30. Ancient Rus and the Great Steppe, Gumilev

THIS IS THE LAST CHAPTER, we started uploading on Aug 11th 2024; XXXIII. Contours, 216. THE BEGINNING OF A NEW TIME, finished today, December 27th.

Epochs, like people, are mortal. Superethnic integrity, coupled with a worldview and cultural tradition, arising as a result of a passionate push, inevitably loses inertia, and the next passionate push marks the beginning of a new process. However, culture can pass on the baton, which often obscures natural patterns: to contemporaries of the era, which accounts for the gap between the old and new ethnogenesis, it seems to them that nothing special has happened. And historians and literary critics cannot notice the living reality already because the object of their study is the creation of human hands, which can either be preserved or destroyed, but not mature or grow old.

And how can a contemporary notice the long-running process of ethnic modification? This is visible only to the historian, whose vision covers centuries, and in them the violent excesses that amaze contemporaries turn out to be only zigzags of ethnogenesis. At the same time, some quiet epochs are in fact the calm before the storm, preparation for the manifestation of a new ethnic group that has already passed its incubation period.

Such an epoch for Russia was the time of the reigns of Dmitry Donskoy, Vasily I and Vasily the Dark, when the swollen passionarity turned Ancient Rus into Great Russia. It took relatively little time for this restructuring - 70 years.

Let's imagine a Russian man born in 1412, after the last Tatar invasion of Russia. In the years of his childhood, he learns that he lives in the Moscow Principality, which is part of the ulus of the Great Horde, the ruler of which is considered a "tsar". In the west lies the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, hostile and dangerous, and in the north - the rich Novgorod Republic, where lawlessness prevails; from there, evil robbers come to the ears, which it is better not to fall into their clutches.

But political division does not entail cultural division. Orthodoxy remains the dominant worldview in Moscow, Novgorod, and most of Lithuania, despite its state contact with Catholic Poland. The situation seems to be extremely stable, and its change is impossible.

And 70 years later, in 1482, there was no Novgorod Veche, no Large Horde, no independent Lithuania, which turned into the outskirts of the kingdom of Poland, oppressing Orthodox subjects. But the Russian kingdom appeared, calling itself the "third Rome" and claiming eternal prosperity. So the course of ethnogenesis broke ethno-social systems that seemed eternal.

Thus, the topic we have outlined is exhausted by the XIV century. The description of the XV century itself requires a different methodology for studying sources and events. We will leave this to other scientists, and we ourselves will limit ourselves to a contour outline of the course of events only in order to understand exactly what happened and how it happened.

S.M. Solovyov, considering the various principles of periodization of Russian history, notes: "... in history nothing ends suddenly and nothing begins suddenly; the new begins at the time when the old continues"[1]. This wise generalization applies to ethnic history even more than to social history. Let us recall how in the Roman Empire Christian communities - a newborn ethnos with its own structure and an original stereotype of behavior - pushed the bearers of the old tradition to the outskirts of the area, and the winners inherited the proud name - the Romans, and the vanquished began to be called pagani, i.e. redneck. Now we are forced to invent ethnonyms for a new ethnos ourselves, so as not to get confused; therefore, we call the descendants of Christians of different tribes Byzantines.

In the XV century. the Old Russian ethnic tradition came to naught, and in its place there were three ethnic groups: Great Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, who called themselves Russians until the XVII century. Ukrainians are a conditional ethnonym, as are the Byzantines.

But since Lithuanians, Tatars, Ugrians and Eastern Finns took part in this complex process in addition to the ancient Rus, it is advisable to pay attention to the beginning of the XV century, especially since S.M. Solovyov himself considers 1462 to be the border of Ancient Russia and the Moscow state - the future Russia[2]. In this case, social, cultural and ethnic periodizations coincide[3].

