M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “The History of a City”: description, characters, analysis of the work

Of course he was a genius. To think about such things in the 30s...
Here are his busts-reconstructions of the external appearance of historical characters from the Timiryazev Museum (sorry for the glare, but we had to shoot there almost secretly, photography is now strictly prohibited there).”

For example, this is what Ivan the Terrible looked like:

Fyodor Ioannovich, his son.

Irina Godunova, Fedor's wife

Elena Glinskaya, mother of Ivan the Terrible

Sofia Paleolog, paternal grandmother of Ivan the Terrible. From her he inherited “such characteristic features as a large hooked nose and thick lips, which gave his face a repulsive, seemingly grumpy expression.”

Tamerlane

“Most likely, the body was embalmed before burial, but the mummy collapsed due to dampness. The remains belonged to a large man with a powerful build. The skeleton revealed pathological changes in the elbow, knee joints and index finger. The skull contains remains of hair, a mustache, a beard and a right eyebrow. The hair was red with graying. This corresponds to the testimony of contemporaries, according to which he was red-bearded, tall, extremely strong and had a limp on his right leg with a withered right arm after being wounded.”

Shahrukh and Ulukbek, son and grandson of Tamerlane

Chronicler Nestor

Ilya Muromets

“Studies of the relics showed that the monk was an exceptionally strong man and had a height of 177 cm (above average height for the Middle Ages). He was found to have signs of a spinal disease (the epic Elijah could not move from birth until the age of 33) and traces of numerous wounds. The cause of death was probably a blow to the chest from a sharp weapon (spear or sword). Death occurred at the age of about 40-55 years. It is believed that he died during the capture of Kyiv by Prince Rurik Rostislavich in 1204, which was accompanied by the defeat of the Pechersk Lavra by the Polovtsians allied with Rurik.”

Andrey Bogolyubsky

“The skeleton, presumably considered the remains of Bogolyubsky, was accurately identified by comparing it with the description of the wounds inflicted on the prince during the murder. When reconstructing the face, Gerasimov noticed that the skull was of the Slavic type with an admixture of Mongoloid features, which is explained by Andrei’s Polovtsian mother. During the restoration, Gerasimov also took into account the fusion of his cervical vertebrae and gave a peculiar fit to the head.”

The question of fiction and historical truth in A. S. Pushkin’s story “The Captain’s Daughter” was one of the first to be raised by censor P. A. Korsakov: “Did the maiden Mironov exist and did the late empress really have one?” The writer’s answer was unequivocal: “The name of the girl Mironova is fictitious. My novel is based on a legend that I once heard, as if one of the officers who betrayed his duty and joined the Pugachevsky gangs was pardoned by the empress at the request of his elderly father, who threw himself at her FEET. The novel, as you can see, has gone far from the truth.” Pushkin emphasized that fiction predominated in his work. Thus, the writer “suggested” to the benevolent censor how to avoid difficulties associated with the ending of the story. The fact is that in historical works, especially those depicting members of the reigning family, documentary evidence was required. But if the narrative on a historical theme was based on “poetic fiction,” such a requirement was not made.

In the process of working on the work, the author carefully studied historical documents and eyewitness accounts. But it should be understood that “The Captain's Daughter” is not a historical novel. There is no need to depict the life and morals of those times. Historical figures (Pugachev, Catherine II) are glimpsed in a few scenes. The main attention is focused on the events of the private lives of the Grinevs and Mironovs, and historical events are described only to the extent that they touched the lives of these ordinary people.

Pushkin cites one of the real facts of life in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the story. So, the writer says that young Grinev was registered as a sex worker even before he was born. This is a confirmation of a historical fact: according to the decree of Peter I, the sons of nobles, in order to receive an officer rank, had to serve as privates in the guards regiments. But later the order changed: the nobles began to enroll their children in regiments as corporals, non-commissioned officers and sergeants, and then kept them with them until adulthood. At the same time, promotion to ranks began from the day of registration.

There are quite a few such real life facts in the story, but we are primarily attracted by the images of real historical figures. Researchers of Pushkin's work emphasize the artistic perfection of the story, strict, sober reality and historical impartiality. According to M. Tsvetaeva, Pushkin’s Pugachev is “a molded man, a living man.” Naturally, the author does not shy away from poetry: for the first time in the story, Pugachev suddenly appears before the reader from the muddy darkness of a snowstorm, like some kind of mythical spirit of thunder and storm. At the same time, he is a simple runaway Cossack, a half-naked tramp who has just drunk his sheepskin coat in a tavern.

Having gained power over the Cossacks and declaring himself Peter III, Pugachev changes his appearance. Now he must look and dress like a king: “He was wearing a red Cossack caftan trimmed with braid. A tall sable cap with golden tassels was pulled down over his sparkling eyes." Meanwhile, Pushkin’s description of Pugachev’s clothing corresponds to the clothing of a Cossack; it does not contain any elements of royal clothing.

The description of Pugachev’s reprisal against Captain Mironov also corresponds to reality. While working on this episode, Pushkin used the stories of an old Cossack woman, a witness to real historical events. However, in his notes on these stories, Pushnin did not include everything that he heard.

In describing the empress, Pushkin used her famous portrait by Borovikovsky. This was the writer's trick. 1Gutshin had a rather difficult attitude towards Catherine’s activities. For example, he condemned favoritism, as a result of which upstarts and sycophants came to power. Taking a well-known portrait as a basis, the writer seemed to abdicate responsibility for the depiction of the reigning person.

On the one hand, the image of Catherine seems episodic: she exists only to bring the rather complicated story of the main characters to a happy ending.

