Kievan Rus - an invention of historians

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

Objects of material culture, which are much more eloquent than crafty chronicles, could well have survived and tell us about Kiev antiquity. Archaeologists were very actively digging in the ground in Kiev, especially in the 50s of the last century. They dug up a lot of shards, pieces of iron and other small things.

And immediately they began to race to scribble scientific works in order to quickly get the titles of professors and academicians.

On the whole, they were in solidarity - Kiev is oo-och-ch-yen ancient, but in details, "the scientists differed among themselves."

To give the reader an idea of the questions that concern archaeologists, I will cite one paragraph from E. Mühle's article "On the question of the beginning of Kiev":

At first glance, everything is very convincing - the finds are very ancient and the dispute is about which period they belong to - to the 5th century. or by the VII century.

But it is worth asking historians just two questions: on what basis did they date the finds, how did they check the dates, and what do they have to do with the modern city of Kiev?

The date of minting was not set on "Byzantine" coins, and they could get into the ground much later than their birth.

It is even more difficult to determine the age in which they were used by a clay shard or a woman's earring, because the earthenware was made from the same clay at all times.

The fact that this type of shards belongs to this period, and such to another - is just assumptionsarchaeologists, often frankly taken from the ceiling.

But let's say that people lived on the Dnieper mountains a thousand years ago. What does this have to do with Kiev? Historians do not provide any evidence of this connection, and if during excavations they stumble upon a layer of sterile clay that is uncomfortable for them, then they do not comment on this in any way.

In this regard, I can give an example from the history of my hometown. The founding of Tyumen dates back to 1586, when, according to the Kungur Chronicle, the governor Sukin and Myasnaya “put the city of Tyumen”.

The dating of this event is based on a single source, which, of course, does not inspire confidence, but we will not dispute the generally accepted date. Better to talk about another well-known fact - on the site of the present city of Tyumen, there was once the city of Chimgi-Tura (historians call it Tatar and attribute its foundation to Prince Taibuga to the XIV century), which was once, allegedly, even the capital of some local khanate.

If this is so, then many shards and female earrings, arrowheads and pins should remain in the Tyumen land from the Chimgi-Turin era. They can be unearthed, dated to the 5th century. and declare Tyumen the same age as ancient Kiev, or even argue for seniority.

But archaeologists are not particularly eager to dig the soil here, since they are of little interest to an ordinary provincial town. In addition, the historical center of Tyumen is densely built up and in order to conduct archaeological research, it is necessary to demolish a hundred monuments of architecture.

Nevertheless, several archaeological monuments were discovered on the territory of the city (Tsarevo settlement, Antipinskoe-1 and Antipinskoe-2), but not very significant ones. However, if desired, they can be passed off as the remains of an ancient city, and thus make the history of Tyumen a few hundred years old.

In Kiev, of course, there were more opportunities for archaeologists - even after the war, when a large-scale reconstruction of the city was carried out, and now the same Castle Hill is empty (they want to build a model of a wooden castle on it, like the one that stood there under the Poles, which is why the name went the mountains).

Three kilometers from the city limits of Tyumen begins Lake Andreevskoe (Tatar name Indrei-kul), or rather, it is a whole system of lakes surrounded by pine forests. Here archaeologists have a lot of freedom - dig even to the center of the Earth.

And there they really found in the settlements and burial grounds a gigantic amount of shards, stones and knuckles, which dated back to the Neolithic period.

Scientific discussions are of a different scale - who says that people lived here two thousand years ago and cites fragments of a stone ax as evidence, and who no less convincingly proves that ancient hunters and gatherers lived here already five thousand years ago, backing up their version with debris a stone ax of a different shape. I, of course, somewhat exaggerate the situation, but the essence is just that.

By themselves, archaeological finds do not prove anything. If the task was to prove that Tyumen is the mother of Russian cities, the shards would go into business, and they gather dust in boxes in the basement of the local museum of local lore unnecessarily.

But exactly the same finds made on the banks of the Dnieper perform today an important political task, eloquently proving by the fact of their existence that the Ukrainians are ancient Aryans, unlike some wild Asians, half-breeds of Russians, who adopted all cultural achievements.

For "scientists" it is not the shards and bones themselves that are important, but the ability to interpret the findings in strict accordance with the prevailing "scientific truth" and political conjuncture at this stage.

The most interesting finds for archaeologists are treasures. Usually the most valuable things are buried - money and jewelry. In the old days, they even kept money in pots, so that, on occasion, you could quickly bury it. Fortunately, money was used in silver, rarely gold. How are things going with ancient Russian coin hoards in Kiev?

