Venevsky district - Vyatichi. Map of the settlement of Slavic tribes

Ancient authors were sure that on the lands that were subsequently occupied by the Old Russian state, there lived wild and warlike Slavic tribes, which every now and then were at enmity with each other and threatened more civilized peoples.

Vyatichi

The Slavic tribe of Vyatichi (according to the chronicle, its ancestor was Vyatko) lived on a vast territory, which today is the Smolensk, Kaluga, Moscow, Ryazan, Tula, Voronezh, Oryol and Lipetsk regions. According to anthropologists, the Vyatichi were outwardly similar to their northern neighbors, but differed from them in the higher bridge of their nose and in the fact that most of their representatives had light brown hair.

Some scientists, analyzing the ethonym of this tribe, believe that it comes from the Indo-European root “vent” (wet), others believe that it comes from the ancient Slavic “vęt” (large). Some historians see the kinship of the Vyatichi with the German tribal union of the Vandals; there is also a version linking them with the tribal group of the Wends.

It is known that the Vyatichi were good hunters and skilled warriors, but this did not prevent them from engaging in gathering, cattle breeding and shifting agriculture. Nestor the Chronicler writes that the Vyatichi mostly lived in forests and were distinguished by their “beastly” disposition. They resisted the introduction of Christianity longer than other Slavic tribes, preserving pagan traditions, including “bride kidnapping.”

The Vyatichi fought most actively with the Novgorod and Kyiv princes. Only with the coming to power of Svyatoslav Igorevich, the conqueror of the Khazars, were the Vyatichi forced to moderate their warlike ardor. However, not for long. His son Vladimir (the Saint) again had to conquer the obstinate Vyatichi, but this tribe was finally conquered by Vladimir Monomakh in the 11th century.

Slovenia

The northernmost Slavic tribe - the Slovenes - lived on the shores of Lake Ilmen, as well as on the Mologa River. The history of its origin has not yet been clarified. According to a widespread legend, the ancestors of the Slovenes were the brothers Sloven and Rus; Nestor the Chronicler calls them the founders of Veliky Novgorod and Staraya Russa.

After Sloven, as legend tells, power was inherited by Prince Vandal, who married the Varangian maiden Advinda. The Scandinavian saga tells us that Vandal, as the ruler of the Slovenes, went north, east and west, by sea and land, conquering all the surrounding peoples.

Historians confirm that the Slovenes fought with many neighboring peoples, including the Varangians. Having expanded their possessions, they continued to develop new territories as farmers, simultaneously entering into trade relations with the Germans, Gotland, Sweden and even with the Arabs.

From the Joachim Chronicle (which, however, not everyone trusts) we learn that in the first half of the 9th century, the Slovenian prince Burivoy was defeated by the Varangians, who imposed tribute on his people. However, the son of Burivoy Gostomysl regained his lost position, once again subordinating the neighboring lands to his influence. It was the Slovenes, according to historians, who subsequently became the basis of the population of the free Novgorod Republic.

Krivichi

By the name “Krivichi”, scientists mean the tribal union of the Eastern Slavs, whose area in the 7th-10th centuries extended to the upper reaches of the Western Dvina, Volga and Dnieper. The Krivichi are known, first of all, as the creators of extensive military mounds, during the excavations of which archaeologists were amazed by the variety and richness of weapons, ammunition and household items. The Krivichi are considered a related tribe of the Lutich, characterized by an aggressive and ferocious disposition.

Krivichi settlements were always located on the banks of rivers along which the famous route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” went. Historians have established that the Krivichi interacted quite closely with the Varangians. Thus, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus wrote that the Krivichi made ships on which the Rus sailed to Constantinople.

According to information that has reached us, the Krivichi were active participants in many Varangian expeditions, both trade and military. In battles they were not much inferior to their warlike comrades - the Normans.

After joining the Principality of Kyiv, the Krivichi took an active part in the colonization of the vast northern and eastern territories, known today as the Kostroma, Tver, Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Ryazan and Vologda regions. In the north they were partly assimilated by Finnish tribes.

Drevlyans

The territories of settlement of the East Slavic tribe of the Drevlyans are mainly the modern Zhitomir region and the western part of the Kyiv region. In the east, their possessions were limited by the Dnieper, in the north by the Pripyat River. In particular, the Pripyat swamps, according to historians, created a natural barrier that separated the Drevlyans from their Dregovich neighbors.

It is not difficult to guess that the habitat of the Drevlyans is forests. There they felt like full owners. According to the chronicler Nestor, the Drevlyans were noticeably different from those who lived to the east of the meek glades: “The Drevlyans live in a bestial manner, they live bestially: they kill each other, they eat everything uncleanly, and they have never had a marriage, but they have snatched a maiden from the water.”

Perhaps for some time the glades were even tributaries of the Drevlyans, who had their own reign. At the end of the 9th century, the Drevlyans were subjugated by Oleg. According to Nestor, they were part of the army with which the Kiev prince “went against the Greeks.” After Oleg's death, the Drevlyans' attempts to free themselves from Kyiv's rule became more frequent, but in the end they only received an increased amount of tribute imposed on them by Igor Rurikovich.

Arriving to the Drevlyans for the next portion of tribute, Prince Igor was killed. According to the Byzantine historian Leo the Deacon, he was captured and executed, torn in two (they were tied by his hands and feet to the trunks of two trees, one of which had been strongly bent before and then released). The Drevlyans paid dearly for the terrible and daring murder. Driven by a thirst for revenge, the wife of the deceased prince Olga destroyed the Drevlyan ambassadors who had come to woo her, burying them alive in the ground. Under Princess Olga, the Drevlyans finally submitted, and in 946 they became part of Kievan Rus.

The Vyatichi were pagans and preserved their ancient faith. If in Kievan Rus the main god was Perun - the god of the stormy sky, then among the Vyatichi it was Stribog ("Old God"), who created the universe, the Earth, all gods, people, flora and fauna. It was he who gave people blacksmith's tongs, taught how to smelt copper and iron, and also established the first laws. In addition, they worshiped Yarila, the sun god, who rides across the sky in a wonderful chariot drawn by four white golden-maned horses with golden wings. Every year on June 23, the holiday of Kupala, the god of earthly fruits, was celebrated, when the sun gives the greatest power to plants and medicinal herbs were collected.

The Vyatichi believed that on the night of Kupala, trees move from place to place and talk to each other with the noise of their branches, and whoever has a fern with him can understand the language of each creation. Among young people, Lel, the god of love, was especially revered, who appeared in the world every spring to unlock the bowels of the earth with his keys-flowers for the lush growth of grasses, bushes and trees, for the triumph of the all-conquering power of Love. The Vyatichi people sang the goddess Lada, the patroness of marriage and family.

In addition, the Vyatichi worshiped the forces of nature. So, they believed in the goblin - the owner of the forest, a wild-looking creature that was taller than any tall tree. The goblin tried to lead a man off the road in the forest, lead him into an impassable swamp, slums and destroy him there. At the bottom of the river, lake, in the pools lived a waterman - a naked, shaggy old man, the owner of the waters and swamps, all their riches. He was the lord of mermaids. Mermaids are the souls of drowned girls, evil creatures. Coming out of the water where they live on a moonlit night, they try to lure a person into the water by singing and charming and tickle him to death. The brownie, the main owner of the house, enjoyed great respect. This is a little old man who looks like the owner of the house, all overgrown with hair, an eternal busybody, often grumpy, but deep down he is kind and caring. In the minds of the Vyatichi people, an unsightly, harmful old man was Father Frost, who shook his gray beard and caused bitter frosts. They used to scare children with Santa Claus. But in the 19th century, he turned into a kind creature who, together with the Snow Maiden, brings gifts for the New Year. Such were the life, customs and religion of the Vyatichi, in which they differed little from other East Slavic tribes.

In 882, Prince Oleg created a united Old Russian state. The freedom-loving and warlike tribe of the Vyatichi long and persistently defended independence from Kyiv. They were led by princes elected by the people's assembly, who lived in the capital of the Vyatic tribe, the city of Dedoslavl (now Dedilovo). The strongholds were the fortified cities of Mtsensk, Kozelsk, Rostislavl, Lobynsk, Lopasnya, Moskalsk, Serenok and others, which numbered from 1 to 3 thousand inhabitants. Under the command of the Vyatic princes there was a large army, in the front ranks of which stood recognized strongmen and brave men, who boldly exposed their bare breasts to the arrows. Their entire clothing consisted of canvas trousers, tightly belted and tucked into boots, and their weapons were wide axes, so heavy that they fought with both hands. But how terrible were the blows of battle axes: they cut even strong armor and split helmets like clay pots. Warrior-spearmen with large shields made up the second line of fighters, and behind them were crowded archers and javelin throwers - young warriors.

In 907, the Vyatichi were mentioned by the chronicler as participants in the campaign of the Kyiv prince Oleg against Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium.
In 964, the Kiev prince Svyatoslav invaded the easternmost Slavic people. He had a well-armed and disciplined squad, but he did not want a fratricidal war. His negotiations took place with the elders of the Vyatichi people. The chronicle briefly reports this event: “Svyatoslav went to the Oka River and the Volga and met the Vyatichi and said to them: “To whom are you giving tribute?” They answered: “To the Khazars.” Svyatoslav removed the power of the Khazar Kaganate from the Vyatichi, they began to pay tribute to him.

However, the Vyatichi soon separated from Kyiv. The Kiev prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich also fought twice with the Vyatichi. The chronicle says that in 981 he defeated them and laid tribute - from each plow, just as his father took it. But in 982, as the chronicle reports, the Vyatichi rose up in war, and Vladimir went against them and won a second time. Having baptized Rus' in 988, Vladimir sent a monk from the Kiev Pechersk Monastery to the land of the Vyatichi to introduce the forest people to Orthodoxy. Gloomy, bearded men in bast shoes and women wrapped in scarves up to their eyebrows respectfully listened to the visiting missionary, but then unanimously expressed bewilderment: why, why do they need to change the religion of their grandfathers and fathers to faith in Christ? then in a dark corner of the endless Vyatic forests at the hands of fanatical pagans.

It is noteworthy that in the epics about Ilya Muromets, his move from Murom to Kyiv along the “straight road” through the Vyatic territory is considered one of his heroic feats. Usually they preferred to go around it in a roundabout way. Vladimir Monomakh speaks with pride, as if about a special feat, about his campaigns in this land in his “Teachings”, dating back to the end of the 11th century. It should be noted that he does not mention either his conquest of the Vyatichi or the imposition of tribute. Apparently, they were ruled in those days by independent leaders or elders. In the Instruction, Monomakh crushes Khodota and his son from them.
Until the last quarter of the 11th century. The chronicles do not name a single city in the land of the Vyatichi. Apparently, it was essentially unknown to the chroniclers.

In 1082-86, the proud and rebellious Vyatichi again rose against Kyiv. They are led by Khodota and his son, famous adherents of the pagan religion in their region. Modern historians, who are unbiased about the facts, call Khodota a Russian Robin Hood, who rebels against the extortions of Monomakh, robs the sons of noble boyars and distributes the loot to the poor. Vladimir Monomakh goes to pacify them (which he talks about in his teaching!): “And two winters went to the Vyatichi land: against Khodota and against his son.” His first two campaigns ended in nothing. The squad passed through the forests without meeting the enemy, who was praying to their forest gods. Only during the third campaign did Monomakh overtake and defeat the forest army of Khodota, but its leader managed to escape.

By the second winter Grand Duke prepared differently. First of all, he sent his scouts to the Vyatic settlements, occupied the main ones and brought there all kinds of supplies. And when the frosts hit, Khodota was forced to go to the huts and dugouts to warm up. Monomakh overtook him in one of his winter quarters. The vigilantes knocked out everyone who came to hand in this battle.

But the Vyatichi continued to fight and rebel for a long time, until the governors intercepted and bandaged all the instigators and executed them in front of the villagers with a brutal execution. Only then did the land of the Vyatichi finally become part of the Old Russian state. In the 14th century, the Vyatichi finally disappeared from the historical scene and were no longer mentioned in the chronicles.

Then the Vyatichi border runs along the Ugra and Oka valleys until the confluence of Moscow and the Oka, bypassing the Protva and Nara basins. Further, the border of the Vyatichi settlement follows northwest along the right tributaries to the upper reaches of the Moscow River (where Krivichi monuments are also found), and then turns east towards the upper reaches of the Klyazma. At the confluence of the Ucha and the Klyazma, the border turns to the southeast and runs first along the left bank of Moscow and then the Oka. The extreme eastern border of the distribution of seven-lobed temporal rings is Pereyaslavl-Ryazan.

Further, the distribution border of the Vyatichi goes to the upper reaches of the Oka, including the Pronya basin. The upper reaches of the Oka are entirely occupied by the Vyatichi. Individual archaeological sites of the Vyatichi people were also discovered on the upper Don, in the territory of the modern Lipetsk region.

Chronicle mentions

In addition to the Tale of Bygone Years, the Vyatichi are mentioned (as V-n-n-tit) and in an earlier source - a letter from the Khazar Kagan Joseph to the dignitary of the Cordoba Caliph Hasdai ibn Shaprut (960s), which reflects the ethnopolitical situation of the late 8th - mid-9th centuries.

In one of the Arab sources, the ancient author Gardizi wrote about those places: “ And at the extreme limits of the Slavic there is a madina called Vantit (Vait, Vabnit)" Arabic word " Madina"could mean the city, the territory subject to it, and the entire district. The ancient source “Hudud al-Alam” says that some of the inhabitants of the first city in the east (the country of the Slavs) are similar to the Rus. The story is about those times when there were no Russians here yet, and this land was ruled by its princes, who called themselves “ Swiet-malik" From here there was a road to Khazaria, to Volga Bulgaria, and only later, in the 11th century, did the campaigns of Vladimir Monomakh take place.

The Vantit theme also found a place in the texts of the Scandinavian chronicler and saga collector Snorri Sturluson.

Origin

According to archaeological observations, the settlement of the Vyatichi occurred from the territory of the Dnieper left bank or even from the upper reaches of the Dniester (where the Dulebs lived).

Most researchers believe that the substrate of the Vyatichi was the local Baltic population. The predecessors of the Slavic population in the upper Oka basin were representatives of the Moshchin culture that had developed by the 3rd-4th centuries. Such cultural features as house-building, rituals, ceramic materials and decorations, in particular things inlaid with colored enamels, allow its carriers to be classified as a Baltic-speaking population. Archaeologist Nikolskaya T.N., who devoted most of her life to archaeological research of the territory of the Upper Oka basin, in her monograph “Culture of the tribes of the Upper Oka basin in the 1st millennium AD” also concluded that the Upper Oka culture is close to the culture of the ancient Balts, and not the Finno-Ugric population. .

