When was the Mongol-Tatar yoke years. Who invented the Tatar-Mongol yoke

There are a large number of facts that not only unequivocally refute the hypothesis of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, but also say that history was distorted deliberately, and that this was done with a very specific purpose ... But who and why deliberately distorted history? 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 “baptism”. 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 becomes unambiguously clear that the forces that stood behind the imposition of this religion, in the future, fabricated history, manipulating 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 substantiation, which have already been described quite widely, let us summarize the basic facts that refute the big lie about the "Tatar-Mongol yoke".

1. Genghis Khan

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

Chinggis Khan is not a name, but the title of "military prince", which, in the modern world, is close to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Army. And there were several people who bore such a title. The most outstanding of them was Timur, it is about him that is usually talked about when they talk about Chinggis 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In the surviving historical documents, this man is described as a tall warrior with blue eyes, very white skin, powerful reddish hair and a thick beard.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 (LN Gumilyov - "Ancient Russia and the Great Steppe.").

French engraving by Pierre Duflos (1742-1816)

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

Reconstruction of the throne of Genghis Khan with a patrimonial 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 told 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 (NV Levashov "Visible and invisible genocide").

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

70-80% of the army of "Tatar-Mongols" were Russians, the remaining 20-30% fell on other small peoples of Russia, in fact, as now. This fact is clearly confirmed by a fragment of the icon of St. 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.

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

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

The inscription is as follows: "The figure of a Tatar under the feet of Henry II, Duke of Silesia, Krakow and placed on the grave in Breslau of this prince, who was killed in the battle with the Tatars at Lygnitz on April 9, 1241" As we can see, this "Tatar" has a completely Russian appearance, clothes and weapons. The next image shows "the khan's palace in the capital of the Mongol empire, Khanbalik" (it is believed that Khanbalik is supposedly 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, rifle caps, the same thick beards, the same characteristic saber blades called "Elman". The roof on the left is almost an exact copy of the roofs of old Russian towers ... (A. Bushkov, “Russia, which did not exist”).

5. Genetic examination

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

6. Documents during the Tatar-Mongol yoke

During the period of the existence of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, not a single document in the Tatar or Mongolian language has survived. But on the other hand, 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 forgeries designed to convince us of the existence of an invention called the "Tatar-Mongol yoke". Here is one of these 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, the bright light and beautifully decorated Russian land! You are famous for many beauties: you are famous for many lakes, locally revered rivers and springs, mountains, steep hills, high oak forests, clean fields, wonderful animals, various birds, countless great cities, glorious villages, monastery gardens, temples of God and formidable, honest boyars and nobles many. You are filled with everything, Russian land, about the Christian Orthodox faith!..»

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

Before the church reform of Nikon, which was carried out in the middle of the 17th century, Christianity in Russia was called "faithful". It began to be called Orthodox only after this reform ... Therefore, this document could have been written not 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 later, you can see the following.

The western part of Russia is called Muscovy, or Moscow Tartary ... 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 Tartary 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 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 Tartary. Those Tartars living south of Muscovy and Siberia are called Astrakhan, Cherkassk and Dagestan, living in the northwest 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 north-west of China ... "(see the website "Food of RA") ...

Where did the name Tartary come from?

Our ancestors knew the laws of nature and the real structure of the world, life, 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 higher were called Gods.

That is, the meaning of the word God, our ancestors was not at all the same as it is now. Gods were people who went much further in their development than the overwhelming majority of people. For an ordinary person, their abilities seemed incredible, nevertheless, the gods were also people, and the capabilities of each god had their limits.

Our ancestors had patrons - God, 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, writing and much more, which was necessary in order to survive after the disaster and eventually restore civilization.

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

Baptism of Russia

What does the baptism of Rus have to do with it? Some may ask. As it turned out, very much to do with it. After all, baptism took place in a far from peaceful way ... Before baptism, people in Russia were educated, almost everyone knew how to read, write, count (see article). Let us recall from the school history curriculum, 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 worldview, as I wrote above, it was not a religion. Since the essence of any religion comes down to 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, on the other hand, gave people an understanding of real nature, an understanding of how the world works, what is good and what is bad.

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

Everyone perfectly understood what the "Greek religion", into which the Bloody Kievan Rus and those who stood behind it, were going to baptize, was in it. Therefore, none of the inhabitants of the then Kiev principality (a province that broke away from Great Tartary) did not accept this religion. But behind Vladimir were large forces, and they were not going to retreat.

In the process of "baptism" for 12 years of violent Christianization, with rare exceptions, almost the entire adult population of Kievan Rus was destroyed. Because it was only possible to impose such a "teaching" on the unreasonable, who, due to their youth, still could not 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" only 30 cities and 3 million people remained! 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 has not disappeared. 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, and itself continued to live according to the Vedic tradition, however, without showing it off. And this phenomenon was observed not only among the masses, but also among a part of the ruling elite. And this state of affairs remained until the reform of Patriarch Nikon, who figured out how to deceive everyone.

conclusions

In fact, after baptism in the Kiev principality, only children and a very small part of the adult population survived, which adopted the Greek religion - 3 million people out of the 12 million population before baptism. The principality was completely ruined, most of the cities, villages and villages were plundered and burned. But after all, the authors of the version of the "Tatar-Mongol yoke" paint us exactly the same picture, the only difference is that the same cruel actions were allegedly carried out there by "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 suppress 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 rewrote history, where all the cruelty was blamed on the "wild nomads" ...

The well-known statement of President V.V. Putin about, in which the Russians allegedly fought against the Tatars with the Mongols ...

The Tatar-Mongol yoke is the biggest myth in history.

N A SH K A L E N D A R b

November 24, 1480 - the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke in Russia

In the distant fifties, the author of this article, then a graduate student of the State Hermitage, took part in archaeological excavations in the city of Chernigov. When we reached the layers of the middle of the 13th century, terrible pictures of the traces of Batu's invasion of 1239 were revealed before our eyes.

The Ipatiev Chronicle under. 1240 describes the assault on the city in this way: “Surrounding the city of Chernigov (“ Tartar ”- BS), the city of Chernigov is heavy in strength .. Prince Mikhail Glebovich came on foreign tribes with his warriors, and there was a battle at Chernigov ... But Mstislav was defeated and many from howl (soldiers - B.S.) were beaten by him. And the hail took and ignited with fire ... ”. Our excavations have confirmed the accuracy of the chronicle record. The city was ravaged and burned to the ground. A ten-centimeter layer of ash covered the entire area of ​​one of the richest cities in Ancient Russia. Fierce battles were fought for every house. The roofs of houses often bore the marks of the blows of heavy stones from Tatar catapults, the weight of which reached 120-150 kg (The annals indicate that these stones could barely lift four strong people.) The inhabitants were either killed or taken prisoner. The ashes of the burnt city were mixed with the bones of thousands of dead people.

After completing my postgraduate studies, already as a research fellow at the museum, I worked on the creation of a permanent exhibition "Russian culture of the 6th-13th centuries." In the process of preparing the exposition, special attention was paid to the fate of a small ancient Russian fortress city, erected in the 12th century. on the southern borders of Ancient Rus, near the modern city of Berdichev, now called Raiki. To some extent, his fate is close to the fate of the world famous ancient Italian city of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD. during the eruption of Vesuvius.

But Raiki were completely destroyed not by the forces of the raging elements, but by the hordes of Khan Batu. The study of material material stored in the State Hermitage Museum, and written reports on excavations made it possible to restore a terrible picture of the death of the city. It reminded me of the pictures of Belarusian villages and cities burned by the invaders, seen by the author during our offensive during the Great Patriotic War, in which the author took part. The inhabitants of the city resisted desperately and all died in an unequal struggle. Dwelling houses were excavated, on the thresholds of which there were two skeletons - a Tatar and a Russian, killed with a sword in his hand. There were terrible scenes - the skeleton of a woman covering her child with her body. A Tatar arrow is stuck in her vertebrae. After the defeat, the city did not come to life, and everything remained in the same form as the enemy left it.

Hundreds of Russian cities shared the tragic fate of Raikov and Chernigov.

The Tatars destroyed about a third of the entire population of Ancient Rus. Considering that at that time about 6 - 8,000,000 people lived in Russia, at least 2,000,000 - 2,500,000 were killed. Foreigners passing through the southern regions of the country wrote that Russia was practically turned into a dead desert, and such a state was on the map Europe no longer exists. The horrors of the Tatar-Mongol invasion are described in detail in Russian chronicles and literary sources, such as "The Word about the Destruction of the Russian Land", "The Tale of the Ruin of Ryazan" and others. The tragic consequences of Batu's campaigns were largely multiplied by the establishment of an occupation regime, which not only led to the total plundering of Russia, but drained the soul of the people. He delayed the forward movement of our Motherland for more than 200 years.

The Great Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 inflicted a decisive defeat on the Golden Horde, but could not completely destroy the yoke of the Tatar khans. The Grand Dukes of Moscow were faced with the task of completely, legally eliminating the dependence of Russia on the Horde.

November 24 of the new style (11 old) on the church calendar marks a remarkable date in the history of our Motherland. 581 years ago, in 1480 - the “Standing on the Ugra” ended. The Golden Horde Khan Akhma (? - 1481) turned his fogs away from the borders of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and was soon killed.

This was the legal end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke. Russia became a completely sovereign state.

Unfortunately, neither the media, nor in the minds of the general public, this date was not reflected. Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that on that day the dark page of our history was turned over, and a new stage in the independent development of the Fatherland began.

It is necessary, at least briefly, to recall the development of events in those years.

Although the last khan of the Great Horde stubbornly continued to consider the Grand Duke of Moscow his tributary, in fact, Ivan Sh Vasilyevich (reigned 1462 - 1505) was actually independent of the khan. Instead of a regular tribute, he sent small gifts to the Horde, the size and regularity of which he himself determined. The Horde began to understand that the times of Batu were gone forever. The Grand Duke of Moscow became a formidable adversary, not a silent slave.

In 1472, the Khan of the Big (Golden) Horde, at the suggestion of the Polish king Casimir IV, who had promised him support, undertook the usual campaign for the Tatars against Moscow. However, it ended in complete failure for the Horde. They could not even cross the Oka, which was the traditional defensive line of the capital.

In 1476, the Khan of the Great Horde sent an embassy to Moscow, headed by Akhmet Sadyk, with a formidable demand to fully restore tributary relations. In Russian written sources, in which legends and reports of true facts were complexly intertwined, the negotiations were complex. During the first stage, Ivan III, in the presence of the Boyar Duma, was playing for time, realizing that a negative answer meant war. It is likely that Ivan III made the final decision under the influence of his wife Sophia Fominichna Palaeologus, a proud Byzantine princess, who allegedly told her husband with anger: “I married the Grand Duke of Russia, not a Horde servant.” At the next meeting with the ambassadors, Ivan III changed his tactics. He tore up the khan's letter and trampled the basma with his feet (a basma or paiza-box filled with wax with the imprint of the khan's heel was issued to the ambassadors as a credential). And the ambassadors themselves were expelled from Moscow. Both in the Horde and in Moscow it became clear that a large-scale war was inevitable.

But Akhmat did not go straight to action. In the early eighties, Casimir IV began to prepare for war with Moscow. The traditional alliance of the Horde and the Polish crown against Russia was outlined. The situation in Moscow itself was aggravated. At the end of 1479 there was a quarrel between the Grand Duke and his brothers Boris and Andrey Bolshoi. They rose from their estates with their families and "courtyards" and headed through the Novgorod lands to the Lithuanian border. There was a real threat of unification of the internal separatist opposition with the attack of external enemies - Poland and the Horde.

Given this circumstance, Khan Akhmat decided that the time had come to strike a decisive blow, which should be supported by the invasion of the Russian borders by the Polish-Lithuanian troops. Gathering a huge army, the Khan of the Great Horde at the end of the spring of 1480, when the grass, necessary for the food of his cavalry, turned green, moved to Moscow. But not directly to the North, but bypassing the capital, from the southwest, to the upper reaches of the Oka, towards the Lithuanian border to join with Casimir IV. In the summer, the Tatar hordes reached the right bank of the Ugra River, not far from its confluence with the Oka (Modern Kaluga Region). About 150 km remained to Moscow.

For his part, Ivan III took decisive measures to strengthen his position. His special services established contact with the enemy of the Great Horde - the Crimean Khan Mengly-Girey, who attacked the southern regions of Lithuania and thereby prevented Casimir IV from coming to the aid of Akhmat. Towards the Horde, Ivan III moved his main forces, which approached the northern left bank of the Ugra, covering the capital.

In addition, the Grand Duke sent an auxiliary corps by water along the Volga to the capital of the Horde - the city of Sarai. Taking advantage of the fact that the main forces of the Horde were on the banks of the Ugra, the Russian troops defeated it, and, according to legend, plowed the ruins of the city, as a sign that there will never be a threat to Russia from this place (now the village of Selitryany is located on this place) ...

On the banks of a small river, two huge troops converged. The so-called "Standing on the Ugra" began, when both sides did not dare to start a general battle. Akhmat waited in vain for the help of Casimir, and Ivan had to deal with his brothers. As an extremely cautious person, the Grand Duke took decisive action only when he was confident of victory.

