Yarga swastika under Soviet rule. Part 2

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A year after the publication of the article by the People's Commissar Lunacharsky, which was, in fact, the prohibition of the Russian yag-swastika, the work of V. A. Gorodtsov (1923) “Archeology. Stone period . It gives a general idea of the hooked cross, which had developed by that time in world science: meanings and meanings; continents and lands, countries and peoples of its distribution; time of historical existence; some features of the image of yarg; the importance of the swastika for the study of scientific problems, etc. The most important thing in the work, which has not lost its scientific significance to this day, was the discovery and detailed description of yargic patterns on bone sculptures of birds from the Paleolithic in the Chernigov province.

In this regard, the assessment of V. A. Gorodtsov's images of Yargi herself:

… the third bird has … on the back plane of the abdomen - a superbly designed swastika sign, drawn in the figures of the meander. The development of this mystical sign has been brought to an amazing virtuosity: it can be seen that the master has got his hands on the production of such figures to perfection. Even more amazing is the fact that the arrangement of the ends of the swastika, bent in the form of concentric spiral rhombuses, gives the shape of a cross, closely associated with the swastika, a rhombus and a meander, also associated by some researchers with the swastika sign.

In his other work, published a few years later under the title "Dako-Sarmatian religious elements in Russian folk art", V. A. Gorodtsov revealed not only the external beauty of peasant patterns saturated with yargs. Using the example of North-Russian embroidery, he was the first to define the idea of the meaning of three-part patterns with the image of Rozhanitsa in the middle. In them, he compares the folk image of Baba with the image of the world tree, the image of the Supreme Goddess, and correlates horses with yargs on their backs with the gods.

Having singled out the concept of "element" in the work, V. A. Gorodtsov, first of all, pays attention to "the most charming swastika". Yarga, repeatedly shown by him in northern peasant patterns, occupies one of the leading places in his work. It serves as a scholarly image that has absorbed folk spiritual values, a common sign of the culture of the Sarmatians, Dacians and Eastern Slavs of the 19th and 20th centuries. The sign is understood by him as a characteristic indicator of Indo-European cultures. V. A. Gorodtsov believed that in the linear patterns and, in particular, in the swastikas, the key to the problem of the origin of the "Russian Slavs" is hidden, to the explanation of their ancient Religious cult and to the discovery, if not of the primogeniture, then of the homeland from which they emerged into the borders of modern Russia … In the view of the scientist, the cross with bent ends acts as a special sign of all Aryan tribes and peoples, which have retained their ancient meaning in peasant patterns. Research by V. A. Gorodtsov is considered a classic work of Russian ethnology from the position of substantiating the idea of the Supreme Principle among the ancient Slavs and using the method of ethnic reconstructions and ethnic attributions - genus-cultural understanding, description and restoration.

E. N. Kletnova, professor of archeology, in her work "Symbols of folk decorations of the Smolensk region" for the first time explored peasant decorations (including yargu) within the boundaries of only one locality - several districts of the Smolensk region. She showed the most ancient layers of Slavic culture, which lie at the basis of the modern folk culture of the Smolensk region. At the same time, E. N. Kletnova emphasized that “the types of hook figures already known in the most ancient cultures of the East under the name“swastikas”are of particular interest.”The researcher significantly expanded the list of styles included in the circle of yargic signs and gave them her own names: "complicated" swastika; "Split" or "split", a swastika, the middle of which forms a rhombus; “The split swastika that has lost its folds” is a rhombus with “swastily bent marks”. The researcher considered the yargu as a common characteristic feature of the Smolensk folk culture and the local early medieval archaeological culture.