All that has been said can be summed up in the words of the writer V. A. Sollogub: in the story “The Captain’s Daughter” A. S. Pushkin “did not allow himself to deviate from the connection of historical events, did not utter an extra word, - calmly distributed all parts of his story in due proportion, approved his style with dignity, calmness and laconicism of history and conveyed the historical episode in a simple but harmonious language.”

Each of us is literally crammed with historical information. We gleaned this information from textbooks, radio and television programs, books and newspaper articles. It is often almost impossible to understand this information, because over several centuries it has received its mutual agreement, forming a monolith of historical knowledge, or rather pseudo-knowledge, as well as the entire huge volume of the material itself. It is worth noting that history these days is studied by era and by country. This was probably done unintentionally, but this approach does not allow modern people to see the whole thing. Instead, he sees a patchwork quilt, sparkling with holes of unknowing. Therefore, we have to trust authorities. Is it just the authorities we trust? And are they right in everything? And isn’t there something behind them that prevents us from critically thinking about our past? It turns out that there is a way to verify the truth of certain statements of historical science. This turned out to be possible not for historians, but for specialists from another field of knowledge, namely mathematicians.

Mathematics is the queen of sciences

As a result of many years of work, a group of Russian mathematicians from Moscow State University created several new historical texts for research. The effectiveness of these methods was tested on fairly large, reliable material from the Middle Ages and the period of modern history, that is, the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. These methods were then applied to chronicles that historians date to the early sixteenth century AD. When studying these documents in world history, repetitions and three chronological shifts were discovered. For approximately 330 years, 1050 and 1800 years. As a result of these shifts in history, duplicates of a number of historical figures of ruling dynasties and even entire historical eras appeared. It was found that different ,describe the same events. With the help of research by mathematicians, it was possible to identify these historical twins. As a result, they constructed a new chronology scale, which is very different from the Scaliger-Pictarius scale generally accepted today.

This new timeline or map, as scientists call it, has given traditional historians a very unpleasant shock. It turned out that history was not what is commonly believed. Historians refused to believe her. And the authors of the new chronology had to build a new, real version of history themselves. That is, to reconstruct the history of a new chronological scale. The existing version of history before the seventeenth century is monstrously distorted. These mistakes were made by chronologists of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. At the same time, along with unintentional errors, major distortions were made that border on falsification. As a result, mathematicians managed to restore the true history before the seventeenth century. The completion of this activity of creating false history lasted until the nineteenth century.

Now let's see what the new chronology outlined by Russian mathematicians looks like. Let's walk through centuries of history.

10th century

No information has reached us about events earlier than the eleventh century AD. There was probably no writing at that time. It appeared only in the tenth and eleventh centuries AD. The era before the eleventh century must be imagined as a primitive era at the dawn of civilization. Probably, at that time people did not yet know how to build any significant structures, much less buildings, so they lived in caves or dugouts. Only the primitive primitive tools of these people have survived to this day. Shards, bones, flint tools, knives, stone arrow and spear tips, from mammoth bones and predator teeth. Today all this is exhibited in museums, halls dedicated to primitive man, who supposedly lived many, many centuries and even millennia before our era. But, despite the lack of written information, modern historical textbooks contain many details about the life of people in the era earlier than the tenth century AD. Textbooks tell about the legendary Sumerians, about the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and America, about the luxurious ancient culture of Egypt during the time of the pharaohs. The Trojan kingdom and the famous Trojan War, supposedly from the thirteenth century BC, are described in great detail. Enlightened ancient China, great ancient Rome, mysterious ancient India, ancient Assyria, Syria and Persia, as well as the ancient biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And as we are told today, all this existed in an era earlier than the tenth century AD. It is not true. All this really existed, but only after the tenth century AD, that is, in the last millennium of our history. The real written history of the world turned out to be much shorter.

11th-12th century

The most ancient kingdom was ancient, or old Rome. The capital of this ancient African kingdom was located near the mouth of the Nile. Subsequently, this city began to be called Alexandria. Today we have practically no information about this kingdom. This is probably where writing originated, first in the form of hieroglyphs. That is, people at that time wrote with pictures. Conventionally, we will call Alexandria the first Rome. There were no Cyclopean buildings known to us today in Egypt. There were no pyramids and sphinxes, temples and obelisks. All of them will be erected much later, in the era of the fourteenth, sixteenth centuries AD. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the capital of the kingdom was moved to the Bosporus, where the city of Yoros arose, located on the outskirts of modern Istanbul. Let's call it the second Rome. It was also the Jerusalem of the Gospels, ancient Troy, medieval Constantinople, it was also the medieval Constantinople, it was also the modern Turkish city of Istanbul. It should be noted the excellent strategic position of this city, its powerful military fortifications, significant remains of which have survived to this day.

The power of the second Rome extended to many regions of the west and east. Themes, that is, the provinces of Byzantium, were located here. Such provinces were Egypt, Rus', the territory of Western Europe, where Germany, Italy, France, Spain and other states would subsequently arise. The Second Rome, also known as Jerusalem, the holy city, was at that time the generally recognized religious center of the kingdom. All themes were united by a common Christian religion. Independent local history in themes was practically not recorded at that time. were carried out only in Constantinople - the capital of the Christian kingdom. And they mainly reflected events of interest only to the capital itself.

In the twelfth century, important events took place in this new Rome that were later recorded in the gospels. , his earthly life, crucifixion and resurrection. The crucifixion of Christ took place in 1185 on Mount Beykos, which is located on the outskirts of modern Istanbul. In the era of Christ, that is, in the twelfth century, Rus' immediately and fully adopted Christianity. And not in a thousand years, as Scaligerian history assures us. The Russian Tsar Vladimir, that is, the ruler of the world, his mother, Queen Malka, and his chief military leader came to worship Christ. In the gospels they are described as three wise men under the names: Volkosar, Melchior and Caspar. In their honor, the huge Cologne Cathedral was erected, in which the famous sarcophagus of the Magi was placed. Thus, the events described in the gospels took place not far from Constantinople in the city of Yoros on the eastern bank of the Bosphorus.