Several times the Tatars tried to cross the Ugra, but met with powerful fire from Russian artillery, commanded by the famous Italian architect Aristotle Fiorovanti, the builder of the Assumption Cathedral in 1479, were forced to retreat.

At this time, Ivan III, abandoning his troops, returned to Moscow, which caused unrest in the capital, since the threat of a breakthrough by the Tatar troops was not eliminated. The inhabitants of the capital demanded active action, accusing the Grand Duke of indecision.

The Rostov Archbishop Vassian in the famous "Epistle to the Ugra" called the Grand Duke a "runner" and called on him to "harrow his fatherland." But Ivan's caution is understandable. He could not start a decisive battle without a reliable rear. In Moscow, with the assistance of church hierarchs, on October 6, he made peace with his brothers, and their retinues joined the grand ducal army.

Meanwhile, the favorable situation for Akhmat has changed dramatically. Busy with the defense of the southern borders, the Polish-Lithuanian troops never came to the aid of Akhmat. Strategically, the khan had already lost the battle that had not taken place. Time passed towards autumn. Winter was approaching, the Ugra River froze over, which made it possible for the Tatars to easily cross to the other side. Accustomed to warm winters on the shores of the Black and Azov Seas, the Tatars were worse than the Russians withstanding the coming cold.

In mid-November, Ivan III gave the command to move to winter apartments in Borovsk, located 75 km from Moscow. On the banks of the Ugra, he left the “watchman” to observe the Tatars. Further events developed according to a scenario that no one in the Russian camp could have foreseen. On the morning of November 11, the old style - 24 new, the guards unexpectedly saw that the right bank of the Ugra was empty. The Tatars secretly withdrew from their positions at night and went south. The swiftness and good disguise of the retreat of the Khan's troops were perceived by the Russians as a flight that they did not expect.

Ivan III Vasilievich, Grand Duke of Moscow and All Russia, returned to Moscow as a winner.

Khan Akhmat, who had no reason to return to the burnt Sarai, went to the lower reaches of the Volga, where on January 6, 1481 he was killed by the Nogai Tatars.

So the Tatar-Mongol yoke was eliminated, which brought innumerable calamities to our people.

November 24 of the new style is one of the most significant dates of the Patriotic history, the memory of which cannot fade into centuries.

How historiography is written.

Unfortunately, there is no analytical review of the history of historiography yet. It's a pity! Then we would understand how historiography for the health of the state differs from 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 him a requiem, 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, which came here precisely because of the inability of local residents to equip an original and independent state. Then, if we sing the eulogy, we will say that the name of this ancient formation was clear to everyone, and has not changed to this day. On the contrary, if we bury our state, we will say that it was named for an unknown reason, and then changed its name. Finally, in favor of the state in the first phase of its development, there will be an 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 an unknown in ancient times and a very peaceful and small people could conquer it. 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 the ancient Russian history, composed by the Germans who were discharged from abroad to St. Petersburg, is built according to the following scheme: Evil wild nomads come to the East, destroy the Russian state and establish an occupation regime called the "yoke". Two and a half centuries later, the Moscow princes cast off the yoke, collect the Russian lands under their rule and create a powerful Moscow kingdom, which is the legal successor of Kievan Rus and rid the Russians of the "yoke"; for several centuries in Eastern Europe there has been an ethnically Russian Grand Duchy of Lithuania, however, it is politically dependent on the Poles, and therefore cannot be considered a Russian state, therefore, the war between Lithuania and Muscovy should be viewed not as civil strife between 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 accustomed to thinking with his head will doubt this very much, if only because the history of the Mongol invasion has been completely sucked out of his thumb. Until the 19th century, the Russians did not even suspect that they were allegedly once conquered by the Trans-Baikal savages. Indeed, the version that a highly developed state was completely crushed by some wild steppe, unable to create an army in accordance with the technical and cultural achievements of that time, looks delusional. Moreover, such a people as the Mongols was not known to science. True, historians were not at a loss and announced that the Mongols are the small nomadic people of Khalkha living in Central Asia ”(KUN: 162).

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

“The Khalkhs 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 their successful conquest of half of the world, a completely artificial term "Mongolo-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 they form ruling dynasties. In the future, however, we do not observe any Tatars-nomads, but this is because, as the same historians explain, that the Mongol-Tatars settled on the lands they conquered, and partially went back to the steppe and disappeared there completely without a trace "(KUN: 162- 163).

Wikipedia about the game.

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 undeveloped 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. It was first used by the chronicler Jan Dlugosz ("iugum barbarum", "iugum servitutis") in 1479 and professor at the University of Krakow Matvey Mekhovsky in 1517. Literature: 1. Golden Horde // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: In 86 volumes (82 vol. and 4 additional). - SPb .: 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 in the relations of the Tatar-Mongols to other peoples a "yoke". 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, the young Moscow state was pursuing an active foreign policy, liberated from the vassal dependence of the Golden Horde khans. In neighboring Poland, there is an increased interest in 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 the University of Krakow, 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 to be his most important merit, and, apparently, a global event of the era. "

Mention of the yoke among historians.

Poland's attitude towards Russia has always been ambiguous, and its attitude towards its own fate has always been an extremely tragic one. So they could exaggerate the dependence of some peoples on the Tatar-Mongols. And then 3 authors continue: “Later, the term Tatar yoke is also mentioned in the notes about the Moscow war of 1578-1582, compiled by the secretary of state of another king Stephen Batory - Reingold Heydenstein. Even Jacques Margeret, a French mercenary and adventurer, an officer in the Russian service and a person far from science, knew what was meant by the Tatar yoke. This term was widely used by other West 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 Russian or Russian "

For now, I will interrupt the quotation in order to draw attention to the fact that foreigners write about the "yoke" first of all, who really liked the scenario of weak Russia, which was captured by the "evil Tartars". While Russian historians did not know anything about this yet

"V. N. Tatishchev did not use this phrase, perhaps because, when writing the History of Russia, he mainly relied on early Russian chronicle terms and expressions, where it is absent. IN Boltin already used the term Tatar rule, and M., M., Shcherbatov believed that liberation from the Tatar yoke was a great achievement of Ivan III. N.M., Karamzin found in the Tatar yoke both negative - the tightening of laws and mores, a slowdown in the development of education and science, and positive aspects - the formation of autocracy, a factor in the unification of Rus. Another phrase, the Tatar-Mongol yoke, also most likely comes from the vocabulary of Western, and not domestic researchers. In 1817, Christopher Kruse published an Atlas on 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. Russian 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 used in Russian historical science. In our encyclopedic publications, under the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Russia in the 13th-15th centuries, we mean: the system of rule of the Mongol-Tatar feudal lords, with the help of various political, military and economic means, with the goal of regular exploitation of the conquered country. Thus, in European historical literature, the term yoke denotes domination, oppression, slavery, bondage, or the power of foreign conquerors over defeated peoples and states. It is known that the Old Russian principalities were subject to the Golden Horde economically and politically, and also paid tribute. The Golden Horde khans actively intervene 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 was never equal, voluntary and stable. In addition, even in the developed and late Middle Ages, short-term interstate alliances were usually formalized by contractual relations. Such, equal allied, relations between the fragmented Russian principalities and the Golden Horde could not exist, since the khans of Ulus Jochi issued labels for the rule of the Vladimir, Tver, Moscow princes. Russian princes were obliged, at the request of the khans, to send troops to participate in the military campaigns of the Golden Horde. In addition, using the Russian princes and their army, the Mongols make punitive campaigns against other rebellious Russian principalities. The khans summoned princes to the Horde in order to issue a label to reign alone, and to execute or pardon those who were unwanted. During this period, the Russian lands were actually under the rule or yoke of Ulus Jochi. Although, sometimes the foreign policy interests of the Golden Horde khans and the Russian princes, for various reasons, could somehow coincide. The Golden Horde is a chimera state in which the elite are conquerors, and the lower strata are conquered peoples. The Mongolian Golden Horde elite established power over the Polovtsy, Alans, Circassians, Khazars, Bulgars, Finno-Ugric peoples, and also placed the Russian principalities in a rigid vassal relationship. Therefore, we can assume that the scientific term yoke is quite acceptable to denote in the historical literature the nature of the power of the Golden Horde, established not only over the Russian lands. "

Yoke as the Christianization of Rus.

Thus, Russian historians really repeated the assertions of the German Christopher Kruse, while they did not subtract such a term from any chronicle. Not only Kungurov drew attention to the strangeness in the interpretation of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. This is what we read in the article (TAT): “Such a nation as the Mongolo-Tatars does not exist, and did not exist at all. The Mongols and Tatars are related only by the fact that they wandered across the Central Asian steppe, which, as we know, is large enough to accommodate any nomadic people, and at the same time give them the opportunity not to intersect on the same territory at all. The Mongol tribes lived in the southern tip of the Asian steppe and often hunted in raids on China and its provinces, which is often confirmed by the history of China. Whereas other nomadic Türkic tribes, called Bulgars (Volga Bulgaria) from the Pokonese centuries in Russia, settled in the lower reaches of the Volga River. In those days in Europe they were called Tatars, or Tat Aryans (the most powerful of the nomadic tribes, unbending and invincible). And the Tatars, the closest neighbors of the Mongols, lived in the northeastern part of modern Mongolia, mainly in the area of ​​Lake Buir-Nor and up to the borders of China. There were 70 thousand families, which made up 6 tribes: Tatars-tutukulyut, Tatars-alchi, Tatars-chagan, Tatars-Kuin, Tatars-terat, Tatars-barkuy. The second parts of the names, apparently, are the self-names of these tribes. There is not a single word among them that would sound close to the Turkic language - they are more consonant with the Mongolian names. Two kindred peoples - Tatars and Mongols - fought 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 a foregone conclusion. Since the Tatars were the murderers of Genghis Khan's father, exterminated many tribes and clans close to him, constantly supported the tribes opposing him, “then Genghis Khan (Tei-mu-Chin) ordered a general beating of the Tatars and not one left alive to that limit, which is determined by law (Yasak); to kill women and small children, and to cut the wombs of pregnant women 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 name all indestructible (from the point of view of Europeans) and invincible peoples, Tat'Aryans, or simply TatArie in Latin. This can be easily traced on ancient maps, for example, Map of Russia 1594 in the Atlas of Gerhard Mercator, or Maps of Russia and TarTaria Ortelius. Below you can view these maps. So what can we see from this newfound 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 moving on to the narration of the truth, I propose to consider a few more discrepancies 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 of nomadic peoples, and subjecting them to strict discipline, he decided to conquer the whole world. Having defeated China, he sent his army to Russia. In the winter of 1237, the Mongol-Tatars invaded the territory of Russia, and after defeating the Russian army on the Kalka River, they set out 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 conquer the whole world ... so why not move on? Historians replied that they were afraid of an attack from the back, broken and plundered, but still strong Russia. But this is just ridiculous. Plundered state, will run to defend other people's cities and villages? Rather, they will rebuild their borders, and wait for the return of the enemy troops, so that they can fight back fully armed. But the oddities don't end there. For some unimaginable reason, during the reign of the House of Romanov, dozens of chronicles describing the events of the “times of the Horde” disappear. For example, "The Lay of the Death of the Russian Land", historians believe that this is a document from which everything was carefully removed, which would testify to the Yoke. They left only fragments telling about some kind of "misfortune" that befell Russia. But there is not a word about the "Mongol invasion". There are many more oddities. In the story "About the Evil Tatars" the khan from the Golden Horde orders the execution of the Russian Christian prince ... for refusing to worship the "pagan god of the Slavs!" And some chronicles contain amazing phrases, such as: "Well, with God!" - said the khan and, crossing himself, galloped to the enemy. So what really happened? At that time in Europe, a “new faith” was already flourishing with might and main, namely, the Faith in Christ. Catholicism was widespread everywhere, and ruled everything from the way of life and order, to the state system and legislation. At that time, the crusades against the infidels were still relevant, but along with military methods, "tactical tricks" were often used, akin to bribery of powerful persons and persuading them to their faith. And after gaining power through the purchased person, the conversion of all his "subordinates". It was precisely such a secret crusade that was then carried out to Russia. Through bribery and other promises, the ministers of the church were able to seize power over Kiev and surrounding areas. Just relatively recently, by the standards of history, the baptism of Rus took place, but history is silent about the civil war that arose on this basis 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. This understanding of the baptism of Rus is very painful for the ROC for two reasons. The date of the baptism of Rus is considered to be 988, not 1237. Due to the shift in the date, 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 a massive protest 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-Mongols" to the quite real West, to Rome and Constantinople. And the official historiography on this issue turns out to be not a science, but a modern pseudo-scientific mythology. But let us return 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 they use 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 just 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 the back of their heads and chuckling, will show a couple of half-rotted 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. Nobody will explain this to you for sure. In the best case scenario, you will hear the story that the saber was dug up at the place where, according to the ancient and very reliable chronicle, there was a battle with the Mongols. Where is that chronicle? God knows her, has not reached our days, but the historian N. saw her with his own eyes, who translated it from Old Russian. Where is this historian N.? Yes, for two hundred years since he died - modern "scientists" will answer you, but they will certainly add that the works of N are considered classical and are not subject to doubt, since all subsequent generations of historians wrote their works based on his works. I am not laughing - this is approximately the case in the official historical science of Russian antiquity. Even worse - armchair scientists, creatively developing the legacy of the classics of Russian historiography, in their puffy volumes have stuck such nonsense about the Mongols, whose arrows, it turns out, pierced the armor of European knights, and battering guns, flamethrowers and even rocket artillery made it possible to take by storm for several days powerful fortresses, which 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 have encountered the armor of European knights and what do Russian sources say about this? “And Vorogi came from the Overseas, and they brought faith in alien gods. With fire and sword, they began to implant an alien faith to us, Sprinkle gold and silver on the Russian princes, bribe their will, and lead them astray. They promised them an idle life, full of riches and happiness, and forgiveness of any sins, for their dashing deeds. And then Ros broke up, into different states. The Russian clan retreated to the north to the Great Asgard, And they named their state after the names of the gods of their patrons, Tarkh Dazhdbog the Great and Tara, his Sister Light-wise. (They named it the Great Tartaria). Leaving the foreigners with the princes bought in the principality of Kiev and its environs. Volga Bulgaria, too, did not bow before the enemies, and did not begin to accept their faith as hers. But the principality of Kiev did not live in peace with TarTaria. They began to conquer the Russians with the fire and sword of the earth and impose their alien faith. And then the army of war rose to a fierce battle. In order to keep their faith and win back their lands. Both old and young then went to Ratniki in order to restore order to the Russian Lands. "