Story

The Vyatichi settled in the Oka basin in the 8th century. According to the Tale of Bygone Years, in the middle of the 10th century, the Vyatichi paid tribute to Khazaria by shelyag (presumably a silver coin) per plow. Like other Slavs, government was carried out by the veche and princes. The discovery of numerous coin hoards indicates the participation of communities in international trade.

The lands of the Vyatichi became part of the Chernigov, Rostov-Suzdal and Ryazan principalities. IN last time The Vyatichi are mentioned in the chronicle under their tribal name in 1197. Archaeologically, the legacy of the Vyatichi in the culture of the Russian population can be traced back to the 17th century.

Archeology

In the upper reaches of the Oka, before the Ugra flowed into it, the process of assimilation proceeded most intensively and was completed by the 12th century.

The advance of the Vyatichi to the northeast along the valleys of the Oka and then Moscow began in the 10th century. This is evidenced by the discovery of several villages with molded ceramics in the Serpukhov, Kashira and Odintsovo districts of the Moscow region. It should be noted that Slavic colonization does not occur in the Nara and Protva basins. This period is characterized by a high density of Slavic mounds with seven-lobed temporal rings typical of the Vyatichi. The largest number of such burials were discovered in the Moscow basin.

Settlements

The dwellings of the Vyatichi were dugouts (4 meters by 4 meters), lined with wood on the inside; log walls with gable roof. Settlements were located at great distances from each other and, as a rule, along river banks. Many villages were surrounded by deep ditches. The Vyatichi dumped the earth dug out from the ditch into a rampart, strengthening it with boards and piles, and then compacted it until the wall reached the desired height. An entrance with a strong gate was made in the wall. Before the entrance, a wooden bridge was thrown across the moat. Archaeologists call the remains of fortified settlements settlements, and unfortified settlements - settlements.

There are known settlements of the Vyatichi in the Glazunovsky district of the Oryol region (Taginskoye fortified settlement), Maloyaroslavetsky district of the Kaluga region, on the territory of the Kremlin in Moscow, in Ryazan (Old Ryazan).

Later, the Vyatichi began to build log houses, which were both housing and protective structures. The log house was taller than a half-dugout and was often built on two floors. Its walls and windows were decorated with carvings, which made a strong aesthetic impression.

Farm

The Vyatichi were engaged in hunting (they paid tribute to the Khazars with furs), collecting honey, mushrooms and wild berries. They were also engaged in shifting farming, and later in arable farming (millet, barley, wheat, rye), and cattle breeding (pigs, cows, goats, sheep). At all times, the Vyatichi were excellent farmers and skilled warriors. On the farm, the Vyatichi used iron axes, plows, and sickles, which indicates developed blacksmithing.

Beliefs

The Vyatichi remained pagans for a long time. In the 12th century, they killed the Christian missionary Kuksha Pechersky (presumably on August 27, 1115). A later legend reports the adoption of Christianity in some places only at the beginning of the 15th century:

in 1415, during the reign of Grand Duke Vasily Dmitrievich, son of Donskoy, the Mtsenians did not yet recognize the true God, which is why they sent that year, from him and Metropolitan Photius, priests, with many troops, to bring the inhabitants to the true faith. The Mtsenians were horrified and began to fight, but were soon struck by blindness. Those sent began to persuade them to accept baptism; Convinced by this, some of the Mtsenians: Khodan, Yushinka and Zakei were baptized and, having received their sight, found the Cross of the Lord, carved from stone, and a carved image of Nicholas the Wonderworker, in the form of a warrior holding an ark in his hand; Then, amazed by the miracle, all the inhabitants of the city hurried to receive holy baptism.

Burials (mounds)

The Vyatichi performed a funeral feast over the dead and then cremated them, erecting small mounds over the burial site. This is confirmed by archaeological excavations in the Moscow basin. Distinctive feature Women's burials of the Vyatichi are considered to have seven-lobed temporal rings. The Baltic influence on the Vyatichi (through the local tribes of the Moshchin culture) is also indicated by characteristic jewelry - neck torches, which are not among the common jewelry in the East Slavic world of the 10th-12th centuries. Only among two tribes - the Radimichi and the Vyatichi - did they become relatively widespread.

Among the Vyatichi decorations there are neck torcs, unknown in other ancient Russian lands, but having complete analogies in Letto-Lithuanian materials. In the 12th centuries, the mounds of this region already had a characteristic Vyatichi appearance, the burials were oriented with their heads to the west, in contrast to the Baltic ones, for which the orientation to the east was typical. Also, Slavic burials differ from the Baltic ones in the group arrangement of mounds (up to several dozen).

Anthropological appearance

Anthropologically, the Vyatichi from the Moscow region were close to the northerners: they had a long skull, a narrow, orthognathic face, well profiled in the horizontal plane, and a rather wide, medium-protruding nose with a high bridge. V.V. Bunak (1932) noted elements of similarity of the Vyatichi and Northerners with the Sardinians as representatives of the Mediterranean type, and attributed them to the Pontic anthropological type. T. A. Trofimova (1942) identified among the Vyatichi the Caucasoid dolichocephalic and subural types, which have analogies in the Finno-Ugric population of the Volga and Urals regions. G.F. Debets believed that it would be more correct to talk only about a small subural admixture.

A third of the Vyatichi died in childhood. Life expectancy for men rarely exceeded 40 years, for women it was much lower.

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Notes

2. (Russian) . NTV. Retrieved July 3, 2008. .
6. Gagin I. A.(Russian) . Retrieved July 3, 2008. .
7. Sedov V.V. Volyntsevo culture. Slavs in the southeast of the Russian Plain // . - M.: Scientific and Production Charitable Society "Archaeology Foundation", 1995. - 416 p. - ISBN 5-87059-021-3.
8. Wed. other-russian vyache"more". To the same root the words go back Vyacheslav"great glory" Vyatka"big [river]".
9. Khaburgaev G. A. Ethnonymy of the “Tale of Bygone Years” in connection with the tasks of reconstructing East Slavic glottogenesis. M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1979. P. 197.
10. Nikolaev S. L.
11. (Russian) . Retrieved July 3, 2008. .
12. Cm.: Kokovtsov P.K. E. S. Galkina identifies V-n-n-tit not with the Vyatichi, but with the Turkic tribal union of the Unnogundurs (Onogurs): Galkina E. S.
15. Sedov V.V.
17. Krasnoshchekova S. D., Krasnitsky L. N. Local history notes. Archeology of the Oryol region. Eagle. Spring Waters. 2006
18. “We give Kozarom one sliver of the raal”
20. B. A. Rybakov noted the similarity of the name Kordno with someone Khordab- a city of the Slavs, mentioned by Arab and Persian authors
26. Nikolskaya T. N. Land of the Vyatichi. On the history of the population of the upper and middle Oka basin in the 9th-13th centuries. Moscow. The science. 1981.)
27. Artsikhovsky A.V. Vyatichi burial mounds. 1930.
28. tulaeparhia.ru/home/istoriya-tulskoj-eparxii.html
29. Sedov V.V. Slavs of the Upper Dnieper and Podvinia. M., 1970. S. 138, 140.
30. In earlier lists of the chronicle, instead of stealing"funeral pyre" is the word treasure"deck, coffin."
31. Quote By: Mansikka V.Y. Religion of the Eastern Slavs. M.: IMLI im. A. M. Gorky RAS, 2005. P. 94.
32. Alekseeva T. I. Ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs according to anthropological data. M., 1973.

Literature

• Nikolskaya T. N. The culture of the tribes of the Upper Oka basin in the 1st millennium AD. / Rep. ed. M. A. Tikhanova; . - M.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1959. - 152 p. - (Materials and research on the archeology of the USSR. No. 72). - 1500 copies.(in translation)
• Nikolskaya T. N. Land of the Vyatichi: On the history of the population of the upper and middle Oka basin in the 9th-13th centuries. / Rep. ed. Doctor of History V. V. Sedov; . - M.: Nauka, 1981. - 296 p. - 3000 copies.(in translation)
• Grigoriev A.V. Slavic population of the Oka and Don watershed at the end of the 1st - beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. e. / Editorial Board: V. P. Gritsenko, A. M. Vorontsov, A. N. Naumov (chief editor); Reviewers: A. V. Kashkin, T. A. Pushkina; State military-historical and natural museum-reserve “Kulikovo Field”. - Tula: Repronix, 2005. - 208 p. - 500 copies. - ISBN 5-85377-073-X.(region)

Links

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

Turning events stories Chronicle tribes Kyiv rulers before the collapse of Old Russian states (1132) Significant wars and battles Major principalities in the XII-XIII centuries Society Crafts and economics Culture Literature Architecture