The city in modern Palestine, called Jerusalem today, was in fact made in a rather desolate area of ​​the Middle East from a small Arab settlement no earlier than the eighteenth century, or even the nineteenth, and declared a center of worship. But it has nothing to do with the Evangelical events.

The execution of Christ in 1185 Yoros caused a violent reaction, both in the capital itself and in the theme areas of the Aramean Empire. Especially in Rus', which was the homeland. At the end of the twelfth, beginning of the thirteenth centuries, it was Rus' that led the crusades that moved to Constantinople, with the aim of avenging the execution of Christ and punishing the guilty.

13th century

In 1204, Constantinople was captured during the crusade. The city was plundered and burned by the crusaders, that is, the Horde Cossacks and their allies. They are the ancient Achaeans, the Greeks described by Homer in the Iliad. The Achaeans were led by the so-called ancient Achilles, also known as the Russian-Horde prince Svyatoslav. This event went down in history as the legendary Trojan War, reflected in many documents also under the names: the Taquinian War and the Gothic War.

In the Scaligerian history of the Middle Ages, this same war is well known under the collective name of the crusades of the thirteenth century. Capture of Constantinople in 1204, then fall of Constantinople in 1261. In fact, the Trojan War was a series of separate bloody wars. The Great Trojan War in the thirteenth century AD was the first world war of the Middle Ages. It was a war between east and west. It predetermined the development of world history for several centuries to come.

With the fall of Constantinople and Jerusalem at the beginning of the thirteenth century AD, severe turmoil began in the Aramaic kingdom. The exodus begins. The flight and at the same time the invasion of various eastern groups from the capital region of the collapsing Aramea. They settled in different countries of Europe and Asia. Representatives of the royal dynasty of the Arameans also fled from the capital to the provinces of the former empire. Some of them did not want to come to terms with the loss of supreme power and began to fight for. According to the ideas of the Aramaic kings, who had a pronounced religious basis, their royal family had the full right to own the entire world. And not only the already known lands, but also all those that will be discovered in the future. They considered this right as a sacred and ancient property belonging to them by inheritance, which, due to temporary reasons, was illegally taken away from them, and which needed to be returned.

As a result, several states arose that considered themselves the successors of ancient Aramaea. For example, the Nicene Empire. In ancient times, the capital of this empire was the modern Turkish city of Iznik.

One of these states was Vladimir-Suzdal Rus' with its capital in Rostov the Great. The Vladimir-Suzdal, then Rostov, kings were representatives of the Aramaic dynasty, expelled from Constantinople during the collapse of Aramea at the beginning of the thirteenth century. They, like other representatives of the dynasty, began the struggle to restore the empire. But only they managed to create, partly military, partly peacefully, a powerful multinational state that covered the Volga region and the northern Black Sea region. By the end of the thirteenth century, a strong tsarist power emerged in Rus', relying on the country’s enormous natural wealth and resources, as well as on its strong and numerous army - a horde, the backbone of which was the cavalry troops - the Cossacks. Thus, in Vladimir-Suzdal Rus', the metropolis of a new empire arose - the heir of the previous, Aramaic one. It was Rus'-Horde, or the Great Mongol Empire.

There was no Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus'. There was no successful invasion of foreigners into Rus'. What is today declared as the Mongol-Tatar enslavement of Rus' was the unification of Russian principalities and the strengthening of tsarist power in the country.

In 1261, the ruler of Nicaea, with the help of the allied troops of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus', took Constantinople by storm. The great Mongol invasion began from the east from Vladimir-Suzdal Rus' to the west. This invasion predetermined the outcome of the Trojan War.

14th century

The final formation of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus' took place under the Grand Duke and Great Khan Georgy Danilovich. Today we also know him as Genghis Khan, or Bu Khan, in foreign sources. The armed forces of the state were called the word “Horde”, which in the old Russian language meant a large military association, an army. The word “horde” was also used to describe the armed forces as a whole. Due to the fact that the state had unlimited supplies of horses from the herds of the steppe, it was able to create a huge cavalry army. Since the horses needed food, the army was necessarily nomadic. To maintain the army, the rest of the country's population was subject to tribute - tithes. At the head of the state was a king with unlimited power - an autocrat. The capital region of the state was Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'. At that time it was called Veliky Novgorod and under this famous name it was included in the chronicles. The center of administrative control was reflected in the chronicles as Yaroslav's Court of Veliky Novgorod. Fortified royal headquarters were located at different times in different cities: in Rostov the Great, Kostroma, Vladimir, Suzdal, and some other cities. Today we call the collection of these ancient Russian cities the Golden Ring of Russia.

By the end of the first half of the fourteenth century, during the reign of Ivan Danilovich Kalita, Rus'-Horde began the development and colonization of Eurasia and moved its troops in a western direction. Russian cavalry troops invaded Europe on a wide front. As a result, much of western Europe was colonized. The result of the aggressive campaigns of Grand Duke Georgy Danilovich, and then his brother Ivan Danilovich Kalita, in the first half of the fourteenth century, was the emergence of the great Mongol Empire with its center in Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'. Tsardom of Russia is a Russian term, and Mongol Empire is a Western European term for the same state. In Russian sources, the worldwide empire was simply called - All Rus' or the Russian Kingdom. In foreign ones - the Mongolian, that is, the great empire.