And so the war began, in which the Russian army, the lands of Great Aria (Tat'Aria), defeated the enemy, and drove him from the lands of the primordial Slavic. It drove the alien army, with their fierce faith, from their stately lands. By the way, the word Horde, translated by the initial letters of the Old 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 Princes reigned on the ground, planted with the approval of the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Army, or in one word they called him KHAN (our defender).
This means that there was not more than two hundred years of oppression, but there was a time of peace and prosperity for Great Aria or Tartaria. By the way, modern history also confirms this, but for some reason no one pays attention to it. But we will definitely turn it over, and very intent ...: Doesn't it seem strange to you that the battle with the Swedes takes place right in the middle of the invasion of the "Mongolo-Tartars" to Russia? Blazing in fires and plundered by the Mongols, Russia is attacked by the Swedish army, which is safely drowning in the waters of the Neva, and the Swedish crusaders never encounter the Mongols. And the Rusichi, who defeated the strong Swedish army, lose to the Mongols? In my opinion, this is just nonsense. Two huge armies at the same time are fighting on the same territory and never intersect. But if we turn to the ancient Slavic chronicle, then everything becomes clear.

Since 1237, the Host of Great Tartaria began to recapture their ancestral lands, and when the war came to an end, the representatives of the church who were losing power asked for help, and the Swedish crusaders were sent into battle. Since it was not possible to take the country by bribery, it means that 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) faced in battle with the army of the Crusaders, which had come to the rescue of its henchmen. Having won the battle on the Neva, Alexander received the title of Nevsky prince and remained to reign Novgorod, and the army of the horde went on to expel the foe from the Russian lands completely. So she persecuted "the church and the alien faith" until she reached the Adriatic Sea, thereby restoring her original ancient borders. And having reached them, the army turned around and again left not north. Having established a 300 year peace period ”(TAT).

Fantasies of historians about the power of the Mongols.

Commenting on the lines quoted above (KUN: 163), Aleksey Kungurov adds: “This is what Doctor of Historical Sciences Sergei Nefyodov writes:“ The main weapon of the Tatars was the Mongol 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 sinews to protect it from moisture; gluing was carried out under pressure, and drying lasted for several years - the secret of making these bows was kept secret. This bow was as powerful as a musket; an arrow from it pierced any armor 300 meters away, 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-crushing 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 for 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, together with horses, covered with armor of thick buffalo skin. During major battles, this attack was preceded by shelling from "fire catapults" borrowed from the Chinese - these catapults fired bombs filled with gunpowder, which, exploding, "burned through the armor with sparks" (NEF). - Aleksey Kungurov comments on this passage as follows: “The funniest thing here is not that Nefyodov is a historian (this brotherhood has the wildest idea of ​​natural science), but that he is also a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. Well this is how much it is necessary to degrade the mind in order to flog such nonsense! Yes, if a bow shot at 300 meters and at the same time pierced any armor, then a firearm simply did not have a chance to be born. The American M-16 rifle has an effective firing range of 400 meters with an initial bullet speed of 1000 meters per second. Further, the bullet quickly loses its lethality. In reality, aimed firing from the M-16 with a mechanical sight is ineffective for more than 100 meters. At 300 meters, even from a powerful rifle, only a very experienced shooter is capable of shooting accurately without an optical sight. And the scientist Nefyodov weaves nonsense about the fact that Mongolian arrows not only flew aiming at a third of a kilometer (the maximum distance at which champions-archers shoot at competitions is 90 meters), but also pierced any armor. Rave! For example, a good chain mail cannot be pierced even at close range from the most powerful bow. To defeat a soldier in chain mail, a special arrow with a needle tip was used, which did not pierce the armor, but, with a successful coincidence, passed through the rings.

In physics at school I had grades of no higher than three, but I know very well from practice that an arrow fired from a bow is imparted with the effort that the muscles of the arms 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 enamel basin with it. In the absence of an arrow, use any pointed object like a half of a tailor's scissors, an awl or a knife. How is it going? Do you believe historians after that? If they write in their dissertations that small and thin Mongols pulled bows with an effort of 75 kg, then I would award the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences only to those who can repeat this feat on defense. Though there will be fewer parasites with scientific titles. By the way, modern Mongols have no idea about any Saadaks - the superweapons of the Middle Ages. Having conquered half the world by them, for some reason they completely forgot how to do it.

It is even easier with battering machines and catapults: one has only to look at the drawings of these monsters, as it becomes clear - these multi-ton colossus cannot be moved even a meter, since they will get bogged down in the ground even during construction. But even if at that time there were asphalt roads from Transbaikalia to Kiev and Polotsk, how would the Mongols drag them thousands of kilometers, how would they ferry 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 also add that, according to the works of Ya.A. Koestler, there were no reserves of saltpeter in China, so they had nothing to stuff the powder bombs with. In addition, gunpowder does not create a temperature of 1556 degrees, at which iron melts in order to “burn through the armor with sparks”. And if he could create such a temperature, then the "sparks" would first of all burn guns and guns at the moment of the shot. It is very funny to read that the Tatars fired and fired (the number of arrows in their quiver, apparently, was not limited), and the enemy was exhausted, and the skinny Mongolian soldiers fired the tenth and hundredth arrows with the same fresh forces as the first, without getting tired. Surprisingly, even rifle shooters get tired, shooting while standing, and the Mongol archers did not know this state.

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

Mongols are metallurgists.

It would seem that it is already possible to put an end here, but Kungurov wants to consider several more aspects. “I don't know much about metallurgy, but I can still very roughly estimate how many tons of iron are needed to equip at least a 10-thousandth Mongolian army” (KUN: 166). Where did the figure 10 thousand come from? - This is the minimum size of the troops with which you can go on a campaign of conquest. Gaius Julius Caesar with such a detachment could not capture Britain, but when he doubled the number, the conquest of foggy Albion was crowned with success. “Actually, such a small army could not conquer China, India, Russia and other countries in any way. Therefore, historians, without trifling, write about the 30-thousand-strong horse horde of Batu, sent to conquer Russia, but this figure seems absolutely fantastic. Even if we assume that the Mongolian warriors had leather armor, wooden shields, and stone arrowheads, then iron is still required for horseshoes, spears, knives, swords, and sabers.

Now it's worth thinking: 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? Do archaeologists find many remains of forges there? They, of course, are still magicians - they will find anything where they need it. But in this case, nature itself made the task extremely difficult for archaeologists. Iron ore on the territory of Mongolia is not even mined today (although small deposits have recently been discovered) ”(KUN: 166). But even if the ore was found, and the furnaces for smelting existed, the labor of metallurgists would have to be paid, and they themselves had to live settled. Where are the former settlements of metallurgists? Where are the waste rock heaps (waste heaps)? Where are the remnants of finished goods warehouses? None of this has been found.

“Of course, you can buy weapons, but you need money, which the ancient Mongols did not have, at least they are completely unknown to world archeology. And they could not have, since their economy was not marketable. Weapons could be exchanged, but where, with whom, and for what? In short, if you think about such trifles, then Genghis Khan's campaign from the Manchurian steppes to China, India, Persia, the Caucasus and Europe looks like sheer 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 cover up 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 the advanced technologies, the highest at that time. It's like a criminal over two meters in height put on someone else's costume and mask - he is identified not by his clothes or face, but by his exorbitant height. If during the specified period, that is, in the XIII century, the best armor of iron had the Western European knights, then it will not work in any way to attribute their urban culture to the steppe nomads. In the same way, as the highest culture of Etruscan writing, where the Italic, Russian, stylized Greek alphabets and Runica were used, it is impossible to ascribe to any small people such as Albanians or Chechens, which, perhaps, did not exist at that time.

Forage for the Mongolian cavalry.

“For example, how did the Mongols cross the Volga or the Dnieper? You can't cross 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 the old days. But in order to make such a long transition during the winter, it is necessary to prepare an enormous amount of forage, since although the Mongolian horse is capable of finding withered grass under the snow, for this it needs to graze where there is grass. In this case, the snow cover should be small. In the Mongolian steppes, winters are just little snow, and the herbage is quite high. In Russia, the opposite is true - the grass is high only in floodplain meadows, and in all other places it is very thin. Snowdrifts are such that the horse, not only finding grass under it, will not be able to move in deep snow. Otherwise, it is not clear why the French lost all their cavalry during the retreat from Moscow. They ate it, of course, but they ate the already fallen konyazh, because if the horses were well-fed and healthy, the uninvited guests would use them in order to escape 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 fodder, and a horse needs 5-6 kg per day. It turns out that the nomads, preparing in advance for a campaign beyond the distant lands, sowed oats on the steppe? Or did they carry hay with them on carts? Let's make simple arithmetic operations and calculate what preparations the nomads had to make in order to go on a long trip. Let's say that they have assembled an army of at least 10 thousand cavalry soldiers. Each warrior needs several horses - one specially trained combatant for battle, one for marching, one for a convoy - 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 on the way, there will be combat losses, therefore a reserve is needed.

And if 10 thousand horsemen go in marching formation even across the steppe, then when the horses graze, where the soldiers will live, will they rest in the snowdrifts, or what? On a long hike, you cannot do without food, fodder and a convoy with warm yurts. You need more fuel to cook your 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 procurement of hundreds of tons of dried shit by the Mongols, which they took with them on the road, going to conquer the world, but I will give this opportunity to the most stubborn historians.

Some clever people tried to prove to me that the Mongols did not have a wagon train at all, which is why they were able to show phenomenal maneuverability. But in this case, how did they carry the loot home - in their pockets, or what? And where were their battering tools and other engineering devices, and the same maps and food supplies, not to mention their environmentally friendly fuel? Not a single army of the world ever did without a convoy if it was going to make a transition lasting more than two days. The loss of the convoy 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 least 40 thousand horses at its disposal. From the experience of mass armies of the 17th-19th centuries. it is known that the daily requirement for forage of such a herd will be at least 200 tons of oats. It's just one day! And the longer the trip, the more horses should be involved in the wagon train. A medium-sized horse is capable of pulling a cart with a weight of 300 kg. This is if on the road, and off-road in packs is two times less. That is, in order to provide our 40,000-strong herd, we need 700 horses per day. A three-month hike will require a wagon train of almost 70 thousand horses. And this mob also needs oats, and in order to feed 70 thousand horses carrying fodder for 40 thousand knuckles, 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, horseback trips with a full supply of food is fundamentally impossible. True, here are the calculations for the 3-month winter campaign. But if the campaign is carried out in the summer, and you move in the steppe zone, feeding the horses with pasture, then you can go much further.

“Even in summer, the cavalry never did without fodder, so a Mongol campaign against Russia would still require logistical support. Until the twentieth century, the maneuverability of troops was determined not by the speed of horse hooves and the strength of the soldiers' legs, but by the dependence on carts and the capacity of the road network. The cruising speed of 20 km per day was very good even for the average division of the Second World War, and German tanks, when the paved highways allowed them to blitzkrieg, reeled on tracks for 50 km per day. But in this case, the rear inevitably lagged behind. In ancient times, in off-road conditions, such indicators would be simply fantastic. The textbook (SVI) reports that the Mongolian army passed about 100 kilometers a day! Yes, you can hardly find people who are the worst versed in history. Even in May 1945, Soviet tanks, making a march from Berlin to Prague along good European roads, could not break the "Mongol-Tatar" record "(KUHN: 168-169). - I believe that the very division of Europe into Western and Eastern was 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 exertion of all state forces, so that the military campaign affects not only the army, but develops into a patriotic war, requiring the participation of the entire population.

The food problem.

“What did the riders themselves eat on the way? If you chase a herd of lambs, then you will have to move with their speed. During the winter, there is no way to get to the nearest hearth of civilization. But nomads are unpretentious people, they got by with dried meat and cottage cheese, which they soaked in hot water. Whatever one may say, a kilogram of food per day is necessary. Three months of travel - 100 kg of weight. In the future, you can slaughter the transport horses. At the same time, savings will come out on forage. But not a single convoy can move at a speed of 100 km per day, especially on impassable roads. " - It is clear that this problem mainly concerns uninhabited areas. In populous Europe, the winner can take food from the vanquished

Demographic problems.

