How many years did the Mongol Tatar yoke last. Tatar-Mongol invasion

Studying the works of chroniclers, the testimonies of European travelers who visited Russia and the Mongol Empire, the far from unambiguous interpretation of the events of the 10th–15th centuries by academician N.V. Levashov, L.N. Gumilyov, one cannot help but wonder a range of questions: there was a Tatar-Mongolian yoke or it was invented on purpose, for a specific purpose, this is a historical fact or deliberate fiction.

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Russians and Mongols

The prince of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise, who died in 978, had to do so, how the british do it, in which the entire inheritance is given to the eldest son, and the rest become either priests or naval officers, then we would not have formed several separate regions given to the heirs of Yaroslav.

Specific disunity of Russia

Each prince who received the land divided it among his sons, which contributed to an even greater weakening of Kievan Rus, although it expanded its possessions by transferring the capital to forest Vladimir.

Our state do not be specific disunity, would not allow the Tatar-Mongols to enslave themselves.

Nomads at the walls of Russian cities

At the end of the 9th century, Kyiv was surrounded by the Hungarians, who were forced out to the west by the Pechenegs. Following them, by the middle of the 11th century, Torks followed, followed by the Polovtsy; then the invasion of the Mongol Empire began.

Approaches to the Russian principalities repeatedly besieged by powerful troops steppe dwellers, after a while the former nomads were replaced by others who enslaved them with greater prowess and better weapons.

How did the empire of Genghis Khan develop?

The period of the end of the XII - beginning of the XIII century was marked by the unification of several Mongolian clans, directed by the extraordinary Temujin who took the title of Genghis Khan in 1206.

The endless feuds of the governors-noyons were stopped, ordinary nomads were subjected to exorbitant dues and obligations. To strengthen the position of the common population and the aristocracy, Genghis Khan moved his huge army first to the prosperous Celestial Empire, and later to Islamic lands.

The state of Genghis Khan had an organized military administration, government staff of employees, had postal communication, constant taxation. The code of canons "Yasa" balanced the powers of adherents of any beliefs.

The foundation of the empire was the army, based on the principles of universal army duty, military order, and strict restraint. Yurtzh quartermasters planned routes, halts, stocked food. Information about future points of attack brought merchants, heads of convoys, special missions.

Attention! The result of the aggressive campaigns of Genghis Khan and his followers was a gigantic superpower that covered the Celestial Empire, Korea, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Transcaucasia, Syria, the steppes of Eastern Europe, Kazakhstan.

Successes of the Mongols

From the southeast, imperial troops unloaded on the Japanese Islands, the islands of the Malay Archipelago; reached Egypt on the Sinai Peninsula, to the north they approached the European borders of Austria. 1219 - the army of Genghis Khan conquered the greatest Central Asian state - Khorezm, which then became part of the Golden Horde. By 1220 Genghis Khan founded Karakorum- the capital of the Mongol Empire.

Having rounded the Caspian Sea from the south, the cavalry troops invaded the Transcaucasus, through the Derbent Gorge they reached the North Caucasus, where they met with the Polovtsians and Alans, having defeated them, they captured the Crimean Sudak.

Steppe nomads persecuted by the Mongols asked for protection from the Russians. The Russian princes accepted the offer to fight with an unknown army outside the borders of their land. In 1223, by a cunning trick, the Mongols lured the Russians and Polovtsians to the shores. The squads of our commanders resisted separately and were completely overturned.

1235 - the meeting of the Mongolian aristocracy approved the decision on the campaign to capture Russia, detaching most of the imperial soldiers, about 70 thousand combat units under the control of Genghis Khan's grandson Batu.

This army was defined symbolically as "Tatar-Mongolian". "Tatars" were called Persians, Chinese, Arabs of the steppes living on northern border with them.

By the middle of the 13th century, in the mighty state of Chingizids, the heads of military districts and selected privileged fighters were Mongol, the other troops remained a characteristic imperial army, representing the warriors of the defeated territories - the Chinese, Alans, Iranians, countless Turkic tribes. Having captured Silver Bulgaria, the Mordvins and the Kipchaks, this cloud moved closer in the cold of 1237 to the borders of Russia, covered Ryazan, then Vladimir.

Important! The historical countdown of the Tatar-Mongol yoke begins in 1237, with the capture of Ryazan.

Russians defend themselves

Since that time, Russia began to pay tribute to the conquerors, very often subjected to the most severe raids of the Tatar-Mongol troops. Rusichi heroically responded to the invaders. Little Kozelsk entered the history, which the Mongols called the evil city because he fought back and fought to the last; defenders fought: women, old people, children - everything, who could hold a weapon or pouring molten resin from the walls of the city. Not a single person in Kozelsk survived, some died in battle, the rest were finished off when the enemy army broke through the defenses.

The name of the Ryazan boyar Yevpaty Kolovrat is well known, who, having returned to his native Ryazan and seeing what the invaders had done there, rushed after the Batyev detachments with a small army, fought them to the death.

1242 - Khan Batu founded the newest settlement on the Volga plains Genghisid Empire - Golden Horde. The Russians gradually guessed with whom they were to come into conflict. From 1252 to 1263, Alexander Nevsky was the highest lord of Vladimir, in fact, then the Tatar yoke was established as a concept of legal subordination to the Horde.

Finally, the Russians understood that it was necessary to unite against a terrible enemy. 1378 - Russian squads on the Vozha River defeated the huge Tatar-Mongolian hordes under the leadership of an experienced Murza Begich. Offended by this defeat, the temnik Mamai put together an innumerable army and moved to Muscovy. At the call of Prince Dmitry to save his native land, all of Russia rose.

1380 - Mamai's temnik was finally defeated on the Don River. After that great battle, Dmitry began to be called Donskoy, the battle itself was named after the historical town of Kulikovo field between the rivers Don and Nepryadva, where the massacre took place, called.

But Russia did not come out of bondage. How many years still could not she gain final independence. Two years later, Tokhtamysh Khan burned Moscow, because Prince Dmitry Donskoy left to gather an army, he could not give worthy rebuff to the attackers. For another hundred years, the Russian princes continued to obey the Horde, and it became weaker and weaker due to the strife of Genghisides - the bloodlines of Genghis.

1472 - Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, defeated the Mongols, refused to pay tribute to them. A few years later, the Horde decided to restore its rights and moved with the next campaign.

1480 - Russian troops settled on one bank of the Ugra River, Mongolian - on the other. "Standing" on the Ugra lasted 100 days.

Finally, the Russians moved away from the coast to make room for a future battle, but the Tatars did not have the courage to cross, they left. The Russian army returned to Moscow, and the opponents returned to the Horde. The question is who won- Slavs or the fear of their enemies.

Attention! In 1480 came the end of the yoke in Russia, its north and northeast. However, a number of researchers believe that Moscow's dependence on the Horde continued until the reign.

The results of the invasion

Some scholars believe that the contributed to the regression of Russia, but this is a lesser evil compared to the Western Russian enemies, who took away our allotments, demanding the transition of the Orthodox to Catholicism. Positive thinkers believe that the Mongol Empire helped Muscovy rise. The strife ceased, the divided Russian principalities united against a common enemy.

After the establishment of stable ties with Russia, the rich Tatar murzas with convoys amicably reached out to Muscovy. The arrivals converted to Orthodoxy, married Slavs, gave birth to children with non-Russian surnames: Yusupov, Khanov, Mamaev, Murzin.

The classic history of Russia is refuted

Among some historians there is a different opinion about the Tatar-Mongol yoke and about those who invented it. Here are some interesting facts:

1. The gene pool of the Mongols is different from the gene pool of the Tatars, so they cannot be combined into a common ethnic group.
2. Genghis Khan had a Caucasian appearance.
3. Lack of writing Mongols and Tatars of the 12th–13th centuries, as a consequence of this - the lack of perpetuated evidence of their victorious raids.
4. Our chronicles, confirming the bondage of the Russians for almost three hundred years, have not been found. There are some pseudo-historical documents that describe the Mongol-Tatar yoke only since the beginning of the reign.
5. Confusion causes lack of archaeological artifacts from the place of famous battles, for example, from the Kulikovo field,
6. The entire territory over which the Horde roamed did not give archaeologists either a lot of weapons of that time, or the burial places of the dead, or mounds with the bodies of the dead on the camps of the steppe nomads.
7. The ancient Russian tribes had paganism with a Vedic worldview. Their patrons were the God Tarkh and his sister, the Goddess Tara. From here came the name of the people "Tarkhtars", later simply "Tartars". The population of Tartaria was Russian, further to the east of Eurasia they were diluted with scattered multilingual tribes, nomadic in search of food. All of them were called Tartars, in the present - Tatars.
8. Later chroniclers covered up the fact of the violent, bloody imposition of the Greek Catholic faith on Russia by the invasion of the Horde, carried out the order of the Byzantine Church and the ruling elite of the state. The new Christian doctrine, which received the name Orthodox Christianity after the reform of Patriarch Nikon, led the masses to a split: some accepted Orthodoxy, those who disagree exterminated or exiled to the northeastern provinces, to Tartaria.
9. The Tartars did not forgive the destruction of the population, the ruin of the Kiev principality, but its army failed to respond with lightning speed, distracted by turmoil on the Far Eastern borders of the country. When the Vedic empire gained strength, it rebuffed those who planted the Greek religion, a real civil war began: the Russians with the Russians, the so-called pagans (Old Believers) with the Orthodox. Lasting almost 300 years modern historians filed a confrontation of their own against ours as a “Mongol-Tatar invasion”.
10. After the forced baptism by Vladimir the Red Sun, the Kiev principality was destroyed, the settlements were devastated, burned, most of the inhabitants were destroyed. They could not explain what was happening, so they covered it with a Tatar-Mongol yoke to mask the cruelty transition to a new faith(not without reason Vladimir after that began to be called Bloody) the invasion of "wild nomads" was called.

Tatars in Russia

Kazan's past

The Kazan fortress of the end of the 12th century becomes the patronal city of the state of the Volga-Kama Bulgars. After some time, the country submits to the Mongols, for three centuries it submits to the Golden Horde, the Bulgarian rulers, akin to the Moscow princes, pay dues, correct subordinate functions.

By the fifties of the XV century, following the obvious division of the Mongol Empire, its former ruler Udu-Muhammed, who found himself without property, invaded the Bulgarian capital, executed the governor Ali-Bek, seized his throne.

1552 - Tsarevich Yediger arrived in Kazan - the heir of the Khan of Astrakhan. Ediger descended on 10,000 foreigners, self-willed nomads wandering around the steppe.

Ivan IV Vasilyevich, Tsar of All Russia, conquers the capital of Bulgaria

The battle for Kazan was played out not with the native inhabitants of the state, but with the military masses of Yediger, who had been overtaken by him from Astrakhan. The army of many thousands of Ivan the Terrible was opposed by a flock of Genghisides, consisting of the peoples of the Middle Volga region, Turkic tribes, Nogais, Mari.

October 15, 1552 after 41 days courageous defense, during a frenzied assault, the glorious fertile city of Kazan surrendered. After the defense of the capital, almost all of its defenders perished. The city was completely destroyed. A merciless punishment awaited the surviving residents: wounded men, old people, children - all were finished off by victors at the behest of the Moscow Tsar; young women with tiny babies were sent into slavery. If the tsar of all Russia, having finished with Kazan and Astrakhan, planned to perform the rite of baptism against the will of all Tatars, then, of course, he would have committed another lawlessness.

Even Peter I advocated the creation of a mono-confessional Christian state, but during his reign, the peoples of Russia did not reach the universal baptism.

The baptism of the Tatars in Russia took place from the first half of the 18th century. 1740 - Empress Anna Ioannovna issued a decree according to which all the heterodox peoples of Russia were to accept Orthodoxy. According to the prescriptions, it was not fitting for new converts to live with non-Christians; non-Christs were to be resettled in separate localities. Among the Muslim Tatars who recognized Orthodoxy there was a small share much less in comparison with the pagans. The situation gave rise to the displeasure of the crown and the administration, who adopted the practice of the last quarter of the 16th century. Those in power initiated cardinal sanctions.

Radical measures

It was not possible to baptize the Tatars in Russia several centuries ago and remains problematic in our time. Actually, the refusal of the Tatars to accept Orthodoxy, as well as the resistance to the course of Christianization of the Orthodox priesthood, led to the implementation of the intention to destroy Muslim churches.

The Islamic people not only rushed to the authorities with petitions, but also reacted extremely disapprovingly to the widespread destruction of mosques. It spawned dominant power concern.

Orthodox priests of the Russian army became preachers among non-Christian servicemen. Upon learning of this, some of the heterodox recruits preferred to be baptized even before mobilization. In order to induce the adoption of Christianity, tax discounts were used by the baptized, and non-Orthodox had to pay additional contributions.

Documentary film about the Mongol-Tatar yoke

Alternative history, Tatar-Mongol yoke

findings

As you understand, many opinions are offered today about the features of the Mongol invasion. Maybe in the future, scientists will be able to find solid evidence of the fact of its existence or fiction, what politicians and rulers covered up with the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and for what purpose this was done. Perhaps the true truth about the Mongols (the "great" as other tribes called Genghisides) will be revealed. History is a science where there can be no unambiguous view on this or that event, as it is always considered from different points of view. Scientists collect facts, and descendants will draw conclusions.

The Russian principalities before the Tatar-Mongol yoke and the Muscovite state after gaining legal independence are, as they say, two big differences. It will not be an exaggeration that the unified Russian state, of which modern Russia is the direct heir, was formed during the period of the yoke and under its influence. The overthrow of the Tatar-Mongol yoke was not only the cherished goal of Russian self-consciousness during the second half of the 13th-15th centuries. It also turned out to be a means of creating a state, a national mentality and cultural identity.

Approaching the Battle of Kulikovo...

The idea of ​​most people about the process of overthrowing the Tatar-Mongol yoke comes down to a very simplified scheme, according to which, before the Battle of Kulikovo, Russia was enslaved by the Horde and did not even think about resistance, and after the Battle of Kulikovo, the yoke lasted another hundred years simply due to a misunderstanding. In reality, everything was more complicated.

The fact that the Russian principalities, although they generally recognized their vassal position in relation to the Golden Horde, did not stop trying to resist, is evidenced by a simple historical fact. From the moment the yoke was established and throughout its entire length, about 60 major punitive campaigns, invasions and large-scale raids of the Horde troops on Russia are known from Russian chronicles. Obviously, in the case of completely conquered lands, such efforts are not required - which means that Russia resisted, actively resisted for centuries.

The Horde detachments suffered their first significant military defeat on the territory controlled by Russia about a hundred years before the Battle of Kulikovo. True, this battle took place during the internecine war for the grand throne of the Vladimir principality, which flared up between the sons of Alexander Nevsky . In 1285, Andrei Alexandrovich attracted the Horde prince Eltorai to his side and set off with his army against his brother Dmitry Alexandrovich, who reigned in Vladimir. As a result, Dmitry Alexandrovich won a convincing victory over the Tatar-Mongolian punitive corps.

Further, individual victories in military clashes with the Horde happened, although not too often, but with stable constancy. Distinguished by peacefulness and a penchant for political solutions to all issues, the Moscow prince Daniil Alexandrovich, the youngest son of Nevsky, in 1301 defeated the Mongol detachment near Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky. In 1317, Mikhail of Tverskoy defeated the army of Kavgady, which was attracted to his side by Yuri of Moscow.

The closer to the Battle of Kulikovo, the more confident the Russian principalities became, and unrest and unrest were observed in the Golden Horde, which could not but affect the balance of military forces.

In 1365, the Ryazan forces defeated the Horde detachment near the Shishevsky forest, in 1367 the Suzdal army won a victory on Pyan. Finally, in 1378, Dmitry of Moscow, the future Donskoy, won his dress rehearsal in the confrontation with the Horde: on the Vozha River, he defeated the army under the command of Murza Begich, close to Mamai.

The overthrow of the Tatar-Mongol yoke: the great Battle of Kulikovo

Once again, it is unnecessary to talk about the significance of the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, as well as to retell the details of its immediate course. Since childhood, everyone has known the dramatic details of how Mamai's army pressed on the center of the Russian army and how, at the most decisive moment, the Ambush Regiment hit the rear of the Horde and their allies, which changed the fate of the battle. As well as it is well known that for the Russian self-consciousness it became an event of great importance, as for the first time after the establishment of the yoke, the Russian army was able to give a large-scale battle to the invader and win. But it is worth remembering that the victory in the Battle of Kulikovo, for all its great moral significance, did not lead to the overthrow of the yoke.

Dmitry Donskoy managed to take advantage of the difficult political situation in the Golden Horde and embody his military leadership and the fighting spirit of his own army. However, two years later, Moscow was taken by the forces of the legitimate Khan of the Horde Tokhtamysh (Temnik Mamai was a temporary usurper) and almost completely destroyed.

The young Moscow principality was not yet ready to fight on equal terms with the weakened, but still powerful Horde. Tokhtamysh imposed an increased tribute on the principality (the previous tribute was retained at the same rate, but the population was actually halved; in addition, an emergency tax was introduced). Dmitry Donskoy undertook to send his eldest son Vasily to the Horde as a hostage. But the Horde had already lost political power over Moscow - Prince Dmitry Ivanovich managed to transfer power by inheritance on his own, without any label from the Khan. In addition, a few years later Tokhtamysh was defeated by another eastern conqueror, Timur, and for a certain period Russia stopped paying tribute.

In the 15th century, tribute was generally paid with serious fluctuations, taking advantage of more and more constant periods of internal instability in the Horde. In the 1430s - 1450s, the Horde rulers undertook several devastating campaigns against Russia - however, in fact, these were already predatory raids, and not attempts to restore political supremacy.

In fact, the yoke did not end in 1480 ...

In school exam papers on the history of Russia, the correct answer to the question “When and with what event did the period of the Tatar-Mongol yoke in Russia end?” will be considered "In 1480, Standing on the Ugra River." In fact, this is the correct answer - but from a formal point of view, it does not correspond to historical reality.

Indeed, in 1476 the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III refused to pay tribute to the Khan of the Great Horde, Akhmat. Until 1480, Akhmat dealt with his other opponent, the Crimean Khanate, after which he decided to punish the recalcitrant Russian ruler. The two armies met near the Ugra River in September 1380. An attempt by the Horde to cross the river was thwarted by Russian troops. After that, the Stand itself began, which lasted until the beginning of November. As a result, Ivan III was able to force Akhmat to retreat without unnecessary loss of life. First, there were strong reinforcements on the approach to the Russians. Secondly, Akhmat's cavalry began to experience a shortage of fodder, and illness began in the army itself. Thirdly, the Russians sent a sabotage detachment to the rear of Akhmat, which was supposed to plunder the defenseless capital of the Horde.

As a result, the khan ordered a retreat - and on this the Tatar-Mongol yoke lasting almost 250 years ended. However, from a formal diplomatic position, Ivan III and the Muscovite state remained in vassal dependence on the Great Horde for another 38 years. In 1481, Khan Akhmat was killed, and another wave of struggle for power arose in the Horde. In the difficult conditions of the late XV - early XVI centuries, Ivan III was not sure that the Horde would not be able to mobilize its forces again and organize a new large-scale campaign against Russia. Therefore, being in fact a sovereign ruler and no longer paying tribute to the Horde, for diplomatic reasons, in 1502 he officially recognized himself as a vassal of the Great Horde. But soon the Horde was finally defeated by eastern enemies, so that in 1518 all vassal relations, even at a formal level, between the Muscovite state and the Horde were terminated.

Alexander Babitsky

How are historiographies written?

Unfortunately, there is no analytical review on the history of historiographies yet. It's a pity! Then we would understand the difference between historiography for the health of the state and historiography for its repose. If we want to glorify the beginning of the state, we will write that it was founded by a hardworking and independent people, who enjoy the well-deserved respect of their neighbors.
If we want to sing a requiem to him, then let's say that it was founded by a wild people living in dense forests and impassable swamps, and the state was created by representatives of a different ethnic group, who came here just because of the inability of local residents to equip a distinctive and independent power. Then, if we sing a eulogy, we will say that the name of this ancient formation was understood by everyone, and has not changed to this day. On the contrary, if we bury our state, we will say that it was named unknown how, and then changed its name. Finally, in favor of the state in the first phase of its development will be the assertion of its strength. And vice versa, if we want to show that the state was so-so, we must show not only that it was weak, but also that it was able to be conquered by an unknown in antiquity, and a very peaceful and small people. It is on this last statement that I would like to dwell.

- This is the name of a chapter from the book of Kungurov (KUN). He writes: “The official version of ancient Russian history, composed by Germans discharged from abroad to St. East, evil wild nomads come, destroy the Russian state and establish an occupation regime called the “yoke”. After two and a half centuries, the Moscow princes throw off the yoke, collect Russian lands under their rule and create a powerful Muscovite kingdom, which is the successor of Kievan Rus and save the Russians from the "yoke"; for several centuries in Eastern Europe there has been an ethnically Russian Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but politically it is dependent on the Poles, and therefore cannot be considered a Russian state, therefore, the war between Lithuania and Muscovy should be considered not as a civil strife of Russian princes, but as a struggle between Moscow and Poland for the reunification of Russian lands.

Despite the fact that this version of history is still recognized as official, only "professional" scientists can consider it reliable. A person who is used to thinking with his head will doubt this very much, if only because the story of the Mongol invasion is completely sucked out of his finger. Until the 19th century, Russians did not suspect at all that they had allegedly once been conquered by Transbaikalian savages. Indeed, the version that a highly developed state was completely destroyed by some wild steppes who were not able to create an army in accordance with the technical and cultural achievements of that time looks delusional. Moreover, such a people as the Mongols were not known to science. True, historians did not lose their heads and announced that the Mongols are a small nomadic Khalkha people living in Central Asia ”(KUN: 162).