217. CONTOUR OF THE HORDE

The wounds inflicted by Timur on ulus Juchiev could not be healed. The descendants of the "people of long will" died defending the Great Steppe from the Gulyams (mercenaries), of the Samarkand ruler. Although Timur failed to break the Horde, he left a "splinter" in its body - Murza Edigei, who became the "ruler of the court", i.e. the head of the government. By origin, Edigey was a mangut, but his support was the Nogais, a Turkic tribe that roamed between the lower reaches of the Volga and the Yaik [4]. In pre-Mongol times, this territory was inhabited by Guzes, and it is possible that the Nogais were at least partially their descendants. This hypothesis explains the hostility of the Nogais to the Volga and Crimean Tatars, descendants of the Kipchaks, with whom they had constant wars - a steppe vendetta. And if so, then it is clear that they recognized Timur's colleague as their leader - the wise and brave Edigei, who easily elevated the khans to the throne of Sarai and just as easily removed them. In fact, even during the life of Edigei, the Nogais fell out of the integrity of the Great Horde, as it became known in the XV century, but in 1438 Sarai was still a large city and a major shopping center [5].

Nevertheless, the collapse of the Great Horde continued. The pretenders to the throne killed each other, relying on the Lithuanian Gediminovich, then on the Samarkand Timurids, and the ethnic groups continued to separate. In 1428 Tyumen was liberated, where Khan Abulkhair and his ulus adopted the name "Uzbeks". Around 1438, Crimea and Kazan separated from the Great Horde. All these newly formed khanates were enemies of the Great Horde. Moscow supported the alliance with the Horde for the longest time, although it evaded the regular payment of tribute. The money that continued to be collected from the peasants, ostensibly for the Tatars, remained in the treasury of the Moscow prince. Because of the strife in the Horde, it was possible not to pay[6]. Therefore, it is clear that the Russian princes fought not against the khan, but against the rebels, who often raided the border areas. Even Vasily II himself was defeated and captured in 1445 by Ulug-Muhammad, who had left the Horde, who had recently sought refuge in Russia.

And the tragic death of the Barn in 1480 was the work of not so much Russians as Nogais and Crimeans. The disintegration of the ethnosocial system of the ulus of Dzhuchiyev was a direct consequence of a decrease in the level of passionarity due to strife and wars. But this level decreased slowly, and until the end of the XVI century. islands of high passionarity remained, gradually eroded by selection, i.e., the movement of passionaries to the vicinity of Moscow.

And yet, ulus Dzhuchiev lasted longer than others. The eastern Mongols fell victim to their western neighbors, the Oirats, by 1434, when the Great Horde on the Volga was still holding out.

Oirats are the name of the union of four tribes: Dorbets, Khoits, Torgouts and Hoshouts, whose ancestors were exiled to Western Mongolia by Genghis, and there they mixed with the Turkic ethnos - Oirats [7] and took their ethnic name, thanks to which there are many Turkisms in their language [8]. During the internecine war of 1259-1301, the Western Mongols fought on the side of Haidu against Kublai. This led to their alienation from the eastern Mongols, who were supported by the Ming Empire. In 1449 The Oirats completely defeated the Chinese army, but limited themselves to plunder and were forced to retreat to the north, where they killed the Mongol khan in 1451. However, when the Oirat commander Esen tried to declare himself khan, the princes rebelled against the attempted usurpation and killed Esen in 1454. The Oirat state became a steppe republic that refused to conquer Eastern Mongolia, where power returned to the Genghisid Khans.

Map "Border of peaceful peace of Mongolia of the XVI-XVIII centuries (41 KB)"

http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/maps/args17.gif

[not too explicit? There’s Korea and Japan to the right.]

At the same time, the Oirats made a grandiose raid to the west. Between 1452 and 1455, their army passed through Mogulistan, the northern outskirts of the Jagatai Khanate, invaded the Kipchak steppe, turning south, passed through the Syr Darya Valley to Tashkent and returned home with rich booty[9]. After this defeat, the White Horde disappeared from the map of Asia, in place of which tribal unions of Kazakhs (juz) took shape. Like the Oirats, the Kazakhs began to stand out from the hordes [10] a little earlier, in 1425-1428, and even then they replaced the khan's power with the councils of princes. The Oirats called their rulers by the Chinese word "taiji" (tsarevich), and the Kazakhs by the Arabic word "sultan". In both cases, there was a restoration of pre-Genghis social forms while preserving the ethnic norms inherent in nomads. The decrease in passion tension affected the social life of the Oirats and Kazakhs and brought them back to the idyll lost in the XIII century when building a world empire created due to an excess of passionarity. Now there were only enough forces for civil strife and raids, but not for external conquests, no matter how tempting they might be.