“If we touch upon the issues of demography and try to understand how the nomads were able to field 10 thousand warriors, given the very low population density in the steppe zone, then we will bury ourselves in another insoluble riddle. Well, there is no such thing as a 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 is from 18 to 45 years old), then to mobilize a 10-thousand 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 the Mongols collected taxes on the army and recruited, how did military training take place, how was the military elite brought up? It turns out that, for purely technical reasons, the Mongol campaign against Russia, as it is 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 by the fact that the tsarist administration had significantly curtailed their autonomy, together withdrew from their place and moved to their historical homeland in Dzungaria (the territory of modern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Okrug 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. Out of 170 thousand nomads, only about 70 thousand reached their goal in 8 months. The rest, as you might guess, died on the way. The winter crossing would be even more disastrous. The local population greeted the settlers without enthusiasm. Who will find traces of Kalmyks in Xinjiang now? And on the right bank of the Volga today, 165 thousand Kalmyks live, who switched to a sedentary lifestyle 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, which had good carts in the summer and slowly, perished on the way. Even if the losses of the regular army were less, say, 1/3, then instead of 10 thousand troops, less than 7 thousand people will reach the goal. It may be objected that they were driving 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 away when the winners are at least twice the number of defeated ones. So if half of the army dies 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 in the first battle will try run across to the side of the enemies, strengthening their ranks. And an army of less than 4 thousand people is hardly capable of advancing with battles further into a foreign country - 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 cultivated for some reason. And why, 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 Batu's invasion, the Dnieper region was completely depopulated. And what for, one wonders, was it for the nomads to destroy the population? Well, they would impose a tribute, like everyone else - at least some benefit. But no, historians in chorus 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 lard, fled without looking back into the wild forests to the northeast, where from time created a powerful Muscovy. One way or another, but the time until the 16th century seems to drop out of the history of Southern Russia: if anything, historians mention anything about this period, it is the raids of the Crimeans. Only on whom did they raid, if the Russian lands were depopulated?

It cannot be that for 250 years in the historical center of Russia no events have taken place at all! However, no epoch-making events have been recorded. This caused heated debate among historians when controversy was still allowed. Some put forward hypotheses about the general 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 run 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, terrified to death by the evil Tatars, left their habitable places and went partly to Galicia, and partly to the Suzdal lands, from where they spread far to the north and east. Kiev, as a city, according to the professor, has temporarily ceased to exist, having reduced to 200 houses. Solovyov argued that Kiev was completely destroyed and for many years it was a heap of ruins where no one lived. In the Galician lands, then called Little Russia, refugees from the Dnieper, they say, slightly polonized, and after returning to their autochthonous territory as Little Russians, they brought there a peculiar dialect and customs acquired in exile ”(KUN: 170-171).

So, from the point of view of Aleksey Kungurov, the myth about the Tatar-Mongols supports another myth - about Kievan Rus. So far I am not considering this second myth, but I admit that the existence of the vast Kievan Rus is also a myth. However, let us 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.

Surprisingly fast delivery of Russian cities.

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

Why, one wonders, did the Mongols totally clean up the Kiev region? It should be noted that the Kiev land is not some insignificant outskirts, but supposedly the core of the Russian state according to the version of the same Klyuchevsky. Meanwhile, Kiev in 1240 was surrendered to the enemy in a few days after the siege. Are there any similar cases in history? More often we come across opposite examples, when we gave everything to the enemy, but fought for the core to the last. Consequently, the fall of Kiev seems absolutely incredible. Before the invention of siege artillery, a well-fortified city could only be taken by starvation. And it often happened that the besiegers fizzled out faster than the besieged. History knows cases of a 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 pierced an impressive opening in the wall, and the besieged were exhausted to the extreme by hunger and disease.

The Polish king Sigismund, amazed at the courage of the defenders, dismissed them on their way. But why did the people of Kiev surrender so quickly to the wild Mongols, who did not spare anyone? The nomads did not have powerful siege artillery, and the battering weapons with which they allegedly destroyed fortifications were 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. It is now generally accepted that the defense of Kiev lasted 93 days. The well-known writer-fiction writer Bushkov is sneering 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" army and the capture of Kiev. First, the "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 "Batu" came. 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 Kiev 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, having held out for seven weeks under 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 it was difficult to do, because the walls were watered from above with water, 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 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 foe, 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 disgraceful. Where is the logic? And why was the "scattered" population until the 16th century paralyzed with fear and did not try to return to the fertile lands of the Dnieper region? The Mongols have long gone cold, and the frightened Russians, they say, were afraid to show their nose there. The Crimeans were not at all peaceful, but for some reason the Russians were not afraid of them - the Cossacks on their seagulls descended the Don and the Dnieper, unexpectedly attacked the Crimean cities and staged cruel pogroms there. Usually, if some places are favorable for life, then the struggle for them is especially fierce, and these lands are never empty. The conquerors are replaced by conquerors, those are displaced or assimilated by stronger neighbors - the issue here is not in disagreements on some political or religious issues, but in the possession of the territory ”(KUN: 171-173). - Indeed, the situation is completely inexplicable from the point of view of the collision of steppe dwellers and townspeople. It is very good for a slanderous version of the historiography of Russia, but it is completely illogical. While Alexey Kungurov notices all the new aspects of the completely incredible development of events from the standpoint of the Tatar-Mongol invasion.

Incomprehensible motives of the Mongols.

“Historians do not explain at all the motives of the mythical Mongols. Why did they participate in such grandiose campaigns? If in order to impose a 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 massacred almost to the root, as historians tell about it? 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 primary cause of the belligerence of peoples in ancient times was the so-called crisis of nature and man. When the territory was overpopulated, society seemed to push young and energetic people outward. They will conquer those lands of their neighbors and settle there - good. They will die in the hearth - not bad either, because there will be no "extra" population. In many ways, this can explain the belligerence of the ancient Scandinavians: their meager northern lands could not feed the multiplying population and that remained to live by robbery or to be hired to serve in foreign rulers in order to engage in the same robbery. The Russians are lucky - the surplus population has been rolling back south and east for centuries up 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 have caused the Mongols' belligerence? If the population density of the steppe dwellers 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 a small massacre will arise, in which the strongest will win. That is, the Mongols, in order to get to Kiev, would have to master vast areas from Manchuria to the northern Black Sea region. But even in this case, the nomads did not pose a threat to the strong civilized countries, because no nomadic people ever created their own statehood and did not have an army. The maximum that the steppe inhabitants are capable of is to raid a border village with the aim of robbery.

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

I am ready to believe in a lot, but I categorically refuse to take the ravings about the evil nomads who destroyed Ancient Russia seriously. All the more fantastic is the theory of the three-century "yoke" of the wild steppe dwellers over the Russian principalities. Only the STATE can exercise dominion over the conquered lands. Historians generally understand this, and therefore invented a 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 for centuries and generations, and only the greatest world empire was allegedly created by an illiterate savage literally by wave of the hand "(KUN: 173-175). - So, Aleksey Kungurov comes to the conclusion that if there was a conquest of Russia, it was carried out not by the wild steppe inhabitants, but by some powerful state. But where was its capital located?

The capital of the steppe people.

“If there is an empire, then there must be a capital. The fantastic city of Karakorum was appointed to be the capital, the remains of which were explained by the ruins of the Erdeni-Dzu Buddhist monastery at the end of the 16th century in the center of modern Mongolia. On what basis? And so the historians wanted it. Schliemann dug up the ruins of a small ancient city, and announced that it was Troy ”(KUHN: 175). I have shown in two articles that Schliemann dug up one of the temples of Yar and took its treasures for the trail 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 valley, declared it Karakorum. Karakorum literally means "black stones" Since there was a mountain range not far from the place of discovery, it was given the official name Karakorum. And since the mountains are called Karakorum, then the settlement was given the same name. Here is such a compelling rationale! True, the local population had never heard of any Karakorum, but called the Muztag ridge - Ice Mountains, but this did not bother 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 grand empire.

“The largest world empire left the least traces of itself. Or rather, none at all. She, they say, disintegrated in the XIII century into separate uluses, the largest of which was the Yuan Empire, that is, China (its capital Khanbalik, now Aekin, allegedly was at one time the capital of the entire Mongol Empire), the Ilkhan state (Iran, Transcaucasia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan), Chagataisky ulus (Central Asia) and the Golden Horde (territory from the Irtysh to the White, Baltic and Black seas). This historians cleverly came up with. Now any pieces of pottery or copper jewelry found in the vastness from Hungary to the coast of the Sea of ​​Japan can be declared traces of the great Mongol civilization. And find And announce. And they won't blink 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 made Alexander Nevsky the Grand Duke of their own free will, the Tatars sent Baskaks and censors to Russia -“ and the cursed Tatars began to travel through the streets, rewriting Christian houses ”. It was a census that was being carried out at that time throughout the vast Mongol Empire; the members of the ranks drew up the register-defters in order to collect the taxes established by Yelyu Chu-tsai: land tax, "kalan", poll tax, "kupchur", and the tax on merchants, "tamga" "(NEF). True, in the epigraphy the word "tamga" has a different meaning, "generic signs of ownership", 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. - Alas, there is none of this. It is not even clear what typeface all this was written in. But if there are no such special marks, 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 came across a judgment that I reproduce below.

Why are the chronicles silent?

“At the time of the mythical“ Tatar-Mongol yoke ”, according to official history, decline came in Russia. This, in their opinion, is confirmed by the almost complete absence of evidence of that period. Once, 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 there was once a monastery in these places. First, it should be said about the area: the river valley with hills in the immediate vicinity, there are springs - an ideal place for a settlement. And so it was. However, the annals of this monastery mention the nearest settlement only a few tens of kilometers away. Although between the lines you can read that people lived closer and closer, only "wild". Reasoning 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, sometimes historians unearth settlements that flourished during the “Tatar-Mongol yoke”. Which 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 rise to doubts in the official history.

In fact, apart from the sources of the Orthodox Church, we do not have reliable data about the occupation by the Tatar-Mongols. In addition, the fact of the rapid occupation of not only the steppe regions of Russia (from the point of view of the official history of the Tatar-Mongols - steppe people), but also wooded and even swampy territories is quite interesting. Of course, the history of military operations 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 so, however, the population in Belarus was needed to create a bridgehead for subsequent offensives. They simply chose to step on the least expected (and therefore guarded) area. 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 have done the unthinkable, immediately conquered the swamps - they abandoned further offensives ”(STR). - 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 steppe inhabitants 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 one you like. Allegedly, Buddhist shrines were found in the Karakorum "palace" of the great khan Ugedei (the heir of Genghis Khan). In the capital of the Golden Horde, Saray-Batu, they find mainly Orthodox crosses and breast icons. Islam established itself in the Central Asian possessions of the Mongol conquerors, and Zoroastrianism continued to flourish in the South Caspian. The Khazars-Jews also felt free in the Mongol Empire. Various shamanistic beliefs have survived in Siberia. Russian historians traditionally tell tales that the Mongols were idolaters. Say, they made Russian princes a "head ax" if they, coming for a label for the right to rule in their lands, did not worship their filthy pagan idols. In short, the Mongols did not have any state religion. All empires had, but the Mongolian did not. Everyone could pray, whoever he liked ”(KUN: 176). - Note that there was no religious tolerance either before or after the Mongol invasion. Ancient Prussia with the Baltic people of Prussians inhabiting it (relatives by language to Lithuanians and Latvians) were wiped out by the German knightly orders from 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 as enemies after Nikon's reform. Therefore, such a combination of words as "evil Tatars" and "religious tolerance" is impossible, it is illogical. The division of the greatest empire into separate regions, each with its own religion, probably indicates the independent, independent existence of these regions, united into a gigantic empire only in the mythology of historians. As for the finds of Orthodox crosses and breast icons in the European part of the empire, this suggests that the "Tatar-Mongols" spread Christianity and eradicated paganism (Vedism), that is, there was a forced Christianization.

Cash.

“By the way, if Karakorum was the Mongolian capital, then there must have been a mint in it. It is believed that the monetary unit of the Mongol Empire was gold dinars and silver dirhams. For four years, archaeologists have been digging in the ground on Orkhon (1999-2003), but not like 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 discovered traces of a Buddhist shrine under the palace of Ogedei (which turned out to be much smaller than expected). In Germany, about the results of the excavations published a solid tome "Genghis Khan and his legacy" This despite the fact that no traces of the ruler of the Mongols were found by archaeologists. However, it does not matter, everything that they found was declared the legacy of Genghis Khan. True, the publishers prudently kept silent about the Buddhist idol and about Chinese coins, but they filled most of the book with abstract arguments that were of no scientific interest ”(KUHN: 177). - A legitimate question arises: if the Mongols carried out three types of census, and they collected tribute, then where was it kept? And in what currency? Was everything translated into Chinese money? What could they buy in Europe?

