The most ancient faith in Rus'. How they lived in Rus' before the arrival of Christians or why the history of Rus' before baptism was a big headache for Soviet historians

The topic of Russian paganism has been incredibly popular in recent years. The ranks of “Rodnovers”, “Slavic-Aryans”, “relatives” and other neo-pagan movements are expanding. Meanwhile, even before the middle of the last century, the debate about Russian paganism was conducted only in scientific circles.

What is paganism

The word “paganism” comes from the Slavic word “pagans,” that is, “peoples” who did not accept Christianity. In historical chronicles it also means “worshipper of many gods (idols)”, “idol worshiper”.

The word “paganism” itself is a translation from the Greek “ethnikos” (“pagan”), from “ethnos” (“people”).

From the same Greek root, a people is called an “ethnos”, and the name of the science of “ethnography” is derived from “the study of the material and spiritual culture of peoples.”

When translating the Bible, translators translated the word “Gentile” from the Hebrew terms “goy” (non-Jew) and similar ones. Then the first Christians began to use the word “pagan” to designate representatives of all non-Abramic religions.

The fact that these religions were, as a rule, polytheistic influenced the fact that “paganism” in the broad sense began to be called “polytheism” as such.

Difficulties

There was very little scientific research on Russian paganism until the last third of the 20th century.

In 1902-1934, the Czech philologist Lubor Niederle published his famous work “Slavic Antiquities”. In 1914, the book of the Masonic historian Evgeniy Anichkov “Paganism and Ancient Rus'” was published. At the beginning of the 20th century, Finnish-born philologist Viljo Petrovich Mansikka (“Religion of the Eastern Slavs”) studied Russian paganism.

After the First World War, interest in Slavic paganism subsided and awoke again in the second half of the 20th century.

In 1974, the work of Vladimir Toporov and Vyacheslav Ivanov “Research in the Field of Slavic Antiquities” was published. In 1981 - the book of archaeologist Boris Rybakov “The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs”. In 1982 - the sensational work of philologist Boris Uspensky about the ancient cult of Nicholas of Myra.

If we go to any bookstore now, we will see hundreds of books on Russian paganism on the shelves. Everyone writes about it (even satirists) - the topic is very popular, but today it is extremely difficult to “catch” anything scientific in this ocean of waste paper.

Ideas about Russian paganism are still fragmentary. What do we know about him?

Gods

Russian paganism was a polytheistic religion. This has been proven. The supreme god was Perun, which immediately puts the paganism of the Slavs in a row of religions with the Thunder God at the head of the pantheon (remember Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Hinduism).

The so-called “Vladimir Pantheon”, compiled in 980, gives us an idea of ​​the main pagan gods.

In the Laurentian Chronicle we read: “And Volodya began to reign as one in Kyiv and placed idols on a hill outside the dark courtyard. Perun is wood and his head is silver and otss is gold and Khursa Dazhba and Striba and Simargla and Mokosh [and] I ryakhu in the name of the honorable god... and I eat demons.

There is a direct listing of the gods: Perun, Khors, Dazhdbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokosh.

Horse

Khors and Dazhdbog were considered sun gods. If Dazhdbog was recognized as the Slavic sun god, then Khorsa was considered the sun god of the southern tribes, in particular the Torci, where the Scythian-Alan influence was strong even in the 10th century.

The name Khorsa is derived from the Persian language, where korsh (korshid) means “sun”.

However, the personification of Khors with the sun has been disputed by some scholars. Thus, Evgeny Anichkov wrote that Khors is not the god of the sun, but the god of the month, the moon.

He made this conclusion on the basis of the text “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” which mentions the majestic pagan deity to whom Vseslav of Polotsk crossed the path: “Vseslav the Prince ruled over the people, ruled over the princes of the city, and at night he prowled like a wolf: from Kyiv he hunted to the roosters of Tmutarakan , the great Horse scoured the path like a wolf.”

It is clear that Vseslav crossed the path of Khorsu at night. The Great Horse, according to Anichkov, was not the sun, but the month, which was also worshiped by the Eastern Slavs.

Dazhdbog

There is no dispute regarding the solar nature of Dazhdbog. His name comes from “dazhd” - to give, that is, God willing, giving God, literally: giving life.

According to ancient Russian monuments, the sun and Dazhdbog are synonyms. The Ipatiev Chronicle calls Dazhdbog the sun in 1114: “The sun is the king, the son of Svarog, aka Dazhdbog.” In the already mentioned “Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” the Russian people are called Dazhdboz’s grandchildren.

Stribog

Another god from the Vladimir pantheon is Stribog. He is usually considered the god of the winds, but in the “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” we read: “Behold the winds, Stribozh’s grandchildren, blow arrows from the sea onto Igor’s brave regiments.”

This allows us to talk about Stribog as the god of war. The first part of the name of this deity “stri” comes from the ancient “street” - to destroy. Hence Stribog is the destroyer of good, the destroying god, or the god of war. Thus, Stribog is a destructive principle as opposed to the good Dazhdbog. Another name for Stribog among the Slavs is Pozvizd.

Simargl

Among the gods listed in the chronicle, whose idols stood on Starokievskaya Mountain, the essence of Simargl is not entirely clear.

Some researchers compare Simargl with the Iranian deity Simurgh (Senmurv), a sacred winged dog, guardian of plants. According to Boris Rybakov, Simargl in Rus' in the 12th–13th centuries was replaced by the god Pereplut, who had the same meaning as Simargl. Obviously, Simargl was the deity of some tribe, subject to the Grand Duke of Kyiv Vladimir.

Mokosh

The only woman in the Vladimir pantheon is Mokosh. According to various sources, she was revered as the goddess of water (the name “Mokosh” is associated with the common Slavic word “get wet”), as the goddess of fertility and birth.

In a more everyday sense, Mokosh was also the goddess of sheep breeding, weaving and women's husbandry.

Mokosh was revered for a long time after 988. This is indicated by at least one of the 16th century questionnaires; During confession, the clergyman was obliged to ask the woman: “Didn’t you go to Mokosha?” Sheaves of flax and embroidered towels were sacrificed to the goddess Mokosha (later Paraskeva Pyatnitsa).

Veles

In the book by Ivanov and Toporov, the relationship between Perun and Veles goes back to the ancient Indo-European myth about the duel between the God of Thunder and the Serpent; in the East Slavic implementation of this myth, “the duel between the Thunder God and his opponent occurs due to the possession of a lamb.”

Volos, or Veles, usually appears in Russian chronicles as a “cattle god”, as a god of wealth and trade. “Cattle” - money, tax; "cowwoman" - treasury, "cowman" - tribute collector.

In Ancient Rus', especially in the North, the cult of Volos was very significant. In Novgorod, the memory of pagan Volos was preserved in the stable name of Volosovaya Street.

The cult of Hair was also in Vladimir on the Klyazma. The suburban Nikolsky-Volosov monastery, built according to legend on the site of the temple of Volos, is famous here. There was also a temple of Volos in Kyiv, down on Podol near the trading piers of Pochayna.

Scientists Anichkov and Lavrov believed that the temple of Volos in Kyiv was located where the boats of the Novgorodians and Krivichi stopped. Therefore, Veles can be considered either the god of the “wider part of the population,” or the “god of the Novgorod Slovenes.”

Veles's book

When talking about Russian paganism, you must always understand that this system of ideas is reconstructed according to the language, folklore, rituals and customs of the ancient Slavs. The key word here is “reconstructed”.

Unfortunately, since the middle of the last century, increased interest in the topic of Slavic paganism began to give rise to both poorly proven pseudo-scientific research and outright fakes.

The most famous hoax is the so-called “Veles Book”.

According to the recollections of the scientist’s son, in his last speech at the department’s bureau, Academician Boris Rybakov said: “Historical science faces two dangers. Veles's book. And - Fomenko." And he sat down in his place.

Many people still believe in the authenticity of the Book of Veles. This is not surprising: according to it, the history of the Russians begins in the 9th century. BC e. from forefather Bogumir. In Ukraine, the study of “The Book of Veles” is even included in the school curriculum. This is, to put it mildly, astonishing, since the authenticity of this text is not even fully recognized by the academic community.

Firstly, there are many errors and inaccuracies in the chronology, and secondly, the language and graphics do not correspond to the stated era. Finally, the primary source (wooden tablets) is simply missing.

According to serious scientists, the “Veles Book” is a hoax, allegedly created by the Russian emigrant Yuri Mirolyubov, who in 1950 in San Francisco published its text from the tablets that he never demonstrated.

The famous philologist Anatoly Alekseev expressed the general point of view of science when he wrote: “The question of the authenticity of the Book of Veles is resolved simply and unambiguously: it is a primitive forgery. There is not a single argument in defense of its authenticity; many arguments have been given against its authenticity.”

Although, of course, it would be nice to have “Slavic Vedas”, but only genuine ones, and not written by falsifiers.

The word “paganism” comes from the root “language”, which in Old Slavonic means “people, tribe”. For example, “tongue will rise against tongue; Yes, one person will die for the people. but not the whole language will perish; veskuyu shatasha yazytsi; as if I had put you among the nations.” Thus, “paganism” for the Slavs is, first of all, a folk, primordial, Slavic Pagan Tradition.

In V. Dahl's explanatory dictionary one can find another remarkable meaning of the word “language”, namely: “a people, a land, with a population of the same tribe, with the same speech.” Accordingly, paganism is a tribal belief, and in this meaning it has long been used by our ancestors.

So, pagans are people belonging to one clan-tribe, who honor its customs, love and protect their Earth, preserve tribal myths and reproduce these relationships in new generations. At the same time, the Earth, the tribe inhabiting it, other forms of life and the Gods form a single tribal whole, which is reflected in tribal myths and rituals, in the way of life and management.

The fundamental concepts of traditional pagan Slavic society are Rodyanin (or Rodnover) and his clan, family, community, tribe, people, Earth and Nature, finally, but not nation or nationality. And therefore, the Pagan Tradition of the Slavs is, first of all, Rodnovery and Rodolubie, as a system of tribal and natural beliefs. The gods are the First Ancestors who love us, whom each pagan calls in his own language in his own way, and therefore we have nothing to fear from them as long as we can reciprocate their feelings.

Paganism is the Pagan Tradition of the Indo-Europeans, and the Slavic Rodnovers in particular, a highly developed system of worldviews aimed at the self-improvement of a free person and his acquisition of the necessary abilities. It allows you to freely combine various legends to create a harmonious sacred and family picture of the world and its origin, based on the knowledge, spiritual and life experience of thousands of generations of people.

The pagan tradition is a mythological consciousness and spiritual practice based on the love of Life, on the understanding of the similarity between man and nature, their divinity, on the recognition of all things in the Universe as related and interconnected and living, including those having a personal essence. The religion of the ancient Slavs is one of the parts of this primordial Tradition, which grew out of the common cradle of the Indo-European peoples. But the whole Traditional faith cannot be reduced only to religion. Religion is part of it and one of its components.

The pagan tradition of the Slavs from infancy, from the mother’s lullaby and grandmother’s fairy tale, laid down the principles of physical and moral health of the Slavic family, taught the native to live in harmony with the laws of nature and the surrounding world of people, to serve the Earth-Mother and the Family.

Education in the Old Russian State

“All nature for the pagan was the great temple of universal life. It was not the elements and not the phenomena of nature, but the phenomena of life that the pagan worshiped. The diversity of his deities depended entirely on the diversity of the phenomena of life itself. And he, filled with a sense of life, met its appearance everywhere, and there was no object in the world around him that did not shine with a living thought, that did not appear as a living will and a living intention. In this contemplation the sources of pagan wonder and worship of Mother Nature were hidden..."

How did the pagan Slavs imagine their world? Scientists write that it seemed to them like a large egg. Legends have been preserved about the Great Mother - the parent of Earth and Heaven, the foremother of Gods and people. The name of the Great Mother is Zhiva, or Zhivana. In the middle of the Slavic Universe, like a yolk, is the Earth itself. The upper part of the “yolk” is our living world, the world of people. The lower side is the Lower World, the World of the Dead, the Night Country. When it's day there, it's night here. To get there, you need to cross the ocean - the sea that surrounds the earth. Or dig a well right through, and the stone will fall into this well for twelve days and nights. Around the Earth, like eggshells and shells, there are 9 different heavens. Each of the nine heavens of Slavic mythology has its own purpose: one for the Sun and stars, another for the Moon, another for clouds and winds. Our ancestors considered the seventh to be the “firmament,” the transparent bottom of the heavenly ocean. The Slavs believed that you can get to any sky by climbing the World Tree, which connects the Lower World, the Earth and all 9 heavens. There, above the seventh heaven, there is an island, and on that island live the ancestors of all birds and animals. This wonderful island was called “irium” or “virium”. Some scientists suggest that the current word “paradise”, associated in our concept with Christianity, comes from it. Iriy was also called Buyan Island

In the VI - IX centuries. In the Middle Dnieper region, a union of tribes of the Eastern Slavs was formed, on the basis of which in the 9th century. The Old Russian state arose with its capital in Kyiv. During this period, along with the preservation of tribal traditions, significant changes occurred in education, which were the result of serious social transformations. The fragmentation of communities into families, the strengthening of property and class differences led to the transformation of education from equal and universal to family-class.

Education among the Eastern Slavs corresponded to their communal tribal way of life and the characteristics of their habitat. Due to the lack of natural boundaries of residence, as a result of frequent raids by nomadic tribes, as a result of a rather harsh climate, the Eastern Slavs formed a special way of settled communal-family agricultural labor and joint defense.

The main unit of society was the family, which included several generations of relatives. Families united into communities, communities into tribes. Preserving the tribe was the main meaning of life. An individual could survive only as part of a family, community and tribe. People were united by the so-called mutual responsibility. The way of life determined the characteristics of raising children and adolescents and gave rise to moral values, the transmission of which from generation to generation was the essence of education. In the family, the elders taught the younger ones that the most worthy occupation of a person is the daily work of a farmer and that his first duty is to protect this work. With mother's milk, from the first conscious actions, the idea of ​​sacrifice in the name of preserving the lives of relatives was absorbed. Thus, through education, the system of relations within the community was consolidated. Each member was taught to obey his father, the head of the clan, community, tribe, and to bear responsibility for the observance of common interests. The idea of ​​such submission and at the same time paternal patronage and protection on the part of fellow tribesmen was the essence of spiritual development and education. The Eastern Slavs were distinguished by their unique character, behavior, and attitude, which developed under the influence of their lifestyle and upbringing.

The Slavs were characterized by faith in a higher deity and magic, good morals, and military skill. The Byzantine Mauritius spoke about such qualities of the Slavs as love of freedom, physical strength and toughness. The Eastern Slavs had many similarities in raising children and adolescents.

In pre-Christian Rus', pedagogical views were closely related to pagan ideas about nature. In upbringing, conspiracies, magic, and spells are intricately intertwined. Raising children and adolescents among the Eastern Slavs was a process of inclusion in certain types of activities. A special role was played by established rites and rituals, primarily initiations. Education was aimed at transferring experience from elders to younger ones, at preserving the existing way of life. Through educational norms: traditions and customs, behavior was learned, they helped to cultivate socially important and useful qualities: honesty, hard work, diligence, etc. An important function of rituals was the transfer of certain skills necessary for life and work. Participation in rituals made it possible, for example, to learn hunting skills. The experience of labor and moral education was transmitted verbally through sayings and proverbs. They formulate important truths, instructions, teachings, wishes regarding life principles.

