence of an extraneous factor, but the latter acquires this opportunity only through contact with matter. The attitude towards Gnosticism and Mahayanic Buddhism is clearly negative, but the life-affirming theism itself resembles a combination of the "yellow faith" of Tibet with Nestorian reminiscences of early Byzantium and Eastern variants of Mithraism. In the cultural history of Central Asia, such a concept is unknown, although it is logical and original.

Apparently, the above philosopheme was the fruit of the individual creativity of some Turfan freethinker, and the text got into the museum with the materials of our great travelers. But this is a hypothesis that cannot be confirmed. It remains for us to consider the concept of an unknown author and an anonymous translation as an apocrypha, as unreliable texts were called in the Middle Ages. For a book on the history of the Great Steppe, this publication is just an insert novella.

186. THE MECHANISM of a PASSIONATE PUSH

A passionate push, or micromutation, is a condition without which no ethnic group would have arisen, both living and ancient, from which even the name has not been preserved. And now it is appropriate to raise the question: is there a general law of nature, or a series of random combinations of social fluctuations? The second assumption can be discarded immediately, since the geographical distribution of the bands where passionarity arises is in no way connected with the level of development of productive forces, crises of industrial relations, as well as with variations of ethnic identity, which academician Yu.V. Bromley suggests, and even with the landscapes of the planet, it does not matter whether natural or anthropogenic.

Obviously, analogies should be sought at the cellular and molecular levels of the biosphere. Indeed, the role of mutations there is undeniable and does not require additional evidence. However, it can also be traced at the atomic level. Here, a passionate shock corresponds to the impact of a neutron beam on the mass of matter. The latter can be either inert, like a monotonous landscape, with a uniform way of farming and a homogeneous population, or radioactive, containing isotopes of uranium or plutonium, which is similar to the junction of a variety of nourishing, or rather accommodating, landscapes, with peculiar forms of life and original farming techniques, and consequently cultural types.

In the first case, the initial pulse decays both at the population and atomic level, in the second case it causes a chain reaction that will continue until the source of secondary neutrons runs out and the isotope content drops to a certain norm for a given mass and shape. Sometimes it ends with an explosion that disrupts the structure of the host substance.

Having noticed this, let's return to the population level we are interested in, which lies four orders of magnitude higher than the atomic one. The same pattern will be found here.

The radiation that causes the mutation passes through various regions. Sparsely populated, such as deserts, react extremely poorly to the mutagenic impulse, which fades at the person level. Monotonous landscapes, even densely populated ones, extinguish impulses more slowly, but also radically, because they themselves have inertia of rest, the vector of which is always not the same as in a mutagenic pulse. But diverse landscapes with different ethnic content are labile, as a result of which new ethnic systems with many chances of survival are easily formed at their junctions.

Map "The map of passion shocks in Eurasia from the X century BC to the XV century AD (111 KB)"

http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/maps/args14.gif

However, if ethnogenesis proceeds very quickly, it can break fragile systemic ties; then the process breaks off in the acmatic phase. There is a fracture in which the ethnos can either die, "crumble peacefully", or remain in an optimal state under these conditions, in which entropy slows down, although it does not completely disappear. The limit of ethnogenesis is homeostasis, characterized by the absence of free (extra) energy. Because of this, homeostatic ethnic groups are not aggressive, although they are quite resistant.

Thus, it turns out that the "beginning" of ethnic history is real as a natural phenomenon. Therefore, it is not comparable with conventional reference points: the foundation of Rome, the first Olympiad, the new era, incorrectly compared with the birth of Christ, the Hijra, etc. Similarly, dates of political history are not suitable for starting the countdown, for example, the formation of the national French kingdom - the election of Hugo Capet. It was preceded by a long, more than 150 years, process of passionate rise of ethnic groups that inhabited the territory of present-day France. In 986 this process did not begin and did not end; but it became obvious, nothing more.

In determining the starting point of ethnogenesis, it is not necessary to strive for accuracy up to a year. Our observations can only establish the incubation period of the maturation of a new behavioral stereotype and the organization of a new structure that breaks the dilapidated framework of the old one. This degree of accuracy is sufficient to establish the identity of atomic, molecular, cellular and population mutations. But the place of organizational, i.e. personal, norms of behavior should be clarified.