Indeed, all the great conquerors are well known. When Spain had a powerful fleet, the great armada, Spain captured a number of lands in North and South America, and today there are two dozen Latin American states. Britain, as mistress of the seas, also has or had a lot of colonies. But today we do not know a single colony of Mongolia or a state dependent on it. Moreover, except for the Buryats or Kalmyks, who are the same Mongols, not a single ethnic group in Russia speaks Mongolian.

“The Khalkhas themselves learned that they were the heirs of the great Genghis Khan only in the 19th century, but they did not object - everyone wants to have great, albeit mythical, ancestors. And in order to explain the disappearance of the Mongols after they successfully conquered half of the world, a completely artificial term “Mongol-Tatars” is introduced into use, which means other nomadic peoples allegedly conquered by the Mongols, who joined the conquerors and formed a certain community in them. In China, foreign-speaking conquerors turn into Manchus, in India - into Mughals, and in both cases form the ruling dynasties. In the future, however, we do not observe any nomadic Tatars, but this is because, as the same historians explain, that the Mongol-Tatars settled on the lands they conquered, and partially took them back to the steppe and evaporated there completely without a trace ”(KUN: 162- 163).

Wikipedia about the yoke.

This is how Wikipedia interprets the Tatar-Mongol yoke: “The Mongol-Tatar yoke is a system of political and tributary dependence of the Russian principalities on the Mongol-Tatar khans (until the beginning of the 60s of the XIII century, the Mongol khans, after the khans of the Golden Horde) in the XIII-XV centuries. The establishment of the yoke became possible as a result of the Mongol invasion of Russia in 1237-1241 and took place for two decades after it, including in the unravaged lands. In North-Eastern Russia it lasted until 1480. In other Russian lands, it was liquidated in the XIV century as they were absorbed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland.

The term "yoke", meaning the power of the Golden Horde over Russia, is not found in Russian chronicles. It appeared at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries in Polish historical literature. The first to use it was the chronicler Jan Dlugosh (“iugum barbarum”, “iugum servitutis”) in 1479 and the professor of the University of Krakow Matvey Mechovsky in 1517. Literature: 1. The Golden Horde // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes). and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg: 1890-1907.2. Malov N. M., Malyshev A. B., Rakushin A. I. “Religion in the Golden Horde”. The word formation “Mongol-Tatar yoke” was first used in 1817 by H. Kruse, whose book was translated into Russian in the middle of the 19th century and published in St. Petersburg.”

So, for the first time this term was introduced by the Poles in the XV-XVI centuries, who saw the “yoke” in the relations of the Tatar-Mongol to other peoples. The reason for this is explained by the second work of 3 authors: “Apparently, the Tatar yoke was first used in Polish historical literature of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. At this time, on the borders of Western Europe, an active foreign policy was pursued by the young Muscovite state, which had freed itself from the vassal dependence of the Golden Horde khans. In neighboring Poland, there is an increased interest in the history, foreign policy, armed forces, national relations, internal structure, traditions and customs of Muscovy. Therefore, it is no coincidence that for the first time the phrase Tatar yoke was used in the Polish Chronicle (1515-1519) by Matvey Mekhovsky, professor at Krakow University, court physician and astrologer of King Sigismund I. The author of various medical and historical works, spoke enthusiastically about Ivan III, who threw off the Tatar yoke , considering this his most important merit, and apparently the global event of the era.

Mention of the yoke by historians.

Poland's attitude towards Russia has always been ambiguous, and the attitude towards its own fate - as an exceptionally tragic one. So they could completely exaggerate the dependence of some peoples on the Tatar-Mongols. And then 3 authors continue: “Later, the term Tatar yoke is also mentioned in notes on the Moscow war of 1578-1582, compiled by the secretary of state of another king, Stefan Batory, Reinhold Heidenstein. Even Jacques Margeret, a French mercenary and adventurer, an officer in the Russian service and a man far from science, knew what was meant by the Tatar yoke. This term was widely used by other Western European historians of the 17th-18th centuries. In particular, the Englishman John Milton and the Frenchman De Tu were familiar with him. Thus, for the first time, the term Tatar yoke was probably introduced into circulation by Polish and Western European historians, and not by Russians or Russians.

For now, I will interrupt the quotation to draw attention to the fact that foreigners write about the “yoke”, first of all, who really liked the scenario of a weak Russia, which was captured by the “evil Tatars”. Whereas Russian historians still did not know anything about it

"AT. N. Tatishchev did not use this phrase, perhaps because, when writing the Russian History, he mainly relied on early Russian chronicle terms and expressions, where it is absent. I. N. Boltin already used the term Tatar dominion, and M., M., Shcherbatov believed that liberation from the Tatar yoke was a huge achievement of Ivan III. N.M., Karamzin found in the Tatar yoke both negative - the tightening of laws and customs, the slowdown in the development of education and science, and positive aspects - the formation of autocracy, a factor in the unification of Russia. Another phrase, the Tatar-Mongolian yoke, also, most likely, comes from the lexicon of Western, and not domestic researchers. In 1817, Christopher Kruse published an Atlas of European History, where he first introduced the term Mongol-Tatar yoke into scientific circulation. Although this work was translated into Russian only in 1845, but already in the 20s of the XIX century. domestic historians began to use this new scientific definition. Since that time, the terms: Mongol-Tatars, Mongol-Tatar yoke, Mongol yoke, Tatar yoke and Horde yoke, have traditionally been widely distributed in Russian historical science. In our encyclopedic publications, under the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Russia of the XIII-XV centuries, it is understood: the system of rule of the Mongol-Tatar feudal lords, with the help of various political, military and economic means, aimed at the regular exploitation of the conquered country. Thus, in European historical literature, the term yoke denotes domination, oppression, slavery, captivity, or the power of foreign conquerors over defeated peoples and states. It is known that the Old Russian principalities were economically and politically subordinate to the Golden Horde, and also paid tribute. The Golden Horde khans actively interfere in the policy of the Russian principalities, which they tried to tightly control. Sometimes, the relationship between the Golden Horde and the Russian principalities is characterized as a symbiosis, or a military alliance directed against the countries of Western Europe and some Asian states, first Muslim, and after the collapse of the Mongol Empire - Mongolian.

However, it should be noted that, if theoretically the so-called symbiosis, or military alliance, could exist for some time, then it has never been equal, voluntary and stable. In addition, even in the epochs of the developed and late Middle Ages, short-term interstate unions were usually formalized by contractual relations. There could not be such equal allied relations between the fragmented Russian principalities and the Golden Horde, since the khans of the Ulus Jochi issued labels for the rule of the Vladimir, Tver, Moscow princes. The Russian princes were obliged, at the request of the khans, to field an army to participate in the military campaigns of the Golden Horde. In addition, using the Russian princes and their army, the Mongols carry out punitive campaigns against other recalcitrant Russian principalities. The khans called the princes to the Horde in order to issue a label to reign alone, and to execute or pardon those who were objectionable. During this period, the Russian lands were actually under the rule or yoke of the Ulus of Jochi. Although, sometimes the foreign policy interests of the Golden Horde khans and Russian princes, for various reasons, could coincide in some way. The Golden Horde is a chimera state in which the conquerors make up the elite, and the conquered peoples make up the lower strata. The Mongolian Golden Horde elite established power over the Polovtsians, Alans, Circassians, Khazars, Bulgars, Finno-Ugric peoples, and also placed the Russian principalities in rigid vassal dependence. Therefore, it can be assumed that the scientific term yoke is quite acceptable for designating in the historical literature the nature of the power of the Golden Horde established not only over the Russian lands.

Yoke as Christianization of Russia.

Thus, Russian historians really repeated the statements of the German Christopher Kruse, while they did not subtract such a term from any chronicle. Not only Kungurov drew attention to the oddities in the interpretation of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. Here is what we read in the article (TAT): “Such a nationality as the Mongol-Tatars does not exist, and did not exist at all. The only thing the Mongols and Tatars have in common is that they roamed the Central Asian steppe, which, as we know, is quite large to accommodate any nomadic people, and at the same time give them the opportunity not to intersect in one territory at all. The Mongol tribes lived in the southern tip of the Asian steppe and often hunted for raids on China and its provinces, which is often confirmed by the history of China. While other nomadic Turkic tribes, called from time immemorial in Russia Bulgars (Volga Bulgaria), settled in the lower reaches of the Volga River. At that time in Europe they were called Tatars, or TatAriyev (the strongest of the nomadic tribes, inflexible and invincible). And the Tatars, the closest neighbors of the Mongols, lived in the northeastern part of modern Mongolia, mainly in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bLake Buir-Nor and up to the borders of China. There were 70 thousand families, which made up 6 tribes: Tutukulyut Tatars, Alchi Tatars, Chagan Tatars, Kuin Tatars, Terat Tatars, Barkui Tatars. The second parts of the names, apparently, are the self-names of these tribes. Among them there is not a single word that would sound close to the Turkic language - they are more in tune with the Mongolian names. Two related peoples - the Tatars and the Mongols - waged a war for a long time with varying success for mutual extermination, until Genghis Khan seized power in all of Mongolia. The fate of the Tatars was sealed. Since the Tatars were the murderers of Genghis Khan's father, they exterminated many tribes and clans close to him, constantly supported the tribes opposing him, “then Genghis Khan (Tei-mu-Chin) ordered a general massacre of the Tatars and not one should be left alive to that limit, which is determined by law (Yasak); that the women and little children should also be slaughtered, and that the wombs of the pregnant women should be cut open in order to completely destroy them. ...”. That is why such a nationality could not threaten the freedom of Russia. Moreover, many historians and cartographers of that time, especially Eastern European ones, “sinned” to call all indestructible (from the point of view of Europeans) and invincible peoples TatAri or simply in Latin TatArie. This can be easily traced on ancient maps, for example, the Map of Russia in 1594 in the Atlas of Gerhard Mercator, or the Maps of Russia and Tartaria by Ortelius. You can view these cards below. So what can we see from the newly acquired material? And we see that this event simply could not happen, at least in the form in which it is transmitted to us. And before proceeding to the narration of the truth, I propose to consider a few more inconsistencies in the "historical" description of these events.

Even in the modern school curriculum, this historical moment is briefly described as follows: “At the beginning of the 13th century, Genghis Khan gathered a large army from nomadic peoples, and subjecting them to strict discipline decided to conquer the whole world. Having defeated China, he sent his army to Russia. In the winter of 1237, the army of the "Mongol-Tatars" invaded the territory of Russia, and later defeating the Russian army on the Kalka River, went further, through Poland and the Czech Republic. As a result, having reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, the army suddenly stops, and without completing its task, turns back. From this period, the So-called "Mongol-Tatar Yoke" over Russia begins.
But wait, they were going to take over the world...so why didn't they go further? Historians answered that they were afraid of an attack from the back, defeated and plundered, but still strong Russia. But this is just ridiculous. A plundered state, will it run to protect other people's cities and villages? Rather, they will rebuild their borders, and wait for the return of the enemy troops in order to fully fight back. But the oddities don't end there. For some unimaginable reason, during the reign of the Romanov dynasty, dozens of chronicles describing the events of the "Horde times" disappear. For example, "The Word about the destruction of the Russian land", historians believe that this is a document from which everything that would testify to the Yoke was carefully removed. They left only fragments telling about some kind of "trouble" that befell Russia. But there is not a word about the "invasion of the Mongols." There are many more oddities. In the story “About the Evil Tatars”, a Khan from the Golden Horde orders the execution of a Russian Christian prince ... for refusing to bow to the “pagan god of the Slavs!” And some chronicles contain amazing phrases, for example, such: “Well, with God!” - said the Khan and, crossing himself, galloped at the enemy. So what really happened? At that time, Europe was already flourishing "new faith" namely Faith in Christ. Catholicism was widespread everywhere, and ruled everything, from the way of life and system, to the state system and legislation. At that time, crusades against the Gentiles were still relevant, but along with military methods, "tactical tricks" were often used, akin to bribing powerful persons and inclining them to their faith. And after receiving power through a purchased person, the conversion of all his “subordinates” to the faith. It was precisely such a secret crusade that was then carried out against Russia. Through bribery and other promises, church ministers were able to seize power over Kiev and nearby areas. Just relatively recently, by the standards of history, the baptism of Russia took place, but history is silent about the civil war that arose on this soil immediately after the forced baptism.

So, this author interprets the "Tatar-Mongol yoke" as a civil war imposed by the West during the real, Western baptism of Russia, which took place in the XIII-XIV centuries. Such an understanding of the baptism of Russia is very painful for the ROC for two reasons. The date of the baptism of Russia is considered to be 988, and not 1237. Due to the date shift, the antiquity of Russian Christianity is reduced by 249 years, which reduces the “millennium of Orthodoxy” by almost a third. On the other hand, the source of Russian Christianity is not the activities of the Russian princes, including Vladimir, but the Western crusades, accompanied by mass protests of the Russian population. This raises the question of the legitimacy of the introduction of Orthodoxy in Russia. Finally, the responsibility for the "yoke" in this case is transferred from the unknown "Tatar-Mongol" to the very real West, to Rome and Constantinople. And official historiography on this issue turns out to be not science, but modern near-scientific mythology. But let's get back to the texts of the book by Alexei Kungurov, especially since he examines in great detail all the inconsistencies of the official version.

Lack of writing and artifacts.

“The Mongols did not have their own alphabet and did not leave a single written source” (KUN: 163). Indeed, this is extremely surprising. Generally speaking, even if the people do not have their own written language, then for state acts it uses the writing of other peoples. Therefore, the complete absence of state acts in such a large state as the Mongol Khanate during its heyday causes not only bewilderment, but doubt that such a state ever existed. “If we demand to present at least some material evidence of the long existence of the Mongol empire, then archaeologists, scratching their heads and grunting, will show a pair of half-rotten sabers and several female earrings. But do not try to find out why the remains of sabers are "Mongol-Tatar" and not Cossack, for example. No one will explain this to you for sure. At best, you will hear a story that the saber was dug up at the place where, according to the version of the ancient and very reliable chronicle, there was a battle with the Mongols. Where is that chronicle? God knows, it has not reached our days, but the historian N. saw it with his own eyes, who translated it from Old Russian. Where is this historian N.? Yes, he has been dead for two hundred years now - modern “scientists” will answer you, but they will certainly add that the works of H are considered classic and are beyond doubt, since all subsequent generations of historians wrote their works based on his writings. I'm not laughing - something like this is the case in the official historical science of Russian antiquity. Even worse - armchair scientists, creatively developing the legacy of the classics of Russian historiography, scribbled in their plump volumes such nonsense about the Mongols, whose arrows, it turns out, pierced the armor of European knights, and wall-beating guns, flamethrowers and even rocket artillery allowed them to be taken by storm for several days powerful fortresses that this raises serious doubts about their mental usefulness. It seems that they do not see any difference between a bow and a crossbow loaded with a lever” ” (KUHN: 163-164).

But where could the Mongols encounter the armor of European knights, and what do Russian sources say about this? “And the Vorogs came from the Overseas, and they brought faith in alien gods. With fire and sword, they began to instill in us an alien faith, Showering the Russian princes with gold and silver, bribing their will, and misleading the true path. They promised them an idle life, full of wealth and happiness, and the remission of any sins, for their dashing deeds. And then Ros broke up into different states. The Russian clans retreated to the north to the great Asgard, And they named their state by the names of the gods of their patrons, Tarkh Dazhdbog the Great and Tara, his Sister of Light. (They called her Great Tartaria). Leaving foreigners with princes bought in the principality of Kiev and its environs. Volga Bulgaria also did not bow before the enemies, and did not accept their alien faith as their own. But the principality of Kiev did not live in peace with Tartaria. They began to conquer the Russian land with fire and sword and impose their alien faith. And then the army rose up, for a fierce battle. In order to keep their faith and win back their lands. Both old and young then went to the Warriors in order to restore order to the Russian Lands.

And so the war began, in which the Russian army, the land of the Great Aria (tatAria) defeated the enemy, and drove him out of the primordially Slavic lands. It drove the alien army, with their fierce faith, from their stately lands. By the way, the word Horde, translated from the letters of the ancient Slavic alphabet, means Order. That is, the Golden Horde is not a separate state, it is a system. "Political" system of the Golden Order. Under which the Princes reigned locally, planted with the approval of the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Army, or in one word they called him KHAN (our protector).
This means that there was not, after all, more than two hundred years of oppression, but there was a time of peace and prosperity of the Great Aria or Tartaria. By the way, in modern history there is also confirmation of this, but for some reason no one pays attention to it. But we will definitely pay attention, and very closely…: Don't you think it's strange that the battle with the Swedes takes place right in the middle of the invasion of the "Mongol-Tatars" into Russia? Russia, blazing in fires and plundered by the "Mongols", is attacked by the Swedish army, which safely drowns in the waters of the Neva, and at the same time, the Swedish crusaders do not encounter the Mongols even once. And the Russians, who defeated the strong Swedish army, lose to the “Mongols”? In my opinion, it's just Brad. Two huge armies at the same time are fighting on the same territory and never intersect. But if we turn to the ancient Slavonic chronicle, then everything becomes clear.

Since 1237, the Rat of Great Tartaria began to recapture their ancestral lands back, and when the war was coming to an end, church representatives who were losing power asked for help, and the Swedish crusaders were sent into battle. If it was not possible to take the country by bribery, then they will take it by force. Just in 1240, the army of the Horde (that is, the army of Prince Alexander Yaroslavovich, one of the princes of the ancient Slavic family) clashed in battle with the army of the Crusaders that came to the rescue of their henchmen. Having won the battle on the Neva, Alexander received the title of the Neva prince and remained to reign in Novgorod, and the Horde Army went further to drive the adversary from the Russian lands completely. So she persecuted the “church and alien faith” until she reached the Adriatic Sea, thereby restoring her original ancient borders. And having reached them, the army turned around and again went north. By establishing a 300-year period of peace” (TAT).

Fantasies of historians about the power of the Mongols.

Commenting on the lines cited above (KUN:163), Aleksey Kungurov adds: “Here is what Sergey Nefyodov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, writes: “The main weapon of the Tatars was the Mongolian bow,“ saadak ”, - it was thanks to this New Weapon that the Mongols conquered most of the promised world. It was a complex killing machine, glued together from three layers of wood and bone and wrapped in tendons to protect against moisture; gluing was carried out under pressure, and drying lasted several years - the secret of making these bows was kept secret. This bow was not inferior in power to the musket; an arrow from it pierced any armor for 300 meters, and it was all about the ability to hit the target, because the bows did not have a sight and shooting from them required many years of training. Possessing this all-destroying weapon, the Tatars did not like to fight hand-to-hand; they preferred to fire at the enemy with bows, dodging his attacks; this shelling sometimes lasted several days, and the Mongols took out their sabers only when the enemies were wounded and fell from exhaustion. The last, "ninth", attack was carried out by "swordsmen" - warriors armed with curved swords and, along with horses, covered with armor made of thick buffalo leather. During the big battles, this attack was preceded by shelling from the "fire catapults" borrowed from the Chinese - these catapults fired bombs filled with gunpowder, which, when exploding, "burned the armor with sparks" (NEF). - Alexey Kungurov comments on this passage as follows: “The funny thing here is not that Nefyodov is a historian (this fraternity has the most dense idea of ​​natural science), but that he is also a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. Well, how much you need to degrade your mind in order to flog such nonsense! Yes, if the bow shot at 300 meters and at the same time pierced any armor, then firearms simply did not have a chance to be born. The American M-16 rifle has an effective firing range of 400 meters with a muzzle velocity of 1000 meters per second. Further, the bullet quickly loses its striking ability. In reality, further than 100 meters, aimed shooting from the M-16 with a mechanical sight is ineffective. At 300 meters, even from a powerful rifle, only a very experienced shooter can shoot accurately without an optical sight. And the scientist Nefyodov spins nonsense about the fact that the Mongolian arrows not only flew aiming for a third of a kilometer (the maximum distance at which archer champions shoot at competitions is 90 meters), but also pierced any armor. Rave! For example, good chain mail cannot be pierced even at close range from the most powerful bow. To defeat a warrior in chain mail, a special arrow with a needle tip was used, which did not pierce the armor, but, with a good combination of circumstances, passed through the rings.

In physics at school, I had grades no higher than three, but I know very well from practice that an arrow fired from a bow is given the force that the muscles of the hands develop when it is pulled. That is, with about the same success, you can take an arrow with your hand and try to pierce at least an enameled basin with it. In the absence of an arrow, use any pointed object such as half a tailor's scissors, an awl or a knife. How is it going? Do you believe the historians after that? If they write in their dissertations that short and thin Mongols pulled their bows with a force of 75 kg, then I would only award the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences to those who can repeat this feat on defense. Though parasites with scientific titles will be less. By the way, modern Mongols have no idea about any saadaks - the superweapon of the Middle Ages. Having conquered half the world with them, for some reason they completely forgot how to do it.