Agrarian-calendar poetry (shepherds’, ritual-seasonal songs, etc.) had a huge influence on the development of children. Folk pedagogy introduced the younger generation to the world of nature, passed on age-old signs that helped to avoid crop failure and escape from natural elements, for example: “A red month means rain”; “This oats, when the birch blossoms,” etc. The cementing force of the Slavs was, first of all, the pagan community. Consequently, language learning turned out to be one of the main ways to understand the ethnic unity of the Slavic world.

Caring for the child began long before his birth. From time immemorial, the Slavs tried to protect expectant mothers from all kinds of dangers, including supernatural ones. Thus, in the last months before giving birth, a woman was not recommended to leave the yard, or better yet, the house, so that the Brownie and the sacred Fire of the hearth could always come to her aid: terrible stories were told about evil sorcerers who were able to use their magic to kidnap a child directly from the mother’s womb or replace it with the witch's cub - an evil freak... In a word, there was no need for outsiders to know about the onset of pregnancy, and especially the due date. But the woman herself, expecting a child, was considered the favorite of the Gods, capable of bringing happiness. She was willingly invited to the gardens to treat herself to apples: if she tastes the fruit from a young apple tree that first bore a harvest, this apple tree will bear fruit abundantly throughout its entire life.

But then the time came for the child to be born. The ancient Slavs believed that birth, like death, violates the invisible border between the worlds of the dead and the living. It is clear that there was no need for such a dangerous business to take place near human habitation. Among many peoples, the woman in labor retired to the forest or tundra so as not to harm anyone. And the Slavs usually gave birth not in the house, but in another room, most often in a well-heated bathhouse. And to make it easier for the mother’s body to open up and release the child, the woman’s hair was unbraided, and in the hut all the doors and chests were opened, the knots were untied, and the locks were unlocked. I guess it helped psychologically. A woman in labor, who involuntarily opens the door to another world, was considered “unclean” by many peoples because of this. At all times, before other people, before a loving husband, there was a choice - to help a woman or think only about himself. And of course, at all times there were those whose choice was noble. Many stories have been preserved about them. Among the Slavs, chroniclers no longer found the era of strict solitude for women in labor. Here the expectant mother was usually helped by an elderly woman, experienced in such matters. An indispensable condition was that she herself had healthy children, preferably boys. In addition, the husband was often present during the birth. Now this custom is returning to us as an experiment borrowed from abroad. Meanwhile, the ancient Slavs did not see anything unusual in having a strong, reliable, beloved and loving person next to a suffering, frightened woman.

...And then the child was born safely. If it was a boy, the umbilical cord was cut on an ax or arrow so that he would grow up to be a hunter and a craftsman. If a girl is on a spindle, so that she grows up as a needlewoman. The navel was tied with linen thread woven with the hair of the mother and father. “Tie” – in Old Russian “to tie”; This is where “midwives” and “midwives” come from.

In general, all the very first actions with the baby (bathing, feeding, cutting hair, etc.) were surrounded by important and very interesting rituals. Nowadays, wanting to introduce a newborn to the Christian religion, parents take him to church, where the priest baptizes him, lowering him into a font of water. At the same time, a name is given. Meanwhile, the custom of dipping a baby in water (or at least splashing it) is noted among a variety of peoples who have never even heard of Christianity. What's the matter? Scientists see here an echo of the most ancient ritual of introducing a new person... to the Cosmos! How was this done? The father - the head of the family - solemnly carried out the newborn and showed it to the Sky and the Sun (not setting, but always rising - for a long life!), the Fire of the hearth, the Moon (again growing, so that the child grows well), applied it to the Earth-Mother and finally dipped into the Water. Thus, the baby was introduced to all the Deities of the Universe, all its elements, giving under their protection.

Next, the child was given a name, but, as mentioned above, it was kept secret. Boys and girls received the right to adult clothing not only after reaching a certain age, but only when they could prove their “adulthood” with deeds.

At the same time, different social groups also exhibited their own characteristics. Children were raised in accordance with the ideas of good and evil, encouraging them to do good and warning them against evil deeds. The ideal was brave, kind and strong heroes of epics, legends and fairy tales. Education was considered as the gradual maturation of a member of a family, clan, community, tribe: “young” - a 3-6 year old child, “child” - a 7-12 year old child, “youth” - a teenager 12-15 years old.

Until the age of 3-4 years, boys and girls were primarily under the care of their mother. In Slavic languages, the words “give birth” and “raise” come from the same root, which confirms the most important role of the mother in raising the baby. The role of the mother in education throughout the entire period of childhood was very important. This is why a person who entered adulthood was called “seasoned,” that is, raised by his mother.

At the age of 3-4, children in families of peasants and artisans did all they could, helping their elders and, above all, their mother. From the age of five to seven, children were taught to do household chores for men and women, and were also introduced to the world of legends, beliefs and traditions - as we would put it now, the child also went through a theological school. In ancient times, there were special houses for this purpose - men's and women's, and everything that happened there was shrouded in secrecy, to which representatives of the opposite sex had no right. Researchers write that the mansions of the “seven heroes” from “The Tale of the Dead Princess” are nothing more than a memory of such a man’s house, located in a deep forest thicket.

From the age of 7, the child entered the age of adolescence, which lasted until 14-15 years. After adolescence, girls remained under the supervision of their mother, learning how to run a household, while teenage boys fell under the care of their father. They helped ordinary community members in agricultural work, and in the family of an artisan they mastered the craft. The children of the vigilantes studied military science; from the age of 12 they lived in special houses - gridnitsa, where they mastered the art of war.

When a boy began to become a boy, and a girl to become a girl, it was time for them to move into the next quality, into the category of youth - future brides and grooms, ready for family responsibility and procreation. To do this, it was necessary to pass the test, which scientists call “initiation” - “renewal”, “bringing to the initial state.” It was a kind of test of maturity, physical and spiritual.

The young man had to endure severe pain, accepting a tattoo or even a brand with the signs of his clan and tribe, of which he would henceforth become a full member. There were also trials for the girls, although not as painful. Their goal is to confirm maturity and the ability to freely express their will. And most importantly, both were subjected to the ritual of “temporary death” and “resurrection.”

Probably, the priests and priestesses used intoxicating drinks and even hypnosis for this. It is also quite likely that a whole performance was played out of the “swallowing” of children by a mythical animal - totem, “progenitor” and symbol of the tribe – and the subsequent “birth” from its belly.

So, the old children “died”, and new adults were “born” in their place. In ancient times, they also received new “adult” names, which, again, outsiders were not supposed to know (and sometimes this was the first naming of the name). They were also given new adult clothes: boys - men's trousers, girls - ponevs, a type of skirt made of checkered fabric, which was worn over a shirt with a belt. From the moment she put on adult clothes, the girl could be matched. This is how adult life began.

It is worth mentioning such important attributes of appearance as a beard and braid. The beard was considered the most important symbol of honor among adult men. Pulling a beard, much less spitting on it, was a terrible insult, for which one could be called to a duel, if not killed outright. And this is rooted in ancient views on hair as one of the concentrations of vital force in a person. Let us at least remember the snake Hair, a living hair in a river, the biblical hero Samson, whose strength was located in the “seven braids of his head,” and shorn hair, which has no reason to fall into the hands of evil sorcerers. It was no coincidence that old Hottabych pulled out hairs from his beard - without this the magic would not work. Chernomor’s beard in Pushkin’s fairy tale is no coincidence either...

As for the braid, before marriage, a girl had the right to walk around with her hair down, but such a hairstyle had a rather solemn and ritual character: try sewing, cooking, washing, caring for livestock, with thick, knee-length hair down! And the girls tied them together with a headband and braided them into a braid - always one (as a sign that she was still single, “alone”). The strands of hair in the braid were also laid in a strictly defined way: one on top of the other. Two braids and reverse braiding were prohibited by custom; this was the property of a married woman. A girl's braid was considered no less a symbol of honor than a beard for men, and the attitude towards it was exactly the same.

In approaches to education among the main social strata: communal farmers, artisans, nobility with warriors and pagan priests, the traditional and the new were increasingly combined. Along with common traditions, differences in upbringing among fellow tribesmen are increasing, depending on their social affiliation. For ordinary community members and artisans, the educational ideal remained labor education as the highest social and moral value. At the same time, in the craft environment, the need for hereditary apprenticeship came to the fore. For the nobility, preparation for military service and community leadership was of particular importance. For the priests, the main thing was mental education and the teaching of cult knowledge, which included, in particular, textographic writing used for fortune telling. The bearers of such ideals were the heroes of epics and fairy tales.

The origin of the common Slavic teaching tradition dates back to the 7th-9th centuries, when a new written language arose - Slavic (Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian). A special role in its formation was played by Cyril and Methodius, who translated the Old Church Slavonic language and created the Cyrillic alphabet (instead of the Glagolitic alphabet). This language became common to Rus', Bulgaria, Serbia, and Moravia.

Before this, all the ancient tribes of the Slavs had their own runic writings, and their education is evidenced by many confirmations in the chronicles of other peoples; It is known that since ancient times folk laws were written on wooden tablets. A huge number of facts speak in favor of the fact that the Slavs had literacy not only before all the Western peoples of Europe, but also before the Romans and even the Greeks themselves, and that the outcome of enlightenment was from the Russians to the west, and not from there to them. And if anything stopped the enlightenment of the Russians for a while, it was the periods of destructive invasions of the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Mongols, who destroyed everything with fire and sword; equally internal strife, which always ended in destructive fires; periods in which the Slavic-Russians lost not only their material treasures and were forced to introduce leather money, but also literary treasures, of which we find hints in various later works, which, apparently, were partly used by the creator of the Igoriad, and which in preserved in a distorted form in the oral tradition of the people, already in the form of fairy tales, but still retaining all their spiritual beauty and power in those places where, with the smoothness and sonority of the verse, it involuntarily lay in the memory of everyone. This is an example of a description of a beauty or a horse, which is in no way inferior to the description of Achilles’ horses in the Iliad.

The first school where they taught in the Slavic language was opened by Cyril and Methodius in the capital of the Moravian Principality of Veligrad in 863. The students of Cyril and Methodius scattered throughout the Slavic world and opened schools in Bulgaria and Kievan Rus.

Christianity and the split into Orthodoxy and Catholicism played a great role in the education and training of the medieval Slavic world. The Eastern and Southern Slavs were influenced by the Greek-Byzantine tradition (religious, cultural and educational), and the Western Slavs were influenced by the Roman Catholic Western European tradition of education.

Conclusion

“The essence of paganism is harmony with Nature. Man is a part of the World Life, and only Christianity separated him (in human consciousness) from Nature. Let someone try not to breathe for at least 5 minutes, and the idea of ​​​​independence from nature will immediately become clear.

“An ancient Slav, just like a modern Muslim, could have as many wives as he had enough money, health and imagination, for they all passed into another life. However, this did not at all mean belittling the role of a woman; she was an equal member of society, and no one could marry her off without her consent. Ancient paganism knew the form of a marriage contract - a free agreement between interested parties. Among the pagans, a woman could rule the country, like, for example, Princess Olga, which became completely impossible under Christianity. Not to mention the fact that women had their own patron goddesses with whom they could solve their purely female problems.

Unlike Christianity, the ancient Russians were neither “products” of their Gods, much less slaves of the Gods, nor great sinners before the Gods. The Slavs are the descendants of their Gods. Russian Gods are ancestors. Therefore, the nature of the relationship between the ancient Russians and their Gods was fundamentally different than in Christianity. Unlike Christianity, the Slavs did not humiliate themselves before their Gods. They never knelt before them, never bent their backs slavishly, never kissed the hands of the priests. They, understanding all the superiority of their Gods, at the same time felt a natural kinship with them.

The main feeling towards the Gods among Christians is fear, among the ancient Romans - respect, among the Slavs - love. The Slavs did not whine or beg the Gods for forgiveness for non-existent sins, alms or salvation. If the Slavs felt guilty, they atone for it not with prayers, but with specific deeds. The Slavs lived by their own will, but also sought to coordinate their will with the will of their Gods. During prayer, the Slavs maintained pride and masculinity. The prayers of the Slavs are mainly praise and glorification of the Gods, usually in the form of a hymn. The Slavs glorified their Gods, hence the concept “Slavs”.

Russian (like Greco-Roman and any other) paganism, unlike Christianity, raised proud, brave, cheerful, strong-willed, independent individuals, people of honor and dignity, who do not tolerate bullying and who know how to stand up for themselves. Every Russian man, regardless of vocation, first of all had to be a warrior in spirit, capable, if necessary, of defending himself, his wife and children, his loved ones, his homeland.”

Modern scientists, historians and theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church argue that Rus' became Orthodox only thanks to the baptism of Rus' and the spread of Byzantine Christianity among the dark, wild, mired in paganism of the Slavs.
This formulation is very convenient for distorting history and belittling the significance of the most ancient culture of all Slavic peoples.

What could Christian missionaries know about the culture and Faith of the Slavic peoples?
How could they understand a culture alien to them?

Here is an example of a description of the life of the Slavs by one of the Christian missionaries.
“The Orthodox Slovenians and Rusyns are wild people and their lives are wild and godless. Naked men and girls lock themselves together in a hot heated hut and torture their bodies, slashing each other with tree branches mercilessly to the point of exhaustion, then they run out naked and jump into an icy hole or snowdrift. And having cooled down, they run back to the hut to torture themselves with rods.”
How else could the Greek-Byzantine missionaries understand the simple Orthodox ritual of visiting a Russian bathhouse? For them it was truly something wild and incomprehensible.

The word itself Orthodoxy means the glorification with a kind word of the Glorious World of Rule, i.e. The World of the Light Gods and Our Ancestors.
In the modern sense, “scientific intelligentsia” identifies Orthodoxy with Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Christian Church).

An opinion has formed that a Russian is necessarily an Orthodox Christian. This formulation is fundamentally incorrect.
Russian means Orthodox, this concept is undeniable. But a Russian is not necessarily a Christian, because not all Russians are Christians.

The name Orthodox itself was assigned by Christian hierarchs in the 11th century (1054 AD) during a split into the Western and Eastern churches.

The Western Christian Church, centered in Rome, began to be called Catholic i.e. Ecumenical, and the Eastern Greek-Byzantine Church with its center in Constantinople (Constantinople) - Orthodox i.e. Faithful.
And in Rus', the Orthodox adopted the name of the Orthodox Church, because... Christian teaching was forcibly spread among the Orthodox Slavic peoples.

Did the peoples of Europe and Asia really need Christianity? Or was it necessary for individuals seeking power?

According to the Teachings of Jesus Christ, all his commandments and deeds are aimed at instructing Jews on the True Path, so that every person from the 12 tribes of Israel could receive the Holy Spirit and achieve the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is reported in Christian scriptures: canonical and synodal (the Bible or the separately recognized New Testament); apocrypha (Gospel of Andrew, Gospel of Judas Simon, etc.), and non-canonical (Book of Mormon, etc.).

This is what they say: “These are twelve, Jesus sent and commanded them, saying: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles and do not enter the cities of the Samaritans, but go especially to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; As you go, preach to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” (Matt. ch. 10, v. 5-7).

