The history of ancient Russia in brief.

For several centuries, Russia experienced ups and downs, but eventually became a kingdom with its capital in Moscow.

Brief periodization

The history of Russia began in 862, when the Viking Rurik arrived in Novgorod, who was proclaimed a prince in this city. Under his successor, the political center moved to Kiev. With the onset of fragmentation in Russia, several cities at once began to argue with each other for the right to become the main one in the East Slavic lands.

This feudal period was interrupted by the invasion of the Mongol hordes and the established yoke. In extremely difficult conditions of devastation and constant wars, Moscow became the main Russian city, which finally united Russia and made it independent. In the 15th - 16th centuries, this name became a thing of the past. It was replaced by the word "Russia", adopted in the Byzantine manner.

In modern historiography, there are several points of view on the question of when feudal Russia became a thing of the past. Most often, researchers believe that this happened in 1547, when Prince Ivan Vasilyevich took the title of tsar.

The emergence of Russia

The ancient united Russia, whose history began in the 9th century, appeared after the Novgorod conquered Kiev in 882 and made this city its capital. During this era, the East Slavic tribes were divided into several tribal unions (glade, Dregovichi, Krivichi, etc.). Some of them were at enmity with each other. The inhabitants of the steppes also paid tribute to the hostile foreigners, the Khazars.

Unification of Russia

Northeastern or great Russia became the center of the struggle against the Mongols. This confrontation was led by the princes of small Moscow. At first, they were able to obtain the right to collect taxes from all Russian lands. Thus, part of the money was deposited in the Moscow treasury. When he gained enough strength, Dmitry Donskoy found himself in open confrontation with the Golden Horde khans. In 1380, his army defeated Mamai.

But even in spite of this success, for another century, Moscow rulers periodically paid tribute. Only after, in 1480, the yoke was finally thrown off. At the same time, under Ivan III, almost all Russian lands, including Novgorod, were united around Moscow. In 1547, his grandson Ivan the Terrible took the title of tsar, which was the end of the history of princely Russia and the beginning of a new tsarist Russia.

The earliest traces of human habitation on the territory of Russia were found in Siberia, the North Caucasus and the Kuban region and date back to about 3–2 million years BC. In the VI-V centuries BC. NS. Greek colonies appeared on the Black Sea coast, which later turned into the Scythian and Bosporan kingdoms.

Slavs and their neighbors

By the 5th century A.D. Slavic tribes occupy lands on the shores of the Baltic Sea, along the Dnieper and along the Danube, and in the upper reaches of the Oka and Volga. In addition to hunting, the Slavs are engaged in agriculture, and trade is gradually developing. The main trade routes are rivers. By the 9th century, several Slavic principalities were formed, the main ones being Kiev and Novgorod.

Russian state

In 882, Prince Oleg of Novgorod captures Kiev, and, combining the Slavic north and south, creates the Old Russian state. Kievan Rus is considered both in Byzantium and in neighboring western states. Under Oleg's successor Igor, the son of Rurik, an agreement is concluded with Byzantium to protect its borders from nomads. In 988, under Prince Vladimir, the Baptism of pagan Rus took place. The adoption of Orthodoxy strengthens ties with Byzantium, along with the new faith among the Slavs, Greek culture, science and art are spreading. In Russia, a new Slavic alphabet is used, chronicles are being written. Under Prince Yaroslav the Wise, the first set of laws of the Kiev state, "Russian Truth", was drawn up. Since the 30s of the XII centuries, the division of the united state into a number of independent principalities begins.

From the beginning of the XIII century, the huge army of Genghis Khan Temuchin devastated Asia and Transcaucasia. Having conquered and imposed a tribute on the peoples of the Caucasus, the Mongolian army first appeared in Russian history, defeating in 1223 the combined forces of the Slavic princes and Cumans on the Kalka River. After 13 years, the grandson of Genghis Khan Batu comes to Russia from the east and one by one defeats the troops of the Russian princes, in 1240 he takes Kiev, goes to Western Europe and, returning, founds his state in the lower reaches of the Volga - the Golden Horde, and imposes tribute on the Russian lands. From now on, the princes receive power over their lands only with the sanction of the khans of the Golden Horde. This period went down in Russian history as the Mongol-Tatar yoke.

Grand Duchy of Moscow

Since the beginning of the XIV century, in many respects, thanks to the efforts of Ivan Kalita and his heirs, a new center of Russian principalities, Moscow, has gradually been formed. By the end of the XIV century, Moscow had grown strong enough to openly oppose the Horde. In 1380, Prince Dimitry defeated the army of Khan Mamai at the Kulikovo field. Under Ivan III, Moscow ceases to pay tribute to the Horde: Khan Akhmat, during his "standing on the Ugra River" in 1480, does not dare to fight and retreats. The Mongol-Tatar yoke is coming to an end.

The time of Ivan the Terrible

Under Ivan IV the Terrible, (officially the first Russian tsar since 1547), the collection of lands lost as a result of the Tatar-Mongol yoke and the Polish-Lithuanian expansion is being actively pursued, and a policy of further expanding state borders is also being pursued. The Russian state includes the Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberian Khanates. At the end of the 16th - middle of the 17th centuries, with a great delay in comparison with the countries of Central Europe, serfdom was formalized.
In 1571 Moscow was burnt down by the army of the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey. In the next 1572, the 120-thousandth Crimean-Turkish army, marching to Russia, was destroyed, which actually put an end to the centuries-old struggle of Russia with the steppe.

Time of Troubles and the first Romanovs

With the death of Ivan the Terrible's son Fyodor in 1598, the Rurik dynasty was interrupted. The Time of Troubles begins, the time of the struggle for the throne and the Polish-Swedish intervention. The Troubles ends with the convocation of a national militia, the expulsion of the Poles and the election of Mikhail Fedorovich, the first representative of the Romanov dynasty (February 21, 1613) to the kingdom. During his reign, Russian expeditions begin the development of Eastern Siberia, Russia goes to the Pacific Ocean. In 1654, Ukraine became part of the Russian state with the rights of autonomy. Under Alexei Mikhailovich, the influence of the West is increasing.

Russian empire

Tsar Peter I radically reforms the Russian state, establishing an absolute monarchy headed by the emperor, to whom even the church is subject. The boyars turn into the nobility. The army and the education system are being modernized, and much is being arranged according to the Western model. As a result of the Northern War, the Russian lands captured by Sweden at the end of the 16th century were returned to Russia. At the mouth of the Neva, the port city of St. Petersburg was founded, where the capital of Russia was transferred in 1712. Under Peter the Great, the first Russian newspaper Vedomosti was published and a new calendar was introduced from January 1, 1700, where the new year begins in January (before that the year was counted from September 1).
After Peter I, the era of palace coups begins, the time of noble conspiracies and the frequent overthrow of objectionable emperors. Anna Ivanovna and Elizaveta Petrovna reign longer than others. Under Elizaveta Petrovna, Moscow University was founded. Under Empress Catherine the Great, the development of America begins, Russia conquers access to the Black Sea from Turkey.

Napoleonic Wars

In 1805, Alexander I entered the war with Napoleon I, who declared himself emperor of France. Napoleon wins, one of the conditions of the peace agreement is the termination of trade with England, to which Alexander I has to agree. In 1809, Russia seizes Finland, which belonged to the Swedes, which is part of the Russian Empire. A few years later, Russia resumed trade with England, and in the summer of 1812 Napoleon with an army of more than 500 thousand people invaded Russia. The Russian army, outnumbered by more than two times, retreats to Moscow. The people rose up to fight the invaders, numerous partisan detachments appeared, the war of 1812 was called the Patriotic War.
At the end of August, the largest battle of the war took place near Moscow near the village of Borodino. The losses on both sides were enormous, but the numerical superiority remained with the French. The head of the Russian army, Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, decides to surrender Moscow to Napoleon without a fight and retreat to save the army. Moscow, occupied by the French, was almost completely destroyed by fires. While retreating to the borders of Russia, Napoleon's army gradually melted, the Russians pursued the retreating French, and in 1814 the Russian army entered Paris.

The emergence of civil society

In the 19th century, under the influence of the liberal ideas of the West, a stable diverse group of educated people emerged, which itself created liberal and democratic values, later called the intelligentsia. Its most famous representatives were Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov.
After the end of the war, the revolutionary ideas that penetrated Russia resulted in the failed Decembrist Uprising in 1825. Fearing new uprisings, the state tightens control over the political, economic and cultural life of the country.
In the course of long wars with the mountaineers in the first half of the 19th century, Russia annexes the Caucasus, and - partly peacefully, partly by military means - the territories of Central Asia (Bukhara and Khiva Khanates, Kazakh zhuzes).

2nd half of the 19th century

In 1861, under Emperor Alexander II, serfdom was abolished in Russia. A number of liberal reforms were also carried out, accelerating the modernization of the country.

Late 19th - early 20th century

In the late 19th - early 20th century. Russia is actively developing the Far East, which causes concern for Japan, the government of the Russian Empire believes that a "small victorious war" against the background of growing revolutionary sentiments will improve the internal situation. Japan, however, defeated some of the Russian ships with a preemptive strike, the lack of modern technical equipment of the Russian army and the incompetence of the higher officers completes the defeat of Russia in the war. Russia's position in the international arena turns out to be extremely difficult.
In 1914, Russia enters the First World War. The February Revolution of 1917 put an end to the monarchy: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates the throne, power passes to the Provisional Government. In September 1917, the Russian Empire was transformed into the Russian Republic.

Soviet state

However, even after the revolution, it is not possible to restore order in the country, taking advantage of the political chaos, the Bolshevik party seized power under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, in alliance with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists. After the October Revolution on October 25 (November 7) 1917, the Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in the country. The Soviet Republic begins the liquidation of private property and its nationalization. In an effort to establish control, the Bolsheviks do not shy away from extreme measures, subjecting religion, the Cossacks and other forms of social organization to repression.
The peace concluded with Germany cost the Soviet state of Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland, part of Belarus and 90 tons of gold, and served as one of the causes of the civil war. In March 1918, the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, fearing the capture of the city by the Germans. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the royal family was shot in Yekaterinburg, the bodies were thrown into the mine of a collapsed mine.

Civil War

During 1918-1922, supporters of the Bolsheviks waged military operations against their opponents. During the war, Poland, the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and Finland leave Russia.

USSR, 1920-1930s

On December 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Transcaucasian Federation) is formed. In 1921-1929, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was carried out. Joseph Stalin (Dzhugashvili) becomes the winner in the internal political struggle that erupted after Lenin's death in 1924. In the 1930s, Stalin carried out a "purge" of the party apparatus. A system of forced labor camps (GULag) is being created. In 1939-1940, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, Moldavia, Western Karelia, and the Baltic States were annexed to the USSR.

The Great Patriotic War

On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began with a surprise attack by Nazi Germany. In a relatively short time, German troops were able to advance far into the depths of the Soviet state, but they could not capture Moscow and Leningrad, as a result of which the war, instead of the blitzkrieg planned by Hitler, turned into a protracted one. The battles of Stalingrad and Kursk turned the tide of the war, and Soviet troops launched a strategic offensive. The war ended with the capture of Berlin in May 1945 and the surrender of Germany. The death toll in the course of hostilities and as a result of the occupation in the USSR reaches, according to historians, 26 million people.

Soviet-Japanese war

As a result of the war with Japan in 1945, South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands became part of Russia.

Cold war and stagnation

As a result of the war, the countries of Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany) fell into the Soviet zone of influence. Relations with the West are sharply aggravated. The so-called Cold War begins - a confrontation between the West and the countries of the socialist camp, which reached its peak in 1962, when a nuclear war (Caribbean Crisis) almost broke out between the USSR and the United States. Then the intensity of the conflict gradually subsided, there was some progress in relations with the West, in particular, an agreement on economic cooperation with France was signed.
In the 70s, the confrontation between the USSR and the United States was weakened. Strategic nuclear arms limitation treaties are being concluded (SALT-1 and SALT-2). The second half of the 70s is called the "era of stagnation", when, with relative stability, the USSR is gradually lagging behind the advanced Western countries in terms of technology.

Perestroika and disintegration of the USSR

With the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, a policy of perestroika was announced in the USSR, with the aim of solving problems in the social sphere and social production, as well as avoiding the impending economic crisis caused by the arms race. However, this policy leads to an aggravation of the crisis, the collapse of the USSR and the transition to capitalism. In 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created, which includes the RSFSR, Ukraine and Belarus.

The ancestors of the Slavs - the Proto-Slavs - have long lived in Central and Eastern Europe. By language, they belong to the Indo-European group of peoples that inhabit Europe and part of Asia up to India. The first mentions of the Proto-Slavs date back to the 1st-2nd centuries. The Roman authors Tacitus, Pliny, Ptolemy called the ancestors of the Slavs Wends and believed that they inhabited the Vistula River basin. Later authors - Procopius of Caesarea and Jordan (VI century) divide the Slavs into three groups: the Sklavins who lived between the Vistula and the Dniester, the Wends who inhabited the Vistula basin, and the Antes who settled between the Dniester and the Dnieper. It is the Antes that are considered the ancestors of the Eastern Slavs.
Detailed information about the settlement of the Eastern Slavs is given in his famous "Tale of Bygone Years" by the monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery Nestor, who lived at the beginning of the XII century. In his chronicle, Nestor names about 13 tribes (scientists believe that these were tribal unions) and describes in detail their places of settlement.
Near Kiev, on the right bank of the Dnieper, there lived a glade, along the upper course of the Dnieper and the Western Dvina - Krivichi, along the banks of the Pripyat - Drevlyans. On the Dniester, the Prut, in the lower reaches of the Dnieper and on the northern coast of the Black Sea, Uliches and Tivertsy lived. Volhynians lived to the north of them. Dregovichi settled from Pripyat to Western Dvina. On the left bank of the Dnieper and along the Desna lived northerners, along the river Sozh - a tributary of the Dnieper - Radimichi. Ilmen Slovenes lived around Lake Ilmen.
Neighbors of the Eastern Slavs in the west were the Baltic peoples, the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs), in the south - the Pechenegs and Khazars, in the east - the Volga Bulgarians and numerous Finno-Ugric tribes (Mordovians, Mari, Murom).
The main occupations of the Slavs were agriculture, which, depending on the soil, was slash-and-burn or shifting, cattle breeding, hunting, fishing, beekeeping (collecting honey from wild bees).
In the 7th-8th centuries, in connection with the improvement of the tools of labor, the transition from a fallow or transient farming system to a two-field and three-field crop rotation system, among the Eastern Slavs there is a decomposition of the clan system, an increase in property inequality.
The development of craft and its separation from agriculture in the VIII-IX centuries led to the emergence of cities - centers of craft and trade. Usually cities arose at the confluence of two rivers or on a hill, since such an arrangement made it possible to much better defend against enemies. The oldest cities were often formed along the most important trade routes or at their intersections. The main trade route passing through the lands of the Eastern Slavs was the route "from the Varangians to the Greeks", from the Baltic Sea to Byzantium.
In the 8th - early 9th centuries, the clan-tribal and military-druzhina nobility stood out among the Eastern Slavs, and military democracy was established. The leaders turn into tribal princes, surround themselves with a personal squad. Stands out to know. The prince and the nobility seize the tribal land in a personal hereditary share, subordinate the former clan and tribal governing bodies to their power.
Accumulating values, seizing lands and lands, creating a powerful military squad organization, making campaigns to seize military booty, collecting tribute, trading and engaging in usury, the nobility of the Eastern Slavs turns into a force that stands above society and subjugates previously free communes. This was the process of class formation and the formation of early forms of statehood among the Eastern Slavs. This process gradually led to the formation of an early feudal state in Russia at the end of the 9th century.

State of Russia in the 9th - early 10th centuries

On the territory occupied by Slavic tribes, two Russian state centers were formed: Kiev and Novgorod, each of which controlled a certain part of the trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks."
In 862, according to The Tale of Bygone Years, the Novgorodians, wishing to end the internecine struggle that had begun, invited the Varangian princes to rule Novgorod. The Varangian prince Rurik, who arrived at the request of the Novgorodians, became the founder of the Russian princely dynasty.
The date of the formation of the ancient Russian state is conventionally considered 882, when Prince Oleg, who seized power in Novgorod after Rurik's death, undertook a campaign against Kiev. After killing Askold and Dir who were ruling there, he united the northern and southern lands into a single state.
The legend about the vocation of the Varangian princes served as the basis for the creation of the so-called Norman theory of the emergence of the ancient Russian state. According to this theory, the Russians turned to the Normans (the so-called then
whether immigrants from Scandinavia) so that they put things in order on Russian soil. In response, three princes came to Russia: Rurik, Sineus and Truvor. After the death of the brothers, Rurik united the entire Novgorod land under his rule.
The basis for such a theory was the position rooted in the works of German historians that there were no prerequisites for the formation of a state among the Eastern Slavs.
Subsequent studies refuted this theory, since the determining factor in the formation of any state is objective internal conditions, without which it is impossible to create it by any external forces. On the other hand, the story about the foreign origin of power is quite typical for medieval chronicles and is found in the ancient histories of many European states.
After the unification of the Novgorod and Kiev lands into a single early feudal state, the Kiev prince began to be called the "Grand Duke." He ruled with the help of a council of other princes and warriors. The collection of tribute was carried out by the Grand Duke himself with the help of the senior squad (the so-called boyars, men). The prince had a younger squad (greedy, youths). The most ancient form of collecting tribute was "polyudye". In late autumn, the prince traveled around the lands subject to him, collecting tribute and judging. There was no clearly established norm for the delivery of tribute. The prince spent the whole winter going round the lands and collecting tribute. In the summer, the prince and his retinue usually made military campaigns, subjugating the Slavic tribes and fighting with their neighbors.
Gradually, more and more of the princely warriors became landowners. They ran their own economy, exploiting the labor of the peasants they enslaved. Gradually, such vigilantes became stronger and could in the future resist the Grand Duke both with their own retinues and with their economic strength.
The social and class structure of the early feudal state of Rus was indistinct. The class of feudal lords was variegated in composition. These were the Grand Duke with his entourage, representatives of the senior squad, the prince's inner circle - boyars, local princes.
The dependent population included slaves (people who lost their freedom as a result of sales, debts, etc.), servants (those who lost their freedom as a result of captivity), purchases (peasants who received a "kupu" from the boyar - a loan with money, grain or by draft), etc. The bulk of the rural population was made up of free community members, smerds. As their lands were seized, they turned into feudal-dependent people.

