Politicians refer us to history for any reason. They say she teaches, warns, determines the future. What if the Russian history that we know is a fake? Not all, but many of its events have been "rewritten". And in fact there was not even such a "classic" as the Mongol-Tatar yoke and the Battle of the Ice? Something that we believe in since childhood, as the obvious blue of the sky? Today, some historians object to school textbooks, citing primary sources. About which for fussing with the presentation of events "as it should" have forgotten
In Moscow, I happened to hear an unusual version of the history of my native state and even ask questions to the person who voiced it. And get reasoned answers. He is the hero of my material today. I often re-read the records of meetings with him in the club of regional journalism "From First Mouth". In order not to forget how, with a keen desire, events can be distorted. To remember that history is always being rewritten. But we, too, will probably learn about the current rewriting centuries later.
I represent: Nikita SOKOLOV - editor of the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, a professional historian who has lectured not only in Moscow universities, but also abroad.
Why was the "great distortion of facts" necessary?
- By 1816, the image of Russian history, created for us by the great writer and thinker N. M. Karamzin was already ready. This design, without major changes, continues to be replicated in our school textbooks, implanted in the heads of children and live in our heads.
The general construction of our historical destiny looks like this: there was a great and mighty state, the ancient Russian state. It was prosperous, people prospered in it, until the idiot princes torn among themselves and smashed the country to shreds, giving us feudal fragmentation. And then terrible disasters set in for the people. The princes fought with each other so that they could not even provide a rebuff to the terrible danger that came from the steppe. We were conquered by the Mongol-Tatars, having established a 200-year monstrous yoke. And then the great and wise Moscow princes bit by bit gathered the Russian lands, drove out the Mongols and founded a powerful state.
The scheme in this form was created for the needs of the Russian Empire, that is, an imperial state based on the Orthodox people and having an imperial ideology. But she also remarkably took root in the supposedly Marxist and international Soviet state.
There are colossal flaws in the Karamzin scheme. This is easy to verify by opening something besides a school textbook, which is designed to replicate the familiar image. Having seen the original documents of the era (chronicles, memoirs of contemporaries), monographs, you will find that this image does not fit well with historical reality.
I will give only a few glaring examples.
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There was no Tatar-Mongol yoke
- The false moment of the Karamzin scheme is the story of the Mongol-Tatar invasion and yoke. There was no fatal inevitability in submission to the Horde. This is a deliberate choice of Prince Alexander Yaroslavich, who, in alliance with the Mongols, found it more convenient to destroy the free veche cities, which he did.
It is deposited in the minds of schoolchildren that the yoke is 240 years of continuous pogrom. It's impossible. A nation exposed to this would have to disappear from the face of the earth. It did not disappear, but spread to the Pacific Ocean.
This means that the word "yoke" hides some other relationship. It is used to camouflage circumstances unpleasant for our statesmen. In addition to paying tribute to the horde in gold and blood (by warriors for campaigns), there were also legal relations with it: not asymmetric, mutual. Vassals. They do not arise, do not add up, do not form. They must be concluded.
By itself, Batyev pogrom had no legal consequences. He came, destroyed, left. After he went to Western Europe, there were not even garrisons left in Russia. I got to Italy, but it didn't seem to him there. He returned to the Volga steppes and settled in Sarai. The Vladimir prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich came to this nomadic headquarters in 1243, took the oath in accordance with Mongolian custom, and received a khan's label (certifying that he was under the patronage of the khan). This is the exact date of the establishment of the yoke.
Our textbooks interpret that the wise princes deliberately imposed the Horde yoke on our necks. They saved our blood and strength, since it was impossible to fight the Mongols. Batu's army was numerous: "The darkness of those". Darkness is not an artistic case, but an Old Russian numeral meaning 10,000. At that time, the entire Great Steppe, who sat on a horse, from young to old, could not send such an army. The calculations are closer to the truth that 30-40 thousand soldiers came from Batu. You can resist such an enemy. For example, the cities of Kremenets, Uglich, Yaroslavl, Kostroma fought off him. What is this mighty "yoke" that keeps the whole of Russia under the thumb, but cannot cope with several cities?