In the fourteenth century, Ivan Kalita, who ruled the empire from 1328 to 1340, founded Rome in Italy, both as the center of secular and religious power in Western Europe, as well as the institution of popes. Ivan Kalita was both a king and a high priest, a caliph. In the West he left behind many memories, which over time became overgrown with legends and myths. For example, about the medieval king-priest Prester John. Due to the mistakes of the chroniclers, he was described on the pages of world history several times under different names, including under the name of Batu Khan. Thus, the first half of the fourteenth century is the beginning of the conquest of the world. During this time, the great Mongol Empire spread its influence over a vast territory of Eurasia and America. Moreover, this was not a military operation, but a more or less peaceful colonization of large spaces. The small tribes and nationalities living in these territories could not offer serious resistance to the Cossack imperial troops. New large states and kingdoms arose on the colonized lands. For example, the Great Mughal Empire of India, the Mongol Empire in the territory of modern China, the Maniliuk kingdom in Egypt, the Samurai kingdom in Japan, and finally, the famous May and Incas kingdoms in America.

This conquest was the first wave. It must be said that at that time, it was not so much about the military conquest of distant lands, inhabited mainly by wild tribes or not inhabited at all, but about their development and inclusion in the empire. According to some ancient sources, most regions of Eurasia and Africa in that era were sparsely populated, so the troops of Rus'-Horde, uncontrollably spreading in all directions from the Volga, settled on as yet undeveloped lands and created new cities, settlements, and cultures there. For example, the Horde development of India of that era is known to us from ancient sources, as the appearance of the famous Aryans here and the creation of the Aryan-Indian civilization in Hindustan. And the Cossacks who came to Egypt founded the Manilyuk dynasty there. Then they were described in the history of the so-called Ancient Egypt, under the name of the ancient Hyksos.

Numerous ancient chronicles tell about this as the dispersion of peoples. Like the great migration of peoples. How about the great Slavic conquest. How about the emergence of Babylon.

At the end of the fourteenth century, turmoil began in Rus'-Horde. In 1380, a bloody battle took place between the troops of Dmitry Donskoy and the troops. The capital of the royal headquarters of Dmitry Donskoy at that time was Kostroma, and it itself took place on the site of modern Moscow, where the Yauza flows into the Moscow River. At that time, the city of Moscow was not here yet. This battle was a battle for the final acceptance of Apostolic Christianity as the official religion of the entire Mongol Empire. Subsequently, on the site of the Battle of Kulikovo, Dmitry Donskoy founded the city of Moscow.

15th century

After about a hundred years of the existence of the Russian-Horde Empire, its rulers were faced with new, unprecedented problems. As a result of state construction, a network of good roads was built over vast territories. Along established caravan routes throughout Eurasia, epidemics began to easily spread, which from time to time broke out in the south of the empire. Deadly diseases: plague, cholera and others became an inevitable price to pay for the unification of vast territories of Europe, Asia, and Africa under one rule. There was only one way out - the introduction of administrative boundaries on the territory of a huge empire. The first center - Yaroslavl, also known as Veliky Novgorod, became the center of Rus'-Horde. The second center is Istanbul on the Bosphorus. Constantinople became the center of part of the Great Ottoman Empire, Atamania. At the same time, Constantinople regained its former significance, which it had in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of our era. At the same time, a decision was made to force quarantine cleansing of areas where the epidemic prevailed. Such areas, according to the central government, were the lands of western and southern Europe. Cossack and Ottoman troops were sent there with a cruel order to destroy the sick population of these territories and repopulate all these lands. This huge operation is known today as the Ottoman-Taman conquest, it is also described in the Bible as the conquest of the promised land in the book of Exodus.

Thus, in the fifteenth century, Rus'-Horde was forced to send troops to the south and west for the second time. This was the second wave of conquests, that is, the conquest of previously subjugated territories, in which, starting from the fourteenth century, there were already armed forces of local rulers, governors of the horde, who did not want to be destroyed. However, the quarantine purge was carried out forcibly and very consistently. New governors were installed in the re-conquered lands of Europe and Asia. In Russian history, the trace of these events remained as a large-scale distribution of Novgorod lands to boyars, children of boyars, nobles and even the best slaves.

As a result, on the site of the ancient Aramaic empire in the mid-fifteenth century, the Ottoman-Atamanian empire arose. An empire allied with Rus'-Horde, with its center in Istanbul. By the way, the very name of the atamans, the family name of the sultans, comes from the well-known name - Hetman ataman. This was the name of the progenitor of the Ataman Sultans. At the same time, Western Europe and all of Eurasia in general are still under the rule of the great Mongol Empire. Europe, apparently, was somehow divided between Russia-Horde and Ottomania-atamania. At the same time, Europe, like other territories of Eurasia, paid tribute to the central government. Historians call this tribute a tribute to the Sultan.

At that time, each country in Western Europe had its own Horde governor, the king. The governors were subordinate to the central government of the great Mongol Empire, that is, the emperor. The word “Emperor” was used by Western Europeans to call the great Tsar Khan of Rus'-Horde, who ruled in Veliky Novgorod, far from them. There was one empire, and the emperor was, naturally, alone. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a religious split of the previously united Christianity into several large branches and religions began to emerge in the empire. Namely, Orthodoxy, Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism and Judaism. They will acquire these names only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus, all the main religions known today came from one root - from the single Christianity of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This explains, in part, the conclusions drawn by the large school of nineteenth-century scholars working in the field of so-called comparative religion. After processing a huge amount of material, they discovered amazingly many similarities between all these religions. But being shackled hand and foot by an infidel, they decided that Christianity had absorbed numerous elements of supposedly earlier cults. Actually this is not true. On the contrary, the former united Christianity, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was divided into several religions, each of which, naturally, inherited a significant part of the former cult, modifying it. At the same time, the previous common symbolism was also divided. The wide cross began to be used mainly by the Orthodox Church. The narrow cross is Catholic. The six-pointed star is one of the forms of the cross - in Judaism. A crescent with a star is also one of the forms of the cross – Muslim. The Gospel was most likely written at the end of the twelfth century AD, or at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The rest of the Old Testament was created in a later era. These books were edited and written until the mid-seventeenth century AD.