East Slavic tribes West Slavic tribes South Slavic tribes Bulgarian tribes Greco-Macedonian tribes Dalmatian tribes Excerpt characterizing Vyatichi Princess Marya was not in Moscow and out of danger, as Prince Andrei thought. After Alpatych returned from Smolensk, the old prince seemed to suddenly come to his senses from his sleep. He ordered militiamen to be collected from the villages, to arm them, and wrote a letter to the commander-in-chief, in which he informed him of his intention to remain in the Bald Mountains to the last extremity, to defend himself, leaving it at his discretion to take or not take measures to protect the Bald Mountains, in which he would be taken one of the oldest Russian generals was captured or killed, and announced to his family that he was staying in Bald Mountains. But, remaining himself in Bald Mountains, the prince ordered the sending of the princess and Desalles with the little prince to Bogucharovo and from there to Moscow. Princess Marya, frightened by her father's feverish, sleepless activity, which replaced his previous dejection, could not decide to leave him alone and for the first time in her life allowed herself to disobey him. She refused to go, and a terrible thunderstorm of the prince’s wrath fell upon her. He reminded her of all the ways in which he had been unfair to her. Trying to blame her, he told her that she had tormented him, that she had quarreled with his son, had nasty suspicions against him, that she had made it her life's task to poison his life, and kicked her out of his office, telling her that if she he won't leave, he doesn't care. He said that he did not want to know about her existence, but warned her in advance so that she should not dare to catch his eye. The fact that he, contrary to Princess Marya’s fears, did not order her to be forcibly taken away, but only did not order her to show herself, made Princess Marya happy. She knew that this proved that in the very secret of his soul he was glad that she stayed at home and did not leave. The next day after Nikolushka’s departure, the old prince dressed in full uniform in the morning and got ready to go to the commander-in-chief. The stroller had already been delivered. Princess Marya saw him, in his uniform and all the decorations, leave the house and go into the garden to inspect the armed men and servants. Princess Marya sat by the window, listening to his voice coming from the garden. Suddenly several people with frightened faces ran out of the alley. Princess Marya ran out onto the porch, onto the flower path and into the alley. A large crowd of militiamen and servants was moving towards her, and in the middle of this crowd several people were dragging a little old man in a uniform and orders by the arms. Princess Marya ran up to him and, in the play of small circles of falling light, through the shadow of the linden alley, she could not give herself an account of the change that had taken place in his face. One thing she saw was that the former stern and decisive expression on his face was replaced by an expression of timidity and submission. Seeing his daughter, he moved his weak lips and wheezed. It was impossible to understand what he wanted. They picked him up, carried him into the office and laid him on that sofa that he was so afraid of. Lately. The doctor brought in drew blood that same night and announced that the prince had a stroke on the right side. It became more and more dangerous to stay in Bald Mountains, and the next day after the prince was struck, they were taken to Bogucharovo. The doctor went with them. When they arrived in Bogucharovo, Desalles and the little prince had already left for Moscow. Still in the same position, no worse and no better, broken by paralysis, the old prince lay in Bogucharovo for three weeks in a new house built by Prince Andrei. The old prince was unconscious; he lay there like a mutilated corpse. He muttered something incessantly, twitching his eyebrows and lips, and it was impossible to know whether he understood or not what surrounded him. One thing that was certain was that he suffered and felt the need to express something else. But what it was, no one could understand; was it some kind of whim of a sick and half-crazy person, did it relate to general progress affairs, or did it relate to family circumstances? The doctor said that the anxiety he expressed meant nothing, that it had physical causes; but Princess Marya thought (and the fact that her presence always increased his anxiety confirmed her assumption), thought that he wanted to tell her something. He obviously suffered both physically and mentally. There was no hope for healing. It was impossible to transport him. And what would have happened if he had died on the way? “Wouldn’t it be better if there was an end, a complete end! - Princess Marya sometimes thought. She watched him day and night, almost without sleep, and, scary to say, she often watched him not with the hope of finding signs of relief, but watched, often wanting to find signs of approaching the end. Strange as it was for the princess to recognize this feeling in herself, but it was there. And what was even more terrible for Princess Marya was that since her father’s illness (even almost earlier, perhaps even when she, expecting something, stayed with him) everyone who had fallen asleep in her woke up, forgotten personal desires and hopes. What had not occurred to her for years - thoughts about a free life without the eternal fear of her father, even thoughts about the possibility of love and family happiness, as temptations of the devil, constantly floated in her imagination. No matter how much she distanced herself from herself, questions constantly came to her mind about how she would arrange her life now, after that. These were temptations of the devil, and Princess Marya knew it. She knew that the only weapon against him was prayer, and she tried to pray. She stood in a position of prayer, looked at the images, read the words of the prayer, but could not pray. She felt that she was now embraced by another world - of everyday, difficult and free activity, completely opposite to the moral world in which she had been confined before and in which prayer was the best consolation. She could not pray and she could not cry, and the cares of life overwhelmed her. It was becoming dangerous to stay in Vogucharovo. The approaching French were heard from all sides, and in one village, fifteen versts from Bogucharovo, an estate was plundered by French marauders. The doctor insisted that the prince must be taken further; the leader sent an official to Princess Marya, persuading her to leave as soon as possible. The police officer, having arrived in Bogucharovo, insisted on the same thing, saying that the French were forty miles away, that French proclamations were going around the villages, and that if the princess did not leave with her father before the fifteenth, then he would not be responsible for anything. The princess of the fifteenth decided to go. The worries of preparations, giving orders for which everyone turned to her, occupied her all day. She spent the night from the fourteenth to the fifteenth, as usual, without undressing, in the room next to the one in which the prince lay. Several times, waking up, she heard his groaning, muttering, the creaking of the bed and the steps of Tikhon and the doctor, turning him over. Several times she listened at the door, and it seemed to her that he was muttering louder than usual and tossing and turning more often. She could not sleep and went to the door several times, listening, wanting to enter but not daring to do so. Although he did not speak, Princess Marya saw and knew how unpleasant any expression of fear for him was to him. She noticed how dissatisfied he turned away from her gaze, sometimes involuntarily and stubbornly directed at him. She knew that her coming at night, at an unusual time, would irritate him. But she had never been so sorry, she had never been so afraid of losing him. She remembered her entire life with him, and in every word and action of his she found an expression of his love for her. Occasionally, between these memories, the temptations of the devil burst into her imagination, thoughts about what would happen after his death and how her new, free life would work out. But she drove away these thoughts with disgust. By morning he calmed down and she fell asleep. She woke up late. The sincerity that occurs during awakening showed her clearly what occupied her most during her father’s illness. She woke up, listened to what was behind the door, and, hearing his groaning, said to herself with a sigh that it was still the same. - Why should that happen? What did I want? I want him dead! – she screamed with disgust at herself. She got dressed, washed, said prayers and went out onto the porch. Horseless carriages were brought to the porch, into which things were packed. The morning was warm and gray. Princess Marya stopped on the porch, never ceasing to be horrified by her spiritual abomination and trying to put her thoughts in order before entering him. The doctor came down the stairs and approached her. “He’s feeling better today,” said the doctor. - I was looking for you. You can understand something from what he says, with a fresher head. Let's go. He is calling you... Princess Marya's heart beat so hard at this news that she, turning pale, leaned against the door so as not to fall. To see him, to talk to him, to fall under his gaze now, when Princess Marya’s whole soul was filled with these terrible criminal temptations, was painfully joyful and terrible. “Let’s go,” said the doctor. Princess Marya entered her father and went to the bed. He lay high on his back, with his small, bony hands covered with lilac knotty veins on the blanket, with his left eye staring straight and his right eye squinted, with motionless eyebrows and lips. He was all so thin, small and pitiful. His face seemed to have shriveled or melted, his features shriveled up. Princess Marya came up and kissed his hand. His left hand squeezed her hand so that it was clear that he had been waiting for her for a long time. He jerked her hand, and his eyebrows and lips moved angrily. She looked at him in fear, trying to guess what he wanted from her. When she changed her position and moved so that her left eye could see her face, he calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for a few seconds. Then his lips and tongue moved, sounds were heard, and he began to speak, timidly and pleadingly looking at her, apparently afraid that she would not understand him. Princess Marya, straining all her attention, looked at him. The comic labor with which he moved his tongue forced Princess Marya to lower her eyes and with difficulty suppress the sobs rising in her throat. He said something, repeating his words several times. Princess Marya could not understand them; but she tried to guess what he was saying and repeated the questioning words he said to the elephant. “Gaga – fights... fights...” he repeated several times. There was no way to understand these words. The doctor thought that he had guessed right, and, repeating his words, asked: is the princess afraid? He shook his head negatively and repeated the same thing again... “My soul, my soul hurts,” Princess Marya guessed and said. He hummed affirmatively, took her hand and began to press it to various places on his chest, as if searching for the real place for her. - All thoughts! about you... thoughts,” he then said much better and more clearly than before, now that he was sure that he was understood. Princess Marya pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide her sobs and tears. He moved his hand through her hair. “I called you all night...” he said. “If only I knew...” she said through tears. – I was afraid to enter. He shook her hand. – Didn’t you sleep? “No, I didn’t sleep,” said Princess Marya, shaking her head negatively. Unwittingly obeying her father, she now, just as he spoke, tried to speak more signs and as if he was also having difficulty moving his tongue. - Darling... - or - friend... - Princess Marya could not make out; but, probably, from the expression of his gaze, a gentle, caressing word was said, which he never said. - Why didn’t you come? “And I wished, wished for his death! - thought Princess Marya. He paused. “Thank you... daughter, friend... for everything, for everything... forgive... thank you... forgive... thank you!..” And tears flowed from his eyes. “Call Andryusha,” he suddenly said, and something childishly timid and distrustful was expressed in his face at this demand. It was as if he himself knew that his demand made no sense. So, at least, it seemed to Princess Marya. “I received a letter from him,” answered Princess Marya. He looked at her with surprise and timidity. - Where is he? - He is in the army, mon pere, in Smolensk. He was silent for a long time, closing his eyes; then in the affirmative, as if in response to his doubts and to confirm that he now understood and remembered everything, he nodded his head and opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said clearly and quietly. - Russia is dead! Ruined! - And he began to sob again, and tears flowed from his eyes. Princess Marya could no longer hold on and cried too, looking at his face. He closed his eyes again. His sobs stopped. He made a sign with his hand to his eyes; and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away his tears. Then he opened his eyes and said something that no one could understand for a long time, and finally only Tikhon understood and conveyed it. Princess Marya looked for the meaning of his words in the mood in which he spoke a minute before. She thought that he was talking about Russia, then about Prince Andrei, then about her, about his grandson, then about his death. And because of this she could not guess his words. “Put on your white dress, I love it,” he said. Realizing these words, Princess Marya began to sob even louder, and the doctor, taking her by the arm, led her out of the room onto the terrace, persuading her to calm down and make preparations for departure. After Princess Marya left the prince, he again started talking about his son, about the war, about the sovereign, twitched his eyebrows angrily, began to raise a hoarse voice, and the second and final blow came to him. Princess Marya stopped on the terrace. The day had cleared up, it was sunny and hot. She could not understand anything, think about anything and feel anything except her passionate love for her father, a love that, it seemed to her, she did not know until that moment. She ran out into the garden and, sobbing, ran down to the pond along the young linden paths planted by Prince Andrei. - Yes... I... I... I. I wanted him dead. Yes, I wanted it to end soon... I wanted to calm down... But what will happen to me? “What do I need peace of mind when he’s gone,” Princess Marya muttered aloud, walking quickly through the garden and pressing her hands on her chest, from which sobs were convulsively escaping. Walking around the garden in a circle that led her back to the house, she saw M lle Bourienne (who remained in Bogucharovo and did not want to leave) and an unfamiliar man coming towards her. This was the leader of the district, who himself came to the princess in order to present to her the necessity of an early departure. Princess Marya listened and did not understand him; she led him into the house, invited him to have breakfast and sat down with him. Then, apologizing to the leader, she went to the door of the old prince. The doctor with an alarmed face came out to her and said that it was impossible. - Go, princess, go, go! Princess Marya went back into the garden and sat down on the grass under the mountain near the pond, in a place where no one could see. She didn't know how long she was there. Someone's running female steps along the path made her wake up. She got up and saw that Dunyasha, her maid, who was obviously running after her, suddenly, as if frightened by the sight of her young lady, stopped. “Please, Princess... Prince...” Dunyasha said in a broken voice. “Now, I’m coming, I’m coming,” the princess spoke hastily, not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she had to say, and, trying not to see Dunyasha, she ran to the house. “Princess, God’s will is being done, you must be ready for anything,” said the leader, meeting her at the front door. - Leave me. It is not true! – she angrily shouted at him. The doctor wanted to stop her. She pushed him away and ran to the door. “Why are these people with frightened faces stopping me? I don't need anyone! And what are they doing here? - She opened the door, and bright daylight in this previously darkened room terrified her. There were women and a nanny in the room. They all moved away from the bed to give her way. He was still lying on the bed; but the stern look of his calm face stopped Princess Marya at the threshold of the room. “No, he’s not dead, that can’t be! - Princess Marya said to herself, walked up to him and, overcoming the horror that gripped her, pressed her lips to his cheek. But she immediately pulled away from him. Instantly, all the strength of tenderness for him that she felt in herself disappeared and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what was in front of her. “No, he is no more! He is not there, but there is right there, in the same place where he was, something alien and hostile, some terrible, terrifying and repulsive secret... - And, covering her face with her hands, Princess Marya fell into the arms of the doctor who supported her. In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor, the women washed what he was, tied a scarf around his head so that his open mouth would not stiffen, and tied his diverging legs with another scarf. Then they dressed him in a uniform with orders and placed the small, shriveled body on the table. God knows who took care of it and when, but everything happened as if by itself. By nightfall, candles were burning around the coffin, there was a shroud on the coffin, juniper was strewn on the floor, a printed prayer was placed under the dead, shriveled head, and a sexton sat in the corner, reading the psalter. Just as horses shy away, crowd and snort over a dead horse, so in the living room around the coffin a crowd of foreign and native people crowded - the leader, and the headman, and the women, and all with fixed, frightened eyes, crossed themselves and bowed, and kissed the cold and numb hand of the old prince. Bogucharovo was always, before Prince Andrei settled there, an estate behind the eyes, and the Bogucharovo men had a completely different character from the Lysogorsk men. They differed from them in their speech, clothing, and morals. They were called steppe. The old prince praised them for their tolerance at work when they came to help with cleaning in the Bald Mountains or digging ponds and ditches, but did not like them for their savagery. Prince Andrei's last stay in Bogucharovo, with its innovations - hospitals, schools and ease of rent - did not soften their morals, but, on the contrary, strengthened in them those character traits that the old prince called savagery. There were always some vague rumors going around between them, either about the enumeration of all of them as Cossacks, then about the new faith to which they would be converted, then about some royal sheets, then about the oath to Pavel Petrovich in 1797 (about which they said that back then the will came out, but the gentlemen took it away), then about Peter Feodorovich, who will reign in seven years, under whom everything will be free and it will be so simple that nothing will happen. Rumors about the war in Bonaparte and his invasion were combined for them with the same unclear ideas about the Antichrist, the end of the world and pure will. In the vicinity of Bogucharovo there were more and more large villages, state-owned and quitrent landowners. There were very few landowners living in this area; There were also very few servants and literate people, and in the life of the peasants of this area, those mysterious currents of Russian folk life, the causes and significance of which are inexplicable to contemporaries, were more noticeable and stronger than in others. One of these phenomena was the movement that appeared about twenty years ago between the peasants of this area to move to some warm rivers. Hundreds of peasants, including those from Bogucharov, suddenly began to sell their livestock and leave with their families somewhere to the southeast. Like birds flying somewhere across the seas, these people with their wives and children strove to the southeast, where none of them had been. They went up in caravans, bathed one by one, ran, and rode, and went there, to the warm rivers. Many were punished, exiled to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger along the way, many returned on their own, and the movement died down by itself just as it had begun without an obvious reason. But the underwater currents did not stop flowing in this people and were gathering for some new force, which was about to manifest itself just as strangely, unexpectedly and at the same time simply, naturally and strongly. Now, in 1812, for a person who lived close to the people, it was noticeable that these underwater jets were doing strong work and were close to manifestation. Alpatych, having arrived in Bogucharovo some time before the death of the old prince, noticed that there was unrest among the people and that, contrary to what was happening in the Bald Mountains strip on a sixty-verst radius, where all the peasants left (letting the Cossacks ruin their villages), in the steppe strip , in Bogucharovskaya, the peasants, as was heard, had relations with the French, received some papers that passed between them, and remained in place. He knew through the servants loyal to him that the other day the peasant Karp, who had a great influence on the world, was traveling with a government cart, returned with the news that the Cossacks were ruining the villages from which the inhabitants were leaving, but that the French were not touching them. He knew that yesterday another man had even brought from the village of Visloukhova - where the French were stationed - a paper from the French general, in which the residents were told that no harm would be done to them and that they would pay for everything that was taken from them if they stayed. To prove this, the man brought from Visloukhov one hundred rubles in banknotes (he did not know that they were counterfeit), given to him in advance for the hay.

Russian chronicles connect the area of ​​the Vyatichi with the Oka. The Tale of Bygone Years notes: “...and Vyatko sat with his family in Otsa, from him he was called Vyatichi” (PVL, I, p. 14), and under 964, in connection with Svyatoslav’s campaign to the northeast, it says: “And I went to the Oka River and the Volga, and climbed the Vyatichi” (PVL, I, pp. 46, 47).

Vyatichi is mentioned more than once in chronicles later, especially in connection with the political events of the 12th century, and this information allows us to outline in the most general terms the boundaries of the Vyatichi land. Under 1146, two Vyatichi cities were named - Kozelsk and Dedoslavl. During the first of them, Svyatoslav Olgovich fled to the Vyatichi; in the second, the Vyatichi assembly was convened, which decided to fight against Svyatoslav Olgovich (PSRL, II, pp. 336-338). In the description of the 1147 campaign of Svyatoslav Olgovich against Vladimir Davydovich of Chernigov, the cities of Bryanesk, Vorobiin, Domagoshch and Mtsensk, located near the Vyatichi land or on its outskirts, are named (PSRL, II, p. 342). However, in the 12th century. the chronicle “Vyatichi” was also an administrative-territorial unit of the Chernigov land, and the boundaries of the latter did not at all correspond to the boundaries of the tribal (ethnographic) region of the Vyatichi (Zaitsev A.K., 1975, pp. 101-103).

However, it seems certain that the administrative region “Vyatichi” was some part of the tribal territory. Therefore, the geography of the cities indicated by the chronicle in “Vyatichi” can be used to reconstruct the Vyatichi ethnographic territory.

Under 1185, Karachev was definitely classified as a Vyatichi city (PSRL, II, p. 637). In addition, the “Vyatichi” mentions the cities of Vorotinsk (on the Vyssa River, the left tributary of the Oka), Koltesk (on the Oka), Mosalsk (in the Ugra basin) and Serenek (in the Zhizdra basin).

In later chronicles there is news that in the east the Vyatichi land extended to the Ryazan current of the Oka: “Vyatichi to this day, which is Ryazantsi” (PSRL, XV, p. 23; XX, p. 42; XXII, p. 2). Thus, judging by the chronicles, the territory of settlement of the Vyatichi covered the basins of the upper and middle reaches of the Oka.

The largest representatives of Russian historical geography, N.P. Barsov and M.K. Lyubavsky, attempted to detail the boundaries of the Vyatichi settlement, using toponymic and landscape data. They also looked for the opportunity to use dialectology data to reconstruct the territory of the Vyatichi, but to no avail. The most substantiated and detailed picture of the Vyatichi settlement was provided only by archaeological materials.

The Vyatichian mounds with corpses and their artefacts were perfectly systematized and interpreted by A.V. Artsikhovsky (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1930a). Small in volume, but
In a very rich book, this researcher was able to process all the archaeological materials accumulated by that time on the Vyatichi and draw important historical and archaeological conclusions that have not lost their scientific significance to this day. The objects he identified - seven-blade temple rings, crystal spherical and yellow glass spherical beads, lattice rings and plate-shaped curved bracelets, very characteristic of the Vyatichi, made it possible to outline the Vyatichi tribal territory in detail. Of these things, only seven-bladed rings are ethnically defining for the Vyatichi. The remaining decorations, although very often found in the Vyatichi mounds, are also known in some other regions of the East Slavic territory.

Based on the distribution of seven-lobed temporal rings, the limits of the Vyatichi tribal region are outlined as follows (Map 21).

In the west, the Vyatichi neighbored the northerners, Radimichi and Krivichi. The western border of the Vyatichi area initially ran along the watershed of the Oka and Desna. In the Zhizdra and Ugra basins there is a border strip 10-30 km wide, where the Vyatichi mounds coexisted with the Krivichi mounds. This strip ran along the upper reaches of the Zhizdra and along the tributaries of the Ugra - Bolva, Ressa and Snopoti. Further, the Vyatichi border rose north to the headwaters of the Moscow River, and then turned east towards the headwaters of the Klyazma. The right bank of the Moscow River belonged entirely to the Vyatichi. The Vyatichi also entered the left bank of this river (10-50 km to the north), but here, along with the Vyatichi mounds, Krivichi mounds are also found. Approximately near the confluence of the Ucha and the Klyazma, the Vyatichi border turned to the southeast and ran first along the left bank of the Moscow River, and then the Oka.