And now let's compare two reference systems: social and ethnic. From the point of view of social history, the changes that took place in the Great Steppe should be considered as a regression, since the traditions of the tribal system have triumphed. This was of little use to the nomads because intertribal wars were accompanied by the constant theft of livestock and, consequently, the violation of the economy of both the vanquished and the victors, whose youth were engaged not in creative work, but in senseless bloodshed. In the socio-economic aspect, the nomadic world has taken a step back.

But, considering ethnogenic processes[11], we see that energy dissipation is a natural way out of the overheating of the acmatic phase. The number of passionaries is sharply decreasing, as well as sub-passionaries, which healthy collectives are trying to get rid of. The percentage of harmonious individuals for whom conservatism is most desirable increases. They are ready to defend this order courageously and even tolerate passionaries in their environment who do not interfere with their usual way of life.

Oirats, Kazakhs, Nogais and Black Sea Tatars came to this state in the XV century, with the exception of the Crimeans, who tied their fate with the Ottoman Empire, and the Uzbeks, who defeated the enemies of the nomadic world - the Timurids - in 1507.

218. CONTOUR of ANCIENT RUSSIA

Back in the XIII century, the "light-bright and beautifully decorated Russian land" fascinated contemporaries, but already in the XIV century only fragments remained of it, quickly captured by Lithuania. Lithuania's meteoric rise is over... by joining it to Poland, thanks to which Lithuania was introduced into the Western European superethnos. But most of the population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania consisted of Russian people who kept Orthodoxy as a symbol of ethnic self-affirmation. The high culture of Ancient Russia, which survived the Old Russian passionarity, attracted many Lithuanian heroes, and it seemed that Lithuanians and Russians would merge into one people, but the influence of Poland was no less effective.

That part of Lithuanians who in the XIV century kept the faith of their ancestors, in 1386 was converted to Catholicism by Jagiello Olgerdovich, but the other part, who tied their fate with the Russians, supported Vitovt Keistutovich, a cousin of Jagiello.

The struggle of Gediminas' grandchildren for the throne of Lithuania is a chain of murders, and betrayals to principles and sympathies; but the story on a personal level deserves a separate narrative. In general, the course of ethnic history looks like this. The Russians wanted to see an Orthodox prince on the throne of their country, even a Litvin. The Poles were ready to equalize the rights of Lithuanians with their gentry, but insisted on Catholicism as the state religion, which provided Poland with contacts with the West. The Teutonic Order and the Tatar Horde were an obstacle to them, and they considered Russians as an object of conquest.

The ambitious and unscrupulous Prince Vytautas played on this ethnic contradiction. In order to receive German help, he ceded his native Zhmud to the order in 1398 and declared himself king of Lithuania and Russia, hoping to seize all Russian lands. But already in 1399 he was defeated by the Tatars and forced to return to the Polish-Lithuanian union.

The continuation of the offensive to the east proved difficult. True, in 1402 the Lithuanians defeated the Ryazan people at Lyubutsk, took Vyazma and in 1404 pacified Smolensk, but Moscow was rescued by the Tatars of Shadibek, who forced the Lithuanians to retreat without a fight in 1406 [12]. In addition, Orthodox Lithuanians went over to the side of Moscow in droves; even the son of Algirdas, Svidrigailo, was among the defectors, although he returned home in 1409, preferring the Lithuanian prison to the mercies of the Moscow prince. We mentioned him for a reason - he will show himself yet.

Vytautas' successes were also stopped by the war with the order. Only in 1410 the Polish-Lithuanian-Russian-Tatar army defeated the German knights at Grunwald. After that, the order did not recover, as the influx of volunteers from the West stopped. The Germans fought with the Czechs, the British fought with the French; there were no extra soldiers left in any kingdom of Europe with such a self-extinguishing of passionarity.

So, Moscow turned out to be impregnable. Novgorod fought off the Swedes without Lithuanian help, and concluded "eternal peace" with the order in 1420. Edigei burned the suburbs of Kiev in 1416, and Vytautas had only to return to restoring the union with the Polish crown, which was against his wishes and very unpopular in Lithuania. And Vytautas' rival, Vasily I, was named "Russian emperor", i.e. sovereign in a contract with the order in 1417. The Tatar "yoke" was forgotten both in Moscow and in Riga.