“And Andrei Ionin, His disciple, asked: “Rabbi! to which nations should we bring the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven? And Jesus answered him: “Go to the nations of the east, to the nations of the west, and to the nations of the south, where the children of the house of Israel live. Do not go to the pagans of the north, for they are sinless and do not know the vices and sins of the house of Israel” (Gospel of Andrew, chapter 5, v. 1-3).

Many may say that this is apocryphal, there is no such thing in the Bible, Jesus was sent as the Savior to all the peoples of the world. But Jesus himself told his disciples something else, and the Bible says it this way: “He answered and said: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew ch. 15, v. 24).

And twenty years had not passed after the crucifixion of Jesus the Nazarene, when crowds of newly-minted apostles and interpreters of the Teachings of Christ, not paying attention to the commandments of Jesus, rushed north to the Gentiles and pagans, destroying the ancient Culture and Ancient Faith of the northern peoples, while saying that they bring Love , Peace and Salvation from sins to all nations.

Their goal was aimed at increasing the number of followers of the Great Fisherman's Teachings. In those ancient times, the followers of Jesus were called Nazarenes and their sacred symbol was not a cross, as they are trying to prove today, but an image fish.

The goal of later preachers, especially after Christianity was declared the state religion in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, was completely different.
Use the Doctrine of Christianity (created by the Jew Saul, who later declared himself the Apostle Paul) to undermine the ancient foundations and renounce the Faith of the Ancestors.

Expanding influence on the minds of people, enslaving peoples and their own enrichment at the expense of others, although, at the same time, they said that all the wealth goes to the construction of the Church of Christ, to the creation of Temples, for divine services should not take place, as before, in caves.
Any discontent was suppressed by force and they built their church on the blood and bones of people who sincerely believed in the Teachings of Jesus Christ.

“And it came to pass that I saw among the Gentiles the foundation of one great church. And the angel said to me: Look at the foundation of the church, which is the most shameful of all other churches and puts to death the saints of God; yea, and tortures them, and oppresses them, and puts an iron yoke on them, and brings them into bondage.
And it came to pass that I saw this great and shameful church, and I saw that the devil was the foundation of it. And I also saw gold and silver, silks and scarlet, fine linen and all kinds of costly clothing, and I saw many harlots.
And the angel said to me: Behold, all this gold and silver, silks and scarlet, elegant fine linen, expensive clothes and harlots are objects of desire for this great and shameful church. And for the sake of human praise they destroy the saints of God and bring them into bondage.” (Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi, chapter 13, vv. 4-9).

All this, as a proven mechanism, was used to Christianize European countries and Rus' was no exception.
How did it all happen in Rus'? After all, Rus' had its own rich culture, its own religion in two forms: Ingliism and Vedism. A special form of statehood - the Veche democratic republic.

Every person was free and did not know what slavery, betrayal, lies and hypocrisy were. The Slavs respected the faiths of other peoples, for they observed the Commandment of Svarog: “Do not force the Holy Faith on people and remember that the choice of faith is a personal matter for every free person.”

As we know from the school history course, Rus' was baptized by the Kiev prince Vladimir in 988 AD. He single-handedly decided for everyone which religion is the best and most correct, and which religion should be professed by all Russian people.
Why did this happen? What made Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich abandon the Vedic Faith of his ancestors and accept another faith - Christianity?

“6496 (988) Vladimir, the son of Svyatoslav, reigned alone in Kyiv, and he did not keep the laws and commandments of our Gods and Ancestors, and he was overcome by the lust of women, and was insatiable in fornication and corrupted girls and had wives numbering up to 1000 and violated the Commandment Svarozhia “a husband must encroach on one wife, otherwise you will not know salvation.”

And the Many-Wise Magi came to Vladimir and said to him these words: “punishment will befall you, the prince, for Svarog does not tolerate the violation of His Commandments, do not wait for our help, for we will not go against the God of Heaven.” From that time on, Prince Vladimir's eyes began to hurt, and a fog covered his eyes whenever he looked at the girls and wives, and he grieved greatly, and did not know what to do. And the Greek ambassadors came to him and offered to be baptized in order to avoid Svarozhy’s punishment.

And having heeded the admonitions of the Greeks, Vladimir renounced the Holy Faith of his father’s Ancestors and accepted pagan, Christian baptism, and got rid of God’s punishment, for Svarog does not punish for professing a different faith.
And having regained his sight, he desecrated the Shrines of the Orthodox Faith, Kummira and the images of the Gods and Ancestors, and he ordered Kummira to throw Perun into the river. And Prince Vladimir the Apostate ordered to baptize the people of Kiev by force, and ordered those who did not want to be baptized to be put to a cruel death.” (Chronicle of the Western Ross Community of the Old Russian Inglistic Church).

But the destruction of the Holy Faith did not end with Kiev alone. The princely squads, together with Christian preachers, marched through the Russian lands with fire and sword, destroying Ancient Russian culture, Ancient Russian Temples, Temples, Sanctuaries and Fortifications, killing Russian clergy: Capenov, Magi, Veduns and Magicians.
Over 12 years of forced Christianization 9 million the Slavs who refused to renounce the Faith of their Ancestors were destroyed, and this despite the fact that the entire population, before the baptism of Rus', was 12 million Human.

After 1000 AD The destruction of the Old Believers Slavs did not stop. This is confirmed by the Ancient texts of the Russian Chronicles, which were preserved by the Russian Orthodox Church.
“6579 (1071) ...Two Magi rebelled near Yaroslavl... And they came to Belozero, and there were 300 people with them. At that time, it happened from Svyatoslav, the tribute collector Yan, son of Vyshatin... Yan ordered to beat them and pull out their beards.

When they were beaten and their beards were torn out with a splinter, Yan asked them: “What do the Gods tell you?”... They answered: “So the Gods tell us: we will not live from you.” And Yan said to them: “Then they told you the truth.” told "... And having grabbed them, killed them and hanged them on an oak tree" (Laurentian Chronicle. PSRL, vol. 1, v. 1, L., 1962).

“6735 (1227) The Magi, the Sorcerers, the accomplices, appeared in Novogorod, and they performed many sorceries, and tricks, and signs... The Novgorodians caught them and brought the Magi to the courtyard of the husbands of Prince Yaroslav, and tied up all the Magi, and threw them into the fire, and then they all burned down” (Nikonov Chronicle vol. 10, St. Petersburg, 1862).

Not only Russian people professing the Vedic Faith or pre-Vedic Ingliism were destroyed, but also those who interpreted Christian teaching in their own way.
Suffice it to recall the Nikon schism in the Russian Christian Church, how many innocent schismatics and Old Believers were burned alive, without a woman, an old man or a child watching.

A very successful application of the Commandments of Jesus Christ: Thou shalt not kill and love thy neighbor as thyself.
This inhumane destruction of Russian Spiritual Culture and the Culture of other peoples lasted not a hundred, not three hundred years, it continues to this day. Everything that contradicts the doctrines of the Russian Orthodox Church must be destroyed.

Since Peter's times, this principle has been applied in Siberia. Suffice it to recall the Tara riots of Summer 7230 (1722), which were suppressed with weapons; many Orthodox Old Believers-Ynglings and Orthodox-Old Believers (schismatics) were burned alive, many were doomed to a more painful death by being impaled.
This entire action was carried out with the blessing of the hierarchs of the Christian Church. I absolutely do not want to accuse ordinary parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church, who sincerely believe in the Savior Jesus Christ, of atrocities.

But the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church are trying to instill in their parishioners intolerance towards Gentiles and pagans.
The 20th century did not make any changes in the relationship of the Russian Orthodox Church to other faiths, especially to the Orthodox Old Believers-Ynglings, whom Christians still call pagans.

In the Summer of 7418 (1910) the Kapishche (Temple) of the Sign of Perun was founded in Omsk, so as not to irritate Christians it was called the Znamensky Temple or the Church of the Sign.
In Summer 7421 (1913) the temple was consecrated by Pater Diem (Head of the Council of Elders and the Church, High Priest) of the Old Russian Church Miroslav, and opened the doors to the Orthodox Ynglings or, as they called themselves, Old Believers.

On October 20, 1913, the icon “The Sign of the Queen of Heaven” arrived from Novgorod to Omsk.
And Bishop Andronik of Omsk and Pavlodar proposes to build a temple in Omsk in honor of the icon of the “Sign of the Queen of Heaven”, for which donations from parishioners began to be collected, but on August 1, 1914, World War I began, and the money collected for the construction of the temple was spent on military needs (organization of military hospitals).
And yet, Bishop Andronik found a way out of the situation: at the end of 1916, on his orders, the Old Believers-Yinglings were expelled from the Temple of the Sign of Perun, the Temple was re-equipped and the icon of the “Sign of the Queen of Heaven” was brought into the Temple and they began to hold their services in someone else’s temple.

This is how representatives of the Omsk diocese gave orders before the revolution.
After the Bolsheviks came to power in Omsk, the Znamensky Temple was closed and a tire workshop with heavy presses was set up in it. In 1935, a basement was dug under the church and after some time the walls of the church masonry burst due to the action of the presses.

Now the premises of the Temple are used as the assembly hall of the Omskpassazhirtrans Training Center, and the sanctuary, where the consecration ceremonies of the Old Believers and the holy of holies (altar) of the Christians took place, is used as a classroom for dismantling engines.

For those who don’t know, the Temple of the Sign of Perun is located at the address: Omsk, st. Kuibysheva 119-A.
Repeated appeals by representatives of the Old Russian Inglistic Church to the Regional Administration on the issue of the return of the Temple yielded nothing, since Archbishop Theodosius of the Omsk-Tara Diocese began to lay claim to this Temple.

And in order to avoid religious conflicts, they decided not to give the Temple to anyone for now. But, knowing the connections of Archbishop Theodosius with representatives of the regional administration, one can guess in advance in whose favor the issue will be resolved.
There is another example of the Russian Orthodox Church interfering in the affairs of other faiths.
All Omsk residents and residents of the region know about the existence of an ashram of Babaji’s followers in the village of Okuneva, Muromtsevo district.

Babaji's followers, like the parishioners of the Old Russian Inglistic Church, consider the Omsk land to be the Sacred Land, whose name is Belovodye.
On this Holy Land, Babaji’s followers perform their rituals, bring flowers and gifts to the established cult pillar with the OM sign, for from here our ancestors came to India and brought the Teachings of the Veda to the Indians and Dravidians.

For Indians, Chinese, Mongols, the land in the north is the Sacred Land.
For everyone, but not for Archbishop Theodosius. In 1993, he came to Okunevo and ordered the cult pillar to be thrown into the river (just as Prince Vladimir of Kiev did with Perun’s Kummir), and a Christian cross was installed in its place.
It is not clear by what right he did this, because there is not a single Christian church in Okunev and never has been, apparently the actions of the Kyiv prince Vladimir are closer in spirit than the establishment of peaceful relations between religious faiths.

Two years later, in 1995, the Omsk diocese will celebrate its centenary. A hundred years is not a thousand.
Arriving on the lands of Belovodye, like uninvited guests, Christians behave like owners, declaring that they have been here for a thousand years and only they have the right to exist and teach people Spirituality and Culture.

The authorities decided not to interfere in the actions of Theodosius, but they should have, because Archbishop Theodosius violates not only the RSFSR Law “On Freedom of Religion” N_267-1 of October 25, 1990, but also the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
People of any religion, regardless of religious affiliation, should live and exist peacefully in Omsk and the region.

Everyone must profess the Faith or religion that is closer to him in Spirit, so as not to blush before the Gods, Ancestors and descendants.

Diy Vladimir,
elder of the Dolinnaya Community of Old Russian
Inglistic Church of the Orthodox Old Believers of the Inglings.

The history of America is discussed a lot in the world - Indian tribes - recently the whole world was waiting for the end of the world)).. And we read a lot and with pleasure about them and watch films.. We also know a lot about the Ancient Roman Empire... gladiators... swords, blood ...Ancient China - dynasties of emperors..jade statues...They even climbed into Atlantis and we know so much about this still mythical country that it’s time to create our own Atlantis...And much, much...We know about ancient Egypt, admiring and admiring the Sphinx... we're intoxicated by stories about the Templars, and I decided to remember what I know about Rus' before Orthodoxy...they taught We don’t have everything at school, and over time, knowledge about our homeland was collected in drops (not like streams about foreign culture..) - yes, there are fairy tales... What about us? was it before Olga???????Before Christianity??I somehow scraps from outside I gained knowledge from literature... and with great shame I admit that I don’t know much about “idolatrous” Rus'... I know about everyone and everything, just not about my ancestors. Today I specifically searched the internet and an article “popped up” for me.. Despite that that in a review of something like this, a lot clearly comes through negative - I can’t to say that it is completely false and fictitious (I had previously read from various sources many facts from the history of Rus' and Christianity).Because The article is well presented logically and has links to facts. and primary sources...well and in the end, it interested me very much - already because someone had already combined into 1 text the crumbs that I knew + added something new (I’m sure not all geniuses of Russian history))) - I hope that this information is for you - It will be interesting for me too. After all, even a negative result is a result..
Happy Baptism to you!..So:

Modern scientists, historians and theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church claim that Rus' became Orthodox only thanks to the baptism of Rus' and dissemination Byzantine Christianity among the dark, wild, mired in paganism of the Slavs. This formulation is very convenient for distorting history and belittling the significance of the most ancient culture of all Slavic peoples. What could Christian missionaries know about the culture and Faith of the Slavic peoples? How could they understand a culture alien to them? Here is an example of a description of the life of the Slavs by one of the Christian missionaries:

“The Orthodox Slovenians and Rusyns are wild people and their lives are wild and godless. Naked men and girls lock themselves together in a hot heated hut and torture their bodies, slashing each other with tree branches mercilessly to the point of exhaustion, then they run out naked and jump into an icy hole or snowdrift. And having cooled down, they run back to the hut to torture themselves with rods.”

How else could the Greek-Byzantine missionaries understand the simple Orthodox ritual of visiting a Russian bathhouse? For them it was truly something wild and incomprehensible.

The word Orthodoxy itself means the glorification with a kind word of the Glorious World of Rule, i.e. The World of the Light Gods and Our Ancestors. In the modern sense, the “scientific intelligentsia” identifies Orthodoxy with Christianity and the Russian Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Christian Church). An opinion has formed that a Russian is necessarily an Orthodox Christian. This formulation is fundamentally incorrect. Russian means Orthodox, this concept is undeniable. But a Russian is not necessarily a Christian, because not all Russians are Christians.

The name Orthodox itself was assigned by Christian hierarchs in the 11th century (1054 AD) during a split into the Western and Eastern churches. The Western Christian Church, centered in Rome, began to be called Catholic i.e. Ecumenical, and the Eastern Greek-Byzantine Church with its center in Constantinople (Constantinople) - Orthodox i.e. Faithful. And in Rus', the Orthodox adopted the name of the Orthodox Church, because... Christian teaching was forcibly spread among the Orthodox Slavic peoples.

Did the peoples of Europe and Asia really need Christianity? Or was it necessary for individuals seeking power? According to the Teachings of Jesus Christ, all his commandments and deeds are aimed at instructing Jews on the True Path, so that every person from the 12 tribes of Israel could receive the Holy Spirit and achieve the Kingdom of Heaven. This is reported in Christian scriptures: canonical and synodal (the Bible or the separately recognized New Testament); Apocrypha (Gospel of Andrew, Gospel of Judas Simon, etc.), and non-canonical(Book of Mormon, etc.). Here's what they say:

“These twelve Jesus sent and commanded them, saying: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles and do not enter the cities of the Samaritans, but go especially to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; As you go, preach to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matthew ch. 10, vv. 5-7).