The easternmost point with the Vyatichi temple rings is Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky. From here the southeastern border of the Vyatichi went to the upper reaches of the Oka, capturing the Pronya basin, but not reaching the Don basin. The basin of the upper reaches of the Oka was entirely Vyatichi.

Several thousand mounds have been excavated in this vast Vyatichi region. Their first scientific studies date back to 1838 (Chertkov A.D., 1838). In the second half of the 19th century. The Vyatichi mounds were studied by a large group of researchers, among whom are A. P. Bogdanov, N. G. Kercelli, A. I. Kelsiev, A. M. Anastasyev, V. A. Gorodtsov, A. I. Cherepnin, I. I. . Prokhodtsev, V.F. Miller, (Bogdanov A.P., 1867, p. 1-176; Kertselli N.G., 1878-1879, p. 9-12; Kelsiev A.I., 1885, p. 30-45; Miller V.F., 1890, pp. 182-186; Cherepnin A.P., 1896, pp. 130-152; 1898a, pp. 53-76; 18986, pp. 6-17; Gorodtsov V A., 1898, pp. 217-235; Spitssh A. A., 1898, pp. 334-340; Prokhodtsev I. I., 1898, pp. 81-85; 1899, pp. 73-76; Milyukov 77 77., 1899, pp. 14-137).

Large studies of mounds on the Krivichi-Vyatichi borderland at the very end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century. conducted by N.I. Bulychov (Bulychov N.I., 1899a; 18996; 1903; 1913).

From the works of the first decades of the 20th century. we can mention the excavations of mounds in the upper Oka basin by I. E. Evseev (Evseev I. E., 1908, p. 29-52). In the 20s, mound excavations were carried out by A.V. Artsikhovsky (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1928, p. 98-103), M.V. Gorodtsov (Gorodtsov M.V., 1928, p. 342-558) and other.

After the publication of A. V. Artsikhovsky’s monograph on the Vyatichi mounds, their field research continued almost every year. The mounds are being excavated by many researchers from both Moscow and peripheral centers. In the Moscow region they were excavated by the Department of Archeology of Moscow State University, and in post-war years- Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow. Some information about the work of the 30-40s was published in an archaeological collection dedicated to the 800th anniversary of Moscow (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1947a, pp. 17-19; 19476, pp. 77-81; Bader O.N., 1947 , pp. 88-167). Materials on excavations of mounds in the Moscow region. of the last decades have been published by many researchers (Latysheva G.P., 1954, pp. 39-56; Avdusina G.A., 1962, pp. 272-285; Ravdina T.V., 1963, pp. 213-217; 1966, pp. 222-221; Rosenfeldt R.L., 1963, pp. 218-220; 1966, pp. 202-204; 1967, pp. 106-109; 1973a, pp. 62-65; 19736, pp. 192- 199; 1978, pp. 81, 82; Veksler A. G., 1970, pp. 122-125; Yushko A. A., 1967, pp. 48-53; 1972, pp. 185-198; 1980, p. 82, 87).

In the upper Oka basin interesting results were obtained during the burial mound excavations of P. S. Tkachevsky and K. Ya. Vinogradov, the materials of which were not published. T.N. Nikolskaya conducted research in the burial mounds of Voronovo and Lebedka (Nikolskaya T.N., 1959, pp. 73-78,120,147), and S.A. Izyumova - in burial grounds located on the territory of the Tula region. (Izyumova S. A., 1957, pp. 260,261; 1961, pp. 252-258; 1964, pp. 151-164; 1970a, pp. 191-201; 19706, pp. 237, 238). Vyatichi settlements are also being fruitfully studied (Nikolskaya T.N., 1977, pp. 3-10).

At the time when A. V. Artsikhovsky wrote a monograph on Vyatichi antiquities, there were very few materials about burial mounds in the region under study and they were not published. The researcher cited the words of the chronicler: “And Radimichi, and Vyatichi, and the North have one custom: ...if someone dies, I perform a funeral feast over him, and I put a great treasure in seven, and I blaspheme the treasure, I burn the dead man, and I collect the bones in seven I put a small amount into the vessel, and placed it on a pillar on the way, so that the Vyatichi can be created even now” (PVL, I, p. 15) - and concluded that until the 12th century. The Vyatichi were buried “on a pillar, on the paths,” and from such a ritual nothing remains for archaeologists (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1930a, p. 151, 152).

However, the etymology of the Old Russian word “pillar” is not limited to the meaning of “pillar”, “log”. In the monuments of Russian writing of the XI-XVI centuries. Both small grave houses and sarcophagi are called pillars (Rybakov B.A., 1970a, p. 43). A chronicler from Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, writing at the beginning of the 13th century, added to the words of the text of the Tale of Bygone Years about placing a funeral vessel on a pillar: “... and poured into the mounds,” and interpreted “a great treasure” as “a huge pile of great firewood” (Chronicle of Pereyaslavl Suzdalsky, p. 4). In this regard, the Vyatichi funeral rite in the chronicle can be understood as the burial of the remains of corpses in burial mounds with wooden structures in the form of houses or pillars. Therefore, the search for early Vyatichi mounds is quite natural.

The first to begin their persistent search was P.N. Tretyakov, who attributed the mounds of the mid-1st millennium AD to the Vyatichi. e. type Shankovo, excavated in the 80s of the last century by N.I. Bulychov in the Ugra basin (Tretyakov P.N., 1941, pp. 48-51).

However, as new materials accumulate, in particular from extensive excavations at settlements of the 1st millennium AD. e., it turned out that antiquities like Shankovo-Pochepok belonged to a non-Slavic population. These are monuments of the Moshchin culture, left by the ancestors of the chronicle golyad.

Information about the excavations of early Vyatichi mounds with corpse burnings, which archeology now has, was summarized and analyzed in a special work (Sedov V.V., 1973, pp. 10-16). These mounds are divided into two types. The mounds of the first type are generally identical to the burial mounds of other East Slavic tribes. In the Vyatich region they are most common and are found in all points where there are mounds with corpses burned.

Among the most explored in the land of the Vyatichi we will name the burial mound located in the Igrishche tract, 0.5 km north of the village of Lebedka in the Tsona basin, the left tributary of the Oka. IN different years I. E. Evseev, P. S. Tkachevsky, K. Ya. Vinogradov and T. N. Nikolskaya excavated 32 mounds here. All of them contained burials according to the ritual of corpse burning. In most cases, calcined bones collected from a funeral pyre are placed in a pile or in a clay urn directly in the mound, at its base or upper part. Many mounds contained one burial, others - from two to four. Most burials are devoid of belongings. Items were found in only two burials: in one - fused glass beads, a billon openwork buckle and copper spirals, in the other - an iron buckle. Clay urns from the mounds (Table XLI, 5, 6) have analogies among materials from a nearby settlement, the lower layer of which dates back to the 8th-10th centuries. (Nikolskaya T. Ya., 1957, pp. 176-197). Obviously, the Lebedkinsky mounds belong to the same time.

Similar mounds with burials according to the ritual of corpse burning have been studied in many places along the banks of the upper Oka and on its tributaries. Burnt bones collected from a funeral pyre are most often placed at the bases of mounds, but mounds with burials of the remains of corpses were also found 0.2-0.3 m higher than the mainland, as well as with burials at the top. Most burials contain neither urns nor objects.

Map 21. Mounds of the 11th-13th centuries. area of ​​the Vyatichi. a - monuments with finds of seven-lobed temporal rings; b - monuments with finds of bracelet-shaped tied temple rings; c - monuments with diamond-shaped rings; d - monuments with seven-rayed rings; d - monuments with spiral temple rings; e - burial mounds without finds of temple rings of the listed types 1 - Titovka; 2 - Volokolamsk; 3 - Ivanovskaya; 4 - Zakhryapino; 5 - Palashkino; 6 - Rybushkino; 7 - Volyn region; 8 - Pesoshnya; 9 - Nizhneye Slyadnevo; 10 - Volkov; 11 - Vorontsovo; 12 - New items; 13 - Blokhino; 14 - Chentsovo; 15 - Vlasovo; 16 - Mityaevo; 17 - Tesovo; 18 - Krasny Stan; 19 - Shishinorovo; 20 - Oak trees; 21 - Tuchkovo; 22 - Grigorovo; 23 - Crimean; 24 - Volkov; 25 - Shikhovo; 26 - Digging; 27 - Biological station; 28 - Savino; 29 - Korallovo-Dyutkovo; 30 - Klopovo; 31 - Tagannikovo; 32 - Porechye; 33 - Upper mud; 34 - Islavskoe; 35 - Uspenskoe; 36 - Nikolina Gora; 37 - Povadino; 38 - Podevshchina; 39 - Sannikovo; 40 - Christmas; 41 - Ayaosovo; 42 - Nikolskoye; 43 - Chashnikovo; 44 - Lyalovo; 45 - Shustino; 46 - Muromtsevo; 47 - Mikhailovskoe; 48 - Fedoskino; 49 - Listvyany; 50 - Kudrina; 51 - Podrezkovo; 52 - Mitino; 53 - Angelovka; 54 - Cherkeevo; 55 - Znamenskoye (Gubailovo); 56 - Spas-Tushino;
57 - Aleshkino; 58 - Nikolskoye; 59 - Cherkizovo; 60 - Bolshevo; 61 - Cherkizovo-Gostokino; 62-Moscow, Kremlin; 63-. Kosino; 64 - Aniskino; 65 - Oseevo; 66 - Obukhov; 67 - Church of Peter and Paul; 68 - Miletus; 69 - Saltykovka; 70-Trinity; 71 - Dyatlovka; 72 - Marusino; 73 - Tokareve; 74 - Balyatin; 75 - Fili; 76 - Cherepkovo; 77 - Setun; 78 - Nemchinovo; 79 - Kalchuga; 80 - Daisies; 81 - Odintsovo (three groups); 82 - Matveevskaya; 83-Troparevo; 84 - Cheryomushki; 85 - Zyuzino; 86 - Derevlevo; 87 - Konkovo; 88 - Borisovo; 89 - Orekhovo; 90 - Chertanovo; 91 - Kotlyakovo; 92 - Dyakovo; 93 - Tsaritsyno; 94 - Bitsa; 95 - Potapovo; 96 - Conversations; 97 - Berezkino; 98 - Bobrovo; 99 - Sukhanovo; 100 - Solarevo; 101 - Filimonki; 101a - Gums; 102 - Marino; 102a - Penino; 103 - Ryazanovo; 104 - Alkhilovo; 105 - Polivanov; 106 - Lukino; 107 - Sheep; 108 - Przemysl; 109 - Strelkovo; 110 - Veil; 111 - Turgenevo; 112-Zabolotie; 113-Dobryagino; 114 - Domodedovo; 114a-Vitovka; 115 - Seraphim-Znamensky monastery; 116 - Bityagovo; 117 - Sudakovo; 118 - Nikitskoe; 119 - Ushmara; 120 - Puvikovo; 121 - Ivino; 122 - Meshcherskoe; 123 - Alexandrovna; 124 - Lopatkina; 125 - Tupichino; 126 - Nikonovo; 127 - Leninskie Gorki; 128 - Novlenskoye; 129 - Seven enemies; 130 - Volodarsky; 131 - Konstantinovo; 132 - Prudishchi; 133- Zhukovo; 134 - Yeganovo; 135 - Morozov; 136 - Tyazhino; 137 -
Antsiferovo; 138 - Kolokolovo; 139 - Tishkovo; 140 - Boborykino; 141 - Zalesye; 142 - Avdotino; 143 - Voskresensk; 144 - Churchyard of Five Crosses; 145 - Achkasovo; 146 - Fedorovskoe; 147 - Rivers; 148 - Nikulskoe; 149 - Myachkovo; 150 - Suvorov; 151 - Insomnia; 152 - Oreshkovo; 153 - Bogdanovka; 154 - Malivo; 155 - Aksenovo; 156 - Krivishino; 157 - Aponichishchi; 158 - Kozlovo; 159 - Rossokha; 160- Vakino; 161 - Rubtsovo; 162 - Akaemovo; 163 - Borki; 164 - Ryazan; 165 - Alekapovo; 166 - Gorodets; 167 - Old Ryazan; 168 - Princely; 169 - Maklakovo; 170 - Pronsk (monastery); 171 - Projask (Zavalye); 172 - Sviridovo; 173 - Zvoiko; 174 - Osovo; 175 - Dyatlovo; 176 - Sosnovka; 177 - Smedovo; 178 - Flint; 179 - Teshilov; 180 - Meshrekovo; 181 - Serpukhov; 182 - Spas; 183 - Slevidovo; 184 - Parshino; 185 - Lobanovka; 186 - Vasilyevskoe; 187 - Epiphany; 188 - Spas-Pereksha; 189 - Yukhnov; 190 - Wet; 191 - Leonovo; 192 - Klimovo; 193 - Oblique Mountain; 194 - Bo¬charovo; 195 - Kozlovtsy; 196 - Kharlapovo; 197 - Ivanovskoe; 198 - Steps (two groups); 199 - Desire; 200 - Kohans; 201 - Shuya; 202 - Dobroselye; 203 - Merenishche; 204 - Voylovo; 205 - Maklaki; 206 - Serenek; 207 - Marfina; 208 - Prisca; 209 - Good; 209a - Senevo; 210 - Duna; 211 - Shmarovo; 212 - Likhvin; 213 - Boil; 214 - Kuleshovo; 215 - Belev; 216 - Doves; 217 - Tshlykovo; 218 - Settlement; 219 - b. Chernsky district near Zushn; 220 - Volokhovo; 221 - Mtsensk; 222 - Vorotyntsevo; 223 - Go; 224 - Rafts; 225 - Vshchizh: 226 - Slobodka; 227 - Alekseevna (Dunets)

Mounds of the first type made up the bulk of the burial ground near the village of Zapadnaya on the right bank of the river. Cherepet, not far from its confluence with the Oka. Excavations here were carried out by Yu. G. Gendune and S. A. Izyumova (Ieyumova S. A., 1964, pp. 159-162). The burning of the dead is always carried out on the side. The burnt bones are placed in a pile OR in an urn at the base of the mound or at various heights. Often a layer of burnt bones was scattered at the bases of mounds with an area of ​​80X70 to 210X75 cm. The burials placed in the mounds were obviously introductory.

In the burial mounds near the village of Zapadnaya, five clay urn vessels were found, of which one was pottery (Table XLI, 3), the rest were molded (Table XLI, 7). Bronze items are represented by a small wire ring, a wire bracelet and fragments of other jewelry. A rectangular iron buckle was also found. Glass mosaic beads (striped and ocellated), which have analogies in North Caucasian antiquities of the 8th-9th centuries, and one carnelian cylindrical bead were discovered.