Continuing the theme, Kungurov writes: “In general, ALL OVER Mongolia, only a few dirhams with Arabic inscriptions were found, which completely excludes the idea that this was the center of a certain empire. “Scientists” -historians cannot explain this, and therefore they simply do not touch upon this issue. Even if you grab the historian by the lapel of his jacket, and gaze intently into his eyes, ask about it, he will portray a fool who does not understand what this is about ”(KUHN: 177). - I will interrupt the citation here, because this is how archaeologists behaved when I made my report in the Tver Museum of Local Lore, 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 out there. For to come up and feel the inscription meant for them to sign a long-term lie about the lack of their own written language among the Slavs in the pre-Cyrillic 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 tell anyone,” as the popular song says).

“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 offer only a casuistic interpretation of the works of Rashid al-Din. True, they cite the latter very selectively. For example, after four years of excavations in Orkhon, historians prefer not to recall that the latter writes about the walking of dinars and dirhams in Karakorum. And Guillaume de Rubruck reports that the Mongols knew a lot about the Romans' money, which filled their budget bins. They now also have to keep quiet about this. It should also be forgotten that Plano Carpini mentioned how the ruler of Baghdad paid tribute to the Mongols in Roman gold solidi - besants. In short, all the ancient witnesses were wrong. Only modern historians know the truth ”(KUHN: 178). - As you can see, all ancient witnesses indicated that the "Mongols" used European money that circulated in Western and Eastern Europe. And they did not 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. No pastoralist would dream of compiling lists of landowners that pastoralists did not have. And even more so - to create a tax on merchants who were wandering in many eastern countries. In short, all these population censuses, very expensive shares, with the aim of taking a STABLE TAX (10%), are betrayed not by greedy steppe dwellers, but by scrupulous European bankers, who, of course, collected taxes calculated in advance in European currency. They didn't need Chinese money.

“Did the Mongols have a financial system, without which, as you know, no state can do? Did not have! Numismatists do not know any specific Mongolian money. But, if desired, any unidentified coins are declared as such. What was the name of the empire's currency? Yes, it was not called in any way. Where was the imperial mint, treasury? And nowhere. It seems that historians wrote something about the evil Baskaks - collectors of tribute in the Russian uluses of the Golden Horde. But today the ferocity of the Baskaks seems quite exaggerated. It seems like they collected tithes in favor of the khan (a tenth of the income), and every tenth young man was recruited into their army. The latter should be considered a gross 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 13th century is usually estimated at at least 5 million souls. If every year 10 thousand recruits come to the army, then in 10 years it will swell to completely unimaginable sizes ”(KUHN: 178-179). - If 10 thousand people are called up annually, then in 10 years it will turn out to be 100 thousand, and in 25 years - 250 thousand. Was the state at 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 a million-strong horde would turn out, which not a single empire could feed or arm in the Middle Ages” (KUN: 179). - That's it.

“But where the tax went, how the accounting was carried out, who was in charge of the treasury, scientists cannot really explain anything. Nothing is known about the counting system, measures and weights used in the empire. It remains a mystery for what purposes the huge Golden Horde budget was spent - the conquerors did not build palaces, cities, monasteries, or navies. Although not, 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 on the earth are found ”(KUN: 179). - As Aleksey 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 at the very least suitable for this mission. How did the West carry out such a blunder? - The answer is simple. All Siberia and Central Asia on the European maps of that time was called Tartary (as I showed in one of my articles, it was there that the Underworld, Tartarus was moved). Accordingly, the mythical "Tatars" were located there. Their eastern wing also extended to the Khalkha people, about which few of the historians knew anything at that time, 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 stratum in the Mongol Empire? Any state has its own military, political, economic, cultural and scientific elite. The ruling stratum in the Middle Ages is called the aristocracy, the current ruling class is usually called the vague term "elite". One way or another, but the state elite must be, otherwise there is no state. And the Mongolian invaders had a tense relationship with the elite. They conquered Russia and left the Rurik dynasty to rule it. They 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 latter is extremely surprising. Take, for example, the huge preceding empire, the Arab Caliphate. There was not only religions, Islam, but also secular literature. For example, the tales of a thousand and one nights. There was a monetary system and Arab money has long been considered the most popular currency. And where are the legends about the Mongol khans, where are the Mongolian tales of the conquests of distant Western countries?

Mongolian infrastructure.

“Even today, any state cannot be established 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 took shape 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, did not exist either. More precisely, it seemed to be, but only in the form of a camp, where Genghis Khan left his family during the campaigns ”(KUN: 179-180). In this case, the question arises, how did the state negotiations take place at all? Where did the ambassadors of sovereign states live? Really at the military headquarters? And how could you keep up with the constant transfers of these rates during military operations? And where was the state chancellery, archives, translators, scribes, heralds, treasury, premises for stolen valuables? Did you also move along with the Khan's headquarters? - This is hard to believe. - And now Kungurov comes to a conclusion.

Did the Mongol Empire exist?

“Here it is natural to ask the question: was there even this legendary Mongol Empire? 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, historians will authoritatively add a couple of clay shards dug up in the Black Sea steppes. This will surely convince the most inveterate skeptic ”(KUHN: 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 about the attitude of the Mongols to 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 nevertheless closer than from Mongolia. During the winter, from the Caspian steppes you can get to Kiev, Moscow and even Vologda. But the same difficulties arise. First, horses need fodder. Horses can no longer get withered grass in the Volga steppes with a hoof from under the snow. Winters there are snowy, and therefore local nomads in their winter quarters prepared stocks of hay in order to hold out in the most difficult time. Oats are needed for the army to move in winter. No oats - no opportunity to go to Russia. Where did the nomads get their oats?

The next problem is roads. From time immemorial, frozen rivers have been used as roads in winter. But a horse needs to be shod so that it can walk on the ice. On the steppe, she can run barefoot all year round, and on ice, stone deposits or a frozen road, a bare horse, and even with a rider, cannot walk. In order to shoe the hundreds of thousands of battle horses and transport mares required for the invasion, you need more than 400 tons of iron alone! And after 2-3 months you need to shoe the horses again. And how many forests need to be cut down in order to prepare 50 thousand sledges for the convoy?

But in general, as we found out, even in the case of a successful march to Russia, the 10,000-strong army will be in an extremely difficult situation. Supply at the expense of the local population is practically impossible; it is absolutely unrealistic to raise reserves. We have to conduct grueling assaults on cities, fortresses and monasteries, incur irreparable losses, deepening into enemy territory. And what is the point in this deepening, if the invaders left behind a devastated desert? What is the general purpose of the war? Every day the invaders will be weaker and weaker, and by the spring they have to leave for the steppe, otherwise the opened rivers will lock the nomads in the forests, where they will die of hunger ”(KUN: 180-181). - As you can see, the problems of the Mongol Empire on a smaller scale are also manifested in the example of the Golden Horde. And further Kungurov considers a later Mongolian state - the Golden Horde.

Capitals of the Golden Horde.

“There are two known capitals of the Golden Horde - Saray-Batu and Saray-Berke. Even the ruins have not survived 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 are excavating at the site of the supposedly great capitals of the great Eurasian empire only the remains of adobe huts and the most primitive household utensils. Everything valuable, they say, was plundered by the evil Tamerlane. Tellingly, archaeologists do not find the slightest traces 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, then the matter is clear: the Mongols brought craftsmen from the conquered countries to their capital. Does anyone doubt that the Mongols conquered Italy? Read carefully the works of "scientists" - historians - it says that Batu reached the coast of the Adriatic Sea and almost as far as Vienna. Somewhere there he caught the Italians. And what does the fact that Saray-Berke is the center of the Sarsk and Podonsk Orthodox dioceses say? 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 Kiev and Chernigov Mikhail Vsevolodovich was even canonized for refusing 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. It is useless to look for references to "yoke" or mythical Mongols in Russian chronicles. "Evil Tatars" are mentioned in it quite often. The question is, who did the chroniclers mean by this name? Either it is an ethnic group, or a way of life or an estate (akin to the Cossacks), or this is the collective name of all the Turks. Perhaps the word "Tatar" means an equestrian warrior? There are a great many Tatars: Kasimov, Crimean, Lithuanian, Bordakovs (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, 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 Polovtsians, they are Nogais. But if the Mongols conquered, partially annihilated, 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 Mekhovsky (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, Mekhovsky wrote: “The southern regions and coastal peoples up to India were discovered by the king of Portugal. Let the northern lands with the peoples living near the Northern Ocean to the east, discovered by the troops of the Polish king, will 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 dashing! This enlightened husband equates the Russians with African blacks and American Indians, and attributes fantastic services to the Polish troops. The Poles have never reached the coast of the Arctic Ocean, long ago explored by the Russians. Only a century after the death of Mekhovsky during the Time of Troubles, some Polish detachments roamed the Vologda and Arkhangelsk regions, but these were not the troops of the Polish king, but ordinary robber bands that robbed merchants on the northern trade route. Therefore, one should not take seriously his insinuations that the backward Russians were conquered by quite wild Tatars ”(KUHN: 183) - It turns out that Mekhovsky's work was a fantasy that the West did not have the opportunity to verify.

“By the way, Tatars are the European collective name for all Eastern peoples. And 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 sedentary Turkic-speaking peoples, was established only in the twentieth century. The word formation "Mongol-Tatar yoke" was first used in 1817 by the German historian Hermann Kruse, whose book in the middle of the 19th century was translated into Russian and published in St. Petersburg. In 1860, the head of the Russian ecclesiastical mission in China, Archimandrite Palladiy, acquired the manuscript of The Secret Legend of the Mongols, making it public. No one was embarrassed that the "Tale" was written in Chinese. It is even very convenient, because any discrepancies can be explained by erroneous transcription from Mongolian to Chinese. Mo, Yuan is a Chinese transcription of the Chingizid 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 for nothing that Kungurov mentions a clergyman from the Russian Orthodox Church, Archimandrite Pallady, hinting that he was interested in creating a legend about the Tatars based on Chinese chronicles. And it is not in vain that he throws the bridge to the crusades.

The legend about the Tatars and the role of Kiev in Russia.

“The beginning of the legend of Kievan Rus was laid by the Synopsis, published in 1674 - the first textbook on Russian history known to us. This book was reprinted more than once (1676, 1680, 1718 and 1810) and enjoyed great popularity until the middle of the 19th century. Its author is considered to be Innokenty Gizel (1600-1683). Born in Prussia, in his youth he came to Kiev, converted to Orthodoxy and tonsured a monk. Metropolitan Peter Mogila sent the young monk abroad, from where he returned as an educated person. 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 in the 18th century Miller, Bayer and Schloetzer became the "fathers" of Russian historiography, we forget that a century earlier, under the first Romanovs and after Nikon's reform, a new Romanov historiography under the name "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 Old Believers and Old Believers, Muscovy needed a new historiography, whitewashing the Romanovs and denigrating the Rurikovichs. And it appeared, although it did not come from Muscovy, but from Little Russia, which since 1654 became part of Muscovy, although spiritually adjacent to Lithuania and Poland.

“Gisel should be considered not only a church figure, but also a political one, for the church Orthodox elite in the Polish-Lithuanian state was an integral part of the political elite. As a protege of Metropolitan Peter Mogila, he maintained active ties with Moscow on political and financial issues. In 1664 he visited the Russian capital as part of the Little Russian embassy of the Cossack foreman and clergy. Apparently, his works were appreciated, since in 1656 he received the rank of archimandrite and abbot 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 were very fond of him, did not give him valuable gifts. So, it is "Synopsis" that begins to actively popularize the legend of Kievan Rus, the Tatar invasion and the struggle against Poland. The main stereotypes of ancient Russian history (the founding of Kiev by three brothers, the vocation of the Varangians, the legend of the baptism of Rus by Vladimir, etc.) are laid down in a slender row in the Synopsis and are accurately dated. Somewhat strange to today's reader will seem perhaps a hundred story by Gisel "On the freedom or liberty of Slavic". - “The Slavs, in their courage and courage, struggle hard day by day, fighting against the ancient Greek and Roman Caesars, and always accepting a glorious victory, in all kinds of freedom to live; I helped the great Tsar Alexander the Great and his father Philip to incite the power under the power of this Light. With the same, glorious for the sake of the deeds and labors of the military, Alexander gave the Tsar the Slav a graft or a letter on parchment in gold, written in Alexandria, liberties and the land were affirmed to them, before the Nativity of Christ the year 310; and Augustus Caesar (in his own Kingdom the King of glory Christ the Lord was born) is not daring to fight with the free and strong Slavs ”(KUN: 184-185). - I will note that if the legend about the founding of Kiev was very important for Little Russia, which, according to it, became the political center of all ancient Russia, in light of which the legend of the baptism of Kiev by Vladimir grew to the approval 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, 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 are also examples of the interaction of Russia with the politicians of late antiquity; later the historiography of all countries will remove any mention of the existence of Russia in the specified period. It is also interesting to see that the interests of Little Russia in the 17th century and now are diametrically opposed: then Gizel argued that Little Russia is the Center of Russia, and all events in it are epoch-making for Great Russia; now, on the contrary, it is being proved that the Outskirts are independent of Rus, the Outskirts are connected with Poland, and the work of the first President of the Outskirts Kravchuk was called “Outskirts - e such a state”. Allegedly independent throughout its history. And the Outskirts Ministry of Foreign Affairs asks Russians to write "In the Outskirts" and not "ON the Outskirts", distorting 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 abandon claims to leadership, but even change the name to a completely discordant one. Modern Gisel would try to connect the three brothers who founded Kiev with Germany and the Germanic Ukrainians, who had nothing to do with Little Russia, and the conduct of Christianity in Kiev - with the general Christianization of Europe, which supposedly has nothing to do with Russia.