It is even easier with wall-beating machines and catapults: one has only to look at the drawings of these monsters, as it becomes clear that these multi-ton colossus cannot be moved even a meter, since they will get stuck in the ground even during construction. But even if in those days there were asphalt roads from Transbaikalia to Kyiv and Polotsk, how would the Mongols drag them thousands of kilometers, how did they transport them across large rivers like the Volga or the Dnieper? Stone fortresses ceased to be considered impregnable only with the invention of siege artillery, and in previous times well-fortified cities were taken only by starvation” (KUN: 164-165). I think this criticism is excellent. I will add that, according to the works of Ya.A. Koestler, there were no saltpeter reserves in China, so they had nothing to fill with powder bombs. In addition, gunpowder does not create a temperature of 1556 degrees, at which iron is melted in order to "burn armor with sparks." And if he could create such a temperature, then the “sparks” would burn first of all the guns and guns at the moment of the shot. It is very funny to read that the Tatars shot and shot (the number of arrows in their quiver, apparently, was not limited), and the enemy was exhausted, and the skinny Mongol warriors shot the tenth and hundredth arrow with the same fresh strength as the first, not getting tired at all. Surprisingly, even shooters from a rifle get tired, shooting while standing, and this state was unknown to the Mongolian archers.

At one time, I heard from lawyers the expression: "Lies like an eyewitness." Now, probably, using the example of Nefyodov, an addition should be proposed: “He lies like a professional historian.”

Mongolian metallurgists.

It would seem that we can put an end to this already, but Kungurov wants to consider several more aspects. “I know little about metallurgy, but I can still estimate very roughly how many tons of iron are needed to arm even a 10,000-strong Mongol army” (KUN:166). Where did the 10,000 figure come from? - This is the minimum size of the troops with which you can go on a campaign of conquest. Guy Julius Caesar with such a detachment could not capture Britain, but when he doubled the number, the conquest of foggy Albion was a success. “Actually, such a small army could not conquer China, India, Russia and other countries. Therefore, historians, without trifles, write about the 30,000th cavalry horde of Batu, sent to conquer Russia, but this figure seems absolutely fantastic. Even if we assume that the Mongol warriors had leather armor, wooden shields, and stone arrowheads, then horseshoes, spears, knives, swords, and sabers still require iron.

Now it’s worth considering: how did the wild nomads know the high iron-making technologies at that time? After all, the ore still needs to be mined, and for this to be able to find it, that is, to understand a little about geology. Are there many ancient ore mines in the Mongolian steppes? How many remains of forges do archaeologists find there? Of course, they are still those wizards - they will find anything they want, where they need it. But in this case, nature itself made the task extremely difficult for archaeologists. Even today, iron ore is not mined in Mongolia (although small deposits have recently been discovered)” (KUN:166). But even if the ore was found, and smelting furnaces existed, the work of metallurgists would have to be paid, and they themselves had to live settled. Where are the former settlements of metallurgists? Where are waste rock dumps (heaps)? Where are the remnants of warehouses for finished products? None of this has been found.

“Of course, weapons can be bought, but money is needed, which the ancient Mongols did not have, at least they are completely unknown to world archeology. Yes, and could not have, because their economy was not marketable. Weapons could be exchanged, but where, from whom and for what? In short, if you think about such trifles, then the campaign of Genghis Khan from the Manchurian steppes to China, India, Persia, the Caucasus and Europe looks like a complete fantasy ”(KUN: 166).

This is not the first time I have come across such "punctures" in mythological historiography. As a matter of fact, any historiographical myth is written in order to close the real fact like a smoke screen. This kind of camouflage works well in cases where secondary facts are masked. But it is impossible to disguise advanced technologies, the highest at that time. It's like a criminal over two meters tall wearing someone else's suit and mask - he is identified not by his clothes or face, but by his exorbitant height. If in the indicated period, that is, in the XIII century, the best iron armor was worn by Western European knights, then it would be impossible to attribute their urban culture to the steppe nomads in any way. In the same way as the highest culture of Etruscan writing, where the Italian, Russian, stylized Greek alphabets and runica were used, cannot be attributed to any small people like the Albanians or Chechens, who, perhaps, did not exist in those days.

Forage for the Mongolian cavalry.

“For example, how did the Mongols cross the Volga or the Dnieper? You can't overcome a two-kilometer stream by swimming, you can't wade. There is only one way out - to wait for winter to cross the ice. It was in winter, by the way, that in Russia they usually fought in old age. But in order to make such a long journey during the winter, it is necessary to prepare an enormous amount of fodder, since although the Mongolian horse is able to find withered grass under the snow, for this it needs to graze where the grass is. In this case, the snow cover should be small. In the Mongolian steppes, winters are just short of snow, and the herbage is quite high. In Russia, the opposite is true - the grass is tall only in floodplain meadows, and in all other places it is very thin. Snowdrifts, on the other hand, sweep up such that a horse, not only to find grass under it, will not be able to move through deep snow. Otherwise, it is not clear why the French lost all their cavalry during the retreat from Moscow. Of course, they ate it, but they ate the already fallen horses, because if the horses were well-fed and healthy, then uninvited guests would use them to get away as soon as possible ”(KUN: 166-167). – Note that it is for this reason that summer campaigns have become preferable for Western Europeans.

“Oats are usually used as forage, of which a horse needs 5-6 kg per day. It turns out that the nomads, preparing in advance for a trip to distant lands, sowed the steppe with oats? Or did they carry hay behind them in carts? Let's perform simple arithmetic operations and calculate what preparations the nomads had to make in order to go on a long trip. Let us assume that they have gathered an army of at least 10,000 cavalry fighters. Each warrior needs several horses - one specially trained combatant for combat, one for marching, one for a wagon train - to carry food, a yurt and other supplies. This is at least, but we must also take into account that some of the horses will fall along the way, there will be combat losses, therefore a reserve is needed.

And if 10,000 horsemen march in marching formation even across the steppe, then when the horses will graze, where the soldiers will live, will they rest in the snowdrifts, or what? On a long trip, one cannot do without food, fodder and wagon trains with warm yurts. You still need fuel to cook food, but where can you find firewood in the treeless steppe? The nomads drowned their yurts, sorry, with poop, because there is nothing else. It stank, of course. But they are used to it. You can, of course, fantasize about the strategic harvesting of hundreds of tons of dried shit by the Mongols, which they took with them on the road, setting off to conquer the world, but I will leave this opportunity to the most stubborn historians.

Some wise men tried to prove to me that the Mongols did not have a convoy at all, which is why they managed to show phenomenal maneuverability. But in this case, how did they carry the stolen booty home - in their pocket, or what? And where were their battering rams and other engineering devices, and the same maps and food supplies, not to mention their environmentally friendly fuel? Not a single army in the world has ever done without a convoy if it was going to make a transition lasting more than two days. The loss of the baggage usually meant the failure of the campaign, even if there was no battle with the enemy.

In short, according to the most modest estimates, our mini-horde should have at its disposal at least 40 thousand horses. From the experience of mass armies of the XVII-XIX centuries. it is known that the daily forage requirement of such a herd will be at least 200 tons of oats. This is just in one day! And the longer the transition, the more horses should be involved in the wagon train. A medium-sized horse is capable of pulling a cart with 300 kg of weight. This is if on the road, and off-road in packs is half as much. That is, in order to provide our 40,000th herd, we need 700 horses per day. A three-month campaign will require a convoy of almost 70 thousand horses. And this horde also needs oats, and in order to feed 70 thousand horses carrying fodder for 40 thousand horses, it will take more than 100 thousand horses with carts for the same three months, and these horses, in turn, want to eat - it turns out a vicious circle " (KUHN:167-168). - This calculation shows that intercontinental, for example, from Asia to Europe, trips on horseback with a full supply of provisions are fundamentally impossible. True, here are the calculations for a 3-month winter campaign. But if the campaign is carried out in the summer, and moving in the steppe zone, feeding the horses with pasture, then you can move much further.

“Even in the summer, the cavalry never did without fodder, so the Mongol campaign against Russia would still require logistics. Until the 20th century, the maneuverability of troops was determined not by the speed of horse hooves and the strength of soldiers' legs, but by dependence on wagon trains and the capacity of the road network. A marching speed of 20 km per day was very good even for the average division of the Second World War, and German tanks, when paved highways allowed them to carry out blitzkrieg, wound on their tracks 50 km per day. But in this case, the rear inevitably lagged behind. In ancient times, in off-road conditions, such performance would have been simply fantastic. The textbook (SVI) reports that the Mongolian army passed about 100 kilometers a day! Yeah, you can hardly find people who are the worst versed in history. Even in May 1945, Soviet tanks, making a forced march from Berlin to Prague along good European roads, could not beat the "Mongol-Tatar" record" (KUN: 168-169). - I believe that the very division of Europe into Western and Eastern is made not so much from geographical as from strategic considerations. Namely: within each of them, military campaigns, although they require supplies of fodder and horses, but within reasonable limits. And the transition to another part of Europe already requires the tension of all state forces, so that the military campaign affects not only the army, but develops into a domestic war that requires the participation of the entire population.

Food problem.

“What did the riders themselves eat on the way? If you drive a herd of sheep behind you, then you will have to move at their speed. During the winter, there is no way to reach the nearest center of civilization. But nomads are unpretentious people, they managed with dried meat and cottage cheese, which was soaked in hot water. Like it or not, a kilogram of food a day is necessary. Three months of travel - 100 kg of weight. In the future, you can score convoy horses. At the same time, there will be savings on fodder. But not a single convoy is able to move at a speed of 100 km per day, especially off-road.” - It is clear that this problem mainly concerns deserted areas. In densely populated Europe, the victor can take food from the vanquished

demographic problems.

“If we touch on demographic issues and try to understand how the nomads were able to field 10 thousand soldiers, given the very low population density in the steppe zone, then we will run into another unsolvable mystery. Well, there is no population density in the steppes higher than 0.2 people per square kilometer! If we take the mobilization capabilities of the Mongols as 10% of the total population (every second healthy man from 18 to 45 years old), then to mobilize a 10,000-strong horde, it will be necessary to comb an area of ​​​​half a million square kilometers. Or let's touch on purely organizational issues: for example, how did the Mongols collect taxes on the army and recruit, how did military training take place, how was the military elite brought up? It turns out that for purely technical reasons, the Mongols' campaign against Russia, as described by "professional" historians, was impossible in principle.

There are examples of this from relatively recent times. In the spring of 1771, the Kalmyks, who roamed the Caspian steppes, annoyed that the tsarist administration had significantly curtailed their autonomy, unanimously took off and moved to their historical homeland in Dzungaria (the territory of the modern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in China). Only 25 thousand Kalmyks, who lived on the right bank of the Volga, remained in place - they could not join the others due to the opening of the river. Of the 170 thousand nomads, only about 70 thousand reached the goal after 8 months. The rest, as you might guess, died on the way. The winter crossing would have been even more disastrous. The local population met the settlers without enthusiasm. Who will now find traces of the Kalmyks in Xinjiang? And on the right bank of the Volga today there are 165 thousand Kalmyks who switched to a settled way of life during the period of collectivization in 1929-1940, but did not lose their original culture and religion (Buddhism) ”(KUN: 1690170). This last example is amazing! Almost 2/3 of the population, who traveled slowly and with good convoys in the summer, died on the way. Even if the losses of the regular army were less, say, 1/3, but then instead of 10 thousand troops, less than 7 thousand people will reach the goal. It may be objected that they drove the conquered peoples ahead of them. So I counted only those who died from the difficulties of the transition, but there were also combat losses. Defeated enemies can be driven when the winners are at least twice the number of the defeated. So if half of the troops die in battle (in fact, the attackers die about 6 times more than the defenders), then the surviving 3.5 thousand can drive no more than 1.5 thousand prisoners in front of them, who will try to run over to the side of the enemies, strengthening their ranks. And an army of less than 4 thousand people is hardly capable of moving further into a foreign country with battles - it's time for him to return home.

Why do we need a myth about the Tatar-Mongol invasion.

“But the myth of the terrible Mongol invasion is being cultivated for something. And for what, it’s easy to guess - virtual Mongols are needed solely to explain the disappearance of the equally phantom Kievan Rus along with its original population. Say, as a result of the Batu invasion, the Dnieper region was completely depopulated. And what the hell, you ask, the nomads had to destroy the population? Well, they would have imposed a tribute, like everyone else - at least some benefit. But no, historians unanimously convince us that the Mongols completely ruined the Kiev region, burned the cities, exterminated the population or took them prisoner, and those who were lucky enough to survive, smearing their heels with fat, fled without looking back into the wild forests to the northeast, where time created a powerful Muscovite kingdom. One way or another, but the time before the 16th century, as it were, falls out of the history of Southern Russia: if historians mention anything about this period, it is the raids of the Crimeans. But who did they raid, if the Russian lands were depopulated?

It cannot be that for 250 years no events at all took place in the historical center of Russia! However, no milestone events were noted. This caused heated debate among historians, when disputes were still allowed. Some put forward hypotheses about the total flight of the population to the northeast, others believed that the entire population died out, and a new one came from the Carpathians in the following centuries. Still others expressed the idea that the population did not flee anywhere, and did not come from anywhere, but simply sat quietly in isolation from the outside world and did not show any political, military, economic, demographic or cultural activity. Klyuchevsky promoted the idea that the population, frightened to death by the evil Tatars, left their habitable places and went partly to Galicia, and partly to Suzdal lands, from where it spread far to the north and east. Kyiv, as a city, according to the professor, temporarily ceased to exist, reduced to 200 houses. Solovyov claimed that Kyiv was completely destroyed and for many years was a pile of ruins where no one lived. In the Galician lands, then called Lesser Russia, refugees from the Dnieper region, they say, became slightly Polonized, and after returning several centuries later to their autochthonous territory already as Little Russians, they brought there a peculiar dialect and customs acquired in exile ”(KUN: 170-171).

So, from the point of view of Alexei Kungurov, the myth about the Tatar-Mongols supports another myth - about Kievan Rus. While I do not consider this second myth, however, I admit that the existence of a vast Kievan Rus is also a myth. However, let's listen to this author to the end. Perhaps he will show that the myth of the Tatar-Mongols is beneficial to historians for other reasons as well.

Surprisingly fast surrender of Russian cities.

“At first glance, this version looks quite logical: evil barbarians came and destroyed a flourishing civilization, killed everyone and dispersed to hell. Why? Because they are barbarians. What for? But Batu was in a bad mood, maybe his wife cuckolded him, maybe he tortured his stomach with a stomach ulcer, so he was spiteful. The scientific community is quite satisfied with such answers, and since I have nothing to do with this very public, I immediately want to argue with the luminaries of historical "science".

Why, one wonders, did the Mongols totally clear out the Kiev region? It should be noted that the Kyiv land is not some insignificant outskirts, but supposedly the core of the Russian state, according to the same Klyuchevsky. Meanwhile, Kyiv in 1240 was surrendered to the enemy a few days after the siege. Are there similar cases in history? More often we will find reverse examples, when we gave everything to the enemy, but fought for the core to the last. Therefore, the fall of Kyiv seems completely unbelievable. Before the invention of siege artillery, a well-fortified city could only be taken by starvation. And it often happened that the besiegers ran out of steam faster than the besieged. History knows cases of very long defense of the city. For example, during the Polish intervention during the Time of Troubles, the siege of Smolensk by the Poles lasted from September 21, 1609 to June 3, 1611. The defenders capitulated only when the Polish artillery broke through an impressive opening in the wall, and the besieged were exhausted to the extreme by hunger and disease.

The Polish king Sigismund, struck by the courage of the defenders, let them go home. But why did the people of Kiev surrender so quickly to the wild Mongols, who spared no one? The nomads did not have powerful siege artillery, and the battering rams with which they allegedly destroyed the fortifications are stupid inventions of historians. It was physically impossible to drag such a device to the wall, because the walls themselves always stood on a large earthen rampart, which was the basis of the city fortifications, and a moat was arranged in front of them. Now it is generally accepted that the defense of Kyiv lasted 93 days. The well-known fiction writer Bushkov is sarcastic about this: “Historians are a little cunning. Ninety-three days is not a period between the beginning and the end of the assault, but the first appearance of the “Tatar” rati and the capture of Kyiv. First, “Batu Voivode” Mengat appeared at the Kiev walls and tried to persuade the Kiev prince to surrender the city without a fight, but the Kievites killed his ambassadors, and he retreated. And three months later came "Batu". And in a few days he took the city. It is the interval between these events that other researchers call the “long siege” (BUSH).

Moreover, the story of the rapid fall of Kyiv is by no means unique. According to historians, all other Russian cities (Ryazan, Vladimir, Galich, Moscow, Pereslavl-Zalessky, etc.) usually held out for no more than five days. Surprisingly, Torzhok defended for almost two weeks. Little Kozelsk allegedly set a record by holding out for seven weeks in the siege, but fell on the third day of the assault. Who will explain to me what kind of superweapon the Mongols used to take fortresses on the move? And why was this weapon forgotten? In the Middle Ages, throwing machines - vices - were sometimes used to destroy city walls. But in Russia there was a big problem - there was nothing to throw - boulders of a suitable size would have to be dragged along.

True, the cities in Russia in most cases had wooden fortifications, and theoretically they could be burned. But in practice, in winter, this was difficult to do, because the walls were poured with water from above, as a result of which an ice shell formed on them. In fact, even if a 10,000-strong nomadic army came to Russia, no catastrophe would have happened. This horde would simply melt away in a couple of months, taking a dozen cities by storm. The losses of the attackers in this case will be 3-5 times higher than those of the defenders of the citadel.

According to the official version of history, the northeastern lands of Russia suffered much more from the adversary, but for some reason no one thought to scatter from there. And vice versa, they fled to where the climate is colder, and the Mongols were more outrageous. Where is the logic? And why was the "runaway" population right up to the 16th century paralyzed with fear and did not try to return to the fertile lands of the Dnieper region? The Mongols have long since disappeared, and the frightened Russians, they say, were afraid to show their nose there. The Crimeans were by no means peaceful, but for some reason the Russians were not afraid of them - the Cossacks on their seagulls descended along the Don and Dnieper, unexpectedly attacked the Crimean cities and staged cruel pogroms there. Usually, if any places are favorable for life, then the struggle for them is especially fierce, and these lands are never empty. The vanquished are replaced by the conquerors, those are displaced or assimilated by stronger neighbors - the question here is not in disagreements on some political or religious issues, but precisely in the possession of the territory ”(KUN: 171-173). - Indeed, the situation is completely inexplicable from the point of view of the clash between the steppe dwellers and the townspeople. It is very good for a denigrating version of the historiography of Russia, but it is completely illogical. So far, Aleksey Kungurov is noticing more and more new aspects of the absolutely incredible development of events from the standpoint of the Tatar-Mongol invasion.

Incomprehensible motives of the Mongols.

“Historians do not explain the motives of the mythical Mongols at all. In the name of what did they participate in such grandiose campaigns? If in order to impose tribute on the conquered Russians, then why the hell did the Mongols raze 49 out of 74 large Russian cities to the ground, and the population was slaughtered almost to the root, as historians say? If they destroyed the natives because they liked the local grass and a milder climate than in the Trans-Caspian and Trans-Baikal steppes, then why did they leave for the steppe? There is no logic in the actions of the conquerors. More precisely, it is not in the nonsense composed by historians.

The root cause of the militancy of peoples in antiquity was the so-called crisis of nature and man. When the territory was overpopulated, the society, as it were, pushed young and energetic people out. They will conquer those lands of their neighbors and settle there - good. They will die in the hearth - also not bad, because there will be no “extra” population. In many ways, this is precisely what can explain the militancy of the ancient Scandinavians: their stingy northern lands could not feed the multiplying population, and they had to live by robbery or be hired in the service of foreign rulers in order to engage in the same robbery. The Russians can be said to be lucky - for centuries the surplus population rolled back south and east all the way to the Pacific Ocean. In the future, the crisis of nature and man began to be overcome through a qualitative change in agricultural technologies and the development of industry.

But what could be the reason for the militancy of the Mongols? If the population density of the steppes exceeds the permissible limits (that is, there is a shortage of pastures), some of the shepherds will simply migrate to other, less developed steppes. If the nomads there are not happy with the guests, then there will be a small massacre in which the strongest will win. That is, the Mongols, in order to get to Kyiv, would have to master vast expanses from Manchuria to the northern Black Sea region. But even in this case, the nomads did not pose a threat to strong civilized countries, because not a single nomadic people ever created their own statehood and did not have an army. The maximum that the steppe dwellers are capable of is to make a raid on the border village with the aim of robbery.

The only analogue of the mythical warlike Mongols is the pastoral Chechens of the 19th century. This people is unique in that robbery has become the basis of its existence. The Chechens did not even have a rudimentary statehood, they lived in clans (teips), did not know agriculture, unlike their neighbors, did not possess the secrets of metal processing, and in general they owned the most primitive crafts. They posed a threat to the Russian frontier and communications with Georgia, which became part of Russia since 1804, only because they supplied them with weapons and supplies, and bribed local princes. But the Chechen robbers, despite their numerical superiority, could not oppose the Russians with anything other than the tactics of raids and forest ambushes. When the patience of the latter burst, the regular army under the command of Yermolov quite quickly carried out a total "cleansing" of the North Caucasus, driving the abreks into the mountains and gorges.

I am ready to believe in many things, but I categorically refuse to take nonsense about the evil nomads who destroyed Ancient Russia seriously. All the more fantastic is the theory of the three-century "yoke" of the wild steppes over the Russian principalities. Only the STATE can exercise dominance over the conquered lands. Historians generally understand this, and therefore they invented some kind of fabulous Mongol Empire - the largest state in the world in the entire history of mankind, founded by Genghis Khan in 1206 and including the territory from the Danube to the Sea of ​​​​Japan and from Novgorod to Cambodia. All empires known to us were created over centuries and generations, and only the greatest world empire was allegedly created by an illiterate savage literally by a wave of the hand ”(KUN: 173-175). - So, Alexei Kungurov comes to the conclusion that if there was a conquest of Russia, then it was carried out not by wild steppe dwellers, but by some powerful state. But where was its capital?