However, Vytautas was persistent. He obtained from Sigismund, King of Hungary and Emperor of Germany, recognition of Lithuania's independence, but the following year (1430) he died, and the throne of Lithuania went to Svidrigail, the leader of Orthodox Lithuanians and Russians.

And then, it seemed, the hour of the revival of Ancient Russia had come. Everything favored this. The Poles, having taken Podolia from Lithuania, caused a civil war between Catholics and Orthodox, in which they remained without allies, since the Czech Hussites devastated Catholic Germany, and the Polish protégé in Lithuania, Prince Sigismund, gained hatred by executing nobles and, finally, was himself killed by conspirators - Princes Czartoryski, by Russian origin. If Moscow had provided assistance to Western Russia, the reunification of the Slavs would have come already in 1436, but there was an equally fierce internal war in the principality of Moscow, and the hands of Svidrigail's friends were tied. Svidrigailo himself showed neither military nor state abilities, was defeated in 1435 on the Sventa River (a tributary of Vilia) and renounced the throne of Lithuania, retaining Eastern Podolia as a principality, where he died in 1452.

Historians pay little attention to Basil I, but in vain. This prince managed to repel the onslaught of Vytautas and the raid of Edigey, to annex the principality of Suzdal and, most importantly, to give his people a twenty-year peace, during which the fragmented Ancient Rus turned into Russia, which many contemporaries did not notice.

However, from afar, we can see the economic recovery, demographic growth, the development of art and, what is important for us, an increase in the level of passionarity. Two ideological dominants appeared in the Moscow state, one of which was represented by the "grandchildren of the fighters of Paul Kulikov", and the second by the "zealots of antiquity".

It is curious that the supporters of both directions did not look for leaders on the side, but chose them from the descendants of Dmitry Donskoy. The first direction supported the young Prince Vasily II, and the second - his uncle, Yuri Dmitrievich, and Yuri's children - Vasily Kosoy and Dmitry Shemyaku. All these princes did not shine with talents, and it should be concluded that they obeyed their subordinates, and did not lead them. This means that we are facing a moment of ethnic history - the formation of rival subethnoses, with different stereotypes and structures. These subethnoses were even grouped in different territories: supporters of Vasily II - in the Moscow region, his opponents - on the outskirts of the area - in Galich and Vyatka. Svidrigailo, unfortunately, became friends with the leaders of the opposition to the Grand Duke, who, of course, did not give him help at the decisive moment of the struggle, but, on the contrary, concluded a peace treaty with Kazimir of Lithuania [13].

The open war dragged on with varying success in the Principality of Moscow for 20 years - from 1432 to 1452 . The description of its vicissitudes lies beyond our topic. We will only note that it was conducted more fiercely than the previous specific strife. Now the captive princes began to be blinded, and Shemyaku, who escaped to Novgorod, was poisoned by a traitor cook. However, there was a reason. Having taken in 1450 Ustyug, Shemyak drowned unsympathetic citizens in Sukhona not after the assault, in a hurry, but deliberately, methodically.

Shemyaka lost because the people and the army preferred the new order, i.e. a new stereotype of behavior, to the old, traditional, but already distorted by the decrepitude of the system. The renewed ethnic group was disgusted by the "Shemyakin court".

The agony of Ancient Russia ended in the same year 1453 as the agony of Byzantium. The only difference was that Constantinople was taken by Slavs and Paphlagonians, who adopted Islam instead of Orthodoxy and changed the name "Romei" to "Turks". It would seem that this is just a change of labels, but no! The stereotype of behavior and worldview have changed, and cheating on yourself never goes away without a trace. A similar conflict arose in Lithuanian Rus. Catholics were no kinder than Turks. And only the Grand Duchy of Moscow managed to preserve from its beloved, native culture what can be saved when the turn changes-ethnogenesis, a natural phenomenon of the same order as an earthquake, flood or tsunami. How did he do it?

219. BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

In the middle of the XV century, three new, young, unlike their decrepit ancestor appeared on the site of the Old Russian ethnos [14]. The very fact of dissimilarity is not surprising. This has happens with the change of superethnoses always and everywhere. Let's limit ourselves to one illustrative example. Byzantium considered itself a "second Rome"[15], and in fact was "anti-Rome". Charlemagne in 800 called his Frankish kingdom the "Holy Roman Empire", but he had to add the epithet: "German nation" to avoid terminological confusion. Gaul, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Provence turned into the kingdom of France, and the inhabitants of these countries became French. For such changes, a passionate push was needed, thanks to which neighboring ethnic groups mixed and formed a new one that had not existed before. The culture of the newborn ethnos inherited not from one ancestor, whose name it took, but from all ethnic substrates integrated into the new ethnic system.

