Horizontal model of the world in the ideas of the ancient Slavs. The world in the ideas of the ancient Slavs

3.2 The world in the ideas of the ancient Slavs

The world of the then pagans consisted of four parts: earth, two heavens and an underground water zone.

For many peoples, the earth was depicted as a rounded plane surrounded by water. Water was concretized either as the sea, or in the form of two rivers washing the earth, which is perhaps more archaic and local - wherever a person was, he was always between any two rivers or rivulets limiting his closest land space. Judging by folklore, Slavic ideas about the sea did not have a complete form. The sea is somewhere on the edge of the earth. It may be in the north, where on the glass mountains there is the crystal palace of Koshchei the Immortal, sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow. This is a reflection of later acquaintance with the Arctic Ocean and the northern lights. The sea may be normal, without these arctic signs. Here they fish, sail on ships, here is the maiden kingdom (Sarmatians) with stone cities; from here, from the sea shores, the Serpent Gorynych, the personification of the steppe inhabitants, goes on his raids on Holy Rus'. This is the real historical Black Sea-Azov Sea, which has long been known to the Slavs and even at times bore the name “Russian Sea”. You can get to this sea from the forest-steppe outskirts of the Slavic ancestral home or (which is the same thing) from the southern outskirts of the Slavic kingdoms by “quick ride,” as they used to say in the 16th century, in just three days.

For the pagans, the agricultural aspect of the earth was very important: the earth is the soil that gives birth to crops, “Mother of the Earth,” soil saturated with moisture that nourishes the roots of plants, “Mother Earth,” with which a number of rituals and spells are associated. Here the line with the imaginary underground fairy-tale world is almost imperceptible. The goddess of the fruit-bearing soil, the “mother of the harvest,” was Makosh, introduced in 980 into the pantheon of the most important Russian deities as the goddess of fertility.

The sky, in direct dependence on the economic system, was perceived differently by primitive people: Paleolithic hunters, who imagined the world as flat, single-tiered, were not interested in the sky, did not depict the sun, focusing only on the plane of their tundra and the animals they hunted. Mesolithic hunters, divided into small groups, lost in the endless taiga, involuntarily turned to him, to the stars, which helped them navigate the forest during a long pursuit of deer. An important astronomical observation was made: it turned out that among the countless stars moving slowly across the sky there is a fixed Polaris star, always indicating the North.

The sky, in direct dependence on the economic system, was perceived differently by primitive people. Farmers' ideas about the sky and its role in nature and in human life differed significantly from the views of hunters. If hunters needed to know the stars and winds, then farmers were interested in clouds (“fat”, rain clouds promoting fertility) and the sun. The lack of knowledge about the process of evaporation of earthly water, the formation of clouds and fog (“dew”) led to a peculiar idea of constant reserves of water somewhere high above the earth, in the sky. This heavenly moisture can sometimes, at unpredictable times, take the form of clouds and spill onto the earth in the form of rain, “fatten” it and promote the growth of grass and harvest. From here it is one step to the idea of the owner of heavenly water, who controls rain, thunderstorms and lightning. In addition to the two archaic women in labor, a powerful Rod appeared, the ruler of the sky and the entire Universe, the great life-giver who breathes life into all living things through raindrops.

The sun was also valued by farmers as a source of light and heat and a condition for the growth of everything in nature, but here the element of chance, the element of the whims of divine will was excluded - the sun was the embodiment of law. The entire annual cycle of pagan rituals was built on four solar phases and subordinated to 12 solar months. The sun in the fine arts of all centuries was for farmers a symbol of goodness, a sign of light that disperses darkness. The ancient Slavs, like many other peoples, accepted the geocentric model of the world.

In the ideas of the pagan Slavs about the underground-underwater layer of the world there is also a lot of universal humanity, many echoes of that distant era when, after the melting of a giant glacier, the continents were flooded by seas and lakes that quickly changed their shape, by fast-moving rivers breaking through mountain ranges, by vast swamps in low valleys . Folklore has not yet been studied from the point of view of what sharp change should have occurred in human consciousness with such a rapid revolution in nature, in the appearance and essence of the world.

An important part of ideas about the underworld is the universal human concept of the underground ocean, into which the sun descends at sunset, floats at night and emerges at the other end of the earth in the morning. The night movement of the sun was carried out by waterfowl (ducks, swans), and sometimes the active figure was an underground lizard, swallowing the sun in the evening in the west and regurgitating it in the morning in the east. During the day, the sun was drawn across the sky above the earth by horses or powerful birds like swans.

Ancient Slavic deities in Russian fairy tales. History and fiction

Mythology of the Eastern Slavs

Mythology of the ancient Slavs

The mythological consciousness of any people is directly related to its ethnic characteristics - economic activities, social structure, customs, language...

Mythology of the ancient Slavs

As for the morals and customs of the pagan Slavs, they are determined primarily by their national life of that time. We find...

Mythology of the ancient Slavs

One day, the Sun-Dazhdbog and his brother Perun traveled together in the Underworld. And here, from beyond the edge of the Universe, a dark star appeared without rays, with a long bloody tail...

Mythology and beliefs of the ancient Slavs

Images of death in world religions

Death caused concern among ancient people not only because they were afraid of it, but mainly because they were concerned with the question of maintaining the existing order, the continuity of life - what death undermined and disrupted...

Fundamentals of the religion of the ancient Slavs

The religion of the Eastern Slavs was paganism. Its origins lie at the beginning of our era, and echoes persist to this day. Paganism. In every class society one must distinguish between the culture of the working people and the culture of the ruling class...

Funeral rituals of the Eastern Slavs and the Russian people

Funeral lamentations record constant formulas for the posthumous personification of the deceased as an indicator of his “transition” to another form of existence. In lamentations, death, while personified, does not, as a rule, receive...

Ideas about the world of the ancient Celts

Both the plot line of the ancient Irish sagas and their ideological basis are quite closely related to nature. First of all, we are talking about the constant mention of certain natural objects (ford, stone, hill, etc.), one way or another involved in the events...

Pagan beliefs of the Eastern Slavs

Pagan rituals among modern Slavic peoples

Paganism,” as is known, is an extremely vague term that arose in the church environment to designate everything non-Christian, pre-Christian...

Paganism of the ancient Slavs

Various phenomena of the external world, as well as mental states experienced by a person, encourage him to sort through the mass of impressions, give himself an account, reduce everything to unity, find an explanation for the phenomena...

Paganism and Christianity in Rus', their mutual influence

In the early stages of development, the nature of the country left a huge imprint on the entire course of its history. V. O. Klyuchevsky noted the flatness and abundance of river routes on the East European Plain...

Paganism of the Slavs

The Slavs divided the world into three tiers. The upper tier is the sky, the world of the gods. The middle tier is the world of people. The lower, underground tier is the world of spirits and shadows. Each tier had a numerical designation (1,2,3) and was symbolized by birds (sky)...

Vadim ROSTOV

“Analytical newspaper “Secret Research”, No. 5, 2009

Professor Valery Chudinov and his friend the satirist Mikhail Zadornov discovered that “all nations descended from the Russians.”

“THE FIRST PEOPLE ON EARTH WERE THE RUSSIANS”

“Were the Russians the first people on Earth?” - this is the surprising title of an article by Svetlana Kuzina, published on January 22, 2009 in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. The article tells about the Moscow researchers mathematics Vladimir Pakhomov and philosopher professor Valery Chudinov, who, together with the satirist Mikhail Zadornov, discovered that “all nations descended from the Russians.”

Svetlana Kuzina writes:

“Once upon a time, humanity was represented by one people speaking one language. These people were Russians, and their common language was Russian. So says Valery Alekseevich (Chudinov). He came to this unexpected conclusion after studying more than 3,000 archaeological objects. Among them are ancient sanctuaries, religious objects and utensils of ancient and pre-antique times, letters containing secret writing, Christian icons of the first centuries and other artifacts found throughout the world. The main research method is a scrupulous study of small details on these ancient objects in order to find hidden or erased texts.

The professor, studying small details, discovers Russian letters where an inexperienced person sees either a play of light and shadow, or purely artistic patterns.