The capital of the steppes.

“If there is an empire, then there must be a capital. The fantastic city of Karakorum was appointed to be the capital, the ruins of the Buddhist monastery Erdeni-Dzu of the end of the 16th century in the center of modern Mongolia were explained as the remains of it. Based on what? And so wanted historians. Schliemann dug up the ruins of a small ancient city, and declared that it was Troy” (KUN:175). I showed in two articles that Schliemann unearthed one of the temples of Yar and mistook its treasures for the trace of ancient Troy, although Troy, as one of the Serbian researchers showed, was located on the shores of Lake Skoder (the modern city of Shkoder in Albania).

“And Nikolai Yadrintsev, who discovered an ancient settlement in the Orkhon Oeki valley, declared it Karakorum. Karakorum literally means "black stones" Since there was a mountain range not far from the place of the find, it was given the official name Karakorum. And since the mountains are called Karakorum, the settlement was given the same name. That's such a compelling reason! True, the local population had never heard of any Karakorum, but called the Muztag ridge - Ice Mountains, but this did not bother the scientists at all ”(KUN: 175-176). - And rightly so, because in this case, the "scientists" were looking not for the truth, but for confirmation of their myth, and geographical renaming is very conducive to this.

Traces of a grandiose empire.

“The largest empire in the world has left the fewest traces of itself. Or rather, none at all. It allegedly broke up in the 13th century into separate uluses, the largest of which was the Yuan Empire, that is, China (its capital Khanbalik, now Aekin, was supposedly at one time the capital of the entire Mongol Empire), the state of the Ilkhans (Iran, Transcaucasia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan), Chagatai ulus (Central Asia) and the Golden Horde (the territory from the Irtysh to the White, Baltic and Black Seas). This historians cleverly came up with. Now any fragments of ceramics or copper jewelry found in the vastness from Hungary to the coast of the Sea of ​​Japan can be declared traces of the great Mongolian civilization. And find And announce. And they will not blink an eye at the same time ”(KUN: 176).

As an epigraphist, I am primarily interested in written monuments. Did they exist in the Tatar-Mongol era? Here is what Nefyodov writes about this: “Having installed Alexander Nevsky as the Grand Duke of their own free will, the Tatars sent Baskaks and numeralists to Russia - “and the accursed Tatars began to ride through the streets, rewriting Christian houses.” This was the census being carried out at that time throughout the vast Mongol Empire; The clerks compiled defter registers in order to levy taxes established by Yelü Chu-tsai: land tax, “kalan”, poll tax, “kupchur”, and a tax on merchants, “tamga” (NEF). True, in epigraphy the word “tamga” has a different meaning, “generic signs of property”, but this is not the point: if there were three types of taxes, drawn up in the form of lists, then something must have been preserved. “Unfortunately, there is none of that. It is not even clear what font all this was written in. But if there are no such special notes, then it turns out that all these lists were written in Russian, that is, in Cyrillic. – When I tried to find articles on the Internet on the topic “Artifacts of the Tatar-Mongol yoke”, I met a judgment that I reproduce below.

Why are the annals silent.

“At the time of the mythical “Tatar-Mongol yoke”, according to official history, Russia fell into decline. This, in their opinion, is confirmed by the almost complete absence of evidence for that period. Once, while talking with a lover of the history of my native land, I heard from him a mention of the decline that reigned in this area during the “Tatar-Mongol yoke”. As evidence, he recalled that a monastery once stood in these places. First, it should be said about the area: a river valley with hills in the immediate vicinity, there are springs - an ideal place for a settlement. So it was. However, in the annals of this monastery, the nearest settlement is mentioned only a few tens of kilometers away. Although between the lines you can read that people lived closer, only "wild". Arguing on this topic, we came to the conclusion that due to ideological motives, the monks mentioned only Christian settlements, or during the next rewriting of history, all information about non-Christian settlements was erased.

No, no, yes, sometimes historians dig up settlements that flourished during the “Tatar-Mongol yoke”. What forced them to admit that, in fact, the Tatar-Mongols were quite tolerant of the conquered peoples ... “However, the lack of reliable sources about the general prosperity in Kievan Rus does not give reason to doubt the official history.

In fact, apart from the sources of the Orthodox Church, we have no reliable data about the occupation by the Tatar-Mongols. In addition, quite interesting is the fact of the rapid occupation of not only the steppe regions of Russia (from the point of view of official history, the Tatar-Mongols are steppes), but also wooded and even swampy territories. Of course, the history of hostilities knows examples of the rapid conquest of the marshy forests of Belarus. However, the Nazis bypassed the swamps. But what about the Soviet army, which carried out a brilliant offensive operation in the swampy part of Belarus? This is true, however, the population in Belarus was needed to create a bridgehead for subsequent offensives. They simply chose to advance on the least expected (and therefore protected) site. But most importantly, the Soviet army relied on local partisans, who thoroughly knew the area even better than the Nazis. But the mythical Tatar-Mongols, who did the unthinkable, conquered the swamps on the move - abandoned further offensives ”(SPO). – Here, an unknown researcher notes two curious facts: already the monastery chronicle considers as a populated area only the one where the parishioners lived, as well as the brilliant orientation of the steppes among the swamps, which should not be characteristic of them. And the same author also notes the coincidence of the territory occupied by the Tatar-Mongols with the territory of Kievan Rus. Thus, he shows that in reality we are dealing with a territory that has undergone Christianization, regardless of whether it was in the steppe, in forests or in swamps. – But back to the texts of Kungurov.

Religion of the Mongols.

“What was the official religion of the Mongols? - Choose whichever you like. Allegedly, Buddhist idols were found in the Karakorum "palace" of the great Khan Ogedei (the heir of Genghis Khan). In the capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai-Batu, mostly Orthodox crosses and breastplates are found. Islam was established in the Central Asian possessions of the Mongol conquerors, and Zoroastrianism continued to flourish in the South Caspian. The Jewish Khazars also felt free in the Mongol Empire. A variety of shamanistic beliefs have been preserved in Siberia. Russian historians traditionally tell stories that the Mongols were idolaters. Say, they made the Russian princes a “headaxe”, if those, coming for a label for the right to reign in their lands, did not worship their filthy pagan idols. In short, the Mongols had no state religion. All empires had it, but the Mongol one did not. Everyone could pray to whomever he pleased” (KUN:176). – Note that there was no religious tolerance either before or after the Mongol invasion. Ancient Prussia with the Baltic people of the Prussians who inhabited it (relatives in language to the Lithuanians and Latvians), the German knightly orders were wiped off the face of the earth only because they were pagans. And in Russia, not only Vedists (Old Believers), but also early Christians (Old Believers) began to be persecuted after Nikon's reform as enemies. Therefore, such a combination of words as “evil Tatars” and “tolerance” is impossible, it is illogical. The division of the greatest empire into separate regions, each with its own religion, probably indicates the independent existence of these regions, united into a gigantic empire only in the mythology of historians. As for the finds of Orthodox crosses and breastplates in the European part of the empire, this indicates that the “Tatar-Mongols” planted Christianity and eradicated paganism (Vedism), that is, there was forced Christianization.

Cash.

“By the way, if Karakorum was the Mongolian capital, then it must have had a mint. It is believed that the monetary unit of the Mongol Empire was gold dinars and silver dirhems. For four years, archaeologists dug the soil on Orkhon (1999-2003), but not only the mint, they did not even find a single dirham and dinar, but they dug up a lot of Chinese coins. It was this expedition that found traces of a Buddhist shrine under Ogedei's palace (which turned out to be much smaller than expected). In Germany, a solid folio “Genghis Khan and His Legacy” was published on the results of the excavations. This is despite the fact that archaeologists have not found any traces of the Mongol ruler. However, it does not matter, everything they found was declared the legacy of Genghis Khan. True, the publishers prudently kept silent about the Buddhist shrine and Chinese coins, but most of the book was filled with abstract reasoning, not of any scientific interest ”(KUN: 177). - A legitimate question arises: if the Mongols carried out three types of census, and they collected tribute from them, then where was it stored? And in what currency? Was everything translated into Chinese money? What could they buy in Europe?

Continuing the theme, Kungurov writes: “In general, only a few dirhams with Arabic inscriptions have been found in ALL of Mongolia, which completely excludes the idea that it was the center of some kind of empire. “Scientists”-historians cannot explain this, and therefore they simply do not touch this issue. Even if you grab a historian by the lapel of his jacket, and looking intently into his eyes, ask about it, he will portray a fool who does not understand what he is talking about ”(KUHN:177). - I will interrupt the citation here, because this is exactly how archaeologists behaved when I made my message in the local history museum of Tver, showing that there is an INscription on the stone-cup donated to the museum by local historians. None of the archaeologists approached the stone and felt the letters cut there. For to approach and feel the inscription meant for them to sign a long-term lie about the lack of their own writing among the Slavs in the pre-Cyrilian era. This was the only thing they could do to protect the honor of the uniform (“I don’t see anything, I don’t hear anything, I won’t say anything to anyone,” as the popular song sings).

“There is no archaeological evidence of the existence of an imperial center in Mongolia, and therefore, as arguments in favor of a completely delusional version, official science can only offer a casuistic interpretation of the writings of Rashid ad-Din. True, they cite the latter very selectively. For example, after four years of excavations on the Orkhon, historians prefer not to recall what the latter writes about the circulation of dinars and dirhems in Karakorum. And Guillaume de Rubruk reports that the Mongols knew a lot about Roman money, with which their budget bins were overflowing. Now they have to keep quiet about it too. It should also be forgotten that Plano Carpini mentioned how the ruler of Baghdad paid tribute to the Mongols in Roman gold solids - bezants. In short, all the ancient witnesses were wrong. Only modern historians know the truth” (KUN:178). - As you can see, all ancient witnesses pointed out that the "Mongols" used European money that circulated in Western and Eastern Europe. And they didn't say anything about Chinese money from the "Mongols". Again, we are talking about the fact that the "Mongols" were Europeans, at least in economic terms. It would never occur to any pastoralist to compile lists of landowners that the pastoralists did not have. And even more so - to create a tax on merchants, who in many eastern countries were vagrants. In short, all these censuses, very expensive actions, in order to take a STABLE TAX (at 10%), give out not greedy steppe dwellers, but scrupulous European bankers, who, of course, levied taxes calculated in advance in European currency. Chinese money was useless to them.

“Did the Mongols have a financial system, without which, as you know, no state can do? Did not have! Numismatists are not aware of any specific Mongolian money. But if desired, any unidentified coins are declared as such. What was the name of the imperial currency? Yes, it was not named. Where was the imperial mint, treasury? And nowhere. It seems that historians wrote something about the evil Baskaks - tribute collectors in the Russian uluses of the Golden Horde. But today, the ferocity of the Basques seems highly exaggerated. It seems like they collected a tithe (a tenth of the income) in favor of the khan, and every tenth young man was recruited into his army. The latter should be considered a great exaggeration. After all, the service in those days lasted not a couple of years, but probably a quarter of a century. The population of Russia in the XIII century is usually estimated at the very least at 5 million souls. If every year 10 thousand recruits come to the army, then in 10 years it will swell to absolutely unimaginable sizes ”(KUN: 178-179). - If you call on 10 thousand people annually, then in 10 years you will get 100 thousand, and in 25 years - 250 thousand. Was the state of that time able to feed such an army? “And if we take into account that the Mongols shaved into the service not only Russians, but also representatives of all other conquered peoples, then we get a million-strong horde that no empire could neither feed nor arm in the Middle Ages” (KUN: 179). - That's it.

“But where the tax went, how the accounting was carried out, who disposed of the treasury, scientists cannot really explain anything. Nothing is known about the system of counting, measures and weights used in the empire. The purpose for which the huge Golden Horde budget was spent is also a mystery - the conquerors did not build palaces, cities, monasteries, or fleets. Although no, other storytellers claim that the Mongols had a fleet. They, they say, even conquered the island of Java, and almost captured Japan. But this is such an obvious nonsense that it makes no sense to discuss it. At least, until at least some traces of the existence of steppe pastoralists-seafarers are found on the earth ”(KUN: 179). - As Alexei Kungurov examines various aspects of the Mongols' activities, one gets the impression that the Khalkha people, appointed by historians to the role of world conqueror, were in the most minimal degree suitable for fulfilling this mission. How did the West carry out such a blunder? - The answer is simple. All of Siberia and Central Asia on the European maps of that time was called Tartaria (as I showed in one of my articles, it was there that the Underworld, Tartarus, was moved). Accordingly, the mythical "Tatars" settled there. Their eastern wing also extended to the Khalkha people, about whom at that time few historians knew anything, and therefore anything could be attributed to him. Of course, Western historians did not foresee that in a couple of centuries the means of communication would develop so strongly that through the Internet it would be possible to receive any latest information from archaeologists, which, after analytical processing, would be able to refute any Western myths.

The ruling layer of the Mongols.

“What was the ruling class in the Mongol Empire? Any state has its own military, political, economic, cultural and scientific elite. The ruling layer in the Middle Ages is called the aristocracy, today's ruling class is usually called the vague term "elites". One way or another, but the state elite must be, otherwise there is no state. And the Mongol occupiers with the elite were tense. They conquered Russia and left the Rurik dynasty to rule it. Themselves, they say, went to the steppe. There are no such examples in history. That is, there was no state-forming aristocracy in the Mongol Empire” (KUN:179). The last one is extremely surprising. Take, for example, the previous huge empire - the Arab Caliphate. There was not only religion, Islam, but also secular literature. For example, fairy tales of a thousand and one nights. There was a monetary system, and Arab money was considered the most popular currency for a long time. And where are the legends about the Mongol khans, where are the Mongol tales about the conquests of distant western countries?

Mongolian infrastructure.

“Even today, any state cannot take place if it does not have transport and information connectivity. In the Middle Ages, the lack of convenient means of communication absolutely ruled out the possibility of the functioning of the state. Therefore, the core of the state was formed along river, sea, and much less often land communications. And the Mongol Empire, the greatest in the history of mankind, did not have any means of communication between its parts and the center, which, by the way, also did not exist. More precisely, he seemed to be, but only in the form of a camp where Genghis Khan left his family during campaigns ”(KUN: 179-180). In this case, the question arises, how did the state negotiations take place in general? Where did the ambassadors of sovereign states live? Is it at the military headquarters? And how could it be possible to keep up with the constant transfers of these rates during military operations? And where was the state chancellery, archives, translators, scribes, heralds, the treasury, the premises for the stolen valuables? Did they also move along with the Khan's headquarters? - It's hard to believe. - And now Kungurov comes to a conclusion.

Did the Mongol Empire exist?

“Here it is natural to ask the question: did this legendary Mongol Empire exist at all? Was! - Historians will shout in chorus and, as evidence, they will show a stone turtle of the Yuan dynasty in the vicinity of the modern Mongolian village of Karakorum or a shapeless coin of unknown origin. If this seems unconvincing to you, then historians will authoritatively add a couple more clay shards dug out in the Black Sea steppes. This, for sure, will convince the most inveterate skeptic” (KUN:180). - The question of Alexei Kungurov has been asking for a long time, and the answer to it is quite natural. No Mongol Empire ever existed! – However, the author of the study is concerned not only about the Mongols, but also about the Tatars, as well as the attitude of the Mongols towards Russia, and therefore he continues his story.

“But we are interested in the great Mongol Empire insofar as. Russia was allegedly conquered by Batu, the grandson of Genghis Khan and the ruler of the Jochi ulus, better known as the Golden Horde. From the possessions of the Golden Horde to Russia is still closer than from Mongolia. During the winter, from the Caspian steppes you can get to Kyiv, Moscow and even Vologda. But the same difficulties arise. First, horses need fodder. Horses can no longer get withered grass from under the snow with their hooves in the Volga steppes. Winters are snowy there, and therefore local nomads in their winter quarters prepared stocks of hay in order to survive in the most difficult time. In order for the army to move in winter, oats are needed. No oats - no way to go to Russia. Where did the nomads get oats from?

The next problem is roads. In winter, frozen rivers have been used as roads for centuries. But the horse, so that it can walk on ice, must be shod. In the steppe, she can run unshod all year round, but an unshod horse, and even with a rider, cannot walk on ice, stone placers or a frozen road. In order to shoe a hundred thousand war horses and convoy mares needed for the invasion, more than 400 tons of iron alone is needed! And in 2-3 months it is necessary to shoe the horses again. And how many forests do you need to cut down in order to prepare 50,000 sleds for the convoy?

But in general, as we found out, even in the event of a successful march to Russia, the 10,000th army will be in an extremely difficult position. Supply at the expense of the local population is almost impossible, it is absolutely unrealistic to pull up reserves. We have to carry out exhausting assaults on cities, fortresses and monasteries, incur irreparable losses, deepening into enemy territory. And what is the point in this deepening, if the occupiers left a devastated desert behind them? What is the general purpose of the war? Every day the interventionists will be weaker, and by spring they will have to leave for the steppes, otherwise the open rivers will lock up the nomads in the forests, where they will die of starvation” (KUN: 180-181). – As you can see, the problems of the Mongol Empire on a smaller scale are also manifested by the example of the Golden Horde. And then Kungurov considers the later Mongolian state - the Golden Horde.

Capitals of the Golden Horde.

“There are two known capitals of the Golden Horde - Sarai-Batu and Sarai-Berke. Even the ruins have not survived from them to this day. Historians found the culprit here too - Tamerlane, who came from Central Asia and destroyed these very flourishing and populated cities of the East. Today, archaeologists dig out only the remains of adobe huts and the most primitive household utensils in the place of the supposedly great capitals of the great Eurasian empire. Everything of value, they say, was plundered by the evil Tamerlane. Tellingly, archaeologists do not find the slightest trace of the presence of Mongolian nomads in these places.

However, this does not bother them at all. Since traces of Greeks, Russians, Italians and others were found there, it means that the matter is clear: the Mongols brought craftsmen from conquered countries to their capital. Does anyone doubt that the Mongols conquered Italy? Read carefully the works of "scientific" historians - it says that Batu reached the coast of the Adriatic Sea and almost to Vienna. Somewhere there he caught the Italians. And what does the fact that Saray-Berke is the center of the Sarsk and Podonsk Orthodox diocese mean? This, according to historians, testifies to the phenomenal religious tolerance of the Mongol conquerors. True, in this case it is not clear why the Golden Horde khans allegedly tortured several Russian princes who did not want to give up their faith. The Grand Duke of Kyiv and Chernigov, Mikhail Vsevolodovich, was even canonized because he refused to worship the sacred fire, and was killed for disobedience” (KUN: 181). Again we see a complete inconsistency in the official version.

What was the Golden Horde.

“The Golden Horde is the same state invented by historians as the Mongol Empire. Accordingly, the Mongol-Tatar "yoke" is also an invention. The question is who invented it. In Russian chronicles it is useless to look for mention of the "yoke" or the mythical Mongols. "Evil Tatars" are mentioned in it quite often. The question is who did the chroniclers mean by this name? Either this is an ethnic group, or a way of life or class (akin to the Cossacks), or this is the collective name of all Turks. Maybe the word "Tatar" means an equestrian warrior? A great many Tatars are known: Kasimov, Crimean, Lithuanian, Bordakov (Ryazan), Belgorod, Don, Yenisei, Tula ... just listing all kinds of Tatars will take half a page. The annals mention service Tatars, baptized Tatars, godless Tatars, sovereign Tatars and Basurman Tatars. That is, this term has an extremely broad interpretation.

Tatars, as an ethnic group, appeared relatively recently, about three hundred years ago. Therefore, an attempt to apply the term "Tatar-Mongols" to modern Kazan or Crimean Tatars is a fraud. There were no Kazan Tatars in the XIII century, there were Bulgars who had their own principality, which historians decided to call the Volga Bulgaria. There were no Crimean or Siberian Tatars then, but there were Kipchaks, they are also Polovtsy, they are also Nogais. But if the Mongols conquered, partially destroyed, the Kipchaks and periodically fought with the Bulgars, then where did the Mongol-Tatar symbiosis come from?

No newcomers from the Mongolian steppes were known not only in Russia, but also in Europe. The term "Tatar yoke", meaning the power of the Golden Horde over Russia, appeared at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries in Poland in propaganda literature. It is believed that it belongs to the historian and geographer Matthew Miechowski (1457-1523), professor at the University of Krakow” (KUN:181-182). - Above, we read the news about this both in Wikipedia and in the works of three authors (SVI). His Treatise on the Two Sarmatians was considered in the West to be the first detailed geographical and ethnographic description of Eastern Europe up to the meridian of the Caspian Sea. In the preamble of this work, Mechowski wrote: “The southern regions and coastal peoples up to India were discovered by the king of Portugal. Let the northern regions with the peoples living near the Northern Ocean to the east, discovered by the troops of the Polish king, now become known to the world ”(KUN: 182-183). - Very interesting! It turns out that Russia had to be discovered by someone, although this state existed for several millennia!

“How cool! This enlightened husband equates Russians with African blacks and American Indians, and attributes fantastic merits to the Polish troops. The Poles have never reached the coast of the Arctic Ocean, long mastered by the Russians. Only a century after the death of Mekhovsky during the Time of Troubles, separate Polish detachments scoured the Vologda and Arkhangelsk regions, but these were not the troops of the Polish king, but ordinary robber gangs that robbed merchants on the northern trade route. Therefore, one should not take seriously his insinuations that the backward Russians were conquered by absolutely wild Tatars ”(KUN: 183) - It turns out that Mekhovsky’s work was a fantasy that the West had no opportunity to verify.