“When an archimandrite, treated kindly 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. And a lie is the most effective method of propaganda if a lie can be introduced into the mass consciousness.

It is "Synopsis", which was published in 1674, that the honor of becoming the first Russian MASS print edition belongs. Until the beginning of the 19th century, the book was used as a textbook on Russian history, but in total it went through 25 editions, of which the last took place in 1861 (the 26th edition was already in our century). From the point of view of propaganda, it is not important how Gisel's work corresponded to reality, it is important how firmly it was rooted in the consciousness of the educated stratum. And it is firmly rooted. Considering that "Synopsis" was actually written by order of the ruling house of the Romanovs and was officially implanted, it could not have been otherwise. Tatishchev, Karamzin, Shcherbatov, Solovyov, Kostomarov, Klyuchevsky and other historians brought up on the Gizelian concept simply could not (and hardly wanted to) critically interpret the legend of Kievan Rus ”(KUN: 185). - As we can see, the “Synopsis” of the German Gisel, who represented the interests of Little Russia, which had recently become part of 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 dynasty of the Romanovs. So to speak, out of rags - yes to riches! It was this peripheral newly acquired part of Russia as a historical leader that completely suited the Romanovs, as well as the tale that this weak state was beaten by equally peripheral steppe dwellers from the Underworld - Russian Tartary. The meaning of these legends is obvious - Russia was allegedly flawed from the beginning!

Other Romanov historians about Kievan Rus and Tatars.

“The court historians of the 18th century, such as Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer, August Ludwig Schlözer and Gerard Friedrich Miller, did not contradict the Synopsis. So tell me, if you please, how could Bayer have been a researcher of Russian antiquities and the inventor of the concept of Russian history (gave rise to the Norman theory), when, in 13 years of his stay in Russia, he did not even learn Russian? The latter 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 the true Europeans Rurik. Both of them edited and published the works of Tatishchev, after which it is difficult to say what remains 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 get 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, after the death of the author, the work was confiscated 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 Müller. Reading Lomonosov today, it is absolutely impossible to understand what he argued so violently with the courtiers of the Germans - his "Ancient Russian History" was sustained in the spirit of the officially approved version of history. There are absolutely no contradictions with Müller on the most controversial issue of Russian antiquity in Lomonosov's book. Therefore, we are dealing with forgery ”(KUN: 186). - Brilliant conclusion! Although another thing remains unclear: the Soviet government was no longer interested in glorifying one of the republics of the USSR, namely the Ukrainian one, 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, in Soviet times, did Soviet historiography adhere to the version pleasing to the Romanovs and the Russian Orthodox Church? - The answer lies on the surface. Because the worse the history of Tsarist Russia was, the better was the history of Soviet Russia. It was then, at the time of the Rurikids, it was possible to call foreigners to rule a great power, and the country was so weak that some Tatar-Mongols could conquer it. In Soviet times, it seems that no one was called from anywhere, and Lenin and Stalin were natives of Russia (although in Soviet times no one would dare to write that Rothschild helped Trotsky with money and people, the German General Staff for Lenin, and Yakov Sverdlov was responsible for communication with European bankers). On the other hand, one of the employees of the Institute of Archeology in the 90s told me that the color of pre-revolutionary archaeological thought did not remain in Soviet Russia, archaeologists of the Soviet style were very much inferior in their professionalism to pre-revolutionary archaeologists, and they tried to destroy the pre-revolutionary archaeological archives. - I asked her in connection with the excavation of the Kamennaya Mogila caves by the archaeologist Veselovsky in Ukraine, because for some reason all the reports on his expedition were lost. It turned out that they were not lost, but deliberately destroyed. For the Stone Tomb is a Paleolithic monument in which there are Russian inscriptions in runic. And on it a completely different history of Russian culture looms. But archaeologists are part of the collective of historians of the Soviet era. And they created no less politicized historiography than the historians in the service of the Romanovs.

“It only remains to state that the editorial staff of Russian history used today was composed exclusively of foreign authors, mostly Germans. The works of Russian historians who tried to resist them were destroyed, and falsifications were published under their name. One should not expect that the gravediggers of the national historiographic school have spared the primary sources that are dangerous to them. Lomonosov was horrified when he learned that Schlötser had gained access to all the ancient Russian chronicles preserved at that time. Where are those chronicles now?

By the way, Schlötser called Lomonosov "a gross ignoramus who knew nothing but his chronicles." It is difficult to say why there is more hatred in these words - 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 nemchure, was also not shy in expressions. About Schlötser, we have heard such a statement: “... what disgusting dirty tricks such a beast allowed to them will not wander in Russian antiquities” or his head, gives obscure, dark, incomprehensible and completely wild answers. "

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

Discussion.

Although on the topic of the mythological nature of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, I read the works of L.N. Gumilyov, and A.T. Fomenko, and Valyansky and Kalyuzhny, but no one wrote so vividly, in detail and convincingly before Alexei Kungurov. And I can congratulate "our regiment" of researchers of non-politicized Russian history that it has more with one bayonet. 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 comes up with bows that shoot at 300 meters with the destructive power of a modern rifle bullet, it is she who calmly appoints backward pastoralists who did not have statehood, the creators of the largest state in the history of mankind, it is they who suck out of their finger huge armies of conquerors that cannot be fed nor move several thousand kilometers. The illiterate Mongols, it turns out, compiled land and capitation lists, that is, they conducted a population census on the scale of this huge country, and also kept a record of 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. Even today, the Mongolian tugriks are an inconvertible currency.

Of course, the chapter touches upon 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.

Today, there is only one justification for supporting the myth of the Tatar-Mongol invasion: it not only expressed, but expresses today the point of view of the West 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.

So was there a Tatar-Mongol yoke in Russia?

A passing Tatar. Hell will truly envelop them.

(She passes.)

From the parody theatrical play by Ivan Maslov "Elder Paphnutius", 1867

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 account of most historians, the 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, welded together by iron discipline, and rushed to conquer the world - "to the last sea." Having conquered the closest neighbors, and then China, the mighty Tatar-Mongol horde rolled westward. 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 the battle on the Kalka River. In the winter of 1237, the Tatar-Mongols invaded Russia with all their countless army, burned and ravaged many Russian cities, and in 1241 they tried to conquer Western Europe by invading Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary, reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, but turned back, therefore that they were afraid to leave in their rear the ruined, but still dangerous for them Russia. The Tatar-Mongol yoke began.

The great poet AS Pushkin left heartfelt lines: “Russia was assigned a high mission ... 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 resulting enlightenment was saved by a torn apart and dying Russia ... "

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

Having strengthened over time, Russia began to resist. In 1380, the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Horde Khan Mamai, and a century later, the troops of the Grand Duke Ivan III and the Horde Khan Akhmat met in the so-called "standing on the Ugra". The opponents camped for a long time on different sides of the Ugra River, after which Khan Akhmat, finally realizing that the Russians had become strong and he had little chance of winning the battle, gave the order to retreat and took 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 called into question. 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 kind of "complementarity" 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 actually the struggle of the descendants of Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest (son of Yaroslav and grandson of Alexander Nevsky ) with their rival princes for the 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 the great reign. Thus, the Battle of Kulikovo and the "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" in history there are ... Russian princes Yaroslav and Alexander Nevsky, and Dmitry Donskoy - this is Khan Mamai himself (!).

Of course, the conclusions of the publicist are full of 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 more close attention and unbiased research. Let's try to consider some of these mysteries.

Let's start with a general comment. Western Europe in the 13th century presented a disappointing picture. Christendom was experiencing a certain depression. The activity of Europeans shifted to the borders of their area. German feudal lords began to seize the border Slavic lands and turn their population into powerless serfs. The Western Slavs, who lived along the Elbe, resisted the 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 come about? Let's make an excursion into its history.

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

In the collision with the Kerait, the character of Genghis Khan was fully manifested. When Wang Khan and his son Nilha fled from the battlefield, one of their noyons (military leaders) with a small detachment detained the Mongols, saving their leaders from captivity. This noyon was seized, brought before the eyes of Chinggis, and he asked: “Why, noyon, seeing the position of your troops, didn’t 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, about the victor." Genghis Khan said: “Everyone should imitate this man.

Look 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 at the border, seeing the Kerait, killed him, and the severed head of the old man was brought to their khan.

In 1204, the Mongols of Genghis Khan and the powerful Naiman Khanate clashed. And again the Mongols won the victory. The defeated were included in the Chinggis horde. In the eastern steppe, there were no more tribes capable of actively resisting the new order, and in 1206, at the great kurultai, Chinggis was re-elected as a khan, but already throughout Mongolia. This is how the all-Mongolian state was born. The only hostile tribe to him remained the old enemies of the Borjigins - the Merkits, but even those by 1208 were forced out into the valley of the Irgiz River.

The growing power of Genghis Khan allowed his horde to quite easily assimilate different tribes and peoples. Because, in accordance with Mongolian stereotypes of behavior, the khan could and should have required obedience, obedience to orders, performance of duties, but forcing a person to abandon his faith or customs was considered immoral - the individual had the right to make 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 into his ulus. The request, of course, was granted, and Genghis Khan gave the Uighurs huge trade privileges. A caravan route passed through the Uyguria, and the Uyghurs, being part of the Mongol state, became rich due to the fact that they sold water, fruits, meat and "pleasure" to starving caravan men at high prices. The voluntary union of the Uyguria with Mongolia turned out to be useful for the Mongols as well. With the annexation of the Uyguria, the Mongols went beyond the boundaries of their ethnic range and came into contact with other peoples of the oikumene.

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 arose 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 took the title of “Khorezmshahs”. They turned out to be energetic, adventurous and belligerent. 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 made up of the Turks from the adjacent steppes.

But the state turned out to be fragile, despite the wealth, brave warriors and experienced diplomats. The military dictatorship relied on tribes alien to the local population, which had a different language, different customs and customs. The mercenaries' cruelty caused discontent among the residents 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 by the Khorezmians, who cruelly dealt with the population of Samarkand. Other large and wealthy cities of Central Asia also suffered.

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

The Khorezm army attacked the Mongols, but in the rearguard battle they themselves went on the offensive and severely wounded the Khorezmians. Only the attack of the left wing, commanded by the son of the Khorezmshah, the talented commander Jalal-ad-Din, straightened 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 got rich at the expense of the duties paid by merchants. Merchants willingly paid duties, because they passed their expenses on to consumers, while losing nothing. Wishing to preserve all the advantages associated with the existence of caravan routes, the Mongols strove for peace and tranquility on their borders. The difference of faith, in their opinion, did not give a pretext for war and could not justify the bloodshed. Probably, the Khorezmshah himself understood the episodic nature of the clash on Irshze. In 1218, Muhammad sent a trade caravan to Mongolia. Peace was restored, especially since the Mongols were not up to Khorezm: shortly before that, the Naiman prince Kuchluk began a new war with the Mongols.

The Mongol-Khorezm relations were again 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 food supplies and bathe in the bathhouse. There the merchants met two acquaintances, one of whom informed the governor of the city that these merchants were spies. He immediately realized that there was a great reason to rob the travelers. The merchants were killed, their property was confiscated. The ruler of Otrar sent half of the loot to Khorezm, and Muhammad took the spoil, which means he shared responsibility for what he had done.

Genghis Khan sent ambassadors to find out what caused the incident. Muhammad was angry when he saw the infidels, and ordered some of the ambassadors to kill, and some, stripping naked, drive them out to certain death in the steppe. Two or three Mongols finally got home and talked about what had happened. Genghis Khan's anger had no limits. From the Mongolian point of view, there were two most terrible crimes: deceiving those who confided in and killing guests. According to custom, Genghis Khan could not leave unavenged neither the merchants who were killed in Otrar, nor the ambassadors whom the Khorezmshah insulted and killed. The khan had to fight, otherwise his fellow tribesmen would simply refuse to trust him.

In Central Asia, the Khorezmshah had at their disposal a regular army of four hundred thousand. 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-Kitays, 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 could I bear such an insult."

Genghis Khan threw the assembled Mongol, Uyghur, Turkic and Kara-Chinese troops on Khorezm. Khorezmshah, having quarreled with his mother Turkan-Khatun, did not trust the military leaders who were related to her. He was afraid to gather them into a fist in order to repel the onslaught of the Mongols, and scattered the army across the garrisons. The best generals of the shah were his own unloved son Jalal-ad-Din and the commandant of the Khujand fortress Timur-Melik. The Mongols took the fortresses one after another, but in Khojent, 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 advance 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 Central Asian cities by the Mongols, there is a well-established version: "Wild nomads destroyed the cultural oases of agricultural peoples." Is it so? This version, as shown by L. N. Gumilev, is based on the legends of the court Muslim 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 take to the streets littered with corpses. Only wild beasts roamed the city and tormented the dead. After sitting out for some time and coming to their senses, 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 were hiding there would simply die. No predators, except jackals, live near the city, and they very rarely enter the city. It was simply impossible for exhausted people to move to rob caravans several hundred kilometers from Herat, because they would have to walk, carrying heavy loads - water and provisions. Such a "robber", having met a caravan, could no longer rob it ...