“And Andrei Ionin, His disciple, asked: “Rabbi! to which nations should we bring the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven?” And Jesus answered him: “Go to the nations of the east, to the nations of the west, and to the nations of the south, where the children of the house of Israel live. Do not go to the pagans of the north, for they are sinless and do not know the vices and sins of the house of Israel” (Gospel of Andrew, chapter 5, v. 1-3).

Many may say that this is apocryphal, there is no such thing in the Bible, Jesus was sent as the Savior to all the peoples of the world. But Jesus himself told his disciples differently, and the Bible says it this way:

“He answered and said: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew ch. 15, v. 24).

And twenty years had not passed after the crucifixion of Jesus the Nazarene, when crowds of newly-minted apostles and interpreters of the Teachings of Christ, not paying attention to the commandments of Jesus, rushed north to the Gentiles and pagans, destroying the ancient Culture and Ancient Faith of the northern peoples, while saying that they bring Love , Peace and Salvation from sins to all nations. Their goal was aimed at increasing the number of followers of the Great Fisherman's Teachings. In those ancient times, the followers of Jesus were called Nazarenes and their sacred symbol was not a cross, as they are trying to prove today, but an image of a fish.

The goal of later preachers, especially after Christianity was declared the state religion in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, was completely different. Use the Doctrine of Christianity (created by the Jew Saul, who later declared himself the Apostle Paul) to undermine the ancient foundations and renounce the Faith of the Ancestors. Expanding influence on the minds of people, enslaving peoples and their own enrichment at the expense of others, although, at the same time, they said that all the wealth goes for construction Church of Christ, for the creation of Temples, for divine services should not take place, as before, in caves. Any discontent was suppressed by force, and they built their church on the blood and bones of people who sincerely believed in the Teachings of Jesus Christ.

“And it came to pass that I saw among the Gentiles the foundation of one great church. And the angel said to me: Look at the foundation of the church, which is the most shameful of all other churches and puts to death the saints of God; yea, and tortures them, and oppresses them, and puts an iron yoke on them, and brings them into bondage. And it came to pass that I saw this great and shameful church, and I saw that the devil was the foundation of it. And I also saw gold and silver, silks and scarlet, fine linen and all kinds of costly clothing, and I saw many harlots. And the angel said to me: Behold, all this gold and silver, silks and scarlet, elegant fine linen, expensive clothes and harlots are objects of desire for this great and shameful church. And for the sake of the praise of men they destroy the saints of God, and bring them down into bondage” (Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi, chapter 13, vv. 4-9).

All this, as a proven mechanism, was used to Christianize European countries, and Rus' was no exception. How did it all happen in Rus'? After all, Rus' had its own rich culture, its own religion in two forms: Ingliism and Vedism. A special form of statehood – the Veche Democratic Republic. Every person was free and did not know what slavery, betrayal, lies and hypocrisy were. The Slavs respected the faiths of other peoples, for they observed the Commandment of Svarog: “Do not force the Holy Faith on people and remember that the choice of faith is a personal matter for every free person.”

As we know from the school history course, Rus' was baptized by the Kiev prince Vladimir in 988 AD. He single-handedly decided for everyone which religion is the best and most correct, and which religion should be professed by all Russian people. Why did this happen? What made Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich abandon the Vedic Faith of his ancestors and accept another faith - Christianity?

“6496 (988) Vladimir, the son of Svyatoslav, reigned alone in Kyiv, and he did not keep the laws and commandments of our Gods and Ancestors, and he was defeated by the lust of women, and was insatiable in fornication and corrupted girls and had wives numbering up to 1000 and violated the Commandment Svarozhia “a husband must encroach on one wife, otherwise you will not know salvation.” And the Many-Wise Magi came to Vladimir and said to him these words: “punishment will befall you, the prince, for Svarog does not tolerate the violation of His Commandments, do not wait for our help, for we will not go against the God of Heaven.” From that time on, Prince Vladimir's eyes ached, and a fog covered his eyes whenever he looked at the girls and wives, and he grieved greatly, and did not know what to do. And the Greek ambassadors came to him and offered to be baptized in order to avoid Svarozhy’s punishment. And having heeded the admonitions of the Greeks, Vladimir renounced the Holy Faith of his father’s Ancestors and accepted pagan, Christian baptism, and got rid of God’s punishment, for Svarog does not punish for confession of a different faith. And, having regained his sight, he desecrated the Shrines of the Orthodox Faith, Kummira and the images of the Gods and Ancestors, and ordered Kummira to throw Perun into the river. And Prince Vladimir the Apostate ordered to baptize the people of Kiev by force, and ordered those who did not want to be baptized to be put to death with cruelty” (Chronicle of the Community of Western Rosses of the Old Russian Inglistic Church).

But the destruction of the Holy Faith did not end with Kiev alone. The princely squads, together with Christian preachers, marched through the Russian lands with fire and sword, destroying Ancient Russian culture, Ancient Russian Temples, Temples, Sanctuaries and Fortifications, killing Russian clergy: Capenov, Magi, Veduns and Magicians. During 12 years of forced Christianization, 9 million Slavs who refused to renounce the Faith of their Ancestors were destroyed, and this despite the fact that the total population, before the baptism of Rus', was 12 million people. After 1000 AD destruction of the Old Believers Slavs didn't stop. This is confirmed and Ancient texts of the Russian Chronicles, which were preserved by the Russian Orthodox Church.

“6579 (1071) ... Two Magi rebelled near Yaroslavl ... And they came to Belozero, and there were 300 people with them. At that time, it happened that the tribute-collector Yan, the son of Vyshatin, came from Svyatoslav... Yan ordered to beat them and pull out their beards. When they were beaten and their beards were torn out with a splinter, Yan asked them: “What do the Gods say to you?”... They answered: “So the Gods say to us: we will not be alive from you.” And Yan told them: “Then they told you the truth”... And they grabbed them, killed them and hanged them on an oak tree” (Laurentian Chronicle. PSRL, vol. 1, v. 1, L., 1962).

“6735 (1227) The Magi, the Sorcerers, the connivances appeared in Novogorod, and they performed many sorceries, and conjurations, and signs... The Novogorodians caught them and brought the Magi to the courtyard of the husbands of Prince Yaroslav, and tied up all the Magi, and threw them into the fire, and then they all burned down” (Nikon Chronicle vol. 10, St. Petersburg, 1862).

Not only Russian people professing the Vedic Faith or pre-Vedic Ingliism were destroyed, but also those who interpreted Christian teaching in their own way. Suffice it to recall the Nikon schism in the Russian Christian Church, how many innocent schismatics and Old Believers were burned alive, without a woman, an old man or a child watching. A very successful application of the Commandments of Jesus Christ: Thou shalt not kill and love thy neighbor as thyself.

This inhumane destruction of Russian Spiritual Culture and the Culture of other peoples lasted not a hundred, not three hundred years, it continues to this day. Everything that contradicts the doctrines of the Russian Orthodox Church must be destroyed. Since Peter's times, this principle has been applied in Siberia. Suffice it to recall the Tara riots of Summer 7230 (1722), which were suppressed by weapons, many Orthodox Old Believers-Ynglings and Orthodox Old Believers(schismatics) were burned alive, many were doomed to a more painful death, impaled.

This entire action was carried out with the blessing of the hierarchs of the Christian Church. I absolutely do not want to accuse ordinary parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church, who sincerely believe in the Savior Jesus Christ, of atrocities. But the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church are trying to instill in their parishioners intolerance towards Gentiles and pagans.

The 20th century did not make any changes in the relationship of the Russian Orthodox Church to other faiths, especially to the Orthodox Old Believers-Ynglings, whom Christians still call pagans. In the Summer of 7418 (1910) the Kapishche (Temple) of the Sign of Perun was founded in Omsk, so as not to irritate Christians it was called the Znamensky Temple or the Church of the Sign. In Summer 7421 (1913) the temple was consecrated by Pater Diem (Head of the Council of Elders and the Church, High Priest) of the Old Russian Church Miroslav, and opened the doors to the Orthodox Ynglings or, as they called themselves, Old Believers.

On October 20, 1913, the icon “The Sign of the Queen of Heaven” arrived from Novgorod to Omsk. And Bishop Andronik of Omsk and Pavlodar proposes to build a temple in Omsk in honor of the icon of the “Sign of the Queen of Heaven,” for which donations from parishioners began to be collected, but on August 1, 1914, World War I began, and the money collected for construction temple, went to military needs (organization of military hospitals). And yet, Bishop Andronik found a way out of the situation: at the end of 1916, on his orders, the Old Believers-Yinglings were expelled from the Temple of the Sign of Perun, the Temple was re-equipped and the icon of the “Sign of the Queen of Heaven” was brought into the Temple and they began to hold their services in someone else’s temple.

This is how representatives of the Omsk diocese gave orders before the revolution.

After the Bolsheviks came to power in Omsk, the Znamensky Temple was closed and a tire workshop with heavy presses was set up there. In 1935, a basement was dug under the church and after some time the walls of the church masonry burst due to the action of the presses. Now the premises of the Temple are used as the assembly hall of the Omskpassazhirtrans Training Center, and the sanctuary, where the consecration ceremonies of the Old Believers and the holy of holies (altar) of the Christians took place, is used as a classroom for dismantling engines.

For those who don’t know, the Temple of the Sign of Perun is located at the address: Omsk, st. Kuibysheva 119-A.

Repeated appeals by representatives of the Old Russian Inglistic Church to the Regional Administration on the issue of the return of the Temple yielded nothing, since Archbishop Theodosius of the Omsk-Tara Diocese began to lay claim to this Temple. And in order to avoid religious conflicts, they decided not to give the Temple to anyone for now. But, knowing the connections of Archbishop Theodosius with representatives regional administration, you can guess in advance in whose favor the issue will be resolved.

There is another example of the Russian Orthodox Church interfering in the affairs of other faiths. All Omsk residents and residents of the region know about the existence of an ashram of Babaji’s followers in the village of Okuneva, Muromtsevo district. Followers of Babaji, like parishioners of the Old Russian Inglistic Church, consider the Omsk land to be the Sacred Land, whose name is Belovodye. On this Holy Land, Babaji's followers perform their rituals, bring flowers and gifts to the established a cult pillar with the sign OM, for from here our ancestors came to India and brought the Teachings of the Veda to the Indians and Dravidians. For Indians, Chinese, Mongols, the land in the north is the Sacred Land.

For everyone, but not for Archbishop Theodosius. In 1993, he came to Okunevo and ordered the cult pillar to be thrown into the river (just as Prince Vladimir of Kiev did with Perun’s Kummir), and a Christian cross was installed in its place. It is not clear by what right he did this, because there is not a single Christian church in Okunev and never has been, apparently the actions of the Kyiv prince Vladimir are closer in spirit than the establishment of peaceful relations between religious denominations.

Two years later, in 1995, the Omsk diocese will celebrate its centenary. A hundred years is not a thousand. Arriving on the lands of Belovodye, like uninvited guests, Christians behave like owners, declaring that they have been here for a thousand years and only they have the right to exist and teaching the people Spirituality and Culture. The authorities decided not to interfere in the actions of Theodosius, but they should have, because Archbishop Theodosius violates not only the RSFSR Law “On Freedom of Religion” No. 267-1 of October 25, 1990, but also the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

In Omsk and the region, people of any religion should live and exist peacefully, regardless from confessional accessories. Everyone must profess the Faith or religion that is closer to him in Spirit, so as not to blush before the Gods, Ancestors and descendants.
****
Fragment from Lev Prozorov’s book “The Pagans of Baptized Rus'”

...I have already cited one figure in several of my works, reader, but here I will tell you about it in more detail - it’s too serious a matter, and this figure has a very direct relationship to the topic of the book. This is what historian V.V. writes. Puzanov with reference to the collection “Ancient Rus'. City, castle, village" (M., 1985, p. 50):

“Of the 83 settlements permanently studied by archaeologists from the 9th – early 11th centuries. 24 (28.9%) ceased to exist by the beginning of the 11th century.”

(Puzanov V.V. “The main features of the political system of Kievan Rus of the X–XI centuries.” // Studies in Russian history. To the 65th anniversary of Professor I.Ya. Froyanov. St. Petersburg - Izhevsk, 2001. P. 31).

Of course, the researcher tries his best not to see what, in fact, he is asserting when talking about the “formation of a unified state of Rus'”, the “pacification” of some vague “tribes”. But facts, as they say, are stubborn things - not a single source says anything at all about the “pacification” of anyone in the last decades of the power of the future “saint”. To the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th centuries, sources date not punitive expeditions against “tribes”, but the baptism of Rus'. This was the price of “enlightenment with the good news” of the East Slavic lands - 28.9% of Russian settlements. Almost a third...
(Lev Prozorov “Pagans of Baptized Rus'. Tales of the Black Years.” - M. Yauza, Eksmo, 2006. Chapter 2, p. 112. ISBN 5–699

Something like this...On the eve of the sacred holiday I introduced search... and got it! I’m sitting Now I’m seriously thinking, “Should I go tonight for holy water???” When you read about burned witches, about the Crusades, and even about the Christianization of the American Indians, it’s sad, just as I feel sorry for Christ himself, and the Jews ...But when you so clearly realize what PEOPLE can do for their goals, and even on the land of your ancestors, to put it mildly, you are in a stupor...I constantly have the phrase in my head about “those who did not agree to accept Christianity were killed... killed 9 million... out of 12 million of the entire population of Rus'!”...Wow...Even in the Second World War, so much of the population did not die (relative to% of the population!)....
I believe in God, yes, so that others may envy...I even believe in people - not all, but I believe... How interestingly said Depardieu-having received Russian citizenship"I am a citizen Mira-registration as such is just a piece of paper" - I understand more and more clearly that I am also a citizen of the World - only in the field of Faith - for me there are no differences between Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism and Muslims...even faith of the pagans - faith... Faith in everything good and bright in this life - for the fight against evil.. This is what faith in God means to me. And learning more and more details of the infusion of now omnipotent faiths into the masses, I am more and more glad that I do not belong to none of them. I’ll go get holy water today! Because for many years now (since I was 10))) I’ve been going to the river and at exactly 12 o’clock, when the water “sway” - as if gurgling, I scoop 2 buckets from the hole... This water is truly healing, I already have some bottles of this water 10 years - and the purest - open and drink! This is some kind of gift from nature for me.. at this particular time and at this particular time - taken at any other time water spoils..tried it experiment more than once.. One granny told me about this “miracle” I told you and now I am one of the family who is not officially baptized (absolutely all the others are baptized)) I collect water for the whole family... I am a sinner.." but who I'm not a sinner, come on there's a stone in me"….

In preparation for the thousand-year anniversary of the initial stage of the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Old Russian state, theological and church circles of the Moscow Patriarchate noticeably intensified their religious activities. Taking advantage of the moment, they strive to extract the maximum benefit from this anniversary for modern Russian Orthodoxy. And yet, their main concern is to convince Soviet people (not only believers, but also atheists) that the baptism of the inhabitants of ancient Kyiv was not just one of the important events of national history, but its actual beginning, which supposedly determined the entire content of subsequent historical development right up to up to now. This is exactly how this action of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv is characterized in modern theological articles and reports. This is how she is portrayed in church sermons.