“By the way, Tatars is the European collective name for all eastern peoples. Moreover, in the old days it was pronounced as "tartars" from the word "tartar" - the underworld. It is quite possible that the word "Tatars" came to the Russian language from Europe. At least when European travelers called the inhabitants of the lower Volga Tatars in the 16th century, they did not really understand the meaning of this word, and even more so they did not know that for Europeans it means “savages who escaped from hell.” The binding of the word "Tatars" of the Criminal Code to a certain ethnic group begins only in the 17th century. Finally, the term "Tatars", as a designation of the Volga-Ural and Siberian settled Turkic-speaking peoples, was established only in the 20th century. The word formation "Mongol-Tatar yoke" was first used in 1817 by the German historian Hermann Kruse, whose book was translated into Russian in the middle of the 19th century and published in St. Petersburg. In 1860, the head of the Russian spiritual mission in China, Archimandrite Pallady, acquired the manuscript of The Secret History of the Mongols, making it public. No one was embarrassed that the Tale was written in Chinese. This is even very convenient, because any inconsistencies can be explained by erroneous transcription from Mongolian to Chinese. Mo, Yuan is the Chinese transcription of the Chinggisid dynasty. And Shutsu is Kublai Khan. With such a "creative" approach, as you might guess, any Chinese legend can be declared even the history of the Mongols, even the chronicle of the Crusades" (KUN: 183-184). - It is not in vain that Kungurov mentions a clergyman from the Russian Orthodox Church, Archimandrite Pallady, hinting that he had an interest in creating a legend about the Tatars based on Chinese chronicles. And it is not in vain that he throws a bridge to the crusades.

The legend of the Tatars and the role of Kyiv in Russia.

“The beginning of the legend of Kievan Rus was laid by the Synopsis published in 1674, the first educational book on Russian history known to us. This little book was reprinted more than once (1676, 1680, 1718 and 1810) and was very popular until the middle of the 19th century. Innocent Gizel (1600-1683) is considered to be its author. Born in Prussia, in his youth he came to Kyiv, converted to Orthodoxy and took the vows as a monk. Metropolitan Peter Mohyla sent the young monk abroad, from where he returned as an educated man. He applied his scholarship in a tense ideological and political struggle against the Jesuits. He is known as a literary theologian, historiographer and theologian” (KUN:184). – When we talk about the fact that Miller, Bayer and Schlozer became the “fathers” of Russian historiography in the 18th century, we forget that a century earlier, under the first Romanovs and after Nikon’s reform, a new Romanov historiography called “Synopsis”, that is, a summary was also written by a German, so there was already a precedent. It is clear that after the eradication of the Rurik dynasty and the persecution of the Old Believers and Old Believers, Muscovy needed a new historiography that would whitewash the Romanovs and denigrate the Rurikovichs. And it appeared, although it did not come from Muscovy, but from Little Russia, which since 1654 became part of Muscovy, although it spiritually adjoined Lithuania and Poland.

“Gizel should be considered not only a church figure, but also a political one, for the Orthodox church elite in the Polish-Lithuanian state was an integral part of the political elite. As a protégé of Metropolitan Peter Mogila, he maintained active contacts with Moscow on political and financial issues. In 1664 he visited the Russian capital as part of the Little Russian embassy of the Cossack officers and clergy. Apparently, his work was appreciated, since in 1656 he received the rank of archimandrite and rector of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, keeping it until his death in 1683.

Of course, Innokenty Gizel was an ardent supporter of the annexation of Little Russia to Great Russia, otherwise it is difficult to explain why the tsars Alexei Mikhailovich, Fedor Alekseevich and the ruler Sofya Alekseevna favored him very much, more than once bestowed valuable gifts. So, it is Synopsis that begins to actively popularize the legend of Kievan Rus, the Tatar invasion and the struggle with Poland. The main stereotypes of ancient Russian history (the founding of Kyiv by three brothers, the calling of the Varangians, the legend of the baptism of Russia by Vladimir, etc.) are laid out in the "Synopsis" in a slender row and accurately dated. Somewhat strange to today's reader will seem perhaps one hundred Gizel's story "On Slavic Freedom or Liberty." - “The Slavs, in their bravery and courage, work hard from day to day, fighting also against the ancient Greek and Roman Caesars, and always glorious perceiving victory, living in all freedom; I also helped the great Tsar Alexander of Macedon and his father Philip to incite the state under the rule of this Light. The same, glorious for the sake of the deeds and labors of the military, gave Alexander the Tsar of the Slavs privileges or a letter on golden parchment, written in Alexandria, liberties and the land they claim, before the Nativity of Christ, the year 310; and August Caesar (in his own Kingdom the King of glory Christ the Lord was born) did not dare to fight with the free and strong Slavs ”(KUN: 184-185). - I note that if the legend of the founding of Kyiv was very important for Little Russia, which, according to it, became the political center of all ancient Russia, in the light of which the legend of the baptism of Kyiv by Vladimir grew to the statement of the baptism of All Russia, and both legends, thus, carried a powerful the political meaning of the promotion of Little Russia to the first place in the history and religion of Russia, then the quoted passage does not carry such pro-Ukrainian propaganda. Here, apparently, we have an insert of traditional views on the participation of Russian soldiers in the campaigns of Alexander the Great, for which they received a number of privileges. Here, examples of the interaction of Russia with the politicians of late antiquity are also given; later, the historiographies of all countries will remove any mention of the existence of Russia in this period. It is also interesting to see that the interests of Little Russia in the 17th century and now are diametrically opposed: then Gisel argued that Little Russia is the Center of Russia, and all events in it are epoch-making for Great Russia; now, on the contrary, the “independence” of the outskirts from Russia, the connection of the outskirts with Poland, is being proved, and the work of the first President of the outskirts, Kravchuk, was called “The outskirts is such a power.” Allegedly independent throughout its history. And the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Outskirts asks the Russians to write "In the Outskirts", and not "ON the Outskirts", mangling the Russian language. That is, at the moment, the Qiu power is more satisfied with the role of the Polish periphery. This example clearly shows how political interests can change the country's position by 180 degrees, and not only give up its claims to leadership, but even change its name to a completely dissonant one. Modern Gisel would try to connect the three brothers who founded Kyiv with Germany and the German Ukrainians, who had nothing to do with Little Russia, and the conduct of Christianity in Kyiv with the general Christianization of Europe, allegedly having nothing to do with Russia.

“When an archimandrite, favored at court, undertakes to compose history, it is very difficult to consider this work a model of unbiased scientific research. Rather, it will be a propaganda treatise. A lie is the most effective method of propaganda, if the lie can be introduced into the mass consciousness.

It is Synopsis, which was published in 1674, that has the honor of becoming the first Russian mass printed publication. Until the beginning of the 19th century, the book was used as a textbook on Russian history; in total, it went through 25 editions, of which the last one took place in 1861 (the 26th edition was already in our century). From the point of view of propaganda, it does not matter how much Gisel's work corresponded to reality, what matters is how firmly it was rooted in the minds of the educated layer. And it is firmly rooted. Considering that the "Synopsis" was actually written by order of the ruling house of the Romanovs and was officially planted, it could not be otherwise. Tatishchev, Karamzin, Shcherbatov, Solovyov, Kostomarov, Klyuchevsky and other historians, brought up on the Gizel concept, simply could not (and hardly wanted to) critically comprehend the legend of Kievan Rus ”(KUN: 185). – As you can see, the “Synopsis” of the German Gisel, who represented the interests of the recently incorporated Little Russia, which immediately began to claim the role of leader in the political and religious life of Russia, became a kind of “Short course of the CPSU (b)” of the victorious pro-Western Romanov dynasty. So to speak, from dirt to riches! It was this peripheral newly acquired part of Russia that completely suited the Romanovs as a historical leader, as well as the tale that this weak state was beaten by the equally peripheral steppes from the Underworld - Russian Tartaria. The meaning of these legends is obvious - Russia was allegedly flawed from the very beginning!

Other Romanov Historians on Kievan Rus and the Tatars.

“The court historians of the 18th century, Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer, August Ludwig Schlözer and Gerard Friedrich Miller, did not contradict the Synopsis either. Now tell me, for mercy, how could Bayer be a researcher of Russian antiquities and a writer of the concept of Russian history (gave rise to the Norman theory), when during the 13 years of his stay in Russia he did not even learn Russian? The last two were co-authors of the obscenely politicized Norman theory, proving that Russia acquired the features of a normal state only under the leadership of true Europeans Ruriks. Both of them edited and published the works of Tatishchev, after which it is difficult to say what was left of the original in his works. At least, it is known for sure that the original of Tatishchev's "History of Russia" disappeared without a trace, and Miller, according to the official version, used some "drafts", which are also unknown to us now.

Despite constant conflicts with colleagues, it was Miller who formed the academic framework of official Russian historiography. His main opponent and ruthless critic was Mikhail Lomonosov. However, Miller managed to take revenge on the great Russian scientist. And how! The Ancient Russian History, prepared by Lomonosov for publication, was never published through the efforts of his opponents. Moreover, the work was confiscated after the death of the author and disappeared without a trace. A few years later, only the first volume of his monumental work was printed, prepared for publication, as it is believed, personally by Muller. Reading Lomonosov today, it is absolutely impossible to understand what he argued so fiercely with the German courtiers about - his "Ancient Russian History" was sustained in the spirit of the officially approved version of history. There are absolutely no contradictions with Muller on the most controversial issue of Russian antiquity in Lomonosov's book. Therefore, we are dealing with a forgery” (KUN:186). - Brilliant conclusion! Although something else remains unclear: the Soviet government was no longer interested in exalting one of the republics of the USSR, namely the Ukrainian, and belittling the Turkic republics, which just fell under the understanding of Tartaria or Tatars. It would seem that it was high time to get rid of the forgery and show the true history of Russia. Why, then, in Soviet times, Soviet historiography adhered to the version pleasing to the Romanovs and the Russian Orthodox Church? – The answer lies on the surface. Because the worse was the history of tsarist Russia, the better was the history of Soviet Russia. It was then, in the time of the Rurikovichs, that it was possible to call foreigners to control a great power, and the country was so weak that some kind of Tatar-Mongols could conquer it. In Soviet times, it seemed that no one was called up from anywhere, and Lenin and Stalin were natives of Russia (although in Soviet times no one would have dared to write that Rothschild helped Trotsky with money and people, the German General Staff helped Lenin, and Yakov Sverdlov was responsible for communication with European bankers). On the other hand, one of the employees of the Institute of Archeology told me in the 90s that the color of pre-revolutionary archaeological thought did not remain in Soviet Russia, Soviet-style archaeologists were very much inferior in their professionalism to pre-revolutionary archaeologists, and they tried to destroy pre-revolutionary archaeological archives. - I asked her in connection with the excavations by the archaeologist Veselovsky of the caves of Kamennaya Mohyla in Ukraine, because for some reason all the reports about his expedition were lost. It turned out that they were not lost, but deliberately destroyed. For the Stone Grave is a Paleolithic monument, in which there are Russian inscriptions in runes. And a completely different history of Russian culture emerges from it. But archaeologists are part of the team of Soviet historians. And they created no less politicized historiography than historians in the service of the Romanovs.

“It remains only to state that the edition of Russian history used to this day was made up exclusively by foreign authors, mostly Germans. The works of Russian historians who tried to resist them were destroyed, and falsifications were issued under their name. You should not expect that the gravediggers of the national historiographic school spared the primary sources dangerous to them. Lomonosov was horrified when he learned that Schlözer had access to all the ancient Russian chronicles that had survived at that time. Where are those chronicles now?

By the way, Schlozer called Lomonosov "a rude ignoramus who knew nothing but his annals." It is difficult to say why these words contain more hatred - to the stubborn Russian scientist who considers the Russian people the same age as the Romans, or to the chronicles that confirmed this. But it turns out that the German historian who received the Russian chronicles at his disposal was not guided by them at all. He revered the political order above science. Mikhail Vasilyevich, when it came to the hated German, was also not shy in expressions. About Schlözer, the following statement of his has come down to us: “... what vile dirty tricks such cattle admitted to them will not do in Russian antiquities” or “He looks a lot like some idol priest who, having fumigated himself with bleached and dope and fast on one leg, spinning his head, gives dubious, dark, incomprehensible and completely wild answers.

How long will we dance to the tune of "stoned idol priests"? (KUN:186-187).

Discussion.

Although I read the works of L.N. Gumilyov, and A.T. Fomenko, and Valyansky with Kalyuzhny, but no one wrote so convexly, in detail and conclusively before Alexei Kungurov. And I can congratulate “our regiment” of researchers of non-politicized Russian history that it has become one more bayonet. I note that he is not only well-read, but also capable of a remarkable analysis of all the absurdities of professional historians. It is professional historiography that invents bows that shoot at 300 meters with the lethal force of a modern rifle bullet, it is she who calmly appoints backward pastoralists who did not have statehood as the creators of the largest state in the history of mankind, it is they who suck out of their fingers huge armies of conquerors who cannot be fed. , nor move for several thousand kilometers. Illiterate Mongols, it turns out, compiled land and per capita lists, that is, they conducted a population census on the scale of this vast country, and also registered trade income, even from wandering merchants. And the results of this huge work in the form of reports, lists and analytical reviews disappeared somewhere without a trace. It turned out that there is not a single archaeological confirmation of the existence of both the capital of the Mongols and the capitals of the uluses, as well as the existence of Mongolian coins. And even today, the Mongolian tugriks are an inconvertible monetary unit.

Of course, the chapter touches on many more problems than the reality of the existence of the Mongol-Tatars. For example, the possibility of disguise due to the Tatar-Mongol invasion of the real forced Christianization of Russia by the West. However, this problem requires much more serious argumentation, which is absent in this chapter of Alexei Kungurov's book. Therefore, I am in no hurry to draw any conclusions in this regard.

Conclusion.

Nowadays, there is only one justification for supporting the myth of the Tatar-Mongol invasion: it not only expressed, but still expresses today the West's point of view on the history of Russia. The West is not interested in the point of view of Russian researchers. It will always be possible to find such "professionals" who, for the sake of self-interest, career or fame in the West, will support the myth generally accepted and fabricated by the West.

The traditional version of the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Russia, the "Tatar-Mongol yoke", and the liberation from it is known to the reader from school. In the presentation of most historians, events looked something like this. At the beginning of the 13th century, in the steppes of the Far East, the energetic and brave tribal leader Genghis Khan gathered a huge army of nomads, soldered by iron discipline, and rushed to conquer the world - "to the last sea."

So was there a Tatar-Mongolian yoke in Russia?

Having conquered the nearest neighbors, and then China, the mighty Tatar-Mongol horde rolled to the west. Having traveled about 5 thousand kilometers, the Mongols defeated Khorezm, then Georgia, and in 1223 reached the southern outskirts of Russia, where they defeated the army of Russian princes in a battle on the Kalka River. In the winter of 1237, the Tatar-Mongols invaded Russia already with all their countless troops, burned and devastated many Russian cities, and in 1241 tried to conquer Western Europe by invading Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, but turned back, because that they were afraid to leave Russia devastated, but still dangerous for them, in their rear. The Tatar-Mongol yoke began.

The great poet A. S. Pushkin left heartfelt lines: “Russia was assigned a high destiny ... its boundless plains absorbed the power of the Mongols and stopped their 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. The emerging enlightenment was saved by a torn and dying Russia…”

The huge Mongol state, stretching from China to the Volga, hung over Russia like an ominous shadow. The Mongol khans issued labels to the Russian princes for reigning, attacked Russia many times in order to rob and rob, repeatedly killed Russian princes in their Golden Horde.

Having grown stronger over time, Russia began to resist. In 1380, the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Horde Khan Mamai, and a century later, in the so-called “standing on the Ugra”, the troops of Grand Duke Ivan III and the Horde Khan Akhmat converged. The opponents camped for a long time on opposite sides of the Ugra River, after which Khan Akhmat, finally realizing that the Russians had become strong and had little chance of winning the battle, gave the order to retreat and led his horde to the Volga. These events are considered "the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke."

But in recent decades, this classic version has been challenged. The geographer, ethnographer and historian Lev Gumilyov convincingly showed that relations between Russia and the Mongols were much more complicated than the usual confrontation between cruel conquerors and their unfortunate victims. Deep knowledge in the field of history and ethnography allowed the scientist to conclude that there was a certain “complimentarity” between the Mongols and the Russians, that is, compatibility, the ability to symbiosis and mutual support at the cultural and ethnic level. The writer and publicist Alexander Bushkov went even further, "twisting" Gumilyov's theory to its logical conclusion and expressing a completely original version: what is commonly called the Tatar-Mongol invasion was in fact a struggle of the descendants of Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest (son of Yaroslav and grandson of Alexander Nevsky ) with their rival princes for sole power over Russia. Khans Mamai and Akhmat were not alien raiders, but noble nobles who, according to the dynastic ties of the Russian-Tatar families, had legally justified rights to a great reign. Thus, the Battle of Kulikovo and "standing on the Ugra" are not episodes of the struggle against foreign aggressors, but pages of the civil war in Russia. Moreover, this author promulgated a completely “revolutionary” idea: under the names “Genghis Khan” and “Batu”, the Russian princes Yaroslav and Alexander Nevsky appear in history, and Dmitry Donskoy is Khan Mamai himself (!).

Of course, the conclusions of the publicist are filled with irony and border on postmodern "banter", but it should be noted that many facts of the history of the Tatar-Mongol invasion and the "yoke" really look too mysterious and need closer attention and unbiased research. Let's try to consider some of these mysteries.

Let's start with a general remark. Western Europe in the 13th century presented a disappointing picture. Christendom was going through a certain depression. The activity of Europeans shifted to the borders of their range. German feudal lords began to seize the border Slavic lands and turn their population into disenfranchised serfs. The Western Slavs who lived along the Elbe resisted German pressure with all their might, but the forces were unequal.

Who were the Mongols who approached the borders of the Christian world from the east? How did the powerful Mongolian state appear? Let's take a tour of its history.

At the beginning of the 13th century, in 1202-1203, the Mongols first defeated the Merkits, and then the Keraites. The fact is that the Keraites were divided into supporters of Genghis Khan and his opponents. The opponents of Genghis Khan were led by the son of Van Khan, the legitimate heir to the throne - Nilha. He had reason to hate Genghis Khan: even at the time when Van Khan was an ally of Genghis, he (the leader of the Keraites), seeing the undeniable talents of the latter, wanted to transfer the Kerait throne to him, bypassing his own son. Thus, the clash of part of the Keraites with the Mongols occurred during the lifetime of Wang Khan. And although the Keraites had a numerical superiority, the Mongols defeated them, as they showed exceptional mobility and took the enemy by surprise.

In the clash with the Keraites, the character of Genghis Khan was fully manifested. When Van Khan and his son Nilha fled from the battlefield, one of their noyons (commanders) with a small detachment detained the Mongols, saving their leaders from captivity. This noyon was seized, brought before the eyes of Genghis, and he asked: “Why, noyon, seeing the position of your troops, did not leave yourself? You had both the time and the opportunity." He replied: "I served my khan and gave him the opportunity to escape, and my head is for you, O conqueror." Genghis Khan said: “Everyone should imitate this man.

See how brave, loyal, valiant he is. I cannot kill you, noyon, I offer you a place in my army.” Noyon became a thousand-man and, of course, faithfully served Genghis Khan, because the Kerait horde disintegrated. Wang Khan himself died while trying to escape to the Naimans. Their guards on the border, seeing the Kerait, killed him, and presented the severed head of the old man to their khan.

In 1204, the Mongols of Genghis Khan and the powerful Naiman Khanate clashed. Once again, the Mongols won. The defeated were included in the horde of Genghis. There were no more tribes in the eastern steppe that could actively resist the new order, and in 1206, at the great kurultai, Genghis was again elected khan, but already of all Mongolia. Thus was born the all-Mongolian state. The only hostile tribe remained the old enemies of the Borjigins - the Merkits, but by 1208 they were forced out into the valley of the Irgiz River.

The growing power of Genghis Khan allowed his horde to assimilate different tribes and peoples quite easily. Because, in accordance with the Mongolian stereotypes of behavior, the khan could and should have demanded obedience, obedience to an order, fulfillment of duties, but it was considered immoral to force a person to abandon his faith or customs - the individual had the right to his own choice. This state of affairs was attractive to many. In 1209, the Uighur state sent ambassadors to Genghis Khan with a request to accept them as part of his ulus. The request, of course, was granted, and Genghis Khan gave the Uighurs huge trading privileges. The caravan route went through Uyghuria, and the Uyghurs, being part of the Mongolian state, got rich due to the fact that they sold water, fruits, meat and “pleasures” to hungry caravaners at high prices. The voluntary unification of Uighuria with Mongolia turned out to be useful for the Mongols as well. With the annexation of Uighuria, the Mongols went beyond the borders of their ethnic range and came into contact with other peoples of the ecumene.

In 1216, on the Irgiz River, the Mongols were attacked by the Khorezmians. Khorezm by that time was the most powerful of the states that emerged after the weakening of the power of the Seljuk Turks. The rulers of Khorezm from the governors of the ruler of Urgench turned into independent sovereigns and adopted the title of "Khorezmshahs". They proved to be energetic, enterprising and warlike. This allowed them to conquer most of Central Asia and southern Afghanistan. The Khorezmshahs created a huge state in which the main military force was the Turks from the adjacent steppes.