The reign of Oleg

After the capture of Kiev in 882, Oleg subdued the Drevlyans, Northerners, Radimichs, Croats, and Tivertsy. Oleg successfully fought with the Khazars. In 907 he laid siege to Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, and in 911 he concluded a profitable trade agreement with it.

Igor's reign

After the death of Oleg, the son of Rurik, Igor, became the Grand Duke of Kiev. He subdued the Eastern Slavs who lived between the Dniester and the Danube, fought with Constantinople, and was the first of the Russian princes to face the Pechenegs. In 945 he was killed in the land of the Drevlyans while trying to collect tribute from them again.

Princess Olga, reign of Svyatoslav

Igor's widow Olga brutally suppressed the uprising of the Drevlyans. But at the same time, she determined a fixed amount of tribute, organized places for collecting tribute - camps and churchyards. So a new form of collecting tribute was established - the so-called "poz". Olga visited Constantinople, where she converted to Christianity. She ruled during the childhood of her son Svyatoslav.
In 964, Svyatoslav, who had reached the age of majority, entered the reign of Rus. Under him, until 969, the state was largely ruled by Princess Olga herself, since her son spent almost his entire life on campaigns. In 964-966. Svyatoslav freed the Vyatichi from the Khazars' power and subjugated them to Kiev, defeated the Volga Bulgaria, the Khazar Kaganate and took the capital of the Kaganate, the city of Itil. In 967 he invaded Bulgaria and
settled at the mouth of the Danube, in Pereyaslavets, and in 971, in alliance with the Bulgarians and Hungarians, began to fight with Byzantium. The war was unsuccessful for him, and he was forced to make peace with the Byzantine emperor. On the way back to Kiev, Svyatoslav Igorevich died at the Dnieper rapids in a battle with the Pechenegs, warned by the Byzantines about his return.

Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich

After the death of Svyatoslav, a struggle for rule in Kiev began between his sons. The winner was Vladimir Svyatoslavovich. By campaigns against Vyatichi, Lithuanians, Radimichi, Bulgarians, Vladimir strengthened the possessions of Kievan Rus. To organize defense against the Pechenegs, he established several defensive lines with a system of fortresses.
To strengthen the princely power, Vladimir attempted to turn popular pagan beliefs into a state religion, and for this he established in Kiev and Novgorod the cult of the main Slavic guardian god Perun. However, this attempt was unsuccessful, and he turned to Christianity. This religion was declared the only all-Russian religion. Vladimir himself adopted Christianity from Byzantium. The adoption of Christianity not only equated Kievan Rus with neighboring states, but also had a huge impact on the culture, life and customs of ancient Rus.

Yaroslav the Wise

After the death of Vladimir Svyatoslavovich, a fierce struggle for power began between his sons, which ended in the victory of Yaroslav Vladimirovich in 1019. Under him, Russia became one of the strongest states in Europe. In 1036, Russian troops inflicted a major defeat on the Pechenegs, after which their raids on Russia ceased.
Under Yaroslav Vladimirovich, nicknamed the Wise, a single judicial code for the whole of Russia began to take shape - "Russian Truth". This was the first document regulating the relationship of the prince's warriors among themselves and with the inhabitants of cities, the procedure for resolving various disputes and compensation for damage.
Important reforms under Yaroslav the Wise were carried out in the church organization. In Kiev, Novgorod, Polotsk, the majestic cathedrals of St. Sophia were built, which was supposed to show the church independence of Russia. In 1051, the Kiev metropolitan was elected not in Constantinople, as before, but in Kiev by a council of Russian bishops. Church tithes have been determined. The first monasteries appear. The first saints, the brothers princes Boris and Gleb, were canonized.
Kievan Rus under Yaroslav the Wise reached its highest power. Many of the largest states of Europe were looking for support, friendship and kinship with her.

Feudal fragmentation in Russia

However, the heirs of Yaroslav - Izyaslav, Svyatoslav, Vsevolod - could not preserve the unity of Russia. The internecine strife between the brothers led to the weakening of Kievan Rus, which was taken advantage of by a new formidable enemy that appeared on the southern borders of the state - the Polovtsy. These were nomads who drove out the Pechenegs who lived here earlier. In 1068 the combined troops of the Yaroslavich brothers were defeated by the Polovtsy, which led to an uprising in Kiev.
A new uprising in Kiev, which broke out after the death of the Kiev prince Svyatopolk Izyaslavich in 1113, forced the Kiev nobility to call for reign of Vladimir Monomakh, the grandson of Yaroslav the Wise, an imperious and authoritative prince. Vladimir was the inspirer and direct leader of military campaigns against the Polovtsy in 1103, 1107 and 1111. Having become the prince of Kiev, he suppressed the uprising, but at the same time he was forced by legislative means to somewhat soften the position of the lower classes. This is how the charter of Vladimir Monomakh arose, which, without encroaching on the foundations of feudal relations, tried to somewhat alleviate the situation of peasants who fell into debt bondage. The same spirit is imbued with the "Instruction" by Vladimir Monomakh, where he advocated the establishment of peace between feudal lords and peasants.
The reign of Vladimir Monomakh was a time of strengthening of Kievan Rus. He managed to unite significant territories of the ancient Russian state under his rule and stop the princely feuds. However, after his death, feudal fragmentation in Russia intensified again.
The reason for this phenomenon was the very course of the economic and political development of Russia as a feudal state. The strengthening of large land tenure - estates dominated by subsistence farming, led to the fact that they became independent production complexes associated with their immediate environment. Cities became economic and political centers of estates. Feudal lords became complete masters on their land, independent of the central government. The victories of Vladimir Monomakh over the Polovtsy, which temporarily eliminated the military threat, also contributed to the separation of individual lands.
Kievan Rus disintegrated into independent principalities, each of which in terms of the size of the territory could be compared with the middle Western European kingdom. These were Chernigov, Smolensk, Polotsk, Pereyaslavl, Galitsk, Volynsk, Ryazan, Rostov-Suzdal, Kiev principality, Novgorod land. Each of the principalities not only had its own internal order, but also pursued an independent foreign policy.
The process of feudal fragmentation opened the way for the consolidation of the system of feudal relations. However, it had several negative consequences. The division into independent principalities did not stop the princely strife, and the principalities themselves began to split between the heirs. In addition, within the principalities, a struggle began between the princes and local boyars. Each side strove for the greatest completeness of power, calling on foreign troops to fight the enemy. But most importantly, the defenses of Russia were weakened, which was soon taken advantage of by the Mongol conquerors.

Mongol-Tatar invasion

By the end of the XII - beginning of the XIII century, the Mongolian state occupied a vast territory from Baikal and Amur in the east to the upper reaches of the Irtysh and Yenisei in the west, from the Great Wall of China in the south to the borders of southern Siberia in the north. The main occupation of the Mongols was nomadic cattle breeding, therefore, the main source of enrichment was constant raids to seize prey and slaves, pasture territories.
The Mongol army was a powerful organization consisting of foot squads and mounted warriors, which were the main offensive force. All units were shackled by brutal discipline, intelligence was well established. The Mongols had siege equipment at their disposal. At the beginning of the XIII century, the Mongol hordes conquer and destroy the largest Central Asian cities - Bukhara, Samarkand, Urgench, Merv. Having passed through the Transcaucasia, which they had turned into ruins, the Mongol troops entered the steppes of the northern Caucasus, and, having defeated the Polovtsian tribes, the hordes of the Mongol-Tatars, led by Genghis Khan, advanced along the Black Sea steppes in the direction of Russia.
They were opposed by the united army of Russian princes, commanded by the Kiev prince Mstislav Romanovich. This decision was made at the princely congress in Kiev, after the Polovtsian khans turned to the Russians for help. The battle took place in May 1223 on the Kalka River. Polovtsi fled almost from the very beginning of the battle. The Russian troops found themselves face to face with an as yet unfamiliar enemy. They knew neither the organization of the Mongol army, nor the methods of fighting. The Russian regiments lacked unity and coordination of actions. One part of the princes led their squads into battle, the other chose to wait. The consequence of this behavior was the brutal defeat of the Russian troops.
Having reached the Dnieper after the Battle of Kalka, the Mongol hordes did not go north, but, turning east, returned back to the Mongol steppes. After the death of Genghis Khan, his grandson Baty in the winter of 1237 moved an army now against
Rus. Deprived of assistance from other Russian lands, the Ryazan principality became the first victim of the invaders. Having devastated the Ryazan land, Batu's troops moved to the Vladimir-Suzdal principality. The Mongols ravaged and burned Kolomna and Moscow. In February 1238 they approached the capital of the principality - the city of Vladimir - and took it after a fierce assault.
Having ruined the Vladimir land, the Mongols moved to Novgorod. But because of the spring thaw, they were forced to turn towards the Volga steppes. Only the next year Batu again moved his troops to conquer southern Russia. Having seized Kiev, they passed through the Galicia-Volyn principality to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. After that, the Mongols returned to the Volga steppes, where they formed the state of the Golden Horde. As a result of these campaigns, the Mongols conquered all Russian lands, with the exception of Novgorod. The Tatar yoke hung over Russia, which continued until the end of the XIV century.
The yoke of the Mongol-Tatars was to use the economic potential of Russia in the interests of the conquerors. Rus' annually paid a huge tribute, and the Golden Horde tightly controlled the activities of the Russian princes. In the cultural area, the Mongols used the labor of Russian craftsmen to build and decorate the Golden Horde cities. The conquerors plundered the material and artistic values ​​of Russian cities, exhausting the vital forces of the population with numerous raids.

Crusader invasion. Alexander Nevskiy

Russia, weakened by the Mongol-Tatar yoke, found itself in a very difficult situation when a threat from the Swedish and German feudal lords hung over its northwestern lands. After the seizure of the Baltic lands, the knights of the Livonian Order approached the borders of the Novgorod-Pskov land. In 1240 the Battle of the Neva took place - a battle between Russian and Swedish troops on the Neva River. Prince of Novgorod Alexander Yaroslavovich utterly defeated the enemy, for which he received the nickname Nevsky.
Alexander Nevsky headed the united Russian army, with which he set out in the spring of 1242 to liberate Pskov, which had been captured by the German knights by that time. Pursuing their army, the Russian squads went to Lake Peipsi, where on April 5, 1242, the famous battle took place, called the Battle of the Ice. As a result of a fierce battle, the German knights were utterly defeated.
The importance of Alexander Nevsky's victories with the aggression of the crusaders can hardly be overestimated. If the crusaders succeeded, the forcible assimilation of the peoples of Russia could have occurred in many areas of their life and culture. This could not have happened for almost three centuries of the Horde yoke, since the general culture of the nomadic steppe inhabitants was much lower than the culture of the Germans and Swedes. Therefore, the Mongol-Tatars were never able to impose their culture and way of life on the Russian people.

Rise of Moscow

The founder of the Moscow princely dynasty and the first independent Moscow appanage prince was the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, Daniel. At that time, Moscow was a small and poor lot. However, Daniil Alexandrovich managed to significantly expand its borders. In order to gain control over the entire Moscow River, in 1301 he took away Kolomna from the Ryazan prince. In 1302, the Pereyaslavsky inheritance was annexed to Moscow, the next year - Mozhaisk, which was part of the Smolensk principality.
The growth and rise of Moscow were primarily associated with its location in the center of that part of the Slavic lands where the Russian nationality took shape. The economic development of Moscow and the Moscow principality was facilitated by their location at the crossroads of both water and land trade routes. The trading duties that traveling merchants paid to the Moscow princes were an important source of the growth of the prince's treasury. It was equally important that the city was in the center
Russian principalities, which covered him from the raids of the invaders. The Moscow principality became a kind of refuge for many Russian people, which also contributed to the development of the economy and the rapid growth of the population.
In the XIV century, Moscow was promoted as the center of the Moscow Grand Duchy - one of the strongest in North-Eastern Russia. The skilful policy of the Moscow princes contributed to the rise of Moscow. Since the time of Ivan I Danilovich Kalita, Moscow has become the political center of the Vladimir-Suzdal Grand Duchy, the residence of the Russian metropolitans, and the church capital of Russia. The struggle between Moscow and Tver for supremacy in Russia ends with the victory of the Moscow prince.
In the second half of the XIV century, under the grandson of Ivan Kalita, Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy, Moscow became the organizer of the armed struggle of the Russian people against the Mongol-Tatar yoke, the overthrow of which began with the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, when Dmitry Ivanovich defeated the hundred thousandth army of Khan Mamai on the Kulikovo field. The Golden Horde khans, realizing the importance of Moscow, more than once tried to destroy it (the burning of Moscow by Khan Tokhtamysh in 1382). However, nothing could stop the consolidation of Russian lands around Moscow. In the last quarter of the 15th century, under the Grand Duke Ivan III Vasilievich, Moscow turned into the capital of the Russian centralized state, which in 1480 forever threw off the Mongol-Tatar yoke (standing on the Ugra River).

The reign of Ivan IV the Terrible

After the death of Vasily III in 1533, his three-year-old son Ivan IV came to the throne. Because of his early childhood, Elena Glinskaya, his mother, was declared the ruler. This is how the period of the notorious "boyar rule" begins - the time of boyar conspiracies, noble unrest, and urban uprisings. Ivan IV's participation in state activities begins with the creation of the Chosen Rada - a special council under the young tsar, which included the leaders of the nobility, representatives of the largest nobility. The composition of the Chosen Rada, as it were, reflected a compromise between the various strata of the ruling class.
Despite this, the aggravation of relations between Ivan IV and certain circles of the boyars began to mature in the mid-50s of the 16th century. Particularly sharp protest was caused by the course of Ivan IV "to open a big war" for Livonia. Some members of the government considered the war for the Baltics premature and demanded that all forces be directed to the development of the southern and eastern borders of Russia. The split between Ivan IV and most of the members of the Chosen Rada pushed the boyars to oppose the new political course. This prompted the tsar to move to more decisive measures - the complete elimination of the boyar opposition and the creation of special punitive authorities. The new order of government, introduced by Ivan IV at the end of 1564, was called oprichnina.
The country was divided into two parts: oprichnina and zemstvo. In the oprichnina, the tsar included the most important lands - the economically developed regions of the country, strategically important points. On these lands settled the nobles who were part of the oprichnina army. It was the responsibility of the Zemshchina to maintain it. The boyars were evicted from the oprichnina territories.
A parallel system of state administration was created in the oprichnina. Ivan IV himself became its head. The oprichnina was created to eliminate those who expressed dissatisfaction with the autocracy. This was not only an administrative and land reform. In an effort to destroy the remnants of feudal fragmentation in Russia, Ivan the Terrible did not stop at any atrocities. The oprichnina terror, executions and exile began. The center and north-west of the Russian land, where the boyars were especially strong, were subjected to a particularly severe defeat. In 1570 Ivan IV undertook a campaign against Novgorod. On the way, the oprichnina army defeated Klin, Torzhok and Tver.
The oprichnina did not destroy the princely-boyar land tenure. However, she greatly weakened his power. The political role of the boyar aristocracy, which opposed
centralization policy. At the same time, the oprichnina worsened the situation of the peasants and contributed to their massive enslavement.
In 1572, shortly after the campaign against Novgorod, the oprichnina was canceled. The reason for this was not only the fact that the main forces of the opposition boyars were broken by this time and that they were physically exterminated almost completely. The main reason for the abolition of the oprichnina lies in the clearly overdue dissatisfaction with this policy of the most diverse strata of the population. But, having canceled the oprichnina and even returned to some boyars their old estates, Ivan the Terrible did not change the general direction of his policy. Many oprichnina institutions continued to exist after 1572 under the name of the Tsar's court.
The oprichnina could give only temporary success, since it represented an attempt by brute force to break what was generated by the economic laws of the country's development. The need to combat specific antiquity, the strengthening of centralization and the power of the tsar were objectively necessary at that time for Russia. The reign of Ivan IV the Terrible predetermined further events - the establishment of serfdom on a national scale and the so-called "Time of Troubles" at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries.