This is done consciously and with a long-range view. Theologians and church leaders understand: if it is proven that the baptism of the Kievites in 988 is the beginning of our historical existence, “where the Russian land came from,” then the thousand-year anniversary of this event will be perceived by all Soviet people as an anniversary date, important not only for the Russian the Orthodox Church, but also for our entire society, of which the church is a part. This means that the theological concept of the decisive role of religion and the church in the historical process will receive additional argumentation that can mislead not only adherents of modern Russian Orthodoxy, but also some part of the non-believing citizens of a socialist society. Russian Orthodoxy itself will be perceived by them as the driving force of Russian history, as a stimulator of social progress, which will arouse sympathy for it on the part of people who do not know the past of their country well and do not know how to analyze it from the standpoint of historical materialism. In a word, the exaggeration of the role of the baptism of Kiev residents in national history is carried out by church leaders in religious and propaganda interests.

Ideologists of modern Russian Orthodoxy resort to various methods of distorting the historical past of our country. But most often this is done through a deliberate understatement of the level of socio-economic, socio-political and cultural development achieved by our ancestors at the time of the adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir and the inhabitants of ancient Kyiv.

In the works of modern church authors, pre-Christian Rus' is portrayed as something prehistoric, primitive, flawed in economic, political and spiritual terms. So, for example, according to Archpriest K. Konstantinov, pre-Christian ancient Russian society is a “stinking and cruel world” where people have “inert and selfish minds” (ZhMP, 1960, No. 1, pp. 47, 48). Another theologian described the pre-Christian forms of spiritual life in Ancient Rus' as “dark, embittered, vengeful paganism” (ZhMP, 1958, no. 5, p. 47).

Clerics from the Russian emigrant religious-political group grossly and shamelessly falsify the state of ancient Russian society before the adoption of Christianity as the state religion. They do not value pre-Christian Rus' at all: its economic, political and spiritual potential is presented to the modern reader as a kind of zero state, from which ancient Russian society allegedly emerged only thanks to Christianization. They are trying to convince the world community that “Russia was created by Christianity, Orthodoxy.” The emigrant church-political press classifies Orthodoxy as “the main elements of our national existence,” and declares the Orthodox Church “the demiurge of Russian history.”

True, some of the emigrant clerics recognize the presence in Ancient Rus' of certain political relationships characteristic of state entities. In particular, the author of the report “The Paths and Destinies of Russia,” read at the New York “congress of the Orthodox Russian public,” agrees that the political activities of the princes from Rurik to Vladimir “united Kievan Rus.” But this unification is characterized by the speaker as a purely mechanical phenomenon, supposedly devoid of an internal spiritual basis, which supposedly appeared only thanks to the “baptism of Rus'.”

However, the majority of emigrant church falsifiers do not even make such reservations, presenting pre-Christian Rus' to modern readers and listeners in the most unattractive form. If the Greeks, Romans and Germanic peoples, as stated on the pages of the official body of the foreign anniversary “Commission for Preparation for the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus',” came to Christianity with a “rich pagan heritage” in all areas of socio-political and cultural life, then the Russian Slavs, they say, before the adoption of Christianity “they had absolutely nothing: no state ideas, no national consciousness, no original culture.” According to the author of the above slanderous statements, the East Slavic pagans did not even have their own gods, and “the entire ancient Russian pantheon consisted of foreign deities: Perun was a Lithuanian deity, Khora was a Scythian-Sarmatian deity, Mokosha and Belee were Finnish. None of them even have a Slavic name.” And this stream of fabrications concludes with a pathetic phrase: “The Russian people gave their untouched soul to Christianity.”

It is not difficult to notice that in this case we are dealing with that anti-scientific and reactionary concept of the historical process, according to which our ancestors allegedly borrowed everything that was most essential in their state, socio-political and cultural life from other peoples. Soviet historical science has long ago refuted and exposed this false concept. And now it is being put into circulation again in order to substantiate the decisive role of the Christianization of Rus' as supposedly the only determining factor in Russian history. They do this in the hope that believing Soviet people will accept it uncritically, and non-believers will not discover reactionary social content in it and will not specifically engage in exposing it.

In addition to the direct goal - to deprive the Slavic peoples of our country of their own history, declaring their historical existence to be a consequence of purely external influences - the emigrant-clerical falsifiers also pursue an indirect one: to prove the “unhistoricity” of the Great October Socialist Revolution in order to discredit it in the eyes of the believing working people of the whole world. The logic of the slanderers, which they would like to impose on as many people as possible, is this: since the October Revolution interrupted the development of the country, which had begun and was conditioned by the entire process of Christianization of Rus', it allegedly deprived Russia of its prospects and led to the fact that the Russian people “began to deviate from their a truly historical path." Therefore, they view the millennium of the formal beginning of this process from an openly anti-Soviet position - as a reminder of the need to “restorate historical Russia” through the “liquidation of the revolution.”

The method of refuting theological errors and clerical falsifications is simple and reliable: appealing to the truth of history, appealing to facts, relying on a scientific-materialistic analysis of historical events. It is advisable to begin the polemic with the champions of modern Russian Orthodoxy and the exposure of anti-Soviet clerics not with a description of the process of Christianization of Ancient Rus' and its consequences, which will be discussed further, but with a consideration of the segment of Russian history that preceded this process - with a brief, scientific data of a confirmed analysis ancient Russian society as it was before the introduction of Christianity by the Kyiv prince Vladimir. Only such an analysis can prove the complete inconsistency of ideas about pre-Christian Rus' as a society supposedly defective in all respects, as it would have remained if our ancestors had not converted to Christianity.

So, what was Ancient Rus' like before the adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir and his subjects?

Economic development and material culture

Since the Christianization of Ancient Rus' is primarily a political and ideological phenomenon, it influenced first and foremost the spiritual life of ancient Russian society. Therefore, to compare the pre-Christian and Christian periods of the history of Ancient Rus', it would be enough to consider the socio-political sphere and the area of ​​spiritual culture. But since ideological relations are determined by the conditions of the material life of society, in order to correctly understand and explain them, it is necessary to identify the socio-economic base on which they grew and were formed. That is why we begin our description of pre-Christian Rus' with a brief examination of the level of development of ancient Russian society of the 6th - 10th centuries and the state of material culture of that time. In this case, we used data obtained and summarized by the largest Soviet researchers of Ancient Rus', academicians B. D. Grekov, M. N. Tikhomirov, B. A. Rybakov, D. S. Likhachev, Professor V. V. Mavrodin, as well as their students and followers.

In the history of our country, the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. was an era of gradual decomposition of the primitive communal system and the slow emergence of feudal relations in its depths. “The period of the 6th - 9th centuries,” points out B. A. Rybakov, “can be called pre-feudal, since at that time the highest forms of tribal society finally matured in the form of firmly organized tribal unions and the main cells of the tribal system gradually became obsolete - small, isolated and closed tribal collectives, the economic necessity of which was determined by the primitive technique of shifting agriculture.”

The progressive development of productive forces was manifested primarily in the success of the agricultural activities of the Eastern Slavs.

The limitations of archaeological materials and an insufficiently careful study of ancient Russian written sources led pre-revolutionary historians of Kievan Rus to the erroneous conclusion that hunting was the basis of the Slavic and ancient Russian economy, and agriculture supposedly became an important factor in the economic life of our ancestors only in the second half of the 11th century. Academician B. A. Rybakov figuratively characterized this conclusion as “a blatant distortion of historical reality”2, which has been convincingly refuted by Soviet historical science. Modern archeology has a huge arsenal of data proving the presence of a high level of agricultural culture not only in Ancient Rus' of the 9th century, but also among the Slavic tribes of an earlier period of Russian history.

Since ancient times, agriculture has successfully developed in the forest-steppe zone of the Middle Dnieper region, where in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. e. The Slavs grew bread both for their own needs and for sale to the countries of the ancient world. The beginning of agriculture in the forest zone of settlement of the ancient Slavs also goes back centuries. “It would be extremely imprudent,” warns B. A. Rybakov, “to sharply distinguish between forest and forest-steppe zones in relation to their economic capabilities during the period of maturation of Slavic statehood. There was a difference... but this difference was more quantitative than qualitative. The same types of economic activity were then possible both in the forest-steppe and in the more northern zone of deciduous forests... The volume of the harvest was different, and the amount of labor spent by the peasant on plowing open land or clearing land from under a century-old forest was different.”1 .

The primitive and labor-intensive slash, or fire, system of developing new lands (burning out forests for arable land) was replaced by arable farming - repeated use of already cultivated land plots, cultivating them first with a plow, and then with a wooden plow ("ralo"), in which was harnessed by oxen (in the south) or horses (in the north). Two-field and three-field crop rotation systems were used, which increased the yield and the degree of its guarantee. They cultivated many cereal crops (soft and durum wheat, rye, millet, barley), sowed legumes, cultivated fibrous crops (hemp and flax), grew turnips, cabbage, etc.

The successes of agriculture prepared the ground for an increase in surplus product and for a more complete division of labor, and therefore for the further development of social relations and forms of spiritual life. Noting this, Academician D.S. Likhachev wrote: “The basis of Rus'’s success in the development of all aspects of culture, its foreign policy power, its rapid social development was the work of the Russian people, agricultural labor in the first place”2.

Livestock farming continued to develop and become an increasingly intensive sector of the economy, supplying draft animals to farmers, war horses to warriors, and skins to artisans for subsequent processing and turning them into clothing, shoes, saddles, military armor, etc., and all together - meat and dairy foods. Along with the breeding of horses and cattle, much attention was paid to pig and sheep breeding; They also kept goats on the farm, which in addition to meat and milk also provided wool.

Therefore, the authors of the fundamental “History of the Culture of Ancient Rus'” had reason to declare: “In the 9th - 10th centuries. agricultural technology and the composition of cultivated plants, with few exceptions, acquired... a character characteristic of the later times of the 11th - 13th centuries... All types of livestock were familiar to the Slavic tribes from ancient times, and in this regard, Kievan Rus didn’t bring anything new.”

As the productive forces developed, the division of labor deepened, crafts arose and multiplied, which entailed a further expansion of exchange within the tribe and between tribes.

Archaeological excavations and other sources of information about Ancient Rus' convincingly testify to the high level of material culture of Old Russian society in the 9th - 10th centuries.

Although slowly, agricultural tools were still being improved: the plow, which replaced it with a plow with an iron share and a knife for ripping up turf (“cherslo”), a sickle, a scythe, etc. The tools used by artisans became more complex and varied: blacksmiths, potters, gunsmiths, carpenters, jewelers, etc. According to researchers, there were more than forty craft specialties in Ancient Rus'.

The technology of metal mining and the manufacture of metal products progressed rapidly. Having analyzed the vast archaeological material, V.V. Sedov writes in his general work on the history of the Slavs of the 6th - 13th centuries: “The ironworking craft of the Eastern Slavs on the eve of the formation of the Old Russian state was at a fairly high stage of development”2. In particular, craftsmen of the 10th century knew several ways to obtain high-quality steel; it was used for weapons and tools. Blacksmiths had at their disposal a large set of tools, the purpose and form of which have been preserved to the present day. This gave them the opportunity to produce blacksmith products, including those whose fame went far beyond the borders of Ancient Rus'. For example, locks made by Russian blacksmiths (“Russian castles”) were highly valued in Rus' and Europe.

A powerful branch of handicraft production in Rus' was the production of weapons and military equipment: swords, battle axes, arrows and quivers, chain mail, shields, helmets, saddles and harnesses for war horses. Many types of weapons, especially those intended for princes and noble warriors, were covered with artistic patterns, decorated with jewelry, and looked like jewelry.

An important place in the craft production of Ancient Rus' was occupied by pottery - the production of various clay dishes intended for cooking food, storing food (grain, honey, wine, etc.), as well as for feasting. The use of a pottery wheel made it possible to expand the range of manufactured dishes, improve their quality and level of artistic design. The technology for preparing clay mass and firing ceramic products was improved. Potters made bricks, tiles, decorative tiles and other building materials from baked clay.

The main building and ornamental material in Rus' was wood, so the craft of carpenters (“wood makers”) was very highly valued in ancient Russian society, and deservedly so. “Very numerous materials,” writes V.V. Sedov, “indicate that the Eastern Slavs in the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. were familiar with many types of wood processing.”

The carpenter's main tools were an ax and an adze (there was already a saw, but it was used extremely rarely - even boards were most often hewn out). At the same time, a wide range of different tools was used, which ensured high quality of construction and ornamental work.

Dwellings, buildings for economic and public purposes, fortifications, bridges, etc. were built from wood. Wood is a short-lived material and poorly preserved in the ground, so the remains of wooden structures are rarely found by archaeologists. Nevertheless, scientists suggest that the Eastern Slavs “had wooden chopped pagan temples”2, the methods of construction of which were later transferred to Christian churches. “The basis for the construction of the Slavic pagan temple,” write historians of Russian architecture, “lay, as one might assume, a cage , sometimes tower-shaped. It can also be assumed that the largest pagan temples consisted of several wooden frames connected to each other, and that under their influence the first wooden cathedrals were built, like Sophia of Novgorod 989, with thirteen domes, as the chronicle says, i.e., probably , thirteen rubles."

Stone construction was just beginning to develop at the time in question. But this beginning was encouraging, creating the preconditions for the construction by Russian masters of genuine stone masterpieces in subsequent centuries. This is exactly how academician B. A. Rybakov assesses the potential capabilities of ancient Russian builders: “Having been prepared during the pagan period for the construction of fortresses, towers, palaces, wooden pagan temples, Russian architects with amazing speed mastered the new Byzantine brick construction technique and decorated the largest Russian cities with magnificent monumental structures"2.

Relatively few, but well-made pieces of jewelry have survived, convincingly demonstrating the high technical level of jewelry production in Ancient Rus'. Jewelers of that time mastered the complex technique of gold, silver and bronze casting using wax models and in stone forms, used stamping on dies, forging and chasing, soldering, gilding, niello, etc. They mastered the most complex art of making enamels. If until the middle of the 10th century champlevé enamel prevailed (filling specially made recesses on jewelry with enamel), then later it was replaced by a more complex cloisonné enamel: thin partitions were soldered onto the smooth surface of the product, and multi-colored enamel (enamel) was melted between them. Many jewelry items were made using the granulation technique (soldering gold or silver grain balls onto plates) and filigree or filigree (using twisted gold or silver wire).

Assessing the technical level of jewelry production in Ancient Rus', academician B. A. Rybakov wrote: “In terms of the technique of execution, the products of city craftsmen, especially those who served the most noble customers in the princely palaces, were not inferior to examples of the most advanced world art of that time - the art of Byzantium and the Middle East.. The minters could produce excellent reliefs on silver, and the foundries cast complex, ingenious products. Masters of gold and silversmiths, in search of the best play of light, shaded the silver with niello and gilding, and sometimes covered the smooth silver surface of the kolta (a hollow gold or silver pendant that adorned a gold headdress - N.G.) with thousands (!) of microscopic rings and for each ( !) the ring was soldered with a tiny grain of silver.”