The meaning of the sign is determined in work based on its popular names in comparison with the position it occupies in the iconic images of women's clothing. E. N. Kletnova considers the swastika to belong to the culture of the Slavic, Iranian and other Indo-European peoples, with whom the Smolensk yarga and patterns have a direct ancestral connection. On the example of the Smolensk people, E. N. Kletnova was the first among domestic scientists to single out the most important characteristic of the image of the yaggi: "With it, wide patterns are mainly performed, but it is always inscribed in a rhombus: smooth, comb-like, even of a special kind of hook with swastily bent marks." Using contemporary materials, Kletnova showed the originality and variety of yargic outlines in the folk culture of the Smolyans, while emphasizing the connection of the former with Indo-Iranian cultures. In the work of E. N. Kletnova traces further substantiation of the views of V. I. Sizov on the direct connection of the archaeological culture of the early Middle Ages of the Smolensk region with the existing peasant culture of the region.

In the work "Peasant Art" released in 1924 by V. S. Voronov examines the connection between the symbolic content of patterns in various types of carving and painting, embroidery and weaving. The scientist studied folk art based on the materials of his numerous field studies in the Northern, Sredinny, Volga and Ural provinces of Russia, as well as in museum collections. Voronov believed that the patterns are based on those "iconographic elements, the artistic existence of which has already been counted for long centuries," and their diverse and rich meanings were "laid down in the ancient pagan times." In his opinion, the content of all patterned Russian peasant art belongs to "a symbolic illustration of the ancient religious principles of folk life." At the same time, the pictorial side of folk art was associated by him with the ancient cults of the native faith. In the yarge-cross, he saw the native-faith principle of the spiritual, religious life of the people, which, as the most ancient sign, is easily distinguished in peasant art.

The scientist admits some new influence on peasant art (especially during the reign of Peter I and later), but at the same time asserts the inviolability of the outlines, images of the most ancient signs that were always present in peasant designs. His figurative expression on the question of the antiquity of yargi and other influence is as vivid as it is meaningful:

Having separated the western jug and the eastern kumgan, we remain in front of a primitive brother with a clay barrow vessel as its prototype, and a figured skopkar in the form of a water bird, broadcasting about ancient pagan religious festivals and feasts. For a bouquet and a garland of the 18th century. the most ancient swastika is immediately visible …

So, the scientist attributes the yargu to the signs of the most ancient times. Assessing the historical depth of the main signs of peasant patterns, including the yargu, he determined several millennia of the latter's uninterrupted stay in folk culture.

The visual basis of peasant art, in particular embroidery, V. S. Voronov counted linear bright images:

Pure geometric patterns predominate in the embroidery, apparently constituting an older ornamental layer. Their main element is the ancient motif of the swastika, complicated or fragmented in an infinite number of witty geometric variations (the so-called “crests”, “raskovka”, “trump cards”, “wings”, etc.). On this motive, as a basis, the artistic inventiveness of the embroiderers unfolds.

At the same time, Moscow professor B. A. Kuftin. In his famous work "The Material Culture of the Russian Meshchera" (forbidden, by the way, in the same years), Kuftin widely used the yargu proper and the yargic signs that were saturated with ancient Slavic clothes, as well as household items of the Poochya peasants as the most important characteristic of the Great Russian people.

The main task of his work was to describe material culture and determine the ancient ancestral roots of the population of the Meshchera lowland - Meshchera.

B. A. Kuftin very vividly used the yarga when solving the issue of establishing the ancient Slavic roots of the inhabitants of Meshchera. Showing the material areas of existence of a cross with bent ends, ancient methods of weaving and embroidery, historical and linguistic data, using these characteristics, he decided the racial identity of the ancient inhabitants of Poochya. The researcher distinguished between the scientific concepts of "Tatars-Mishars" and the so-called "Meshcheryaks", who were previously considered Finno-Ugrians, referring the latter to the descendants of the ancient Slavs. Thanks to Kuftin, the image of the Vyatichi-Ryazan people - the inhabitants of Meshchera and the image of the Yarga - became parts of a single sign-tribal concept, where the cross with bent ends turned out to be a generic sign of the inhabitants of the early Middle Ages of Meshchera. Yarga was considered in it as a sign of the reflection of the spiritual native-faith culture of the people. The folk names of the cross with curved ends revealed by Kuftin connected his image with the sun, horse and snake. All subsequent generations of Soviet scientists and researchers of Russian culture recognized this work as a classic work of ethnology.