But the state turned out to be fragile, despite the wealth, brave warriors and experienced diplomats. The regime of military dictatorship relied on tribes alien to the local population, who had a different language, other customs and customs. The cruelty of the mercenaries caused discontent among the inhabitants of Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv and other Central Asian cities. The uprising in Samarkand led to the destruction of the Turkic garrison. Naturally, this was followed by a punitive operation of the Khorezmians, who brutally dealt with the population of Samarkand. Other large and rich cities of Central Asia also suffered.

In this situation, Khorezmshah Mohammed decided to confirm his title of "ghazi" - "victorious infidels" - and become famous for another victory over them. The opportunity presented itself to him in that very year 1216, when the Mongols, fighting with the Merkits, reached the Irgiz. Upon learning of the arrival of the Mongols, Muhammad sent an army against them on the grounds that the steppe inhabitants must be converted to Islam.

The Khorezmian army attacked the Mongols, but in the rearguard battle they themselves went on the offensive and badly beaten the Khorezmians. Only the attack of the left wing, commanded by the son of Khorezmshah, the talented commander Jalal-ad-Din, corrected the situation. After that, the Khorezmians withdrew, and the Mongols returned home: they were not going to fight with Khorezm, on the contrary, Genghis Khan wanted to establish ties with the Khorezmshah. After all, the Great Caravan Route went through Central Asia and all the owners of the lands along which it ran grew rich due to the duties paid by merchants. Merchants willingly paid duties, because they shifted their costs to consumers, while losing nothing. Wishing to preserve all the advantages associated with the existence of caravan routes, the Mongols strove for peace and quiet on their borders. The difference of faiths, in their opinion, did not give a reason for war and could not justify bloodshed. Probably, the Khorezmshah himself understood the episodic nature of the collision on the Irshz. In 1218 Muhammad sent a trade caravan to Mongolia. Peace was restored, especially since the Mongols had no time for Khorezm: shortly before this, the Naiman prince Kuchluk began a new war with the Mongols.

Once again, Mongol-Khorezmian relations were violated by the Khorezmshah himself and his officials. In 1219, a rich caravan from the lands of Genghis Khan approached the Khorezm city of Otrar. The merchants went to the city to replenish their food supplies and take a bath. There, the merchants met two acquaintances, one of whom informed the ruler of the city that these merchants were spies. He immediately realized that there is a great reason to rob travelers. Merchants were killed, property was confiscated. The ruler of Otrar sent half of the loot to Khorezm, and Mohammed accepted the booty, which means he shared the responsibility for what he had done.

Genghis Khan sent envoys to find out what caused the incident. Mohammed was angry when he saw the infidels, and ordered to kill part of the ambassadors, and part, having stripped naked, drive them to certain death in the steppe. Two or three Mongols nevertheless got home and told about what had happened. Genghis Khan's anger knew no bounds. From the point of view of the Mongol, two of the most terrible crimes took place: the deceit of those who trusted and the murder of guests. According to custom, Genghis Khan could not leave unavenged either the merchants who were killed in Otrar, or the ambassadors who were insulted and killed by the Khorezmshah. The Khan had to fight, otherwise the tribesmen would simply refuse to trust him.

In Central Asia, the Khorezmshah had at his disposal a 400,000-strong regular army. And the Mongols, as the famous Russian orientalist V.V. Bartold believed, had no more than 200 thousand. Genghis Khan demanded military assistance from all allies. Warriors came from the Turks and Kara-Kitais, the Uighurs sent a detachment of 5 thousand people, only the Tangut ambassador boldly replied: "If you do not have enough troops, do not fight." Genghis Khan considered the answer an insult and said: "Only dead I could bear such an insult."

Genghis Khan threw the assembled Mongolian, Uyghur, Turkic and Kara-Chinese troops to Khorezm. Khorezmshah, having quarreled with his mother Turkan-Khatun, did not trust the military leaders related to her by kinship. He was afraid to gather them into a fist in order to repel the onslaught of the Mongols, and scattered the army among the garrisons. The best commanders of the Shah were his own unloved son Jalal-ad-Din and the commandant of the fortress Khojent Timur-Melik. The Mongols took fortresses one after another, but in Khujand, even taking the fortress, they could not capture the garrison. Timur-Melik put his soldiers on rafts and escaped pursuit along the wide Syr Darya. Scattered garrisons could not hold back the offensive of Genghis Khan's troops. Soon all the major cities of the Sultanate - Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv, Herat - were captured by the Mongols.

Regarding the capture of the Central Asian cities by the Mongols, there is an established version: "Wild nomads destroyed the cultural oases of the agricultural peoples." Is it so? This version, as shown by L. N. Gumilyov, is based on the legends of Muslim court historians. For example, the fall of Herat was reported by Islamic historians as a disaster in which the entire population was exterminated in the city, except for a few men who managed to escape in the mosque. They hid there, afraid to go out into the streets littered with corpses. Only wild animals roamed the city and tormented the dead. After sitting for some time and recovering, these "heroes" went to distant lands to rob caravans in order to regain their lost wealth.

But is it possible? If the entire population of a large city was exterminated and lay on the streets, then inside the city, in particular in the mosque, the air would be full of cadaveric miasma, and those who hid there would simply die. No predators, except for jackals, live near the city, and they very rarely penetrate the city. It was simply impossible for exhausted people to move to rob caravans a few hundred kilometers from Herat, because they would have to walk, carrying burdens - water and provisions. Such a “robber”, having met a caravan, would no longer be able to rob it ...

Even more surprising is the information reported by historians about Merv. The Mongols took it in 1219 and also allegedly exterminated all the inhabitants there. But already in 1229 Merv rebelled, and the Mongols had to take the city again. And finally, two years later, Merv sent a detachment of 10 thousand people to fight the Mongols.

We see that the fruits of fantasy and religious hatred gave rise to legends of Mongol atrocities. If, however, we take into account the degree of reliability of sources and ask simple but inevitable questions, it is easy to separate historical truth from literary fiction.

The Mongols occupied Persia almost without a fight, driving the Khorezmshah's son Jalal-ad-Din to northern India. Mohammed II Ghazi himself, broken by struggle and constant defeat, died in a leper colony on an island in the Caspian Sea (1221). The Mongols also made peace with the Shiite population of Iran, which was constantly offended by the Sunnis in power, in particular the Caliph of Baghdad and Jalal-ad-Din himself. As a result, the Shiite population of Persia suffered much less than the Sunnis of Central Asia. Be that as it may, in 1221 the state of the Khorezmshahs was finished. Under one ruler - Mohammed II Ghazi - this state reached its highest power, and died. As a result, Khorezm, Northern Iran, and Khorasan were annexed to the Mongol Empire.

In 1226, the hour of the Tangut state struck, which at the decisive moment of the war with Khorezm refused to help Genghis Khan. The Mongols rightly viewed this move as a betrayal that, according to Yasa, required vengeance. The capital of Tangut was the city of Zhongxing. It was besieged in 1227 by Genghis Khan, having defeated the Tangut troops in previous battles.

During the siege of Zhongxing, Genghis Khan died, but the Mongol noyons, on the orders of their leader, concealed his death. The fortress was taken, and the population of the "evil" city, on which the collective guilt for betrayal fell, was subjected to execution. The Tangut state disappeared, leaving behind only written evidence of its former culture, but the city survived and lived until 1405, when it was destroyed by the Ming Chinese.

From the capital of the Tanguts, the Mongols took the body of their great ruler to their native steppes. The funeral rite was as follows: the remains of Genghis Khan were lowered into the dug grave along with many valuable things and all the slaves who performed the funeral work were killed. According to custom, exactly one year later, it was required to celebrate a commemoration. In order to later find a burial place, the Mongols did the following. At the grave they sacrificed a little camel just taken from their mother. And a year later, the camel herself found in the boundless steppe the place where her cub was killed. Having slaughtered this camel, the Mongols performed the prescribed rite of commemoration and then left the grave forever. Since then, no one knows where Genghis Khan is buried.

In the last years of his life, he was extremely concerned about the fate of his state. The khan had four sons from his beloved wife Borte and many children from other wives, who, although they were considered legitimate children, did not have rights to the throne of their father. Sons from Borte differed in inclinations and in character. The eldest son, Jochi, was born shortly after the Merkit captivity of Borte, and therefore not only evil tongues, but also the younger brother Chagatai called him a "Merkit degenerate." Although Borte invariably defended Jochi, and Genghis Khan himself always recognized him as his son, the shadow of the Merkit captivity of his mother fell on Jochi as a burden of suspicion of illegitimacy. Once, in the presence of his father, Chagatai openly called Jochi illegitimate, and the matter almost ended in a fight between the brothers.

It is curious, but according to contemporaries, there were some stable stereotypes in Jochi's behavior that greatly distinguished him from Genghis. If for Genghis Khan there was no concept of "mercy" in relation to enemies (he left life only for small children who were adopted by his mother Hoelun, and valiant bagaturas who transferred to the Mongol service), then Jochi was distinguished by humanity and kindness. So, during the siege of Gurganj, the Khorezmians, completely exhausted by the war, asked to accept surrender, that is, in other words, to spare them. Jochi spoke out in favor of showing mercy, but Genghis Khan categorically rejected the request for mercy, and as a result, the Gurganj garrison was partially massacred, and the city itself was flooded by the waters of the Amu Darya. The misunderstanding between the father and the eldest son, constantly fueled by the intrigues and slander of relatives, deepened over time and turned into distrust of the sovereign to his heir. Genghis Khan suspected that Jochi wanted to gain popularity among the conquered peoples and secede from Mongolia. It is unlikely that this was the case, but the fact remains: at the beginning of 1227, Jochi, hunting in the steppe, was found dead - his spine was broken. The details of what happened were kept secret, but, without a doubt, Genghis Khan was a person interested in the death of Jochi and quite capable of ending his son's life.

In contrast to Jochi, the second son of Genghis Khan, Chaga-tai, was a strict, executive and even cruel man. Therefore, he received the position of "Guardian of Yasa" (something like the Attorney General or the Supreme Judge). Chagatai strictly observed the law and treated its violators without any mercy.

The third son of the Great Khan, Ogedei, like Jochi, was distinguished by kindness and tolerance towards people. The character of Ogedei is best illustrated by the following case: once, on a joint trip, the brothers saw a Muslim bathing by the water. According to Muslim custom, every true believer is obliged to perform prayer and ritual ablution several times a day. Mongolian tradition, on the contrary, forbade a person to bathe during the whole summer. The Mongols believed that washing in a river or lake causes a thunderstorm, and a thunderstorm in the steppe is very dangerous for travelers, and therefore "calling a thunderstorm" was seen as an attempt on people's lives. The nukers-rescuemen of the ruthless zealot of the law Chagatai seized the Muslim. Anticipating a bloody denouement - the unfortunate man was threatened with beheading - Ogedei sent his man to tell the Muslim to answer that he had dropped gold into the water and was just looking for it there. The Muslim said so to Chagatai. He ordered to look for a coin, and during this time, Ugedei's combatant threw a gold one into the water. The found coin was returned to the "rightful owner". In parting, Ugedei, taking a handful of coins from his pocket, handed them to the rescued man and said: “The next time you drop gold into the water, don’t go after it, don’t break the law.”

The youngest of the sons of Genghis, Tului, was born in 1193. Since Genghis Khan was then in captivity, this time Borte's infidelity was quite obvious, but Genghis Khan recognized Tuluya as his legitimate son, although outwardly he did not resemble his father.

Of the four sons of Genghis Khan, the youngest possessed the greatest talents and showed the greatest moral dignity. A good commander and an outstanding administrator, Tului was also a loving husband and distinguished by nobility. He married the daughter of the deceased head of the Keraites, Wan Khan, who was a devout Christian. Tului himself did not have the right to accept the Christian faith: like Genghisides, he had to profess the Bon religion (paganism). But the Khan's son allowed his wife not only to perform all Christian rites in a luxurious "church" yurt, but also to have priests with her and receive monks. The death of Tului can be called heroic without any exaggeration. When Ogedei fell ill, Tului voluntarily took a strong shamanic potion, seeking to "attract" the disease to himself, and died saving his brother.

All four sons were eligible to succeed Genghis Khan. After the elimination of Jochi, three heirs remained, and when Genghis died, and the new khan had not yet been elected, Tului ruled the ulus. But at the kurultai of 1229, in accordance with the will of Genghis, the gentle and tolerant Ogedei was chosen as the great khan. Ogedei, as we have already mentioned, had a good soul, but the kindness of the sovereign is often not to the benefit of the state and subjects. The management of the ulus under him was carried out mainly due to the severity of Chagatai and the diplomatic and administrative skills of Tului. The great khan himself preferred roaming with hunting and feasting in Western Mongolia to state concerns.

The grandchildren of Genghis Khan were allocated various areas of the ulus or high positions. The eldest son of Jochi, Orda-Ichen, received the White Horde, located between the Irtysh and the Tarbagatai ridge (the area of ​​\u200b\u200bpresent-day Semipalatinsk). The second son, Batu, began to own the Golden (big) Horde on the Volga. The third son, Sheibani, went to the Blue Horde, which roamed from Tyumen to the Aral Sea. At the same time, the three brothers - the rulers of the uluses - were allocated only one or two thousand Mongol soldiers each, while the total number of the Mongols' army reached 130 thousand people.

The children of Chagatai also received a thousand soldiers each, and the descendants of Tului, being at the court, owned the entire grandfather and father's ulus. So the Mongols established a system of inheritance, called the minority, in which the youngest son received all the rights of his father as an inheritance, and older brothers only a share in the common inheritance.

The great Khan Ugedei also had a son - Guyuk, who claimed the inheritance. The increase in the clan during the lifetime of the children of Genghis caused the division of the inheritance and enormous difficulties in managing the ulus, which stretched over the territory from the Black to the Yellow Sea. In these difficulties and family scores, the seeds of future strife lurked that ruined the state created by Genghis Khan and his associates.

How many Tatar-Mongol came to Russia? Let's try to deal with this issue.

Russian pre-revolutionary historians mention "a half-million Mongol army". V. Yan, the author of the famous trilogy "Genghis Khan", "Batu" and "To the last sea", calls the number four hundred thousand. However, it is known that a warrior of a nomadic tribe goes on a campaign with three horses (at least two). One is carrying luggage (“dry rations”, horseshoes, spare harness, arrows, armor), and the third needs to be changed from time to time so that one horse can rest if you suddenly have to engage in battle.

Simple calculations show that for an army of half a million or four hundred thousand fighters, at least one and a half million horses are needed. Such a herd is unlikely to be able to effectively advance a long distance, since the front horses will instantly destroy the grass in a vast area, and the rear ones will die from starvation.

All the main invasions of the Tatar-Mongolians into Russia took place in winter, when the remaining grass is hidden under the snow, and you can’t take much fodder with you ... The Mongolian horse really knows how to get food from under the snow, but ancient sources do not mention the horses of the Mongolian breed that were available "in service" of the horde. Horse breeding experts prove that the Tatar-Mongolian horde rode Turkmens, and this is a completely different breed, and looks different, and is not able to feed itself in winter without human help ...

In addition, the difference between a horse released to roam in the winter without any work, and a horse forced to make long transitions under a rider, and also to participate in battles, is not taken into account. But they, in addition to the riders, also had to carry heavy prey! Wagon trains followed the troops. The cattle that pulls the carts also need to be fed ... The picture of a huge mass of people moving in the rearguard of a half-million army with carts, wives and children seems quite fantastic.

The temptation for the historian to explain the campaigns of the Mongols of the 13th century by "migrations" is great. But modern researchers show that the Mongol campaigns were not directly related to the movements of huge masses of the population. Victories were won not by hordes of nomads, but by small, well-organized mobile detachments, after campaigns returning to their native steppes. And the khans of the Jochi branch - Baty, Horde and Sheibani - received, according to the will of Genghis, only 4 thousand horsemen, that is, about 12 thousand people who settled in the territory from the Carpathians to Altai.

In the end, historians settled on thirty thousand warriors. But here, too, unanswered questions arise. And the first among them will be this: is not it enough? Despite the disunity of the Russian principalities, thirty thousand cavalrymen is too small a figure to arrange "fire and ruin" throughout Russia! After all (even the supporters of the “classical” version admit this) they did not move in a compact mass. Several detachments scattered in different directions, and this reduces the number of "innumerable Tatar hordes" to the limit beyond which elementary distrust begins: could such a number of aggressors conquer Russia?

It turns out a vicious circle: a huge army of the Tatar-Mongolians, for purely physical reasons, would hardly be able to maintain combat capability in order to move quickly and inflict the notorious "indestructible blows." A small army would hardly have been able to establish control over most of the territory of Russia. To get out of this vicious circle, one has to admit that the Tatar-Mongol invasion was in fact only an episode of the bloody civil war that was going on in Russia. The enemy forces were relatively small, they relied on their own forage stocks accumulated in the cities. And the Tatar-Mongols became an additional external factor used in the internal struggle in the same way as the troops of the Pechenegs and Polovtsy were previously used.

The annalistic information about the military campaigns of 1237-1238 that has come down to us draws a classically Russian style of these battles - the battles take place in winter, and the Mongols - the steppes - act with amazing skill in the forests (for example, the encirclement and subsequent complete destruction of the Russian detachment on the City River under the command of the great Prince Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich).

Having cast a general look at the history of the creation of the huge Mongol state, we must return to Russia. Let us take a closer look at the situation with the battle of the Kalka River, not fully understood by historians.

At the turn of the 11th-12th centuries, it was by no means the steppes that represented the main danger to Kievan Rus. Our ancestors were friends with the Polovtsian khans, married the “red Polovtsian girls”, accepted the baptized Polovtsians into their midst, and the descendants of the latter became Zaporozhye and Sloboda Cossacks, not without reason in their nicknames the traditional Slavic suffix belonging to “ov” (Ivanov) was replaced by a Turkic one - “ enco" (Ivanenko).

At this time, a more formidable phenomenon emerged - the decline in morals, the rejection of traditional Russian ethics and morality. In 1097, a princely congress took place in Lyubech, which laid the foundation for a new political form of the country's existence. There it was decided that "let each one keep his fatherland." Russia began to turn into a confederation of independent states. The princes swore to inviolably observe what was proclaimed and in that they kissed the cross. But after the death of Mstislav, the Kievan state began to quickly disintegrate. Polotsk was the first to be laid aside. Then the Novgorod "republic" stopped sending money to Kyiv.

A striking example of the loss of moral values ​​and patriotic feelings was the act of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. In 1169, having captured Kyiv, Andrew gave the city to his warriors for a three-day plunder. Until that moment in Russia it was customary to act in this way only with foreign cities. Under no civil strife, this practice never spread to Russian cities.

Igor Svyatoslavich, a descendant of Prince Oleg, the hero of The Tale of Igor's Campaign, who became the Prince of Chernigov in 1198, set himself the goal of cracking down on Kiev, the city where the rivals of his dynasty were constantly strengthening. He agreed with the Smolensk prince Rurik Rostislavich and called for the help of the Polovtsy. In defense of Kyiv - "the mother of Russian cities" - Prince Roman Volynsky spoke out, relying on the troops of the Torks allied to him.

The plan of the Chernigov prince was realized after his death (1202). Rurik, Prince of Smolensk, and the Olgovichi with the Polovtsy in January 1203, in a battle that went mainly between the Polovtsy and the Torks of Roman Volynsky, prevailed. Having captured Kyiv, Rurik Rostislavich subjected the city to a terrible defeat. The Church of the Tithes and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra were destroyed, and the city itself was burned. “They created a great evil, which was not from baptism in the Russian land,” the chronicler left a message.

After the fateful year 1203 Kyiv never recovered.

According to L. N. Gumilyov, by this time the ancient Russians had lost their passionarity, that is, their cultural and energy “charge”. Under such conditions, a collision with a strong enemy could not but become tragic for the country.

Meanwhile, the Mongol regiments were approaching the Russian borders. At that time, the main enemy of the Mongols in the west were the Cumans. Their enmity began in 1216, when the Polovtsians accepted the natural enemies of Genghis - the Merkits. The Polovtsians actively pursued the anti-Mongolian policy, constantly supporting the Finno-Ugric tribes hostile to the Mongols. At the same time, the Polovtsian steppes were as mobile as the Mongols themselves. Seeing the futility of cavalry clashes with the Polovtsy, the Mongols sent an expeditionary force behind enemy lines.

The talented generals Subetei and Jebe led a corps of three tumens across the Caucasus. The Georgian king George Lasha tried to attack them, but was destroyed along with the army. The Mongols managed to capture the guides, who showed the way through the Darial Gorge. So they went to the upper reaches of the Kuban, to the rear of the Polovtsians. Those, finding the enemy in their rear, retreated to the Russian border and asked for help from the Russian princes.

It should be noted that the relationship between Russia and the Polovtsy does not fit into the scheme of irreconcilable confrontation "sedentary - nomads". In 1223, the Russian princes became allies of the Polovtsy. The three strongest princes of Russia - Mstislav Udaloy from Galich, Mstislav of Kyiv and Mstislav of Chernigov - having gathered troops, tried to protect them.

The clash at the Kalka in 1223 is described in some detail in the annals; in addition, there is another source - "The Tale of the Battle of the Kalka, and the Russian Princes, and the Seventy Bogatyrs." However, the abundance of information does not always bring clarity ...