Even more surprising is the information reported by historians about Merv. The Mongols took it in 1219 and also supposedly exterminated all the inhabitants there. But already in 1229 Merv revolted, 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 the legends of Mongol atrocities. If we take into account the degree of reliability of the sources and ask simple but inevitable questions, it is easy to separate the historical truth from literary fiction.

The Mongols occupied Persia almost without a fight, driving out the son of the Khorezmshah Jelal ad-Din to northern India. Muhammad II Gazi himself, broken by struggle and constant defeats, died in a leper colony on an island in the Caspian Sea (1221). The Mongols made peace with the Shiite population of Iran, which was constantly offended by the Sunnis in power, in particular the Baghdad Caliph and Jalal ad-Din himself. As a result, the Shiite population of Persia suffered significantly less than the Sunnis of Central Asia. Be that as it may, in 1221 the state of the Khorezmshahs was finished. Under one ruler - Muhammad II Gazi - this state reached its highest power and perished. 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, which, according to Yasa, required revenge. The capital of Tangut was the city of Zhongxing. It was besieged by Genghis Khan in 1227, defeating the Tangut troops in the previous battles.

During the siege of Zhongsin, 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 the past culture, but the city survived and lived until 1405, when it was destroyed by the Chinese of the Ming dynasty.

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 the commemoration. In order to find the burial place later, the Mongols did the following. At the grave, they sacrificed a little camel just taken from the mother. And a year later, the camel herself found in the boundless steppe a place where her cub was killed. Having killed this she-camel, the Mongols performed the prescribed ceremony 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 the right to the father's throne. Sons from Borte differed in inclinations and 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 geek”. Although Borte invariably defended Jochi, and Genghis Khan himself always recognized him as his son, the shadow of his mother's merkit captivity fell on Jochi with the burden of suspicion of illegitimacy. Once, in the presence of his father, Chagatai openly called Jochi illegitimate, and the case almost ended in a fight between the brothers.

It is curious, but according to the testimony of contemporaries, there were some persistent stereotypes in Jochi's behavior that greatly distinguished him from Chinggis. If for Genghis Khan there was no concept of "mercy" in relation to enemies (he left life only to young children, who were adopted by his mother Hoelun, and to the valiant Bagatura who passed on to the Mongol service), then Jochi was distinguished by his humanity and kindness. So, during the siege of Gurganj, the Khorezmians, completely exhausted by the war, asked to accept the surrender, that is, in other words, to spare them. Jochi spoke in favor of showing mercy, but Genghis Khan categorically rejected the request for mercy, and as a result, the garrison of Gurganj was partially cut, 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 the sovereign's distrust of 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 so, but the fact remains: at the beginning of 1227, Jochi, hunting in the steppe, was found dead - his spine was broken. The details of the incident were kept secret, but, without a doubt, Genghis Khan was a man 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 was promoted to the "keeper of the Yasa" (something like the attorney general or the supreme judge). Chagatai strictly observed the law and treated its violators without 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 incident: once, on a joint trip, the brothers saw a Muslim washing himself by the water. According to Muslim custom, every believer is obliged to perform namaz and ritual ablution several times a day. Mongolian tradition, on the other hand, forbade a person to bathe during the entire 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 viewed as an attempt on people's lives. The nukers-vigilantes of the ruthless adherent of the Chagatai law seized a Muslim. Foreseeing a bloody denouement - the unfortunate man was threatened with cutting off his head - Ogedei sent his man to tell the Muslim to answer that he had dropped the gold one into the water and was just looking for it there. The Muslim said so to Chagatay. He ordered to look for a coin, and during this time Ogedei's vigilante threw a gold coin into the water. The found coin was returned to the "rightful owner". At parting, Ogedei, taking out a handful of coins from his pocket, handed them to the rescued person and said: "The next time you drop a gold coin into the water, don't go after it, don't break the law."

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

Of the four sons of Genghis Khan, the youngest had the greatest talents and showed the greatest moral dignity. A good commander and an outstanding administrator, Tului was also a loving husband and distinguished for his nobility. He married the daughter of the deceased head of the Kerait, Wang Khan, who was a devout Christian. Tului himself had no right to accept the Christian faith: like Chinggisid, he had to profess the Bon religion (paganism). But the son of the khan allowed his wife not only to perform all Christian rituals in a luxurious "church" yurt, but also to have priests with them 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, trying to "attract" the disease to himself, and died saving his brother.

All four sons had the right to inherit Genghis Khan. After the elimination of Jochi, three heirs remained, and when Chinggis was gone, and the new khan had not yet been elected, Tului ruled the ulus. But at the kurultai of 1229, the gentle and tolerant Ogedei was chosen as the great khan, in accordance with the will of Chinggis. Ogedei, as we have already mentioned, had a kind soul, but the kindness of the sovereign is often not good for the state and subjects. Under him, the administration of the ulus was mainly due to the strictness of Chagatai and the diplomatic and administrative skills of Tului. The great khan himself preferred nomadic wanderings and feasts in Western Mongolia to state concerns.

Genghis Khan's grandchildren 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 ​​present-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, roaming from Tyumen to the Aral Sea. At the same time, the three brothers - the rulers of the uluses - were allocated only one to two thousand Mongolian soldiers each, while the total number of the Mongol army reached 130 thousand people.

The children of Chagatai also received a thousand warriors, and the descendants of Tului, being at the court, owned all of their grandfather's and paternal ulus. So the Mongols established a system of inheritance, called a minorat, in which the youngest son inherited all the rights of his father, and the older brothers - only a share in the common inheritance.

The great khan Ogedei also had a son - Guyuk, who claimed the inheritance. The increase in the clan during the lifetime of Chinggis's children caused the division of the inheritance and enormous difficulties in managing the ulus, stretching from the Black to the Yellow Sea. These difficulties and family accounts concealed the seeds of future strife, which destroyed the state created by Genghis Khan and his associates.

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

Russian pre-revolutionary historians mention the "half-million Mongolian 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 sets out on a campaign with three horses (at least two). One carries luggage ("dry rations", horseshoes, spare harness, arrows, armor), and on the third one needs to change from time to time so that one horse can rest if suddenly it is necessary 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 leading horses will instantly consume the grass over a huge area, and the hind horses will die from lack of food.

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

In addition, the difference between a horse that was allowed to roam in winter without any work, and a horse forced to make long journeys under a rider, and also participate in battles, is not taken into account. But they, in addition to the horsemen, had to carry also heavy prey! Convoys 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 rather 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 displacement of huge masses of the population. Victories were won not by hordes of nomads, but by small, well-organized mobile detachments, returning to their native steppes after campaigns. And the khans of the Jochi branch - Batu, Horde and Sheibani - received, according to the will of Chinggis, 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 even here unanswered questions arise. And the first among them will be this: is it not enough? Despite the disunity of the Russian principalities, thirty thousand horsemen is too small a figure to arrange “fire and ruin” all over Russia! After all, they (even the supporters of the "classical" version admit it) 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 begins an elementary mistrust: could such a number of aggressors conquer Russia?

It turns out to be a vicious circle: for purely physical reasons, a huge army of the Tatar-Mongols would hardly have been able to maintain combat effectiveness in order to move quickly and deliver 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: the invasion of the Tatar-Mongols was actually just an episode of the bloody civil war going on in Russia. The forces of the opponents were relatively small, they relied on their own stocks of fodder 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 Polovtsians were previously used.

The chronicles that have come down to us about the military campaigns of 1237-1238 paint the classically Russian style of these battles - battles take place in winter, and the Mongols - steppe people - operate 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 Vladimirsky Yuri Vsevolodovich).

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

At the turn of the 11th – 12th centuries, it was not the steppe inhabitants that represented the main danger for 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 Slobod Cossacks, not without reason in their nicknames the traditional Slavic suffix of belonging “ov” (Ivanov) was replaced by the Turkic one - “ Enko "(Ivanenko).

At this time, a more formidable phenomenon emerged - a fall in morals, a rejection of traditional Russian ethics and morality. In 1097, a princely congress took place in Lyubech, which marked the beginning of a new political form of the country's existence. There it was decided that "let everyone keep his fatherland." Russia began to turn into a confederation of independent states. The princes vowed to keep the proclaimed inviolably and in that they kissed the cross. But after the death of Mstislav, the Kiev state began to quickly disintegrate. Polotsk was the first to postpone. Then the Novgorod "republic" stopped sending money to Kiev.

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

Igor Svyatoslavich, a descendant of Prince Oleg, the hero of The Lay of Igor's Regiment, who became Prince of Chernigov in 1198, set himself the goal of cracking down on Kiev, a city where rivals of his dynasty were constantly strengthening. He agreed with the Smolensk prince Rurik Rostislavich and called for the help of the Polovtsi. In defense of Kiev - “the mother of Russian cities” - the prince Roman Volynskiy came forward, relying on the Tork troops allied to him.

The plan of the Chernigov prince was implemented 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 torques of Roman Volynsky, prevailed. Having captured Kiev, 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 did a great evil, which was not from baptism in the Russian land,” the chronicler left a message.

After the fateful year 1203, Kiev has not recovered.

According to L. N. Gumilyov, by this time the ancient Russians had lost their passionarity, that is, their cultural and energetic "charge". In such conditions, a clash with a strong adversary 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 was the Polovtsy. Their enmity began in 1216, when the Polovtsians accepted Chingis' blood enemies - the Merkits. The Polovtsians actively pursued the anti-Mongol policy, constantly supporting the Finno-Ugric tribes hostile to the Mongols. At the same time, the steppe-Polovtsians were as mobile as the Mongols themselves. Seeing the futility of cavalry clashes with the Polovtsy, the Mongols sent an expeditionary corps to the rear of the enemy.

The talented commanders Subatei 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 Polovtsy. 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 Polovtsians does not fit into the scheme of irreconcilable confrontation "sedentary - nomads". In 1223 the Russian princes became the allies of the Polovtsians. The three strongest princes of Russia - Mstislav Udaloy from Galich, Mstislav of Kiev and Mstislav of Chernigov - gathered troops and tried to protect them.

The collision on Kalka in 1223 is described in some detail in the annals; in addition, there is another source - "The Tale of the Battle of Kalka, and about the Russian princes, and about seventy heroes." However, the abundance of information does not always clarify ...

Historical science has not denied for a long time the fact that the events on Kalka were not the aggression of evil aliens, but an attack from the Russians. The Mongols themselves did not strive for a war with Russia. The ambassadors who arrived to the Russian princes quite friendly asked the Russians not to interfere in their relations with the Polovtsy. But, true to allied commitments, 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 simply killed, but "tortured"). At all times, the murder of an ambassador, a parliamentarian was considered a grave crime; according to the Mongolian law, the deceit of the trusting person was an unforgivable crime.

Following this, the Russian army sets out on a long campaign. Having left the borders of Russia, it was 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 takes place on the Kalka River: an 80,000-strong Russian-Polovtsian army fell on a 20,000th (!) Detachment of Mongols. This battle was lost by the Allies due to the inability to coordinate actions. The Polovtsi left the battlefield in panic. Mstislav Udaloy and his "younger" prince Daniel fled across the Dnieper; they were the first to reach the shore and managed to jump into the boats. At the same time, the prince chopped up the rest of the boats, fearing that the Tatars would be able to cross after them, "and, fearful, he made his way to Galich." Thus, he doomed to death his comrades-in-arms, whose horses were worse than the prince's. The enemies killed everyone they overtook.

The other princes are left alone with the enemy, they beat off his attacks for three days, after which, believing the assurances of the Tatars, they surrender. Another mystery lurks here. It turns out that the princes surrendered after a certain Rusich named Ploskinya, who was in the enemy's battle formations, solemnly kissed the pectoral cross that the Russians would be spared and not shed their blood. The Mongols, according to their custom, kept their word: having tied the captives, they laid them on the ground, covered them with a deck of planks and sat down to feast on the bodies. Not a drop of blood was really spilled! And the latter, according to Mongolian views, was considered extremely important. (By the way, the fact that the captive princes were put under the boards is reported only by “The Tale of the Battle of Kalka.” Other sources write that the princes were simply killed without mockery, and still others - that they were “taken prisoner.” So the story with a feast on bodies is just one of the versions.)

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

Why did the Russian princes surrender after listening to the persuasions of Ploskini? "The Tale of the Battle of Kalka" writes: "There were also the Rogues along with the Tatars, and Ploskinya was their commander." Brodniks are Russian free warriors who lived in those places, the predecessors of the Cossacks. However, the establishment of Ploskini's social position only confuses the matter. It turns out that the roaming people in a short time managed to come to an agreement with the "unknown peoples" and became so close to them that they jointly struck at their brothers in blood and faith? One thing can be stated with certainty: part of the army with which the Russian princes were fighting on Kalka was Slavic, Christian.