No way! Roman coins were found in Podol quite often. But official historiography places the era of Adrian and Marcus Aurelius far from the birth of Russian statehood and the founding of Kiev. There is no need to talk about commercial production of anything at that time either. Who hid the treasures on the Dnieper mountains and ravines? If the official chronology and dating of the coins are correct, then one can only think about the robbers.

But what about the old Russian coins? No way either. Period XII-XIII centuries. in the history of Russia "scientists" declared "coinless". Like, there was no money in use then, so it makes no sense to look for them. And what was instead of money?

Some historians give out on-the-mountain concept, stunning in its cretinism: they say, instead of coins, hryvnias were in use - silver bars. How did a common man in the street pay for a chicken, for example? And, they say, he chopped the hryvnia into pieces and paid off with these pieces of silver.

Something is hard to believe in this. The coin is an ingenious invention. It is good because identical coins are equal in weight to each other. Accordingly, they have equal purchasing power. The value of a product can be measured in terms of the number of coins of a known weight. But what if the chicken costs 0.08 hryvnia? What instrument are these eight hundredths to measure and how to open?

And who will do it - the seller or the buyer? It’s clear that the seller will cut off a little more than it should be, and the buyer measures less by eye than necessary. How will the dispute be resolved? The matter will inevitably come to a fight.

Elementary common sense dictates that small coins, once entered into circulation, will not disappear by themselves, for without them everyday retail trade seems impossible.

The technology of minting silver or copper rounds is nothing super complicated. But coins made of pure silver or gold have one very unpleasant property - they are erased during circulation. There was a coin in 12, and a year later, after passing through a hundred hands, it began to weigh 11 g. Therefore, now compact paper money is in use, which does not lose its purchasing power from the fact that someone is actively rubbing it with sweaty hands.

So, 200-gram hryvnia is a kind of large denomination bills. They were not intended to buy salt and candles in a shop, but were used by merchants in large transactions, for wholesale, so to speak, purchases. Small coins were extremely inconvenient for this purpose.

Firstly, it will take more than one hour to recount them, Secondly, coins may be badly worn. Stuck in a thousand worn coins - here's a 10% loss for you. Ingots, on the other hand, do not wear out, because they do not go from hand to hand. And they can be immediately read by weight. Something tells me that hryvnias were in circulation not instead of coins, but simultaneously with them, just as today plastic credit cards circulate in parallel with paper banknotes and old-fashioned metallic money.

Why do historians date the hryvnia mainly to the XII-XIII centuries? Then, to explain the absence of specific Kiev penalties, as money was called in the old days. Meanwhile, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary reports that the hryvnia was in use even in the 16th century. So there is no reason to tie them to Kievan Rus.

The ancient Criminal Code - the so-called "Russian Truth" - prescribes punishment for a crime in hryvnia. There is nothing surprising here, because the hryvnia is a measure of silver. Money in circulation could be different - efimkas, thalers, dinars, coins could be copper or gold.

But all of them were easily converted into hryvnia, which had a certain weight. Today, the Administrative Code calculates the amount of punishment in the minimum wage, but this does not mean that the currency under the mysterious name "mrot" is in use.

By the way, when was the document, which is usually called "Russian Truth", was drawn up? It was first discovered by Tatishchev in 1738, studying a list of the Novgorod Chronicle dating back to the 15th century. It is unlikely that this purely utilitarian text was rewritten because there was nothing to do. The entire XV century. this normative act was in use until the introduction of the Code of Laws in 1497. This period coincides with the circulation of the hryvnia.

The fact that today historians consider "Russian Truth" a monument of Old Russian law, dating back to the 11th century, should not be surprising. Any self-respecting historian will certainly age any find by 400-500 years. This is how the hryvnia moved from the 15th century. in the XI century.

If Kiev was the capital of Russia, then the prince's mint was supposed to be located there - an emission center, so to speak. Large capitals were to be concentrated in the capital, and in kind. Consequently, it is in Kiev that the largest number of treasures with Russian coins should be found.

Let us turn to special literature - the book by Ivan Spassky "Russian Monetary System".

Here is what the author writes about the so-called silver coins of Yaroslav - classified as the first known ancient Russian coins: “Only one coin was found in Kiev [in 1792], and even then not in the ground, but as a pendant to an icon, while all the others gravitate to the northwestern edge of the ancient Russian state: one was found in the ground near the ancient Yuryev (Tartu), the other - on the island of Saarema; there are indications about the find in the Petersburg province.