So it was in our homeland. The Great Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians in relation to the ancient Russians are the same as the Italians in relation to the Romans, with the only difference that the latter acquired a new cultural dominant - Catholicism, and the descendants of the Russians retained ancient Orthodoxy, which determined the direction of their ethnogenesis, and thereby their historical destiny. As usually happens, there was a "fatal moment" that took place in 1439 and aggravated the disintegration of Eastern Europe and Western Eurasia.

For young ethnic groups, the greatest danger is posed by adults, i.e. predatory, neighboring superethnoses. Their predation is determined by the level of passionate tension that forces people to overcome deserts and wilds, seas and oceans, which they do if peace comes at home, which is established by the "sane" individuals with average passionarity. Such an era came in Western Europe in the 30s of the XV century.

In 1434, the Czech Utraquists (Orthodox) defeated the Czech taborites (extremists) at Lipany, after which the wars that devastated both the Czech Republic and Germany ended. In 1436, the Constable of France Richemont took Paris, after which the turning point in the Hundred Years' War came. Although it dragged on sluggishly until 1453, when the French took Bordeaux, but the extra soldiers turned out to be in France. Catholic Europe stopped annihilating within itself and turned back to the East.

Again, as in 1095, the papal-see led a crusade to repel the Turks and to convert the Schismatics. In 1438-1439, the Ecumenical Council began its work, which opened in Ferrara, and then moved to Florence. Two decisions were made at it: the union of the Eastern and Western churches and the campaign against the Turks. Both ended in disaster.

Emperor John VIII, seeing the hopelessness of defending against the Turks without help from the West, forced the Greek clergy to accept a union with Rome, but the people and ordinary priests rejected a compromise with Latinism. The Latin bishops were forced to leave for Rome. And the crusade ended in defeat at Varna in 1444 . Nevertheless, the union was not officially abolished, which finally lowered the authority of the Paleologians in the eyes of all Orthodox states, as well as their own people.

But the decisions of the Council of Florence pleased the Polish-Lithuanian government of the Jagiellons, who began to plant a union among their Orthodox subjects in Galicia and Belarus. In Moscow, they perfectly understood that the conquest of the soul of the people precedes the conquest of the country. Therefore, Metropolitan Isidore, who mentioned the pope in the liturgy, was arrested here and imprisoned. But since Vasily II did not know what to do with him, he ordered him to organize an escape and cross the Lithuanian border. Thus, a clear border was created between humanistic Western Europe and the guardian of Orthodoxy - Russia. Russia was weaker, since Lithuania had a deep rear; if it had not been for the victory of the Turks at Varna, then perhaps Moscow could not have resisted in a duel with Lithuania, but she used the respite skillfully: Moscow was rescued by the collapse of a Large Horde.

For two centuries the Tatars came to Russia as agents of a foreign and distant power. They protected Russia from Lithuania, as shepherds protect flocks from wolves, so that they could be milked and sheared. But when passionarity in the Horde fell below the level of homeostasis and heavily armed sub-passionaries were fighting with each other, many Tatars poured into Russia to serve the Grand Duke for a modest salary. Such a mass admission to the Moscow service meant the irreversible end of the Horde, whose system was losing its charge of passionarity, and Moscow was turning from a principality into a kingdom. Many contemporaries condemned Vasily II for this, but so did Peter I, who employed Germans and Dutch as good specialists. After all, in the XV century. the Tatars were also the world's best specialists in equestrian formation and maneuver warfare.

However, there was no complete analogy between Peter I and Basil II either in their personal qualities or in the phases of ethnogenesis. In the XV century . Russia was on the rise, its passionarity was growing. This gave the Russians the plasticity that allowed them to include in their ethnic group the guests who arrived, both those who adopted the state worldview - Orthodoxy, and the remaining Muslims - Kasimov Tatars. Vasily II received a new contingent of serving people, and very qualified ones.

