In the XI-XIII centuries, the Moscow region - then a forest, mossy land - was, perhaps, the last place in Russia, where the coals of the funeral pyres of our gray-haired pagan tradition were still glowing and burning out. At a time when a new Byzantine god was already triumphant around the victory, the land that belonged to the freedom-loving Slavic tribes of the Vyatichi and Krivichi was a kind of reserve, a taiga island, where people with enviable persistence continued to adhere to the old faith of their forefathers. All attempts of Christian missionaries to penetrate here in order to “save the Slavic souls lost in the endless forests of Vyatichi” were in vain. The chronicle has preserved the story of how the blessed Kuksha, a monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, with his disciple, who arrived here in the 12th century to bring the “word of God” to the Oka and Moskvoretsky shores,were "truncated by many pains" by the adherents of the old customs. The proud, adamant Vyatichi, who did not want to obey even the supreme princely power, continued to bury their relatives under the embankments of majestic mounds until the 13th century, dressing the dead in rich wedding clothes with many ornaments speckled with pagan spell symbols. And they saw off the dead to another world not with sad mournful crying, but with ritual, death-conquering laughter and noisy feasts, which they arranged on their graves. And they saw off the dead to another world not with sad mournful crying, but with ritual, death-conquering laughter and noisy feasts, which they arranged on their graves. And they saw off the dead into another world not with sad mournful crying, but with ritual, death-conquering laughter and noisy feasts, which they arranged on their graves.
Archaeologists call the Vyatichi burial mound burial rite, which flourished by the middle of the 12th century, the swan song of Slavic paganism. Scientists still cannot clearly explain why it was by this time, against the background of the general regression of paganism, this vivid archaic custom flashed here with renewed vigor, albeit for a short time.
However - a seemingly strange thing! - until recently, only isolated objects and finds of a pagan ritual nature were known, made along the banks of the Moskva River and its numerous tributaries among thousands of burial mounds and settlements and settlements synchronized with them. For forty years, from publication to publication, a poor idol from the village of Akulinino, near Moscow, wandered in splendid isolation - simply for lack of other material available to researchers. For a long time this was explained by the fact that such finds here “do not exist and should not exist”; even the authenticity of the Akulininskaya find itself was questioned. The learned men of the "old school" stubbornly did not recognize the presence of their ancient tradition in the Vyatichi, while artificially simplifying the answer to the "seditious" question of the pre-Christian religion of all Eastern Slavs. So,at one time at the Department of Archeology of Moscow State University, doubting students were clearly explained that, they say, paganism is not at all a culture of relationship with Nature, not unity with it and not a complex system of ancient knowledge, customs, rituals, but simply a complex of primitive beliefs in spirits nature - devil and water, to which the cult of ancestors was mingled - belief in navies and ghouls: “It is wrong to call such views a religion. Rather, it is "natural history" corresponding to the level of knowledge of that time. Taken together, superstitions represented some semblance of a worldview, but they cannot be considered a real religious cult, just as it is impossible to identify the brownie with God the Creator… "Naturally, with such an approach to the problem, there could be no question of the existence of any traces,material remnants of paganism - this huge cultural layer. Most likely, this is why none of the archaeologists tried to purposefully search for them, and if a certain curiosity came across "by accident" in the excavation, then, as a rule, this was mentioned in the scientific report only in passing …
In fact, the Moscow region is a real treasure for researchers of the history and religious beliefs of the ancient Vyatichi. As it becomes clear recently, in addition to the kurgans, there are first-class Slavic monuments abounding in pagan objects. We will tell you about similar finds in the west of the Moscow region - within the ancient Zvenigorod land. It was there that archaeologists in the capital have recently managed to make a number of truly sensational discoveries.