Historical science has long denied the fact that the events on Kalka were not an aggression of evil aliens, but an attack by the Russians. The Mongols themselves did not seek war with Russia. The ambassadors who arrived at the Russian princes rather amiably asked the Russians not to interfere in their relations with the Polovtsians. But, true to their allied obligations, the Russian princes rejected the peace proposals. In doing so, they made a fatal mistake that had bitter consequences. All the ambassadors were killed (according to some sources, they were not even just killed, but "tortured"). At all times, the murder of an ambassador, a truce was considered a serious crime; according to Mongolian law, the deceit of a person who trusted was an unforgivable crime.

Following this, the Russian army sets out on a long march. Leaving the borders of Russia, it is the first to attack the Tatar camp, take prey, steal cattle, after which it moves out of its territory for another eight days. A decisive battle is taking place on the Kalka River: the eighty thousandth Russian-Polovtsian army fell on the twenty thousandth (!) Detachment of the Mongols. This battle was lost by the allies due to the inability to coordinate actions. The Polovtsy left the battlefield in panic. Mstislav Udaloy and his "younger" prince Daniel fled for the Dnieper; they were the first to reach the shore and managed to jump into the boats. At the same time, the prince cut down the rest of the boats, fearing that the Tatars would be able to cross after him, “and, filled with fear, he reached Galich on foot.” Thus, he doomed his comrades-in-arms, whose horses were worse than the prince's, to death. The enemies killed everyone they overtook.

Other princes remain one on one with the enemy, repulse his attacks for three days, after which, believing the assurances of the Tatars, they surrender. Here lies another mystery. It turns out that the princes surrendered after a certain Russian named Ploskinya, who was in the enemy’s battle formations, solemnly kissed the pectoral cross that the Russians would be spared and their blood would not be shed. The Mongols, according to their custom, kept their word: having tied the captives, they laid them on the ground, covered them with planks and sat down to feast on the bodies. Not a drop of blood was shed! And the latter, according to Mongolian views, was considered extremely important. (By the way, only the “Tale of the Battle of Kalka” reports that the captured princes were put under the boards. Other sources write that the princes were simply killed without mocking, and still others that they were “captured.” So the story of a feast on the bodies is just one of the versions.)

Different nations have different perceptions of the rule of law and the concept of honesty. The Russians believed that the Mongols, having killed the captives, violated their oath. But from the point of view of the Mongols, they kept their oath, and the execution was the highest justice, because the princes committed the terrible sin of killing the one who trusted. Therefore, the point is not in deceit (history gives a lot of evidence of how the Russian princes themselves violated the “kiss of the cross”), but in the personality of Ploskin himself - a Russian, a Christian, who somehow mysteriously found himself among the soldiers of the “unknown people”.

Why did the Russian princes surrender after listening to Ploskini's persuasion? “The Tale of the Battle of the Kalka” writes: “There were roamers along with the Tatars, and their governor was Ploskinya.” Brodniki are Russian free combatants who lived in those places, the predecessors of the Cossacks. However, the establishment of the social position of Ploskin only confuses the matter. It turns out that the roamers in a short time managed to agree with the “unknown peoples” and became close to them so much that they jointly hit their brothers in blood and faith? One thing can be stated with all certainty: part of the army with which the Russian princes fought on the Kalka was Slavic, Christian.

Russian princes in this whole story do not look the best. But back to our mysteries. For some reason, the "Tale of the Battle of the Kalka" mentioned by us is not able to definitely name the enemy of the Russians! Here is a quote: “... Because of our sins, unknown peoples came, the godless Moabites [a symbolic name from the Bible], about whom no one knows exactly who they are and where they came from, and what their language is, and what tribe they are, and what faith. And they call them Tatars, while others say - Taurmen, and others - Pechenegs.

Amazing lines! They were written much later than the events described, when it seemed to be necessary to know exactly who the Russian princes fought on the Kalka. After all, part of the army (albeit small) nevertheless returned from Kalka. Moreover, the victors, pursuing the defeated Russian regiments, chased them to Novgorod-Svyatopolch (on the Dnieper), where they attacked the civilian population, so that among the townspeople there should have been witnesses who saw the enemy with their own eyes. And yet he remains "unknown"! This statement further confuses the matter. After all, by the time described, the Polovtsians were well known in Russia - they lived side by side for many years, then fought, then became related ... The Taurmens, a nomadic Turkic tribe that lived in the Northern Black Sea region, were again well known to the Russians. It is curious that in the "Tale of Igor's Campaign" among the nomadic Turks who served the Chernigov prince, some "Tatars" are mentioned.

There is an impression that the chronicler is hiding something. For some reason unknown to us, he does not want to directly name the enemy of the Russians in that battle. Perhaps the battle on the Kalka was not at all a clash with unknown peoples, but one of the episodes of the internecine war waged between Christian Russians, Christian Polovtsians and Tatars who got involved in the matter?

After the battle on the Kalka, part of the Mongols turned their horses to the east, trying to report on the completion of the task - the victory over the Polovtsians. But on the banks of the Volga, the army fell into an ambush set up by the Volga Bulgars. The Muslims, who hated the Mongols as pagans, unexpectedly attacked them during the crossing. Here the victors at Kalka were defeated and lost many people. Those who managed to cross the Volga left the steppes to the east and united with the main forces of Genghis Khan. Thus ended the first meeting of the Mongols and the Russians.

L. N. Gumilyov collected a huge amount of material, clearly indicating that the relationship between Russia and the Horde CAN be denoted by the word "symbiosis". After Gumilyov, they write especially much and often about how Russian princes and “Mongol khans” became brothers, relatives, sons-in-law and father-in-law, how they went on joint military campaigns, how (let’s call a spade a spade) they were friends. Relations of this kind are unique in their own way - in no country conquered by them, the Tatars did not behave like this. This symbiosis, brotherhood in arms leads to such an interweaving of names and events that sometimes it is even difficult to understand where the Russians end and the Tatars begin...

Therefore, the question of whether there was a Tatar-Mongolian yoke in Russia (in the classical sense of the term) remains open. This topic is waiting for its researchers.

When it comes to “standing on the Ugra”, we again encounter omissions and omissions. As those diligently studying school or university history courses remember, in 1480 the troops of the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III, the first “sovereign of all Russia” (ruler of the united state) and the hordes of the Tatar Khan Akhmat stood on opposite banks of the Ugra River. After a long "standing" the Tatars fled for some reason, and this event was the end of the Horde yoke in Russia.

There are many dark places in this story. Let's start with the fact that the famous painting, which even got into school textbooks - "Ivan III tramples on the Khan's basma" - was written on the basis of a legend composed 70 years after "standing on the Ugra". In reality, the khan's ambassadors did not come to Ivan, and he did not solemnly tear any letter-basma in their presence.

But here again an enemy is coming to Russia, a non-believer, threatening, according to his contemporaries, the very existence of Russia. Well, all in a single impulse are preparing to repulse the adversary? Not! We are faced with a strange passivity and confusion of opinion. With the news of the approach of Akhmat in Russia, something happens that still has no explanation. It is possible to reconstruct these events only on the basis of meager, fragmentary data.

It turns out that Ivan III does not at all seek to fight the enemy. Khan Akhmat is far away, hundreds of kilometers away, and Ivan's wife, Grand Duchess Sophia, flees from Moscow, for which she receives accusatory epithets from the chronicler. Moreover, at the same time, some strange events are unfolding in the principality. “The Tale of Standing on the Ugra” tells about it this way: “In the same winter, the Grand Duchess Sophia returned from her escape, for she ran to Beloozero from the Tatars, although no one was chasing her.” And then - even more mysterious words about these events, in fact, the only mention of them: “And the lands where she wandered became worse than from the Tatars, from boyar serfs, from Christian bloodsuckers. Reward them, Lord, according to the treachery of their deeds, according to the deeds of their hands, give them, for they loved more women than the Orthodox Christian faith and holy churches, and they agreed to betray Christianity, for malice blinded them.

What is this about? What happened in the country? What actions of the boyars brought on them accusations of "blood drinking" and apostasy from the faith? We practically don't know what it was about. A little light is shed by reports about the "evil advisers" of the Grand Duke, who advised not to fight the Tatars, but "run away" (?!). Even the names of "advisors" are known - Ivan Vasilievich Oshchera Sorokoumov-Glebov and Grigory Andreevich Mamon. The most curious thing is that the Grand Duke himself does not see anything reprehensible in the behavior of the near boyars, and subsequently no shadow of disfavor falls on them: after “standing on the Ugra”, both remain in favor until their death, receiving new awards and positions.

What's the matter? It is completely dull, vaguely reported that Oshchera and Mamon, defending their point of view, mentioned the need to observe some kind of “old times”. In other words, the Grand Duke must give up resistance to Akhmat in order to observe some ancient traditions! It turns out that Ivan violates certain traditions, deciding to resist, and Akhmat, accordingly, acts in his own right? Otherwise, this riddle cannot be explained.

Some scholars have suggested: maybe we have a purely dynastic dispute? Once again, two people claim the throne of Moscow - representatives of the relatively young North and the more ancient South, and Akhmat, it seems, has no less rights than his rival!

And here Bishop of Rostov Vassian Rylo intervenes in the situation. It is his efforts that break the situation, it is he who pushes the Grand Duke on a campaign. Bishop Vassian pleads, insists, appeals to the conscience of the prince, gives historical examples, hints that the Orthodox Church may turn away from Ivan. This wave of eloquence, logic and emotion is aimed at convincing the Grand Duke to come to the defense of his country! What the Grand Duke for some reason stubbornly does not want to do ...

The Russian army, to the triumph of Bishop Vassian, leaves for the Ugra. Ahead - a long, for several months, "standing". And again something strange happens. First, negotiations begin between the Russians and Akhmat. The negotiations are quite unusual. Akhmat wants to do business with the Grand Duke himself - the Russians refuse. Akhmat makes a concession: he asks for the brother or son of the Grand Duke to arrive - the Russians refuse. Akhmat again concedes: now he agrees to speak with a "simple" ambassador, but for some reason Nikifor Fedorovich Basenkov must certainly become this ambassador. (Why him? A riddle.) The Russians again refuse.

It turns out that for some reason they are not interested in negotiations. Akhmat makes concessions, for some reason he needs to agree, but the Russians reject all his proposals. Modern historians explain it this way: Akhmat "intended to demand tribute." But if Akhmat was only interested in tribute, why such long negotiations? It was enough to send some Baskak. No, everything indicates that we have before us some big and gloomy secret that does not fit into the usual schemes.

Finally, about the mystery of the retreat of the "Tatars" from the Ugra. Today in historical science there are three versions of not even a retreat - Akhmat's hasty flight from the Ugra.

1. A series of "fierce battles" undermined the morale of the Tatars.

(Most historians reject this, rightly stating that there were no battles. There were only minor skirmishes, clashes of small detachments "in no man's land.")

2. The Russians used firearms, which led the Tatars into panic.

(It is unlikely: by this time the Tatars already had firearms. The Russian chronicler, describing the capture of the city of Bulgar by the Moscow army in 1378, mentions that the inhabitants “let thunder from the walls.”)

3. Akhmat was “afraid” of a decisive battle.

But here is another version. It is taken from a historical work of the 17th century, written by Andrey Lyzlov.

“The lawless tsar [Akhmat], unable to endure his shame, in the summer of the 1480s gathered a considerable force: princes, and lancers, and murzas, and princes, and quickly came to the Russian borders. In his Horde, he left only those who could not wield weapons. The Grand Duke, after consulting with the boyars, decided to do a good deed. Knowing that in the Great Horde, from where the tsar came, there was no army left at all, he secretly sent his numerous army to the Great Horde, to the dwellings of the filthy. At the head were the service tsar Urodovlet Gorodetsky and Prince Gvozdev, governor of Zvenigorod. The king did not know about it.

They, sailing in boats along the Volga to the Horde, saw that there were no military people there, but only women, old men and youths. And they undertook to captivate and devastate, mercilessly betraying the wives and children of the filthy to death, setting fire to their dwellings. And, of course, they could kill every single one.

But Murza Oblyaz the Strong, a servant of Gorodetsky, whispered to his king, saying: “O king! It would be absurd to devastate and ruin this great kingdom to the end, because you yourself come from here, and we all, and here is our homeland. Let’s get out of here, we’ve already caused enough ruin, and God can be angry with us.”

So the glorious Orthodox army returned from the Horde and came to Moscow with a great victory, having with them a lot of booty and a lot of food. The king, having learned about all this, at the same hour retreated from the Ugra and fled to the Horde.

Doesn’t it follow from this that the Russian side deliberately dragged out the negotiations - while Akhmat tried for a long time to achieve his unclear goals, making concessions after concessions, Russian troops sailed along the Volga to the capital of Akhmat and cut down women, children and the elderly there, until the commanders woke up that something like conscience! Please note: it is not said that the voivode Gvozdev opposed the decision of Urodovlet and Oblyaz to stop the massacre. Apparently, he was also fed up with blood. Naturally, Akhmat, having learned about the defeat of his capital, retreated from the Ugra, hurrying home with all possible speed. What next?

A year later, the “Horde” is attacked with an army by a “Nogai Khan” named ... Ivan! Akhmat is killed, his troops are defeated. Another evidence of a deep symbiosis and fusion of Russians and Tatars ... There is another version of the death of Akhmat in the sources. According to him, a certain close associate of Akhmat named Temir, having received rich gifts from the Grand Duke of Moscow, killed Akhmat. This version is of Russian origin.

Interestingly, the army of Tsar Urodovlet, who staged a pogrom in the Horde, is called "Orthodox" by the historian. It seems that before us is another argument in favor of the version that the Horde soldiers who served the Moscow princes were by no means Muslims, but Orthodox.

There is another aspect that is of interest. Akhmat, according to Lyzlov, and Urodovlet are "kings." And Ivan III is only a “Grand Duke”. Writer inaccuracy? But at the time when Lyzlov wrote his history, the title "Tsar" was already firmly entrenched in Russian autocrats, had a specific "binding" and precise meaning. Further, in all other cases, Lyzlov does not allow himself such "liberties". Western European kings he has "kings", Turkish sultans - "sultans", padishah - "padishah", cardinal - "cardinal". Is that the title of Archduke is given by Lyzlov in the translation "artsy prince". But this is a translation, not a mistake.

Thus, in the late Middle Ages there was a system of titles that reflected certain political realities, and today we are well aware of this system. But it is not clear why two seemingly identical Horde nobles are called one "prince" and the other "murza", why "Tatar prince" and "Tatar khan" are by no means the same thing. Why are there so many holders of the title "Tsar" among the Tatars, and the Moscow sovereigns are stubbornly called "Grand Dukes". Only in 1547 Ivan the Terrible for the first time in Russia takes the title of "tsar" - and, as Russian chronicles extensively report, he did this only after much persuasion from the patriarch.

Are the campaigns of Mamai and Akhmat against Moscow explained by the fact that, according to some perfectly understandable contemporaries, the rules of the “tsar” were higher than the “grand prince” and had more rights to the throne? That some dynastic system, now forgotten, declared itself here?

It is interesting that in 1501 the Crimean king Chess, having been defeated in an internecine war, for some reason expected that the Kyiv prince Dmitry Putyatich would come out on his side, probably due to some special political and dynastic relations between the Russians and the Tatars. Which one is not exactly known.

And finally, one of the mysteries of Russian history. In 1574 Ivan the Terrible divides the Russian kingdom into two halves; He rules one himself, and transfers the other to the Kasimov Tsar Simeon Bekbulatovich - along with the titles of "Tsar and Grand Duke of Moscow"!

Historians still do not have a generally accepted convincing explanation for this fact. Some say that Grozny, as usual, mocked the people and those close to him, others believe that Ivan IV thus “transferred” his own debts, mistakes and obligations to the new king. But can we not talk about joint rule, which had to be resorted to due to the same intricate ancient dynastic relations? Perhaps for the last time in Russian history, these systems declared themselves.

Simeon was not, as many historians previously believed, Grozny's "weak-willed puppet" - on the contrary, he was one of the largest statesmen and military figures of that time. And after the two kingdoms were again united into one, Grozny by no means “exiled” Simeon to Tver. Simeon was granted the Grand Dukes of Tver. But Tver in the time of Ivan the Terrible was a recently pacified center of separatism, which required special supervision, and the one who ruled Tver, by all means, had to be a confidant of the Terrible.

And finally, strange troubles fell upon Simeon after the death of Ivan the Terrible. With the accession of Fyodor Ioannovich, Simeon is “reduced” from the reign of Tver, blinded (a measure that in Russia from time immemorial was applied exclusively to sovereign persons who had the right to the table!), Forcibly tonsured monks of the Kirillov Monastery (also a traditional way to eliminate a competitor to the secular throne! ). But even this is not enough: I. V. Shuisky sends a blind, elderly monk to Solovki. One gets the impression that the Muscovite tsar in this way got rid of a dangerous competitor who had significant rights. A contender for the throne? Really the rights of Simeon to the throne were not inferior to the rights of the Rurikovich? (It is interesting that Elder Simeon survived his tormentors. Returned from Solovki exile by decree of Prince Pozharsky, he died only in 1616, when neither Fyodor Ivanovich, nor False Dmitry I, nor Shuisky were alive.)

So, all these stories - Mamai, Akhmat and Simeon - are more like episodes of the struggle for the throne, and not like a war with foreign conquerors, and in this respect they resemble similar intrigues around one or another throne in Western Europe. And those whom we have been accustomed to consider from childhood as the “deliverers of the Russian land”, perhaps, in fact, solved their dynastic problems and eliminated rivals?

Many members of the editorial board are personally acquainted with the inhabitants of Mongolia, who were surprised to learn about their supposedly 300-year-old dominion over Russia. Of course, this news filled the Mongols with a sense of national pride, but at the same time they asked: “Who is Genghis Khan?”

from the magazine "Vedic Culture No. 2"

In the annals of the Orthodox Old Believers about the "Tatar-Mongol yoke" it is said unambiguously: "There was Fedot, but not that one." Let's turn to the ancient Slovene language. Having adapted the runic images to modern perception, we get: thief - enemy, robber; mogul-powerful; yoke - order. It turns out that “Tati Arias” (from the point of view of the Christian flock) with the light hand of the chroniclers were called “Tatars”1, (There is another meaning: “Tata” is the father. Tatar is Tata Arias, i.e. Fathers (Ancestors or the older ones) Aryans) the powerful - by the Mongols, and the yoke - the 300-year-old order in the State, which stopped the bloody civil war that broke out on the basis of the forced baptism of Russia - "martyrdom". Horde is a derivative of the word Order, where “Or” is strength, and day is daylight hours or simply “light”. Accordingly, the “Order” is the Force of Light, and the “Horde” is the Light Forces. So these Light Forces of the Slavs and Aryans, led by our Gods and Ancestors: Rod, Svarog, Sventovit, Perun, stopped the civil war in Russia on the basis of forced Christianization and maintained order in the State for 300 years. Were there dark-haired, stocky, dark-faced, hook-nosed, narrow-eyed, bow-legged and very evil warriors in the Horde? Were. Detachments of mercenaries of different nationalities, who, like in any other army, were driven in the forefront, saving the main Slavic-Aryan Troops from losses on the front line.

It's hard to believe? Take a look at the "Map of Russia 1594" in Gerhard Mercator's Atlas of the Country. All the countries of Scandinavia and Denmark were part of Russia, which extended only to the mountains, and the Principality of Muscovy is shown as an independent state that is not part of Russia. In the east, beyond the Urals, the principalities of Obdora, Siberia, Yugoria, Grustina, Lukomorye, Belovodie are depicted, which were part of the Ancient Power of the Slavs and Aryans - the Great (Grand) Tartaria (Tartaria - lands under the auspices of the God Tarkh Perunovich and the Goddess Tara Perunovna - Son and Daughter of the Supreme God Perun - Ancestor of the Slavs and Aryans).

Do you need a lot of intelligence to draw an analogy: Great (Grand) Tartaria = Mogolo + Tartaria = "Mongol-Tataria"? We do not have a high-quality image of the named picture, there is only "Map of Asia 1754". But it's even better! See for yourself. Not only in the 13th, but until the 18th century, Grand (Mogolo) Tartaria existed as realistically as the now faceless Russian Federation.

"Pisarchuks from history" not all were able to pervert and hide from the people. Their repeatedly darned and patched "Trishkin's caftan", which covers the Truth, now and then bursts at the seams. Through the gaps, the truth bit by bit reaches the consciousness of our contemporaries. They do not have truthful information, therefore they are often mistaken in the interpretation of certain factors, but they draw the correct general conclusion: what school teachers taught to several dozen generations of Russians is deceit, slander, falsehood.

Published article from S.M.I. "There was no Tatar-Mongol invasion" - a vivid example of the above. Commentary to it by a member of our editorial board Gladilin E.A. will help you, dear readers, to dot the "i".
Violetta Basha,
All-Russian newspaper "My family",
No. 3, January 2003. p.26

The main source by which we can judge the history of Ancient Russia is considered to be the Radzivilov manuscript: "The Tale of Bygone Years". The story about the calling of the Varangians to rule in Russia is taken from her. But can she be trusted? Its copy was brought at the beginning of the 18th century by Peter 1 from Koenigsberg, then its original turned out to be in Russia. This manuscript has now been proven to be a forgery. Thus, it is not known for certain what happened in Russia before the beginning of the 17th century, that is, before the accession to the throne of the Romanov dynasty. But why did the House of Romanov need to rewrite our history? Is it not then to prove to the Russians that for a long time they were subordinate to the Horde and were not capable of independence, that their lot was drunkenness and humility?