The ethno-social system has become more complicated. The combat capability of the Moscow army has increased so much that it surprised the Muscovites themselves. So, in 1456, during the next conflict between Moscow and Novgorod, Moscow soldiers plundered Staraya Russia and took the loot home, leaving a barrier of 200 horsemen. Here the Novgorod army appeared - 5 thousand people... and then it was completely defeated[16]. Novgorod capitulated.

Russians may have been strangers to these slashers and mounted riflemen, but they married Russian women, and their children and grandchildren became Russians. And under Peter I and Catherine II, the Germans who came to serve the emperor, and not Russia, preserved their way of life, outlook, tastes and mores. They lived in isolated colonies, communicated with each other outside of service and were not part of the Russian ethnos, but of the Russian superethnos, forming xenia - foreign inclusions in it. The presence of Xenia does not harm the host ethnic group, but only as long as they do not begin to lose their identity. Then they turn into chimeras and stimulate the coming fracture.

Along with the Tatars, the Great Russian ethnos included Ugro-Finnish tribes - relict ethnoses of the northern part of the Russian Plain. Some of them, having adopted Orthodoxy, merged with the Slavic ones so much that they forgot their former self-names. Such are merya, muroma, goliad and zavolotskaya chud. Others retained the names of their ancestors: Chuvash, Cheremis (Mari), Votyaks (Udmurts), Mordvins, Izhora, Veps, etc., but this did not interfere with their contacts with Russians. Since they lived in their familiar landscapes, i.e. "at home", their communication with the Great Russians should be called a symbiosis, which also complicates the ethnic system and thereby strengthens it.

So, Moscow managed to lead Russia, renewed by a passionate push, and bring it out of the state of a vassal of the Horde on a broad path of self-affirmation, which was greatly facilitated by a broad tolerance for aborigines and a firm position of rejection of foreign influences. We can say that Russia has revived... no, not the Byzantine Empire, but rather the dream of the kingdom of Prester John, which the Central Asian Nestorians could not realize. The Russian people themselves have long forgotten about this legend and the events that gave rise to it, but natural processes take place regardless of whether their observers and participants are aware of them. Most often it is too difficult for them, because "big things are seen from a distance", but Science exists for this purpose to correct errors of direct perception by critical attitude to the information of sources and broad comparisons, where the zigzags of history are mutually compensated over time.

And now it's easy to make a conclusion. Ancient Russia was destroyed by destabilization, which resulted from a decrease in the passionate tension of the ethnic system or, more simply, an increase in the number of egoistic subpassionaries who are not capable of self-sacrifice for the sake of selfless patriotism.

Who Survived?

There was only the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which for a whole century drew in passionaries thanks to the principles of Metropolitan Alexei and Sergius of Radonezh. Their associates and students bequeathed to their descendants a promising behavioral stereotype and a stable internal structure. So from 1380 to 1452, the Moscow Principality became Russia, and the former Rus became the outskirts of Lithuania, which was led by Poland.

220. CONTOURS OF UKRAINE

The victory in the internecine war was won not by Vasily II, but by his people, who categorically rejected the tradition of appanage Russia, more precisely, its decrepitude and impotence. Shemyaka was defeated by his "defenseless, blind prisoner"[17], during which all the estates in the Moscow Principality disappeared. The princes gave way to serving people. Dmitry Shemyaki's son went to Lithuania and received from King Kazimir Rylsk and Novgorod-Seversky [18], where his few supporters flocked. Very close, on the right bank of the Dnieper, in the eastern Podolia, supporters of Svidrigail, a friend of Shemyaka, settled. Both were brave and persistent people, and such people usually do not give up when they lose, but go to the outskirts of the area; this is how the name "Ukraine" arose, although its inhabitants called themselves Russians.

There is a huge literature on the origin of the ethnos that took the name "Ukrainians", in which it is easy to distinguish two opposing points of view [19]. Polish historians of the XVI century (G.F. Miller and others) unanimously consider the Ukrainian Cossacks to be serfs or runaway peasants. The Ukrainian historians of the XVIII century, G. Grabyanka, P.I. Simonovsky and the anonymous author of the "History of the Rus" consider the Ukrainian Cossacks to be a military organization, a kind of knightly orders (in which there were no social differences), intended for war with Muslims [20].