187. THE LAWS OF NATURE AND THE "FREEDOM STRIP"

Just as the movement of a single atom in the Wilson chamber is unpredictable, or the nature of the reaction of a unicellular organism to a change in the host environment, whether it is thermal, chemical or electromagnetic, so is the behavior of higher mammals at the organismic level, and humans at the personal level. In all cases, there is a "band of freedom" in probabilistic changes.

For microorganisms, the freedom to choose from two or more variants of reaction to a change in the environment is a way of intraspecific selection, because an error leads the organism to death. For higher vertebrates, the situation is about the same.

The hunting of predators is based on this principle, exterminating those animals that allow themselves to be caught and eaten. But if the "elusive" hares and deer did not appear from time to time, then their species would have been destroyed by foxes and wolves long ago, after which these latter would have died of hunger.

This phenomenon has been described for a long time and exhaustively, but the biographies of individual animals were described only by Seton Thompson in the books "Life of the Persecuted" and "Animal Heroes". In fact, this remarkable naturalist applied to zoology the method used by the history of "great people" who for some reason deserved the attention of the researcher.

However, it is no longer necessary to prove that a number of biographies do not explain major historical changes. The deeds of very talented and energetic people are included in the deeds of the masses - large population entities, and the consequences of exploits are smoothed out by general ethnic development, and this latter is universal human formation programmed on a planetary scale. At the same time, the part of historical science that studies the actions of individuals is not barren. It gives clarifications that make it clear that the line of ethnogenesis is not smooth, but a broken one, consisting of many zigzags, mutually compensating for long periods of time.

This observation is of great practical importance, because the zigzags of development are commensurate with the biological life of individuals. But a person, one or the other, does not care at all in what era he lives: in a quiet, peaceful or, as the poet said, "in moments of doom." It is necessary to apply to both, but once in the "freedom lane", a person can find either an erroneous or the right way out. Of course, we know that an individual decision cannot affect the result of a grandiose process, but for those decades, and sometimes two or three centuries, individual actions are by no means indifferent. For example, the fool who released a couple of rabbits to Australia disturbed the biological balance of an entire continent, and Berthold Schwartz, having discovered gunpowder, made it possible for European kings to deal with feudal lords.

We can say that gunpowder would have been discovered and applied anyway, that the date of its discovery is not important for the global history of technology, but for the people of the XIV century. it was super-significant, because the destinies of capitals, castles, and thus villages depended on it. In short, zigzags, even short-lived ones, leave indelible scars on the body of humanity, and the entire biosphere. This cannot be called either good or bad, because it is a law of nature.

It goes without saying that it is pointless to divide zigzags into progressive and reactionary ones. If progress proceeds along the course of time, like ethnogenesis, then the end of ethnogenesis - decay - should be considered a progressive phenomenon, which is logical, but contradicts the generally accepted perception of the concept of progress itself. The way out of this controversy offers the law of negation of negation. For example, in place of a rotted oak, an oak grove and a herd of wild boars eating acorns appeared from fallen acorns.

But this is not a zigzag, but simply the discreteness of systems of the same order, the direction of the momentum giving the zigzag will be perpendicular to the course of development. Therefore, the question of progressivity or reactionality of zigzags is illegitimate. However, the general interest of the reading public in the zigzags of history is justified. The number, or rather, the density of zigzags shows the level of the passionary tension of the systems and characterizes their contacts at the superethnic level. With negative complementarity, as a result of zigzags, chimeric wholes are formed, usually unstable, and with a positive one - the merger and formation of new ethnic groups, no more "progressive" than the former ones. Therefore, the very question of evaluation, now called axiology, is irrelevant here. The scientist has only the right to state that this is the case, and not as he would like. The laws of nature do not need approval.

But, moreover, the "freedom strip" does not free either a biological individual nor a person from natural influences. The specificity of "freedom" is only that a person can make a choice between a correct or erroneous decision, and in the latter case, death awaits him. This means that freedom of choice is by no means the right to irresponsibility. On the contrary, it is a heavy moral burden, because, being in society, a person is responsible not only for himself and his unborn offspring, but also for his team, his friends, fellow tribesmen, the heritage of his ancestors, the well-being of his descendants and, finally, for the ideas that shape his culture and even the ideals for which it is worth living and it's not a pity to die.