"Time of Troubles"

After Ivan the Terrible, his son Fyodor Ivanovich, the last tsar from the Rurik dynasty, became the Russian tsar in 1584. His reign marked the beginning of that period in Russian history, which is commonly referred to as the "Time of Troubles". Fyodor Ivanovich was a weak and sickly man, unable to govern the huge Russian state. Among his confidants, Boris Godunov gradually stands out, who after the death of Fedor in 1598 was elected to the kingdom by the Zemsky Sobor. A supporter of hard power, the new tsar continued an active policy of enslaving the peasantry. A decree was issued on enslaving slaves, and then a decree was issued on the establishment of "lease years", that is, the period during which the owners of the peasants could initiate a claim for the return of the fugitive serfs to them. During the reign of Boris Godunov, the distribution of land to service people was continued at the expense of possessions taken to the treasury from monasteries and disgraced boyars.
In 1601-1602 Russia suffered severe crop failures. The deterioration of the situation of the population was facilitated by the cholera epidemic that struck the central regions of the country. The disasters and discontent of the people led to numerous uprisings, the largest of which was the Khlopok uprising, which was suppressed with difficulty by the authorities only in the fall of 1603.
Taking advantage of the difficulties of the internal situation of the Russian state, the Polish and Swedish feudal lords tried to seize the Smolensk and Seversk lands, which were formerly part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Part of the Russian boyars were dissatisfied with the rule of Boris Godunov, and this was a breeding ground for the emergence of opposition.
In the conditions of general discontent on the western borders of Russia, an impostor appears, posing as Tsarevich Dmitry, son of Ivan the Terrible, "miraculously escaped" in Uglich. "Tsarevich Dmitry" turned to the Polish magnates for help, and then to King Sigismund. To enlist the support of the Catholic Church, he secretly converted to Catholicism and promised to subordinate the Russian Church to the papal throne. In autumn 1604 False Dmitry with a small army crossed the Russian border and moved through the Seversk Ukraine to Moscow. Despite the defeat at Dobrynichy at the beginning of 1605, he managed to revolt many regions of the country. The news of the appearance of "the lawful Tsar Dmitry" raised great hopes for changes in life, so city after city announced the support of the impostor. Meeting no resistance on his way, False Dmitry approached Moscow, where by that time Boris Godunov had died suddenly. The Moscow outbreak, which did not accept Boris Godunov's son as tsar, made it possible for the impostor to establish himself on the Russian throne.
However, he was in no hurry to fulfill the promises made to him earlier - to transfer the border Russian regions to Poland, and even more so to convert the Russian people to Catholicism. False Dmitry did not justify
hopes and the peasantry, since he began to pursue the same policy as Godunov, relying on the nobility. The boyars, who used False Dmitry to overthrow Godunov, now waited only for an excuse to get rid of him and come to power. The reason for the overthrow of False Dmitry was the wedding of the impostor with the daughter of the Polish tycoon Marina Mnishek. The Poles who arrived at the celebrations behaved in Moscow as in a conquered city. Taking advantage of the situation, the boyars, led by Vasily Shuisky, on May 17, 1606, raised an uprising against the impostor and his Polish supporters. False Dmitry was killed, and the Poles were expelled from Moscow.
After the murder of False Dmitry, Vasily Shuisky took the Russian throne. His government had to fight the peasant movement of the early 17th century (the uprising led by Ivan Bolotnikov), with the Polish intervention, a new stage of which began in August 1607 (False Dmitry II). After the defeat at Volkhov, the government of Vasily Shuisky was besieged in Moscow by the Polish-Lithuanian invaders. At the end of 1608, many parts of the country came under the rule of False Dmitry II, which was facilitated by a new surge in the class struggle, as well as the growth of contradictions among the Russian feudal lords. In February 1609, the Shuisky government concluded an agreement with Sweden, according to which, for the hiring of Swedish troops, part of the Russian territory in the north of the country was ceded to her.
At the end of 1608, a spontaneous national liberation movement began, which the government of Shuisky was able to lead only from the end of the winter of 1609. By the end of 1610, Moscow and most of the country were liberated. But back in September 1609, an open Polish intervention began. The defeat of Shuisky's troops near Klushino from the army of Sigismund III in June 1610, the uprising of the urban lower classes against the government of Vasily Shuisky in Moscow led to its downfall. On July 17, part of the boyars, the capital and provincial nobility, Vasily Shuisky was dethroned and forcibly tonsured a monk. In September 1610 he was extradited to the Poles and taken to Poland, where he died in prison.
After the overthrow of Vasily Shuisky, power was in the hands of 7 boyars. This government received the name "seven-boyarshina". One of the first decisions of the "seven-boyars" was the decree not to elect representatives of the Russian clans as tsar. In August 1610, this group entered into an agreement with the Poles standing near Moscow, which recognized the son of the Polish king Sigismund III, Vladislav, as the Russian tsar. On the night of September 21, Polish troops were secretly admitted to Moscow.
Sweden also launched aggressive actions. The overthrow of Vasily Shuisky freed it from allied obligations under the treaty of 1609. Swedish troops occupied a significant part of the north of Russia and captured Novgorod. The country faced a direct threat of losing its sovereignty.
Discontent grew in Russia. The idea of ​​creating a national militia to liberate Moscow from the invaders appeared. It was headed by the governor Procopius Lyapunov. In February-March 1611, militia troops laid siege to Moscow. The decisive battle took place on March 19. However, the city has not yet been liberated. The Poles still remained in the Kremlin and Kitai-Gorod.
In the autumn of the same year, at the call of the Nizhny Novgorod citizen Kuzma Minin, a second militia began to be created, the leader of which was Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. Initially, the militia attacked the eastern and northeastern regions of the country, where not only new regions were formed, but also governments and administrations were created. This helped the army to enlist the support of people, finances and supplies of all the most important cities in the country.
In August 1612, the militia of Minin and Pozharsky entered Moscow and united with the remnants of the first militia. The Polish garrison suffered enormous hardships and hunger. After a successful assault on Kitay-gorod on October 26, 1612, the Poles surrendered and surrendered the Kremlin. Moscow was liberated from the invaders. The attempt of the Polish troops to take Moscow again failed, and Sigizmund III was defeated at Volokolamsk.
In January 1613, the Zemsky Sobor gathered in Moscow decided to elect 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov, the son of Metropolitan Filaret, who was at that time in Polish captivity, to the Russian throne.
In 1618, the Poles again invaded Russia, but were defeated. The Polish adventure ended with an armistice in the village of Deulino in the same year. However, Russia lost Smolensk and the Seversk cities, which it was able to return only in the middle of the 17th century. Russian prisoners returned to their homeland, including Filaret, the father of the new Russian tsar. In Moscow, he was elevated to the patriarchal dignity and played a significant role in history as the de facto ruler of Russia.
In a fierce and severe struggle, Russia defended its independence and entered a new stage in its development. In fact, this is where her medieval history ends.

Russia after the Troubles

Russia defended its independence, but suffered serious territorial losses. The consequence of the intervention and the peasant war led by I. Bolotnikov (1606-1607) was a severe economic devastation. Contemporaries called it “the great Moscow ruin”. Almost half of the arable land was abandoned. Having put an end to the intervention, Russia begins to slowly and with enormous difficulties to rebuild its economy. This became the main content of the reign of the first two tsars from the Romanov dynasty - Mikhail Fedorovich (1613-1645) and Alexei Mikhailovich (1645-1676).
To improve the work of government bodies and create a more equitable system of taxation, according to the decree of Mikhail Romanov, a population census was carried out, land inventories were compiled. In the first years of his reign, the role of the Zemsky Sobor increased, which became a kind of permanent national council under the tsar and gave the Russian state an external resemblance to a parliamentary monarchy.
The Swedes, who ruled in the north, failed at Pskov and in 1617 concluded the Stolbovsk Peace Treaty, according to which Novgorod was returned to Russia. At the same time, however, Russia lost the entire coast of the Gulf of Finland and access to the Baltic Sea. The situation changed only after almost a hundred years, at the beginning of the 18th century, already under Peter I.
During the reign of Mikhail Romanov, an intensive construction of "notch lines" against the Crimean Tatars was also carried out, and further colonization of Siberia took place.
After the death of Mikhail Romanov, his son Alexei ascended the throne. Since the time of his reign, the establishment of autocratic power actually begins. The activity of the Zemsky Sobors ceased, the role of the Boyar Duma diminished. In 1654, the Order of Secret Affairs was created, which was directly subordinate to the king and exercised control over state administration.
The reign of Alexei Mikhailovich was marked by a number of popular demonstrations - urban uprisings, the so-called. "Copper revolt", peasant war led by Stepan Razin. In a number of Russian cities (Moscow, Voronezh, Kursk, etc.), uprisings broke out in 1648. The uprising in Moscow in June 1648 was called the "salt riot". It was caused by the dissatisfaction of the population with the predatory policy of the government, which, in order to replenish the state treasury, replaced various direct taxes with a single tax - on salt, which caused it to rise in price several times. The uprising was attended by townspeople, peasants and archers. The rebels set fire to the White City, Kitay-Gorod, and destroyed the courts of the most hated boyars, clerks and merchants. The king was forced to make temporary concessions to the rebels, and then, having made a split in the ranks of the rebels,
executed many leaders and active participants in the uprising.
In 1650, uprisings took place in Novgorod and Pskov. They were caused by the enslavement of the townspeople by the Cathedral Code of 1649. The uprising in Novgorod was quickly suppressed by the authorities. In Pskov, this failed, and the government had to negotiate and make some concessions.
On June 25, 1662, Moscow was shaken by another major uprising - the "copper riot". Its reasons were the breakdown of the economic life of the state during the years of the wars of Russia with Poland and Sweden, a sharp increase in taxes and an increase in feudal-serf exploitation. The issue of a large amount of copper money, equal in value to silver, led to their depreciation, the mass production of counterfeit copper money. The uprising was attended by up to 10 thousand people, mainly residents of the capital. The rebels went to the village of Kolomenskoye, where the tsar was, and demanded the extradition of the traitor boyars. The troops brutally suppressed this uprising, but the government, frightened by the uprising, canceled the copper money in 1663.
The intensification of serfdom and the general deterioration of the life of the people became the main reasons for the peasant war under the leadership of Stepan Razin (1667-1671). The peasants, the urban poor, the poorest Cossacks took part in the uprising. The movement began with a robbery campaign of the Cossacks against Persia. On the way back, the differences came to Astrakhan. The local authorities decided to let them pass through the city, for which they received part of the weapons and loot. Then Razin's detachments occupied Tsaritsyn, after which they went to the Don.
In the spring of 1670, the second period of the uprising began, the main content of which was an uprising against the boyars, nobles, merchants. The rebels again took possession of Tsaritsyn, then Astrakhan. Samara and Saratov surrendered without a fight. In early September, Razin's detachments approached Simbirsk. By that time, they were joined by the peoples of the Volga region - the Tatars, the Mordovians. The movement soon swept over Ukraine as well. Razin failed to take Simbirsk. Wounded in battle, Razin retreated to the Don with a small detachment. There he was captured by wealthy Cossacks and sent to Moscow, where he was executed.
The turbulent time of Alexei Mikhailovich's reign was marked by another important event - the split of the Orthodox Church. In 1654, on the initiative of Patriarch Nikon, a church council convened in Moscow, at which it was decided to compare church books with their Greek originals and establish a uniform and binding procedure for all rituals.
Many priests, led by Archpriest Avvakum, opposed the resolution of the council and announced their departure from the Orthodox Church, headed by Nikon. They began to be called schismatics or Old Believers. The opposition to the reform that arose in church circles became a peculiar form of social protest.
In carrying out the reform, Nikon set theocratic goals - to create a strong ecclesiastical authority, standing over the state. However, the intervention of the patriarch in the affairs of state administration caused a break with the tsar, which resulted in the deposition of Nikon and the transformation of the church into a part of the state apparatus. This was another step towards the establishment of autocracy.

Reunification of Ukraine with Russia

During the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich in 1654, the reunification of Ukraine with Russia took place. In the 17th century, the Ukrainian lands were ruled by Poland. Catholicism was forcibly introduced on them, Polish magnates and gentry appeared, who brutally oppressed the Ukrainian people, which caused the rise of the national liberation movement. Its center was the Zaporizhzhya Sich, where the free Cossacks were formed. Bohdan Khmelnytsky became the head of this movement.
In 1648 his troops defeated the Poles near Zheltye Vody, Korsun and Pilyavtsy. After the defeat of the Poles, the uprising spread to all of Ukraine and part of Belarus. At the same time, Khmelnitsky turned
to Russia with a request to admit Ukraine to the Russian state. He understood that only in an alliance with Russia was it possible to get rid of the danger of the complete enslavement of Ukraine by Poland and Turkey. However, at this time, the government of Alexei Mikhailovich could not satisfy his request, since Russia was not ready for war. Nevertheless, despite all the difficulties of its domestic political position, Russia continued to provide Ukraine with diplomatic, economic and military support.
In April 1653 Khmelnitsky again turned to Russia with a request to accept Ukraine into it. On May 10, 1653, the Zemsky Sobor in Moscow decided to grant this request. On January 8, 1654, the Big Rada in the city of Pereyaslavl proclaimed the entry of Ukraine into Russia. In this regard, a war broke out between Poland and Russia, culminating in the signing at the end of 1667 of the Andrusov armistice. Russia received Smolensk, Dorogobuzh, Belaya Tserkov, Seversk land with Chernigov and Starodub. Right-bank Ukraine and Belarus continued to be part of Poland. The Zaporizhzhya Sich, according to the agreement, was under the joint control of Russia and Poland. These conditions were finally fixed in 1686 by the "Eternal Peace" of Russia and Poland.

The reign of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich and the regency of Sophia

In the 17th century, it became obvious that Russia lagged behind the advanced Western countries. The lack of access to ice-free seas hindered trade and cultural ties with Europe. The need for a regular army was dictated by the complexity of Russia's foreign policy position. The rifle army and the noble militia could no longer fully ensure its defenses. There was no large manufacturing industry, the order-based management system was outdated. Russia needed reforms.
In 1676, the royal throne passed to the weak and sickly Fedor Alekseevich, from whom one could not expect the radical transformations so necessary for the country. And yet, in 1682 he managed to abolish parochialism - a system of distribution of ranks and positions according to nobility and nobility, which had existed since the XIV century. In the field of foreign policy, Russia managed to win the war with Turkey, which was forced to recognize the reunification of the Left-Bank Ukraine with Russia.
In 1682, Fyodor Alekseevich died suddenly, and, since he was childless, a dynastic crisis erupted in Russia again, since the throne could be claimed by two sons of Aleksey Mikhailovich - sixteen-year-old sickly and weak Ivan and ten-year-old Peter. Princess Sophia did not renounce her claims to the throne either. As a result of the Strelets uprising of 1682, both heirs were declared tsars, and Sophia was their regent.
During the years of her reign, small concessions were made to the townspeople and the search for fugitive peasants was weakened. In 1689, there was a break between Sophia and the boyar-noble group that supported Peter I. After being defeated in this struggle, Sophia was imprisoned in the Novodevichy Convent.

Peter I. His domestic and foreign policy

During the first period of the reign of Peter I, three events took place that decisively influenced the formation of the tsar-reformer. The first of them was the trip of the young tsar to Arkhangelsk in 1693-1694, where the sea and ships conquered him forever. The second - the Azov campaigns against the Turks in order to find an outlet to the Black Sea. The capture of the Turkish fortress of Azov was the first victory of the Russian troops and the fleet created in Russia, the beginning of the country's transformation into a naval power. On the other hand, these campaigns showed the need for changes in the Russian army. The third event was the trip of the Russian diplomatic mission to Europe, in which the tsar himself took part. The embassy did not achieve its direct goal (Russia had to abandon the fight with Turkey), but it studied the international situation, paved the way for the struggle for the Baltics and for access to the Baltic Sea.
In 1700, a difficult Northern War with the Swedes began, which lasted for 21 years. This war largely determined the pace and nature of the transformations being carried out in Russia. The Northern War was fought for the return of the lands seized by the Swedes and for the exit of Russia to the Baltic Sea. In the first period of the war (1700-1706), after the defeat of the Russian troops near Narva, Peter I was able not only to assemble a new army, but also to rebuild the country's industry in a warlike manner. Having seized key points in the Baltic States and founded the city of Petersburg in 1703, Russian troops established themselves on the coast of the Gulf of Finland.
In the second period of the war (1707-1709), the Swedes invaded Russia through the Ukraine, but after being defeated near the village of Lesnoy, they were finally defeated in the Battle of Poltava in 1709. The third period of the war falls on 1710-1718, when the Russians troops captured many Baltic cities, drove the Swedes out of Finland, together with the Poles drove the enemy back to Pomerania. The Russian fleet won a brilliant victory at Gangut in 1714.
During the fourth period of the Northern War, despite the intrigues of England, which made peace with Sweden, Russia established itself on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The Great Northern War ended in 1721 with the signing of the Nystadt Peace Treaty. Sweden recognized the annexation of Livonia, Estland, Izhora land, part of Karelia and a number of islands of the Baltic Sea to Russia. Russia pledged to pay Sweden monetary compensation for the territories receding to it and return Finland. The Russian state, having regained the lands previously seized by Sweden, secured an exit to the Baltic Sea.
Against the background of the turbulent events of the first quarter of the 18th century, there was a restructuring of all sectors of the country's life, as well as reforms of the public administration and political system - the tsar's power acquired an unlimited, absolute character. In 1721 the tsar accepted the title of the All-Russian Emperor. Thus, Russia became an empire, and its ruler became the emperor of a huge and powerful state, which became on a par with the great world powers of that time.
The creation of new power structures began with a change in the image of the monarch himself and the foundations of his power and authority. In 1702, the Boyar Duma was replaced by the "Consilia of Ministers", and in 1711 the Senate became the supreme institution in the country. The creation of this authority also gave rise to a complex bureaucratic structure with offices, departments and numerous staffs. It was from the time of Peter I that a kind of cult of bureaucratic institutions and administrative authorities was formed in Russia.
In 1717-1718. instead of the primitive and long-obsolete system of orders, collegia were created - the prototype of future ministries, and in 1721 the establishment of the Synod, headed by a secular official, completely made the church dependent and at the service of the state. Thus, from now on, the institution of the patriarchate in Russia was abolished.
The crown of the formalization of the bureaucratic structure of the absolutist state was the "Table of Ranks" adopted in 1722. According to it, military, civil and court ranks were divided into fourteen ranks - steps. Society was not only ordered, but also under the control of the emperor and the highest aristocracy. The functioning of state institutions has improved, each of which has received a certain direction of activity.
Experiencing an acute need for money, the government of Peter I introduced the poll tax, which replaced household taxation. In this regard, in order to register the male population in the country, which has become a new object of taxation, its census was carried out - the so-called. revision. In 1723, a decree on succession to the throne was published, according to which the monarch himself received the right to appoint his successors, regardless of family ties and birthright.
During the reign of Peter I arose a large number of manufactories and mining enterprises, the beginning of the development of new iron ore deposits was laid. Promoting the development of industry, Peter I established central bodies in charge of trade and industry, and transferred state enterprises to private hands.
The patronizing tariff of 1724 protected new industries from foreign competition and encouraged the import of raw materials and products into the country, the production of which did not meet the needs of the domestic market, which manifested the policy of mercantilism.