Vyatichsky mounds of the second type contained burial houses made of wood. In the mounds near the village of Zapadnaya, the burial chambers were made of logs. Their dimensions ranged from 2.2 X 1.1 to 1.75 X 0.5 m. The chambers were covered with blocks on top and had a floor made of well-fitted boards below. The height of the chambers is up to 0.35 - 0.45 m. All of them are charred. The burial buildings burned inside the mound after the mound was built.

Each burial chamber was a kind of tomb, where the remains of several corpses were stored, committed on the side in different time. The entrance to the chambers was blocked with stones, so access to them was always possible, as soon as the boulders were moved away. When clearing the chambers, accumulations of calcified bones were discovered in the form of either a continuous layer 10-20 cm thick, or five to seven piles. In addition to scattered bones, on the floor of the houses there were urns with ashes and empty pots, obviously for ritual purposes. All ceramics are molded (Plate XLI, 1, 2, 4, 8).

There are sporadic finds - small iron knives, melted glass beads, fragments of buckles, a deformed bell with a corrugated surface, a button and a tube-holder.

The log chamber was also opened during excavations of one of the mounds in the village. Kind. It had dimensions of 1.4X1 m, a height of 0.25 m and contained three clusters of calcined bones, fragments of molded vessels and glass beads, which made it possible to date the mound to the 9th - 10th centuries.

The researcher of the mounds in Voronets V. A. Gorodtsov noted that the chambers here were built from boards under the western hollow embankment (Gorodtsov V. A., 1900a, pp. 14-20). The entrances to them were blocked with stones or covered with boards. In the Peskovatovsky mound, the box was charred and had dimensions of 2.3 X 0.7 m. It contained very a large number of burnt bones - apparently from the burning of several dead. One of the burials was placed in an ancient Russian pottery vessel decorated with a linear ornament. Apparently, burials in this mound took place back in the 10th-11th centuries. In addition to burnt bones, the pot contained a wire ring and pieces of melted glass.

Mounds with burial houses are so far known only in six Vyatichi burial grounds (Voronets, Dobroe, Zapadnaya, Lebedka, Peskovatoe and Vorotyntsevo). With the exception of the Vorotyntsevsky mound, all these mounds were located in common groups with mounds of the first type and interspersed with them. The mound in Vorotyntsevo was single.

Mounds with burial houses are specific, but do not constitute an ethnographic feature of the Vyatichi area. Similar mounds are known in the area of ​​settlement of the Radimichi (Popova Gora, Demyanki), and in the land of the Northerners (Shuklinka), as well as in the upper Don basin. Later, in the 11th-12th centuries, similar chamber-houses were placed in mounds with corpses, mainly in the area of ​​settlement of the Dregovichi and Radimichi (Sedov V.V., 19706, p. 88-90), but they are also known in the ground Vyatichi Thus, N.I. Bulychov excavated mounds with a wooden chamber, in which there was a corpse with seven-lobed temporal rings, in the Merenshtse tract on the river. Bolva (Bulychov N.I., 1903, p. 47), and V.A. Gorodtsov examined mounds with wooden box-chambers containing skeletons, near Voskresensk (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1930a, p. 106).
Recently, burial houses with corpses have been studied in the Pokrovsky and Strelkovsky mounds on the river. Pakhra (Yushko A. A., 1972, p. 190, 191).

In many Vyatichian burial mounds with burials according to the ritual of corpse burning, ring-shaped pillar fences have been recorded. These are palisade fences, built from posts dug into separate holes or one common ditch. Pillar fences were found in East Slavic mounds containing both burnings and corpses, over a wide area from the Pripyat basin in the southwest to the Suzdal land in the northeast (Bessarabova Z. D., 1973, pp. 74-76). It is obvious that the custom of installing pillar fences was widespread in the East Slavic environment. It cannot be considered only Vyatichi, as was thought quite recently. In all likelihood, the ring fences had a ritual purpose. It has been suggested that they are associated with the cult of the sun in the funeral rites of the Slavs (Lavrov N.F., 1951, p. 73). P. N. Tretyakov noticed that the mound ring fences are very reminiscent of the “fences” of the pagan sanctuaries of the Baltic population of the Smolensk Dnieper region (Tretyakov P. N., 1969, p. 89).

The Vyatichi mounds with corpse burnings generally date back to the 8th-10th centuries, but individual burials of this type can obviously be dated back to the 11th-12th centuries. So, in 1940, G.P. Grozdilov excavated two mounds near the village of Slevidovo, which contained burials according to the ritual of burning and deposition of corpses. Ceramics and carnelian beads make it possible to date the burials according to the cremation rite in these mounds of the 12th century. (Izyumova S.A., 19706, p. 237, 238). Obviously, in the XI-XII centuries. The rite of cremation coexisted with the rite of inhumation.

Map 22. Settlement of the Vyatichi in the 8th-10th centuries. a - burial grounds with mounds containing corpses burned; 6 - Vyatichi settlements; c - Vyatichi villages; d - settlements of the Romny and Borshevsk cultures; d - settlements of the last stage of the Dyakovo culture; e - Meri settlements; g - Sredneoksky soil burial grounds; a - the boundaries of the settlement of the Vyatichi along the mounds of the 11th-13th centuries.
1 - Strelkovo; 1a - Fominskoe; 2 - Stepankovo; 3 - Kamenzino; 4 - Red Town; 5 - Rosva; 6 - mouth of Kaluzhka; 7 - Zhdamirovo; 8 - Gorodnya; 9 - Slevidovo; 10 - Vorotynsk; 11 - Zhelokhovo; 12 - Upper Podgorica; 13 - Voronovo; 14 - Good; 15 - Kudinovo; 16 - Western; 17 - Duna; 18 - Town; 19 - Zhabynskoe; 20 - Triznovo; 21 - Supruts; 22 - Timofeevka; 23 - Shchepilovo; 24 - Toptykovo; 25 - Smelts; 26 - Solonovo; 27 - Resseta; 28- Kharitonovna; 29 - Mikhailovna; 30 - Doves; 31 - Sandy; 32 - Fedyashevo; 33 - Voronets; 34 - Borilovo; 35 - Shlykovo; 36 - Nikitina; 37 - Settlement; 38 - Zaitsev; 39 - Mtsensk; 40 - Vorotyntsevo; 41 - Spasskoye; 42 - Winch; 43 - Winch (Igrishche tract); 44 - Kirov; 45 - Pashkovo; 46 - Rafts

Vyatichi mounds with corpse burnings are concentrated in the basin of the upper Oka River (above Kaluga), and settlements of the 8th-10th centuries. known only in the same southwestern part of the Vyatichi range (map 22). It must be assumed that in the last centuries of the 1st millennium AD. e. the more northern and northeastern regions of the Oka basin were not Slavic. This conclusion is consistent with the results of the latest work on the study of Dyakovo settlements in the Moscow River basin. Materials from the Shcherbinsky settlement show that this settlement was inhabited up to the 9th (maybe 10th) century inclusive (Rozenfeldt I.G., 1967, pp. 90-98). Other settlements of the late stage of the Dyakovo culture are also known (Rozenfeldt I.G., 1974, pp. 90-197). The Dyakovo tribes occupied the entire basin of the Moscow River and the adjacent part of the Oka River. At the same time, the Ryazan current of the Oka belonged to the tribes that left a group of Ryazan-Oka burial grounds, the latest burials of which date back to the 8th-10th centuries. (Mongayt A.L., 1961, pp. 76, 78; Sedov V.V., 1966a, pp. 86-104).

Vyatichi settlements of the 8th-10th centuries. - settlements and settlements. Layers with Romny type ceramics are, as a rule, found on multi-layer fortifications. It is impossible to say to what chronological period the fortifications on them belong until excavation research is carried out. Near the fortifications there are sometimes settlements with deposits from the 8th-10th centuries. Separately located settlements of this time are also known. One of these settlements is near the village of Lebedka on the banks of the river. Tson was studied by T.N. Nikolskaya (Nikolskaya T.N., 1957, pp. 176-197). Village existed for a long time - from the 8th to the 13th centuries. Several half-dugout buildings of the 8th-10th centuries have been discovered. of the same type as in the Romny settlements of the Middle Dnieper region. The same semi-dugouts with adobe stoves were excavated at a settlement near the village of Luzhki (Nikolskaya T.N., 1959, p. 73) and at a settlement in the village. Kromy.

Villages VIII-X centuries. characterized by significant sizes. Their area is from 2.5 to 6 hectares. The development, judging by the excavated site at the settlement near the village of Lebedka, is cumulus, with densely packed dwellings (Nikolskaya T.N., 1977, p. 3-9).

Verkhneokskaya ceramics of the 8th-10th centuries. According to all data, it is very close to Romenskaya. These are mainly molded dishes (pottery ceramics appeared here no earlier than the end of the 10th century). It is represented by pots, bowl-shaped vessels and frying pans. The shapes of pots and bowls have analogies in Romny ceramics of the Middle Dnieper region and the Desna basin. Most of the Oka molded pottery is not ornamented. Although the proportion of ornamented vessels here is less than in Romny ceramics, the patterns are absolutely identical and were applied with the same tools (Nikolskaya T. #., 1959, pp. 65-70).

The antiquities of the early Vyatichi in their main features - ceramic material, house-building and funeral rites - are comparable with the synchronous Slavic cultures of the more southern regions of Eastern Europe: the Romenskaya Dnieper forest-steppe left bank and the Luka-Raikovets type of the right bank of Ukraine.

Obviously, we must assume that at the very beginning of the 8th century. a group of Slavs came from somewhere from the southwest to the upper Oka River, to the territory occupied by the golyad.

The Tale of Bygone Years reports about the origin of the Vyatichi: “... the Radimichi were Bo and the Vyatichi from the Poles. There were two brothers in Lyasi, - Radim, and the other Vyatko, - and the gray-haired Radim came to Suzhya, and was called Radimichi, and Vyatko sat with his family in Otsa, from him he was called Vyatichi" (PVL, I, p. 14).

However, researchers have long noticed that the chronicle “from the Poles” should be understood not in an ethnic, but in a geographical sense. Apparently, the chronicle means that in ancient times the ancestors of the Vyatichi lived somewhere in the western regions, where the Lyash (Polish) tribes settled in the Middle Ages.

The ethnonym Vyatichi is derived from the name Vyatko, as reported in the Tale of Bygone Years. Vyatko is a diminutive form from the Proto-Slavic anthroponym Vyacheslav (Fasmer M., 1964, p. 376). It must be assumed that Vyatko was the leader of that group of Slavs who were the first to come to the upper Oka. This group was, apparently, not yet a separate ethnographic unit of the Slavs. Only isolated life on the Oka and miscegenation with the local Balts led to the tribal isolation of the Vyatichi.

Until the 11th century, apparently, only small isolated groups of Slavs penetrated into the northern regions of the Vyatichi land. Traces of such penetration are the finds of molded ceramics close to the Romny-Borshevskaya, discovered at the Dyakovo site near Moscow, at the Staroryazan, Vyshgorod and Lukhovitsky settlements of the Ryazan current of the Oka (Mongayt A.L., 1961, p. 124). Individual Slavic strata of the 8th-10th centuries. At all these sites there are no, only in layers with a predominance of ceramic material of a different appearance, a few shards of the 9th-10th centuries were found.

The Slavic infiltration of this time in the northern part of the Vyatichi land is also evidenced by isolated burials according to the ritual of corpse burning. One of them was discovered in the mound of the Strelkovsky burial ground on Pakhra (Yushko A. A., 1972, p. 186). However, it is possible that this cremation dates back to the 11th century.

A sign of the massive penetration of the Slavs into the northern regions of the Vyatichi region is the spread of the burial mound ritual here. Mounds with corpses occupy the entire territory of the Vyatichi (Map 21). These are ordinary ancient Russian hemispherical mounds, about 1-2.5 m high. The burial grounds consist of several dozen mounds. Sometimes there are mound groups numbering over a hundred mounds. In most Vyatichian mounds with corpses there are randomly scattered coals or small accumulations of them. This is, in all likelihood, one of the remnants of the previous funeral ritual - burning of corpses.

The dead were buried according to the common Slavic ritual - on their backs, with their heads to the west (with seasonal deviations). The eastern orientation of the deceased has been recorded in isolated cases in the Vyatich region. Such burials were discovered in the Zhizdra and Ugra basins, on the borderland with the Krivichi and in the Moskva River basin (Map 12). The eastern orientation of the dead in ancient Russian mounds was a legacy of the Baltic funeral ritual. Also rarely found in Vyatichi mounds are corpses oriented meridionally. They are found in the Krivichi-Vyatichi borderland - in the burial grounds of Kolchino, Kurganye, Manina, Marfinka, Singovo and, in addition, in the mounds near the village of Krymskoye in the Vereisky district of the Moscow region. and the mounds of the Ryazan current of the Oka, explored in Aponichishchi, Gorodets and Zemskoye. Apparently, this group of burials includes corpses oriented with their heads to the northeast (Sitkovo in the former Zaraisky district). The meridional position of the dead is characteristic of the Finnish tribes, and from them this ritual spread to the Vyatichi.

As a rule, in the Vyatichi mounds there is one corpse. Family burials are relatively rare; in them, the deceased lie either on the horizon or in different tiers. Dugout coffins were often used, less often - plank coffins. Sometimes the deceased was wrapped in birch bark or covered with a layer of it. As already noted, burials were recorded in wooden chamber-houses.

The Vyatichian burial mounds are very rich in artifacts. In this respect, they differ significantly from the mounds of the southern part of the East Slavic region. The corpses of women are characterized by a special variety of things, which makes it possible to reconstruct in general terms the decoration of a woman’s costume.

A well-preserved headdress was found in one of the mounds in the village. Islavskoe near Zvenigorod. It consisted of a woolen ribbon that encircled the head and twisted fringe that descended in tiers on either side of the face. A. V. Artsikhovsky noted that similar headdresses were encountered by ethnographers among the peasant population of a number of districts of the Ryazan region. (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1930a, p. 101). Apparently, the remains of a similar headdress were discovered in a mound near the village. Myachkovo in b. Kolomna district (Index of monuments, p. 275).

The seven-lobed temporal rings characteristic of the Vyatichi were found in hundreds of female burials (Table XLII, 1, 2, 6, 10, 11\ XLIII, 5, 6). They were worn on a headband made of leather or fabric, and sometimes woven into the hair. Usually in one burial there are six or seven seven-lobed rings, but there are also fewer - four or two rings. In addition to finds in burial mounds, seven-lobed rings were repeatedly discovered in Vyatichi settlements, including in the cities of Moscow, Old Ryazan, Serensk, Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky, Teshilova, etc.