In Rus', crafts were widespread everywhere. The potter served 3 - 4 settlements, the blacksmith's products were distributed within a radius of 10 - 20 kilometers (for example, in the territory of the small Principality of Polotsk there were up to 250 forges)2. With the development of cities, artisans formed one of the most numerous groups of the urban population. According to the chronicle, the number of cities in Ancient Rus' increased from century to century: if in the 9th - 10th centuries there were at least 25 of them, then in the 11th century there were almost 90, and growth continued at a rapid pace. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the Scandinavian sagas called Ancient Rus' “the country of cities” (“Gardarik”),

Old Russian cities were centers of handicraft production, centers of intensive commodity exchange, developing trade - not only internal, but also external. Ancient Rus' exchanged goods with many neighboring countries. An ancient trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” passed through its territory. As can be seen from the agreements concluded by the Kyiv princes Oleg and Igor in the first half of the 10th century with Byzantium, ancient Russian warrior-merchants have long conducted brisk trade within the vast borders of the Byzantine Empire and enjoyed certain benefits there, and the Byzantine ones traded freely in Rus'. Russian trade routes ran to all surrounding countries; They led to Western Europe, to the countries of the Arab world. Mainly skins, furs, honey, wax, and later handicrafts were exported. A variety of fabrics, jewelry, weapons, etc. were imported.

The development of domestic and foreign trade led to the emergence and improvement of money circulation. Initially, the functions of money were performed by livestock and furs. Then they were replaced by monometallic monetary circulation - gold and silver coins, as well as silver bars (“hryvnia”) were in use.

This was the state of the economy and material culture of Ancient Rus'. “One can argue,” write the authors of a textbook on the history of Russian culture, “about the number of certain artisans, about the separation of individual industries into an independent type of craft, but it remains undoubted that the ancient Russian craft was comprehensive in nature, achieved great mastery, and created the foundations for further development of material culture."

One of the incentives for this development was the various needs generated by the Christianization of Ancient Rus': the need for churches (first wooden and then stone), monastery buildings, liturgical clothes, religious accessories, icons, church books, etc. Although the initial examples of all this were were brought to our country from Byzantium, where the first architects, masonry and bookmakers, painters, etc. came from, but the bulk of the work on the construction and decoration of churches was carried out by Russian craftsmen, relying on the experience of many generations of artisans of pre-Christian Rus'.

Consequently, the attempts of modern champions of Russian Orthodoxy to present the matter in such a way that the appearance in ancient Russian society of a rich material culture is connected only with the “baptism of Rus'” and should be considered as its direct consequence are completely groundless. In reality, there is not a one-time emergence of something completely new, something that did not previously exist, but only a further development - albeit at a qualitatively higher level - of already existing components, economic relations and material culture of Ancient Rus' of pre-Christian times.

Development of social relations and formation of statehood

As already noted, the ideologists of modern Russian Orthodoxy strive to connect two processes together: the Christianization of Ancient Rus' and the emergence of ancient Russian statehood, and to connect them in such a way that the first process is perceived as the fundamental basis of the second. So, for example, in the editorial article “Forty Years of the Revived Patriarchate” it is argued that the beginning of Russian Orthodoxy as a product of the “baptism of Rus'” goes back “to the very origins of Russian statehood in Kyiv” (ZhMP, 1957, No. 12, p. 36).

All this is being done so that the formation and development of ancient Russian statehood is perceived by Soviet people as a consequence of the conversion of our ancestors to Christianity and is entirely attributed to the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leaders allegedly “directed their influence on the structure of the state” (Russian Orthodox Church. Publ. Moscow patriarchy. M., 1980, p. 11).

Let us compare this theological and ecclesiastical apology for Russian Orthodoxy with reliable evidence of Russian history.

Soviet historical science dates the formation of the Old Russian state to the 9th century. “By the beginning of the 9th century,” writes B. A. Rybakov, “in the center of the East Slavic tribes, the state of Rus' had formed, uniting almost half of the tribes around Kyiv and fighting with the nomads, with Byzantium and with the Varangians”1. B. D. Grekov considered the beginning of this state to be the seizure of Kyiv by the Novgorod prince Oleg (882) and the spread of grand-ducal power to the Kyiv and Novgorod lands: “By the Old Russian state we understand that large early feudal state that arose as a result of the unification of Novgorod Rus with Kievan Rus "2.

Since for considering the problem of interest to us, such differences in dating are insignificant. We will not dwell on them, but will note something on which all Soviet historians are completely unanimous:

The Old Russian state arose more than a century before the baptism of the Kievites and became a historical reality long before the religious action of the Kyiv prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich.

The formation of a state is not the beginning, but a definite result of social development, a transition to a new quality, which was preceded by a long preparatory period, a long process of gradual accumulation of quantitative changes in the social life of Ancient Rus'. Consequently, the formation of Russian statehood occurred in even more ancient times.

Indeed, the prerequisites for the formation of statehood among the Eastern Slavs began to be laid back in the 6th century, when the institution of tribal leaders appeared. Characterizing this period of national history, B. A. Rybakov wrote: “The 6th century was marked by three groups of phenomena that determined the new direction of Slavic life: firstly, thanks to the development of productive forces, the clan system by this time in most tribes had reached its highest development and was already giving rise to such contradictions that prepared the way for the emergence of class relations; secondly, for the strengthening tribal squads, as a result of the great migration of peoples, the possibility of distant campaigns to rich southern countries and even settlements in them opened up. The third feature of this era is the abundance of nomadic hordes in the steppes, warlike and poorly governed, posing a constant and formidable danger to all Slavic tribes of the forest-steppe. The interaction of these three heterogeneous phenomena, associated with both internal development and the external situation, led to a very important result - individual scattered Slavic tribes, of which there were probably about one and a half hundred in Eastern Europe, began to unite into large unions.”

The material prerequisite for such a unification was the further development of productive forces, which gave rise to new social relations. The transition from the shifting system of agriculture, which required the combined efforts of a large group of people - the tribal collective, to arable farming, made cultivating the land feasible for individual peasant families. Economically independent families were separated from clan collectives, which meant the replacement of collective clan property with family and personal property. This inevitably led to differentiation in the receipt of surplus product, and hence to the emergence of property inequality, opening the way to class stratification and the emergence of social antagonisms that caused anxiety among property owners.

To jointly protect their economic interests, territorially close families united into neighboring communities, the composition of which became property (and therefore socially) heterogeneous. Wealthy families concentrated ever-increasing wealth in their hands, subjugated the ruined community members, turning them into economically dependent people - slaves. A unit of feudal society was created - a boyar court, an estate that united neighboring communities around itself, the totality of which constituted an estate.

Economic development led to an increased division of labor and an expansion of intercommunal exchange, which strengthened ties both within the estates and between them. Larger associations arose - tribes (“lands”), where the already formed nobility came to power, nominating from their midst tribal leaders - princes of individual “lands.” Foreign authors who described the life of the Eastern Slavs of the 6th century called these princes “rixes” and “kings” and noted their large number.

To solve problems that exceeded the capabilities of each individual tribe (organizing resistance to militant nomads, conducting a one-time campaign for prey, etc.), temporary tribal alliances could be created. But due to the short duration of their existence, they did not leave behind clear traces: neither Russian chroniclers nor foreign geographers report on them.

As production, exchange and cultural ties between neighboring tribes strengthened and their relationships stabilized, tribal unions became more stable. Their existence stretched for tens and even hundreds of years, leaving a memory of themselves in archaeological materials, and in the toponymy of the corresponding territory, and in ancient layers of language. There is information about them in the chronicle - in particular, in the “Tale of Bygone Years”, where these unions are called “princedoms”. Each such union included 8 - 10 neighboring tribes, and researchers bring the number of unions themselves to fifteen. The author of “The Tale of Bygone Years,” which researchers cite as a source, mentions the tribal reigns of the Polyans, Drevlyans, Dregovichs, Slovenians and Polochans.

Historians believe that tribal unions existed in Ancient Rus' in the 6th - 8th centuries and were an important stage in the long and difficult path of formation of the Old Russian state. Determining their place in this process, B. A. Rybakov notes that tribal unions are nothing more than “a political form of the era of military democracy, that is, that transitional period that connects the last stages of the development of the primitive communal system with the first stages of the new class building." The scientist defines the formation of such unions as “a natural process of progressive development of the institutions of the tribal system, which to a certain extent prepared the future feudal state,” and calls it “a significant step in the development of the Slavic tribal society, which brought the birth of statehood closer.” Moving further to the characterization of the reign of the Polans, which existed in the 6th - 7th centuries, B. A. Rybakov emphasizes that this is “only a union of tribes, and not a state in the modern sense of the word,” since in the presence of property inequality and the allocation of tribal nobility, there are still “feudal there has been no relationship here yet.”

From these statements it is clear that the largest Soviet researcher of Ancient Rus' considers the emergence of tribal unions as the final stage in the development of tribal political organization and at the same time as a preparatory stage in the process of formation of feudal statehood, but not yet the state itself as such.

Professor V.V. Mavrodin characterizes the place of tribal unions in the process of the emergence of ancient Russian statehood in approximately the same way. “Tribal principalities,” he writes, “were the embryonic form of statehood in Ancient Rus' at a time when the bulk of the rural population had not yet lost their communal property and had not become dependent on the feudal lord”2.

The next step towards creating the prerequisites for ancient Russian statehood was the unification of tribal unions, called by B. A. Rybakov “unions of unions.” These “super-alliances” were created both for protection from external danger and for conducting offensive military operations. The prince, who headed the “union of unions,” relied on a permanent military unit - the princely squad, consisting of professional warriors. According to historians, the squad appeared in the 6th - 7th centuries, and by the 9th century it became an important instrument of princely power.

It was precisely these “super-unions” that in the 8th - 9th centuries were the unification of the southern part of the East Slavic tribal unions under the rule of Kyiv, and the northern part under the rule of Novgorod. These associations were already fully mature elements of the future unified Russian statehood, its initial stage.

The chronicle names Askold and Dir as the first princes of Kyiv, under whom the dependence of Kievan Rus on the Khazar Khaganate was eliminated and campaigns against Byzantium were carried out.

The first prince to complete the process of uniting the northern Slavic tribes and subjugating them to Novgorod was Rurik, who, according to the chronicle, was invited to reign (together with the brothers Sineus and Tru-vor) by the Ilmen Slavs. It should be emphasized that Rurik arrived at the head of a hired Varangian squad in Novgorod when all the prerequisites for Russian statehood, discussed above, were already in place. Therefore, his reign in Novgorod did not begin the process of formation of the Russian state, but completed it.

The chronicle story about the “calling of the Varangians to Rus',” tendentiously presented and falsified, was the basis for the so-called “Norman theory” of the emergence of the Russian state, according to which the Varangians (Normans, Scandinavians) created statehood in Rus'. This deeply anti-scientific and socially reactionary false theory, developed in the second quarter of the 18th century, has been convincingly refuted by Soviet historical science, and the reader will find such refutations in any book on the history of the Old Russian state, which frees us from the need to consider them here.

In particular, a well-reasoned, scientifically reliable and deeply partisan criticism of Normanism was given by academician B. A. Rybakov, who noted in his major study on the history of Kievan Rus that the Normanists eventually slipped into the position of the most rabid anti-Sovietism. “Throughout its entire two-hundred-year journey,” the scientist summarizes, “Normanism increasingly turned into a simple anti-Russian, and later anti-Soviet, political doctrine, which its propagandists carefully protected from contact with science and critical analysis.”

The chronicles do not report anything specific about the activities of Rurik. There is no reliable information about this Varangian, who became the Novgorod prince, in foreign sources. The 11th century scribe Metropolitan Hilarion is also silent about him, naming only Svyatoslav and Igor among the ancestors of the Kyiv prince Vladimir.

The reign of Rurik's successor Oleg, who captured Kyiv by deception, killing Askold and Dir, is described in more detail in chronicles and other sources. He moved the center of the united state to Kyiv (882). This is how the Old Russian state was formed, which continued to retain the name of Kievan Rus.

Oleg and his successors fought for the subordination of the remaining independent East Slavic tribes to Kyiv. The Drevlyans, northerners and Radimichi were conquered by Oleg himself, the Ulichs and Tivertsy by Igor, and the Vyatichi by Svyatoslav and Vladimir. It was then that tribal isolation was finally overcome and the territory of the Old Russian state was formed. In order to expand this territory, campaigns were carried out against the Khozars, Kama and Danube Bulgarians, and against the peoples of the North Caucasus.

The campaigns of Ancient Rus' against Byzantium became frequent at that time. The success of Oleg’s campaign is evidenced by the Russian-Byzantine treaty of 911, the terms of which were beneficial for Rus'. Igor's campaigns (941 - 944) were less successful, so the treaty of 944 was not so favorable for the Russians, but it also provided for the establishment of broad trade ties between Byzantium and Russia and the intensification of Byzantine-Russian political relations.

Igor’s son Svyatoslav fought especially hard and persistently against Byzantium. Hardy and unpretentious, he had great military leadership talent. The prince even thought about moving the capital of his state from Kyiv to Danube Bulgaria - closer to the Byzantine borders. However, in 971 he was defeated by the Byzantine emperor and agreed to a peace obliging him not to oppose Byzantium. Upon returning home, Svyatoslav, who remained with a small part of his squad, was waylaid by the Pechenegs and killed. It is believed that this happened not without the assistance of Byzantium, which was eager to get rid of such a restless neighbor.

Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich continued his father’s campaigns against Byzantium, and moreover, successfully. He managed not only to force Byzantium to reckon with the power of Kievan Rus, but to a certain extent even recognize its equality in relations with the Byzantine Empire, which was reflected in Vladimir’s marriage with the sister of Emperors Basil II and Constantine IX, Anna.

Unlike his predecessors, who united and strengthened the Old Russian state only with the help of military force, Prince Vladimir also used an ideological means for this purpose - religion. Initially, it was the paganism of the Eastern Slavs, to which they tried to give the features of a national religion. And only after making sure that local religious beliefs, tailored according to the standards of pre-state Rus', are not suitable for their intended purposes, Prince Vladimir decides to use Christianity as the state religion, which he became familiar with through numerous contacts with Byzantium, Bulgaria and others European ladders.

Thus, Christianity enters the social life of Kievan Rus as a powerful ideological factor not in the pre-state period of its history, but only when the Old Russian state had existed for more than a century, became politically stronger and declared itself to the whole world as a powerful force with which it should neighboring states were considered, right up to imperial Byzantium. Therefore, the assertion of church ideologists that Russian statehood begins with the adoption of Christians by Prince Vladimir and his subjects is a distortion of historical truth.

The Christianization of Ancient Rus', begun by the Kyiv prince Vladimir, did not create Russian statehood, but only strengthened and developed it. This was not the beginning of the process, but its continuation, which introduced a lot of new things into the state life of the Old Russian state, raised it to a higher level and nevertheless only developed the already existing principles of power.

State of spiritual culture

Not a single issue is discussed by Orthodox theologians and church preachers so actively and with such polemical fervour as the problem of the relationship between religion and culture. The purpose of the discussion is more than specific: to convince Soviet people interested in various aspects of cultural progress that religion is the fundamental basis of culture and its deep stimulator, and Russian Orthodoxy is the main factor in the emergence, formation and development of the cultural heritage of the Slavic peoples of our country.

“In the church,” the official body of the Moscow Patriarchate assures its readers, “Russian national culture was born” (ZhMP, 1983, No. 9, p. 79).