The results of the activities of Peter I

Thanks to the energetic activity of Peter I in the economy, the level and forms of development of the productive forces, in the political system of Russia, in the structure and functions of government bodies, in the organization of the army, in the class and estate structure of the population, in the way of life and culture of peoples, enormous changes took place. Medieval Moscow Russia turned into the Russian Empire. The place of Russia and its role in international affairs have radically changed.
The complexity and inconsistency of the development of Russia during this period determined the inconsistency of the activities of Peter I in the implementation of reforms. On the one hand, these reforms had a huge historical meaning, since they went towards the national interests and needs of the country, contributed to its progressive development, being aimed at eliminating its backwardness. On the other hand, the reforms were carried out by the same serf methods and thereby contributed to the strengthening of the rule of the serf-owners.
From the very beginning, the progressive transformations of Peter the Great's time bore conservative features, which in the course of the country's development acted more and more and could not ensure the elimination of its backwardness in full. Objectively, these reforms were of a bourgeois character, subjectively, their implementation led to an increase in serfdom and the strengthening of feudalism. They could not be otherwise - the capitalist structure in Russia at that time was still very weak.
It should also be noted the cultural changes in Russian society that took place in the times of Peter the Great: the emergence of first-stage schools, specialized schools, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. A network of printing houses for printing domestic and translated publications has emerged in the country. The first newspaper in the country began to appear, and the first museum appeared. Significant changes have taken place in everyday life.

Palace coups of the 18th century

After the death of Emperor Peter I, a period began in Russia when the supreme power passed from hand to hand rather quickly, and those who occupied the throne did not always have legal rights to do so. It began immediately after the death of Peter I in 1725. The new aristocracy, which formed during the reign of the reformer emperor, fearing to lose its prosperity and power, contributed to the ascent to the throne of Catherine I, Peter's widow. This made it possible to establish in 1726 the Supreme Privy Council under the Empress, which actually seized power.
The greatest benefit from this was derived by the first favorite of Peter I - His Serene Highness Prince A.D. Menshikov. His influence was so great that even after the death of Catherine I, he was able to subdue the new Russian emperor, Peter II. However, another group of courtiers, dissatisfied with Menshikov's actions, deprived him of power, and he was soon exiled to Siberia.
These political changes did not change the established order. After the unexpected death of Peter II in 1730, the most influential group of the late emperor's close associates, the so-called. The "supreme leaders" decided to invite the niece of Peter I, the Duchess of Courland, Anna Ivanovna, to the throne, stipulating her accession with conditions ("Conditions"): not to marry, not to appoint a successor, not to declare war, not to introduce new taxes, etc. The acceptance of such conditions made Anna is an obedient toy in the hands of the highest aristocracy. However, at the request of the noble deputation upon accession to the throne, Anna Ivanovna rejected the conditions of the "supreme leaders".
Fearing intrigues on the part of the aristocracy, Anna Ivanovna surrounded herself with foreigners, on whom she became completely dependent. The empress was almost uninterested in state affairs. This pushed foreigners from the tsarist environment to many abuses, to plunder the treasury and to insult the national dignity of the Russian people.
Shortly before her death, Anna Ivanovna appointed the grandson of her elder sister, baby Ivan Antonovich, as her heir. In 1740, at the age of three months, he was proclaimed emperor by Ivan VI. The Duke of Courland Biron, who had enjoyed tremendous influence even under Anna Ivanovna, became its regent. This caused extreme discontent not only among the Russian nobility, but also in the inner circle of the late empress. As a result of the court conspiracy, Biron was overthrown, and the rights of regency were transferred to the mother of the emperor, Anna Leopoldovna. Thus, the dominance of foreigners at the court was preserved.
Among the Russian noblemen and officers of the guard, a conspiracy arose in favor of the daughter of Peter I, as a result of which Elizaveta Petrovna ascended the Russian throne in 1741. During her reign, which lasted until 1761, there was a return to the Petrine order. The Senate became the supreme body of state power. The Cabinet of Ministers was abolished, and the rights of the Russian nobility were significantly expanded. All changes in state governance were primarily aimed at strengthening the autocracy. However, in contrast to the times of Peter the Great, the court-bureaucratic elite began to play the main role in decision-making. Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, like her predecessor, was very little interested in state affairs.
Elizabeth Petrovna appointed her heir the son of Peter I's eldest daughter Karl-Peter-Ulrich, Duke of Holstein, who in Orthodoxy took the name of Peter Fedorovich. He ascended the throne in 1761 under the name of Peter III (1761-1762). The Imperial Council became the supreme body of power, but the new emperor was completely unprepared to rule the state. The only major undertaking that he carried out was the "Manifesto on the Granting of Liberty and Freedom to the All Russian Nobility", which eliminated the obligation for nobles to both civil and military service.
The admiration of Peter III before the Prussian king Frederick II and the implementation of a policy that contradicted the interests of Russia led to dissatisfaction with his rule and contributed to the growth of the popularity of his wife Sophia-Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, in Orthodoxy Ekaterina Alekseevna. Catherine, unlike her husband, respected Russian customs, traditions, Orthodoxy, and most importantly, the Russian nobility and the army. A conspiracy against Peter III in 1762 elevated Catherine to the imperial throne.

The reign of Catherine the Great

Catherine II, who ruled the country for more than thirty years, was an educated, intelligent, businesslike, energetic, ambitious woman. While on the throne, she repeatedly declared that she was the successor of Peter I. She managed to concentrate in her hands all the legislative and most of the executive power. Its first reform was the reform of the Senate, which limited its functions in governing the state. She carried out the seizure of church lands, which deprived the church of economic power. A colossal number of monastic peasants were transferred to the state, thanks to which the treasury of Russia was replenished.
The reign of Catherine II left a noticeable mark on Russian history. As in many other European states, Russia during the reign of Catherine II was characterized by the policy of "enlightened absolutism", which assumed the ruler of the wise, patronizing art, the benefactor of all science. Catherine tried to correspond to this model and even was in correspondence with the French enlighteners, giving preference to Voltaire and Diderot. However, this did not prevent her from pursuing a policy of increasing serfdom.
And yet, a manifestation of the policy of "enlightened absolutism" was the creation and activity of a commission to draw up a new legislative code of Russia instead of the obsolete Cathedral Code of 1649. Representatives of various strata of the population were employed in the work of this commission: nobles, townspeople, Cossacks and state peasants. In the documents of the commission, the estate rights and privileges of various strata of the population of Russia were enshrined. However, the commission was soon disbanded. The empress found out the mentality of the estate groups and made a bet on the nobility. There was only one goal - to strengthen local government.
A period of reforms began in the early 1980s. The main directions were the following provisions: decentralization of government and an increase in the role of the local nobility, an increase in the number of provinces almost twofold, strict subordination of all power structures at the local level, etc. The system of law enforcement agencies was also reformed. Political functions were transferred to the zemstvo court elected by the nobility assembly, headed by the zemstvo police chief, and in the county towns - to the mayor. In the counties and provinces, a whole system of courts arose, depending on the administration. Partial election of officials in the provinces and counties by the forces of the nobility was also introduced. These reforms created a fairly perfect system of local government and strengthened the connection between the nobility and the autocracy.
The position of the nobility was further strengthened after the appearance of the "Charter for the rights, liberties and advantages of the noble nobility", signed in 1785. In accordance with this document, the nobles were exempted from compulsory service, corporal punishment, and could also be deprived of their rights and property only on the verdict of the noble court approved by the empress.
Simultaneously with the Certificate of Appreciation to the Nobility, the "Certificate of Rights and Benefits to the Cities of the Russian Empire" also appeared. In accordance with it, the townspeople were divided into categories with different rights and responsibilities. The city duma was formed, dealing with issues of urban economy, but under the control of the administration. All these acts further consolidated the estate-corporate division of society and strengthened the autocratic power.

The uprising of E.I. Pugacheva

The tightening of exploitation and serfdom in Russia during the reign of Catherine II led to the fact that in the 60s and 70s a wave of antifeudal uprisings of peasants, Cossacks, registered and working people swept across the country. They acquired the greatest scope in the 70s, and the most powerful of them went down in the history of Russia under the name of the peasant war led by E. Pugachev.
In 1771, unrest swept the lands of the Yaik Cossacks who lived along the Yaik River (present-day Ural). The government began to introduce army orders in the Cossack regiments and limit Cossack self-government. The unrest of the Cossacks was suppressed, but hatred was ripening in their midst, which burst out in January 1772 as a result of the work of the commission of inquiry, which examined complaints. It was this explosive region that Pugachev chose for organizing and campaigning against the authorities.
In 1773, Pugachev escaped from the Kazan prison and headed east, to the Yaik River, where he proclaimed himself Emperor Peter III, who had allegedly escaped death. "Manifesto" of Peter III, in which Pugachev granted the Cossacks land, hayfields, money, attracted a significant part of the disgruntled Cossacks to him. From that moment on, the first stage of the war began. After bad luck near Yaitsky town with a small detachment of surviving supporters, he moved to Orenburg. The city was besieged by the rebels. The government pulled up troops to Orenburg, which inflicted a strong defeat on the rebels. Pugachev, who retreated to Samara, was soon defeated again and with a small detachment disappeared into the Urals.
In April-June 1774, the second stage of the peasant war took place. After a series of battles, detachments of the rebels moved to Kazan. In early July, the Pugachevites captured Kazan, but they were unable to resist the approaching regular army. Pugachev with a small detachment crossed to the right bank of the Volga and began to retreat to the south.
It was from this moment that the war reached its peak and acquired a pronounced anti-serfdom character. It covered the entire Volga region and threatened to spread to the central regions of the country. Elite army units were nominated against Pugachev. The spontaneity and locality characteristic of peasant wars made it easier to fight the insurgents. Under the blows of government troops, Pugachev retreated to the south, trying to break through into the Cossack
areas of the Don and Yaik. At Tsaritsyn, his troops were defeated, and on the way to Yaik, Pugachev himself was captured and handed over to the authorities by wealthy Cossacks. In 1775 he was executed in Moscow.
The reasons for the defeat of the peasant war were its tsarist character and naive monarchism, spontaneity, locality, poor armament, disunity. In addition, various categories of the population took part in this movement, each of which strove to achieve exclusively its own goals.

Foreign policy under Catherine II

Empress Catherine II pursued an active and very successful foreign policy, which can be divided into three areas. The first foreign policy task set by her government was to seek access to the Black Sea in order, firstly, to protect the southern regions of the country from the threat from Turkey and the Crimean Khanate, and secondly, to expand opportunities for trade and, consequently , to increase the marketability of agriculture.
In order to fulfill this task, Russia fought twice with Turkey: the Russian-Turkish wars of 1768-1774. and 1787-1791 In 1768, Turkey, incited by France and Austria, who were very concerned about the strengthening of Russia's positions in the Balkans and in Poland, declared war on Russia. During this war, Russian troops under the command of P.A. Rumyantsev won brilliant victories over the superior enemy forces near the rivers Larga and Cahul in 1770, and the Russian fleet under the command of F.F. Ushakov twice inflicted a major defeat on the Turkish fleet in the same year. in the Chios Strait and in the Chesme Bay. The advance of Rumyantsev's troops in the Balkans forced Turkey to admit defeat. In 1774, the Kuchuk-Kainardzhiyskiy peace treaty was signed, according to which Russia received land between the Bug and the Dnieper, the fortresses of Azov, Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn, Turkey recognized the independence of the Crimean Khanate; The Black Sea and its straits were open to Russian merchant ships.
In 1783, the Crimean Khan Shagin-Girey resigned from himself, and the Crimea was annexed to Russia. The lands of the Kuban also became part of the Russian state. In the same 1783, the Georgian king Irakli II recognized the protectorate of Russia over Georgia. All these events exacerbated the already difficult relations between Russia and Turkey and led to a new Russian-Turkish war. In a number of battles, the Russian troops under the command of A.V. Suvorov again showed their superiority: in 1787 at Kinburn, in 1788 at the capture of Ochakov, in 1789 at the Rymnik River and near Fokshany, and in 1790 it was taken the impregnable fortress of Izmail. The Russian fleet under the command of Ushakov also won a number of victories over the Turkish fleet in the Kerch Strait, near the Tendra island, at Kali-Akria. Turkey again admitted defeat. According to the Yassy Peace Treaty of 1791, the annexation of Crimea and Kuban to Russia was confirmed, and the border between Russia and Turkey along the Dniester was established. The fortress of Ochakov departed to Russia, Turkey renounced claims to Georgia.
The second foreign policy task - the reunification of the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands - was achieved as a result of the divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Austria, Prussia and Russia. These sections took place in 1772, 1793, 1795. The Commonwealth ceased to exist as an independent state. Russia regained all of Belarus, the right-bank Ukraine, and also received Courland and Lithuania.
The third task was the fight against revolutionary France. The government of Catherine II took a sharply hostile position in relation to the events in France. At first, Catherine II did not dare to openly intervene, but the execution of Louis XVI (January 21, 1793) caused a final break with France, which the Empress announced by a special decree. The Russian government provided assistance to French emigrants, and in 1793 concluded treaties with Prussia and England on joint actions against France. The 60-thousandth corps of Suvorov was preparing for the campaign, the Russian fleet took part in the naval blockade of France. However, this task was no longer destined for Catherine II to solve.

Paul I

On November 6, 1796, Catherine II died suddenly. Her son Paul I became the Russian emperor, whose short period of reign was full of intense searches for the monarch in all spheres of public and international life, which from the outside looked more like a hectic throwing from one extreme to another. Trying to put things in order in the administrative and financial spheres, Pavel tried to penetrate into every little detail, sent out mutually exclusive circulars, severely punished and punished. All this created an atmosphere of police surveillance and barracks. On the other hand, Paul ordered the release of all politically motivated prisoners arrested under Catherine. True, at the same time it was easy to go to jail only for the fact that a person, for one reason or another, violated the rules of everyday life.
Paul I attached great importance to lawmaking in his work. In 1797, he restored the principle of succession to the throne exclusively through the male line with the "Act on the Order of Succession" and the "Institution of the Imperial Family".
The policy of Paul I in relation to the nobility turned out to be completely unexpected. Catherine's liberties came to an end, and the nobility was placed under strict state control. The emperor especially punished representatives of the noble classes for failure to perform public service. But even here it was not without extremes: infringing on the nobles, on the one hand, Paul I at the same time distributed a significant part of all state peasants to the landowners on an unprecedented scale. And here another innovation appeared - legislation on the peasant issue. For the first time in many decades, official documents appeared that gave some relief to the peasants. The sale of courtyard people and landless peasants was canceled, a three-day corvee was recommended, peasant complaints and requests that were previously unacceptable were resolved.
In the field of foreign policy, the government of Paul I continued to fight against revolutionary France. In the fall of 1798, Russia sent a squadron under the command of F.F. Ushakov to the Mediterranean Sea through the Black Sea straits, which liberated the Ionian Islands and southern Italy from the French. One of the largest battles of this campaign was the battle of Corfu in 1799. In the summer of 1799, Russian warships appeared off the coast of Italy, and Russian soldiers entered Naples and Rome.
In the same 1799, the Italian and Swiss campaigns were brilliantly carried out by the Russian army under the command of A.V. Suvorov. She managed to free Milan and Turin from the French, making a heroic crossing over the Alps to Switzerland.
In the middle of 1800, a sharp turn in Russian foreign policy began - the rapprochement between Russia and France, which exacerbated relations with England. Trade with her was actually stopped. This turn largely determined the events in Europe in the first decades of the new 19th century.

The reign of Emperor Alexander I

On the night of March 11-12, 1801, when Emperor Paul I was killed as a result of a conspiracy, the question of the accession to the Russian throne of his eldest son Alexander Pavlovich was resolved. He was privy to the conspiracy plan. Hopes were pinned on the new monarch to carry out liberal reforms and soften the regime of personal power.
Emperor Alexander I was brought up under the supervision of his grandmother, Catherine II. He was familiar with the ideas of the enlighteners - Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau. However, Alexander Pavlovich never separated the idea of ​​equality and freedom from autocracy. This half-heartedness became a feature of both the transformations and the reign of Emperor Alexander I.
His very first manifestos testified to the adoption of a new political course. It proclaimed the desire to rule according to the laws of Catherine II, remove restrictions on trade with England, contained the announcement of amnesty and the reinstatement of persons repressed under Paul I.
All work related to the liberalization of life was concentrated in the so-called. The secret committee, which brought together friends and associates of the young emperor - P.A. Stroganov, V.P. Kochubei, A. Chartoryisky and N.N. Novosiltsev - adherents of constitutionalism. The committee existed until 1805. It was mainly engaged in preparing a program for the emancipation of the peasants from serfdom and reforming the state system. The result of this activity was the law of December 12, 1801, which allowed state peasants, bourgeois and merchants to acquire unpopulated land, and the decree of February 20, 1803 "On free farmers", which gave the landowners the right, at their desire, to release the peasants at will, giving them land for ransom.
A major reform was the reorganization of the highest and central bodies of state power. Ministries were established in the country: the military, land forces, finance and public education, the State Treasury and the Committee of Ministers, which received a single structure and were based on the principle of one-man command. Since 1810, in accordance with the project of a prominent statesman of those years, M.M. Speransky, the State Council began to operate. However, Speransky could not carry out a consistent principle of separation of powers. The State Council was transformed from an intermediate body into a legislative chamber appointed from above. The reforms of the early 19th century did not affect the foundations of autocratic power in the Russian Empire.
In the reign of Alexander I, the Kingdom of Poland, annexed to Russia, was granted a constitution. The constitutional act was also presented to the Bessarabian region. Finland, which also became part of Russia, received its legislative body - the Seim - and a constitutional structure.
Thus, constitutional rule already existed on part of the territory of the Russian Empire, which inspired hopes for its spread throughout the country. In 1818, the development of the "Charter of the Russian Empire" even began, but this document never saw the light of day.
In 1822, the emperor lost interest in state affairs, work on reforms was curtailed, and among the advisers of Alexander I stood out the figure of a new temporary worker - A.A. Arakcheev, who became the first person after the emperor in the state and ruled as an all-powerful favorite. The consequences of the reform activities of Alexander I and his advisers turned out to be insignificant. The unexpected death of the emperor in 1825 at the age of 48 was the reason for an open speech on the part of the most advanced part of Russian society, the so-called. Decembrists, against the foundations of autocracy.