There would be nothing surprising in all these finds if you did not know that some of them are... about 200,000 years old. In other words, at a time when, according to official science, uncultured savages lived on the planet, some intelligent beings were painstakingly cutting out Russian letters with thin hard tools on small, egg-sized pebbles or on statues of gods. That is, they had speech, writing, knowledge and complex techniques for making tools.

Several years ago, the famous satirist Mikhail ZADORNOV met Valery Chudinov at one of the book exhibitions, where the scientist presented his books.

Then we met with him at a round table in the editorial office of Literaturnaya Gazeta,” recalls Valery Alekseevich. - He listened to my story about ancient civilization for several hours. After this, he gave birth to the famous monologue “Secrets of the Russian Language,” with which he has been performing for three years now. And in July 2008, I was Zadornov’s defender in the “Gordonquixote” program.

Researcher Valery Chudinov, studying inscriptions on stones around the world, proves that Slavic writing appeared long before Latin, says Mikhail Zadornov. - He is also supported by the polyglot Alexander Dragunkin, who quite boldly claims that all world languages come from Russian. Anyone who hears this for the first time may twirl their finger at their temple. But Lomonosov’s most educated contemporaries - Tatishchev, Shishkov - raised this topic and gave examples of how English, German, Spanish words are formed from Russian words... According to the theory of probability, which I studied at the Moscow Aviation Institute, there are so many such facts that they should be studied, rather than rejecting it. I advise you to read the books of the modern scientist Alexander Asov. He thoroughly understood those Old Slavonic and Old Russian books that are considered fakes by Western people. He, like a real detective, traced when and thanks to whom these books were lost or deliberately destroyed. He even deciphered the ancient Slavic runic. That is, I figured out those icons, or it would be more correct to say, that first writing on Earth, on which you can read all the ancient records up to the mysterious “Phaistos Disc”.

Here are excerpts from Zadornov’s monologue:

“Once upon a time, in the north of present-day Russia, an amazing and very ancient people lived. It was warm there. And when the glacier began to creep onto their lands, our ancestors had to leave their northern homes and follow the sun. So they scattered - from the word “Scattering” - into many tribes and peoples throughout our present continent from India to Europe...

Western and our pro-Western scientists rightly ask the question: where is the evidence that this highly spiritual people existed on Russian territory? For a long time there was insufficient evidence. But in the 80s, they began to build a hydroelectric power station in the Southern Urals. And suddenly, from under the ground, as in a fairy tale, the ruins of entire cities began to appear... The main city, which was restored to almost the foundation of every house, 2500 BC! That is, this city was built even before the construction of the Egyptian pyramids! And in every house there is a bronze casting stove! But according to traditional academic knowledge, bronze came to Greece only in the second millennium BC. I was at the excavations of this city. It's called Arkaim..."

“The West and our scientists who worship the WEST stubbornly suppress all these findings. Although they no longer deny it. The point is that these discoveries can help Russians understand their history. And for the West it is important that Russia is considered throughout the world a “late work” of history with a barbaric, semi-savage population and turns into an economic colony of the West...”

MEGALOMANIA

Of course, you can smile at the judgments of Professor Chudinov or Academician Fomenko, who say that all the languages of the world originated from the Russian language, and Russia during the time of Ivan the Terrible owned all of Europe, Asia and even Mexico along with Cuba (see our article “ New history of Muscovy", No. 16, 2008).

However, when Mikhail Zadornov begins broadcasting these myths on TV to an audience of millions, it becomes scary. Because these myths are very reminiscent of Hitler’s similar myths about the exclusivity of the German race. At the same time, Zadornov actually repeats the speeches of the Nazis: “Our ancestors are the ancient Aryans.” Thus, “Russians are purebred Aryans and the parents of the Germanic race.”

The origin of these myths is transparent. Great power is the elementary “right of the strong” to dictate its will to the weak. But why on earth should Moscow be a great-power capital, but, for example, Ufa, Warsaw or Tbilisi should not? In order to somehow cover up the ugliness of this and justify this “right”, various fables are invented: about the “special spirituality of the Russian people” or their “sacredness”, and about the fact that, they say, everyone descended from Russians, and about that Moscow in ancient times ruled the whole world, and that Muscovites built the Egyptian pyramids. An obligatory attribute of great power myths is a negative attitude towards the West, which has always prevented Moscow from conquering neighboring countries in order to “grow in lands and peoples” with impunity.

It seems that the great powers completely misunderstand the meaning of the concept “GREAT COUNTRY.” They believe that a country's greatness is determined by its size, military might and ability to dictate its will to small neighboring states. But I believe that the GREATNESS OF A COUNTRY lies in the GREATNESS OF ITS EVERY PERSON. And it is measured specifically and clearly by his income and social security. And questions about who built the Egyptian pyramids or who is older than whom have nothing to do with the greatness of the country.

DISCOVERIES OF PROFESSOR CHUDINOV

As for the “scientific knowledge” of the satirist Mikhail Zadornov, they are simply shocking. Thus, he fantasizes that “English, German, Spanish words are formed from Russian words” - and as “RUSSIAN” words he cites: “comrade”, “master”, “money”. For example, he considers the word “money” to be an “ancient Slavic word” and deciphers it as follows: den - gi, where “gi” is supposedly a “useful thing” from Sanskrit, and “den” is “day”. In fact, all these “Russian” words are Tatar words, and “money” comes from the Horde “denga” or “tenge”. What is “Russian” and “Slavic” here, from which supposedly European languages originated?

On Zadornov’s personal website I found another interview with Professor Chudinov. I will give a few excerpts.

Chudinov: “Before this, in the 16th century, not only we, but also the Poles Stroyakovsky and Belsky clearly write that the Russians helped not only Alexander the Great, but also his father Philip.”

In the 16th century, a people called “Russians” did not exist. There was a people called RUSYNS, which are now called Ukrainians. Does this mean that it was the Ukrainians who helped Alexander the Great?

The current Russian people were then called MUSCOVITS from the indigenous people of the Moscow region Mokshali - this is the Finnish people of the Mordovian group (hence another, more ancient name - “Muscovites”, as the word “Mokshali” changed in the Kiev manner, the Finnish self-name Moksel). Does this mean that the Mokshali Finns helped Alexander the Great?

And finally: Alexander the Great did not visit either the borders of the future Moscow region or the Kyiv region. How could he contact these peoples?

Chudinov: “Therefore, it turns out, even officially, that the history of Russians is the 4th century BC (Alexander the Great). But if you take any textbook of Slavic history now, they tell you: “Sorry, the earliest is the 5th century AD.” That is, 9 centuries were simply cut off from us.”

Firstly, indeed, no Slavs existed before the 4th-6th centuries, but their birth in Polabye has nothing to do with Moscow. Secondly, Chudinov opened the wrong history textbook - he needed to open a Finnish history textbook. From it he would have learned that until the 11th century there was not a single Slav on the territory of the current “Golden Ring of Russia” - but the ancient states of Great Erzya (Ryazan) of the Erzya people, Great Permia, Great Mordva, Great Murom and Great Moksel ( Moksel) of the Moksha people (now Moscow region).

So it was not someone who cut something off from Chudinov, but he himself, for some unknown reason, CUT OFF his ancient Finnish history of Muscovy. And then he’s surprised...

Chudinov: “All of Eurasia was occupied not just by Slavs, but by Russians.”

It is fantastic. There were never any “Eastern Slavs” on the territory of the USSR: we were Slavicized (only by language, not by genes!) by the princely squads of the Obodrits during the period of Kievan Rus, and our indigenous population itself was either Balts (Belarus, Smolensk, Kursk and Bryansk regions of the Russian Federation , plus the Dnieper Balts), or Sarmatians (Western Ukraine), or Finns (Eastern Ukraine and Central Russia).

And then: how, according to the professor, do the Slavs differ from the Russians? The Russians of the region of the “Golden Ring of Russia” are indeed very “strange Slavs”, since all Slavs have Slavic names of ancient cities (Krakow, Lvov, Veligrad, Minsk, Plovdiv). And in the “Golden Ring of Russia” all the ancient cities WITHOUT EXCEPTION are Finnish NON-RUSSIAN toponyms: Moscow, Kaluga, Tver, Kostroma, Tula, Ryazan-Erzya, Suzdal, Murom, Vyazma, etc. The only ancient near-Slavic toponyms of the region are Yaroslavl, Vladimir and Rostov - these are cities whose names were given by the Kyiv princes who founded them. Moreover - when this region was captured under the power of the Kyiv state - that is, these are FOREIGN UKRAINIAN toponyms, and not local ones.

