It's no secret that history is sometimes rewritten to please the powers that be. This has happened more than once in Russia. And not only over the past hundred years. Some experts say with confidence: the history of the Slavs is not calculated at all for a thousand years, as is commonly thought, but for a much longer period. And the ancient runic books from the library of Anna Yaroslavna are cited in confirmation …
RICH BRIDE
In the XI century, the Russian princess Anna Yaroslavna, daughter of the Kiev prince Yaroslav the Wise, married the French king Henry I. She brought a whole library to her husband's homeland. The manuscripts were her dowry - and, by the way, very valuable.
Departure of Princess Anna, daughter of Grand Duke Yaroslav the Wise, to France for a wedding with King Henry I.
So, on the famous Reims Gospel from Anne's library, French kings, including the latter, swore during the coronation. The rarities of Agnes, as the French called her, were for almost eight hundred years in the Abbey of Saint Vincent in the town of Senlis, which she created. But during the Great French Revolution, by the decision of the Convention, book wealth from many monasteries and abbeys migrated to Paris and became the property of the National Library of the country.
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FRIEND OF THE LAW
During the revolution in Paris, Paul Ocher lived under the name Paul Stroganov - the son of the famous Alexander Stroganov, count, senator, member of the Council of State, collector and director of the imperial public libraries. Paul Ocher was known as a Jacobin and was a member of the Friends of the Law club. Meetings of the "friends" were held in the former royal residence - in Versailles.
It was very convenient: in order to develop a constitution for the emerging republic and a declaration of rights and freedoms, club members often had to use legal documents from the royal library, located right there in Versailles.
Paul Ocher was clearly in the right place at the right time: he was appointed not only the librarian of the club, but also the curator of the royal library. However, Paul was not very interested in ancient manuscripts and books - much more he was attracted by the revolution and love affairs. His romance with a courtesan known throughout Paris made a lot of noise at one time. But his father, Count Stroganov, showed a genuine interest in the treasures of the royal library.
Is it any wonder that during his son's tenure as chief curator, a significant part of the royal library (including Slavic runic documents) was forwarded to the Russian embassy and ended up in the hands of the collegiate assessor Pyotr Petrovich Dubrovsky. By the way, after a while, by pure chance, the pseudonym of Pavel Stroganov was revealed. He was recognized as a Russian spy and expelled from the country.
THE CASE OF THE MANUSCRIPTS
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the turmoil, Ambassador Dubrovsky removed from France a rich collection of books belonging to Anna Yaroslavna. It was rightfully considered the most unique - Egyptian papyri, scrolls with texts of ancient authors, letters of French rulers, starting from the V century, Christian and Old Slavic runic books and scrolls!
Slavic runes
Soon the fame of the acquisition of Dubrovsky spread throughout Europe - his collection was compared with the collection of the Vatican itself! The newspapers vied with each other that the "hut", within the "squalid walls", contained the richest treasure of centuries worthy of a different fate. The director of the imperial libraries, Stroganov, also welcomed Dubrovsky to the "hut". He, a passionate collector, at all costs wanted to take possession of the collection for his library, but Dubrovsky refused.
In 1800, the ambassador presented to Tsar Alexander I a part of the treasures - ancient Greek, Latin, Egyptian, ancient French manuscripts. Especially for them, the sovereign ordered to build in St. Petersburg, on Nevsky Prospect, a palace called the "Depot of Manuscripts", now - the building of the Russian National Library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin. The books presented to the emperor migrated there. But there were no Slavic runic manuscripts among them.
Why? Dubrovsky hid them! And he had good reasons for that. Since the time of Peter I, the notorious "Norman theory" has been implanted in Russia, according to which Russians owe their origin and all their achievements to the alien Scandinavians and Germans. Both under Elizabeth Petrovna and under Catherine the Great, and later this theory was supported in every possible way, and all the evidence of the time that contradicted it was ruthlessly destroyed or declared forgeries.
Pyotr Petrovich, a true patriot, had no doubts: if he had handed over the Slavic runes to the library, they would have suffered the same sad fate.
But no matter how the former ambassador took care of his treasures, their fate turned out to be unenviable, just like the fate of the owner himself. A denunciation was drawn up against Dubrovsky - they say he was squandering valuable manuscripts. Was it not Stroganov's hands that was the case? Who knows … A special commission has been investigating for two years. During this time, Dubrovsky was thrown out of his apartment and deprived of his salary.
In 1816, after a serious illness, he died without waiting for the commission's conclusion: the libel was considered false. After his death, a catalog of his collection was compiled, but there were no runic books in it. Dubrovsky took with him to his grave the secret of Anna Yaroslavna's library.
FOOTING TO THE WEST?
It is assumed that the Slavic runes came to the largest bibliophile of that time, Alexander Sulakadzev. At least in his collection there were more than 2,000 of the most ancient manuscripts, and among them - invaluable. Ancient parchments, manuscripts on leather, birch bark, scrolls and books from ancient Russian Vedic temples, a huge number of Christian books, as well as Arabic, Greek, ancient Georgian books, books of the Huns, Volga Bulgars, Permians! Most of the books explicitly spoke of a completely different origin of the Russian people, to which the Normans had nothing to do. This, apparently, played a cruel joke with them!
At the end of his life A. Sulakadzev offered antiquities from his collection to the Rumyantsev Museum. A certain A. Vostokov, a graduate of the Academy of Painting and Architecture, who was an assistant to the keeper of antiquities at the Rumyantsev Museum, arrived in St. Petersburg to get acquainted with them from Moscow. Meanwhile, his real name is Ostenek, and he came from the family of an Estonian German, a descendant of a Teutonic knight.
For the Rumyantsev Museum, Vostok-Ostenek did not acquire anything, but soon became a doctor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen and a correspondent for the German Academy of Sciences. For what such merits? According to the researchers, it was he who sent to Germany some of the most valuable books, which he acquired from Sulakadzev for a pittance. After the sudden death of A. Sulakadzev in 1830, his wife thoughtlessly sold off her husband's treasures for another forty years.
VELESOV'S BOOK
During the Civil War, Colonel of the White Army Ali Isenbek discovered 43 plaques with runic Slavic letters in a plundered prince's estate near Kharkov. They were copied, translated into Russian and published abroad under the title "Velesova Kniga".
Since then, any mention of the runic books from the library of Anna Yaroslavna has caused many, including those abroad, to gnash their teeth. Why is the creation of the Novgorod Magi, which concerns the events of Russian history more than a thousand years ago, so concerned not only linguists and historians, but also politicians and even representatives of Western special services?
"Veles's book" states: the ancestral home of the Slavs and the most ancient Slavic kingdoms were located in the North Caucasus, in the Kazakh Semirechye and in the Crimea. And this is contrary to the generally accepted historical version.
Oksana VOLKOVA