Patriotic War of 1812

During the reign of Alexander I, there was a terrible test for the whole of Russia - the war of liberation against Napoleonic aggression. The war was caused by the desire of the French bourgeoisie for world domination, a sharp exacerbation of Russian-French economic and political contradictions in connection with the wars of conquest of Napoleon I, Russia's refusal to participate in the continental blockade of Great Britain. The agreement between Russia and Napoleonic France, concluded in the city of Tilsit in 1807, was of a temporary nature. This was understood both in St. Petersburg and in Paris, although many dignitaries of the two countries were in favor of preserving peace. However, contradictions between states continued to accumulate, which led to open conflict.
On June 12 (24), 1812, about 500 thousand Napoleonic soldiers crossed the Neman River and
invaded Russia. Napoleon rejected Alexander I's proposal for a peaceful solution to the conflict if he withdraws his troops. This is how the Patriotic War began, so named because not only the regular army fought against the French, but also almost the entire population of the country in the militia and partisan detachments.
The Russian army consisted of 220 thousand people, and it was divided into three parts. The first army - under the command of General M.B. Barclay de Tolly - was in Lithuania, the second - General Prince P.I.Bagration - in Belarus, and the third army - General A.P. Tormasov - in Ukraine. Napoleon's plan was extremely simple and consisted in crushing the Russian armies piece by piece with powerful blows.
The Russian armies retreated to the east in parallel directions, conserving strength and exhausting the enemy in rearguard battles. On August 2 (14), the armies of Barclay de Tolly and Bagration joined up in the Smolensk region. Here, in a difficult two-day battle, the French troops lost 20 thousand soldiers and officers, the Russians - up to 6 thousand people.
The war was clearly taking on a protracted nature, the Russian army continued its retreat, leading the enemy into the interior of the country. At the end of August 1812, instead of Minister of War M.Barklay-de-Tolly, a student and associate of A.V.Suvorov, M.I.Kutuzov, was appointed commander-in-chief. Alexander I, who disliked him, was forced to take into account the patriotic sentiments of the Russian people and the army, the general dissatisfaction with the retreat tactics chosen by Barclay de Tolly. Kutuzov decided to give a general battle to the French army in the area of ​​the village of Borodino, 124 km west of Moscow.
On August 26 (September 7), the battle began. The Russian army was faced with the task of exhausting the enemy, undermining its combat power and morale, and in case of success - to undertake a counteroffensive itself. Kutuzov chose a very good position for the Russian troops. The right flank was defended by a natural obstacle - the Koloch River, and the left - by artificial earthworks - by flashes occupied by the troops of Bagration. In the center were located the troops of General N.N. Raevsky, as well as artillery positions. Napoleon's plan provided for a breakthrough of the defense of the Russian troops in the area of ​​Bagrationovskie flashes and the encirclement of Kutuzov's army, and when it was pressed against the river - its complete defeat.
Eight attacks were made by the French against the flushes, but they could not completely capture them. They managed to advance only slightly in the center, destroying Rayevsky's batteries. In the midst of the battle in the central direction, the Russian cavalry made a daring raid behind enemy lines, which sowed panic in the ranks of the attackers.
Napoleon did not dare to bring into action his main reserve - the old guard - in order to turn the tide of the battle. The battle of Borodino ended late in the evening, and the troops withdrew to their previously occupied positions. Thus, the battle was a political and moral victory for the Russian army.
1 (13) September in Fili, at a meeting of the command staff, Kutuzov decided to leave Moscow in order to save the army. Napoleon's troops entered Moscow and stayed there until October 1812. In the meantime, Kutuzov carried out his plan called the Tarutino maneuver, thanks to which Napoleon lost the ability to track the Russian deployment sites. In the village of Tarutino, Kutuzov's army was replenished by 120 thousand people, significantly strengthened its artillery and cavalry. In addition, it actually closed the way for the French troops to Tula, where the main weapons arsenals and food depots were located.
During its stay in Moscow, the French army was demoralized by hunger, looting, and fires that engulfed the city. In the hope of replenishing his arsenals and food supplies, Napoleon was forced to withdraw his army from Moscow. On the way to Maloyaroslavets on October 12 (24), Napoleon's army suffered a serious defeat and began to retreat from Russia along the Smolensk road, already devastated by the French themselves.
At the final stage of the war, the tactics of the Russian army consisted in the parallel pursuit of the enemy. Russian troops, not
entering the battle with Napoleon, they destroyed his retreating army in parts. The French also seriously suffered from the winter frosts, for which they were not ready, since Napoleon hoped to end the war before the cold weather. The war of 1812 culminated in the battle at the Berezina River, which ended in the defeat of Napoleon's army.
On December 25, 1812, in St. Petersburg, Emperor Alexander I promulgated a manifesto, which said that the Patriotic War of the Russian people against the French invaders ended in complete victory and the expulsion of the enemy.
The Russian army took part in the overseas campaigns of 1813-1814, during which, together with the Prussian, Swedish, British and Austrian armies, finished off the enemy in Germany and France. The campaign of 1813 ended with the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig. After the capture of Paris by the allied forces in the spring of 1814, Napoleon I abdicated the throne.

Decembrist movement

The first quarter of the 19th century in the history of Russia was the period of the formation of the revolutionary movement and its ideology. After the foreign campaigns of the Russian army, advanced ideas began to penetrate into the Russian Empire. The first secret revolutionary organizations of the nobility appeared. Most of them were military officers of the guard.
The first secret political society was founded in 1816 in St. Petersburg under the name "The Union of Salvation", which was renamed the following year into the "Society of True and Faithful Sons of the Fatherland." Its members were the future Decembrists A.I.Muravyev, M.I.Muravyev-Apostol, P.I. Pestel, S.P. Trubetskoy, etc. rights. However, this society was still small in number and could not fulfill the tasks that it set for itself.
In 1818, on the basis of this self-liquidating society, a new one was created - the Union of Prosperity. It was already a more numerous secret organization, numbering more than 200 people. It was organized by F.N. Glinka, F.P. Tolstoy, M.I.Muraviev-Apostol. The organization was ramified: its cells were created in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Tambov, in the south of the country. The goals of the society remained the same - the introduction of representative government, the elimination of autocracy and serfdom. Members of the Union saw the ways to achieve their goal in the propagation of their views and proposals sent to the government. However, they never heard a response.
All this prompted the radical-minded members of the society to create two new secret organizations, established in March 1825. One was founded in St. Petersburg and received the name "Northern Society". Its creators were N.M. Muravyov and N.I. Turgenev. Another originated in Ukraine. This "Southern Society" was headed by PI Pestel. Both societies were interconnected and were actually a single organization. Each society had its own program document, the North - the "Constitution" of N.M. Muravyov, and the South - "Russian Truth", written by P.I. Pestel.
These documents expressed a common goal - the destruction of autocracy and serfdom. However, the "Constitution" expressed the liberal nature of the reforms - with a constitutional monarchy, restriction of electoral rights and the preservation of landlord ownership, while "Russkaya Pravda" was radical, republican. She proclaimed a presidential republic, confiscation of landlords' land and a combination of private and public forms of ownership.
The conspirators planned to carry out their coup in the summer of 1826 during army exercises. But unexpectedly, on November 19, 1825, Alexander I died, and this event prompted the conspirators to take action ahead of schedule.
After the death of Alexander I, his brother Konstantin Pavlovich was supposed to become the Russian emperor, but even during the life of Alexander I, he abdicated in favor of his younger brother Nicholas. This was not officially announced, so initially both the state apparatus and the army swore allegiance to Constantine. But soon Constantine's renunciation of the throne was made public and an oath was appointed. That's why
members of the "Northern Society" decided to speak out on December 14, 1825 with the requirements laid down in their program, for which they intended to hold a demonstration of military force at the Senate building. An important task was to prevent the senators from taking the oath to Nikolai Pavlovich. Prince S.P. Trubetskoy was proclaimed the leader of the uprising.
On December 14, 1825, the first Moscow regiment came to Senate Square, led by members of the Northern Society, brothers Bestuzhev and Shchepin-Rostovsky. However, the regiment stood alone for a long time, the conspirators were inactive. The murder of the Governor-General of St. Petersburg M.A. Miloradovich, who went to the rebels, became fatal - the uprising could no longer end peacefully. By the middle of the day, a guards naval crew and a company of the Life Grenadier Regiment nevertheless joined the rebels.
Leaders continued to hesitate to take action. In addition, it turned out that the senators had already sworn allegiance to Nicholas I and left the Senate. Therefore, there was no one to present the "Manifesto", and Prince Trubetskoy never appeared on the square. Meanwhile, troops loyal to the government began shelling the insurgents. The uprising was suppressed, and arrests began. Members of the "Southern Society" tried to carry out an uprising in early January 1826 (the uprising of the Chernigov regiment), but it was brutally suppressed by the authorities. Five leaders of the uprising - P.I. Pestel, K.F. Ryleev, S.I.Muraviev-Apostol, M.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin and P.G. Kakhovsky - were executed, the rest of its participants were exiled to hard labor in Siberia.
The uprising of the Decembrists was the first open protest in Russia, whose task was to radically reorganize society.

The reign of Nicholas I

In the history of Russia, the reign of Emperor Nicholas I is defined as the apogee of Russian autocracy. The revolutionary upheavals that accompanied the accession to the throne of this Russian emperor left their mark on all of his activities. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was perceived as a strangler of freedom, freethinking, as an unlimited ruler-despot. The emperor believed in the perniciousness of human freedom and the independence of society. In his opinion, the prosperity of the country could be ensured only through strict order, the strict fulfillment of each citizen of the Russian Empire of his duties, control and regulation of public life.
Considering that the question of welfare can be resolved only from above, Nicholas I formed the "Committee on December 6, 1826". The tasks of the committee included the preparation of draft laws for transformations. 1826 saw the transformation of "His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery" into the most important body of state power and administration. The most important tasks were assigned to its II and III branches. The II department was supposed to deal with the codification of laws, and the III was to deal with the affairs of higher politics. To solve problems, it received a corps of gendarmes under the command and, thus, control over all aspects of public life. Almighty Count A.H. Benckendorf, who was close to the emperor, was placed at the head of the III department.
However, the overcentralization of power did not lead to positive results. The supreme authorities were drowned in a sea of ​​papers and lost control over the course of affairs on the ground, which led to red tape and abuse.
Ten successive secret committees were created to resolve the peasant question. However, the result of their activities was insignificant. The most important measure in the peasant question can be considered the reform of the state village in 1837. The state peasants were given self-government, put in order and control over them. Taxation and land allotment were revised. In 1842, a decree was issued on obligated peasants, according to which the landowner received the right to release the peasants to freedom with the provision of land to them, but not for property, but for use. 1844 changed the position of the peasants in the western regions of the country. But this was done not with the aim of improving the situation of the peasants, but in the interests of the authorities, striving
trying to limit the influence of the local, opposition-minded non-Russian nobility.
With the penetration of capitalist relations into the country's economic life and the gradual erosion of the estate system, changes in the social structure were also associated - the ranks giving nobility were increased, and a new estate state was introduced for the growing commercial and industrial strata - honorary citizenship.
Control over public life led to changes in the field of education. In 1828, a reform of lower and secondary educational institutions was carried out. Education was of a class character, i.e. the steps of the school were cut off from each other: primary and parish - for peasants, county - for urban dwellers, gymnasium - for nobles. In 1835, a new university charter was issued, which reduced the autonomy of higher educational institutions.
The wave of European bourgeois revolutions in Europe in 1848-1849, which horrified Nicholas I, led to the so-called. In the "gloomy seven years", when censorship control was tightened to the utmost, the secret police raged. A shadow of despair loomed before the most progressive-minded people. This last stage of the reign of Nicholas I, in fact, was already the agony of the system that he created.

Crimean War

The last years of the reign of Nicholas I passed against the background of the complication of Russia's foreign policy position, associated with the aggravation of the Eastern question. The conflict was caused by problems related to trade in the Middle East, for which Russia, France and England fought. Turkey, in turn, counted on revenge for the defeat in the wars with Russia. Austria did not want to miss its chance, too, wishing to expand its sphere of influence over the Turkish possessions in the Balkans.
The direct reason for the war was the old conflict between the Catholic and Orthodox churches over the right to control the holy places for Christians in Palestine. Backed by France, Turkey has refused to satisfy Russia's claims to the priority of the Orthodox Church in this matter. In June 1853 Russia broke off diplomatic relations with Turkey and occupied the Danube principalities. In response to this, the Turkish sultan on October 4, 1853 declared war on Russia.
Turkey relied on the ongoing war in the North Caucasus and provided all kinds of assistance to the mountaineers who rebelled against Russia, including carrying out landings of its fleet on the Caucasian coast. In response to this, on November 18, 1853, the Russian flotilla under the command of Admiral P.S. Nakhimov completely defeated the Turkish fleet on the roadstead of the Sinop Bay. This naval battle was the pretext for France and England to enter the war. In December 1853, a combined British and French squadron entered the Black Sea, and in March 1854 a declaration of war followed.
The war that came to the south of Russia showed the complete backwardness of Russia, the weakness of its industrial potential and the unpreparedness of the military command for war in the new conditions. The Russian army was inferior in almost all respects - the number of steam ships, rifled weapons, artillery. Due to the lack of railways, the situation with the supply of equipment, ammunition and food to the Russian army was also bad.
During the summer campaign of 1854, Russia managed to successfully resist the enemy. In several battles, Turkish troops were defeated. The English and French fleets tried to attack the Russian positions in the Baltic, Black and White Seas and in the Far East, but to no avail. In July 1854, Russia had to accept the Austrian ultimatum and leave the Danube principalities. And from September 1854, the main hostilities unfolded in the Crimea.
The mistakes of the Russian command allowed the Allied landing to successfully land in the Crimea, and on September 8, 1854, defeated the Russian troops at the Alma River and besieged Sevastopol. The defense of Sevastopol under the leadership of admirals V.A.Kornilov, P.S.Nakhimov and V.I. Istomin lasted 349 days. Attempts by the Russian army under the command of Prince A.S. Menshikov to pull off part of the besieging forces were unsuccessful.
On August 27, 1855, French troops stormed the southern part of Sevastopol and captured the dominant hill over the city - Malakhov Kurgan. Russian troops were forced to leave the city. Since the forces of the fighting sides were exhausted, on March 18, 1856, a peace treaty was signed in Paris, according to the terms of which the Black Sea was declared neutral, the Russian fleet was reduced to a minimum and the fortifications were destroyed. Turkey has also made similar demands. However, since the exit from the Black Sea was in the hands of Turkey, such a decision seriously threatened the security of Russia. In addition, Russia lost the mouth of the Danube and the southern part of Bessarabia, and also lost the right to patronize Serbia, Moldavia and Wallachia. Thus, Russia ceded its positions in the Middle East to France and England. Its prestige in the international arena has been severely undermined.

