Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, the great Russian writer, master of literature, literary classic, who made an invaluable contribution to the development and preservation of the Russian language, and they say, to world culture.
He was a literate person, but when reading one of his famous works, the majority of thinking readers should (but for some reason do not arise) fair questions to the author. Was the classic wrong, or did we miss something in the history of our country?
REFERENCE: "Taras Bulba" - The Story of N. V. Gogol. It was first published in 1835, and the familiar version, modified and corrected by the author himself, was published in 1842."
The events described in the book take place in the 15th century, if you remember. Now there are two questions that everyone who has at least a "Certificate of Maturity" should ask.
Question one: Why is Taras' nickname - Bulba?
What … And you didn't have that question? But now, have you ever wondered how such a nickname could have appeared from a Little Russian man in the fifteenth century? After all, what is a "bulb"? Bulba is sweet potato. The very etymology of the word indicates where this product came from in Little Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. As always, historians lie, attributing feats for the glory of the fatherland to Peter I. In my opinion, it is absolutely indisputable that if one vegetable has two names, then their history is different.
Sweet potato.
This is what a sweet potato looks like. The one that was brought from America.
Promotional video:
Potatoes.
And this, familiar to us, potatoes. Doesn't look like sweet potato.
The potatoes that Peter brought from Holland are potatoes. The etymology of the word is as follows: - “From him. Fartoffel, from old. Tartuffel, further from Italian. tartufo, tartufolo "ruffel" (due to the similarity of tubers, the name was transferred to potatoes imported from America in the 16th century). " I would like to draw your attention to the root "TART". A vague suspicion arises that everything here is much more complicated than it seems at first glance. Especially considering that corn in Tartary, it turns out, was known long before the discovery of America, and was brought to the territory of Turkestan from Persia.
But the etymology of the word "bulba" is different: - "bunba" potato ", Pskov., Resin., Southern., Also gulba - the same, dial., Ukr. bulba. Borrowing via Polish. bulba, bulwa, Czech. bulva from it. Bolle "tuber, bulb". Obviously, this vegetable got to Little Russia in a different way and at a different time. From Poland, and probably earlier than to Petersburg. But … Is it really so much earlier that even before the discovery of America?
After all, according to the version of historians, that the first fruits of sweet potato were brought to Europe only in the sixteenth century, how then could Taras be called "bulba"? Maybe the word "bulb" is older than the word "potato"? I do not deny. It could have been. It often happens that the meaning of words is transferred over time to another object that initially has nothing to do with the desired concept.
But it may very well be that in the sixteenth century, in fact, a sweet potato was brought from America, which we actually did not have, but ordinary potatoes, or their varieties, could well exist. And the famous potato riots in Russia were not against the forced planting of potato growing, but against the ban on traditional Russian agricultural crops. After all, Peter the First forbade the cultivation of amaranth and turnips, which allowed the peasants to have food independence.
Amaranth does not require any labor costs, and is so unpretentious that it does not matter to him what kind of summer it is, fruitful or lean. Several bushes provided bread for the whole family, for the whole winter.
A similar situation is with turnips. It is very unpretentious, in comparison with potatoes, does not require much effort during cultivation, gives a consistently high yield, is not susceptible to diseases, and most importantly, its nutritional value is several times higher than that of potatoes. In addition, turnip is also a very useful product, which cannot be said about potatoes, which do nothing to health but harm. Except for the feeling of satiety after consumption.
Now try to draw a mental portrait of Taras himself. What happened?
Taras Bulba, Right!
A bald head with a donkey on the crown, a long mustache, a shirt, wide trousers, a saber, a sash and an indispensable attribute, the same as Stalin's - a pipe!
Question two: What did Taras smoke and did he smoke at all?
Taras Bulba.
You see for yourself. Taras Bulba without a pipe - a cradle, smoky with tyutyun, is simply not a Cossack, but so …
And here nothing bothers you? And if he had not a smoking pipe, but a mobile phone (which is also popularly called a "pipe"), would that also be normal? Everyone knows from school that tobacco appeared in Russia thanks to the efforts of Peter the Great, but this is not entirely true. For the first time, the Russians saw how a person was drawn in by smoke from a pipe even under Ivan the Terrible. Around 1560, when faced with European grandees during the Livonian War, when Polish troops took part in the hostilities.
But they saw and saw. Twisted a finger at his temple, and even forgotten until 1716, when Peter, on his return from the great embassy, began to suffer without tobacco. Nowadays, few people doubt that Peter, who left the country, returned from Holland. So that's it. The one who returned from Europe with Menshikov, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, was no longer a young, malaria-sick, smoking atheist.
And in order not to carry tobacco from abroad, he decided to get his own factory. It was a tobacco "factory" (a small tobacco plantation and a factory attached to it) in the small Ukrainian town of Akhtyrka, on the territory of the present Sumy region. By the way, in Germany the first tobacco factory was founded in Baden in 1718, and the second in Berlin in 1738. These were the first tobacco factories in Europe - after the Russian ones, of course.
But! Contrary to popular belief, tobacco smoking has not spread in Russia. The tsar died - the factory in Akhtyrka also "died". And only when the Prussians poured into Russia to the court of Catherine, enterprises for the production of tobacco appeared in St. Petersburg, from raw materials grown in Little Russia (Cherkassy) and Azov (Rostov and Yekaterinodar). But there were very few tobacco users, because the common people did not accept these disgusting traditions that the "enlightened" Europeans brought them from Europe.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, for smoking tobacco by young people, more specifically - by men who do not have children of their own, they pulled out their nostrils so that a potential spouse could see from afar that it was better not to deal with this. He smokes, which means there may be health problems for her and future children. And the tobacco lobbies and the “fifth column” in Russia keep silent about the fact that those factories that were built by “labor migrants” - Catherine’s guest workers, produced…. SMOKING tobacco, not smoking tobacco.
And how was it for them to smoke, if not only moral norms put a ban on smoking, but also the criminal law prosecuted for smoking in public places. And to light something from what they could at that time, if only in 1860 the law prohibiting the free wearing of matches in the pockets of clothes was canceled !? And why matches were allowed, it becomes clear if you know when the first factory producing leaf tobacco and cigarettes appeared in Russia. In 1861. in Kiev, it was discovered by Solomon Aronovich Kogen.
Another "civilized" one brought light to the dark barbarian Russia. It is obvious that the manufacturers had their paid legislators who passed the laws they needed to enrich them. And then it began …
They smoked Narzan.
Poison advertising.
Poison advertising. As you can see, the name of Taras Bulba was also used to advertise cigarettes.
Now let's try to reflect on what Gogol wanted to say, endowing his hero with a surname impossible for the 15th century, and the habit of smoking a pipe? There are several options:
1) Emphasize his negative role as an antihero;
2) Show his belonging to the military class (in the time of Gogol, most often, it was soldiers and sailors who started smoking, during foreign campaigns);
3) The action of the story is one of the episodes of real events, but not the 17th century, but the 19th, more precisely, the "Patriotic War" of 1812;
4) Gogol was an ignoramus and a poor student.
What other options are there? I prefer the answer "3". Once again I draw your attention to the fact that the book was rewritten by Gogol. Someone demanded to fit it into the "correct" version of the official history? What could the original version have been written about? I am almost sure that if we had a genuine manuscript of the first version of the story, we would have learned a lot of new things about the true essence and reasons for the most false in history - "Patriotic War of 1812".
Author: kadykchanskiy