16th century

In the sixteenth century the empire reached the highest point of its power and prosperity. Its capital, after Yaroslavl Veliky Novgorod on the Volga, became Moscow. Instead of the previous small settlement on the territory of modern Moscow, a grandiose construction project began, on which the best architects, called from various provinces, worked. First, an underground city was built in an open way, then it was covered with ceilings and a surface city was erected - Moscow. This gigantic construction made a deep impression on contemporaries, and was described on the pages of many so-called ancient sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Herodotus describes sixteenth-century Moscow as an Egyptian labyrinth. In the Bible as the restoration of Jerusalem. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the Kazan kingdom, also known as the famous Khazar Kogonat, became the center of the Jewish religion. The Kazan Tsar, that is, the Khazar Kogan, and his court adopted Judaism. After this, Kazan tried to secede from the empire. In 1552, Tsar Khan Ivan the Terrible brutally suppressed the Kazan rebellion. One should not think that medieval Kazan and Khazar Judaism and modern Judaism are one and the same. Many modern concepts had a completely different meaning in the Middle Ages. Jew - meant one who glorifies God. And the Jews in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries called Ottomania - Atamamania with its capital in the evangelical Jerusalem-Istanbul. In an era of religious disagreement, any part of the provinces of the empire could call itself Israel in order to emphasize its rightness in a religious dispute. First of all, the word “Israel”, that is, a fighter for God, was a religiously charged name in the Russian empire of the Middle Ages.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, a revolt of the Horde governors broke out in Western Europe, who no longer wanted to obey the distant Tsar Khan of Veliky Novgorod and wanted to become independent rulers. Religious separation from the empire was chosen as the ideological basis of the uprising. Lutheranism, which arose in the West, was used by rebel reformers as a reason for political separation from the empire. Having suppressed the rebellion in Kazan, Rus'-Horde turned its gaze to the seething west. It was decided to send punitive troops there. In Russian sources these events are known as the beginning of the Livonian War. Lithuania was actually the name given to all of Western Europe. Historians later portrayed the matter as if it was about some small modern Lithuania in the Baltic states. In fact, the Great Empire in the sixteenth century sought to bring all of Western Europe into submission, and only then did historians try to portray the matter as if the campaign was not directed against all of Western Europe, but only against small modern Lithuania in the Baltic states.

Preparations began for a major punitive campaign in Western Europe. But at this moment in the capital of the empire, which grew into terror and oprichnina. According to research, the name “Ivan the Terrible” alone actually represents four successive kings in Russian history. Later, historians slyly united them under one name and called them.

18 century

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, all centers of resistance of the old Mongol dynasties were suppressed. So, for example, the Horde civilizations in America were drowned in blood by the troops of Western European reformers who invaded here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Then Western historians shifted all the cruelty of this operation in time by about two hundred years down to the fifteenth century and retroactively attributed it to the era of the Horde-Ottoman colonization of America, slyly calling the previous and rather peaceful Horde colonization of the fifteenth century the bloody Spanish conquest. Thus, they secretly recolored the paper from white to black and vice versa. They shifted their atrocities onto others.

At the end of the eighteenth century, a famous one occurred. These events of 1779-1775 were not at all a simple suppression of the peasant-Cossack uprising, as they explain to us today. This was a real major war between the Romanovs and the last independent Russian-Horde state, Great Tartary, the capital of which was the Siberian city of Tobolsk. Only after winning the war with Pugachev did the Romanovs gain access to Siberia for the first time. And only after this the Americans first gained access to the western half of the North American continent and began to quickly capture it. But the Romanovs were not asleep either. At first they managed to capture Alaska. However, they were ultimately unable to keep her. As a result of the victory over Great Tartaria on the ruins of the Horde empire in America, the United States of America arose. The final division of the empire ended in the nineteenth century. This feast of the victors was completely erased from the pages of textbooks and history.

Even into the eighteenth century, the rule of the Romanovs remained largely an occupation of Russia by foreigners. The well-known serfdom was introduced by the first Romanovs and was nothing more than the enslavement of the population on the lands of the former metropolis conquered by foreigners. Centuries-old traditions were broken and... There was an attempt to carry out a deep church reform, which fortunately was not crowned with success and only led to a schism, but not a division of the Russian Orthodox Church. And only many years later, towards the end of their reign, the Romanovs changed, as if mutated under the influence of many factors of Russian life and turned into Russian tsars in spirit.

Russia, occupied by Western Europeans in the seventeenth century, largely absorbed the original Western European Romanov regime. After the war with Pugachev, having strengthened their position on the throne and finding themselves at the head of a huge country, the Romanovs felt like real masters of a large and rich state. They emerged from the subordination of their former masters in the west, and decided to revive in the broadest sense of the word.