Bourgeois reforms in Russia 60s - 70s

The development of capitalist relations in pre-reform Russia came into ever greater contradiction with the feudal-serf system. The defeat in the Crimean War exposed the rottenness and impotence of serf Russia. A crisis began in the policy of the ruling feudal class, which could no longer carry it out using the old serf methods. Urgent economic, social and political reforms were needed to prevent a revolutionary explosion in the country. On the country's agenda were the measures necessary in order not only to preserve, but also to strengthen the social and economic base of the autocracy.
All this was well understood by the new Russian emperor Alexander II, who ascended the throne on February 19, 1855. He also understood the need for concessions, as well as a compromise in the interests of state life. After his accession to the throne, the young emperor brought into the cabinet of ministers his brother Constantine, who was a staunch liberal. The next steps of the emperor were also progressive - they allowed free travel abroad, the Decembrists were amnestied, censorship on publications was partially removed, and other liberal measures were taken.
Alexander II also took the problem of the abolition of serfdom very seriously. Starting from the end of 1857, a number of committees and commissions were created in Russia, the main task of which was to resolve the issue of liberating the peasantry from serfdom. At the beginning of 1859, Editorial Commissions were created to summarize and process the draft committees. The project developed by them was submitted to the government.
On February 19, 1861, Alexander II issued a manifesto on the emancipation of the peasants, as well as the "Regulations" regulating their new state. According to these documents, Russian peasants received personal freedom and most of the general civil rights, peasant self-government was introduced, whose duties included the collection of taxes and some judicial powers. At the same time, the peasant community and communal land tenure remained. The peasants still had to pay the poll tax and carry the recruitment duty. As before, corporal punishment was applied to the peasants.
The government believed that the normal development of the agrarian sector would make it possible for two types of farms to coexist: large landowners and small peasants. However, the peasants got land for allotments 20% less than those plots that they used before liberation. This greatly complicated the development of the peasant economy, and in a number of cases brought it to nothing. For the land received, the peasants had to pay the landowners a ransom that exceeded its value by one and a half times. But this was unrealistic, so 80% of the value of the land was paid to the landowners by the state. Thus, the peasants became debtors of the state and were obliged to return this amount within 50 years with interest. Be that as it may, the reform created significant opportunities for the agrarian development of Russia, although it retained a number of vestiges in the form of class isolation of the peasantry and communities.
The peasant reform also entailed the transformation of many aspects of the country's social and state life. 1864 was the year of birth of zemstvos - local government bodies. The sphere of competence of zemstvos was quite wide: they had the right to collect taxes for local needs and hire employees, were in charge of economic issues, schools, medical institutions, as well as charity issues.
Reforms and city life were also touched upon. Since 1870, self-government bodies began to form in cities. They were mainly in charge of economic life. The self-government body was named the City Duma, which formed the council. The mayor stood at the head of the Duma and the executive body. The Duma itself was elected by city voters, whose composition was formed in accordance with the social and property qualifications.
However, the most radical was the judicial reform, carried out in 1864. The previous estate and closed court was canceled. Now the verdict in the reformed court was passed by jurors who were representatives of the public. The process itself became public, oral and adversarial. On behalf of the state, the prosecutor-prosecutor acted at the trial, and the defense of the accused was carried out by a lawyer - a sworn attorney.
Mass media and educational institutions were not ignored. In 1863 and 1864. new university charters were introduced, which restored autonomy to them. A new regulation on school institutions was adopted, according to which the state, zemstvos and city councils, as well as the church took care of them. Education was proclaimed accessible to all classes and denominations. In 1865, the preliminary censorship of publications was removed and the responsibility for already published articles was assigned to the publishers.
Serious reforms were carried out in the army as well. Russia was divided into fifteen military districts. Military educational institutions and the court-martial were modified. Since 1874, instead of recruiting, universal military service was introduced. The transformations also affected the sphere of finance, the Orthodox clergy and church educational institutions.
All these reforms, called "great", brought the socio-political structure of Russia in line with the needs of the second half of the 19th century, mobilized all representatives of society to solve national problems. The first step was taken towards the formation of the rule of law and civil society. Russia has entered a new, capitalist path of its development.

Alexander III and his counter-reforms

After the death of Alexander II in March 1881 as a result of a terrorist act organized by the Narodnaya Volya, members of a secret organization of Russian utopian socialists, his son, Alexander III, ascended the Russian throne. At the beginning of his reign, confusion reigned in the government: knowing nothing about the forces of the populists, Alexander III did not dare to dismiss the supporters of his father's liberal reforms.
However, the very first steps of Alexander III's state activity showed that the new emperor was not going to sympathize with liberalism. The punitive system was significantly improved. In 1881, the Regulation on Measures to Preserve State Security and Public Peace was approved. This document expanded the powers of the governors, gave them the right to declare a state of emergency for an unlimited period and carry out any repressive actions. There were "security departments" under the jurisdiction of the gendarme corps, whose activities were aimed at suppressing and suppressing any illegal activity.
In 1882, measures were taken to tighten censorship, and in 1884 higher educational institutions were effectively deprived of their self-government. The government of Alexander III closed the liberal publications, increased by several
times the tuition fee. The decree of 1887 "on the cook's children" made it difficult for children of the lower classes to enter higher educational institutions and gymnasiums. At the end of the 80s, reactionary laws were adopted, which in fact canceled a number of provisions of the reforms of the 60s and 70s.
Thus, the peasant class isolation was preserved and consolidated, and power was transferred to officials from among the local landowners, who combined judicial and administrative powers in their hands. The new Zemsky Code and the City Statute not only significantly curtailed the independence of local self-government, but also several times reduced the number of voters. Changes were made in the activities of the court.
The reactionaryness of the government of Alexander III manifested itself in the socio-economic sphere. An attempt to protect the interests of the ruined landowners led to a tougher policy towards the peasantry. In order to prevent the emergence of a rural bourgeoisie, family divisions of the peasants were limited and obstacles were imposed on the alienation of peasant holdings.
However, in the context of the increasingly complicated international situation, the government could not but encourage the development of capitalist relations, primarily in the field of industrial production. Priority was given to enterprises and industries of strategic importance. A policy of their encouragement and state protection was pursued, which led to their transformation into monopolists. As a result of these actions, threatening imbalances were growing, which could lead to economic and social upheavals.
The reactionary transformations of the 1880s-1890s were called "counterreforms". Their successful implementation was due to the lack of forces in Russian society that would be able to create an active opposition to the government's policy. To top it all off, they have greatly exacerbated the relationship between government and society. However, the counter-reforms did not achieve their goals: society could no longer be stopped in its development.

Russia at the beginning of the 20th century

At the turn of the century, Russian capitalism began to develop into its highest stage - imperialism. Bourgeois relations, having become dominant, demanded the elimination of the survivals of serfdom and the creation of conditions for the further progressive development of society. The main classes of bourgeois society had already formed - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and the latter was more homogeneous, bound by the same hardships and difficulties, concentrated in the country's large industrial centers, more receptive and mobile in relation to progressive innovations. All that was needed was a political party that could unite his various detachments, equip him with a program and tactics of struggle.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a revolutionary situation developed in Russia. There was a demarcation of the country's political forces into three camps - government, liberal-bourgeois and democratic. The liberal-bourgeois camp was represented by supporters of the so-called. "Union of Liberation", which set as their task the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Russia, the introduction of general elections, the protection of the "interests of the working people", etc. After the creation of the Cadet Party (Constitutional Democrats), the Liberation Union ceased its activities.
The Social Democratic movement, which emerged in the 1890s, was represented by supporters of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), which in 1903 split into two movements - the Bolsheviks headed by V.I. Lenin and the Mensheviks. In addition to the RSDLP, this included the Socialist Revolutionaries (the party of socialist revolutionaries).
After the death of Emperor Alexander III in 1894, his son Nikolai I. ascended the throne. Easily succumbing to outside influences, not possessing a strong and firm character, Nicholas II turned out to be a weak politician, whose actions in the country's foreign and domestic policy plunged her into the abyss of disasters. which laid the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The mediocrity of the Russian generals and the tsarist encirclement, who sent thousands of Russians into the bloody massacre
soldiers and sailors, further inflamed the situation in the country.

The first Russian revolution

The extremely deteriorating position of the people, the complete inability of the government to resolve the pressing problems of the country's development, defeat in the Russo-Japanese War became the main reasons for the first Russian revolution. The reason for this was the shooting of a demonstration of workers in St. Petersburg on January 9, 1905. This execution caused an outburst of indignation in wide circles of Russian society. Riots and unrest broke out in all regions of the country. The discontent movement gradually took on an organized character. The Russian peasantry also joined him. In the conditions of the war with Japan and complete unpreparedness for such events, the government lacked neither the strength nor the means to suppress numerous demonstrations. As one of the means of relieving tension, tsarism announced the creation of a representative body - the State Duma. The fact of disregard for the interests of the masses from the very beginning put the Duma in the position of a dead-born body, since it had practically no powers.
This attitude of the authorities aroused even greater discontent both on the part of the proletariat and the peasantry and on the part of the liberal-minded representatives of the Russian bourgeoisie. Therefore, by the fall of 1905, all conditions had been created in Russia for the brewing of a nationwide crisis.
Losing control over the situation, the tsarist government made new concessions. In October 1905, Nicholas II signed the Manifesto, granting the Russians freedom of the press, speech, assembly and association, which laid the foundations of Russian democracy. This Manifesto also split the revolutionary movement. The revolutionary wave has lost its breadth and mass character. This can explain the defeat of the December armed uprising in Moscow in 1905, which was the highest point in the development of the first Russian revolution.
Under these conditions, liberal circles came to the fore. Numerous political parties arose - the Cadets (constitutional democrats), the Octobrists (Union on October 17). A notable phenomenon was the creation of patriotic organizations - "Black Hundreds". The revolution was on the decline.
In 1906, the central event in the life of the country was no longer the revolutionary movement, but the elections to the Second State Duma. The new Duma could not resist the government and was dispersed in 1907. Since the manifesto on the dissolution of the Duma was promulgated on June 3, the state system in Russia, which held out until February 1917, was named the June Third Monarchy.

Russia in World War I

Russia's participation in the First World War was due to the aggravation of Russian-German contradictions caused by the formation of the Triple Alliance and the Entente. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, was the reason for the outbreak of hostilities. In 1914, simultaneously with the actions of the German troops on the western front, the Russian command launched an invasion of East Prussia. It was stopped by German troops. But in the region of Galicia, the troops of Austria-Hungary suffered a serious defeat. The result of the 1914 campaign was the establishment of equilibrium on the fronts and the transition to trench warfare.
In 1915, the center of gravity of hostilities was shifted to the Eastern Front. From spring to August, the Russian front along its entire length was hacked by German troops. Russian troops were forced to leave Poland, Lithuania and Galicia, suffering heavy losses.
In 1916 the situation changed somewhat. In June, troops under the command of General Brusilov broke through the Austro-Hungarian front in Galicia on Bukovina. This offensive was stopped by the enemy with great difficulty. The military actions of 1917 took place in the context of a clearly imminent political crisis in the country. In Russia, the February bourgeois-democratic revolution took place, as a result of which the Provisional Government, which replaced the autocracy, turned out to be hostage to the previous obligations of tsarism. The course of continuing the war to a victorious end led to an aggravation of the situation in the country and to the coming to power of the Bolsheviks.

Revolutionary 1917

The First World War sharply exacerbated all the contradictions that have been brewing in Russia since the beginning of the 20th century. Human sacrifices, economic collapse, hunger, people's dissatisfaction with the measures of tsarism to overcome the imminent national crisis, the inability of the autocracy to compromise with the bourgeoisie became the main reasons for the February bourgeois revolution of 1917. On February 23, a workers' strike began in Petrograd, which soon grew into an all-Russian strike. The workers were supported by the intelligentsia, students,
army. The peasantry also did not stay away from these events. Already on February 27, power in the capital passed into the hands of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, headed by the Mensheviks.
The Petrosovet completely controlled the army, which soon completely went over to the side of the rebels. Attempts of a punitive campaign, undertaken by the forces withdrawn from the front, were unsuccessful. The soldiers supported the February coup. On March 1, 1917, a Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd, consisting mainly of representatives of the bourgeois parties. Nicholas II abdicated the throne. Thus, the February Revolution overthrew the autocracy, which hindered the progressive development of the country. The relative ease with which the overthrow of tsarism in Russia took place showed how weak the regime of Nicholas II and its support - the landlord-bourgeois circles - were in their attempts to retain power.
The February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917 had a political character. It could not solve the pressing economic, social and national problems of the country. The provisional government did not have real power. An alternative to his power - the Soviets, created at the very beginning of the February events, controlled so far by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, supported the Provisional Government, but could not yet take the leading role in the implementation of radical transformations in the country. But at this stage, the Soviets were supported by both the army and the revolutionary people. Therefore, in March - early July 1917, the so-called dual power took shape in Russia - that is, the simultaneous existence of two powers in the country.
Finally, the petty-bourgeois parties, which then had a majority in the Soviets, ceded power to the Provisional Government as a result of the July crisis of 1917. The fact is that in late June - early July on the Eastern Front, German troops launched a powerful counteroffensive. Not wanting to go to the front, the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison decided to organize an uprising under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and anarchists. The resignation of some ministers of the Provisional Government further inflamed the situation. There was no consensus among the Bolsheviks about what was happening. Lenin and some members of the party's central committee considered the uprising premature.
Mass demonstrations began in the capital on 3 July. Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks tried to direct the actions of the demonstrators in a peaceful direction, armed clashes broke out between the demonstrators and the troops controlled by the Petrograd Soviet. The Provisional Government, having seized the initiative, with the help of troops arriving from the front, took tough measures. The demonstrators were shot. From that moment on, the leadership of the Council gave all power to the Provisional Government.
The dual power ended. The Bolsheviks were forced to go underground. The authorities began a decisive offensive against all those who were dissatisfied with the government's policy.
By the fall of 1917, a nationwide crisis was ripening again in the country, creating the basis for a new revolution. The collapse of the economy, the intensification of the revolutionary movement, the increased authority of the Bolsheviks and support for their actions in various strata of society, the disintegration of the army, which suffered defeat after defeat on the battlefields of the First World War, the growing distrust of the masses in the Provisional Government, as well as an unsuccessful attempt at a military coup undertaken by General Kornilov , - these are the symptoms of the imminent imminence of a new revolutionary explosion.
The gradual Bolshevization of the Soviets, the army, the disappointment of the proletariat and peasantry in the ability of the Provisional Government to find a way out of the crisis made it possible for the Bolsheviks to put forward the slogan "All power to the Soviets", under which they managed to carry out a coup d'etat in Petrograd on October 24-25, 1917, called the Great October Revolution. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on October 25, the transfer of power in the country to the Bolsheviks was announced. The provisional government was arrested. At the congress, the first decrees of the Soviet government - "On Peace", "On Land" were promulgated, the first government of the victorious Bolsheviks was formed - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by V.I. Lenin. On November 2, 1917, Soviet power was established in Moscow. Almost everywhere the army supported the Bolsheviks. By March 1918, a new revolutionary power was established throughout the country.
The creation of the new state apparatus, which at first encountered stubborn resistance from the previous bureaucratic apparatus, was completed by the beginning of 1918. At the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets in January 1918, Russia was proclaimed a republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was established as a federation of Soviet national republics. Its supreme body was the All-Russian Congress of Soviets; In the intervals between congresses, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), which possessed legislative power, worked.
The government - the Council of People's Commissars - exercised executive power through the formed people's commissariats (people's commissariats), while people's courts and revolutionary tribunals exercised judicial power. Special authorities were formed - the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh), which was responsible for regulating the economy and the processes of nationalization of industry, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK) - for the fight against counterrevolution. The main feature of the new state apparatus was the merger of the legislative and executive powers in the country.

For the successful construction of a new state, the Bolsheviks needed peaceful conditions. Therefore, already in December 1917, negotiations began with the command of the German army to conclude a separate peace treaty, which was concluded in March 1918. Its conditions for Soviet Russia were extremely difficult and even humiliating. Russia abandoned Poland, Estonia and Latvia, withdrew its troops from Finland and Ukraine, and yielded to the Transcaucasian region. However, this "obscene", in the words of Lenin himself, peace was urgently needed for the young Soviet republic. Thanks to a peaceful respite, the Bolsheviks managed to carry out the first economic measures in the city and in the countryside - to establish workers' control in industry, begin its nationalization, and begin social transformations in the countryside.
However, the course of the reforms that had begun was interrupted for a long time by a bloody civil war, the beginning of which was laid by the forces of the internal counter-revolution in the spring of 1918. In Siberia, the Cossacks of Ataman Semyonov spoke out against Soviet power, in the south, in the Cossack regions, the Don Army of Krasnov and the Volunteer Army of Denikin were formed
in the Kuban. Socialist-Revolutionary revolts broke out in Murom, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl. Almost simultaneously, the troops of the interventionists landed on the territory of Soviet Russia (in the north - the British, Americans, French, in the Far East - the Japanese, Germany occupied the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states, British troops occupied Baku). In May 1918, a revolt of the Czechoslovak Corps began.
The situation on the fronts of the country was very difficult. Only in December 1918 did the troops of the Red Army manage to stop the advance of General Krasnov's troops on the southern front. From the east, the Bolsheviks were threatened by Admiral Kolchak, who was striving for the Volga. He managed to capture Ufa, Izhevsk and other cities. However, by the summer of 1919, he was driven back to the Urals. As a result of the summer offensive of General Yudenich's troops in 1919, the threat now hung over Petrograd. Only after bloody battles in June 1919 was it possible to eliminate the threat of the seizure of the northern capital of Russia (by this time the Soviet government had moved to Moscow).
However, already in July 1919, as a result of the offensive of General Denikin's troops from the south to the central regions of the country, Moscow has now turned into a military camp. By October 1919, the Bolsheviks had lost Odessa, Kiev, Kursk, Voronezh and Orel. The troops of the Red Army, only at the cost of huge losses, managed to repel the offensive of Denikin's troops.
In November 1919, the troops of Yudenich were finally defeated, who in the course of the autumn offensive again threatened Petrograd. In the winter of 1919-1920. The Red Army liberated Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk. Kolchak was captured and shot. At the beginning of 1920, having liberated the Donbass and Ukraine, the troops of the Red Army drove the White Guards into the Crimea. Only in November 1920 the Crimea was cleared of the troops of General Wrangel. The Polish campaign of the spring-summer of 1920 ended in failure for the Bolsheviks.

From the policy of "war communism" to the new economic policy

The economic policy of the Soviet state during the years of the civil war, aimed at mobilizing all resources for military needs, was called the policy of "war communism". It was a complex of emergency measures in the country's economy, which was characterized by such features as the nationalization of industry, centralization of management, the introduction of food appropriation in the countryside, the prohibition of private trade and equalization in distribution and payment. In the conditions of the ensuing peaceful life, she no longer justified herself. The country was on the verge of economic collapse. Industry, energy, transport, agriculture, as well as the country's finances were experiencing a protracted crisis. The speeches of peasants who were dissatisfied with the surplus appropriation became more frequent. The mutiny in Kronstadt in March 1921 against the Soviet regime showed that the dissatisfaction of the masses with the policy of "War Communism" could threaten its very existence.
The consequence of all these reasons was the decision of the Bolshevik government in March 1921 to go over to the "New Economic Policy" (NEP). This policy provided for the replacement of the surplus appropriation system with a fixed tax in kind for the peasantry, the transfer of state enterprises to self-financing, and the permission of private trade. At the same time, a transition was made from wages in kind to monetary wages, and leveling was abolished. Elements of state capitalism in industry in the form of concessions and the creation of state trusts associated with the market were partially allowed. It was allowed to open small handicraft private enterprises, served by the labor of hired workers.
The main merit of NEP was that the peasant masses finally went over to the side of Soviet power. Conditions were created for the restoration of industry and the beginning of the rise in production. Granting a certain amount of economic freedom to workers gave them the opportunity to show initiative and enterprise. The NEP, in fact, demonstrated the possibility and necessity of a variety of forms of ownership, the recognition of the market and commodity relations in the country's economy.