Where were the treasures with Kiev hryvnias found? The largest one and a half pound treasure, containing more than a hundred hryvnias, was in 1906 in Tver. So why not call the hryvnia in honor of this event Tver? Many Kiev-type hryvnias were found in the Gotland hoard (Sweden).

The fact that Kiev was the center of the hryvnia production, especially the main one, no evidence the author does not. They are generally nowhere to be found.

Spassky writes about the Chernigov hryvnia: “The chronicle has preserved a mention of the Volyn prince Vladimir Vasilkovich, on whose orders in 1288 the precious vessels of his treasury were cast into ingots.

So, several finds of hryvnias in Chernigov give a conventional Chernigov type, different from the Kiev one. And what kind of hryvnia were found in Kiev? For some reason, the authors of books and articles on archeology keep quiet about this.

And it seems to me that they find hryvnias not of the Kiev type, but of the Lithuanian one (the typology, of course, is rather arbitrary), for Kiev in the XIV-XVI centuries. was part of Lithuania. But this is just my guess, I have not dug this question deeply. The Lithuanian hryvnia is distinguished by characteristic notches on the upper part and a slightly curved but thin shape. They appeared in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as it is believed, at the end of the XIV century. and went, most likely, until the fifties of the 15th century, later the hryvnia was supplanted by regular coinage.

I came across only one mention of the discovery in 1997 of a treasure of 23 hryvnia of the Kiev type during the restoration of the Mikhailovsky Monastery. Since the case took place already in "independent" times, I will not rule out that the find was falsified.

Painfully many "Svidomo" historians have been making sensational discoveries lately - let's remember how Ukrainian-Canadian archaeologists discovered "mass" burials of victims of the "Baturyn massacre" or recently discovered a "Ukrainian" version of the Orlikov constitution, although the "Movies" in the 18th century. did not exist.

If the find has a propagandistic and political significance, then the archaeologists will find out at least Atlantis at the bottom of the Kiev reservoir. But what happens is that the monetary unit of Ukraine was called the hryvnia in honor of the legendary (of course, Kiev) hryvnia, and there is nothing to show in the museum. But soon a treasure of three kilograms of silver ingots is found very opportunely.

It is absolutely impossible to trust messages about treasures if they are not documented. It's like trusting a fisherman telling you what size fish he caught. Even if he has no intention of lying, his hands diverge by themselves a little more than necessary (two or three times). Over time, the treasures only grow in size, especially in media reports.

For example, Vlada Krapivka in the article “270 kg of money was found in the Lavra, and the“devil's treasure”was buried,” asserts that “in 1851, soldiers who were building fortifications in the area of Askold's grave discovered a treasure of Arab coins. An earthen jug served as a "safe", it was filled to the brim with gold coins (about 3 thousand), two twisted gold bracelets were added to the appendage."

But Professor Antonovich in his article "Kiev in pre-Christian times" about the same treasure reports a little differently: "in 1851, during the construction of the Pechersk fortress, a vessel was found filled with silver dirhams, in number from 2 to 3 thousand, Samanid, Abassid and Tigirid, from the end of the VIII to the beginning of the X centuries ".

This is how smartly silver dirhams turn into gold ones. Meanwhile, neither Antonovich, let alone Krapivka, had seen the treasure that the soldiers who had found it had stolen. It is believed that only a small part of the treasure was saved. Therefore, you can talk about its weight and characteristics of the coins completely calmly - no one can object.

But nevertheless, if we consider the dating of the coins to be correct, then the treasure belongs to the very dawn of the Rurik era. We are interested in the treasures of the heyday of Kievan Rus, in order to obtain evidence of the economic power of the state. But here we are witnessing a strange gap.

Only very rich people, for example, merchants and those who robbed merchants, dug treasures of money in pots and chests. And ordinary people, in the event of, as they say now, social cataclysms, holed more modest things in the gardens - earrings, rings, spoons and crosses. Actually, it is precisely such modest stash that archaeologists find in Kiev.

With merchant treasures, and even the ancients, there is somehow not particularly dancing. Let us turn to the curious article "Treasure from the ruins of the Tithe Church" by S. I. Klimovsky, an employee of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, published in the "East European Archaeological Journal" (No. 5 (6), 2000).

The article begins promisingly: "Among the ancient Russian cities, Kiev ranks first in the number of treasures found …", but then there is a description of mythical finds made in the 11th century, which are known only from the chronicles of the following centuries.