Outside the Vyatichi area, seven-lobed temporal rings are rare and undoubtedly reflect settlement from the land of the Vyatichi (Map 23). Two seven-lobed rings were found in Novgorod (Sedova M.V., 1959, p. 224, Fig. 1, 6, 7). They are also found in the upper Volga basin (Spitsyn A.A., 1905a, p. 102, fig. 127; Kuza A.V., Nikitin A.L., 1965, p. 117, fig. 43, 1) , in Suzdal (Voronin N.N., 1941, p. 95, table XIV, 8). Seven-lobed temporal rings have been found several times in the area of ​​settlement of the Smolensk Krivichi (Sedov V.V., 19706, p. 111), including in Smolensk (Belotserkovskaya I.V., Sapozhnikov N.V., 1980 , pp. 251-253). Several finds of Vyatichi temple decorations come from various places in more remote territories.

A. V. Artsikhovsky divided the seven-lobed temporal rings into types. He classified simple seven-bladed decorations as the first type and dated them to the 12th-14th centuries, and complex ones, differentiated into 12 types, to the 13th-14th centuries. (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1930a, pp. 49-55, 136, 137). B. A. Rybakov managed to notice the differences within simple seven-lobed rings (Rybakov B. A., 1948, p. 554). Their typology was later developed by T.V. Raidina (Ravdina T.V., 1968, pp. 136-142), who also wrote a general article about these decorations (Ravdina T.V., 1978, pp. 181-187).

The earliest among the seven-lobed ones are the rings with rounded widened lobes (Pl. XLII, 2). Such rings existed in the 11th and early 12th centuries. (Plate XLIV). They differ from later ones in their relatively small size, do not have lateral rings, and their blades are not ornamented.

At the next stage of development of the seven-lobed rings, their blades acquire ax-shaped outlines, lateral rings appear, the scutes are decorated first with a hatched stripe in one, and then in two rows (Pl. XLII, 1, 11\ XLIII, 5, 6). The dimensions of the temporal rings increase. Their date is XII-XIII centuries.

Map 23. Distribution of seven-lobed temporal rings. a - main region; b - finds outside this region.
1 - Drusti; 2 - Novgorod; 3 - Smolensk; 4 - Borodino; 5 - Black Brook; 6 - Pavlovo; 7-Kharlapovo; 8 - Titovka; 9 - Volokolamsk; 10 - Shustino; 11 - Voronovo; 12 - Kupanskoe; ./Z - Settlement; 14 - Sizino; 15 - Kraskovo; 16 - Kubaevo; 17 - Suzdal; 18 - Gunners; 19 - Petrovskoe; 20 - Russian Bundievka

Seven-lobed ornaments occupying an intermediate position are also known. Their blades have rounded outlines, but there are already lateral rings (Table XLII, 10).

Complex seven-lobed rings (Plate XLIV) date back to the second half of the 12th-13th centuries.

Several assumptions have been made regarding the origin of the seven-lobed temporal rings. N.P. Kondakov believed that the temple decorations of the Vyatichi developed from kolta: the balls that surrounded the kolta gradually evolved into blades (Kondakov N.P., 1896, p. 198). However, transitional forms between kolta and seven-rayed jewelry have not yet been found. P. N. Tretyakov drew attention to the external similarity of the seven-blade rings with crescent-shaped decorations hung with trapezoidal pendants. He believed that the Vyatichi rings developed from the latest jewelry (Tretyakov P.N., 1941, p. 41, 42, 51).
V.I. Sizov’s hypothesis about the influence of artistic products of the Arab East on the origin of seven-lobed rings seems more likely. The researcher was led to this conclusion by comparing the patterns of Vyatichi rings with Arabic ornaments (Sizov V.I., 1895, pp. 177-188). The observations of B.A. Kuftin seemed to confirm the conclusions of V.I. Sizov (Kuftin B.A., 1926, p. 92). In this regard, A.V. Artsikhovsky wrote that “the idea of ​​the Arabic origin of these decorations is apparently fruitful” (A.V. Artsikhovsky, 1930a, p. 48). B. A. Rybakov also came to the conclusion about the Arab-Iranian origin of the seven-lobed temporal rings (Rybakov B. A., 1948, p. 106, 107).

V.I. Sizov also raised the question of the evolution of the Vyatichi temple rings from the seven-rayed jewelry of the Radimichi. This idea was subsequently developed by N. G. Nedoshivina, who noted the finds in ancient Russian monuments of temporal rings, occupying an intermediate place between seven-rayed and seven-lobed jewelry (Nedoshivina N. G., 1960, pp. 141-147).

Most likely, the Vyatichi temple rings were based not on Radimich jewelry, but on seven-rayed rings of an early appearance, known from monuments of the 8th-10th centuries. the southern part of the East Slavic territories. In the process of the evolution of seven-blade rings in the Vyatichi region, judging by the ornamentation, they experienced eastern influence.

The clothes of Vyatich women were made mainly from woolen fabric, but remains of linen and brocade fabrics were also found. Instead of buttons, beads and bells were sometimes used, but more often the buttons were apparently made of wood. Small mushroom-shaped buttons made of bronze or billon were also found several times in the mounds. Belt buckles are almost never found in women's burials. Remains of leather shoes were also found in the mounds.
Women's neck decorations consisted of hryvnias and necklaces. It cannot be said that cervical metal hoops belong to the characteristic Vyatichian decorations. In most of the Vyatichi range, including the upper and middle Oka, they are almost never found. Nevertheless, in the Vyatichi burial mounds, neck torcs are found more often than in the funerary monuments of other East Slavic tribes. But they are concentrated mainly in the Moscow River basin and the adjacent areas of the upper reaches of the Klyazma (Fechner M. V1967, pp. 55-87). The reasons for such a proliferation of these decorations remain to be determined.

Neck torcs of several types come from the Vyatichi mounds. The earliest of them are made of a tetrahedral dart and end in a loop and hook. They were found in four burial grounds near Moscow (Besedy, Konkovo, Tagankovo ​​and Cherkizovo) in mounds dating back to the 11th century. Similar hryvnias are found in the Rostov-Suzdal land, the south-eastern Ladoga region and further in Scandinavia and the northern part of Central Europe.
Neck torcs were discovered in later Vyatichian mounds following types: round wire bent end, gable plate, twisted with locks in the form of hooks (Table XLIII, 11) or hook and loop and twisted with plate (unchained or soldered) ends ending with a hook and loop. Some other types are also represented as single copies.

Neck hryvnias, as a rule, are found in burials with a rich set of grave goods. They usually contain a lot of bracelets, rings, pendants, beads and temple rings. However, it would be a mistake to assume on this basis that the most prosperous women of the Vyatichi wore neck hryvnias. The distribution of burial mounds containing finds of these decorations makes such an assumption incredible. The accumulation of burial mound finds of neck torcs on the eastern coast of Lake Peipus, in the south-eastern Ladoga region, in the Rostov-Suzdal land gives more reason to believe that these jewelry are associated with the non-Slavic population of Eastern Europe.

Vyatichi necklaces, as a rule, consist of a large number of beads, varied in shape and color. More often, different types of beads alternate (Table XLII, 5, 7, 8, 12\ XLIII, 1, 4, 12). Sometimes pendants are added to them (Table XLII, 13). The most common among the Vyatichi were crystal spherical, carnelian beads and yellow glass spherical beads.

Usually Vyatichian necklaces have spherical crystals. the beads alternate with carnelian bipyramidal ones (Plate XLIII, 12). A.V. Artsikhovsky considers this combination to be a tribal characteristic of the Vyatichi.

Among the rare ones are chest decorations consisting of openwork chain holders and chains on which bells were hung, plate-like metal images of birds, keys, combs (Table XLII, 4). More common are bells (Table XLIII, 3), which served as single pendants for clothing.

Hand decorations are represented by bracelets and rings. Among the bracelets, there are twisted knotted ones (Table XLIII, 9, 10), twisted triple ones, twisted 2X2, 2X3 and 2X4, wire, open plate and bent-ended ones. Occasionally one comes across thick-plate bracelets with stylized ends (Table XLII, 9). In Vyatichi antiquities, triple and quadruple twisted bracelets and curved lamellar bracelets predominate numerically.

Rings are almost always found in Vyatichian female burials (Table XLII, 3; XLIII, 2, 7, 8). They were worn on the fingers of both hands, numbering from one to ten. In addition, in some mounds, bundles of two to four rings were noted on the chest of the deceased. The most common among the Vyatichi were lattice rings. A. V. Artsikhovsky identifies several types among them, of which one-, two- and three-zigzag ones are found predominantly among the Vyatichi. Lamellar rings are quite common, including wide-median and straight, wire, ribbed and twisted all-Russian types.

In the burials with the corpses of men in the Vyatichi mounds there are no things or there are few of them. The most common find is iron knives, which are also found in women's burials. In burials of men, iron and bronze buckles are often found, mostly lyre-shaped, but often ring and quadrangular, as well as belt rings.

The custom of putting weapons and objects of labor in the grave was not widespread among the Vyatichi. Only occasionally in the Vyatichian mounds do you come across roll-shaped and oval armchairs, and as an exception - iron axes and spearheads. Iron sickles, scissors, a kochedyk and an arrowhead are also represented as single specimens. Flint arrows found in the mounds had ritual significance.

Quite often, the burials of men and women in the Vyatichi mounds contain clay pots. Almost all of them were made using a potter's wheel and belong to the usual ancient Russian kurgan-type pots.
They were placed, as a rule, at the feet of the deceased and very rarely - near the head. It was a pagan ritual that gradually fell into disuse. Vyatichi burial mounds with pit corpses, as a rule, no longer contain clay pots.

A.V. Artsikhovsky differentiated the Vyatichi kurgan antiquities into three chronological stages, dating the first to the 12th century, the second to the 13th century, and the third to the 14th century. (Artsikhovsky A.V., 1930a, pp. 129-150). The division of the mounds into stages was carried out flawlessly by the researcher; only the absolute chronology of these stages can be clarified. Thus, T.V. Ravdina considers it possible to date the mounds of the first stage of the 11th-12th centuries, the second stage -
XII century, and the third - XIII century. (Ravdina T.V., 1965, pp. 122-129).

Mounds dating back to the first stage (XI - early XII century), in addition to the Verkhneoksky region, where there are mounds with corpses burned, are known along the Oka, before the Moscow River flows into it, and further in the basin of the lower and middle reaches of the latter (including ¬tea outskirts of Moscow).

It must be assumed that in the 11th century. The Vyatichi from the Verkhneok ¬ region ascended the Oka and, having reached the mouth of the Moscow River, turned to the northwest, settling the areas of the lower and middle reaches of this river. The upper reaches of the Moscow River, as well as the left tributaries of the Oka between the Ugra and the Moscow River, were not yet developed by the Slavs during this period. There are no Slavic mounds with corpses of the first stage in the Ryazan current of the Oka.

The burial mounds of the second stage were identified by A.V. Artsikhovsky based on twisted (and false-twisted) triple and quadruple bracelets and some types of seven-lobed temporal rings. Apparently, many of these mounds date back to the 12th century. (according to A.V. Artsikhovsky, to the 13th century), although the latest ones can be dated back to the 13th century. These mounds occupy a larger area than the area of ​​the early mounds. The basins of the Zhizdra, Ugra and Moscow rivers are being fully developed. In the north, the Vyatichi reaches the upper reaches of the Klyazma, in the east - to the right tributary of the Oka - Prony.
The latest Vyatichi mounds, dating back to the 13th and, perhaps, partly to the 14th centuries, are known throughout the Vyatichi area, but are unevenly distributed. Thus, in the upper Oka basin they are rare, which is apparently explained by the disappearance of the custom of constructing mounds here. It is interesting to note that it is in this area of ​​the Vyatichi land that there is a concentration of cities of the pre-Mongol period. Of the Vyatichi cities mentioned in the chronicle in the 12th century, the absolute majority are located in the area of ​​​​the early Vyatichi mounds (Sedov V.V., 1973, Fig. 5). It was in this area that the baptism of the Vyatichi population apparently began. At the end of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century. here, near the city of Serensk, a Christian missionary, the Kiev-Pechersk monk Kuksha, nicknamed by the church “the enlightener of the Vyatichi”, was killed by the Vyatichi (L. Ya., 1862, pp. 9, 10).

In the northern and eastern parts of the Vyatichi territory - in the Moscow River basin and the Ryazan part of the Oka - the burial mound ritual persisted firmly and for a very long time. In the 12th century. These were still quite remote areas. In the vast basin of the Moscow River, the chronicle knows in the 12th century. only two cities - Kolomna and Moscow. In the Ryazan Oka basin, at the same time, Pronsk and Trubech were named, but Trubech, judging by the name, was founded by settlers from Southern Rus'.

Christian symbols - crosses and icons - are very few in number in the Vyatichi mounds. They testify not to the Christianization of the rural population of the Vyatichi land, but to the first contact of the population with a new religion (Belenkaya D. A., 1976, pp. 88-98).

The evolution of the funeral rite among the Vyatichi (Table XLIV) went in the same direction as among most other East Slavic tribes: the earliest were corpses on the horizon, burials in burial pits spread in a later period (Nedoshivina N.G. , 1971, pp. 182-196). Thus, among the mounds with things of the first stage, about 90% are mounds with corpses on the horizon. In the second chronological period, the proportion of pit corpses reaches 24%, and in the third - 55%.

In this regard, the late nature of the Vyatichi mounds of the Ryazan land is quite obvious. Under-mound yampa corpses here decisively prevail over other types of burials. They make up over 80% of the studied burials (corpses on the horizon - 11%, the rest - burials in mounds).

N.G. Nedoshivina believes that the spread of corpses in burial pits reflects the process of Christianization of the Vyatichi population (Nedoshivipa N.G., 1976, pp. 49-52).

On this day:

• Birthdays
• 1795 Was born Johann Georg Ramsauer- an official from the Hallstatt mine. Known for having discovered in 1846 and led the first excavations of burials of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture there.
• Days of Death
• 1914 Died Antonio Salinas- Italian numismatist, art historian and archaeologist. Professor and Rector of the University of Palermo.
• 1920 Died Alexander Vasilievich Adrianov- Siberian educator, ethnographer, traveler, archaeologist.

Academician O.N. Trubachev

History found Vyatichi in the position of the most extreme Slavic tribe in the east [ Ilovaisky D.I. History of the Ryazan Principality. M., 1858, p. 8.]. Already our first famous chronicler Nestor in The Tale of Bygone Years(Monuments of literature of ancient Rus'. XI – early XII century) characterizes them as extremely backward and wild people living like animals in the forest, eating everything unclean, speaking foul language, not being ashamed of their parents and women of the family, and, of course, not Christians. Some of this negative picture probably corresponded to the reality of the time at the beginning of the 12th century, and some of it turned out to be an outright exaggeration at that time, in today’s language - political propaganda [ Nikolskaya T.N. Land of the Vyatichi. On the history of the population of the Upper and Middle Oka basin in the 9th – 13th centuries. M., 1981, p. 10.].