Why did the “Russian Slavs” need to give their ancient cities Finnish non-Russian names? This is as absurd as, for example, today calling the new microdistricts of Minsk Uruchye or Sukharevo by the Finnish names Urkonnen or Sukhkannen. So, as we see, neither “Russian Slavs” nor even separately “Slavs” or “Russians” lived in the “Golden Ring of Russia” before.

Chudinov: “Now take modern Ukrainian historiography: it writes that the Kiev state was Ukrainian, all the princes were purely Ukrainian. After all, Ukraine never existed. Ukraine appears only in the 16th century. This was the Polish outskirts. When the Grand Duchy of Lithuania united with Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth appeared, and then these lands became an outskirts. In general, Ukraine is an artificial formation.”

Of course, Kievan Rus is an invention of Ukrainian separatists; Kyiv has never been the capital of anything. And it was not he who baptized Rus', but Moscow: Muscovites first built the Egyptian pyramids, then they helped Alexander the Great, then they came to baptize Rus', and then finally they thought of founding Moscow. But for some reason they gave it the Finnish name of the Moksha people: Moks + Va (“water” in Finnish).

If Ukraine seems to be an “artificial formation” due to the fact that it was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Belarusians-Litvins), Russians (Rusyns-Ukrainians) and Zhemoytsky (Zhemoyts and Aukshtaits of the current Republic of Lietuva), then Muscovy appeared with this “logic “a completely artificial formation,” having been a powerless ulus within the Horde for three centuries.

Chudinov: “If you follow Ukrainian historiography, then Russia did not even appear in the 5th century, but in the 14th. And we are now only 6 centuries old.”

Where did Chudinov get the idea that Russia appeared in the 14th century? In the 14th century, Moscow was still an ulus of the Horde - and did not have even the slightest attributes of its statehood: it was ruled by the kings of the Horde, it did not have its own army (the army of Muscovy was part of the army of the Horde), it did not even have its own coin (names were minted on Moscow coins kings of the Horde). Only from 1480 (this is the very end of the 15th century) Moscow begins to gradually acquire a status independent of the Horde, and then itself seizes power in the Horde, subjugating the Astrakhan, Siberian and Kazan Hordes. This is where the history of Russia begins. However, if Professor Chudinov wants to lead the history of Russia from the history of the Horde, that is his right. But what do “Russians” and “Slavs” have to do with the history of the Horde?

If we speak strictly scientifically, then a country with the name “Russia” appears only under Peter I in 1721, before that everyone called it “Muscovy”, and its people - “Muscovites” (including on maps published under the personal leadership Peter I, the country is also called the “Moscow State” or “Moscow Country”). Thus, the country with the name “Russia” is only three centuries old.

To the journalist’s question “Can Ukrainians be considered Slavs?” Chudinov replies: “It’s a difficult question.”

Well well! For a Muscovite, “Slavs” are precisely the inhabitants of Finnish Muscovy, and the people of Kiev are already a “complicated question”! The professor reveals this “complexity” as follows:

“Judging by the Paleolithic inscriptions, there was Slavic harmony. I am studying Etruscans, and it turned out that the Etruscan language is a variety of the Belarusian language. Moreover, on one of the mirrors it is written that they came from the Krivichi, and the capital of the Krivichi is the city of Smolensk. And the other part is Polotsk residents. That's who formed the Etruscans. They write two words in Etruscan, Belarusian, and the rest in Russian! And it is absolutely clear that full consonance existed in both antiquity and the Paleolithic; it is also inherent in the Ukrainian language. But in the Ukrainian language “o” turns into “i”. In Russian “on”, in Ukrainian “vin”, in Russian “only”, in Ukrainian “tilki”. This is a much more recent phenomenon. It turns out that the pillar line is the Russian language, and Ukrainian is the escape. And we have preserved that same ancient basic language. The only thing is that we have the Russian “akanie”, and in the Paleolithic we “okali”. And the sound “e” appeared, which is characteristic of the Russian language, but before it was pronounced as “e”.”

Aha, now the origins of the professor’s misconceptions become clear. The “ancient basic language” he “discovered” means the Finnish accent of the Slavicized Finns of Russia (“And we have preserved that same ancient basic language.”). Which, for example, is strenuously demonstrated on stage by the comedians “Russian Grandmothers”. The ignorant do not know that by doing this they are showing not their “Russian roots”, but their FINNISH roots, because this is how all Finnish peoples are defined. Moreover, in any language: the Finns of Finland and Estonians say exactly the same thing when speaking German or English, not only Russian. This is exactly how they end up in Mordva today.

But Chudinov finds this Finnish accent a sign of an “ancient basic language,” and it follows from this that it was not the Kievites who Slavicized the Finns of Muscovy, but, on the contrary, the surrounding Finns Slavicized the Kiev princes who came to capture them. Good "discovery"!

The professor obviously does not know that from the beginning of the 13th century until 1840 there was a people of LITVINS with the Lithuanian language. After our anti-Russian uprising of 1830-31, tsarism decided once and for all to eliminate the very name “Lithuania”: it was banned, and instead of it, “Belorus” was introduced by decree of the tsar, and our Litvin people were renamed “Belarusians”. Three decades after our next uprising in 1863-64, these names invented by tsarism were also banned, and the faceless “North-Western Territory” was introduced instead.

The language of the Litvin-Belarusians itself was formed under the influence of Krakow and Kyiv, this influence gradually dissolved the original Western Baltic texture of the language. But still, the Belarusian language retained the Baltic dzekan and 25% of Prussian vocabulary. So doesn’t Chudinov want to say that the Etruscans also dzekali, like the Belarusians? I got the impression that the professor knows nothing at all about the Belarusian language or the Belarusians.

How to understand his words “the capital of the Krivichi is the city of Smolensk”? Where did he get this from? The capital of the Krivichi is Polotsk. He writes: “And the other part is Polotsk residents. That’s who formed the Etruscans.” That is, the professor insists that Polotsk existed even before the appearance of the Etruscans. Namely: that the inhabitants of Polotsk went to Italy, where they founded Rome and the Roman Empire. Of course, those residents of Polotsk who believe in this “discovery” of Professor Chudinov can be immensely proud of this “history” of theirs. But again the question is - what does Moscow and all sorts of “Russian Slavs” have to do with it?

Chudinov stubbornly calls the Krivichi “Slavs” and “Ancient Russia”, although the Polotsk state was never Russia (it was bloodily captured by Kiev for 70-80 years, but this is UKRAINE, not Muscovy - Moscow did not exist then, and the foot of the Kiev princes - Slavicizers of the Finns - had not yet set foot on the land of Zalesye, as the future Muscovy was then called). Equally, the Krivichi were never “Slavs”. European chroniclers write that the Krivichi were a Baltic-speaking tribe and worshiped the Baltic pagan cult of the Zhivoit snake. They gradually began to be Slavicized only by the Obodrits somewhere from the 9th century, since the lands of the Krivichi lay on the way “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” and there the Varangian Western Slavs, the Obodrits, built their strongholds-fortresses. From where the local population was Slavicized.

Chudinov: “They [Etruscans] write two words in Etruscan, in Belarusian, and write the rest in Russian!”

The Etruscans could not write anything in Belarusian or Russian, because these languages appeared as ETHNIC languages only at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. In this case, the professor should have used the terms “Old Belarusian” and “Old Russian” languages, but the problem is that during the Etruscans these languages were not even in embryo. At that time in Europe, all Indo-Europeans understood each other without translators - because at that time the common Indo-European language had not yet broken up into today's very distinct languages. For example, in the current Russian language there is a huge part of Turkic and Finnish vocabulary, and the grammar of the Russian language itself is not Slavic, but half-Slavic and half-Finnish. How can a professor compare the Etruscan language with this modern language?