History must become a science

A person who hears for the first time about the new chronology of Fomenko and Nosovsky has a hard time. Understanding the history is quite difficult, not to mention the amount of information that has to be absorbed is too large. However, a correct understanding of the past is so important that it justifies any investment of time in acquiring new knowledge. Much of what is happening today becomes clear only after we find out. A revolution has matured in history, similar to the revolutions that took place in natural science. Humanity cannot afford to stagnate in one place indefinitely, especially when the real prerequisites for revising established dogmas have matured. A change in our understanding of the past is inevitable and necessary, because a correct understanding of history affects so many things. It lies unconsciously at the basis of much knowledge: climatology and earthquake forecasts, understanding of population and sociology, linguistics and cultural studies, psychology and many others. The new chronology eliminates a large number of secrets and mysteries, finding simple and natural explanations for them. The chronology and history up to the eighteenth century AD lays the foundation for many political concepts and ideas of our time. For example, all territorial disputes are based on who previously lived on this or that land. These conflicts and disputes have their roots in chronology. If the chronology changes, the territorial claims will also change. Modern religions have a single source, and understanding this should serve to eliminate the painful contradictions that have arisen since the Reformation. When the empire was divided into parts of the province, various branches of Christianity appeared. Certain differences in Christian beliefs were present even before the split of the empire. But they were not so acute that a single religion split into several beliefs that were so different from each other. Today humanity could return to these religious origins in order to eliminate religious conflicts. The introduction of the existing version of history led to the alienation and scattering in different directions of peoples who think of themselves as independent fragments of humanity. After all, it is obvious that the correct history influences the correct worldview. Otherwise it turns out . But first of all, history itself must become a science and it is already becoming a science

Tamerlane

The method of reconstructing a person’s appearance from his skull was invented by the Russian anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov (1907–1970). He grew up in a doctor's family, from adolescence he worked in an anatomical museum and spent a lot of time in the morgue, studying the connections between the soft tissues of the face and the bones of the skull. From the age of 14, Gerasimov took part in excavations of ancient burials. Based on observations and experience, he came to the conclusion that the thickness, type and relief of the skin on the skull and skeleton directly depend on the relief of the bones and their structure. This is how the technique of reconstructing a face from a skull was born, which is still used by anthropologists from around the world. Gerasimov created more than 200 sculptural portraits-reconstructions of historical figures and ancient people, including Yaroslav the Wise, Ivan the Terrible, Andrei Bogolyubsky and Ivan the Terrible. On June 22, 1941, his expedition opened Tamerlane’s grave, after which a long study began. Superstitious people consider this fact barbaric and the cause of the Great Patriotic War, but Gerasimov himself saw this as luck, and considered the reconstruction of the image of Tamerlane his best work.

Today’s anthropologists also work according to Gerasimov’s method: they take a skull and cover it layer by layer with soft tissue, focusing on the relief of the bones. Some still do it by hand, but most prefer computer technology to produce an impressive 3D model.

Cleopatra

In the popular consciousness and cinema, Cleopatra is a beautiful Caucasian woman. However, Egyptologist from the University of Cambridge Sally Ann Ashton claims that by the time she came to power, Cleopatra’s family had already lived in Egypt for 300 years, which means that Egyptian and Greek blood was mixed in her and her skin tone was dark. Ashton created her image of Cleopatra in 2008 after serious research that lasted more than a year. The basis for the three-dimensional reconstruction was the surviving ancient images of the Egyptian queen and an analysis of her genealogy. The computer-generated image of a dark, friendly woman does not really fit in with the image of the fatal beauty who was the lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

Nicholas the Wonderworker

Scottish anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, a professor at the University of Dundee, recreated the appearance of St. Nicholas, who is revered in Russia as Nicholas the Wonderworker, and in the West is considered the prototype of Santa Claus.

The basis for 3D modeling was the results of an examination of the relics, which are kept in the Basilica of St. Nicholas in the Italian city of Bari. In 1953, Professor Luigi Martino, who was involved in the autopsy of the relics, took black and white photographs of the skull, as well as X-rays of the skull in front and profile. Features of the bones helped Wilkinson reconstruct the shape of her face, her teeth suggested the shape of her lips, and her eye sockets suggested her eyes. The details were completed by graphics specialists: they superimposed the skin structure on the three-dimensional image, and also added wrinkles, hair and a beard to the model.

However, not all Christians were happy with the results - many considered the image not as spiritual as they were used to seeing the saint on the icon. Russian artists created a more soulful image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, relying on the iconographic face of the saint and modern technologies.

Tutankhamun

Last fall, the world was shocked by the publication of a three-dimensional image of Tutankhamun, created by a team of scientists exploring his tomb. The first full-length portrait of an Egyptian pharaoh is based on an analysis of the anatomical features of the mummy - in total, about 2,000 scans of the preserved remains were made.

The resulting image turned out to be surprisingly ugly and far from the majestic image that was captured in the golden funerary mask of the pharaoh, which is kept in the collection of the Cairo Museum. The computer-generated Tutankhamun is depicted as a lame, effeminate youth with prominent teeth, an overbite, wide hips and narrow shoulders.

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare scholars still cannot agree on what the famous English playwright really looked like: all the portraits and busts of the classic were made after his death. Many people mistake the death mask found in 1849 in Germany as a genuine image of Shakespeare. German criminologists recently confirmed that it belongs to Shakespeare, as it matches other images, in particular with a bust installed on the playwright’s grave by his relatives. It was this death mask that became the basis for the reconstruction of British specialists led by Stuart Clark: in 2010, they recreated a 3D model of Shakespeare’s face specifically for the film “Death Masks” on History Channel 13. However, Shakespeare scholars refused to recognize the results of the reconstruction as reliable, since They are not completely sure that the Darmstadt mask was actually removed from Shakespeare's face.

Richard III

In 2012, the skeleton of the legendary English king Richard III, who died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, was found in a car park in Leicester - it was previously believed that his body was thrown into the River Suar and lost forever. This discovery sparked a global study that included DNA analysis of the king's remains and living descendants. One of the results was the reconstruction of the appearance of Richard III, which is especially important since lifetime images have not survived.

