One of the most common myths once invented about the Slavic faith is the myth of its extreme cruelty and bloodthirstiness.
It is believed that human sacrifices were a common thing for our ancestors, and they were performed in front of the entire motley public who visited the temple on a holiday: women, children, madmen, and people with a weakened psyche looked at the murder of a man.
For the Christian Church, which fiercely competed with the native faith of the Slavs, the composition of such myths had quite practical significance. Does religion have a right to life, where the wise men are professional murderers, and the believers are their involuntary accomplices? Of course not!
It remains only to portray the Slavic faith as such and make the people believe in it.
One of the most reliable, according to the church and official science, sources, allegedly confirming that ritual murders of people were widespread among the Slavs - ancient Russian chronicles.
But is their testimony really so serious?
Our chronicles mention human sacrifice twice.
"The Tale of Bygone Years" says that in 980, Prince Vladimir "set idols on the hill behind the terem courtyard … And they brought sacrifices to them, and brought their sons and daughters, and the Russian land and that hill were defiled with blood," and three years later, after According to the same chronicle, the people of Kiev decided at all costs to “slaughter a young Varangian youth as a sacrifice to the gods: when his father refused to give his son to the“demons”, the people of Kiev“clicked and cut a canopy under them, and so they were killed”.
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In the first case, the chronicler says that the Russian land was defiled with blood: if ritual murders were committed frequently and consistently, there would be nothing to defile on the Russian land, according to the logic of the chronicle.
As S. Lesnoy rightly noted in his book “Where are you from, Rus?”, “If human sacrifices existed before Vladimir, then the chronicler had nothing to write about this and be indignant; in fact, it is emphasized that it was from Vladimir that the Russian land was desecrated by the blood of people who were sacrificed"
However, it is not known whether the chronicler at all spoke about human sacrifices proper - if our ancestors brought their sons and daughters to the temple (how Buddhists lead their children to temples, Muslims to mosques, etc.), this does not mean at all, that they were certainly killed there, and with regard to the fact that, as the chronicle says, "the good God did not want the death of sinners" - here we are obviously talking about spiritual death: Christian "enlighteners", as you know, were somehow sure that they alone possess a certain "divine truth", while all the others, supposedly rejected by God, are stupid, blind and morally corrupted.
As for the murder of the Varangians, can a crime committed by a violent crowd be called a religious sacrifice?
The chronicler does not mention the presence of either the Magi or the priests during this atrocity; it was done, thank Gods, not at the temple, and the language does not turn out to be called a religious ritual.
It is interesting that the people of Kiev wanted to kill the Varangian young man not just when, but after Prince Vladimir "defeated the Yatvingians and conquered their land."
Apparently, patriotic feelings leaped up in the inhabitants of Kiev and their hands were combed, and relations with the Vikings, and even more so with Christians, were then extremely tense.
It turns out that the Varangians simply fell under a hot hand, and, the Varangian father seems to have done everything possible so that the crowd would not calm down, raged as long as possible and with the maximum possible number of victims and destruction: he sneered at the Slavic Gods as best he could.
Old Russian chronicles say nothing about the tradition of human sacrifice in Russia, on the contrary: the ritual murder of a person (if any) was a "supernatural" event, an event of a national scale.
In general, if you look closely at all the sources recognized by official science, asserting that the sacrifice of people to the Gods was a fairly common phenomenon among the Slavs, one can notice one common detail: their authors treated our ancestors and their religions with tremendous prejudice and tried to outdo each other in the quantity and quality of slander on the Slavic faith.
A striking example of such "ideological chronicle" is given by B. A. Rybakov in the book "Paganism of Ancient Rus":
“… Where Gregory the Theologian speaks about human sacrifices among the Crimean Taurus, he uses the word enoktonia, ie ritual murder of foreigners, and the Russian author replaced it with "child-cutting", that is, by sacrificing babies."
Alas, it is difficult not to agree with the phrase from the decision of the Synod of 1734: "The chronicles are full of lies and dishonor the Russian people."
Even those peoples tried to slander the Slavs who, to put it mildly, have a stigma in the gun on this score.
For example, no one doubts that the Greeks used human sacrifice and took the form of a well-established custom, but this does not prevent modern Western civilization from considering itself the heir to ancient culture, and, moreover, to be proud of it.
In the case of the Slavs, the situation is completely opposite: the tradition of sacrificing people has not been proven at all, but the slightest mention of the fact that probably our ancestors still sacrificed people causes a whole storm of emotions among the "zealots of national honor" who are already it has long been suggested that the Slavic faith and, in general, the ancient "wild" history of the Russian people be forgotten as a nightmare.
Although, if you show a little positive attention to the Slavic faith, you will notice that the devil is not so terrible as he is painted.
While the Greeks on the Apollo holiday, held in early June, chose two people (a boy and a girl), hung garlands of figs around their necks, made them run around the city to the sound of flutes, and then burned them exhausted at the stake and threw ashes into sea, - the Slavs sewed on Kupala two dolls, male and female, and symbolically threw them into the Kupala bonfire, without disturbing the festive mood and leaving people with bright, good impressions of the past celebration.
And how, in fact, can it be otherwise with the Slavic attitude to human life?
You can find out what this very attitude towards a person was, for example, by reading Vleskniga (VK) - the only truly independent source telling about sacrifices in the Slavic faith (in fairness it should be noted that disputes about the authenticity of VK in Russia have almost subsided, and in other countries stopped long ago).
Vleskniga says, reproducing the message of Svarog to Arius, the ancient leader of the Slavs: “I will create you from my fingers. And it will be said that [you are] the natural sons of Isstareg. And you will become the sons of Isstareg and you will be like My children, and your Father will be even Dazhde."
Did our ancestors really think that people are the descendants of the Gods and, at the same time, that the ritual murder of a person, even God's grandson, could have a beneficial effect on relations with the divine world? Hard to believe.
In addition, it is not for nothing that it is said that the Slavs were created from the fingers of Svarog, the Creator: a person in the Slavic faith is not a temporary guest in the manifested world and not a slave of God, but an indispensable participant in the infinite creation of the Universe, a companion of the Gods and their assistant: again, sacrificing a person is extremely unwise.
“We have a true faith,” says VK, “which does not require human sacrifice. And this is done by the thieves, who truly, who always performed it, called Perun Parkun, and made a sacrifice to him. We should give the field sacrifice …
So in any case, the Greeks will start talking about us, that we are sacrificing people - otherwise it is a false speech, and there is no such thing in reality, and we have different customs. And the one who wants to hurt others says unkind things."
Of course, the Slavs have always had and will always have enemies who say unkind things: it’s not a shame, it’s a shame that our people gradually got used to it and began to agree with the slander pouring down on them from all sides.