The book "The Origin of the Cross", published in 1927, examines the problems of the genesis of the prototypes of the swastika, contains important material about the existence of yargic signs among the Western and Eastern Slavs. One of its authors, A. Nemoevsky, gives in it the most valuable generalized evidence on the distribution of the yargi among the Malorussians, Moravians and Poles.

An attempt to divide the Yarga into, relatively speaking, Indo-European and "fascist-anti-Semitic" can be traced in the article of the Small Soviet Encyclopedia [MSE, vol. 7. 1930, swastika]. This is one of the rare works where the views that existed at that time on the origin of the prototype of the yargi were indicated.

Researcher M. Makarchenko in 1931 published materials of the survey of St. Sophia of Kiev. It can be seen from them that ancient masters widely used yargu and yargic images in the paintings of the cathedral. According to the results of a scrupulous study, the decoration material of the cathedral was attributed to local production, and the style of carving was characterized as "the initial stage of Kiev plastic art." In the system of medieval decoration of the Sophia Cathedral (dated 1037), like the Tithe Church, a special technique is noted - the combination of mosaics and fresco painting. This technique is unknown in Byzantine monuments proper. Consequently, in the architectural decoration of the cathedral, the original in Russia yargic pattern, made by local craftsmen, was placed.

Passed in the second half of the 20s. 20th century large scientific meetings - Ethnological Conferences - were marked by the successes of Russian scientists in the theoretical dispute of defending the historical and cultural identity of Russian folk culture. In the reports of the Conference and in other materials of that time, the problem of yargic signs was further developed. The sign of the yargi is singled out as a characteristic feature of individual items of peasant clothing: headdresses of the Nizhny Novgorod region; ponev Ryazan region. However, after the Second Ethnological Conference, harsh repressive measures were taken against the ethnologists and the direction itself (the study of Russian history and folk culture) in general (1930-1934). By the decision of the party, the study of a number of topics in Russian ethnology was curtailed, and the management of research was transferred from Moscow to Leningrad. The scientists themselves were shot, exiled, and imprisoned in insane asylums.

"Ethnology" was renamed into "ethnography". It would seem that this pogrom ended the era of studying the creativity of the Russian people. For many years, both the name of the cross with curved ends with the word swastika and its images disappeared from the topics of scientific research and publications. The ban of the People's Commissar A. V. Lunacharsky took full effect.

However, in the history of science there is a direction of research as a kind of exception, where the study of the yarga and the swastika did not stop. Throughout the Soviet era, the history of Russia-USSR was intensively studied by the powerful Andronovo archaeological cultural community, covering the vastness of Siberia, the Urals, Trans-Urals and other regions. The history of her research can be distinguished in an independent direction.

In this regard, it should be noted that simultaneously with the first articles (reports) on the Andronov culture, the cross with curved ends and its varieties becomes its constant companion. Despite the fact that most of the materials on the Andronovites were published in Soviet times, when the display of yargi and yargic signs was sharply limited, in them it acquired the indisputable status of a bright sign of the characteristics of the Andronov culture, correlated with the most ancient Aryans.

Considering the development of the views of scientists on determining the time periods of the existence of the Andronov culture, comparing the features of the latter with the cultures of historical (Scythians, Sarmatians, Savromats, Persians) and modern peoples, we see that the value of the pattern (including the yargic one) is put on one of the first places, and in some cases it is considered the main indicator of a particular type of archaeological culture when it is correlated with the culture of modern peoples.

Thus, the Andronovo archaeological community as the culture of the Aryan-Indo-Iranians is currently represented by scientists through a set of characteristic features, where the swastika with its family varieties takes a strong place as one of its main indicators.

"Khrushchev thaw" in the late 50s - early 60s. The 20th century lifted the strict ban on the study of the yargi and the swastika, which, as a result, expanded the field of study of Slavic historical and cultural topics.