The restoration of the appearance was carried out by the same researcher as in the case of St. Nicholas, Caroline Wilkinson: this time she started from the data of genetic examination and the shape of the king’s skull. The image was similar to portraits painted after the monarch's death, including the earliest version - a portrait of Richard III from the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London, created in the 1520s.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Another of Wilkinson’s works is a reconstruction of the appearance of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. This work, carried out as a result of a thorough analysis of Bach's remains in 2008, caused much criticism, as the image turned out to be unlike famous portraits and busts of the composer. However, a copy was exhibited at the Bach House Museum in the German city of Eisenach and was recognized by a number of experts. Wilkinson's work process can be seen in the video.

Dante

In 2007, researchers from the universities of Bologna and Pisa restored the appearance of the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri. The portrait is based on detailed descriptions and a plaster cast made by Italian anthropologist Fabio Frassetto during the last opening of the poet's grave in 1921. Restoring the shape of the chin was especially difficult, since the jaw of Dante’s preserved skull was missing, and scientists selected a suitable one from the Frassetto collection, having examined 90 skulls from the Museum of Anthropology. As a result, the newest Dante turned out to be more humane and gentle than he is represented in posthumous images created from the memories of his contemporaries. His characteristic aquiline nose has become noticeably shorter.

Robespierre

Perhaps the most expressive from a visual point of view is the work of the French studio Visualforensic. The image of the revolutionary Maximilian Robespierre is the result of a 3D reconstruction based on a death mask made by Madame Tussauds. Not only computer graphics specialists are involved in creating the image, but also anthropologists, pathologists, and criminologists who investigate real crimes. One of the creators of the portrait, French anthropologist and facial reconstruction specialist Philippe Frosch, commented on his work as follows: “There is no doubt that we see fear in his gaze. High reliability and clarity of the reconstruction was made possible thanks to a 3D scanner. This is what allowed us to reconstruct the details of the mask using the imaging method used by the FBI.».

Jesus Christ

The question of the appearance of Jesus Christ has been exciting the minds of people for 2000 years. Since there are no actual remains or DNA samples available, anthropologists are looking for alternative ways to recreate his appearance. For example, Manchester University forensic artist Richard Neave based his depiction of Christ on archaeological evidence and biblical sources. In the Gospel of Matthew, he found confirmation that Jesus' facial features were characteristic of Semites from Galilee at that time. Israeli archaeologists were able to provide Niv with several skulls of Jews - contemporaries of Christ, and three of them underwent computed tomography. From this data, the researchers created a 3D digital reconstruction of the face and then a template of the skull.

Neve analyzed all available descriptions of Jesus from biblical sources and 1st century drawings found by archaeologists. Thus, questions about the eye color, hair length, skin color, height and physique of Christ were resolved. The portrait, modeled by programmers based on Niv data in 2002, turned out to be strikingly different from known images of Jesus and caused outrage among believers. In response, Neve stated that he had only recreated the appearance of an adult man who lived in the same place and at the same time as Jesus.

Another source for reconstructing the appearance of Christ is the Shroud of Turin. It is believed that this Christian relic, which is kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, captures the original face of the Savior. According to beliefs, it was in this cloth that the body of Jesus was wrapped after suffering torture and death. The first attempt to create a 3D reconstruction based on a print from the shroud was made by the American John Jackson in 1976: he analyzed the face on the canvas using a microdensitometer (a device that measures the degree of darkening of the image) and then reconstructed the three-dimensional shape of the body using computer programs for processing aerial photographs .

In 2010, American artists from Studio Macbeth tried to recreate the appearance of Christ from the shroud for the documentary “The Real Face of Jesus” on The History Channel. Using modern 3D technologies, specialists led by Ray Downing transformed the image obtained from the shroud from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. It also turned out to be different from the canonical images of Christ. This became a reason for the indignation of many, as did the very fact of using a print from the Shroud of Turin for reconstruction, the authenticity of which many doubt.

In order to make a correct analysis of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “History of a City,” you need not only to read this work, but also to study it thoroughly. Try to reveal the essence and meaning of what Mikhail Evgrafovich tried to convey to the reader. To do this, you will need to analyze the plot and idea of ​​the story. In addition, attention should be paid to the images of mayors. As in many other works of the author, he pays special attention to them, comparing them with an ordinary commoner.

Author's published work

“The History of a City” is one of the famous works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. It was published in Otechestvennye zapiski, which aroused great interest in the novel. To have a clear understanding of the work, you need to analyze it. So, an analysis of “The History of a City” by Saltykov-Shchedrin. The genre is a novel, the writing style is a historical chronicle.

The reader immediately gets acquainted with the unusual image of the author. This is the “last archivist-chronicler.” From the very beginning, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin made a small note, which indicated that everything was published on the basis of authentic documents. Why was this done by the writer? To give credibility to everything that will be narrated. All additions and author's notes contribute to creating historical truth in the work.

The authenticity of the novel

The analysis of “The History of a City” by Saltykov-Shchedrin is intended to indicate the history of writing and the use of means of expression. As well as the writer’s skill in ways of revealing the characters of literary images.

The preface reveals the author's intention for creating the novel “The History of a City.” Which city deserved to be immortalized in a literary work? The archives of the city of Foolov contained descriptions of all the important affairs of city residents, biographies of changing mayors. The novel contains the exact dates of the period described in the work: from 1731 to 1826. The quote is from a poem known at the time of writing by G.R. Derzhavina. And the reader believes it. How else!

The author uses a specific name and talks about the events that took place in any city. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin traces the life of city leaders in connection with the changes in various historical eras. Every era changes the people in power. They were reckless, they skillfully managed the city's treasury, and were knightly brave. But no matter how time changes them, they control and command ordinary people.

What is written in the analysis

The analysis of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “History of a City” will be written, like anything written in prose, according to a certain plan. The plan examines the following characteristic features: the history of the creation of the novel and plot lines, composition and images, style, direction, genre. Sometimes the analyzing critic or observer from the reading circle can add his own attitude to the work.

Now it’s worth turning to a specific work.