The surroundings of Zvenigorod have long attracted the attention of researchers. It is noteworthy that it was here in 1838 that the first archaeological excavations in the Moscow region were carried out. It all started like this …
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Local peasants, cultivating their fields along the banks of the Moskva River, every now and then plowed out of the ground and handed over to the district government all kinds of ancient objects. Weapons, outlandish jewelry, coins, shards of richly ornamented dishes - all spoke in favor of the fact that these picturesque shores were already quite densely populated by the ancient Slavs by the 10th-12th centuries, who located villages and small towns here on every convenient cape. Their main shrines - family cemeteries - they, on the contrary, tried to hide away from the coast and prying eyes. So in the upper reaches of numerous ravines and forest channels, in quiet secluded glades, small burial grounds arose; some of them grew over time to enormous sizes and consisted of up to 200 - 300 mounds. Such are, for example,the largest pagan necropolis in the Moscow region near the village of Podushkino near Odiptsovo, as well as extensive ancient cemeteries in the forests around the villages of Goryshkino and Tagankovo …
The main part of the famous Slavic settlements of the Moskvoretsky basin is small in size. These were mainly two or three-yard villages, where ordinary communal peasants lived. However, in addition to ordinary settlements, several new, atypical settlements of the X-XII centuries have been identified in the Zvenigorod district in recent years, which had a significant area and a powerful cultural layer saturated with interesting finds that are very different from the widespread rural "consumer goods". So, in a settlement near the village of Savvinskaya Sloboda, many Slavic jewelry, imported items, weight weights, and a battle ax were found. Archaeologists have studied residential buildings, as well as the remains of a religious building with a stone layout. Among other items found here, a slate spindle with a unique graffiti pattern should be distinguished. According to the author of the find,Doctor of Historical Sciences A. K. Stanyukovich, seven signs drawn on a spindle, at least five of which are solar, can symbolize the Rusal (Kupala) week.
In 2000, a fragment of a stone plate with a carved image of a winged anthropomorphic figure was found in a settlement near the village of Islavskoye. Despite the fact that only a part of the drawing has survived, the overall composition is easily reconstructed. Similar stone images are known in the collections of some museums. Until the 19th century, such items were used in peasant life as pagan amulets-amulets against various diseases of poultry and were called “chicken gods”.
However, the most outstanding archaeological discovery in recent years has been a huge Slavic settlement discovered on the westernmost outskirts of the Odintsovo district. The settlement has a really huge area - about 60,000 square meters - and occupies both banks of the Moskva River, thus dividing into the main (left-bank) upland part and the lower (beyond the river) trade and craft settlement. The mere collection of lifting material on fresh plowing with electronic metal detectors gave such results here that it is just right to revise the entire ancient history of the Moscow region !!!
In the cultural layer of the settlement, many Slavic, Finnish, Baltic decorations of the XI-XII centuries were found, including the rarest types for the Moskvoretsky basin. The unique finds include the Scandinavian fibula and the tormented grivna, as well as the silver Saxon denarius minted under the Duke of Ordulf in Ever. This suggests that the locals were actively involved in trade operations with Western Europe and distant Scandinavia. By the way, today the aforementioned denarius is the first and only early medieval European coin found in the settlements of the vast Vyatichi region.
Judging by the items and ceramics found, this settlement reached its peak in the 11th century, at a time when there was no trace of Zvenigorod, and stumps were still uprooted on Borovitsky Hill of the future Moscow Kremlin, clearing a place for the future village of Kuchkovo. The finds of seven-bladed temporal rings and other characteristic adornments made it possible to determine the ethnicity of the ancient inhabitants of this proto-city center of the Moskvoretskaya Valley: its main population was Vyatichi. But there are also Radimich, as well as earlier Meryan ornaments. A large number of pendants - amulets and all kinds of objects with pagan ornamentation, from bronze bells to pendants with a swastika, speaks eloquently about the religious preferences of local residents. However, among the finds there are several imported early Christian crosses of the Scandinavian type. Finds of amulets in the form of miniature bronze hatchets, exactly repeating the shape of combat squad axes, are associated with the cult of Perun and specific military rituals. It is noteworthy that amulets in the form of models of military weapons are found mostly during excavations of ancient Russian cities and within the main trade routes, such as the “Way from the Varangians to the Greeks”. On ordinary settlements and in mounds, they practically do not occur. Here, these and a number of other finds indicate precisely the urban character of the monument. It is also curious that most of the objects of the pagan circle found here even in antiquity were deliberately damaged - things are bent, broken, in some cases have traces of exposure to fire,which may indicate either a certain pagan rite of purposeful "mortification" of a certain thing, or the consequences of the punitive action of the adherents of the new faith, who "with fire and sword" persuaded the Slavs to abandon their "filthy" customs …
Thus, taking into account the huge area occupied by the settlement (a significant part of the cultural layer of which is located under modern village buildings, and the coastal part is destroyed by medieval quarries), as well as analyzing the material material obtained, we can say with a high degree of confidence: the open monument was the largest in Vyatichi the center of the XI-XII centuries. In terms of its area, it was three times (!) Larger than even the ancient Dedoslavl (the settlement of Dedilovo in the Tula region), where, according to chronicles, a veche of the entire Vyatichi land gathered. What kind of center it was is still unknown. Perhaps this is still not discovered until now Kordno - the city where the table of Khodota was located, either a Vyatichi prince, or an elder leader who dared to fight with Vladimir Monomakh himself in 1082-1083. Some researchers, including B. A. Rybakov, place this mysterious city somewhere on the Oka banks, within the modern Tula region, which, however, is doubtful, since by the second half of the 11th century, this entire territory belonged to the Chernigov principality, which means it was under the reliable control of the stern and decisive Monomakh, who reigned in Chernigov in 1078-1094.