The unscientific nature of such “research,” of course, lies in the fact that, as I said, the professor ignores the past commonality of all Indo-European languages. 2000 years ago, the language of the same Krivichi differed little from the language of the Romans. Yes, in some regions there were rapid linguistic changes, while in others, peoples became isolated, hid in the thickets from civilization, and were able to preserve the proto-language almost unchanged. Thus, the eastern Balt Lietuvis, leading a reclusive lifestyle from civilization (the last in Europe to adopt Christianity and the alphabet only in the 15th century), were able to preserve a language very similar to Sanskrit. But this does not mean that the Zhemoits captured the Hindus or, on the contrary, the Hindus came and gave the Zhemoyts their language. This means ONLY CLOSE TO THE PROTOLANGUAGE - and nothing more.

Therefore, any speculation in comparative linguistics is generally unscientific if, on their basis, conclusions are drawn about “WHO CAPTURED WHO IN THE PAST.” Which, by the way, is something that Russian satirist Mikhail Zadornov has become extremely interested in recently. His far-fetched nationalist speculations seem to be very popular with the great powers of the Russian Federation, because no matter what channel you switch to, he is everywhere with his ethnic fantasies.

Thank God that these are not “history lectures”, but only satirical speeches by a SATIRIST. In this case, the satirist Zadornov - it turns out - only ridicules the myths of the Moscow great powers. That is, he gives satire on himself. But the vast majority of viewers perceive these inventions of Zadornov not as satire, but precisely as “lectures on history.” That's the problem! Millions of people are starting to believe these fantasies! This is truly some kind of “spiritual sabotage.”

To the journalist’s question, “Are you saying that Latin came out of the Russian language?” Professor Chudinov answers:

“Since all of Eurasia was occupied not just by the Slavs, but by the Russians, it is completely clear that any people who came were involved in this culture and, above all, in this language. Yaroslav Kesler writes that all Romance languages are simply distorted Slavic languages. You just scratch any European words a little and you get Russian ones. In my books I give such examples, although there are thousands of them.”

No matter how much you “scrape” the Russian words “comrade”, “money”, “master” - these are not Indo-European words, but the words of the Horde. These Tatar words are not found in any Indo-European language. They are only in the Russian language, because the Russian ethnos itself was formed in the Horde and consists of the Slavicized peoples of the Horde.

Today in the Russian language, only part of the basic vocabulary is Slavic - approximately the same part (according to some linguists, even more) is Turkic and Finnish vocabulary. Including Turkic in the Russian language is absolutely all the basic vocabulary of the sphere of trade and clothing of the Russian language of the 19th century.

It turns out that Professor Chudinov, together with the satirist Zadornov, insist that the basic vocabulary of all Indo-Europeans in the field of trade and clothing should also be “Russian” - THAT IS, TURKIC and not Indo-European. Are we seeing this? No, this is fiction. Because Europe was not under the Horde and then did not create a single state with it.

The words of the professor “Yaroslav Kesler writes that all Romance languages are simply a distorted Slavic language” are generally scientific. Romance peoples appeared much earlier than the Slavs. Therefore, it would be much more “logical” to declare that all Slavic languages are just distorted Latin. But the very term “distorted language” is unscientific and mocking, great-power. Language is a sovereign national phenomenon; it is formed according to its own internal laws, which cannot be called “distortion”. That is, in fact, “ugliness”. No language in the world is a “monstrosity” or a “distortion.” The opposite approach, let me remind you, contradicts the UNESCO principles for the preservation of all languages of the world. If UNESCO begins to divide languages into “normal” and “distortions of normal” languages in exactly the same way, then this is fascism in its purest form.

Chudinov ends his interview like this:

“I am sure that the reader will be completely satisfied with my evidence and the research results obtained and will discover the stunning world of the ancient Slavs.”

Once upon a time, Tolkien, in the same way trying to escape from reality, wrote the novel “The Lord of the Rings”, where he invented a world of all kinds of people, hobbits, elves - with their own history. A science fiction writer from Moscow immerses the reader in the “stunning world of the ancient Slavs” in exactly the same way. Because he is not satisfied with what is written in Russian history textbooks (already falsifying it for the purposes of great power). He wants to see a different story: without any mention of Muscovy’s stay for three centuries in the Horde and without the Horde itself (the professor doesn’t say a word about the Horde, as if it never existed on the territory of the Russian Federation at all), with the ancient people of “Russian Slavs” who travel from Moscow to found the Roman Empire and help Alexander the Great. And then all the peoples of Eurasia give birth, who are in fact originally Russian and had the original Russian language - and therefore the borders of the Russian Federation should expand to the borders of all of Eurasia.

Dreams, dreams...

Their essence is simple: “how good it would be if all of Eurasia spoke Russian, was Russia and had our Kremlin as its capital.” It’s good to fall asleep to such dreams before bed...

REAL RUSSIAN HISTORY

According to official data, today there are about 140 million Russians living in the world (116 million in Russia and another 25 million outside its borders). Only the lands of Muscovy and the Novgorod region are “historically Russian” in the Russian Federation, but they could give no more than 30 million “Eastern Slavs”. Where did another 110 million come from? These are the Russified peoples of the Horde, which did not disappear anywhere, but became Russia.

According to the latest census of the Russian Federation, the most numerous people in Russia are Russians: 80% of the population with a number of 116 million. In second place are the Tatars with a population of 5.5 million (3.8%). But the most interesting thing is that in third place are not some other people of Russia, but Ukrainians. There are 3 million of them (2%). Well, well: representatives of another country took third place in multinational Russia in terms of numbers, although their ethnic territory is outside the borders of the Russian Federation. This does not show the mass character of Ukrainians in Russia, but the very terrible “extinction” of the indigenous peoples of Russia (that is, their odious Russification). Then come the Bashkirs (1.7 million from 1.15%), Chuvash (1.7 million from 1.13%), Chechens (1.4 million from 0.94%), foreigners Armenians (1.1 million from 0.78%), Mordovians (0.8 million from 0.58%), Avars (0.8 million from 0.56%).

Since today each of the 140 million Russians certainly considers himself a “Slav” and a “descendant of the lands of Muscovy and Novgorod,” a strange picture arises: how the Tatar ethnic group with its 3.8% of the population of the peoples of Russia carried out the “Tatar-Mongol yoke” for three centuries "over 80% of the Slavs of Muscovy and Novgorod region? After all, if these current proportions are applied to that era, it turns out that even then there were more than 20 times fewer Tatars than Russians.

This alone shows that “the matter here is unclean” and that not every current Russian is certainly a Slav and a descendant of the population of Suzdal or Novgorod land.

But that's not all. The lands of Suzdal and Novgorod themselves are not Slavic at all, but Finno-Ugric. There were never any local Slavs there. The only Slavs on the vast territory of Russia are the Western Slavs, colonists who encouraged Rurik. Their language, as academician Valentin Yanin recently wrote in “Science and Life,” was identical to the language of the Poles - although out of stupidity, since the times of Tsarist Russia, Russian scientists have absurdly called this language “the Old Russian language of the Eastern Slavs.” The Eastern Slavs never existed in nature at all; they are understood as either the Western Balts (Yatvingians, Krivichi and Dnieper Balts of Kyiv) or the later Slavicized Finnish and Turkic tribes of Ukraine and Russia.

According to German chronicles, the Swedes founded their colony in Ladoga on the lands of the Sami, and a dispute arose there between the Swede colonists and the native Sami. To resolve the dispute, they turned to the authoritative ruler of the Baltic - Margrave of Denmark Rurik, the son of the Danish king and the Slavic (Obodritic Russian) princess from Lubeck (at that time the Slavs of Polabian Rus' were in Union with Denmark). The Danish Margrave Rurik took the opportunity to seize the Swedish lands of Ladoga into his own power, sending there colonies of the Obodrites, who at that time were subject to expansion by the Germans. Thus, in the Swedish colony of Ladoga, on the Sami lands, the Slavs, Rus' and the Russian language first appeared - which was the language of the Obodrits, “identical to the Lyash language” - that is, the Polish language of Krakow. Back in Soviet times, Academician Sedov examined the burial grounds of Rurik colonists near Novgorod and found that “the skulls are identical to the skulls of the Obodrites from the burial grounds near Mecklenburg.” The total number of Western Slavs, the Obodrites of Rurik, did not exceed several thousand, and they ethnically quickly disappeared surrounded by numerous Finnish tribes, although the Finns adopted the Slavic language from them.