In this regard, the baptism of the Kievites is considered by modern church authors as the beginning of the cultural progress of ancient Russian society - progress that boils down to the simple assimilation of Byzantine standards of culture by our ancestors, who supposedly had nothing in their souls except natural genius, understood as the ability to quickly and deeply assimilate ready-made cultural forms. “Together with Christianity,” states the article “A Brief Review of the History of the Russian Church,” “the Russian Church brought to Rus' the highest of that time Byzantine education, culture and art, which fell on the good soil of the Slavic genius and bore fruit in the historical life of the people.” (50th anniversary of the restoration of the patriarchate. - ZhMP. Special issue, 1971, p. 25).

This interpretation of cultural progress, which reduces everything to the assimilation of the Byzantine heritage and does not allow this progress to have its own ancient Russian sources, is deeply erroneous and, in general, offensive to the Slavic peoples of our country, who are portrayed as pitiful epigones. Meanwhile, the assimilation and creative rethinking of the elements of Byzantine culture that came to Rus' during the Christianization of ancient Russian society (Christianity in this case performed a purely communicative function - acted as a simple transmitter of these elements) became possible only because in pre-Christian Rus' there was no then there was a cultural vacuum, as modern church authors claim, but there was a fairly high level of development of spiritual culture.

This has been convincingly proven by Soviet historical science, based on a deep and comprehensive analysis of the cultural heritage of our distant ancestors. “The richest factual material,” says the work on the cultural history of Ancient Rus', “testifies to the height and independence of the most ancient Russian culture and its rapid progress.” Highly appreciating the Old Russian art of the 10th and subsequent centuries, the authors of the two-volume “History of Russian Art” at the same time note: “Its origins go back to the previous artistic culture of the East Slavic tribes... By the time of the formation of the Old Russian state (i.e., to the second half of the 9th century. - I.G.) the Eastern Slavs have already developed deep, ramified artistic traditions. Therefore, from the very first steps, the masters of ancient Russian art were able to create outstanding works.”2

Refuting common speculation about the “backwardness of ancient Russian culture” and rejecting attempts to derive this culture from the Christianization of ancient Russian society, one of the greatest experts and connoisseurs of the cultural heritage of the peoples of our country, Academician D. S. Likhachev, wrote: “Russian culture is much more than a thousand years old. She is of the same age as the Russian people, with the Ukrainian and Belarusian... More than a thousand years of Russian folk art, Russian writing, literature, painting, architecture, sculpture, music”3.

Academician B. A. Rybakov, who devoted many years to the study of ancient Russian art, points out that our people have ancient cultural traditions. “The origins of Russian folk art,” he noted, “go back thousands of years,” and therefore “by the time of the adoption of Christianity, Russian art was at a fairly high stage of development.”

Now let’s turn directly to the spiritual heritage of our ancestors, who had not yet accepted Christianity, and see who is right: theologians or scientists.

Calling pre-Christian forms of spiritual life paganism, modern Orthodox theologians and church preachers characterize them as the embodiment of primitivism and squalor. Paganism, argued the author of the article “Equal to the Apostles,” met only “meager needs, small needs, low tastes” (JMP, 1958, No. 5, p. 48). Meanwhile, even that small part of the monuments of the spiritual culture of pre-Christian Rus', which has reached us and has become the object of the most thorough scientific study, completely refutes such statements.

The economic and political development of Ancient Rus' in the pre-Christian era, characterized by dynamism and multi-quality, gave rise to a multiplicity of forms and manifestations of spiritual culture, quite high for its time. Unfortunately, much of the cultural heritage of ancient Russian society has been irretrievably lost: ruthless time, devastating natural disasters (primarily fires), and numerous enemy invasions, interspersed with princely civil strife, and the disdainful attitude of the ruling classes towards the people's cultural heritage are to blame for this. There is a share of blame (and a considerable one!) on the Russian Orthodox Church: by its command, many cultural works of pre-Christian times were exterminated as “products of pagan superstition” or consigned to oblivion.

But even the relatively little that has been preserved and scientifically comprehended convincingly testifies to the great cultural potential of Ancient Rus' of the pre-Christian era, to the presence of the most diverse forms and manifestations of spiritual culture among our distant ancestors, to their ability to understand and appreciate the beautiful in life and in art. .

As is known, a person’s aesthetic sense was formed in the process of work and under its direct influence. Observing harmony in nature and perceiving it as an expression of beauty, people sought to bring beauty into their work:

they sought to ensure that both the tools of labor and the products of labor activity were harmonious, generating aesthetic pleasure. Bearing in mind precisely this feature of the labor process, K. Marx noted that “man also builds according to the laws of beauty.”

The subtle understanding of beauty in ancient Russian society is eloquently demonstrated by the forms of labor and everyday objects that were perfect for their time, the high artistic level of design of weapons and military armor, and the elegance of jewelry. Having studied folk embroidery, Academician B. A. Rybakov came to the conclusion that its subjects and compositional solutions, striking in aesthetic perfection, were developed thousands of years ago, when Christianity was not yet in sight. The oldest tools of women's labor - spinning wheels - were decorated with great taste: the ancient ornaments and patterns applied to them are highly artistic.

Judging by the jewelry found in the treasures, one can judge that ancient jewelers not only mastered the technology of making complex crafts from gold, silver, and bronze, but also had a subtle understanding of beauty. The customers of these decorations, whose tastes the craftsmen tried to please, also had this understanding.

In all books on the cultural history of Ancient Rus', turk horns from the Black Mogila in Chernigov, dating back to the 10th century, are certainly mentioned and enthusiastically described. Their silver frame, on which, according to B. A. Rybakov’s assumption, the plot of the Chernigov epic about Ivan Godinovich is minted, is indeed one of the masterpieces of ancient Russian art, testifying to the presence of a great aesthetic culture among our ancestors.

Scientists suggest that in Ancient Rus' of the pre-Christian era there was painting. There are quite enough reasons for such assumptions. If ancient Russian society did not have painting traditions, the art of frescoes, mosaics and icon painting, stimulated by the introduction of Christianity, would not have taken root so quickly and would not have reached such heights. With this very circumstance in mind, B. A. Rybakov wrote: “The high level of artistic expression achieved by ancient Russian painting is partly explained by the fact that the perception of Byzantine craftsmanship was prepared by the development of Slavic folk art back in the pagan period”2.

The beginnings of sculpture were also present in Ancient Rus' - the work of wood and stone carvers. Statues of pagan gods, which were subsequently destroyed, were made: Perun, Khors, Veles, etc. There were figurines of gods - patrons of the hearth, etc. One of the very complex sculptural compositions was found on the banks of the Buzh (Bush) River, which flows into the Dniester. On the stone of the cave is a bas-relief image of a man praying in front of a sacred tree with a rooster sitting on it1. Experts in the field of the history of sculpture note: “In the folk art of pagan Rus', in the monolithic, columnar, laconic volumes of wooden idols, a developed sense of large spatial form was already expressed”2.

Historians of Russian architecture claim that “at the time of the transformation of Christianity into the state religion, Rus' already possessed a developed art of architecture, which had deep historical roots”3. This idea is expressed even more clearly in a work on the history of Russian architecture, where, in particular, it is said: “In the 9th century. a powerful ancient Russian state emerged. The architecture of this state was a further development of the architecture of the Eastern Slavs of the previous historical period on a new socio-economic basis and on the basis of a new stage in the development of their culture... Only the large culture of the Eastern Slavs, accumulated over centuries, makes clear the brilliant development of ancient Russian stone architecture of the 10th - 11th centuries. - the heyday of Kievan Rus”4.

Folk everyday rituals were filled with a variety of aesthetic content, many of which included theatrical performances. In ancient Rus' of those distant times, the foundations of buffoonery were laid - the professional art of wandering actors who enjoyed great love and support from the broad masses. Previously, it was believed that the buffoons, first mentioned in the Tale of Bygone Years in 1068, entered the historical arena after the population of Kievan Rus converted to the new faith. However, modern researchers have come to the conclusion that buffoonery appeared “not after the adoption of Christianity, but before it,” that buffoons “existed during paganism.”

The true spiritual wealth of Ancient Rus' was oral folk art in all the diversity of its manifestations: songs on everyday, ritual and historical themes, proverbs and sayings, tales and epics.

Already in ancient times, there were guslar storytellers in Rus', whose glory was embodied in the image of the legendary Boyan, sung by the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” They created and directly performed songs on heroic themes, glorifying the people's heroes, defenders of their native land. “The author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” notes B. A. Rybakov, “also knew some songs about campaigns through the steppes to the Balkans... which could reflect the events of the 6th century, when significant masses of Slavs victoriously fought with Byzantium, and also knew even earlier songs and laments about the tragic fate of the Slavic prince of the 4th century. Busa, captured in the battle with the Goths and painfully killed by them.”2

Some songs of this kind were included in folklore works of later times, but many were subsequently forgotten and irretrievably lost. “If it weren’t so late,” lamented Academician B.D. Grekov, who deeply studied and highly valued the preliterate culture of the ancient Slavic peoples, “they began to collect and record Russian epics, we would have an incomparably greater wealth of these bright indicators of the deep patriotism of the masses, their direct interest in one’s history, the ability to make a correct assessment of persons and events.” called these tales “the people's Kyiv saga.” Based on a thorough analysis, B. A. Rybakov attributed the legend about Kiya to the 6th - 7th centuries.

In the life of our ancestors, songs played a big role: weddings, funerals, etc. Many rituals and holidays were accompanied by songs; they were sung at feasts and funeral feasts. And although the melodies of that time have not reached us, researchers reasonably believe that subsequent successes in the development of song creativity and instrumental music would have been impossible without the ancient traditions of this art form. Therefore, their conclusion is quite categorical: “Old Russian folk song and musical creativity was not primitive.”

Epic folk art has its roots in distant pre-Christian times, although a significant part of the epic stories are of later origin. According to the well-reasoned conclusion of Academician B. A. Rybakov, the basis of the epic about Ivan Godinovich appeared in the 9th - 10th centuries. Around the same time, epics about Mikhail Potok and the Danube (Don Ivanovich) were composed. And the scientist attributes the epics about Volga Svyatoslavich and Mikul Selyaninovich to the eve of the reign of Vladimir Svyatoslavich.

In later records (in particular, in the “Tale of Bygone Years”) ancient spells and conspiracies have come down to us. Examples of such spells are given in the text of the treaty concluded between Kievan Rus and Byzantium in 944: “Those of them (parties to the treaty - N.G.) who are not baptized do not have help from both God and Perun, yes they will not defend themselves with their own shields, and may they perish from their swords, from their arrows and from their other weapons, and may they be slaves throughout their afterlife.” It also includes many ancient proverbs and sayings: “perished like obre” (about the death of the Obry (Avar) tribe, who fought with the Slavs), “dead is no shame for the imam” (words of Prince Svyatoslav, spoken before the battle with the Byzantines), etc. .d.

Much of the oral folk art of Ancient Rus' has not been preserved, not only because it began to be written down very late: the first collection of epics was published only in the 18th century, when many elements had already been lost. A fatal role was played by the hostile attitude towards ancient Russian folklore and the literature created on its basis on the part of the Russian Orthodox Church, which branded it all as paganism and tried to eradicate it by all means available to it. “The medieval church, jealously destroying the apocrypha and works in which pagan gods were mentioned,” noted academician B. A. Rybakov, “probably had a hand in the destruction of manuscripts like “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” where the church is mentioned in passing, and the whole the poem is full of pagan deities."

Consequently, Ancient Rus', which had not yet accepted Christianity, was not poor in preliterate culture. Therefore, even the generally rather limited information about it that has reached our time convincingly refute the theological ideas about ancient Russian society, which did not experience the crucible of Christianization, as a triumph of lack of culture.

The assertions of modern church authors that pre-Christian Rus' did not know writing at all, which supposedly appeared only in the process of Christianization of ancient Russian society and was introduced into use through the efforts of the church, do not stand up to comparison with the facts of Russian history. Meanwhile, statements of this kind are expressed more and more often on the pages of theological publications and in church sermons. So, for example, Archpriest I. Sorokin stated in one of his sermons that from the church “Russian people received writing, education and were grafted into the centuries-old Christian culture” (ZhMP, 1980, No. 7, p. 45). He is echoed by Archimandrite Palladius (Shiman), assuring his listeners and readers that only during the “baptism of Rus'” and thanks to him, the Slavic peoples of our country “soon had their own original writing and original art” (Orthodox Visnik - hereinafter PV, - 1982, No. 8, p. 32). According to Archpriest A. Egorov, “the first Russian writing arose in monasteries” (ZhMP, 1981, No. 7, p. 46).

Scientists have sufficient factual material proving that the Eastern Slavs began to develop writing long before the baptism of the Kievites. And this is not unexpected. Writing, like other manifestations of culture, arose from the needs of social development - primarily from the need to expand the possibilities of communication between people, as well as to record and transmit the experience accumulated by previous generations. And such a need became urgent in the era of the formation of feudal relations in Rus', during the formation of ancient Russian statehood. “The need for writing,” notes academician D.S. Likhachev, “appeared with the accumulation of wealth and the development of trade: it was necessary to record the amount of goods, debts, various obligations, to document in writing the transfer of accumulated wealth by inheritance, etc. Writing was needed and the state, especially when concluding treaties. With the growth of patriotic self-awareness came the need to record historical events. The need also arose for private correspondence” 1.

Based on data from scientific research and on the evidence of ancient authors, D. S. Likhachev suggested that “separate writing systems have existed on the territory of the Russian land for a long time, especially in the areas adjacent to the northern shores of the Black Sea, where ancient colonies were once located.” 2. Here are just some of this evidence.

The author of the legend “On Writing,” written no later than the beginning of the 10th century, noted that while the Slavs were pagans, they used some “traits” and “cuts” as writing, with the help of which they “read and told fortunes.”

In the “Pannonian Life of Constantine the Philosopher” (Cyril - the creator of the Slavic alphabet) it is reported that during his trip to Khazaria (about 860) he saw in Chersonesus (Korsun) a gospel and a psalter written in “Russian letters”. It is believed that the books were written in the “glagolitic alphabet” - the ancient Slavic alphabet, which replaced the “traits” and “cuts”. Arab and German sources of the 10th century report on the presence of writing among the Eastern Slavs of the pre-Christian era: they mention an inscription on a monument to a Russian warrior, a prophecy written on a stone that was located in a Slavic temple, and “Russian writings” sent to one of the Caucasian "kings".

Traces of ancient Russian writing have also been discovered by archaeologists. Thus, during excavations of the Gnezdovo burial mounds near Smolensk (1949), a clay vessel dating back to the first quarter of the 9th century was found. They read the inscription on it indicating the spice (“gorukhsha” or “gorushna”). This means that even then writing was used for purely everyday purposes.

The most convincing evidence of the existence of the beginnings of writing in Rus' in pre-Christian times are the texts of treaties concluded by Russian princes with Byzantium in the first half of the 10th century.

From the text of the treaty of 911, given in the Tale of Bygone Years, it is clear that it was drawn up in two copies (“in two copies”), one of which was signed by the Greeks, and the other by the Russians. The treaty of 944 was drawn up in the same way.

The treaties state the presence in Rus' in the time of Oleg of written wills (“let the one to whom the dying man wrote to inherit his property take what was bequeathed to him” - the treaty of 911), and in the time of Igor - accompanying letters that were supplied to Russian merchants and ambassadors (“formerly ambassadors they brought gold seals, and the merchants brought silver; now your prince has commanded to send letters to us, the kings” - agreement of 944).