It is unlikely that the formidable Vladimir, who more than once in his life fought with the steppe inhabitants and took prisoner up to twenty Polovtsian khans in another campaign, would have allowed the impudent antics of Khodota and his son within his own land. But he could well walk (as he himself writes in his famous "Teaching") for two winters on the banks of the Moskva River - to the northern, most remote and still independent part of the Vyatichi territory, where Khodota could have his own city and even a squad for confrontation the future famous Kiev prince. Judging by the already mentioned finds of seven-bladed temporal rings9 and mounds of the 11th-11th centuries, the largest number of which is not concentrated in the Tula or Ryazan limits, but in the vicinity of Zvenigorod and Moscow, it should apparently be assumed that the center of the land of the Vyatichi shifted precisely here, into the deaf and then safe forests.
Such a shift could have occurred, for example, as a result of the expansion of the Kiev princes, who in the 10th-11th centuries undertook repeated campaigns on the Oka in order to subjugate this freedom-loving and proud people, who in the end chose to go to the north of their territory, but did not accept the fate prepared for them - that the same, which befell the neighboring Radimichi, conquered by the Kiev governor by the name or nickname Wolf Tail. However, the memory of the abandoned cities of their fathers and grandfathers was still alive among the Vyatichi in the middle of the 12th century. It is no coincidence that at the veche of 1146 the Vyatichi men arrived in ancient Dedoslavl, which was then already on the territory of Chernigov. The veche was convened at the request of the Chernigov princes Vladimir and Izyas-lava Davydovich, who sought help from independent Vyatichi against their enemy Svyatoslav Olgovich. But if the Vyatichi at this time lived somewhere in the vicinity of De-doslavl, they would inevitably find themselves under the control of Chernigov. In that case, would the Davydovichs have to go to a humiliating bow? Wouldn't it be enough to give the Vyatichi elders the usual order to militia?
By the way, the next year after the congress of the Vyatichi, Dedoslavl turns out to be a gathering place for the squads of Svyatoslav and Polovtsian detachments, which then marched on the Ugra against the Smolyans, and no Vyatichi in these places are mentioned in the annals …
In the middle - the second half of the XII century, the most extensive settlement on the Moscow River ceases to exist. The end of its existence coincides with the seizure and the final division of the original Vyatichi territory by the Chernigov, Smolensk and Vladimir-Suzdal princes and with the emergence in the Moscow region of the first princely outpost cities - Moscow, Zvenigorod, Mozhaisk, Kolomna, etc. Most likely, it was the external aggression that carried out side of these border fortresses, and was one of the main reasons for the desolation of the Vyatichi settlement, which found itself at the junction of three hostile states. Archaeologists have just begun to explore the ancient Slavic city, but he has already begun to present them with unexpected surprises. So, quite by accident, in the very first excavation, scientists stumbled upon the remains of a large necropolis, with burials,where they discovered luxurious ancient jewelry. Pagan cremations, the remains of ritual funerals, the unique burial of the sacrificial horse, and much more were investigated. In one of the upcoming issues of "Russian Tradition" we will certainly tell our readers about the new discoveries of archaeologists studying this interesting monument of our culture.
Alexey Borunov