The Polovtsi remained in the history of Russia the worst enemies of Vladimir Monomakh and cruel mercenaries during the internecine wars. The tribes who worshiped the sky terrorized the Old Russian state for almost two centuries.
In 1055, the Pereyaslavl prince Vsevolod Yaroslavich, returning from a campaign to the Torks, met a detachment of new, previously unknown in Russia, nomads led by Khan Bolush. The meeting passed peacefully, new "acquaintances" were given the Russian name "Polovtsy" and the future neighbors dispersed.
Since 1064 in the Byzantine and since 1068 in the Hungarian sources, the Cumans and Coons are mentioned, also previously unknown in Europe. They were to play a significant role in the history of Eastern Europe, becoming formidable enemies and insidious allies of the ancient Russian princes, becoming mercenaries in fratricidal civil strife. The presence of the Polovtsians, Cumans, Coons, who appeared and disappeared at the same time, did not go unnoticed, and the questions of who they were and where they came from are of concern to historians to this day.
According to the traditional version, all four of the aforementioned peoples were a single Turkic-speaking people, which were called differently in different parts of the world. Their ancestors - the Sars - lived on the territory of Altai and the eastern Tien Shan, but the state they formed was defeated by the Chinese in 630. The survivors went to the steppes of eastern Kazakhstan, where they received a new name "Kipchaks", which, according to legend, means "unfortunate" and as evidenced by medieval Arab-Persian sources. However, in both Russian and Byzantine sources, the Kipchaks are not found at all, and a people similar in description is called "Kumans", "Kuns" or "Polovtsy". Moreover, the etymology of the latter remains unclear. Perhaps the word comes from the Old Russian "floor", which means "yellow". According to scientists, this may indicate thatthat this people had light hair color and belonged to the western branch of the Kipchaks - "Sary-Kipchaks" (the Kuns and Kumans belonged to the eastern and had a Mongoloid appearance). According to another version, the term "Polovtsy" could come from the familiar word "field" and denote all inhabitants of the fields, regardless of their tribal affiliation.
The official version has many weaknesses.
If all nationalities initially represented a single people - the Kipchaks, then how to explain that neither Byzantium, nor Russia, nor Europe, this toponym was unknown? In the countries of Islam, where they knew about the Kipchaks firsthand, on the contrary, they did not hear about the Polovtsy or the Cumans at all.
Archeology comes to the aid of the unofficial version, according to which, the main archaeological finds of the Polovtsian culture - stone women, erected on the mounds in honor of the soldiers who died in the battle, were characteristic only of the Polovtsians and Kipchaks. The Kumans, despite their worship of heaven and the cult of the mother goddess, did not leave such monuments.
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All these arguments "against" allow many modern researchers to deviate from the canon of studying the Polovtsians, Cumans and Kuns as one and the same tribe. According to the candidate of sciences Yuri Yevstigneev, the Polovtsy-Sars are Turgesh who for some reason fled from their territories to Semirechye.
Weapon of civil strife
The Polovtsi had no intention of remaining a "good neighbor" of Kievan Rus. As befits nomads, they soon mastered the tactics of sudden raids: they set up ambushes, attacked by surprise, swept away an unprepared enemy on their way. Armed with bows and arrows, sabers and short spears, the Polovtsian warriors rushed into battle, at a gallop filling the enemy with a bunch of arrows. They went "roundup" through the cities, robbing and killing people, driving them into captivity.
In addition to shock cavalry, their strength was also in the developed strategy, as well as in technologies new for that time, such as heavy crossbows and "liquid fire", which they apparently borrowed from China since the time of their life in Altai.
However, as long as centralized power was held in Russia, thanks to the order of succession to the throne established under Yaroslav the Wise, their raids remained only a seasonal disaster, and certain diplomatic relations even began between Russia and the nomads. There was a lively trade, the population communicated widely in the border areas. Dynastic marriages with the daughters of the Polovtsian khans became popular among Russian princes. The two cultures coexisted in a fragile neutrality that could not last long.
In 1073, the triumvirate of the three sons of Yaroslav the Wise: Izyaslav, Svyatoslav, Vsevolod, to whom he bequeathed Kievan Rus, fell apart. Svyatoslav and Vsevolod accused their elder brother of conspiring against them and striving to become an "autocrat" like their father. This was the birth of a great and long turmoil in Russia, which the Polovtsians took advantage of. Not taking the side of anyone to the end, they willingly took the side of the man who promised them big "profits". So, the first prince who resorted to their help, Oleg Svyatoslavich (whose uncle was deprived of his inheritance), allowed the Polovtsian to plunder and burn Russian cities, for which he was nicknamed Oleg Gorislavich.