It is believed that when creating the Slavic alphabet, Cyril and Methodius could have used ancient Russian letters. This guess is expressed in one ancient Russian manuscript, where, in particular, it is said; “And the Russian letter, given by God, appeared to the Ruthenians in Korsun, and the Philosopher Konstantin learned from it, and from there he compiled and wrote books in Russian.”

All this, taken together, allowed Soviet historians to conclude that “the need for writing in Rus' appeared a long time ago, and a whole series of, although not entirely clear, news tells us that the Russian people used writing even before Christianity was recognized as the state religion " “There is no doubt,” concludes Professor V.V. Mavrodin, “that among the Slavs, in particular among the Eastern Slavs, Russians, writing appeared before the adoption of Christianity and its emergence is by no means connected with the baptism of Rus'.”

As for the impact of the “baptism of Rus'” on the further development of writing, it was, contrary to the statements of modern Orthodox theologians and church preachers, stimulating, but not determining, accelerating a process that had already been going on for a long time, and not starting it. “Christianity,” emphasized one of the largest Soviet researchers of Kievan Rus, Academician B.D. Grekov, “became only one of the factors that increased the need for writing and undoubtedly accelerated the improvement of its own alphabet”2. Exactly “one of” - and nothing more!

Indeed, the Christianization of Rus', which created the need for liturgical and apologetic literature, various hagiographic materials,3 religious and edifying reading for believers, etc., gave a powerful impetus to the further development of writing and book publishing. But in addition to Christianity, those stimulants for the development of writing that existed in pre-Christian times continued to operate (and to an ever-increasing degree!): the need for state and business documentation, the need to record products and goods, cultural and aesthetic needs satisfied by literary creativity, the need to consolidate and transmit knowledge, etc.

In particular, such a need to record and evaluate historical events gave rise to chronicles, which appeared in pre-Christian times, but took their classical forms after the establishment of Christianity in Rus' as the state religion.

Therefore, the attempts of modern Orthodox theologians and church preachers to make Russian writing completely dependent on the “baptism of Rus'” and to completely remove its development from the process of Christianization of ancient Russian society cannot be called anything other than a distortion of the historical past.

Finally, obvious tendentiousness leading to the violation of historical truth is demonstrated by modern advocates of Orthodoxy when considering the religious state of Ancient Rus'. The reason for this tendentiousness is the conviction that Christianity (and therefore Russian Orthodoxy) is fundamentally different from pre-Christian beliefs, called paganism, as truth from error, light from darkness, and that only with the establishment of Orthodoxy in Rus' did the familiarization of our ancestors with the true religious values. to true spirituality. Hence the desire to present the religiosity of ancient Russian society on the eve of the baptism of the Kievites as an expression of spiritual inferiority, as being in “pagan ignorance,” and the adoption of Christianity as the acquisition of “true faith.” Moreover, the paganism of the Slavic peoples is characterized in the modern church press not only as a delusion and superstition, but also as a state of oppression, spiritual bondage, from which they were allegedly brought out by the Russian Orthodox Church, which fought “against pagan prejudices and superstitions that spiritually enslaved the people” (50 anniversary of the restoration of the patriarchate, p. 25).

All this is being done so that Soviet people perceive the religiosity of pre-Christian Rus' as a state of undiscovered and untapped possibilities of spiritual life, which the people were able to realize supposedly only after becoming familiar with Christianity and thanks to the efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In fact, Christianity is in no way more cognitively perfect than paganism. Of course, the first has a wider object of reflection than the second (not only nature, but also society, class relations, the state, etc.), more complex dogmatics, more diverse rituals, more inclusions of non-religious components, etc. But from the truth they are equally distant, since they are a fantastic reflection of reality, representing various modifications of belief in the supernatural.

Christianity itself, having reached the next stage of religious development in relation to paganism, continues to carry within itself a huge array of pagan heritage, since it grew out of those primitive religious beliefs, the totality of which was called paganism. They differ only ideologically: in paganism the object of distortion is the primitive communal system, and therefore it is a pre-class ideology, and in Christianity it is slave-owning and feudal, which makes this religion a class ideology.

Indeed, faith in the Trinity is no closer to the truth than faith in the Family and the Mother of God; Perun is no more real than Elijah the Prophet, and, conversely, the Christian Blasius did not rise above the pagan Beles in any way, and Orthodox worship does not help the believer solve his vital problems in the same way as sorcery does. And therefore, the epoch-making nature of the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of Kievan Rus lies not in itself, but in circumstances of a social nature. It does not consist in replacing a “less true” religion with a “more true one,” as church authors claim for apologetic purposes, but in the historical significance of the transition of Ancient Rus' from a pre-class society, which gave rise to paganism, to a class society, the product of which was and which Christianity ideologically served.

As for the attempts of the ideologists of modern Russian Orthodoxy to discredit Slavic religious beliefs by pointing out their primitiveness, inconsistency with the level of development of ancient Russian society and the spiritual needs of the population of Ancient Rus', they are untenable in all respects.

Firstly, the religious beliefs of pre-Christian Rus' were fully consistent with the era that gave birth to them. Tailored to the standards of pre-class society, they were the way they should have been under the conditions of the primitive communal system that created them. And while the tribal relations of the Slavs did not sufficiently outlive themselves and did not give way to feudal relations, ancient Slavic paganism remained the only possible form of religiosity in Rus', easily assimilating many pagan beliefs and cults of neighboring peoples, adapting them to their own needs.

That is why in the pan-Slavic pagan pantheon, which the Grand Duke of Kiev Vladimir Svyatoslavich initially intended to make the religious and ideological support of the Old Russian state, there were gods revered not only in Rus' (Perun, Dazhd-bog, Stribog, Mokosh), in and in the neighborhood ( Hore, Simurgh, or Simargl).

Christianity is the religion of a developed class society. Therefore, it could not establish itself in Rus' before feudal relations arose there and became sufficiently strong. While the islands of feudalism were drowning in Rus' in the ocean of tribal structures, Christianization did not take on a mass character, but spread only to individuals and small social groups.

That is why Prince Askold himself and some part of his squad accepted Christianity (if you believe the chronicler), but they could not baptize the entire Kievan Rus under their control, since social conditions that were optimal for class religion had not yet matured. In the same way, Princess Olga did not manage to make any significant progress along the path of Christianization of Ancient Rus', since feudal relations had not yet gained strength. Even her own son Svyatoslav refused to be baptized, declaring, according to the Tale of Bygone Years: “How can I alone accept a different faith? And my squad will begin to mock.” Persuasion did not help - he, according to the chronicler, “did not listen to his mother, continuing to live according to pagan customs” (p. 243).

Only after feudal relations in Rus' not only arose, but also became sufficiently strengthened and acquired the proper scope, were real prerequisites created for the transition from pre-class forms of religiosity, which included Slavic paganism, to the religion of a class society, which was Christianity.

Secondly, the religious beliefs and cults of the Slavs were no more primitive than that part of the doctrine and rituals of Christianity that it inherited from pre-Christian religions and assimilated.

Having deeply and comprehensively studied the religious beliefs of our distant ancestors, the outstanding Soviet scientist Academician B. A. Rybakov convincingly proved that they are not something inferior and narrowly local. “Slavic paganism,” he emphasized, “is part of a huge universal complex of primitive views, beliefs, and rituals, coming from the depths of thousands of years and serving as the basis for all later world religions.” In the fundamental study of B. A. Rybakov, “The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs,” based on enormous archaeological and ethnographic material, it is shown that the religious beliefs that existed in Rus' at the time of the adoption of Christianity are rooted in the deep past. They were the product of a long evolution, reflecting the main stages of development of the ancestors of the Slavs during the times of Kievan Rus.

Not only Slavic paganism of the end of the 1st millennium AD. e., but also the religion of the Proto-Slavs of the 1st millennium BC. represented a complex, internally contradictory and yet quite coherent system of beliefs and rituals, in which there is a very noticeable tendency to move from polytheism (polytheism) to monotheism (monotheism). B. A. Rybakov established that this system is multi-layered: “archaic ideas that arose in the early stages of development continued to exist, despite the fact that new layers had already formed next to them (so to speak, above them”).

Unlike other researchers who focused on the study of Slavic paganism of the 1st millennium AD. e., B. A. Rybakov turned to more isolated times and there he discovered the origins of many beliefs that existed on the eve of the “baptism of Rus'”.

In particular, he suggested that Veles (Volos) was the god of hunting success for the primitive Paleolithic hunters and was identified with the bear. In the Bronze Age3 among shepherds, he turned from Veles the Bear into a “cattle god,” which he remained until the time of Kievan Rus.

The matriarchal cult of Rozhanitsa is very ancient - goddesses of fertility and fertility, perceived as the heavenly Mistresses of the World: mother Lada and daughter Lelya. Above them stood Mokosh (or Makosh) - the personification of Mother Earth, in whom she was seen as the patroness of the harvest and at the same time the progenitor of the World.

With the victory of patriarchy, the idea of ​​a male deity arose: the cult of the god of the Universe, Rod, emerged. B. A. Rybakov considers the traditional idea of ​​Rod as the patron of the family, a petty household god-brownie, to be unreasonable. In his opinion, “Rod in Russian medieval sources is depicted as a heavenly god, located in the air, controlling the clouds and breathing life into all living things. The greatest number of menacing denunciations were directed by clergy against public celebrations in honor of Rod and Rozhanitsa. In these denunciations, the Slavic pagan Rod is equated with the Egyptian Osiris, the biblical Baal (Baal-Hadd), the Christian Sabaoth, the creator god and almighty.” B. A. Rybakov further believes that the Rod overshadowed the archaic Rozhanitsa, whose functions never went beyond the idea of ​​fertility-fertility. “In Russian embroidery,” he writes, “a three-part composition consisting of Mokosh and two Rozhanitsa with their hands raised to the sky is presented as an appeal to the heavenly god, in which Rod should be seen “breathing life.” Obviously, prayers on high mountains located closer to the sky are also associated with the heavenly Family.”2

In other words, the cult of Rod contained, according to a rather convincing assumption by B. A. Rybakov, elements of “ancient pre-Christian monotheism,” which religious ideologists (including theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church) consider a privilege of Christianity.

Following E.V. Anichkov and some other researchers, B.A. Rybakov suggests that the promotion of Perun to a primary place in the Slavic pagan cult has no roots in primitiveness, but is associated with the process of formation of ancient Russian statehood. Therefore, the worship of Perun did not gain strength as a tradition, and after the Christianization of Kievan Rus, mention of him disappeared earlier from chronicles and church sources than references to Rod and Rozhanitsy.

Thus, even a relatively conditional and largely hypothetical reconstruction of ancient Slavic beliefs, carried out by Academician B. A. Rybakov and other researchers, convinces us that the attempts of the ideologists of modern Russian Orthodoxy to present the paganism of the Slavs as something amorphous, primitive and unsystematic are completely untenable. It was a fairly harmonious and holistic structure, if not equal in complexity of its architectonics to Christianity (it is still the next stage in the development of religion in comparison with paganism), then, in any case, comparable to it.

As for the ideological content of pagan and Christian beliefs, from an epistemological point of view it was practically identical - equally erroneous.

Let us take, for example, the following pagan idea about the appearance of man, expressed by the Belozersk Magi in a polemic with adherents of Christianity and given on the pages of The Tale of Bygone Years: “God washed himself in the bathhouse, got sweaty, wiped himself with a rag and threw it from heaven to earth. And Satan argued with God over who should create a man from her. And the devil created man, and God put his soul into him. That’s why when a person dies, his body goes to the earth, and his soul goes to God” (p. 318).

Let us compare the story of the Magi with the biblical account of the creation of man: “And the Lord God created man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). God said to the man he created: “You will return to the ground from which you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19).

And finally, let us cite, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, a statement on this issue by the Christian Jan Vyshatich, who polemicized with the Belozersk Magi: “God created man from the earth, man consists of bones and blood veins, there is nothing else in him” (p. 318).

Comparing all three stories, it is easy to notice that the pagan idea of ​​​​the appearance of man is no more primitive than the Christian one - both as set out in the Bible and as retold by a Christian who converted to the new faith from the inner circle of Prince Svyatoslav Yaroslavich.

At one level of primitiveness (if we use this term, readily used by theological and church circles of the Moscow Patriarchate and the leaders of the Russian church emigration) there are such components of the pagan and Christian worldview as the worship of idols and veneration of icons, appeal to spirits and invocation of saints, belief in the supernatural the properties of the Magi and the endowment of “divine grace” to the clergy, confidence in the miraculousness of the pagan fetish and hope for the saving system of the Christian cross. Such parallels can be continued indefinitely, and some of them will be revealed in more detail. The point is not in the number of comparisons, but in their essence. And it is this: Christianity is the same distorted reflection of reality as paganism. According to the fair remark of B. A. Rybakov, “Christianity differs from paganism not in its religious essence, but only in those features of class ideology that have been layered over a thousand years on primitive beliefs, rooted in the same primitiveness as the beliefs of the ancient Slavs or their neighbors "

Consequently, even taken in a purely religious aspect, the baptism of the Kievites cannot be considered as the beginning of beginnings. It was not marked by the introduction in Kievan Rus of some fundamentally new form of spiritual life, which had not been practiced at all before. This was a transfer of ancient Russian society from one religious level to another, higher (not in the ideological sense, but in the social sense), more fully corresponding to the new stage of social development.

This is the real picture of the relationship between paganism and Christianity in the general process of religious development of Ancient Rus'. The ideologists of modern Russian Orthodoxy cannot and do not want to accept it, so as not to undermine the important theological thesis about the fundamental difference between Christianity and pre-Christian (pagan) beliefs. That is why they are trying to dig a gap between Christianity and paganism, and that is why they consider the Christianization of Kievan Rus in isolation from the pre-Christian stage of religious development of ancient Russian society.

From what has been said, it is clear that modern Orthodox theologians and church preachers have no reason to claim that national history begins with the adoption of Christianity by the people of Kiev. Their statements that the Russian Orthodox Church supposedly “stood at the origins of Russian national identity, statehood and culture” (ZhMP, 1970, No. 5, p. 56) and had before it “the unenlightened soul of the Russian person” (ZhMP, 1982) are also unfounded , No. 5, p. 50).

Statements of this kind have nothing to do with the truth. They distort the historical truth and do this in the hope that, by exaggerating the scale of the baptism of the Kievites and exaggerating its role in Russian history, they will force all Soviet people (including non-believers) to perceive this event as the beginning of all beginnings and relate to its upcoming anniversary like a national holiday.

Reactionary circles of Russian church emigration try to take advantage of such distortions for ideologically subversive purposes, contrasting the baptism of the inhabitants of ancient Kyiv as the “true beginning” of the national history of the Great October Socialist Revolution as an allegedly “false beginning.” It is the duty not only of academic historians, but also of popularizers of historical knowledge, ideological workers, and propagandists of scientific atheism to convincingly expose the true goals of this action of church-emigrant falsifiers of history. This is the patriotic duty of every Soviet person who knows the history of his homeland, the past of his people and who knows how to correctly, from a scientific point of view, cover every stage of the country’s historical development

Consequently, turning to the times of pre-Christian Rus' and correctly illuminating them is not a simple tribute to historical antiquity, not the satisfaction of idle curiosity and not an orientation towards the past. This is a solution to a problem that has direct access to modern times: refuting the religious-idealistic interpretation of Russian history and exposing the attempts of emigrant churchmen to use this interpretation for anti-Soviet purposes.