Is Voronezh the western outpost of Tartary?

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

Do we know everything about the history of our "Central Russian" cities? By whom and when were they founded and built? Is everything so unambiguous and transparent in this matter, as described in textbooks and encyclopedias?

I am sure that regular readers of "Kramola" are already quite well aware of what Tartaria (or "Tarkh-Tariya") is and where it was located. A great many theoretical and even practical studies on this topic have appeared over the past few years. The network "walks" a lot of photos of foreign maps of different periods, on which the borders of Tartary and the names of settlements are marked. The authenticity of some of these cards, judging by the discussions, is sometimes called into question. But despite the alleged inconsistencies in hotel details, perhaps even the most skeptical adherent of the official (Scaligerian) historical science will not deny the fact that many of the surviving "Western" maps and other documents of the 15th-18th centuries unambiguously contain information about the territorial (state) formation called Tartary.

As a person who is not indifferent to the history of his people, I try to get acquainted with the majority of versatile materials and publications (traditional and alternative) on the history of Russia. In this regard, I read many articles related to the study of Tartary, collected some collection of maps of Tartary available on the Internet. Maps, as practically the only available documentary source of information, have always interested me in the first place.

A few months ago, I printed out a couple of the most colorful (color) maps of Tartary in A3 format (European maps of 1684 and 1706) and hung them in frames on the wall in front of my desk in order to distract myself from the routine and examine the details of the images during breaks.

Once, in the process of such "relaxation", I noticed an interesting feature: the western border of Tartary (and, accordingly, the eastern or southeastern border of Muscovy) runs approximately along the line of the river. Don (Tanais) and on the map of 1706 my hometown Voronezh is marked as "borderline", and judging by the color of the fill, it is "under the protectorate" of Tartaria. I'm not 100% sure that my judgments are correct, because from the point of view of geodesy, old maps do not always correspond to "physical" reality, and the true boundaries could be shifted by tens or even hundreds of kilometers, affecting other settlements.

Below are two fragments of maps that prompted me to think:

Taking the above observation as a basis and realizing the probable error of maps of different periods, I considered that the location of Voronezh on the left bank of the Don (and the right bank of the Voronezh river), i.e. on the natural geological border of the area could determine its border status between Tartary and Muscovy. The question of the subordination of the city remained open. Was Voronezh a western outpost of Tartary? To answer this question, I began to recall the official history of the city and look for old plans-maps of urban development.

In the process of "historical and geodetic" research, I found some explanations for the spatial configuration of Voronezh within the 16-18th centuries, which allows us to understand the logic of the ancestors during the construction of the city.

So the details:

Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to find guaranteed reliable plans of a city older than the 17th century. But those reproductions (redrawings) of plans for Voronezh that are available on the network, in my opinion, are sufficient to form an idea of the shape and size of buildings in the oldest part of the city. Below is one of the variants of the city plan (roughly the beginning of the 17th century).

As you can see in the above figure, the city consisted of a central fortress surrounded by a wall and peripheral buildings and structures. The northeastern and southwestern borders of Voronezh passed along the perimeter of a natural network of gullies and large ravines, which made the city difficult to access from these directions. The eastern part ended with the river bank. The western and northwestern borders, judging by the plan and the remnants of the fortifications (the remnants of the so-called border city outpost), which have survived to this day, passed along the line of a natural (or artificial?) Geological formation - a small radial girder (or ditch) enveloping the city from the north to southwest.

If you try to reconstruct the boundaries of the city on a reliable topographic basis (on a satellite image), then, in my opinion, it would look like this:

The red line marks the subjectively assumed maximum boundaries of the main development. At the same time, from the northeast and southwest (directions are marked with blue arrows), most likely, gullies and ravines served as natural protection. It is possible that several centuries ago the perimeter of the city was also limited by the forest, from which the Shilovsky forest and the Nagornaya oak forest now remain. All this together prevented an open approach to the city from the above directions.

The northwestern border (conventionally marked in green) was, apparently, the first line of defense - a ditch and possibly a wall, as well as a checkpoint in the form of a city outpost.

Railroad tracks have now been laid on the remains of the defensive ditch (it can be seen on the satellite image). It is possible that during the construction of the railway, some sections were modified (filled in or cut off), but I consider the assumption of the presence of a defensive ditch earlier in that place quite realistic. In the photo from Yandex, you can see the "profile" of the places where the railway tracks (= earlier the ditch) in different points of the city.

As for the outpost (ie checkpoint) of the city … The name of the place "Zastava" has been preserved in everyday life. This is now the name of a small area in Voronezh, where the building of the same name was previously located. In photographs from the early 20th century, it looked like this:

After the winter of 1943, these towers were practically destroyed. The remnant of one of these structures on the street has survived to this day. Central Moscow.

The outpost, together with the surrounding moat, was the most powerful fortification of the city. Let me remind you that this defensive line was oriented to the northwest.

The rest of the directions were closed only by natural boundaries (gullies, ravines) and had no other known protective structures.

Here are overview photos of the geomorphological formations in the vicinity of the old buildings:

- southwest (Chizhovskaya gully, abutting further into the Shilovsky forest).

- North-east (descent to the central park)

- East (descent to the river embankment)

Based on the foregoing, it can be concluded that the main direction of the expected attack was the west and northwest. But the official history tells us that Voronezh was founded as a frontier fortress of the Moscow state and served as protection from the attacks of an unknown enemy from the EAST and SOUTH-EAST!

One can only wonder how our ancestors several centuries ago built fortifications from the side of their own capital (from the side of Moscow, i.e. from the rear), and left completely open the approaches to the city from the southeast, from where they were supposed to repel enemy attacks? !

There is no doubt that the city was borderline. Only now, whose boundaries did he guard?