In the well-known works of academician B. A. Rybakova Yarga is considered a characteristic sign of the nationality in the Proto-Slavic, Proto-Slavic and Old Russian cultures. It should be noted that, for well-known reasons of that time, B. A. Rybakov did not pay much attention to the study of the yarga, however, since the 1950s. he provides a wide scope for his followers and students in covering this topic.

An impressive picture of the spread of the yargi and other ancient signs in the medieval culture of the Slavic-Russians is presented in the monograph by A. L. Mongayt, dedicated to the history of the Ryazan land, the chronicle tribe of Vyatichi. It concludes that the marks of the pottery marks of the ancient Slavic masters, affixed on the bottoms of clay products, are similar on the gigantic expanses of the Slavic lands, and besides, "all these circles, wheels, swastikas, crosses are associated with a solar cult."

A. A. Mansurov showed among the traces of signs-met the outlines of yargic signs put down by Ryazan peasants at the beginning of the 20th century. on their lands. Discussing the meanings of the Ryazan signs, the researchers noted their initial ritual meaning.

At the same time, scientists did not associate the phenomenon of the Ryazan yaggi with any borrowings from the cultures of other peoples.

In post-war studies, the idea of the special position and significance of the swastika in ancient cultures, its belonging to the Aryan tribes and peoples, continues to develop. So, E. I. Solomonik considered the wide distribution of the yargi among different peoples as a phenomenon of borrowing. He proceeded from the idea of spreading the sign from one people, one archaeological culture to another, correlating the culture in question with the cultural achievements of the ancient Aryans and their descendants.

In 1960, one of the first Soviet works appeared, completely devoted to the meanings of the signs of the cults of heavenly bodies in Ancient Russia [Darkevich V. P., 1960]. Its writer V. P. Darkevich immediately emphasized the absence of scientific literature on the problem of yargi among the Eastern Slavs. Considering the hooked cross and other solar signs, the scientist, neither word nor thought, questioned the positive meaning of the yarga and did not put anything negative in its meaning, although for the generation of V. P. Darkevich and his scientific editors The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. remained forever alive for its terrible results.

Nevertheless, the consciousness of contemporaries did not associate the horrors of war with the sign of the yargi. Yarga, along with other signs - a cross, a circle, a wheel - is a phenomenon "so stable that it has survived as decorative elements in folk patterns (woodcarving, embroidery) to this day." The scholar emphasizes the continued existence of the yargi-cross in Russian folk culture in the second half of the 20th century.

V. P. Darkevich considered "straight" and "curvilinear" yargs to be ubiquitous in Ancient Russia in the sense of fire and sun. He compiled a table of folk-Orthodox signs of heavenly bodies found in medieval Russian jewelry, where yargic images are also widely represented. Darkevich attributed Yargu and its varieties to the ancient patterns inherent in the spiritual culture of the native faith worldview of the Russians and which have come down to modern times in unchanged forms in Russian folk culture. Thus, the work of V. P. Darkevich finally brings the yargi-cross theme out of thirty years of theoretical oblivion, opening the scientific path for its further research.

In 1963, S. V. Ivanov's "Ornament of the peoples of Siberia as a historical source", in which methodological approaches to the study of folk patterns were proposed, a significant number of ornamental patterns are presented, the yarga of the peoples of Siberia is shown, and significant material on patterns of the Eastern Slavs is considered. In his opinion, the Siberian peoples inherited the swastika from the Scythians.

The work of S. V. Ivanova firmly consolidated the importance of studying patterns as the main indicators of the antiquity of folk culture. The pattern, according to the researcher, shines through the culture through the centuries and millennia, being a connecting link of different cultural layers of folk history.

Later N. V. Ryndin (1963), A. K. Ambrose (1966), Ilyinskaya V. A. (1966), A. I. Melyukova (1976), T. V. Ravdin (1978), L. D. Pobal (1979), J. G. Zveruga (1975; 1989), G. V. Shgykhov (1978), A. R. Mitrofanov (1978), V. V. Sedov (1982), B. A. Rybakov (1981; 1988), I. V. Dubov (1990), P. F. Lysenko (1991), M. M. Sedova (1981), I. K. Frolov constantly mentions this sign in their studies: they write about it, publish its images, but, unfortunately, they very rarely explain its semantic meaning.