Russian princes in this whole story do not look the best. But back to our riddles. The Tale of the Battle of Kalka, which we have mentioned, for some reason is not able to definitely name the enemy of the Russians! Here is a quote: “... Because of our sins, nations came unknown, godless Moabites [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 kind of tribe they are, and what faith. And they call them Tatars, and some say - Taurmen, and others - Pechenegs. "

Amazing lines! They were written much later than the events described, when it seemed like it was supposed to know exactly with whom the Russian princes fought on Kalka. After all, part of the army (albeit a small one) nevertheless returned from Kalka. Moreover, the victors, in pursuit of 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 had seen the enemy with their own eyes. And yet he remains "unknown"! This statement further confuses the matter. After all, by the time described in Russia they knew the Polovtsians very well - they lived side by side for many years, fought, then became related ... The Taurmen - a nomadic Turkic tribe that lived in the Northern Black Sea region - was again well known to the Russians. It is curious that in the "Lay of Igor's Regiment" some "Tartars" are mentioned among the nomadic Türks who served the Chernigov prince.

One gets the 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. Maybe the battle on Kalka was not a clash with unknown peoples at all, but one of the episodes of the internecine war waged between the Russian-Christians, the Polovtsian Christians and the Tatars who got involved in the cause?

After the battle on Kalka, part of the Mongols turned their horses eastward, trying to report on the fulfillment of the assigned task - on the victory over the Polovtsians. But on the banks of the Volga, the army was ambushed by the Volga Bulgars. Muslims, who hated the Mongols as pagans, unexpectedly attacked them during the crossing. Here the victors at Kalka were defeated and many people lost. 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.

LN Gumilev has collected a huge amount of material that clearly indicates that the relationship between Russia and the Horde CAN be designated by the word "symbiosis". After Gumilyov, they write especially a lot and often about how Russian princes and "Mongol khans" became brothers-in-arms, relatives, sons-in-law and father-in-law, how they went on joint military campaigns, how (let's call things by their proper names) they were friends. Relations of this kind are unique in their own way - in no other country they conquered did the Tatars behave like that. 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 ...

the author

2. The Tatar-Mongol invasion as the unification of Russia under the rule of the Novgorod = Yaroslavl dynasty of George = Genghis Khan and then his brother Yaroslav = Batu = Ivan Kalita

From the book Russia and the Horde. Great empire of the middle ages the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

3. "Tatar-Mongol yoke" in Russia - the era of military control in the Russian Empire and its heyday 3.1. What is the difference between our version and Millerovo-Romanovskoy Millerovsko-Romanovskoy history paints the era of the XIII-XV centuries in the dark colors of a fierce foreign yoke in Russia. With one

From the book Reconstruction of True History the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

12. There was no foreign "Tatar-Mongol conquest" of Russia. Medieval Mongolia and Russia are just one and the same thing. No foreigners conquered Russia. Russia was originally inhabited by peoples who originally lived on their land - Russians, Tatars, etc.

the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

7.4. The fourth period: the Tatar-Mongol yoke from the Battle of the City in 1238 to the "standing on the Ugra" in 1481, which is considered today the "official end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke" KHAN BATY since 1238. YAROSLAV VSEVOLODOVICH 1238-1248, ruled for 10 years the capital is Vladimir. Came from Novgorod

From the book Book 1. New Chronology of Russia [Russian Chronicles. "Mongol-Tatar" conquest. Battle of Kulikovo. Ivan groznyj. Razin. Pugachev. The defeat of Tobolsk and the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

2. The Tatar-Mongol invasion as the unification of Russia under the rule of the Novgorod = Yaroslavl dynasty of George = Genghis Khan and then his brother Yaroslav = Batu = Ivan Kalita

From the book Book 1. New Chronology of Russia [Russian Chronicles. "Mongol-Tatar" conquest. Battle of Kulikovo. Ivan groznyj. Razin. Pugachev. The defeat of Tobolsk and the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

3. The Tatar-Mongol yoke in Russia - this is the period of military rule in the United Russian Empire 3.1. What is the difference between our version and Millerovo-Romanovskoy Millerovsko-Romanovskoy history paints the era of the XIII-XV centuries in the dark colors of a fierce foreign yoke in Russia. WITH

the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

4 period: the Tatar-Mongol yoke from the battle of the City in 1237 to the "standing on the Ugra" in 1481, which is considered today "the official end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke" Batu Khan since 1238 Yaroslav Vsevolodovich 1238-1248 (10), the capital - Vladimir, came from Novgorod (, p. 70). By: 1238-1247 (8). By

From the book New chronology and the concept of the ancient history of Russia, England and Rome the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

The Tatar-Mongol invasion as the unification of Russia under the rule of the Novgorod = Yaroslavl dynasty of George = Genghis Khan and then his brother Yaroslav = Batu = Ivan Kalita

From the book New chronology and the concept of the ancient history of Russia, England and Rome the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

The Tatar-Mongol yoke in Russia = the period of military rule in the united Russian empire What is the difference between our version and the traditional one? Traditional history paints the epoch of the XIII-XV centuries in the dark colors of a foreign yoke in Russia. On the one hand, we are encouraged to believe

From the book Gumilyov, son of Gumilyov the author Belyakov Sergey Stanislavovich

TATAR-MONGOL IGO But perhaps the sacrifices were justified, and the "alliance with the Horde" saved the Russian land from the worst misfortune, from the treacherous papal prelates, from the merciless knight-dogs, from enslavement not only physical, but also spiritual? Maybe Gumilev is right, and Tatar help

From the book Reconstruction of True History the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

12. There was no foreign "Tatar-Mongol conquest" of Russia. Medieval Mongolia and Russia are just one and the same thing. No foreigners conquered Russia. Russia was originally inhabited by peoples who originally lived on their land - Russians, Tatars, etc.

the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

From the book Rus. China. England. Dating of the Nativity of Christ and the First Ecumenical Council the author Nosovsky Gleb Vladimirovich

From the book The Great Alexander Nevsky. "The Russian Land will stand!" the author Pronina Natalia M.

Chapter IV. The internal crisis of Russia and the Tatar-Mongol invasion And the point was that by the middle of the XIII century the Kiev state, like most of the early feudal empires, suffered a painful process of complete fragmentation and disintegration. Actually, the first attempts to break

From the book Türks or Mongols? The era of Genghis Khan the author Olovintsov Anatoly Grigorievich

Chapter X "Tatar-Mongol yoke" - as it was There was no so-called yoke of the Tatars. The Tatars never occupied the Russian lands and did not keep their garrisons there ... It is difficult to find parallels in history to such generosity of the victors. B. Ishboldin, Honorary Professor

The Mongol-Tatar yoke is the dependent position of the Russian principalities from the Mongol-Tatars states for two hundred years from the beginning of the Mongol-Tatar invasion in 1237 to 1480. It was expressed in the political and economic subordination of the Russian princes from the rulers of the first Mongol Empire, and after its collapse - the Golden Horde.

Mongol-Tatars are all nomadic peoples living in the Trans-Volga region and further to the East, with which Russia fought in the 13th-15th centuries. The name was given by the name of one of the tribes

“In 1224, an unknown people appeared; came an unheard-of army, godless Tatars, about whom no one knows very well who they are and where they came from, and what kind of language they have, and what kind of tribe they are, and what kind of faith they have ... "

(I. Brekov "The world of history: Russian lands in the 13-15 centuries")

Mongol-Tatar invasion

• 1206 - Congress of the Mongol nobility (kurultai), at which Temujin was elected the leader of the Mongol tribes, who received the name Genghis Khan (Great Khan)
• 1219 - The beginning of the three-year conquest campaign of Genghis Khan to Central Asia
• 1223, May 31 - The first battle of the Mongols and the united Russian-Polovtsian army near the borders of Kievan Rus, on the Kalka River, near the Sea of ​​Azov
• 1227 - Death of Genghis Khan. Power in the Mongolian state passed to his grandson Baty (Batu Khan)
• 1237 - The beginning of the Mongol-Tatar invasion. Batu's army crossed the Volga in its middle reaches and invaded North-Eastern Russia
• 1237, December 21 - Ryazan was taken by the Tatars
• 1238, January - Kolomna is taken
• 1238, February 7 - Vladimir is taken
• 1238, February 8 - Suzdal is taken
• 1238, March 4 - Pal Torzhok
• 1238, March 5 - The battle of the squad of the Moscow prince Yuri Vsevolodovich with the Tatars at the river Sit. The death of Prince Yuri
• 1238, May - Capture of Kozelsk
• 1239-1240 - Batu's army camped in the Don steppe
• 1240 - Devastation by the Mongols of Pereyaslavl, Chernigov
• 1240, December 6 - Kiev is destroyed
• 1240, end of December - The Russian principalities of Volhynia and Galicia are destroyed
• 1241 - Batu's army returned to Mongolia
• 1243 - Formation of the Golden Horde, the state from the Danube to the Irtysh, with the capital Sarai in the lower Volga

The Russian principalities retained their statehood, but were taxed. In total, there were 14 types of tribute, including directly in favor of the khan - 1300 kg of silver per year. In addition, the khans of the Golden Horde retained the right to appoint or overthrow the Moscow princes, who were to receive a label for the great reign in Sarai. The Horde's rule over Russia lasted more than two centuries. It was a time of difficult political games, when the Russian princes either united among themselves for some momentary benefits, then they were at enmity, while at the same time attracting Mongolian troops as allies with might and main. A significant role in the politics of that time was played by the Polish-Lithuanian state, Sweden, the German knightly orders in the Baltic states, the free republics of Novgorod and Pskov, which arose at the western borders of Russia. Creating alliances with each other and against each other, with the Russian principalities, the Golden Horde, they fought endless wars

In the first decades of the fourteenth century, the rise of the Moscow principality begins, which gradually became a political center and collector of Russian lands.

On August 11, 1378, the Moscow army of Prince Dmitry defeated the Mongols in the battle on the Vazha River. On September 8, 1380, the Moscow army of Prince Dmitry defeated the Mongols in the battle on the Kulikovo field. And although in 1382 the Mongol Khan Tokhtamysh plundered and burned Moscow, the myth of the invincibility of the Tatars collapsed. Gradually, the state of the Golden Horde itself fell into decay. It split into the Siberian, Uzbek, Kazan (1438), Crimean (1443), Kazakh, Astrakhan (1459), and Nogai Horde khanates. Of all the tributaries, only Russia remained with the Tatars, but it also periodically rebelled. In 1408, the Moscow prince Vasily I refused to pay tribute to the Golden Horde, after which Khan Edigei made a devastating campaign, robbing Pereyaslavl, Rostov, Dmitrov, Serpukhov, Nizhny Novgorod. In 1451, the Moscow prince Vasily the Dark again refuses to pay. The raids of the Tatars are ineffectual. Finally, in 1480, Prince Ivan III officially refused to obey the Horde. The Mongol-Tatar yoke is over.

Lev Gumilev on the Tatar-Mongol yoke

- “After Batu's income in 1237 - 1240, when the war ended, the pagan Mongols, among whom there were many Nestorian Christians, made friends with the Russians and helped them stop the German onslaught in the Baltic. Muslim khans Uzbek and Janibek (1312-1356) used Moscow as a source of income, but at the same time protected it from Lithuania. During the Horde civil strife, the Horde was powerless, but the Russian princes paid tribute at that time too. "

- “Batu's army, which opposed the Polovtsians, with whom the Mongols had been at war since 1216, passed through Russia to the rear of the Polovtsy in 1237-1238, and forced them to flee to Hungary. At the same time, Ryazan and fourteen cities in the Vladimir principality were destroyed. And then there were about three hundred cities in total. The Mongols left no garrisons anywhere, did not impose tribute on anyone, being content with contributions, horses and food, which was what any army did in those days when attacking. "

- (As a result) “Great Russia, then called Zalesskaya Ukraine, voluntarily united with the Horde, thanks to the efforts of Alexander Nevsky, who became Batu's adopted son. And the original Ancient Rus - Belarus, Kiev region, Galicia and Volynia - submitted almost without resistance to Lithuania and Poland. And so, around Moscow - the "golden belt" of ancient cities, which remained intact during the "yoke", and in Belarus and Galicia, not even a trace of Russian culture remained. Novgorod was defended from the German knights by Tatar help in 1269. And where the Tatar help was neglected, they lost everything. On the site of Yuriev - Dorpat, now Tartu, on the site of Kolyvan - Revol, now Tallinn; Riga closed the Dvina river route to Russian trade; Berdichev and Bratslav - Polish castles - blocked the roads to "Wild Field", once the homeland of Russian princes, thereby taking control of Ukraine. In 1340 Russia disappeared from the political map of Europe. It was revived in 1480 in Moscow, on the eastern outskirts of former Russia. And its core, ancient Kievan Rus, captured by Poland and oppressed, had to be saved in the 18th century "

- “I believe that Batu's 'invasion' was actually a big raid, a cavalry raid, and further events have only an indirect connection with this campaign. In Ancient Russia, the word "yoke" meant that with which something was fastened, a bridle or a yoke. It also existed in the meaning of a burden, that is, that which is borne. The word "yoke" in the meaning of "domination", "oppression" was first recorded only under Peter I. The union of Moscow and the Horde held on as long as it was mutually beneficial "

The term "Tatar yoke" originates in Russian historiography, as well as the position about its overthrow by Ivan III, from Nikolai Karamzin, who applied it as an artistic epithet in the original meaning of "a collar worn around the neck" ("bowed under the yoke of barbarians" ), possibly borrowing this term from the 16th century Polish author Maciej Miechowski