In 1918-1922. small peoples living compactly on the territory of Russia received autonomy within the RSFSR. Parallel to this, there was the formation of larger national entities - sovereign Soviet republics allied with the RSFSR. By the summer of 1922, the process of unification of the Soviet republics entered its final phase. The Soviet party leadership prepared a project of unification, which provided for the entry of the Soviet republics into the RSFSR as autonomous entities. The author of this project was J.V. Stalin, the then People's Commissar for Nationalities.
Lenin saw in this project an infringement of the national sovereignty of peoples and insisted on the creation of a federation of equal union republics. On December 30, 1922, the First Congress of Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics rejected Stalin's "project of autonomization" and adopted a declaration and treaty on the formation of the USSR, which was based on the plan of a federal structure, on which Lenin insisted.
In January 1924, the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets approved the Constitution of the new union. According to this Constitution, the USSR was a federation of equal sovereign republics that had the right to freely withdraw from the union. At the same time, the representative and executive union bodies were formed at the local level. However, as subsequent events will show, the USSR gradually acquired the character of a unitary state ruled from a single center - Moscow.
With the introduction of the new economic policy, the measures taken by the Soviet government to implement it (denationalization of some enterprises, permission of free trade and hired labor, emphasis on the development of commodity-money and market relations, etc.) came into conflict with the concept of building a socialist society on a commodity-free basis. The priority of politics over the economy, preached by the Bolshevik party, the beginning of the formation of the administrative-command system led to the crisis of the NEP in 1923. In order to increase labor productivity, the state decided to artificially raise prices for manufactured goods. The villagers were unable to afford to purchase manufactured goods, which overcrowded all the warehouses and shops of the cities. The so-called. Overproduction crisis. In response to this, the village began to delay the supply of grain to the state on a tax in kind. Peasant uprisings broke out in some places. New concessions to the peasantry from the state were needed.
Thanks to the successful monetary reform of 1924, the ruble exchange rate was stabilized, which helped to overcome the sales crisis and strengthen trade relations between the city and the countryside. Taxation of peasants in kind was replaced by monetary taxation, which gave them greater freedom in the development of their own economy. On the whole, thus, by the mid-1920s, the process of restoring the national economy was completed in the USSR. The socialist sector of the economy has significantly strengthened its position.
At the same time, the USSR's position in the international arena is improving. In order to break the diplomatic blockade, Soviet diplomacy took an active part in the work of international conferences in the early 1920s. The leadership of the Bolshevik Party hoped to establish economic and political cooperation with the leading capitalist countries.
At an international conference in Genoa devoted to economic and financial issues (1922), the Soviet delegation expressed its readiness to discuss the issue of compensation to former foreign owners in Russia with the condition of recognizing the new state and providing it with international loans. At the same time, the Soviet side put forward counter-proposals to reimburse Soviet Russia for the losses caused by the intervention and blockade during the Civil War. However, during the conference, these issues were not resolved.
But the young Soviet Diplomacy managed to break through the united front of non-recognition of the young Soviet republic from the capitalist encirclement. In Rapallo, suburb
Genoa, it was possible to conclude an agreement with Germany, providing for the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries on the basis of mutual renunciation of all claims. Thanks to this success of Soviet diplomacy, the country entered a period of recognition from the leading capitalist powers. In a short time, diplomatic relations were established with Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Sweden, China, Mexico, France and other states.

Industrialization of the national economy

The need to modernize industry and the entire economy of the country in conditions of capitalist encirclement has become the main task of the Soviet government since the early 1920s. In the same years, the process of strengthening control and regulation of the economy by the state was outlined. This led to the development of the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR. The plan for the first five-year plan, adopted in April 1929, laid down indicators for a sharp, accelerated growth in industrial production.
In this regard, the problem of lack of funds for the implementation of the industrial breakthrough was clearly identified. Investment in new industrial construction was sorely lacking. It was impossible to count on help from abroad. Therefore, one of the sources of the country's industrialization was the resources siphoned off by the state from the still unstable agriculture. Another source was government loans, which were levied on the entire population of the country. In order to pay for foreign supplies of industrial equipment, the state decided to forcibly confiscate gold and other valuables from both the population and the church. Another source of industrialization was the export of the country's natural resources - oil and timber. Grain and furs were also exported.
Against the background of a lack of funds, the country's technical and economic backwardness, and a shortage of qualified personnel, the state began to artificially spur the pace of industrial construction, which led to disproportions, disruption of planning, a discrepancy between wage growth and labor productivity, disruption of the monetary system and rising prices. As a result, there was a shortage of goods, a rationing system for supplying the population was introduced.
The command-administrative system of economic management, accompanied by the formation of the regime of Stalin's personal power, wrote off all the difficulties of implementing industrialization plans at the expense of some enemies that hindered the construction of socialism in the USSR. In 1928-1931. a wave of political processes swept across the country, at which many qualified specialists and managers were condemned as "saboteurs", allegedly holding back the development of the country's economy.
Nevertheless, the first five-year plan, thanks to the broadest enthusiasm of the entire Soviet people, was fulfilled ahead of schedule in terms of its main indicators. Only in the period from 1929 to the end of the 1930s did the USSR make a fantastic leap forward in its industrial development. During this time, about 6 thousand industrial enterprises were commissioned. The Soviet people created an industrial potential that, in terms of its technical equipment and sectoral structure, was not inferior to the level of production of the advanced capitalist countries of that time. And in terms of production, our country took second place after the United States.

Collectivization of agriculture

The acceleration of industrialization, mainly at the expense of the countryside, with an emphasis on basic industries, very quickly exacerbated the contradictions of the new economic policy. The end of the 1920s was marked by her overthrow. This process was stimulated by the fear of the administrative-command structures of the prospect of losing the leadership of the country's economy in their own interests.
Difficulties were growing in the country's agriculture. In a number of cases, the authorities came out of this crisis by the method of violent measures, which was comparable to the practice of war communism and food appropriation. In the fall of 1929, such violent measures against agricultural producers were replaced by compulsory, or, as they said at the time, total collectivization. To this end, with the help of punitive measures, in a short time, all potentially dangerous, as the Soviet leadership believed, elements were removed from the village - kulaks, wealthy peasants, that is, those who could prevent collectivization from developing their personal economy normally and who could resist it.
The destructive nature of the forcible unification of peasants into collective farms forced the authorities to abandon the extremes of this process. Voluntariness began to be observed when joining collective farms. The main form of collective farming was declared to be an agricultural artel, where the collective farmer had the right to a personal plot, small implements and livestock. However, land, cattle and basic agricultural implements were still socialized. In these forms, collectivization in the main grain regions of the country was completed by the end of 1931.
The gain of the Soviet state from collectivization was very important. The roots of capitalism in agriculture were eliminated, as well as unwanted class elements. The country gained independence from the import of a number of agricultural products. The grain sold abroad has become a source for the acquisition of perfect technologies and advanced technology necessary in the course of industrialization.
However, the consequences of the breakdown of the traditional economic structure in the countryside turned out to be very grave. The productive forces of agriculture were undermined. The crop failures of 1932-1933, unreasonably overstated plans for the supply of agricultural products to the state led to famine in a number of regions of the country, the consequences of which were not immediately eliminated.

Culture of the 20-30s

Transformations in the field of culture were one of the tasks of building a socialist state in the USSR. The peculiarities of the implementation of the cultural revolution were determined by the backwardness of the country inherited from the old times, by the uneven economic and cultural development of the peoples that became part of the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik authorities focused on building the public education system, restructuring higher education, enhancing the role of science in the country's economy, and forming a new creative and artistic intelligentsia.
Even during the civil war, the fight against illiteracy began. Since 1931, universal primary education has been introduced. The greatest successes in the field of public education were achieved by the end of the 30s. In the system of higher education, together with the old specialists, measures were taken to create the so-called. "People's intelligentsia" by increasing the number of students from among the workers and peasants. Significant advances have been made in the field of science. Research by N. Vavilov (genetics), V. Vernadsky (geochemistry, biosphere), N. Zhukovsky (aerodynamics) and other scientists became famous all over the world.
Against the backdrop of successes, some areas of science have experienced pressure from the administrative-command system. Significant harm was done to social sciences - history, philosophy, etc., by various ideological cleansing and persecution of their individual representatives. As a result, practically all of the science of that time was subordinated to the ideological ideas of the communist regime.

USSR in the 1930s

By the beginning of the 1930s, the formation of the economic model of society, which can be defined as state-administrative socialism, was taking place in the USSR. According to Stalin and his inner circle, this model should have been based on complete
the nationalization of all means of production in industry, the implementation of collectivization of peasant farms. In these conditions, the command-administrative methods of economic management and management of the country's economy have become very strong.
The priority of ideology over the economy against the background of the domination of the party and state nomenklatura made it possible to industrialize the country by reducing the living standards of its population (both urban and rural). Organizationally, this model of socialism was based on maximum centralization and strict planning. In social terms, it relied on formal democracy with the absolute domination of the party and state apparatus in all areas of the country's population. Directive and non-economic methods of coercion prevailed, the nationalization of the means of production substituted for the socialization of the latter.
Under these conditions, the social structure of Soviet society has changed significantly. By the end of the 1930s, the country's leadership announced that Soviet society, after the liquidation of the capitalist elements, consisted of three friendly classes - workers, collective farm peasants and the people's intelligentsia. Several groups have formed among the workers - a small privileged stratum of highly paid skilled workers and a significant stratum of the main producers who are not interested in the results of labor and, therefore, are poorly paid. The turnover of workers has increased.
In the countryside, the socialized labor of collective farmers was paid very low. Almost half of all agricultural products were grown on small household plots of collective farmers. The collective farm fields themselves yielded significantly less production. The collective farmers were infringed on their political rights. They were deprived of their passports and the right to move freely around the country.
The Soviet people's intelligentsia, the majority of which were unskilled petty employees, was in a more privileged position. It was mainly formed from yesterday's workers and peasants, the ego could not but lead to a decrease in its general educational level.
The new Constitution of the USSR in 1936 found a new reflection of the changes that have taken place in Soviet society and the state structure of the country since the adoption of the first constitution in 1924. It declared declaratively the fact of the victory of socialism in the USSR. The basis of the new Constitution was the principles of socialism - the state of socialist ownership of the means of production, the elimination of exploitation and exploiting classes, labor as an obligation, the duty of every able-bodied citizen, the right to work, rest and other socio-economic and political rights.
The Soviets of Working People's Deputies became the political form of organizing state power in the center and in the localities. The electoral system was also updated: elections became direct, with a secret ballot. The 1936 Constitution was characterized by a combination of new social rights of the population with a whole series of liberal democratic rights - freedom of speech, press, conscience, rallies, demonstrations, etc. It's another matter how consistently these declared rights and freedoms were implemented in practice ...
The new Constitution of the USSR reflected the objective tendency of Soviet society towards democratization, which stemmed from the essence of the socialist system. Thus, she contradicted the already established practice of Stalin's autocracy as the head of the communist party and state. In real life, mass arrests, arbitrariness, and extrajudicial killings continued. These contradictions between word and deed became a characteristic phenomenon in the life of our country in the 1930s. The preparation, discussion and adoption of the new Basic Law of the country was sold simultaneously with falsified political processes, the rampant repression, the violent elimination of prominent party and state leaders who did not accept the regime of personal power and the personality cult of Stalin. The ideological substantiation of these phenomena was his well-known thesis about the aggravation of the class struggle in the country under socialism, which he proclaimed in 1937, which became the most terrible year of mass repressions.
By 1939, virtually all of the "Leninist Guard" had been destroyed. The repressions also affected the Red Army: from 1937 to 1938. about 40 thousand officers of the army and navy were destroyed. Almost the entire top commanding staff of the Red Army was repressed, a significant part of them were shot. The terror affected all strata of Soviet society. The rejection of millions of Soviet people from public life - deprivation of civil rights, removal from office, exile, prisons, camps, the death penalty - became the norm of life.

The international position of the USSR in the 30s

Already at the beginning of the 30s, the USSR established diplomatic relations with most of the countries of the then world, and in 1934 joined the League of Nations - an international organization created in 1919 with the aim of collectively resolving issues in the world community. In 1936, followed by the conclusion of the Franco-Soviet treaty on mutual assistance in the event of aggression. Since in the same year, fascist Germany and Japan signed the so-called. The "anti-Comintern pact", to which Italy later joined, in response to this was the conclusion in August 1937 of a non-aggression pact with China.
The threat to the Soviet Union from the countries of the fascist bloc was growing. Japan provoked two armed conflicts - near Lake Khasan in the Far East (August 1938) and in Mongolia, with which the USSR was bound by an allied treaty (summer 1939). These conflicts were accompanied by significant losses on both sides.
After the conclusion of the Munich Agreement on the severance of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, the distrust of the USSR in the Western countries, which agreed with Hitler's claims to a part of Czechoslovakia, increased. Despite this, Soviet diplomacy did not lose hope of creating a defensive alliance with Britain and France. However, negotiations with the delegations of these countries (August 1939) ended in failure.

This forced the Soviet government to move closer to Germany. On August 23, 1939, a Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed, accompanied by a secret protocol on the delimitation of spheres of influence in Europe. Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Bessarabia were attributed to the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. In the event of the partition of Poland, its Belarusian and Ukrainian territories were to go to the USSR.
Already after the German attack on Poland on September 28, a new treaty was concluded with Germany, according to which Lithuania also withdrew to the sphere of influence of the USSR. Part of the territory of Poland became part of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSR. In August 1940, the Soviet government granted the request to admit three new republics to the USSR - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where pro-Soviet governments came to power. At the same time, Romania yielded to the ultimatum demand of the Soviet government and transferred the territories of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the USSR. Such a significant territorial expansion of the Soviet Union pushed its borders far to the west, which in the face of the threat of invasion from Germany should be assessed as a positive moment.
Similar actions by the USSR against Finland led to an armed conflict that escalated into the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. In the course of heavy winter battles, the troops of the Red Army only in February 1940, with great difficulty and losses, were able to overcome the defensive "Mannerheim line" that was considered impregnable. Finland was forced to transfer the entire Karelian Isthmus to the USSR, which significantly pushed the border away from Leningrad.

The Great Patriotic War

The signing of a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany only delayed the start of the war for a short time. On June 22, 1941, having gathered a colossal invading army - 190 divisions, Germany and its allies fell upon the Soviet Union without declaring war. The USSR was not ready for war. The miscalculations of the war with Finland were slowly eliminated. Serious damage to the army and the country was caused by the Stalinist repressions of the 30s. The situation was no better with the technical support. Despite the fact that Soviet engineering thought created many samples of perfect military equipment, little was sent to the active army, and its mass production was just getting better.
The summer and autumn of 1941 were the most critical for the Soviet Union. Fascist troops invaded a depth of 800 to 1200 kilometers, blockaded Leningrad, came dangerously close to Moscow, occupied most of the Donbass and Crimea, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, almost all of Ukraine and a number of regions of the RSFSR. Many people died, the infrastructure of many cities and towns was completely destroyed. However, the enemy was opposed by the courage and strength of the spirit of the people and the material capabilities of the country that were set in motion. A massive resistance movement developed everywhere: partisan detachments were created behind enemy lines, and later even entire formations.
Having bled the German troops in heavy defensive battles, the Soviet troops in the battle near Moscow launched an offensive in early December 1941, which continued in some directions until April 1942. This dispelled the myth of the invincibility of the enemy. The international prestige of the USSR has sharply increased.
On October 1, 1941, a conference of representatives of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain ended in Moscow, at which the foundations for the creation of an anti-Hitler coalition were laid. Agreements were signed on the supply of military aid. And already on January 1, 1942, 26 states signed the Declaration of the United Nations. An anti-Hitler coalition was created, and its leaders decided the issues of waging war and the democratic structure of the post-war order at joint conferences in Tehran in 1943, as well as in Yalta and Potsdam in 1945.
At the beginning and in the middle of 1942, a very difficult situation again developed for the Red Army. Taking advantage of the absence of a second front in Western Europe, the German command concentrated maximum forces against the USSR. The successes of the German troops at the beginning of the offensive were the result of an underestimation of their strengths and capabilities, the result of an unsuccessful attempt by the Soviet troops near Kharkov and gross miscalculations of the command. The fascists were eager for the Caucasus and the Volga. On November 19, 1942, the Soviet troops, which had stopped them in Stalingrad at the cost of colossal enemy losses, launched a counteroffensive, which ended with the encirclement and complete elimination of more than 330,000 enemy forces.
However, a radical change in the course of the Great Patriotic War came only in 1943. One of the main events of this year was the victory of the Soviet troops in the Battle of Kursk. This was one of the largest battles of the war. In only one tank battle in the Prokhorovka area, the enemy lost 400 tanks and more than 10 thousand people were killed. Germany and its allies were forced from active operations to go on the defensive.
In 1944, an offensive Belorussian operation, codenamed "Bagration", was carried out on the Soviet-German front. As a result of its implementation, Soviet troops reached their former state border. The enemy was not only expelled from the country, but also the liberation of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe from Nazi captivity began. And on June 6, 1944, the Allies who landed in Normandy opened a second front.
In Europe in the winter of 1944-1945. during the Ardennes operation, Hitler's troops inflicted a serious defeat on the allies. The situation took on a catastrophic nature, and the Soviet army helped them out of the difficult situation, which began a large-scale Berlin operation. In April-May, this operation was completed, and our troops seized the capital of Nazi Germany by storm. A historic meeting of the Allies took place on the Elbe River. The German command was forced to surrender. In the course of its offensive operations, the Soviet army made a decisive contribution to the liberation of the occupied countries from the fascist regime. And on May 8 and 9 in the majority
European countries and the Soviet Union began to be celebrated as Victory Day.
However, the war was not over yet. On the night of August 9, 1945, the USSR, faithful to its allied obligations, entered the war with Japan. The offensive in Manchuria against the Japanese Kwantung Army and its defeat forced the Japanese government to admit final defeat. On September 2, the act of surrender of Japan was signed. So after six long years, the Second World War was over. On October 20, 1945, a trial began in the German city of Nuremberg against the main war criminals.