History of creation and main idea of ​​the work

Saltykov-Shchedrin conceived his novel long ago and nurtured it for many years. His observations of the autocratic system have long been sought for embodiment in literary works. The writer worked on the novel for more than ten years. Saltykov-Shchedrin corrected and rewrote entire chapters more than once.

The main idea of ​​the work is the satirist's view of the history of Russian society. The main thing in the city is not gold and money-grubbing, but actions. Thus, the entire novel “The History of a City” contains the theme of a satirical history of society. The writer seemed to predict the death of the autocracy. This is felt in the decisions of the Foolovites, who do not want to live in a regime of despotism and humiliation.

Plot

Novel « The History of a City” has a special content, unlike and not previously described in any classical work. This is for the society that is contemporary to the author, and in this state structure there is a power hostile to the people. To describe the city of Foolov and its daily life, the author takes a time period of one hundred years. The history of the city changes when the next government changes. Very briefly and schematically, you can present the entire plot of the work in a few sentences.

The first thing the author talks about is the origin of the people inhabiting the city. A long time ago, a tribe of bunglers managed to defeat all their neighbors. They are looking for a prince-ruler, instead of whom a thief-deputy turns out to be in power, for which he paid. This went on for a very long time, until the prince decided to appear in Foolov himself. The following is a story about all the significant people of the city. When it comes to the mayor Ugryum-Burcheev, the reader sees that popular anger is growing. The work ends with the expected explosion. Gloomy-Burcheev has disappeared, a new period begins. It's time for change.

Compositional structure

The composition has a fragmented appearance, but its integrity is not violated. The plan of the work is simple and at the same time extremely complex. It's easy to imagine it like this:

• Introducing the reader to the history of the inhabitants of the city of Foolov.
• 22 rulers and their characteristics.
• Mayor Brudasty and his organ in the head.
• The struggle for power in the city.
• Dvoekurov is in power.
• Years of calm and famine under Ferdyshchenko.
• The activities of Vasilisk Semenovich Wartkin.
• Changes in the way of life of the city.
• Depravity of morals.
• Gloomy-Burcheev.
• Wartkin about obligations.
• Mikaladze about the appearance of the ruler.
• Benevolsky about kindness.

Individual episodes

The “History of a City”, chapter by chapter, is interesting. The first chapter, “From the Publisher,” contains a story about the city and its history. The author himself admits that the plot is somewhat monotonous and contains the history of the government of the city. There are four narrators, and the story is told in turn by each of them.

The second chapter, “On the Roots of the Origin of the Foolovites,” tells the story of the prehistoric period of the existence of the tribes. Who was there at that time: bush-eaters and onion-eaters, frogs and bunglers.

In the chapter “Organchik” there is a conversation about the reign of a mayor named Brudasty. He is laconic, his head is completely empty. Master Baibakov, at the request of the people, revealed the secret of Brudasty: he had a small musical instrument in his head. A period of anarchy begins in Foolov.

The next chapter is full of events and dynamism. It's called "The Tale of the Six City Leaders." From this moment on, there came moments of change of rulers one after another: Dvoekurov, who ruled for eight years, with the ruler Ferdyshchenko, the people lived joyfully and in abundance for six years. The activity and activity of the next mayor, Wartkin, made it possible for the people of Foolov to learn what abundance is. But all good things have to come to an end. This happened with Foolov when Captain Negodyaev came to power.

The people of the city now see little good; no one is taking care of it, although some rulers are trying to engage in legislation. What the Foolovites did not survive: hunger, poverty, devastation. “The History of a City,” chapter by chapter, gives a complete picture of the changes that took place in Foolov.

Images of heroes

Mayors occupy a lot of space in the novel “The History of a City.” Each of them has their own principles of government in the city. Each is given a separate chapter in the work. To maintain the chronicle narrative style, the author uses a number of satirical artistic means: anachronism and fantasy, limited space and symbolic details. The novel exposes the entire modern reality. To do this, the author uses grotesque and hyperbole. Each of the mayors is vividly drawn by the author. The images turned out to be colorful, regardless of how their rule influenced the life of the city. Brudasty's categorical attitude, Dvoekurov's reformism, Wartkin's fight for enlightenment, Ferdyshchenko's greed and love of love, Pyshch's non-interference in any affairs and the Ugyum-Burcheevs with their idiocy.

Direction

Satirical novel. It is a chronological overview. It looks like some kind of original parody of the chronicle. A complete analysis of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “History of a City” is ready. All that remains is to read the work again. Readers will have a new look at the novel by Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Sometimes it's the little things that make the difference

In the work “The History of a City,” every passage is so good and bright, every little thing is in its place. Take, for example, the chapter “On the Roots of the Origin of the Foolovites.” The passage is reminiscent of a fairy tale. The chapter contains many fictional characters, invented funny names of tribes, which formed the basis of the city of Foolov. Elements of folklore will sound more than once from the lips of the heroes of the work; one of the bunglers sings the song “Don’t make noise, mother green oak tree.” The virtues of the Foolovites look ridiculous: skilful pasta-stripping, trading, singing obscene songs.

“The History of a City” is the pinnacle of the work of the great Russian classic Saltykov-Shchedrin. This masterpiece brought the author fame as a satirical writer. This novel contains the hidden history of all of Russia. Saltykov-Shchedrin saw an unfair attitude towards the common people. He very subtly felt and saw the shortcomings of the Russian political system. Just as in the history of Russia, in the novel the harmless ruler is replaced by a tyrant and dictator.

Epilogue of the story

The ending of the work is symbolic, in which the despotic mayor Gloomy-Burcheev dies in the funnel of a tornado of popular anger, but there is no confidence that a respectable ruler will come to power. Thus, there is no certainty and constancy in matters of power.