In fact, our ancestors in the XIII century were going to perfectly resist the Mongols. Tell me, at least in one of our textbooks there is a story about the struggle between Prince Alexander Nevsky and his brother Andrey? The latter began to create an anti-Mongol coalition in 1249: he entered into an alliance with Daniel Galitsky, began a correspondence with Rome, concluded an agreement with the Ryazan and Smolensk princes, and expected help from Sweden and Poland. The goal was not just to throw the Mongols out of the Volga, but to throw them beyond the Urals. But Prince Alexander in 1252 went to the Horde to Batu, and from there came an army under the command of Tsarevich Nevryu. Chases Prince Andrew for a long time and drives him out. After that, Prince Alexander returned from the Horde with a label for the great reign and established close allied ties with the horde.
By the way, when the Mongols are raiding Russia, the powerful Prince Alexander, instead of repelling the "yoke", beats the Swedes. Which is very strange.
The Great Neva Battle was a minor skirmish
- In fact, there was no "crusade" against Russia. There were different popes of Rome, but there were not so ignorant ones who did not know that Russia was a Christian country. To declare a crusade on Christian land is an unthinkable thing. And there was no such confrontation between Catholics and Orthodox at that time. This fad appeared only in Stalin's "Essays on the History of the USSR" of 1953, when it was necessary to prop up the Cold War that had begun with a historical foundation.
Everyone remembers the great battle of the Neva, when the great army came, led by Yaru Berger himself, the famous creator of the Swedish state. But it is known for sure that he made a trip outside Sweden once, and he was not born on the Neva.
In the 13th century, the Finnish swamps, where the massacre happened, served as a buffer zone. Now the Novgorodians will come, rob the Finns and leave, then the Swedes. We have to slap them because they rob the Finns, whom we rob. Minor skirmishes happened about once every five years. One of them was produced by the heirs of Prince Alexander in a great event.
The number of the Swedish landing was greatly exaggerated. “Many a multitude of them on many ships came with a vein and urman (Norwegians. - Auth.) And chud, and em”, - written in the Moscow Chronicle of the famous Battle of the Neva. There could not be such a composition, because the Norwegians at that time were at war with Sweden. Chud (Estonians) could not be on the Neva in any way. Yem (the Tavast tribe) at that time was at war with the Swedes.
According to various sources, from 40 to 200 knights died in the battle. This is a lot. At the time of the Battle of the Ice, only 117 knights were listed in the Teutonic Order. They would have noticed the loss of 200 people. But they have not been recorded. The small scale of the battle is indirectly confirmed by the description of the Novgorod losses in the chronicle. In the great battle on the Neva they made up … 6 people! The chronicler lists those killed by name, including the tanner's son. Probably, there were no significant losses, since a character with such a small social status was included in the annalistic list. This means that the clash is not a great size.
Archaeologists also cannot find anything at the site of the massacre. If even one sword was drowned there, it would not be difficult to find it with the help of modern equipment.
During the Battle of the Ice, there was no ice on Lake Peipsi
- A similar story - and with the great Battle of Chudskoye. From an ordinary event, the Moscow chroniclers also made a great massacre, which glorified the great ancestor of the Moscow princes, Prince Alexander and spoke of our great confrontation with Catholic Europe.
As we all remember, the story of the Battle of Peipsi on ice happened in April 1242. But it was established that in April of that year there was no ice on Lake Peipsi.
The scale of the actual skirmish is clearly not epic. The Novgorod chronicle mentions 400 dead prisoners and 40 living ones. The German says that 20 knights died and two were captured. Even if there were differences of opinion about who should be considered knights, the difference is still large.
The site of the Chudskoye battle also cannot be found. For 60 years, a lot of research has been published: hydrological, geological, geographical. There are 2 hypotheses where it could be, but there are no traces there either. At the site of any medieval battle, organics and metals are easy to find today. There is none of them.
There was no outstanding value in the Neva and Peipsi battles. The textbooks say that after the battle on the Neva, the onslaught of the Swedes was stopped. How was it stopped? We reached Vyborg. The same story with the Battle of the Ice: "This largest battle of the European Middle Ages stopped forever …" Who stopped? Why? It was just that the Moscow princes in the 15th century had to make their ancestor Alexander Nevsky a great fighter and commander and justify his alliance with the horde. And the story has been distorted.