The strange behavior of princes

The classic version of the “Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia” has been known to many since school. She looks like this. At the beginning of the 13th century, in the Mongolian steppes, Genghis Khan gathered a huge army of nomads, subject to iron discipline, and planned to conquer the whole world. Having defeated China, the army of Genghis Khan rushed to the west, and in 1223 went to the south of Russia, where they defeated the squads of Russian princes on the Kalka River. In the winter of 1237, the Tatar-Mongols invaded Russia, burned many cities, then invaded Poland, the Czech Republic and reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, but suddenly turned back, because they were afraid to leave behind the ruined, but still dangerous for them Russia. In Russia, the Tatar-Mongol yoke began. The huge Golden Horde had borders from Beijing to the Volga and collected tribute from the Russian princes. The khans gave the Russian princes labels for reigning and terrorized the population with atrocities and robberies.

Even the official version says that there were many Christians among the Mongols and individual Russian princes established very warm relations with the Horde khans. Another oddity: with the help of the Horde troops, some princes were kept on the throne. The princes were very close people to the khans. And in some cases, the Russians fought on the side of the Horde. Are there many strange things? Is this how the Russians should have treated the occupiers?

Having grown stronger, Russia began to resist, and in 1380 Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Horde Khan Mamai on the Kulikovo field, and a century later the troops of Grand Duke Ivan III and the Horde Khan Akhmat converged. The opponents camped for a long time on opposite sides of the Ugra River, after which the khan realized that he had no chance, gave the order to retreat and went to the Volga. These events are considered the end of the "Tatar-Mongol yoke".

Secrets of the disappeared chronicles

When studying the chronicles of the times of the Horde, scientists had many questions. Why did dozens of chronicles disappear without a trace during the reign of the Romanov dynasty? For example, "The Word about the destruction of the Russian land", according to historians, resembles a document from which everything that would testify to the yoke was carefully removed. They left only fragments telling about a certain "trouble" that befell Russia. But there is not a word about the "invasion of the Mongols."

There are many more oddities. In the story “About the Evil Tatars”, a Khan from the Golden Horde orders the execution of a Russian Christian prince ... for refusing to bow to the “pagan god of the Slavs!” And some chronicles contain amazing phrases, for example, such: “Well, with God!” - said the Khan and, crossing himself, galloped at the enemy.

Why are there suspiciously many Christians among the Tatar-Mongols? Yes, and the descriptions of princes and warriors look unusual: the chronicles claim that most of them were of the Caucasoid type, had not narrow, but large gray or blue eyes and blond hair.

Another paradox: why all of a sudden the Russian princes in the battle on the Kalka surrender "on parole" to a representative of foreigners named Ploskinya, and he ... kisses the pectoral cross ?! So, Ploskinya was his own, Orthodox and Russian, and besides, of a noble family!

Not to mention the fact that the number of “war horses”, and hence the soldiers of the Horde troops, at first, with the light hand of the historians of the Romanov dynasty, was estimated at three hundred to four hundred thousand. Such a number of horses could not hide in the copses, nor feed themselves in the conditions of a long winter! Over the past century, historians have constantly reduced the size of the Mongol army and reached thirty thousand. But such an army could not keep all the peoples from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in subjection! But it could easily perform the functions of collecting taxes and restoring order, that is, serving as something like a police force.

There was no invasion!

A number of scientists, including Academician Anatoly Fomenko, made a sensational conclusion based on the mathematical analysis of manuscripts: there was no invasion from the territory of modern Mongolia! And there was a civil war in Russia, the princes fought with each other. No representatives of the Mongoloid race who came to Russia existed at all. Yes, there were some Tatars in the army, but not aliens, but residents of the Volga region, who lived next to the Russians long before the notorious "invasion".

What is commonly called the “Tatar-Mongol invasion” was in fact a struggle between the descendants of Prince Vsevolod the “Big Nest” and their rivals for sole power over Russia. The fact of the war between the princes is generally recognized, unfortunately, Russia did not unite immediately, and rather strong rulers fought among themselves.

But with whom did Dmitry Donskoy fight? In other words, who is Mamai?

Horde - the name of the Russian army

The era of the Golden Horde was distinguished by the fact that, along with secular power, there was a strong military power. There were two rulers: a secular one, who was called a prince, and a military one, they called him a khan, i.e. "warlord". In the annals you can find the following entry: “There were roamers along with the Tatars, and they had such and such a governor,” that is, the troops of the Horde were led by governors! And wanderers are Russian free combatants, the predecessors of the Cossacks.

Authoritative scientists have concluded that the Horde is the name of the Russian regular army (like the "Red Army"). And Tatar-Mongolia is Great Russia itself. It turns out that it was not the “Mongols”, but the Russians who conquered a vast territory from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Arctic to the Indian. It was our troops that made Europe tremble. Most likely, it was the fear of powerful Russians that caused the Germans to rewrite Russian history and turn their national humiliation into ours.

By the way, the German word “ordnung” (“order”) most likely comes from the word “horde”. The word "Mongol" probably came from the Latin "megalion", that is, "great." Tataria from the word "tartar" ("hell, horror"). And Mongol-Tataria (or "Megalion-Tartaria") can be translated as "Great Horror".

A few more words about names. Most people of that time had two names: one in the world, and the other received at baptism or a battle nickname. According to the scientists who proposed this version, Prince Yaroslav and his son Alexander Nevsky act under the names of Genghis Khan and Batu. Ancient sources depict Genghis Khan as tall, with a luxurious long beard, with “lynx”, green-yellow eyes. Note that people of the Mongoloid race do not have a beard at all. The Persian historian of the times of the Horde, Rashid adDin, writes that in the family of Genghis Khan, children "were born mostly with gray eyes and blond."

Genghis Khan, according to scientists, is Prince Yaroslav. He just had a middle name - Genghis with the prefix "khan", which meant "commander". Batu - his son Alexander (Nevsky). The following phrase can be found in the manuscripts: "Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, nicknamed Batu." By the way, according to the description of contemporaries, Batu was fair-haired, light-bearded and light-eyed! It turns out that it was the Khan of the Horde who defeated the Crusaders on Lake Peipus!

Having studied the chronicles, scientists found that Mamai and Akhmat were also noble nobles, according to the dynastic ties of the Russian-Tatar families, who had the right to a great reign. Accordingly, "Mamaev's battle" and "standing on the Ugra" are episodes of the civil war in Russia, the struggle of princely families for power.

What Russia was the Horde going to?

The chronicles do say; "The Horde went to Russia." But in the XII-XIII centuries, Rus was called a relatively small area around Kyiv, Chernigov, Kursk, the area near the Ros River, Seversk land. But Muscovites or, say, Novgorodians were already northern residents, who, according to the same ancient chronicles, often “went to Russia” from Novgorod or Vladimir! That is, for example, in Kyiv.

Therefore, when the Moscow prince was about to go on a campaign against his southern neighbor, this could be called an “invasion of Russia” by his “horde” (troops). Not in vain, on Western European maps, for a very long time, Russian lands were divided into “Muscovy” (north) and “Russia” (south).

A grand fabrication

At the beginning of the 18th century, Peter 1 founded the Russian Academy of Sciences. During the 120 years of its existence, there were 33 academicians-historians at the historical department of the Academy of Sciences. Of these, only three are Russians, including M.V. Lomonosov, the rest are Germans. The history of Ancient Russia until the beginning of the 17th century was written by the Germans, and some of them did not even know the Russian language! This fact is well known to professional historians, but they make no effort to carefully review what history the Germans wrote.

It is known that M.V. Lomonosov wrote the history of Russia and that he had constant disputes with German academics. After Lomonosov's death, his archives disappeared without a trace. However, his works on the history of Russia were published, but edited by Miller. Meanwhile, it was Miller who persecuted M.V. Lomonosov during his lifetime! Lomonosov's works on the history of Russia published by Miller are a falsification, this was shown by computer analysis. There is little left of Lomonosov in them.

As a result, we do not know our history. The Germans of the Romanov family have hammered into our heads that the Russian peasant is good for nothing. That “he does not know how to work, that he is a drunkard and an eternal slave.

It has long been no secret that there was no "Tatar-Mongol yoke", and no Tatars with Mongols conquered Russia. But who falsified history and why? What was hidden behind the Tatar-Mongol yoke? Bloody Christianization of Russia...

There are a large number of facts that not only unequivocally refute the hypothesis of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, but also indicate that history was deliberately distorted, and that this was done with a very specific purpose ... But who deliberately distorted history and why? What real events did they want to hide and why?

If we analyze the historical facts, it becomes obvious that the "Tatar-Mongol yoke" was invented in order to hide the consequences of the "baptism" of Kievan Rus. After all, this religion was imposed in a far from peaceful way ... In the process of "baptism" most of the population of the Kiev principality was destroyed! It definitely becomes clear that those forces that were behind the imposition of this religion, in the future, fabricated history, juggling historical facts for themselves and their goals ...

These facts are known to historians and are not secret, they are publicly available, and anyone can easily find them on the Internet. Omitting scientific research and justification, which have already been described quite extensively, let's summarize the main facts that refute the big lie about the "Tatar-Mongol yoke".

French engraving by Pierre Duflos (1742-1816)

1. Genghis Khan

Previously, in Russia, 2 people were responsible for governing the state: the Prince and the Khan. The prince was responsible for governing the state in peacetime. Khan or "war prince" took over the reins of government during the war, in peacetime he was responsible for the formation of the horde (army) and maintaining it in combat readiness.

Genghis Khan is not a name, but the title of "war prince", which, in the modern world, is close to the position of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army. And there were several people who bore such a title. The most prominent of them was Timur, it is about him that they usually talk about when they talk about Genghis Khan.

In the surviving historical documents, this man is described as a tall warrior with blue eyes, very white skin, powerful reddish hair and a thick beard. Which clearly does not correspond to the signs of a representative of the Mongoloid race, but fully fits the description of the Slavic appearance (L.N. Gumilyov - “Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe”.).

In modern "Mongolia" there is not a single folk tale that would say that this country once conquered almost all of Eurasia in ancient times, just like there is nothing about the great conqueror Genghis Khan ... (N.V. Levashov "Visible and invisible genocide).

Reconstruction of the throne of Genghis Khan with a family tamga with a swastika

2. Mongolia

The state of Mongolia appeared only in the 1930s, when the Bolsheviks came to the nomads living in the Gobi desert and informed them that they were the descendants of the great Mongols, and their “compatriot” created the Great Empire at one time, which they were very surprised and delighted with . The word "Mogul" is of Greek origin and means "Great". This word the Greeks called our ancestors - the Slavs. It has nothing to do with the name of any people (N.V. Levashov "Visible and invisible genocide").

3. The composition of the army "Tatar-Mongols"

70-80% of the army of the "Tatar-Mongols" were Russians, the remaining 20-30% were other small peoples of Russia, in fact, as now. This fact is clearly confirmed by a fragment of the icon of Sergius of Radonezh "The Battle of Kulikovo". It clearly shows that the same warriors are fighting on both sides. And this battle is more like a civil war than a war with a foreign conqueror.

The museum description of the icon reads: “... In the 1680s. an attachment with a picturesque legend about the “Mamaev Battle” was added. On the left side of the composition, cities and villages are depicted that sent their soldiers to help Dmitry Donskoy - Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Rostov, Novgorod, Ryazan, the village of Kurba near Yaroslavl and others. On the right is Mamaia's camp. In the center of the composition is the scene of the Battle of Kulikovo with the duel between Peresvet and Chelubey. On the lower field - a meeting of the victorious Russian troops, the burial of dead heroes and the death of Mamai.

All these pictures, taken from both Russian and European sources, depict the battles of the Russians with the Mongol-Tatars, but nowhere is it possible to determine who is Russian and who is Tatar. Moreover, in the latter case, both the Russians and the "Mongol-Tatars" are dressed in almost the same gilded armor and helmets, and fight under the same banners with the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands. Another thing is that the "Spas" of the two warring parties, most likely, was different.

4. What did the "Tatar-Mongols" look like?

Pay attention to the drawing of the tomb of Henry II the Pious, who was killed on the Legnica field.

The inscription is as follows: “The figure of a Tatar under the feet of Henry II, Duke of Silesia, Krakow and Poland, placed on the grave in Breslau of this prince, who was killed in the battle with the Tatars at Liegnitz on April 9, 1241.” As we can see, this "Tatar" has a completely Russian appearance, clothes and weapons.

In the next image - "the Khan's palace in the capital of the Mongol Empire, Khanbalik" (it is believed that Khanbalik is allegedly Beijing).

What is "Mongolian" and what is "Chinese" here? Again, as in the case of the tomb of Henry II, before us are people of a clearly Slavic appearance. Russian caftans, archer caps, the same broad beards, the same characteristic blades of sabers called "elman". The roof on the left is almost an exact copy of the roofs of the old Russian towers ... (A. Bushkov, "Russia, which was not").

5. Genetic expertise

According to the latest data obtained as a result of genetic research, it turned out that Tatars and Russians have very similar genetics. Whereas the differences between the genetics of Russians and Tatars from the genetics of the Mongols are colossal: “The differences between the Russian gene pool (almost completely European) and the Mongolian (almost completely Central Asian) are really great - it’s like two different worlds ...”

6. Documents during the Tatar-Mongol yoke

During the existence of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, not a single document in the Tatar or Mongolian language has been preserved. But there are many documents of this time in Russian.

7. Lack of objective evidence supporting the hypothesis of the Tatar-Mongol yoke

At the moment, there are no originals of any historical documents that would objectively prove that there was a Tatar-Mongol yoke. But on the other hand, there are many fakes designed to convince us of the existence of a fiction called the "Tatar-Mongol yoke." Here is one of those fakes. This text is called “The Word about the Destruction of the Russian Land” and in each publication it is declared “an excerpt from a poetic work that has not come down to us in its entirety ... About the Tatar-Mongol invasion”:

“Oh, bright and beautifully decorated Russian land! You are glorified by many beauties: you are famous for many lakes, locally revered rivers and springs, mountains, steep hills, high oak forests, clear fields, marvelous animals, various birds, countless great cities, glorious villages, monastery gardens, temples of God and formidable princes, honest boyars and many nobles. You are full of everything, Russian land, O Orthodox Christian faith! .. "

There is not even a hint of the "Tatar-Mongol yoke" in this text. But on the other hand, in this “ancient” document there is such a line: “You are full of everything, the Russian land, about the Orthodox Christian faith!”

Before Nikon's church reform, which was carried out in the middle of the 17th century, Christianity in Russia was called "orthodox". It began to be called Orthodox only after this reform... Therefore, this document could have been written no earlier than the middle of the 17th century and has nothing to do with the era of the "Tatar-Mongol yoke"...

On all maps that were published before 1772 and were not corrected in the future, you can see the following picture.

The western part of Russia is called Muscovy, or Moscow Tartaria ... In this small part of Russia, the Romanov dynasty ruled. Until the end of the 18th century, the Moscow Tsar was called the ruler of Moscow Tartaria or the Duke (Prince) of Moscow. The rest of Russia, which occupied almost the entire continent of Eurasia in the east and south of Muscovy at that time, is called Tartaria or the Russian Empire (see map).

In the 1st edition of the British Encyclopedia of 1771, the following is written about this part of Russia:

“Tartaria, a huge country in the northern part of Asia, bordering Siberia in the north and west: which is called Great Tartaria. Those Tartars living south of Muscovy and Siberia are called Astrakhan, Cherkasy and Dagestan, living in the north-west of the Caspian Sea are called Kalmyk Tartars and which occupy the territory between Siberia and the Caspian Sea; Uzbek Tartars and Mongols, who live north of Persia and India, and, finally, Tibetan, living northwest of China ... "

Where did the name Tartaria come from

Our ancestors knew the laws of nature and the real structure of the world, life, and man. But, as now, the level of development of each person was not the same in those days. People who in their development went much further than others, and who could control space and matter (control the weather, heal diseases, see the future, etc.), were called Magi. Those of the Magi who knew how to control space at the planetary level and above were called Gods.

That is, the meaning of the word God, among our ancestors, was not at all the same as it is now. The gods were people who had gone much further in their development than the vast majority of people. For an ordinary person, their abilities seemed incredible, however, the gods were also people, and the capabilities of each god had their own limit.

Our ancestors had patrons - God Tarkh, he was also called Dazhdbog (giving God) and his sister - Goddess Tara. These Gods helped people in solving such problems that our ancestors could not solve on their own. So, the gods Tarkh and Tara taught our ancestors how to build houses, cultivate the land, write and much more, which was necessary in order to survive after the catastrophe and eventually restore civilization.

Therefore, more recently, our ancestors told strangers "We are the children of Tarkh and Tara ...". They said this because in their development, they really were children in relation to Tarkh and Tara, who had significantly departed in development. And the inhabitants of other countries called our ancestors "Tarkhtars", and later, because of the difficulty in pronunciation - "Tartars". Hence the name of the country - Tartaria ...

Baptism of Russia

And here the baptism of Russia? some may ask. As it turned out, very much so. After all, baptism did not take place in a peaceful way ... Before baptism, people in Russia were educated, almost everyone knew how to read, write, count (see the article “Russian culture is older than European”).

Let us recall from the school curriculum on history, at least, the same "Birch bark letters" - letters that peasants wrote to each other on birch bark from one village to another.

Our ancestors had a Vedic world view as described above, it was not a religion. Since the essence of any religion comes down to the blind acceptance of any dogmas and rules, without a deep understanding of why it is necessary to do it this way and not otherwise. The Vedic worldview gave people precisely an understanding of the real laws of nature, an understanding of how the world works, what is good and what is bad.

People saw what happened after the "baptism" in neighboring countries, when, under the influence of religion, a successful, highly developed country with an educated population, in a matter of years, plunged into ignorance and chaos, where only representatives of the aristocracy could read and write, and then not all of them. ..

Everyone perfectly understood what the “Greek religion” carried in itself, into which Prince Vladimir the Bloody and those who stood behind him were going to baptize Kievan Rus. Therefore, none of the inhabitants of the then Kiev principality (a province that broke away from Great Tartary) accepted this religion. But there were large forces behind Vladimir, and they were not going to retreat.

In the process of "baptism" for 12 years of forced Christianization, with rare exceptions, almost the entire adult population of Kievan Rus was destroyed. Because such a “teaching” could only be imposed on unreasonable children, who, due to their youth, could not yet understand that such a religion turned them into slaves both in the physical and spiritual sense of the word. All those who refused to accept the new "faith" were killed. This is confirmed by the facts that have come down to us. If before the "baptism" on the territory of Kievan Rus there were 300 cities and 12 million inhabitants, then after the "baptism" there were only 30 cities and 3 million people! 270 cities were destroyed! 9 million people were killed! (Diy Vladimir, "Orthodox Russia before the adoption of Christianity and after").

But despite the fact that almost the entire adult population of Kievan Rus was destroyed by the "holy" baptists, the Vedic tradition did not disappear. On the lands of Kievan Rus, the so-called dual faith was established. Most of the population purely formally recognized the imposed religion of slaves, while she herself continued to live according to the Vedic tradition, though without showing it off. And this phenomenon was observed not only among the masses, but also among part of the ruling elite. And this state of affairs persisted until the reform of Patriarch Nikon, who figured out how to deceive everyone.

But the Vedic Slavic-Aryan Empire (Great Tartary) could not calmly look at the intrigues of its enemies, which destroyed three-quarters of the population of the Kiev Principality. Only her response could not be instantaneous, due to the fact that the army of the Great Tartaria was busy with conflicts on its Far Eastern borders. But these retaliatory actions of the Vedic Empire were carried out and entered modern history in a distorted form, under the name of the Mongol-Tatar invasion of the hordes of Khan Batu into Kievan Rus.

Only by the summer of 1223 did the troops of the Vedic Empire appear on the Kalka River. And the united army of the Polovtsians and Russian princes was completely defeated. So they beat us into history lessons, and no one could really explain why the Russian princes fought with the "enemies" so sluggishly, and many of them even went over to the side of the "Mongols"?

The reason for such absurdity was that the Russian princes, who had adopted an alien religion, knew perfectly well who came and why ...

So, there was no Mongol-Tatar invasion and yoke, but there was a return of the rebellious provinces under the wing of the metropolis, the restoration of the integrity of the state. Batu Khan had the task of returning the Western European province-states under the wing of the Vedic Empire, and stopping the invasion of Christians in Russia. But the strong resistance of some princes, who felt the taste of the still limited, but very large power of the principalities of Kievan Rus, and new unrest on the Far Eastern border did not allow these plans to be completed (N.V. Levashov “Russia in Crooked Mirrors”, Volume 2.).

findings

In fact, after baptism in the principality of Kiev, only children and a very small part of the adult population survived, who adopted the Greek religion - 3 million people out of a population of 12 million before baptism. The principality was completely devastated, most of the cities, villages and villages were looted and burned. But exactly the same picture is drawn to us by the authors of the version of the “Tatar-Mongol yoke”, the only difference is that the same cruel actions were allegedly carried out there by the “Tatar-Mongols”!

As always, the winner writes history. And it becomes obvious that in order to hide all the cruelty with which the Kiev principality was baptized, and in order to stop all possible questions, the “Tatar-Mongol yoke” was subsequently invented. Children were brought up in the traditions of the Greek religion (the cult of Dionysius, and later Christianity) and history was rewritten, where all the cruelty was blamed on “wild nomads”…

The famous statement of President V.V. Putin about the Battle of Kulikovo, in which the Russians allegedly fought against the Tatars with the Mongols ...

Tatar-Mongol yoke - the biggest myth of history