But this had nothing to do with the lands of the future Muscovy, which were called Zalesye and were not subject to the authority of Rurik. This entire Finnish region was captured “into a colony of Rus'” for the first time only by the Kyiv princes. It is clear that there were no Slavs there at all - not even the Slavic encouragers of Rurik - and could not be there. Yes, the princely squad of the offspring of the Kyiv princes had Slavic (Obodritov) and Gothic roots, plus Bulgarian or Greek priests, whom the princes of Kiev took to convert the native Finns of Zalesye to their faith. Religious books, with the help of which the Kyiv princes converted the Finnish peoples of Zalesye to Christianity, were written in Bulgarian. This did not prevent them from being read in Kyiv or Polotsk, since the population there understood the Bulgarian language. However, on the lands of the future Muscovy, this gave an “unexpected result”: the Muscovite language became very similar to the Bulgarian language (and not to Ukrainian and especially Western Baltic Belarusian) - although Bulgaria lies distant lands from the distant country of Moksel.

So, there have never been any local Slavs on the territory of Russia, and Nestor’s mention in the “Tale of Bygone Years” of the people “Slovenes” in the Novgorod region is something that is easy to see, only the name of the local Sami, who switched to the language of the Obodrite colonists and learned to “understand” word".

Home-grown “historians” like Chudinov (a physicist and Doctor of Philosophy), Fomenko (a mathematician) or Zadornov (a satirist) do not know these basics of the history of their state and naively believe that “Russian Slavs have always inhabited Russia from time immemorial.” But serious Russian historians - unlike the above-mentioned satirists, physicists and mathematicians - were precisely concerned that the Kiev Chronicles only tell about the capture of Zalesye by the Kiev princes and about the Russification of the local tribes Moksha, Erzya, Mordovians, Muroms, Meshchers and others. In this picture, the Russians are only Finns of the Mordovian, mainly linguistic group, Russified by the Kyiv princes. However, every people who has abandoned their language and adopted another language is mentally drawn to feel themselves and the ETHNOSIS of this language.

And although the Finnish population of Zalesye-Muscovy (like the Hungarians) is anthropologically different from the Slavs and Western Balts (generally Indo-Europeans) with wide faces and snub noses, outwardly they are Caucasians, although not Indo-Europeans (similarly, the Tatars of Kazan are people with brown hair and blue eyes, It seems that the Tatars are also “typical Slavs” according to current ideas in Russia, because they are Caucasians). And of course, the population of Muscovy was distinguished by a Finnish accent and its own Finnish culture with bast shoes (Finnish national shoes), a Russian (that is, Finnish) bathhouse-sauna, a matryoshka doll (the pagan Finno-Ugric belief in the Golden Baba, which contains as a sign of motherhood there are several more of the same smaller ones inside) and so on and so forth. What is called “Russian” is not Slavic and in fact is Finnish.

In general, Russian historians began to look in the chronicles for some traces of the fact that the Russians are not the descendants of local Finns, but the descendants of the Slavs. No references to the “resettlement of the Slavs to the Suzdal lands” were found - because they simply do not exist. In desperation, my imagination began to work. The choice settled on the events of 1169 - 70 years before the arrival of the Horde (the Horde period was no longer suitable, since it would mean a “mass resettlement of the Slavs of Kiev” to the Horde - which is absurd). In 1169, the Zalessk prince Andrei Bogolyubsky captured and destroyed Kyiv. “Historians” seized on this fact and thought of it this way: “Andrei Bogolyubsky, having captured Kiev and becoming the Grand Duke, did not want to stay there under any pretext, moving the capital to Vladimir.” At the same time, they say, the Slavs of the Kyiv State moved en masse to the Vladimir-Suzdal lands (let me remind you that Vladimir is a Slavic name invented by the Kyiv princes, and Suzdal is a local Finnish toponym). Read more about this story in our article “Myths about Rus'” (No. 22, 2008).

Many serious Russian historians insist that the Russian Slavs appeared in Russia precisely as a result of this “exodus” of Ukrainians to Zalesye in 1169. I leave aside the nuance that in this case the Russian ethnos is actually the ethnos of Ukrainians. However, the Ukrainians themselves are not any “Slavs”: as studies of the gene pool of the Ukrainian nation have shown, all of Eastern Ukraine is inhabited by Finno-Ugrians, Western Ukraine is inhabited by descendants of the Sarmatians, and only along the Dnieper “Slavic genes”, which are actually the genes of the Dnieper Balts, are Western The Balts are the closest in genes to the Slavs, hence the confusion.

But the most interesting thing: it turns out that in 1169 a HUGE POPULATION left the Kiev region for the lands of Suzdal, which now gives rise to 140 million Russians. When only 45 million Ukrainians now live in Ukraine itself. The meager lands of Zalesye could not feed such a horde (and abandoning the fertile lands of Ukraine altogether seems strange). But first of all, the sheer size of such a resettlement is terrifying - in comparison, for example, with the resettlement of the currently 10 million Bulgar people to Bulgaria or the same number of Hungarians to Central Europe - also from the Volga region. This is recorded as something epoch-making in the chronicles of Europe. But here there were supposedly 14 times more displaced people! And not a word about this in the chronicles.

The number of “Russian Slavs” in Russia is approximately equal to the NUMBER OF ALL OTHER SLAVS IN THE WORLD. It is clear that this cannot be explained by any “migration of the Slavs to Muscovy,” because in such a “migration” the entire Slavic population would have to leave their lands and move to the scanty lands of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality.

The senselessness and absurdity of such “migration” to the lands of the Finno-Ugric peoples is obvious. At the same time, only Ukraine had any contacts (purely colonial) with Zalesye-Muscovy (more precisely, Ukraine without Galicia and Volyn, which separated from Kiev and created their own Kingdom of Rus', independent of Kiev, in pre-Horde times). And Belarus-Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the Balkan countries have NEVER HAD ANY contacts with Zalesye-Muscovy. And, for example, not a single historian proposed, even in the form of “nonsense,” the idea that Bulgarians moved en masse to Muscovy - although the Russian language is most similar to Bulgarian.

So where did the “Slavic-Russian” ethnos come from, which in the time of Ivan the Terrible was still extremely small in number (at that time there were two to one and a half times fewer Russians than Litvin-Belarusians)? The Russian ethnic group became equal in number to the Belarusian during the seizure of our primordial lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania-Belarus, and then began to “swell by leaps and bounds” due to the Muscovization of the indigenous peoples of the Horde. After all, the main condition for the subordination of these lands to Moscow was their acceptance of the Moscow faith, in which the Moscow feudal lord was considered the “king of God.” This was an INSTRUMENT for consolidating the power of Moscow over the peoples of the Horde, and at the same time, the adoption of the Moscow faith meant the adoption of near-Slavic names and surnames, and over generations, the newly converted peoples generally switched to the language of Moscow.

During the time of Ivan the Terrible, the border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy was an ETHNIC BORDER: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gathered the peoples of the Western Balts (Yatvingians, Dainovichi and Krivichi, united under the name Litvins), and Muscovy contained its own Finnish peoples. Specifically: at the beginning of the 16th century, the border had a clearly ETHNIC character - Daragabuzh, Mezetsk, Mtsensk were the lands of the Krivichi (Western Balts), and the bordering lands of Vyazma, Kaluga, Tula and Ryazan (Erzya) were already Finno-Ugric (and the toponyms themselves are Finnish ).

Subsequently, Muscovy captured from us the purely Belarusian (Krivichi ethnic) territories of the current Bryansk, Smolensk, Kursk regions, half of the Pskov and Tver regions, where the Belarusian ethnic group predominated.

In 1919, the RSFSR of Lenin-Trotsky captured from us as supposedly “Russian” the Vitebsk, Mogilev, Gomel and Smolensk regions of the BPR-BSSR, which the leadership of the BSSR heroically returned to us in subsequent years. It was possible to return only the Mogilev and Gomel regions, and half of the Vitebsk region and the entire Smolensk region remained part of the RSFSR (now the Russian Federation), although in the 1919-1930s the leadership of the BSSR SCIENTIFICALLY AND REASONEDLY proved to Moscow that the Smolensk land is the land of Belarusians, and not Russians.