It's good for a frog that, after laying eggs, no longer remembers about the offspring, but only looks for where to devour. It is difficult for a baboon guarding its females and cubs from leopards. But it is hardest of all for people: the burden of responsibility that lies on them is so heavy that it can only be relieved by a conscious rejection of conscience, or, what is the same, the rupture of a natural connection with nature, the rejection of duty to it. Then he will choose obviously erroneous decisions, for example, to use drugs, or to practice psychological perversions, or to kill for the sake of killing, but then his existence will be short-lived, no more than two or three generations, because nature will excommunicate him from himself.

This way of using the right to choose a solution generates anti-systems such as Cathars, Karmats, Pavlikians and the like. They feed on the same passionarity as ethnic groups, changing only the dominant, or the sign of the zigzags they form, (plus to minus).

Ethnic history is, on the one hand, a function of one or another ethnogenesis, which began with a passionate push, and on the other - the mutual absorption of the energy of two or more ethnic groups in ethnic contact. The nature of mutual settlement depends again on two factors: the phases of the contacting ethnic groups and complementarity - positive or negative.

For a sufficiently long period of time, an unstable balance is established between ethno-cultural systems. Contemporaries of these "quiet" periods consider them permanent, and their history is well-established. When a new explosion of ethnogenesis shakes another region and causes a wave of cause-and-effect relationships, they believe that someone is to blame for the violent events and, therefore, they need to look for a criminal.

Such a turbulent period was the XIII century for the entire Eurasian continent, when a tiny Siberian people suddenly performed acts that shocked all civilized states - from the Yellow Sea to the Mediterranean. And then, in the XIV century, this ethnos quickly turned into a relic, a chip from itself.

In order to understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to consider what preceded it, how it ended and what changed, taking into account at the same time that the Mongols were the winners. Here an inductive method and greater accuracy will be required. So, by alternating degrees of approximation, you can find the desired goal - a consistent version.

188. THE POWER OF BIAS

V.I. Vernadsky, who discovered the biochemical energy of living matter of the biosphere, noted another phenomenon, as if energy with the opposite sign - "mind", more precisely, "thought", which, not being a form of energy, nevertheless produces actions that seem to correspond to it[15]. It produces something, but what is the work it does? What does it create? And finally, what is its relationship with the level of passionary tension of the system in which it manifests itself?

This can be answered only with the help of ethnology, which operates with the concepts of superethnoses and their contacts in the study of the completed processes of ethnic history, for example, what is the conflict of the XIII century, when the Romano-Germanic Catholic superethnos, which was in the akmatic phase, sought to suppress Orthodox Orthodoxy - Byzantium and Russia, the inertia of the development of which has dried up. The Crusaders' attempt to create a Latin Empire on the site of Byzantium failed a year later. Papal calls to suppress the Russian schismatics were even less successful, but in the aspect we have adopted, it is not the results that are important, which often depend on historical accidents, but the tendency of activity, or the dominant output of free energy. And here it was expressed very clearly: the pope called on Catholics to crusade against Lithuanians, Russians and Tatars, guided not by material calculations and the search for benefits that were easier to find in Tunisia and Andalusia, but by a sense of negative compliment to neighboring cultures. And it is always easy to find an excuse for the desired war. You just need to put forward your thesis and get people to accept it without criticism. And then everything will roll by inertia. And it rolled!

In the XIII century, Western European geographical science, which at that time was of great practical importance, represented a raging fountain of myths, legends, unrestrained fantasy and conscious lies. This was the level of science available at that time, which was based NOT on experience and observation, but on the activity of free thought, fueled by the credulity of the masses and the upper classes [16].

One fable about the kingdom of Prester John took into oblivion several thousand Frenchmen and Germans who went on the second crusade to meet an imaginary ally [17]. And when the Christian ally really appeared from the depths of Asia, another misinformation was deliberately given. But this lie, a product of reason, has become habitual, i.e. it has become a factor forming a stereotype of behavior, and as such has survived to our time. The preconceived opinion turned into a passing mistake, which medieval science was powerless to correct[18].

There are innumerable troubles arising from preconceived opinions and passing mistakes. The merit of science is that it often reveals long-standing prejudices that have never been proven and do not seem to require proof. To refute a false judgment, you need to uncover its roots.