Of the reliable discoveries, the author was the first to mention the treasure discovered “in the choir of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, which was the secret monastic treasury of the 17th – 18th centuries. and numbering 6184 gold coins … . Yes, this treasure is, of course, very rich, but it has nothing to do with antiquity.

But Klimovsky is in a hurry to assure the reader that “… finds similar to the Lavra are unique, while most of the Kiev treasures date back to the 9th – 13th centuries. Among them, those that were buried in December 1240 prevail: treasures hidden by the inhabitants of the city besieged by the troops of Batu.

Are you already eager to learn more about these sensational 29 treasures of the 13th century? A great disappointment awaits you, because “most of the treasures found in the 19th century were plundered by random find; as a rule - by digging workers. But the same fate befell the largest ancient Russian Kiev treasure, found in 1842 by an amateur archaeologist landowner A. S. Annenkov.

An interesting picture emerges: the first ancient Russian treasures were plundered, mostly rumors have reached us, and the last treasure of primitive jewelry was discovered for many years only in 1955. What finds were made by archaeologists earlier, the author of the article does not report anything.

Why is the treasure dated December 1240? Probably because the archaeologists agreed so: if there are no later coins in the clay pot, then the treasure was hidden during the period of Batu's ruin. Although historians tell us about the numerous devastations of Kiev by the Polovtsy, Novgorodians, Krymchaks, Poles, for some reason these raids did not frighten the Kievans, and they did not bury anything in the ground.

And finally, almost half a century later, in 1998, archaeologists made us happy with another find. It is surprising that over the previous years, when intensive construction was carried out in Kiev, including in the historical center of the city, NOT a SINGLE treasure was found. Indeed, today the builders are the absolute record holders in finding treasures.

What did archaeologists find this time? Klimovsky in his article reports the following: “September 26, 1998 at the site on the street. Volodymyrskoy, 12, during the excavations carried out by the Starokiev expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (I. I. Movchan, Ya. E. Borovsky, S. I., 15 m.

And it's all? - the reader will be surprised. Everything, but there is nothing to be surprised at. The really valuable, they say, has already been dug up by the villain Annenkov and similar robbers - they cleaned out all the ancient artifacts, leaving only a copper dish and an ordinary washstand to rot in the ground.

One should be surprised not by this, but by the fact that the "scientists" unconditionally dated these finds from the 12th to the beginning of the 13th centuries, and by only one appearance. A similar dish, according to Klimovsky, was found in Kiev in 1892, and both dishes, according to historians, were made in Saxony.

Why do they think so? They want to think so - and they do. Probably, artisans in Kiev did not know how to make the most primitive dishes, and they had to be imported from German lands. All in all, in Kiev in the entire history of archaeological research, as many as three dishes were discovered, but found in 1984. in the burial at Podil, the "scientists" declared it to be more ancient than the other two.

I had only one question for Klimovsky: why does he connect the treasure of scrap metal discovered in 1998 with the Church of the Tithes, to the supposed location of which the find is separated by almost 200 meters? Therefore, Klimovsky answers, the dish is badly bent and scratched.

And it could bend, in his opinion, only at the moment when the walls of the church collapsed under the blows of Mongolian battering guns. Funny? This "learned" logic amused me a lot. Following her, now any spoiled household item unearthed in Kiev can be declared proof of the existence of the Church of the Tithes. After all, nothing else could break it.

Here is a vivid example of the methods of historians: they dug up 10 kg of scrap iron, and on this basis they sucked out of their finger a whole "scientific" concept "proving" the fact of the destruction of Kiev by Batu in 1240.

Coin hoards of Kiev indicate that it was never the capital of the Russian state and a large economic center of Russia.

We observe the almost complete absence of Russian coins against the background of a large number of finds of Roman coins dating from the beginning of our era (there are coins dating from the 2nd century BC) - only five large hoards of Roman coins have been found.

In one of them - "Kudryavsky" in 1874, it is believed that there were about four thousand coins, but most of them were stolen by workers who discovered the treasure.

Previously, historians agreed that Roman coins indicate that the barbarian tribes living in the Dnieper region were in vassal dependence on the Roman Empire.

Today, on the basis of the same findings, the Ukrainian "naukoznavtsy" are trying to make the date of Kiev's foundation one and a half millennia old.

But to our question about why the era of the ECONOMIC PROSPERITY of Kiev, as the CAPITAL of Kievan Rus, did not please the local archaeologists with anything, there was no answer, and there is still no answer.

It remains only to assume that Kievan Rus is an invention of historians

***

From the book of A. Kungurov "Kievan Rus was not, or What historians are hiding."