However, in the RSFSR, the Belarusian ethnos, who inhabited the Smolensk, Bryansk, Kursk regions and part of other regions of Russia, were FORCED to abandon their language and culture, registering them as a Russian ethnos. Although there in the villages to this day no one “okays”, as in Central Russia (that is, does not speak with a Finnish accent), and all the villagers speak PURE BELARUSian language.

From here it becomes clear why some Russians have “Slavic genes”. These are in fact not “Russians”, but BELARUS - and specifically KRIVICHI, and their genes are not Slavic at all, but Western Baltic (which are very similar to Slavic, but still somewhat different). In total, there are about 5-7 million such “Russians” from the territories of the Krivichi (BELARUS, in fact, enrolled in the Russian ethnic group), with other Belarusians in the Russian Federation - up to 10 million.

This is the only “Indo-European component” in the Russian ethnos, because all its other components are no longer Indo-European. Including some kind of migration of Ukrainians (the size of which is no more than the Belarusian component). In the Ukrainian ethnos itself, only a small proportion consists of Indo-European genes of the Dnieper Balts (not even Slavs), and Finno-Ugric and Sarmatian genes predominate.

The Belarusian philologist Yanka Stankevich in No. 4 of the Belarusian Society magazine (August-September 1922) wrote about the origin of surnames:

“...One should not be surprised that the Muscovites moscowized part of the Belarusian surnames, when even peoples so distant from the Muscovites by language (not by blood), like the Chuvash and Kazan Tatars, they moscowed all the surnames. ...The Chuvash, who recently adopted the Orthodox faith, have all Moscow surnames due to the fact that they were baptized in masses and for some reason more often gave the name Vasily or Maxim - so now the majority of Chuvash have the surnames Vasiliev or Maximov.”

If you dig up Vasilievs or Maximovs in the Russian Federation today, in half the cases it will turn out that they are Chuvash.

Here is the solution to the “mystery of the appearance of 140 million Slavs in Russia.” THERE WERE NOT AND THERE ARE NO Slavs in Russia. But there are only LOCAL ETHNOSIS that originally lived there from time immemorial - and today they are “enlisted among the Slavs” only because they speak the near-Slavic language of Moscow and have near-Slavic surnames.

According to my approximate (I do not insist) assessment, today the RUSSIAN ETHNOSIS consists of the following parts. About 10 million of them are Krivichi-Belarusians (the only SIGNIFICANT Indo-European component in the Russian ethnos, and not Slavic, but Western Baltic). From 50-60 million and more - Tatars (Turks in general, no one remembers that, for example, Karamzin or Kutuzov are not Slavs, but descendants of the famous Tatar Murzas of the Horde). The rest are our own local Finno-Ugrians, of whom there are at least 70-80 million. Even up to 5 million “Russian Slavs” are the peoples of Siberia and the Far East who have enrolled in the Russian ethnic group, and who obviously can hardly be considered “Slavs”. For example, during the last census of the population of the Russian Federation, 160 thousand Buryats of the Chita region and the Buryat national district were registered in the “Russian ethnos” (that is, automatically in the Slavic ethnos!). Reason: they do not know the Buryat language, they were baptized into Orthodoxy in Moscow, and have Russian names and surnames. Plus mixed marriages: even in Tsarist Russia, a special decree of tsarism was always in force, requiring children born in marriage between Russians and “foreigners” to be included only in the faith of the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow and considered “Russians”. This decree, by the way, was also in force in Belarus and Ukraine.

The growth of the “Russian nation” has never had anything to do with the demographic growth of the “Russian population” of the lands of Muscovy - therefore, it is absurd to consider the “rate of demographic growth of the Russian people” in comparison with similar rates among Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. This topic itself was TABOO in the USSR, since “ends did not meet”: the ethnic groups of these regions increased their numbers in a common trend for all of them and for all other neighbors in Europe - DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS. But the only people of Europe - the Russian ethnos - did not fall under this natural tendency to increase the number of inhabitants at the expense of children born. He grew by leaps and bounds, not due to the birth of children, but due to the inclusion of completely non-Russian and non-Slavic peoples of Russia in the “ethnos of Slavic-Russians”.

Here is another typical evidence of this large-scale process. The newspaper "Star of the Volga Region" recently published an article by Akyeget NUGAILY from Ufa "Nogais and Ishtyaks", it says:

“...I remember the words of the Tatar poet G. Tukay about the number of Tatars in tsarist Russia. This figure was 32 million. At the same time, the classic of Tatar literature Gayaz Iskhaki expressed his forecast about the future of the Tatar nation in the story “Disappearance after 200 years.” He predicted the disappearance of the Tatars in 200 years. Not even half the term has passed yet, but preliminary results of the “achievements” of the Tatars can be summed up: 80% of the Tatars have lost their native language and forgotten their national roots. The Tatar population decreased from 32 to 5-6 million. Of the remaining part, a third do not know their native language.

Of course, during this period there were wars, epidemics, and famine, but nevertheless, Tatar women did not stop giving birth to children and, according to statistical data, it seems that the population in the USSR and Russia was constantly growing, and the number of Tatars was also growing..."

Let me clarify that we are talking about the population census in Tsarist Russia, when about 25 million ethnic Tatars were recorded in the “Russian ethnos” only on the basis that they converted to Orthodoxy (sometimes voluntarily, but more often - having no other choice). The Tatar poet G. Tukai lamented that “almost the entire Tatar people were made Slavs.”

Let's return to the words of Mikhail Zadornov, he said:

“But in the 80s they began to build a hydroelectric power station in the Southern Urals. And suddenly, from under the ground, as in a fairy tale, the ruins of entire cities began to appear... The main city, which was restored to almost the foundation of every house, 2500 BC! That is, this city was built even before the construction of the Egyptian pyramids! And in every house there is a bronze casting stove! But according to traditional academic knowledge, bronze came to Greece only in the second millennium BC. I was at the excavations of this city. It's called Arkaim..."

But what relation do the Slavs (appeared in the 4th-6th centuries in Polabye) and Rus' (appeared a little earlier there in Western Europe) have to do with this Arkaim? The Slavs and Rus' are realities of only the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, and Zadornov talks about his Russian Arkaim, which existed 2500 years BC - and 3000 years before the appearance of the Slavs!

Russia, as the source of many races and peoples, has something to be proud of even without Zadornov’s myths about the “Slavs and Rus'.” The trouble is that these myths do not allow us to return to the true understanding of the truly enormous role of Russia in the world history of the emergence and development of DIFFERENT races and peoples - but reduce it only to the boring history of the wretched colony of the Kiev princes and then the kings of the Horde, with which it supposedly “began” the whole history of Russia." They say it all started with Yuri Dolgorukov. What about Arkaim? Was it really founded by this Kiev prince?

As for the real history of the Slavs and the mystery of their appearance - more on that in the next issue of the newspaper.

Settlement of the Slavs. In the middle of the first millennium AD, Slavic tribes settled throughout the vast expanses of Europe. From their homeland - the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains - the Slavs dispersed to different directions of the world. Some crossed the Danube and reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea (South Slavs). Others settled in Central Europe and on the Baltic Sea coast in the neighborhood of the Germans (Western Slavs). Still others settled on the banks of the rivers of endless Eastern Europe (Eastern Slavs).

All Slavic peoples - Bulgarians, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and others - speak related languages, they have similar customs and beliefs, legends and fairy tales.

Where are the myths of the Slavs known from? Once upon a time, every Slav knew the names of the gods and myths about them. But in those days the Slavs did not have their own written language and therefore could not describe their gods. And when Christianity came to the Slavs, pagan myths began to be driven out of life by the new religion, although they did not disappear completely.

Only from the surviving descriptions of ancient pagan beliefs and rituals, from legends and fairy tales, chronicles, epics and songs can we reconstruct some of the myths of the ancient Slavs. Traces of ancient mythology are best preserved among the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians).