Our ancestors, who lived in Moscow Russia and in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the XVIII century, did not doubt at all that their eastern neighbors - Tatars, Mordvins, Cheremis, Ostyaks, Tunguses, Kazakhs, Yakuts - were the same people as Tverichi, Ryazan, Vladimirtsy, Novgorodians and Ustyuzhans. Russian were alien to the idea of national exclusivity, and they were not shocked that, for example, Mordvin Nikon sat on the patriarchal throne, and the Russian armies were led by the descendants of the Cheremis - Sheremetevs and the Kutuzov Tatars.

In the countries of Western Europe, prejudice against non-European peoples was born a long time ago. It was believed that the Asian steppe, which many geographers defined from Hungary, others from the Carpathians, was an abode of savagery, barbarism, ferocious morals and khan's arbitrariness. These views were fixed by the authors of the XVIII century, the creators of universal concepts of history, philosophy, morality and politics. At the same time, the most significant thing was that these authors had an extremely superficial and often wrong idea about Asia. Nevertheless, this did not bother them, and their views were not refuted by French or German travelers who had visited the cities of Near Asia or India and China.

They also counted Russians among the savages who threatened the only valuable, in their opinion, European culture, based on the fact that for 240 years Russia was part of first the Great Mongolian Ulus, and then the Golden Horde. This concept was logical in its own way, but by no means true.

In the XVIII century . Russian petimeters, returning from France, where they did not so much comprehend science as they learned ready-made concepts, perceived and brought home the concept of the identity of Russians and Tatars as Eastern barbarians. In Russia, they managed to present this opinion to their contemporaries as a self-evident point of view on history.

This false teaching infected even A.S. Pushkin. He texted: "Russia was determined to have a high purpose. Its vast plains absorbed the power of the Mongols and stopped the invasion at the very edge of Europe: the barbarians did not dare to leave enslaved Russia in their rear and returned to the steppes of their East."

And is it so? Was there really a threat of Mongol conquest of Europe? In the XIX century. all scientists and publicists assumed that innumerable hordes came from Asia, crushing everything in their path by numbers. Now we know that the Mongols were about 600 thousand people in total, and their army was only 130-140 thousand horsemen who fought on three fronts: in China and Korea, in Central Asia and Iran and in the Polovtsian steppes. At that time, about 6 million people lived in Russia, and 1.6 million in Poland and Lithuania. At that time, no more than 700 thousand inhabitants lived in the Volga region, and 500 thousand in the steppe between the Don and the Carpathians. At that time, the population of France was approaching 20 million. The same number is in Italy, Germany, and in England - 3 million inhabitants.

In the XIII century . the danger to Europe - a peninsula protected from all sides - was more psychological than real. But publicists and thinkers of the XVIII-XIX centuries fantasized about a subject that occupied them, but which they did not know.

The main thing is different. Why did the Russian people of the XIII- XIV centuries, for the sake of what common interests, defend the German feudal lords, Hanseatic burghers, Italian prelates and French knights, who steadily advanced on Russia, either exterminating or enslaving "schismatics of the Greek rite", whom they did not consider to be genuine Christians? Truly, the theory of the salvation of Europe by Russia was an incomprehensible blindness, unfortunately, not outlived until now.

The roots of the disease, which we call Mongolophobia, should be sought in the same XIII century, when the Mongol wars took place. It may be objected that the Europeans, and the Romans and Greeks before them, did not like the steppe barbarians - Scythians, Huns. But since we are talking about the Mongols, and not about the Huns, Seljuk Turkmens and even the Tuaregs of the Sahara, who conquered most of Spain for a while, then the causes of Mongolophobia should be sought in the XIII century. For until that time, the Mongols had not been heard of and they were not in the historical arena.

Every phenomenon observed in situ has its origin in the past, sometimes close, sometimes distant, but never infinite, supposedly characteristic of all millennia of human existence. But any description of the past is history. Consequently, the history of any process is a continuation of the moment when, for one reason or another, this process began. Our work is devoted to the search for the beginning, the origin of the "black legend" about the unsympathetic nature of the peoples of Russia and Mongolia, which merged into something whole for medieval Western Europeans. This work is like a diagnosis of a grandiose disease - a delusion that has claimed many lives and generated a lot of unnecessary and senseless grief.

