Perhaps there is no more controversial event in Russian history than the Battle of Kulikovo. Recently, it has been overgrown with a large number of myths, conjectures and revelations. Even the very fact of this battle is being questioned.
Battle legend
According to the official version, the Grand Duke of Moscow and Vladimir Dmitry Ivanovich (later Donskoy), deciding to put an end to the Mongol temnik Mamai, who increased the amount of tribute paid, gathers a large army.
Having chosen the most successful place - the field between the Don and Nepryadva - Dmitry meets the Mongol army moving towards Moscow and defeats Mamai.
Russian history mainly draws information about the Battle of Kulikovo from four sources - "The Tale of the Mamayev Massacre", "The Brief Chronicle of the Battle of Kulikovo", "The Extensive Chronicle of the Battle of Kulikovo" and "Zadonshchina".
However, these works are sinful of inaccuracies and literary fiction. But the main problem is that in foreign sources there is no direct mention of both the Battle of Kulikovo and Dmitry Donskoy.
Given the paucity of information, some historians have great doubts about many facts: the composition and number of opposing sides, the place and date of the battle, as well as its results. Moreover, some researchers completely deny the reality of the Kulikovo battle.
Opposing sides
Promotional video:
On some old frescoes and miniatures dedicated to the Battle of Kulikovo, we can see an interesting detail: the faces, uniforms and even banners of the warring armies are painted in the same manner.
What is this - the lack of skill among painters? Hardly. Moreover, a fragment of the icon "Sergius of Radonezh with Lives" in the camp of the army of Dmitry Donskoy depicts faces with obvious Mongoloid features. How can one fail to recall Lev Gumilyov, who argued that the Tatars constituted the backbone of the Moscow army.
However, according to art critic Viktoria Gorshkova, "it is not customary to prescribe national features, historical details and details in icon painting." But it is quite possible that this is not an allegorical image, but a real reflection of events. The caption on one of the miniatures depicting Mamaev's massacre: “and the escape of Mamaia with her princes” can reveal the riddle.
It is known that Dmitry Donskoy was in alliance with the Mongolian khan Tokhtamysh, and Tokhtamysh's rival Mamai joined forces with the Lithuanian prince Yagailo and the Ryazan prince Oleg. Moreover, the western Mamaev uluses were inhabited mainly by Christians, who could have joined the Horde army.
Also, the research of E. Karnovich and V. Chechulin adds fuel to the fire, who found that Christian names were almost never found among the Russian nobility of that time, and Turkic names were often found. All this fits into the unusual concept of the battle, in which international troops were on both sides.
Other researchers make even bolder conclusions. For example, the author of "New Chronology" Anatoly Fomenko claims that the Kulikovo battle is a showdown between the Russian princes, and the historian Rustam Nabi sees in it a clash between the troops of Mamai and Tokhtamysh.
Military maneuvers
There are many mysteries in preparation for the battle. Scientist Vadim Kargalov notes: "The chronology of the campaign, and its route, and the time of the passage of the Russian army across the Don are not clear enough."
For the historian Yevgeny Kharin, the picture of the movement of troops is also contradictory: “both troops went to meet at right angles to each other along the eastern bank of the Don (Muscovites - to the south, Tatars - to the west.), Then they crossed it in almost the same place to fight on the other side! But some researchers, explaining the strange maneuver, believe that not Russian troops were moving from the north, but the army of Tokhtamysh.
There are also questions about the number of belligerents. In Russian history, figures most often figured: 150 thousand Russians against 300 thousand Mongol Tatars. However, now the number of both sides is noticeably reduced - no more than 30 thousand warriors and 60 thousand Horde men.
For some researchers, it is not so much the outcome of the battle that raises questions, but its end. It is known that the Russians achieved a decisive advantage by using an ambush regiment. Rustam Nabi, for example, does not believe in such an easy victory, claiming that the strong and experienced Mongol army could not so easily take flight without throwing its last reserves into battle.
Battle site
The most vulnerable and controversial part in the traditional concept of the Battle of Kulikovo is the place where it took place. When the 600th anniversary of the battle was celebrated in 1980, it turned out that no real archaeological excavations had been carried out on the Kulikovo field. However, attempts to find anything have yielded very meager results: several dozen metal fragments with undefined dating.
This gave new strength to skeptics to declare that the Battle of Kulikovo took place in a completely different place. Even in the set of Bulgar chronicles, other coordinates of the Kulikovo battle were named - between the modern rivers Krasivaya Mecha and Sosna, which is slightly away from the Kulikovo field. But some modern researchers - supporters of the "new chronology" - literally went further.
The site of the Battle of Kulikovo, in their opinion, is located almost opposite the Moscow Kremlin - where the huge building of the Strategic Missile Forces Military Academy is now standing. Peter the Great. Earlier, there was an Educational House, which was built, according to the same researchers, in order to hide the traces of the real place of the battle.
But on the site of the nearby Church of All Saints on Kulishki, according to some sources, there was already a church before the Battle of Kulikovo, according to others - a forest grew here, which makes this place impossible for a large-scale battle.
A battle lost in time
However, a number of researchers believe that there was no battle of Kulikovo. Some of them refer to the information of European chroniclers. So, who lived at the turn of the XIV-XV centuries, Johann Poschilge, Dietmar Lubeck and Albert Krantz almost simultaneously describe a major battle between the Russians and the Tatars in 1380, calling it "the Battle of Blue Water".
These descriptions partly overlap with the Russian chronicles of the Battle of Kulikovo. But is it possible that the "Battle of the Blue Waters" between the detachments of the Lithuanian prince Olgerd and the Horde troops, which took place in 1362 and the Mamayev massacre, are one and the same event?
Another part of the researchers is inclined to believe that the Battle of Kulikovo can most likely be combined with the battle between Tokhtamysh and Mamai (due to the proximity of dates), which took place in 1381.
However, the Kulikovo field is also present in this version. Rustam Nabi believes that the Russian troops returning to Moscow could have been attacked at this place by the Ryazan residents who did not participate in the battle. This is what the Russian chronicles also report.
Six underground squares
Perhaps recent discoveries will help solve the puzzle of the Battle of Kulikovo. Using the Vine spatial georadar, specialists from the Institute for the Study of the Earth's Crust and Magnetism discovered six underground squares on the Kulikovo field, which, in their opinion, could be military mass graves.
Professor Viktor Zvyagin says that "the contents of an underground object are ashes similar to those found in burials with complete destruction of flesh, including bone tissue."
This version is supported by Andrei Naumov, deputy director of the Kulikovo Pole museum. Moreover, he believes that doubts about the reality of the battle that took place here in 1380 are groundless. He explains the absence of a large number of archaeological finds at the battle site by the enormous value of clothing, weapons and armor. For example, a full set of armor cost 40 cows. In a short time after the battle, the "good" was almost completely taken away.