The world of the ancient Slav. In ancient times, when myths were created, the Slavs were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding, lived in forests and steppes, and settled along the banks of rivers. The ancient Slav felt like a part of the surrounding nature - formidable and merciful at the same time. Endless forests, deep rivers, and vast swamps surrounded the small habitable world of the Slavic plowman. Wild animals roamed near human habitation, so villages, fields and pastures had to be fenced off. Nature could give the farmer good weather, and therefore a harvest, but could punish him with drought or frost. Due to the harsh natural conditions, the Slavs had a more difficult time than the peoples of the Mediterranean. In addition, steppe nomads lived nearby, who often disturbed the Slavs with their raids.

Forests. The forest that surrounded him brought many benefits to the Slav: they built houses and fortifications from wood, they used wood for heating in cold winters, they lit the house with a torch, they made dishes and other household items from wood. In the forest, hunters obtained game, furs, honey from wild bees, and sometimes there they had to seek refuge from their enemies - the steppe inhabitants. But the forest forced people to work a lot: clearing land for arable land, cutting roads. There were wild animals in the thicket of the forest. Therefore, the ancient Slav treated the forest with caution: he populated it in his imagination with terrible creatures - goblins. The goblin, according to the ideas of the ancient Slav, loves to scare people who wander into his domain, play the fool on travelers and lead them into the thicket, carry away children...

Field. The open space of the steppe attracted the Slavs with its fertile lands and vast pastures. But here’s the problem: the steppe nomads - the Huns, Avars, Khazars, Hungarians, Pechenegs - brought destruction and death to the Slavic settlements. A legend has been preserved about how, in time immemorial, the Obry Avars attacked the Carpathian Slavs. Having conquered their lands, they tortured the inhabitants. If Obrin wanted to go somewhere, he ordered several women to be harnessed to the cart instead of a horse - and so he rode, urging them on. The nomads were powerfully built, proud and arrogant. But the gods heard the prayers of the Slavs and destroyed everyone - they sent a terrible pestilence on them, not a single obrin remained. Only the Slavs have preserved a saying: “I died like an obra.”

In the imagination of the people, the steppe enemies took the form of the terrible Serpent Gorynych and Nightingale the Robber, with whom the Russian heroes fought.

Rivers. The Slavs loved their rivers very much. It is no coincidence that the very name “Slavs” originally meant people living near the water, on the banks of the river. The river supplied fish, served as a summer and winter road, and connected settlements and tribes with each other. Tender names were given to the rivers: Vistula, Laba, Vltava, Maritsa. The most affectionate words were sung in songs dedicated to the Dnieper-Slavutich, Mother Volga, and the Danube. The Slavs inhabited the water element with mermaids and mermaids. “Grandfather of the water is the boss of the water,” the proverb said.

The ideas of the pagan Slavs about the earthly structure were very complex and confusing. The spiritual world of the ancient Slavs was formed in the process of continuous relationships with nature. Since ancient times, the creators of agricultural culture, the Slavs, formed a special worldview, reflected in myths, based on the reverence of Nature. Similar ideas, as well as love for the Earth, are clearly visible later in the Slavic epic and Russian epics: the imagery of ancient legends depicts the Earth as the ancestor of the Russian people themselves. In general, since ancient times, the Slavs mastered the spherical structure of the Universe. This is not only the belief in the existence of nine heavens, but also the division of the world into tiers, the formation of a whole picture of the earthly and heavenly world order.

According to Slavic mythology, the Universe is shaped like an egg. This is the oldest image of the World Egg, also found among many peoples of the world; in Slavic myths this is also the motif of the creation of the world by the Duck, which laid the World Egg - echoes of this myth can be found in Russian folk tales.

From the research of Slavic antiquity by M. Semenova, one can glean that in the center of such an egg “like the yolk, the Earth itself is located.” Moreover, already in such a model there is an ancient division of the world into tiers: the upper part of the “Yolk” is our living world, the world of people; the lower “underside” side is the Lower World, the World of the Dead, the Night Country. When it's day there, it's night here. To get there, you need to cross the Ocean-Sea that surrounds the Earth. Or dig a well right through, and the stone will fall into this well for twelve days and nights..."

As noted by the major researcher Afanasyev, the key meaning of Slavic mythology, the mythological picture of the world of the Slavs is the “adoration” of Mother Nature - a living, fair, wise and all-generating force. The Slavs believed that the world is a living system. The main idea of paganism was the belief in the eternity of life, the cult of fertility. Hence the formation of the most ancient image of the Mother of the Raw Earth. Cheese's Mother Earth is a key archetype of the Slavic people.

The worship of Mother Raw Earth is closely connected with the ancient veneration of life-giving moisture. As archaeological excavations show, including evidence of the Trypillian culture, the distant ancestors of the Slavs believed that there were nine heavens around the Earth, like egg yolks and shells. That's why we still say not only "heaven" but also "heavens." At the highest level of these heavens, reserves of rainwater are stored - “in the abyss of heaven.” Each of the nine heavens of Slavic mythology has its own purpose: one for the Sun and stars, another for the Moon, another for clouds and winds. Our ancestors considered the seventh to be the “firmament,” the transparent bottom of the celestial Ocean. There are stored reserves of living water, an inexhaustible source of rain. Let us remember how they say about a heavy downpour: the abysses of heaven have opened up! After all, the “abyss” is the abyss of the sea, the expanse of water.

The most important image in the mythological picture of the Slavic world is the World Tree. This image is also central to many peoples of the Indo-European unity. The Slavs believed that you can get to any sky by climbing the World Tree, which connects the Lower World, the Earth and all nine heavens. Just as the Tree is divided into branches, crown and roots, the world is divided into three levels: the Upper, Middle and Lower world. The upper world, according to various sources, was called Blue Svarga, the World of Glory or Rule (the world of the Gods). The Middle World is Reality, the visible, human world, and finally, the Lower World is Nav, the world of ancestors - Nav spirits.

According to the ancient Slavs, the World Tree looks like a huge spreading oak tree. However, on this oak tree the seeds of all trees and herbs ripen. And where the top of the World Tree rises above the seventh heaven, in the “heavenly abyss” there is an island. This island was called "irium" or "virium". Some scientists believe that the current word “paradise”, which is so firmly associated in our life with Christianity, comes from it. “Iriy” was also called Buyan Island. This island is known from numerous fairy tales and conspiracies as a kind of “generator of life”, “an abode of goodness, light and beauty”; the folk tradition was continued by A.S. Pushkin in his “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”. And on that island live the ancestors of all birds and animals: “elder wolf”, “elder deer”, etc.

The Slavs believed that migratory birds fly to the heavenly island in the fall. The souls of animals caught by hunters ascend there and answer to the “elders” - they tell how people treated them. Accordingly, the hunter had to thank the animal for allowing him to take his skin and meat, and in no case mock him. Then the “elders” will soon release the beast back to Earth, allow it to be born again, so that fish and game will not be transferred. If a person is guilty, there will be no trouble. The pagans did not at all consider themselves “kings” of nature, who were allowed to plunder it as they pleased. They lived in nature and together with nature and understood that every living creature has no less right to life than a person...

According to researchers, information about the Universe of the ancient Slavs can be gleaned from “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” In particular, this passage attracts attention: Prophetic Boyan, if he plans to sing about someone, then he scatters like a squirrel in a tree, like a gray wolf on the ground, like a gray eagle under a cloud. (Translation by A.K. Yugov)

Some researchers in this passage find a three-part division of the world (sky-air-earth) and the archetypal image of the World Tree, and the squirrel that runs along this tree is compared with the squirrel Ratatoskr from German-Scandinavian mythology. In this case, it turns out that Boyan, like the ancient Germanic skalds, traveled along the World Tree (among the Germans - the World Ash), thus connecting the worlds and receiving divine knowledge and inspiration from the higher world.

Finally, archeology can provide a lot of data about the Universe of the ancient Slavs. Including the so-called “Zbruch Idol”, which in the scientific community is often called the “encyclopedia of Slavic paganism”. This tetrahedral stone sculpture is oriented to the cardinal points. Each side is divided into three levels - apparently, heavenly, earthly and underground. On the heavenly level, deities are depicted, on the earthly level - people (two men and two women, like the deities), and on the underground - a certain chthonic creature holding the earth on itself.