We must pay tribute to the intelligence and tact of our ancestors. They did not create a reverse homicidal worldview system. They treated the surrounding peoples as equals, even if unlike them. And thanks to this, they have withstood the age-old struggle, having established as a principle not the extermination of neighbors, but the friendship of peoples. That is why it is important for the Russian reader to understand with whom and how our ancestors had to fight both in the East and in the West.

But was it significant for the ideologists of the XIII century, when the brilliant successes of the Crusaders, who captured Constantinople, the capital of the "schismatics" in 1204, ended a year later with a crushing defeat at Adrianople from the Bulgarians and Polovtsians? The Latin emperor Baldwin was captured; he died in a tower in the Bulgarian capital Tarnovo, and the war took on the most brutal character. The Cumans raged against the Latins and Greeks, the Greek highlanders of Epirus and Asia Minor exterminated the knights, and Dante compared the devils of "Hell" with pirates and Greeks raging on the Mediterranean Sea. The bitterness grew.

The same situation developed at the beginning of the XIII century in Russia. After the first successes, the Swedes and the crusaders of the Livonian Order were stopped by Alexander Nevsky, and Daniel Galitsky defended his land from the Hungarians and Poles. These were, of course, temporary victories, but when the princes concluded a military alliance with the Horde, it became obvious that the onslaught of Papist Europe to the East choked.

And here the "sphere of reason" gave way to a riot of feeling. No one in the medieval West blamed their incompetent kings, self-willed knights, mercenary Italian merchants, through whose fault the two-hundred-year-old howl was lost -

They blamed the opponents who did not allow themselves to be defeated, trying to justify their conclusion by means of science, which at that time was far from perfect. Alas, this is not the only example of the triumph of philistine psychology over scientific psychology.

NOTES:

[1] Is equivalent to the current "dandy", more precisely "dude".

[2] Sapunov B.V. The book in Russia in the XI-XIII centuries L., 1978.

[3] See: Svirin L.N. The Art of the book of Ancient Russia XI-XVII centuries. M.. 1964. P. 11; ms.: Rozov N.N. The Book of Ancient Russia XI-XIV centuries.M., 1977.

[4] Only 183 Russian swords of the XI-XIII centuries have survived to this day, and even fewer helmets, although they were very carefully preserved (see: Sapunov B.V. Decree. op.).

[5] See: Svirin A.N. Decree. Op. pp. 12-13.

[6] The initial phrase shows that the Russian translator gave not a literal, but a semantic translation, rather a retelling, which is understandable, because the original language is extremely complex and poorly studied. But it is unclear where the Russian translator had such knowledge from.

[7] The pleroma is the fullness of all that exists, emanating zones - particles of light, clothed with "low matter" that has no independent existence and, as the eons soar back into the Pleroma, turns into nothing.

[8] Prajna is transcendental intuition; a teaching that arose within the framework of Buddhism in the 1st century AD and was widely used in Mahayana, which postulates the illusory nature of the world, including the cognizing subject.

[9] Manichaeism is a variant of the Antiochian school of Gnosticism, which recognized two elements: Light and Darkness. The world, according to Saturnil and Mani, is the body of the First Man (probably Ormuzd) torn by clouds of darkness, suffering in the snares of darkness. Light is equated with Spirit, Darkness with matter; both elements are impersonal.

[10] All three teachings are pessimistic, i.e. life-negating, and atheistic.

[11] Atman, according to the Vedanta philosophical system, is an immortal soul subject to karma - the law of causality.

[12] The doctrine of Satan as an outraged angel comes from the Knite of Enoch and spread as an attempt to link strict, primitive monism with the spiritual experience of Christians and Muslims.

[13] Shunyata - emptiness, which can be seen only at the moment of death, as a "clear light of pure reality", is the teaching of Tantric Buddhism.

[14] In ancient times, people did not consider themselves "the crown of creation" and "kings of nature". They were supposed to occupy an intermediate position, and above and below them there are beings whom they called "demons". Creatures an order of magnitude lower have now been discovered - these are microorganisms and viruses. Those that are an order of magnitude higher are not open and therefore are considered non-existent. Information about them is present only in folklore and fantasy literature.

[15] See: Vernadsky V.I. Chemical structure of the biosphere... I 200.

[16] See: Gumilev L.N. The Search for a fictional Kingdom. p.388.

[17] Ibid. pp. 390-391.

[18] See: Gumilev L.N. Humanitarian and natural aspects of historical geography. L., 1984. pp. 42-57.

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