It seems that the very formulation of the problem is incorrect. The peasants could not find safety on the steppe border, where it is so easy for Nogais and Crimeans to get to the rope. They needed protection and training in the art of war like air and water; only princes and their retinues could teach them. On the other hand, the Shemyatichi and Olgerdovichi needed to replenish the army; therefore, they had to willingly accept those peasants who preferred eternal war on the border of a quiet life near Vitebsk and Polotsk. In other words, passionaries accumulated on the steppe border, burdened by the rigid orders of Moscow and the disenfranchisement of Poland.

In order to adapt to the new conditions and acquire families that arose during marriages with local women of Polovtsian origin and Orthodox confession, it took them about a hundred years.

During this time, the princes of the Rurik house (Prince Dmitry Vishnevetsky), Polish magnates (Predslav Lyantskoronsky) and ordinary peasants capable of military training equally turned into "Cossacks"[21], whose capital was the Zaporozhye Sich. The latter, according to the terminology we have adopted, should be considered a consortium from which the Little Russian subethnos grew, which turned into a Ukrainian ethnos 200 years later, freed in the XVII century from the power of Catholic Poland, and in the XVIII century won a leading place in the Russian Empire. It should not be forgotten that many "red Polovtsian girls" and their descendants were incorporated into the number of Ukrainians. But the further history of Ukraine goes beyond the chronological framework of our narrative.

And now we can draw a conclusion, having previously recalled that in the XIII century. The Volga-Oka interfluve was also called Ukraine Zalesskaya. Living forces and traditions have been preserved on the outskirts of the area of the ancient Russian ethnos, and in the center of it have dried up. New ethnic groups emerged at the junctions of the ancient ethnic groups through contacts and the transfer of increased passionarity. Of course, its rise was no less in the middle of the area, on the middle Dnieper, but there the pressure of the neighboring superethnos - Western Europe (via Poland) - turned out to be so strong that it "squeezed out" passionate Russians to Moscow and Zaporozhye.

Both centers of ascent aimed to preserve the culture and the stereotype of behavior, i.e. the customs of Ancient Russia. The first succeeded, because masterpieces are not subject to time. The second was not feasible, because historical time is irreversible and unique. The laws of ethnogenesis as a natural process are confirmed by the history of contact between Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe, which was required to be proved.

As for Russia's contact with Western Europe, everyone will be able to make sure that the laws of nature will remain unchanged here. The task of Science is only to warn fellow citizens about possible scenarios in a timely manner, and it is up to Politics to find the optimal way out of possible, but optional, i.e. not predetermined, collisions. That is why fundamental science and practice mutually need each other.

_______________

[It is a relief to finish. Where we’ll go from here I don’t know. There are many options.]

Perhaps this is a weak conclusion for such a great and voluminous work. But this closes Gumilev’s principle historical work. RUSSIA WAS FORMED, around the Moscow principality, maybe 1453. It is 800 pages in my translated word document, and it contains 280,000 words. We started the uploads on August 11 2024. I have read it fully 3 times and I cannot grasp the totality of it. It covers a vast territory in space and time, and without the possibility to “KNOW” all the actors (so many), it does portray the vast mosaic of pre-modern Eurasian history.

Basically, it is all about war and conquest of our European heritage, and our religions that seethe with hostility. Is there anything in our roots that has value in today’s world? You tell me. It would be some feat while reading this to list all the tribal and ethnic groups mentioned. I did do that for a few chapters in September 2023 while I was uploading “From RUS to Russia”. Here are 150 of them from back then. To list these through the whole book will be quite extensive. This may be a frustration, so many mentions, and no way to grasp them. Other historians merely omit them, so we don’t view the true ethnic mosaic. Here they are:

And a few more:

Turk, 
Turkmens, 
Turkuts  
Ugro-Finnic tribes, 
Uighurs
Urut tribe,
Venetians,
Visigoths, 
Vyatichi, the last stronghold of Slavic paganism
Western Mongols, 
white Tatars, 
wild Tatars, lacked even the rudiments of statehood, because they obeyed only the elders in their clan,
Xianbians, 
Yatvyags, 
Ydykuts,
Yelyu, 
Yenisei Kyrgyz, large Mongolian tribe of Oirats the Ob Ostyaks, and Paleoasiates, 
Yenisei, 
Zavolotskii, 
Zinja, 
Zmud, 
Zyrjans, 

Besides the tribes and ethnicities, there are all the prince’s names, which are 100’s. Here is a tiny sample from Kievan RUS: (There is a lot that cannot be grasped.)