In general, the Slavs developed a cosmocentric model of the Universe. Space, Nature (fire, earth, air, water, sun, month, etc.) act as living entities. Man himself cannot be conceived in isolation from nature. The world appears as a harmonious unity of man and nature, where the Earth acts as the main archetype: mother, nurse, and even ancestor and protector of the Russian people themselves. In this regard, the key meaning of Slavic paganism is the veneration of living nature as an all-generating force, the main cult is the cult of fertility, which contains the idea of affirming life. Thus, from all of the above examples it is clear how the Slavs imagined the Universe, using key archetype images: the World Egg and the World Tree. According to the folklore works of Slavic antiquity, in the center of the World Celestial Ocean there is an island (Buyan), on which, in the Center of the World, lies a stone (Alatyr) or the World Tree grows (usually an oak tree). Prophetic birds live in the “paradise” gardens of the Buyan island. It is also often described how a bird sits on the Tree of Life, and under the tree there is a snake - the ruler of the underworld.

5. The world in the ideas of the ancient Slavs

The world of the then pagans consisted of four parts: earth, two heavens and an underground water zone. For many peoples, the earth was depicted as a rounded plane surrounded by water. Water was concretized either as the sea, or in the form of two rivers washing the earth. Wherever a person was, he was always between any two rivers or rivers that bounded his immediate land space. Judging by folklore, Slavic ideas about the sea did not have a complete form. The sea is somewhere on the edge of the earth. It could be in the north. This is a reflection of later acquaintance with the Arctic Ocean and the Northern Lights. The sea may be normal, without these arctic signs. Here they fish, sail on ships, here is the maiden kingdom (Sarmatians) with stone cities. This is the real historical Black Sea-Azov Sea, long known to the Slavs and even at times bearing the name “Russian Sea”.

For the pagans, the agricultural aspect of the land was very important: the land is the soil that gives birth to crops. Here the line with the imaginary underground fairy-tale world is almost imperceptible. The goddess of the fruit-bearing soil, the “mother of the harvest,” was Makosh, introduced in 980 into the pantheon of the most important Russian deities as the goddess of fertility.

If hunters needed to know the stars and winds, then farmers were interested in clouds and the sun. Sometimes, at unpredictable times, heavenly moisture can take the form of clouds and spill onto the earth in the form of rain, “wet” it and promote the growth of grass and harvest. From here it is one step to the idea of the owner of heavenly water, who controls rain, thunderstorms and lightning. The sun was also valued by farmers as a source of light and heat and a condition for the growth of everything in nature, but here the element of chance, the element of the whims of divine will was excluded - the sun was the embodiment of law.

The entire annual cycle of pagan rituals was built on four solar phases and subordinated to 12 solar months. The sun in the fine arts of all centuries was for farmers a symbol of goodness, a sign of light that disperses darkness.

In the ideas of the pagan Slavs about the underground-underwater layer of the world there are many universal things, many echoes of the era when, after the melting of a giant glacier, the continents were flooded with seas and lakes that quickly changed their shape, fast-moving rivers that pierced mountain ranges, and vast swamps in low valleys.

An important part of ideas about the underworld is the universal human concept of the underground ocean, into which the sun descends at sunset, floats at night and emerges at the other end of the earth in the morning. The night movement of the sun was carried out by waterfowl (ducks, swans), and sometimes the active figure was an underground lizard, swallowing the sun in the evening in the west and spitting it out in the morning in the east. During the day, the sun was pulled across the sky above the earth by horses or powerful birds like swans.

According to the ideas of ancient Russian people, on the other side of the clouds near the sea there is a blissful country, a sunny land - Irye (Iry - garden). This is how paradise was called in pre-Christian Rus'. The “Teaching of Vladimir Monomakh” says that “the birds of the air come from Irya.” Eternal summer reigns in this country; it is intended for the future life of good and kind people.

In the middle of Irie there grows a world tree - a birch or an oak. Above its peak live birds and the souls of the dead, suffering for their evil lives. The world tree (tree of life) is the world axis, the center of the world and the embodiment of the universe as a whole. According to legend, this tree stands on about. Buyans in the middle of the ocean on Alatyr-Kamne. Its crown reaches to heaven, its roots to the underworld. The concept of the tree of life was one of the main ones in folk rituals, especially at weddings and house construction. In the latter case, the ritual tree was placed in the center of the construction site. The New Year tree was also a ritual embodiment of the world tree.

The Alatyr stone is of great importance in the pagan universe, for it fell from the sky, and inscriptions with the laws of the pagan god Svarog are engraved on it. Under the Alatyr-stone springs originate, bringing food and healing to the whole world, i.e. living water. All the power of the Slavic land is hidden under that stone; there is no end to that power. The beautiful maiden Dawn sits on the Alatyr Stone and awakens the world from its night sleep.

In ancient times, the day of the Alatyr Stone was considered September 14 - Iryev's Day (Christian Renaissance). According to popular belief, on this day snakes gather in heaps, in pits, in caves where they lick the “white-flammable stone Alatyr”, and then go to Irye.

Magic birds also live in Irya. Firebird, Gamayun, Alkonost and Sirin. The Firebird lives in a garden with golden apples that restore youth. Gamayun is a prophetic bird, a messenger of the gods. She informs everyone who knows how to hear the secret about the origin of the earth and sky, gods and goddesses, people and monsters, etc. Alkonost is a bird of paradise with a woman’s face, whose singing is so beautiful that those who hear it forget about everything, but there is no evil from her (unlike Sirin).

The forces of world evil in the consciousness of ancient Russian people, in addition to belief in evil gods, were expressed in belief in evil spirits and demons. Beliefs about the Snake (Snake Gorynych), who imposes taxes on people, demands girls and children every day, eats and kills people, were widespread. In Russian epics and fairy tales there is always a hero or hero who, with courage and cunning, kills the snake and his little snakes and frees people.

In pre-Christian Rus', along with pagan deities, people “laid prayers” to ghouls, probably the souls of the dead. Later, ghouls began to be understood as ghouls, vampires, evil dead people, in whom an unclean spirit takes possession forty days after death.

Witches, in pagan thought, were ordinary women who were possessed by an evil spirit, demon or the soul of the deceased. The most terrible witch was considered Baba Yaga, who lives in a “hut on chicken legs” and devours people. Even more terrible evil creatures were the witchers, who dominated the witches, gave them tasks to harm people and demanded an account from them. The most famous witcher, apparently, was Koschey the Immortal, in ancient Russian mythology an evil sorcerer whose death is hidden in several nested magical animals and objects. Numerous evil spirits and demons of the lower order were discussed above.

Communicating with the world of demons was considered a terrible crime among the Russian people. The fig was considered a reliable amulet against evil spirits and evil spirits. For pagans it meant the same thing as the sign of the cross for Christians. After the Baptism of Rus', the fig acquired the meaning of denying something or refusing at all.

Were going blind or at least losing our way. Such trees still adorn our forests to this day, only now they are called natural monuments. They sometimes have signs of long-preserved pagan beliefs and cult rituals. Thus, the fences that surround the trees are often located exactly in the place of the fences installed during pagan worship. And in some places they lie at the bottom of rivers and lakes...

Science, high general educational qualifications, coming to the forefront of social or national movements, this function allows one or another religious doctrine to tenaciously hold, using the inertia of traditions, many aspects of people's lives. Pantheon of gods of the Eastern Slavs Before the adoption of Christianity, the Slavs were by no means atheists. They worshiped many gods and spirits, had special sacrificial...

Deceased. The custom of abundant food at funerals has survived to this day. Ritual of suicide. The ritual death of a wife and her husband was understood by pagan peoples as a second marriage through death. According to Soviet archaeologists, the Eastern Slavs had a custom of burning widows on a funeral pyre starting from the 2nd – 3rd centuries. AD A number of Arab and Byzantine sources indicate...

The role of the divine in the value-mental space of culture. Therefore, we will have to limit ourselves to a general analysis of the theme of the “divine” in the fundamental thematic structure of the culture of the Eastern Slavs. In our opinion, the starting point in understanding the divine in the pagan culture of the Eastern Slavs should be the position of its substantial character, as a numinous substance. It means that...