The Monk Nestor was a Kyiv Polyana , and the Vyatichi, who did not immediately submit to Kyiv, deserved such an assessment in his eyes. We now, after centuries, look at the matter differently, calmer, much has outlived time, although - who knows, maybe not everything. It is with the Vyatichi that a number of contradictions or paradoxes, known or less known, are associated. Already one of the first historians are ready, based on the testimony of Nestor, admit that they did not have agriculture, but immediately after this false statement, based on chronicle data, mentions on the payment of tribute by the Vyatichi to Svyatoslav and Vladimir , that is, at a fairly early time, “according to the shell from the plow” concludes that the Vyatichi knew agriculture [Ilovaisky D.I. History of the Ryazan Principality. M., 1858, pp. 9-12].

And this tendency judge the Vyatichi in the spirit of paradoxes, which, curiously, has been preserved by historians right up to our time, prompting us to look at these Vyatichi as the most Russian of tribes - this judgment, as we will see later, is also quite paradoxical. Our most prominent historian, academician. M.N. Tikhomirov, in his book “Ancient Russian Cities” talking about "the wilderness of the Vyatichi" , in order to recognize a little further that “in the middle of the 12th century, the country of the Vyatichi was not at all as remote as it is usually imagined, but filled with towns.”[Tikhomirov M.N. Old Russian cities. Ed. 2nd. M., 1956, p. 12, 32.].

By the way, everything is in the same paradoxical spirit - about “towns” or cities of Vyatichi , about which one can supposedly speak “no earlier than the 12th century,” but in the same In the 12th century, the Vyatichi suddenly found themselves with an amazingly large number of cities. [Ilovaisky D.I. History of the Ryazan Principality. M., 1858, p. 9 and 50.]. It seems that in addition to persistent bias in judgment Lack of information is also to blame for this discrepancy, and we have reason to believe the latest historian-archaeologist, when he talks about the flourishing of urban culture on the middle Oka, where the Vyatichi region also extended already from the 11th century . [Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 255.]. Is it possible to continue talking about backwardness? the Vyatichi, who held lands along the Oka River, through which the most important eastern trade route ran from early times, predecessor of the notorious paths “from the Varangians to the Greeks” ? [Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 255.]

And, finally, it was not “backwardness” that attracted people to Vyatichi Kyiv princes, in particular such a victorious conqueror as Svyatoslav; the seriousness of his plans of conquest illustrates miniature from the Radzivilov Chronicle under 964: Prince Svyatoslav receives the defeated Vyatichi, sitting on the throne.[Rybakov B.A. Kievan Rus and Russian principalities of the 12th – 13th centuries. M., 1982, p. 102].

It is also useful to keep in mind what probably attracted attention in the early centuries of Russian history - tribal identity of the Vyatichi which they preserved “longer than other East Slavic tribes” [Tretyakov P.N. East Slavic tribes. M., 1953, p. 241; Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 254].

Further more. It is known that Russian tribes are aliens in the main land of its habitat, in Eastern Europe, otherwise - Russian plain. The remarkable thing about the Vyatichi is that they are like pure aliens. The arrival of the Vyatichi on the Russian Plain happened, if not entirely before the eyes of written history, then still in the memory of the tribes that had already settled around, and it is usually reported that where did the Vyatichi come from together with the Radimichi , according to the wording of the initial Russian chronicle – "from the Poles." And this really is "grain of truth" [Lyapushkin I.I. Slavs of Eastern Europe on the eve of the formation of the Old Russian state in the 8th - first half of the 9th century.) L., 1968, p. 13.]. In contrast to the inherently tendentious ancient reasonings about backwardness and “savagery” “, information about the place of exodus of the Vyatichi did not promise any self-interest or political reason. For us, these are priceless crumbs of ancient knowledge, although we are not going to use them with straightforwardness. Shakhmatova, since the great scientist associated with the Vyatichi supposedly Polish features in the language of the Eastern Slavs [ Shakhmatov A.A. Essay on the most ancient period in the history of the Russian language // Encyclopedia of Slavic Philology. Pg., 1915 (Issue 11.1), p. XIX].

But about the language - later, as agreed, although in general the “Polish” reputation of the Vyatichi is also one of the long-standing traditions, or paradoxes of science, for, as one of our first historians writes: “Vyatichi are Sarmatians, possessed by the Slavs along the Oka... «[ Tatishchev V.N. Russian history. T. I. M.-L., 1962, p. 248]. At the same time, you just need to keep in mind that old Polish scholarship readily identified the Poles with the Sarmatians, although it is known that the Sarmatians are ancient Iranians! It is clear that we are talking about very old events and their participants, hence this forgivable mythology.

Too early the Vyatichi were mentioned in our writing, their participation in the campaign of Prince Oleg to Byzantium is listed under 907 [Ryazan Encyclopedia. Ryazan, 1995, p. 126 et seq., 674]. That is more than a thousand years ago , but this, of course, is not the limit, not the terminus post quem, because archeology confidently judges the earlier appearance of the Vyatichi on the Russian Plain.

It is appropriate to briefly say about the tribal name Vyatichi , since the borderline linguistic discipline of onomastics routinely appears among historical arguments. In general it is obvious that Vyatichi - from the west, but neither in the Slavic West nor in the South there is such an ethnonym, and this despite the fact that the repetition of ethnonyms is a well-known phenomenon among the Slavs; it is enough to name the glades of Kyiv and Polish glades. We have one more paradox associated with the Vyatichi people.

The chronicle suggests the right path here too: Vyatichi are nicknamed by the name of a certain leader (leader), referred to as Vyatko[Vasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language in 4 volumes. Translation from German and additions by O.N. Trubachev. Ed. 3rd, T. I. St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 376.]. Name Vyatko is a diminutive form of a personal name Vyacheslav, prasl. *vętjeslavъ , Wed Czech Vaclav , that is, exclusively West Slavic name . Thus, although not quite usually, the Western source of the ethnonym Vyatichi turned out to be documented, among them - the form V(a)ntit , name of the people and region in eastern sources X century [Rybakov B.A. Kievan Rus and Russian principalities of the 12th – 13th centuries. M., 1982, p. 215, 259.], allowing one to judge the form in which the name of the Vyatichi appeared until the 10th century inclusive, when the decline of nasals, common among the Eastern Slavs, was subjected to). It makes no sense to etymologically associate *vętitje - Vyatichi with the Wends-Venetians, much less with the Antes, both are alien alloethnonyms for the Slavs, despite the popularity of such experiments. Before us is a case when ancient tribe initially in general had no tribal name, was content with the designations itself “we”, “our”, “ours” , up to the moment of personal union with a daredevil named Vyatko leading them …

In general, on the very eve of our written stories of Poochie , which became the main region Vyatichi, received “different streams of Slavic colonization”, which simultaneously complicates our problem and makes it attractive for knowledge. [ Mongait A. L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 66] V.V. Sedov directly speaks about the multi-act nature of the Slavic development of the East European Plain[ Sedov V.V. Old Russian people. Historical and archaeological research. M., 1999, p. 7].

It is possible to outline this multi-act in advance, at least for our region Vyatichi : Middle Dnieper Slavs, Vyatichi Slavs from its more distant southwest and Don Slavs, who ended up there, on the Upper Don, in turn, as a result of some kind of relocation. It is believed that the Slavic population appeared in the Oka basin, especially in its upper reaches, in the 8th – 9th centuries .[Nikolskaya T.N. Land of the Vyatichi. On the history of the population of the Upper and Middle Oka basin in the 9th – 13th centuries. M., 1981, p. 12; Sedov V.V. Eastern Slavs in the VI – XIII centuries. M., 1982, p. 148] The Slavic population, having met tribes of Baltic origin here, perhaps golyad (other -Russian .), which name characterized the local Balts also as “Ukrainian”, “outskirts” (lit. galindai, galinda: galas - “end” ). However, the places were quite deserted, there was enough for everyone, even though archeology shows a tendency to constantly push back, make ancient the arrival of the Slavs, the first groups on the upper Oka - already in the 4th - 5th centuries. (!), and in Ryazan (middle) Poochie - in the 6th - 7th centuries. [Sedov V.V. Old Russian people. Historical and archaeological research. M., 1999, p. 58, 251].

Obviously, those contacts with the Balts conveyed to the newcomer Slavs the name of the rivers – Oka , together with its stress in the spirit of the Fortunatov-de Saussure law (transfer from a short, circumflex vowel root to an acute longitude ending). Wed. Latvian. aka - “well”, lit. akas - “hole”, akis - “eye”; “not overgrown water in a swamp”, “small bog” [Vasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language in 4 volumes. translation by O.N. Trubachev. Ed. 3rd, T. III. St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 127]. Judging by the semantics of the Baltic prototype, this name could have been given the upper reaches, the source of the Oka, and not at all to the middle or lower reaches of this large river.

Apparently in the upper reaches of the Oka and the beginning of the later region of the Vyatichi was laid, for the core of the Vyatichi is called the Upper Oka group of Slavs, dated archaeologically to the 8th - 10th centuries [ Sedov V.V. Old Russian people. Historical and archaeological research. M., 1999, p. 81].

However, Upper Don (Borshev) Slavs VIII – X centuries. , migrated en masse to the middle Oka in the 10th century, Same counted among the Vyatichi [Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 81, 85, 124]. The multi-act nature of the arrival of the Slavs, known to us, is aggravated by widespread infiltration from the Danube region in the 8th – 9th centuries, Moreover, the realities and routes are very reminiscent of what It is known about the Vyatichi, where we are talking about prototypes of seven-blade - Vyatichi - pendants that came here from the Danube through Mazovsze. [Sedov V.V. Old Russian people. Historical and archaeological research. M., 1999, p. 145, 149, 183, 188, 195.]

Approaching us gradually from time immemorial, the Vyatichi are acquiring features that bring them closer to modern settlement and the population of European Russia. So, in some chronicles Vyatichi are already identified with Ryazan residents [Kuzmin A.G. Ryazan chronicle. Information about Ryazan and Murom until the middle of the 16th century. M., 1965, p. 56]. The habitats also coincide. “The entire Ryazan “regional” territory known to us was Vyatichi in terms of the composition of the Slavic population” [Nasonov A.N.“Russian land” and the formation of territory ancient Russian state. Historical and geographical research. M.. 1951, p. 213].

With some amendments and additions: The Kursk-Oryol lands also belong to the Vyatichi region [Kotkov S.I. Dialects of the Oryol region (phonetics and morphology). dis. ... doc. Philol. n. T. I – II. M., 1951, p. 12.]. Regarding the continuity of settlement, it is important to keep in mind the popularity views of the past , the essence of which was that the steppe side, which closely approached the Ryazan side from the south, and in general the wide spaces of the South and Southeast were completely depopulated and were deserted during the famous events that shook these places before and more often than the more protected forest side. But the absoluteness of these views has long been raised doubts and was gradually refuted by the history of language and onomastics of this periphery, which preserved surprisingly ancient formations.

However, deprivation of fate still did not bypass the land of the Vyatichi, if we touch upon the issue of continuing the Cyril and Methodius traditions of Slavic writing. A unanimously negative answer awaits us: “The Ryazan chronicles have not reached us” [Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 9.]; " Nothing has survived from the writing of the vast Ryazan and Chernigov lands «[ Filin F.P. Origin of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. Historical and dialectological essay. L., 1972, p. 89.]; Ryazan chronicles existed (but did not reach)[ Darkevich V.P. Travel to Ancient Ryazan. Notes of an archaeologist. Ryazan, 1993, p. 136]. However, this should not be surprising if you think about it the tragic role of the outpost, which the Vyatka land was destined to play.

In a relationship preservation of writing all other ancient Russian lands are richer and more prosperous - Kiev, Galician, Pskov-Novgorod, Rostov-Suzdal and others. Therefore, those reaching us sound like a much greater paradox. information about grassroots literacy, which – against the background of the mentioned impoverishment – suddenly discovers the Ryazan, Vyatichi land from the earliest times, but more about it a little lower, when we talk about culture.

The nature of the Vyatichi dwellings further distinguishes them as the original Southerners – they settled in dugouts and semi-dugouts, like the Danube Slavs, like the “Sklavins” of Jordan and finally, how, apparently, also Proto-Slavs. They say that this sign should not be exaggerated, it is determined by the geographical environment; It is still important to note the presence among the Vyatichi on the Upper and Middle Oka semi-dugouts, and to the north, including at Krivichi, – above-ground log buildings (houses), adding that the border between the more northern hut and the more southern hut lay somewhere here, along river Pre. [Tretyakov P.N. East Slavic tribes. Second edition, revised and expanded. M., 1953, p. 197, 198; Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 127; Lyapushkin I.I. Slavs of Eastern Europe on the eve of the formation of the Old Russian state (VIII - first half of the 9th century) L., 1968, p. 120].

In this situation we are left with judge the culture of life and spirit of the Vyatichi according to the traces and remains that the fossil provides, archaeological culture, Vyatichi farmers are obviously not rich. Yet, thanks to the work of our archaeologists, we are learning a surprising amount here. And here perhaps one of the most paradoxical surprises awaits us: Vyatich women wore unusually elegant seven-lobed temple rings, which were consistently characteristic of the Vyatich region[Sedov V.V. Eastern Slavs in the VI – XIII centuries. M., 1982, p. 143]. Their analogues are also being sought in the East, but we are more impressed - in the general ensemble of known data - by the Western prototypes, which are also briefly indicated above.

More Ancient Vyatka women had plate-shaped curved-ended bracelets of the Western European type. [Nikolskaya T.N. Land of the Vyatichi. On the history of the population of the Upper and Middle Oka basin in the 9th – 13th centuries. M., 1981, p. 100, 113]. An enviable adherence to fashion, especially considering that we are talking about “the wilderness”!

Speaking about Vyatichi, then - about Ryazan women, one cannot help but recall the tradition that is still alive wearing poneva, especially since, as noted, “The range of the blue checkered poneva coincides with the distribution area of ​​the Vyatichi seven-lobed temporal rings...«[ Osipova E.P. Names of clothing in Ryazan dialects. dis. Ph.D. Philol. n. M., 1999, p. 72.]. We can further recall about the specificity of poneva - a kind of skirt for the Great Russian South, A sundress - for the Great Russian North , however, let’s say right away, looking ahead somewhat, that the named opposition turns out to be historically inappropriate, since “Northern Great Russian” sundress has arrived also from the south and in general it's later borrowing from Persian and later form (cf. -f-! ) and initially did not mean women’s clothing... All that remains is poneva/ponka with its reduced dialect level, but bright, still proto-linguistic antiquity (Proto-Slavic *pon’a), no less than that of Ukrainian. plakhta (proto-Slavic *рlahъta, plate), designation of an archaic straight cut, actually a piece of fabric, which is confirmed etymologically. Wed. interesting analogies[ Tretyakov P.N. East Slavic tribes. Edition 2. M., 1953, p. 197]: “Ethnographic data show that in Danube Bulgaria has a special type of women's national costume, in other parts of the peninsula, almost never found, finding its closest analogies in Ukrainian national clothing, of which it belongs “plakhta”, or the clothing of the Great Russians of the Kursk and Oryol regions, where “poneva” and a special type of apron were used«.