Princes of Novgorod/Novogord
Volyamir (862–879)
Oleg (879–912)
Rulers of Kievan Rus'
Oleg (882–912)
Igor (912–945)
Olga (Regent) (945–962)
Sviatoslav I (962–972)
Yaropolk (972–980)
Vladimir I (980–1015)
Sviatopolk I (1015–1019)
Yaroslav (1019–1054)
Iziaslav (1054–1073), (1076–1078)
Vseslav (1068–1069)
Sviatoslav II (1073–1076)
Vsevolod (1078–1093)
Sviatopolk II (1093–1113)
Vladimir Monomakh (1113–1125)
Mstislav (1125–1132)
Yaropolk II (1132–1139)
Vyacheslav (1139, 1151–1154).
Vsevolod II (1139–1146)
Igor II (1146)
Iziaslav II (1146–1154, with intervals)
Yuri Dolgoruky (1149–1151, 1155–1157)
Rostislav (1154–1167, with intervals)
Iziaslav III (1155–1162, with intervals)
Mstislav II (1167–1169)
Gleb (1169, 1170–1171)
Vladimir II (1171)
Mikhailo (1171)
Roman (1171–1173, 1175–1177)
Vsevolod III (1173)
Volyamir II (1172–1211, with intervals)
Yaroslav II, (1174–1175, 1180)
Sviatoslav III (1173, 1176–1180, 1181–1194)
Igor III (1202, 1214)*
Roman the Great (1203-1205)
Rostislav II (1204–1206)
Vsevolod IV (1206–1212, with intervals)
Mstislav III (1214–1223)
Vladimir III (1223–1235)
Iziaslav IV (1235–1236)
Yaroslav III (1236–1238, 1246)
Mikhailo II (1238–1239, 1241–1246)
Rostislav III (1239)
Danylo (1239–1240)

NOTES:

[1] Soloviev S.M. History of Russia. Book II. Vol. IV. p. 635.

[2] See: ibid. pp.658-659.

[3] The brevity and generality of the presentation of the course of events are partially compensated by the synchronistic table of 1402-1461.

[4] In the XV-XVI centuries, Nogais also lived in the Black Sea region (see: Shennikov A.A. Residential houses of the Nogais of the Northern Black Sea region // Slavo-Russian ethnography. L., 1973. P. 46).

[5] See: Shennikov A.A. Chervleniy yar. L.1987.P.44.

[6] See: Soloviev S.M. History of Russia ... Book II.T.IV. P.493.

[7] See.: Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. When did and what caused the disintegration of the Mongols into Eastern and Western?

[8] See: Vladimirtsov B.Ya. Turkish elements in the Mongolian language.

[9] See: Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. Decree. op. p. 177.

[10] On the terms "horde" and "tribe" see: Gumilev L.N. Ancient Turks. P.177.

[11] Ethnogenesis is a process that goes along with time: from a passionate push to homeostasis during dispersion energy charge. Therefore, moving "forward" does not mean constant improvement at all, and therefore cannot be called progressive. After all, at the organizational level, the consistent development of the system leads to old age and disintegration into elements for the next update. At the ethnic level, the pattern is the same.

[12] The bitterness against the Great Russians in Lithuania was so strong that when Vitovt broke with Vasily Dmitrievich, all Muscovites who were visiting the Lithuanian possessions were killed (see: Solovyov S.M. History of Russia ... Book II. Vol. IV. p. 599).

[13] See: ibid. pp. 428-429.

[14] See: History of the USSR from ancient times to the present day. Vol. II. pp. 102-104.

[15] The western half of the Empire also changed its self-designation: with the adoption of Christianity, it became known as Hesperia.

[16] See: Solovyov S.M. Decree. op. pp.414- 415.

[17] See ibid. p. 409.

[18] See: ibid., p. 429.

[19] See: Golobutsky V.A. Decree. op. S.Z-9.

[20] See: Simonovsky P. A brief description of the Cossack Little Russian people. M., 1841. P. 4.

[21] For three semantic variations of the term "Cossack", see: Shennikov A.A. Scarlet yar. P. 98 and the trail.

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