Subsequently, the call of the Polovtsians as allies in the internecine struggle became a common practice. In alliance with the nomads, Yaroslav's grandson, Oleg Gorislavich, drove Vladimir Monomakh out of Chernigov, he also got Moore, driving out of there the son of Vladimir Izyaslav. As a result, the warring princes faced a real danger of losing their own territories.
In 1097, on the initiative of Vladimir Monomakh, then prince of Pereslavl, the Lyubech congress was convened, which was supposed to end the internecine war. The princes agreed that from now on everyone had to own his own "fatherland". Even the Kiev prince, who formally remained the head of state, could not violate the borders. Thus, fragmentation was officially enshrined in Russia with good intentions. The only thing that even then united the Russian lands was a common fear of the Polovtsian invasions.
War of Monomakh
The most ardent enemy of the Polovtsians among the Russian princes was Vladimir Monomakh, during whose great reign the practice of using the Polovtsian troops for the purpose of fratricide temporarily ceased. The chronicles, which, however, were actively rewritten under him, tell about Vladimir Monomakh as the most influential prince in Russia, who was known as a patriot who spared neither strength nor life for the defense of the Russian lands. Having suffered defeats from the Polovtsians, in alliance with which his brother and his worst enemy Oleg Svyatoslavich stood, he developed a completely new strategy in the fight against nomads - to fight on their own territory.
Unlike the Polovtsian detachments, which were strong in sudden raids, the Russian squads received an advantage in open battle. The Polovtsian "lava" broke against the long spears and shields of the Russian foot soldiers, and the Russian cavalry, surrounding the steppe inhabitants, did not allow them to escape on their famous light-winged horses. Even the time of the campaign was thought out: until early spring, when the Russian horses, fed with hay and grain, were stronger than the Polovtsian horses that were emaciated on pasture.
Monomakh's favorite tactic also gave an advantage: he provided an opportunity for the enemy to attack first, preferring defense at the expense of footmen, since, when attacking, the enemy exhausted himself much more than the defending Russian warrior. During one of these attacks, when the infantry took the main blow, the Russian cavalry went around from the flanks and struck in the rear. This decided the outcome of the battle.
Vladimir Monomakh needed only a few trips to the Polovtsian lands to save Russia from the Polovtsian threat for a long time. In the last years of his life, Monomakh sent his son Yaropolk with an army across the Don, on a campaign against the nomads, but he did not find them there. The Polovtsi migrated away from the borders of Russia, to the Caucasian foothills.
Guarding the dead and the living
The Polovtsi, like many other peoples, have sunk into the oblivion of history, leaving behind the "Polovtsian stone women" who still guard the souls of their ancestors. Once they were placed in the steppe to "guard" the dead and protect the living, and were also placed as landmarks and signposts for fords. Obviously, they brought this custom with them from the original homeland - Altai, spreading it along the Danube.
"Polovtsian women" is not the only example of such monuments. Long before the appearance of the Polovtsians, in the IV-II millennium BC, such idols on the territory of present-day Russia and Ukraine were erected by the descendants of the Indo-Iranians, and a couple of thousand years after them - by the Scythians.
"Polovtsian women", like other stone women, are not necessarily images of women, among them there are many male faces. Even the very etymology of the word "baba" comes from the Türkic "balbal", which means "ancestor", "grandfather-father", and is associated with the cult of worship of ancestors, and not at all with female beings. Although, according to another version, stone women are traces of the matriarchy that has gone into the past, as well as the cult of veneration of the mother goddess among the Polovtsi (Umai), who personified the earthly principle. The only obligatory attribute is the hands folded on the stomach, holding the bowl for sacrifices, and the breast, which is also found in men, and is obviously associated with the feeding of the genus.
According to the beliefs of the Polovtsians, who professed shamanism and Tengrianism (worship of the sky), the dead were endowed with special powers that allowed them to help their descendants. Therefore, a Polovtsian passing by had to bring a sacrifice to the statue (judging by the finds, these were usually rams) in order to enlist its support. This is how the Azerbaijani poet of the 12th century Nizami, whose wife was a Polovtsian, describes this rite:
“And the back of the Kipchaks bends before the idol.
The rider hesitates before him, and, holding his horse, He bends an arrow into the grass, Every shepherd who drives the flock knows
That it is necessary to leave the sheep in front of the idol”.