It is natural that all life on the Oka completely transformed when I arrived there Christianity. It is also true that Christianity emerged as an urban culture [Ilovaisky D.I. History of the Ryazan Principality. M., 1858, p. 32] X Christianity on the Oka appeared somewhat later than the rest of Rus', yet Christianization was greatly facilitated by the presence a significant number of ancient Ryazan cities, known in the period from the 11th to the 13th centuries: chronicles mention during this time as Ryazan cities (and villages) Kolomna, Rostislavl, Sturgeon, Borisov-Glebov, Solotcha, Olgov, Opakov, Kazar, Pereyaslavl, Ryazan, Dobry Sot, Belgorod, New Olgov, Isady, Voino, Pronsk, Dubok, Voronezh, and according to the Nikon Chronicle, Ryazan cities also include Kadom, Teshilov, Koltesk, Mtsensk, Yelets, Tula. And this, of course, is not all; cities are mentioned in other sources Izheslavets, Verderev, Ozhsk. [Ryazan Encyclopedia. Ryazan, 1995, p. 98, 126, 183, 388]. Of course, in ancient times, too, obviously, these were often villages rather than cities in the full sense of the word. In addition, some of them decayed and turned into villages, like a village with a glorious name Vyshgorod, on the Oka River as, in the end, the same Ryazan (Old), the former capital of the principality. Some such towns and villages were literally forgotten by history, never coming to the attention of the chronicler.

This is what experts say about two cities of Vyatichi who wore ancient name Przemysl - on the Oka in the Kaluga region, and on the Mocha River in the Moscow region. [Nikolskaya T.N. Land of the Vyatichi. On the history of the population of the Upper and Middle Oka basin in the 9th – 13th centuries. M., 1981, p. 157 et seq.]. The nomenclature itself in this case leads us backwards, to ancient Russian-Polish borderland, where the city of Przemysl is still known, also known in Polish Przemyśl, now within Poland, thereby returning us to the “Vyatichi route”, as we understand it.

There is a known transfer of city names in the Ryazan land associated with migration from the relatively close south, from the middle Dnieper region, Kiev region, the land of glades . Here we are dealing with the repetition of entire toponymic hydronymic ensembles, take, for example, this repetition within the city Pereyaslavl Ryazansky (present-day Ryazan) – Pereyaslavl – Trubezh – Lybid – Danube/Dunaets, which is invariably mentioned by all who write about these places [ Smolitskaya T.P. Hydronymy of the Oka basin (list of rivers and lakes). M., 1976, passim; Tikhomirov M.N. Old Russian cities. Ed. 2nd. M., 1956, p. 434]. Not everything, however, is simple and unambiguous with these names, at least those of them that bear the stamp of more distant connections and parishes/ transfer from the further South and / Dunajec, pointing through Polish territory and local landmarks like Dunajec, tributary of the upper Vistula on the great river in Central Europe, and Vyshgorod, also detecting, in addition to Kyiv, Dnieper, - Danube prototype. Relatively Danai, Lybid see “Etymology Dictionary...”, another Western association - Wislica in the middle Poochie.

A huge problem still remains the southern, south-eastern territories of the Vyatichi, the maximum expansion of which occurred in the pre-literate, “dark” centuries, which are mainly concerned with the reconstruction in the work of Shakhmatov and several other scientists, covered by the concept "Priazovskaya" or , which entire subsequent generations for some reason hastened to be archived. The point is not only that from the 11th century the “road route” from the Oka along the Don to Taurida was cut [Ilovaisky D.I. History of the Ryazan Principality. M., 1858, p. 123]. The fact is that the space of the Russian language and tribe was really different , And Tmutarakan as a far southern outpost objectively testifies to this . Only on this path we are still, perhaps, able to catch up and understand a lot, including In return for this, history is content only with reality wild field and studiously avoids reconstructing even the most obvious.

From antiquities much earlier than the 10th century , connected primarily Vyatka, Ryazan Rus' and Russian Tmutarakan on the Taman Peninsula, let’s call here Bosporan coins of the 3rd – 4th centuries. n. e. in archaeological excavations at the site of Old Ryazan and also, perhaps, the identity of semantic tracing established between the Old Russian name of the city Slavyansk-on-Kuban – Kopyl, which apparently meant not only “support”, but also “process” , and recoverable Indo-Aryan (Sindo-Meotian) names of approximately the same places - * utkanda, - “outgrowth” , very eloquent in my eyes. [ Trubachev O.N. Indoarica in the Northern Black Sea region. Reconstruction of language relics. Etymological dictionary. M., 1999, p. 286].
Everything that has been said, including this striking, in my opinion, example “ Indo-Aryan dawns on the Kuban farm" , was intended to show a fairly clear link to another of Vyatka-Ryazan paradoxes as if at the stage of brilliant growth of Russian lands by the South-East (“O Russian land, you are already beyond the shelom!” – “...beyond the strait ", "The Tale of Igor's Host"), and at the stage of subsequent bitter losses, calling out " look for the city of Tmutorokan «.

Rus' remembered this connection between Ryazan and Tmutarakan [Ilovaisky D. I. History of the Ryazan Principality. M., 1858, p. 14; Tatishchev V.N. Russian history. T. I. M.-L., 1962, p. 249] and, moreover, very clearly: “Tmutorokan..., now Rezanskaya Pravintsyya” . Of course, with options: Tmutarakan is a Chernigov city. [Tikhomirov M.N. Old Russian cities. Ed. 2nd. M., 1956, p. 351]. Of course, we must not forget about participation in all this Seversk land , although not with the same degree of sovereignty.

Returning to the history of culture, we observe, albeit unique, but curious a repetition of the Vyatich-Ryazan paradox - this is the lack of writing in the presence of manifestations of early grassroots and everyday literacy, again in Tmutarakan, where did this only ancient stationery come from? an inscription on a stone from the 11th century that Prince Gleb measured the sea “on the ice from Tmutorokan to Korchev” (Kerch)… This epigraphic monument has sparked a whole discussion about its authenticity, but it is worth listening to the opinion: “From the point of view of language, it (the inscription - O.T.) is impeccable.”

Treasure in the Prioksky village with the ancient name Vyshgorod contained, along with iron agricultural implements, also wrote for the letter [Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 196]. These wrote , or styles, were used to apply a wide variety of, mostly household, inscriptions. Obviously, we have before us what is classified as pre-manuscript production [ Rozhdestvenskaya T.V. Epigraphic monuments Ancient Rus' X – XV centuries dis. ...Dr. Philol. n. St. Petersburg, 1994, p. 9]. But only such writing of the Ryazan land is the only one that has reached us , signifying both literacy and urban culture [ Tikhomirov M.N. Old Russian cities. Ed. 2nd. M., 1956, p. 85, 263], and – with all its meagerness – the state of a living local language, without being a work of translated literature.

Ryazan graffiti dates mainly from the 11th – 13th centuries [Darkevich V.P. Travel to Ancient Ryazan. Notes of an archaeologist. Ryazan, 1993, p. 138]. Curious as evidence female literacy there are also more ancient inscriptions, as on whorl - a weight mounted on a spindle to give it stability and uniform rotation, found by Ryazan archaeologist V.I. Zubkov in 1958: SPILLING PARASIN “spinning Parasin” in the 11th – early 12th centuries. [Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 156 – 157].

Of course, this assumes, except owner literacy , urban population, otherwise the inscription simply loses its meaning, also literacy of producers and artisans. The literature has already accumulated a number evidence of literacy from the 11th–12th centuries in the inscription “there is a prince”, “Molodilo” , even the phrases: “ Dobrilo sent new wine to Prince Bogunka “, and an interesting statement is made that this - pre-Mongol - the literacy of the population of Ryazan exceeds the literacy of later times. [Medyntseva A.A. Epigraphic finds from Old Ryazan // Antiquities of the Slavs and Rus'. Collection in honor of the 80th anniversary of B.A. Rybakova. M., 1988, p. 248, 255].

The inscriptions record the personal names of people: “Orina” – medallion, found in Old RyazanTikhomirov M.N. Old Russian cities. Ed. 2nd. M., 1956, p. 427., "Makosimove" , inscription on a foundry mold in Serensk, in the latter case a possessive form "Maksimov" (sc. lie. “lyachek”?) with a curious vowel at the end of the word im. p.un. h.m.r., usually observed in the Novgorod north-west. It remains to add that they are of the same type spindle whorl, very a common item for making inscriptions, “they exist in the Ryazan region to this day”[ Mongait A.L. Ryazan land. M., 1961, p. 296].

The city of Ryazan was first mentioned in 1096, a good half century earlier than Moscow, it is mentioned, but not based. We can still remember this half-century advance later, when we ask ourselves the question: by whom or on whose soil Moscow was founded. When it comes to the founding of the city of Ryazan, everyone readily begins to recall the etymology of its name - historians, archaeologists, perhaps more willingly than others. So it is this time. Apart from the frankly amateurish approximation of the title Ryazan with dial. cassock - “sinking place” , which is elementary doesn't fit here primarily because Ryazan, both the Old and the New, Pereyaslavl Ryazan, was founded in ancient times on the right, mountainous bank of the Oka, the interpretation from Mordovian is popular and widely known Erzyan "Erzyan", "erzya" - "Mordovian" [Nikonov V.A. Brief toponymic dictionary. M., 1966, p. 362], but it too doubtful , in general, invented ad hoc. [ Vasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language in four volumes. Translation from German and additions by O.N. Trubachev. Ed. 3rd, stereotypical. T. III. St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 537]

We need to start with clarification original form of the name , and such - which is wonderful! – there was a form masculine: to Rezan [Ilovaisky D. I. History of the Ryazan Principality. M., 1858, p. 23]. Then everything lines up in a fairly logical series: Rezan – possessive adjective starting with -jb from l the personal name Rezan, that is, “belonging to a person named Rezan.” The masculine gender of the oldest form of the name of the city is understandable due to its agreement with gorod: the binomial Rezan (city) is "Rezanov city". ABOUT we note the reality of the personal name Rezan, famous since 1495 g . [Tupikov N.M. Dictionary of Old Russian personal names.//Notes of the Department of Russian and Slavic Archeology of the Emperor. Russian Archaeological Society. T.VI. St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 402; Veselovsky S.B. Onomastics. Old Russian names, nicknames and surnames. M., 1974, p. 267: Rezanovs, Rezany, 16th century]

By the way, this is where surname Ryazanov (e>i outside the emphasis in the yak environment, but a direct correlation with Ryazan is inaccurate). However, the forms on -e– lasted quite a long time, cf. Rezanskiy, 1496 .[Unbegaun B.O. Russian surnames. M., 1989, p. 113]. To the natural question, what is this original personal name Rezan , the answer is generally clear: short form passive participle, that is "cut" , could be called or nicknamed that way a baby "cut from its mother's womb" «[ Vasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language in 4 volumes. Translation from German and additions by O.N. Trubachev. Ed. 3rd, T. III. St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 537]. Outwardly not prestigious, this name-nickname could sometimes be worn by outstanding people. Let's assume that there was some kind of leader-Vyatichi Rezan , after which it was not without reason named *Rezan city. What allows us to do this is no more and no less than the analogy with Constantinople, for our king is completely Caesar - from lat. Caesar, derived from caedo - “to cut”, “to chop”, from which caesar literally means “flogged”, “cut out of the mother’s womb”. Famous Gaius Julius Caesar was born just this way, operationally" caesarean section", subsequently glorifying his nickname. Our etymological distraction can also be useful in that it shows: The name of the city of Ryazan cannot hide any “cut-off land”. [Ryazan Encyclopedia. Ryazan, 1995, p. 511].

It makes sense to complete the comparison two cities: Ryazan - Moscow because we seem to be Speaking about Moscow, we legally remain in the land of the Vyatichi.

In connection with the questions that interest us, we cannot help but draw attention to the presence of a wide wedge uncovered by archaeologists Vyatichi of the 11th – 13th centuries, capturing from the South the entire “near Moscow region” and Moscow. [Voitenko A.F. Lexical atlas of the Moscow region. M., 1991, p. 61]. Vyatichi burial mounds are found around Moscow and within its boundaries, which was stated starting from Artsikhovsky [ Nasonov A.N.“Russian land” and the formation of the territory of the ancient Russian state. Historical and geographical research. M., 1951, p. 186].

The most dense area the finds of Vyatka seven-lobed temporal rings turn out to be not in Poochye, but in the Moscow region. [Sedov V.V. Eastern Slavs in the VI – XIII centuries. M., 1982, p. 144 – 145]. Further, when V.V. himself Sedov believes that Moscow was founded and populated from Rostov and Suzdal , [Sedov V.V. Old Russian people. Historical and archaeological research. M., 1999, p. 238 – 239] He apparently underestimates those known, of course, to him too Lyash-Vyatichi toponymic identities , Wed Tula – Tul, Vshizh – Uściąz, Kolomna – Kolomyia [some Vyatich-Czech correspondences of the Moscow region and Poochye - chronicle name of the Vyatichi tribal elder Khodops with its proven West Slavic associations. Hoduta* as part of the patronymic colleague Khodoutinich in a birch bark document of the 12th century].

The brightest and most complete is Lyash-Vyatichi identity Moskiew (in Polish Mazowsze) = Moscow, both members of which, on the Polish and Russian side, regularly ascend to the ancient Proto-Slavic basis on -i– long *mosky, gen. n. *moskъve , and at the same time the etymology from slavs is obvious. *mosk – “wet”, “raw” “[Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages, vol. 20, M., 1994, p. 20; Trubachev O.N. Proto-Slavic lexical heritage and Old Russian vocabulary of the preliterate period].

Thus, it seems that we can draw certain conclusions in a long discussion about the origin of the name of our capital, more precisely, of course, historically originally - names of the Moscow river, moreover, rapprochement with Suomi-Fin. Masku or with Baltic material (“Baltic Sea region of Moscow”) are still inferior in likelihood, depth of reconstruction and the entire cultural background mentioned above to the identity Moskiew=Moscow, other Russian Moscow, wine p.un. h.[ Vasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language in 4 volumes. Translation from German and additions by O.N. Trubachev. Ed. 3rd, T. II. St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 660].

How can one not recall old Tatishchev and all his insight: “ But I understand more correctly that the name of the Moscow River is Sarmatian - swamp, because at the top of it there are many swamps ... " [Tatishchev V.N. Russian history. T. I. M.-L., 1962, p. 314] Everything is true and fair, and, moreover, not only “at the top,” remember at least the famous “ Moskvoretskaya puddle ", and frequent Moscow floods in the old days, and, in the end, one thing is that Moscow and the entire Moscow region stand on clay soils... That’s all about Moscow for now, we’ll only add, remembering that once wrote about Ryazan which of the two Vyatka capitals , ended up in the deepest place Moscow .

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