Materials on yarga are included in the work of Soviet scientists of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR "Russians". The hooked cross in it is associated with the most ancient manifestations of Russian folk culture. However, at the same time, thoughts about the influence of the Finno-Ugrians on the appearance of the yargi among the Russians are unreasonably stated. Since the time of V. V. Stasov, this becomes a kind of norm in the interpretation of the subject of yargi, a kind of obsession. As soon as the presentation of the material comes to a description of the phenomenon of yargic signs in Russian culture, some researchers immediately have an unreasonable reservation: borrowed from the Finns, Balts, Ugrians, Greeks, etc. Similar unreasonable reservations can be traced in modern articles.

In Soviet times, the development of the theme of interconnections and mutual influences, as well as the variety of swastika images of the animal style in the material culture of the Scythian and Thracian tribes, continues,genus-culturally related to the Aryan heritage. The jagged Scythian badges of the animal style are closely related to the Thracian items of that time. Neighboring peoples, Scythians and Thracians, had long-term close contacts in material and spiritual culture.

The results of excavations by N. V. Ryndina Novgorod jewelry workshop of the 13-15th centuries. A large number of rings with exemplary yargs were found here, indicating their mass production.

Long before N. V. Ryndina archaeologists constantly found rings with identical yargs and other things during excavations of burial mounds and burial grounds in different regions of Russia. From the first finds of such rings, their type was identified as Novgorod. Their images were constantly published.

Thus, after the so-called thaw of the 1960s, ethnography (ethnography, art history, DPI, etc.) continues to further develop ideas and methods for studying folk culture, outlined in the 1920s, where yarga and its varieties serve as an invariable means of identity of cultural formations of various level (county, territory, region) of the Russian people. During these years L. A. Kozhevnikova, I. P. Rabotnova and others research folk weaving and embroidery in the vast expanses of the Russian North. The tireless field explorer and painter Kozhevnikova communicates with Russian needlewomen who have preserved their ancestors for centuries. Studying the patterns of the Totemsky-Nikolsky Territory of the Vologda region, she found that they are based on "rhombuses, swastikas and their derivatives."

Examining embroidery among the Northern Velikorussians living in the basin of the northern rivers Pinega and Mezen, she also establishes the originality of the folk pattern, that “the motifs of the brane ornament on Pinega and Mezen are derivatives of the rhombus and the“swastika”in the most varied and bizarre versions, with many teeth and branches . Dozens of years later, this fundamental position was refined by S. I. Dmitrieva. In her opinion, “rhombus and swastika in all possible combinations” are the primordial single weaving patterns on the Mezen.

In the 70s. 20th century in the dissertation of I. I. Shangina researches the linear pattern of embroidery and weaving of the 19th century. the peasant population of the Tver province. She found that the composition of the embroidery patterns of towels is monotonous, the main signs in it are rhombuses, swastikas, rosettes and images that arose on the basis of a combination of horny processes, tridents, T-images, curls. At the same time, the researcher noted the stable arrangement of yargs in the middle of the rhombuses, which, in her opinion, are “simple and branched”.

Summarizing the nature of the location of all the described patterns - rhombuses, swastikas, S-images - she drew attention to the fact that there is nothing unusual here and that “the described rhombic ornament was characteristic not only of embroidery in the Tver province, but in general for most areas of settlement Russians . I. I. Shangina about the naturalness of the main characters she singled out (including yargi) for the majority of Russians for the first time in the post-war period was made on the generalization of such significant source material from the Russian North, which is in the priceless collections of the Russian Ethnographic Museum. It is significant that the result of the work was the conclusion about a single ancient patterned basis of the cultures of the lands of the North and Middle-Great Russians.

Fragments of the book "Yarga-cross and the swastika: folk age in science" P. I. Kutenkov, A. G. Rezunkov

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