Soviet rear during the war

At the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Nazis managed to occupy the industrially and agriculturally developed regions of the country, which were its main military-industrial and food base. However, the Soviet economy was able not only to withstand the extreme stress, but also to triumph over the economy of the enemy. In an unprecedentedly short time, the economy of the Soviet Union was rebuilt on a war footing and turned into a well-oiled war economy.
Already in the first days of the war, a significant number of industrial enterprises from the front-line territories were prepared for evacuation to the eastern regions of the country in order to create the main arsenal for the needs of the front. The evacuation was carried out in an extremely short time, often under fire from the enemy and under the blows of his aircraft. The most important force that made it possible to quickly restore evacuated enterprises in new places, build new industrial capacities and start producing products intended for the front is the selfless labor of the Soviet people, which gave unprecedented examples of labor heroism.
In mid-1942, the USSR had a rapidly growing military economy capable of meeting all the needs of the front. During the war years in the USSR, the extraction of iron ore increased by 130%, the production of pig iron - by almost 160%, steel - by 145%. In connection with the loss of Donbass and the enemy's access to the oil-bearing sources of the Caucasus, vigorous measures were taken to increase the production of coal, oil and other types of fuel in the eastern regions of the country. Light industry worked with great stress, which, after 1942, which was difficult for the entire national economy, in the next year, 1943, managed to fulfill the plan to supply the warring army with everything necessary. The transport also worked at full load. From 1942 to 1945 the freight turnover of railway transport alone increased by almost one and a half times.
The military industry of the USSR with each war year provided more and more small arms, artillery weapons, tanks, aircraft, ammunition. Thanks to the selfless work of the home front workers, by the end of 1943 the Red Army was already superior to the fascist in all combat means. All this was the result of the stubborn single combat of two different economic systems and the efforts of the entire Soviet people.

The meaning and cost of the victory of the Soviet people over fascism

It was the Soviet Union, its fighting army and people that became the main force that blocked the path of German fascism to world domination. On the Soviet-German front, over 600 fascist divisions were destroyed, the enemy army lost here three-quarters of its aviation, a significant part of tanks and artillery.
The Soviet Union rendered decisive assistance to the peoples of Europe in their struggle for national independence. As a result of the victory over fascism, the balance of power in the world has drastically changed. The authority of the Soviet Union in the international arena has grown considerably. In the countries of Eastern Europe, power passed to the governments of people's democracy, the system of socialism went beyond the borders of one country. The economic and political isolation of the USSR was eliminated. The Soviet Union has become a great world power. This became the main reason for the emergence of a new geopolitical situation in the world, characterized in the future by the confrontation between two different systems - socialist and capitalist.
The war against fascism brought innumerable losses and destruction to our country. Almost 27 million Soviet people died, of which more than 10 million were killed on the battlefields. About 6 million of our compatriots were in fascist captivity, 4 million of them died. Almost 4 million partisans and underground fighters perished behind enemy lines. The grief of irrecoverable losses came to almost every Soviet family.
During the war years, more than 1,700 cities and about 70 thousand villages and villages were completely destroyed. Almost 25 million people lost their roof over their heads. Such large cities as Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov and others were subjected to significant destruction, and some of them, for example Minsk, Stalingrad, Rostov-on-Don, were completely in ruins.
A truly tragic situation has developed in the village. About 100 thousand collective and state farms were destroyed by the invaders. The sown area has decreased significantly. Livestock has suffered. In terms of its technical equipment, the country's agriculture was thrown back to the level of the first half of the 30s. The country has lost about a third of its national wealth. The damage caused by the war to the Soviet Union exceeded the losses during the Second World War of all other European countries combined.

Restoring the economy of the USSR in the post-war years

The main tasks of the fourth five-year plan for the development of the national economy (1946-1950) were the restoration of the regions of the country destroyed and devastated by the war, and the achievement of the pre-war level of development of industry and agriculture. At first, the Soviet people faced enormous difficulties in this area - a shortage of food, difficulties in rebuilding agriculture, aggravated by a severe crop failure in 1946, problems of transferring industry to a peaceful track, and a massive demobilization of the army. All this did not allow the Soviet leadership until the end of 1947 to exercise control over the country's economy.
However, already in 1948 the volume of industrial production still exceeded the pre-war level. Back in 1946, the level of 1940 for the production of electricity was blocked, in 1947 - for coal, in the next 1948 - for steel and cement. By 1950, a significant part of the indicators of the fourth five-year plan had been realized. In the west of the country, almost 3,200 industrial enterprises were put into operation. Thus, the main emphasis was placed, as in the course of the pre-war five-year plans, on the development of industry, and above all, heavy industry.
The Soviet Union did not have to rely on the help of its former Western allies in rebuilding its industrial and agricultural potential. Therefore, only their own internal resources and the hard work of the entire people became the main sources of restoration of the country's economy. Massive investments in industry grew. Their volume significantly exceeded the investments that were directed to the national economy in the 30s during the first five-year plans.
With all the close attention to heavy industry, the situation in agriculture has not yet improved. Moreover, one can speak of its protracted crisis in the post-war period. The decline of agriculture forced the country's leadership to turn to methods that had been proven back in the 30s, which concerned, first of all, the restoration and strengthening of collective farms. The leadership demanded the fulfillment of plans at any cost, which were based not on the capabilities of the collective farms, but on the needs of the state. Control over agriculture was again sharply strengthened. The peasantry was under heavy tax burden. Purchase prices for agricultural products were very low; peasants received very little for their labor on collective farms. As before, they were deprived of their passports and freedom of movement.
And yet, by the end of the fourth five-year plan, the grave consequences of the war in the field of agriculture were partially overcome. Despite this, agriculture still remained a kind of "pain point" of the entire economy of the country and required a radical reorganization, for which, unfortunately, in the post-war period there were neither funds nor strength.

Foreign policy in the post-war years (1945-1953)

The victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War led to a serious change in the balance of forces in the international arena. The USSR acquired significant territories both in the West (part of East Prussia, Transcarpathian regions, etc.) and in the East (South Sakhalin, Kuriles). The influence of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe grew. Immediately after the end of the war, communist governments were formed here in a number of countries (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc.) with the support of the USSR. A revolution took place in China in 1949, as a result of which the communist regime also came to power.
All this could not but lead to a confrontation between the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. In the conditions of tough confrontation and rivalry between two different socio-political and economic systems - socialist and capitalist, called the "cold war", the USSR government made great efforts in pursuing its policy and ideology in those states of Western Europe and Asia, which it considered objects of its influence ... The split of Germany into two states - the FRG and the GDR, the Berlin crisis of 1949 marked the final break between the former allies and the division of Europe into two hostile camps.
After the formation of the military-political alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) in 1949, a single line began to take shape in the economic and political relations between the USSR and the countries of people's democracies. For these purposes, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) was created, which coordinated the economic relations of the socialist countries, and in order to strengthen their defense capability, their military bloc (Warsaw Pact Organization) was formed in 1955 as a counterweight to NATO.
After the United States lost its monopoly on nuclear weapons, in 1953 the Soviet Union was the first to test a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb. The process of rapid creation in both countries - the Soviet Union and the United States - began more and more new carriers of nuclear weapons and more modern weapons - the so-called. arms race.
This is how the global rivalry between the USSR and the United States arose. This most difficult period in the history of modern mankind, called the Cold War, showed how two opposing political and socio-economic systems fought for dominance and influence in the world and prepared for a new, now all-destructive war. It split the world in two. Now everything began to be viewed through the prism of tough confrontation and rivalry.

The death of J.V. Stalin became a milestone in the development of our country. The totalitarian system created in the 30s, which was characterized by the features of state-administrative socialism with the domination of the party-state nomenklatura in all its links, had already exhausted itself by the beginning of the 50s. It required a radical change. The process of de-Stalinization, which began in 1953, developed in a very complex and contradictory manner. In the end, it led to the coming to power of N.S. Khrushchev, who in September 1953 became the de facto head of the country. His desire to abandon the former repressive methods of leadership won the sympathy of many honest communists and the majority of the Soviet people. At the 20th Congress of the CPSU, held in February 1956, the policy of Stalinism was sharply criticized. Khrushchev's report to the delegates of the congress, later, in milder terms, published in the press, revealed the perversions of the ideals of socialism that Stalin made during almost thirty years of his dictatorial rule.
The process of de-Stalinization of Soviet society was highly inconsistent. He did not touch upon the essential aspects of the formation and development
tia of a totalitarian regime in our country. N.S. Khrushchev himself was a typical product of this regime, only realizing the potential inability of the previous leadership to preserve it in an unchanged form. His attempts to democratize the country were doomed to failure, since in any case, the real activity to implement changes in both the political and economic line of the USSR fell on the shoulders of the former state and party apparatus, which did not want any radical changes.
At the same time, however, many victims of Stalin's repressions were rehabilitated, some of the country's peoples, repressed by Stalin's regime, were able to return to their former places of residence. Their autonomy was restored. The most notorious representatives of the country's punitive authorities were removed from power. Khrushchev's report to the 20th Party Congress confirmed the country's previous political course, aimed at finding opportunities for peaceful coexistence of countries with different political systems, at defusing international tension. It is characteristic that it already recognized various ways of building a socialist society.
The fact of public condemnation of Stalin's arbitrariness had a tremendous impact on the life of the entire Soviet people. Changes in the life of the country led to the undermining of the system of state, barracks socialism, built in the USSR. The total control of the authorities over all areas of life of the population of the Soviet Union was becoming a thing of the past. It was these changes, already uncontrolled by the authorities, in the former political system of society that caused them to strive to strengthen the authority of the party. In 1959, at the 21st Congress of the CPSU, the entire Soviet people were told that socialism had won a complete and final victory in the USSR. The statement that our country had entered the period of "extensive construction of communist society" was confirmed by the adoption of a new program of the CPSU, which set out in detail the tasks of building the foundations of communism in the Soviet Union by the beginning of the 80s of our century.

The collapse of the Khrushchev leadership. Return to the system of totalitarian socialism

NS Khrushchev, like any reformer of the socio-political system that had developed in the USSR, was very vulnerable. He had to change her, relying on her own resources. Therefore, the numerous, not always well-thought-out reformatory initiatives of this typical representative of the administrative-command system could not, to a significant extent, not only change it, but even undermine it. All his attempts to "cleanse socialism" of the consequences of Stalinism were unsuccessful. Having ensured the return of power to the party structures, returning the party-state nomenclature to its significance and saving it from potential repressions, N.S. Khrushchev fulfilled his historic mission.
The aggravated food difficulties of the early 60s, if not turned the entire population of the country into dissatisfied with the actions of the previously energetic reformer, then at least determined indifference to his future fate. Therefore, the removal of Khrushchev in October 1964 from the post of leader of the country by the forces of the highest representatives of the Soviet party and state nomenklatura passed quite calmly and without excesses.

The growing difficulties of the country's socio-economic development

At the end of the 60s - in the 70s, there was a gradual slide of the USSR economy towards the stagnation of almost all of its branches. A steady decline in its main economic indicators was evident. The economic development of the USSR looked especially unfavorable against the background of the world economy, which at that time was significantly progressing. The Soviet economy continued to reproduce its industrial structures with an emphasis on traditional industries, in particular on the export of fuel and energy
resources. This undoubtedly caused significant damage to the development of science-intensive technologies and sophisticated technology, the share of which has significantly decreased.
The extensive nature of the development of the Soviet economy significantly limited the solution of social problems associated with the concentration of funds in heavy industry and the military-industrial complex, the social sphere of life of the population of our country during the period of stagnation was out of sight of the government. The country gradually plunged into a severe crisis, and all attempts to avoid it were unsuccessful.

An attempt to accelerate the socio-economic development of the country

By the end of the 70s, for a part of the Soviet leadership and millions of Soviet citizens, it became obvious that it was impossible to preserve the order that existed in the country without changes. The last years of Leonid Brezhnev's rule, who came to power after the removal of N.S. Khrushchev, passed against the background of a crisis in the economic and social spheres in the country, the growth of apathy and indifference of the people, and the deformed morality of those in power. The symptoms of decay were clearly felt in all areas of life. Some attempts to find a way out of the current situation were undertaken by the new leader of the country - Yu.V. Andropov. Although he was a typical representative and a sincere supporter of the previous system, nevertheless, some of his decisions and actions had already shaken the previously indisputable ideological dogmas, which did not allow his predecessors to carry out, although theoretically justified, but practically failed reformist attempts.
The new leadership of the country, relying mainly on tough administrative measures, tried to bet on establishing order and discipline in the country, on eradicating corruption, which had hit all levels of government by this time. This gave a temporary success - the economic indicators of the country's development improved somewhat. Some of the most odious functionaries were removed from the leadership of the party and government, and criminal cases were opened against many leaders in high positions.
The change in political leadership after the death of Yu.V. Andropov in 1984 showed how great the power of the nomenklatura is. The new General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, terminally ill K.U. Chernenko, seemed to personify the system that his predecessor was trying to reform. The country was still developing as if by inertia, the people indifferently watched Chernenko's attempts to return the USSR to the Brezhnev order. Numerous undertakings of Andropov were curtailed to revive the economy, renew and purge leading personnel.
In March 1985, M.S. Gorbachev, a representative of a relatively young and ambitious wing of the country's party leadership, came to the country's leadership. On his initiative, in April 1985, a new strategic course for the country's development was proclaimed, aimed at accelerating its socio-economic development on the basis of scientific and technological progress, technical re-equipment of mechanical engineering and the activation of the "human factor". At first, its implementation was able to somewhat improve the economic indicators of the development of the USSR.
In February-March 1986, the 27th Congress of Soviet Communists took place, the number of which by this time amounted to 19 million. At the congress, held in a traditional ceremonial setting, a new version of the party program was adopted, from which the unfulfilled tasks of building the foundations of a communist society in the USSR by 1980 were removed. elections, plans were outlined to solve the housing problem by 2000. It was at this congress that a course was put forward for the restructuring of all aspects of the life of Soviet society, but specific mechanisms for its implementation had not yet been worked out, and it was perceived as an ordinary ideological slogan.

The collapse of perestroika. The collapse of the USSR

The course of perestroika, proclaimed by the Gorbachev leadership, was accompanied by slogans of accelerating the country's economic development and glasnost, freedom of speech in the field of social life of the population of the USSR. The economic freedom of enterprises, the expansion of their independence and the revival of the private sector have resulted in rising prices for the majority of the country's population, a shortage of basic goods and a drop in living standards. The policy of glasnost, at first perceived as a sound criticism of all negative phenomena of Soviet society, led to an uncontrollable process of denigrating the country's entire past, the emergence of new ideological and political trends and parties, alternative to the course of the CPSU.
At the same time, the Soviet Union is radically changing its foreign policy - now it was aimed at easing tensions between the West and the East, settling regional wars and conflicts, expanding economic and political ties with all states. The Soviet Union ended the war in Afghanistan, improved relations with China, the United States, promoted the unification of Germany, etc.
The disintegration of the administrative-command system generated by the perestroika processes in the USSR, the abolition of the previous levers of government in the country and its economy significantly worsened the life of the Soviet people and radically influenced the further deterioration of the economic situation. Centrifugal tendencies were growing in the union republics. Moscow could no longer strictly control the situation in the country. The market reforms proclaimed in a number of decisions of the country's leadership could not be understood by ordinary people, since they further worsened the already low level of well-being of the people. Inflation intensified, prices on the "black market" rose, and there was a shortage of goods and products. Workers' strikes and interethnic conflicts became frequent occurrences. Under these conditions, representatives of the former party and state nomenklatura attempted a coup d'etat - the removal of Gorbachev from the post of president of the collapsing Soviet Union. The failure of the August 1991 putsch showed the impossibility of reviving the old political system. The very fact of the attempted coup d'état was the result of Gorbachev's inconsistent and ill-considered policy, leading the country to collapse. In the days following the putsch, many former Soviet republics declared their full independence, and the three Baltic republics won recognition from the USSR as well. The activity of the CPSU was suspended. Gorbachev, having lost all the levers of governing the country and the authority of a party and state leader, left the post of President of the USSR.

Russia at a turning point

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the fact that in December 1991 the American president congratulated his people on the victory in the Cold War. The Russian Federation, which became the legal successor of the former USSR, inherited all the difficulties in the economy, social life and political relations of the former world power. Russian President Boris Yeltsin, with difficulty maneuvering between various political currents and parties in the country, made a bet on a group of reformers who took a tough course towards carrying out market reforms in the country. The practice of ill-considered privatization of state property, the appeal for financial assistance to international organizations and major powers in the West and East have significantly worsened the overall situation in the country. Non-payment of wages, criminal clashes at the state level, uncontrolled division of state property, falling living standards of the people with the formation of a very small stratum of super-rich citizens - this is the result of the policy of the current leadership of the country. Great trials await Russia. But the entire history of the Russian people shows that their creative powers and intellectual potential will in any case overcome modern difficulties.

Russian history. Pupil's short guide - Publishing houses: Slovo, OLMA-PRESS Education, 2003

„Before us, the land of Rus was not a thousand years,
but there have been many thousands, and there will be more,
for we have saved our land from the enemies! "

Prince Kiy

INTRODUCTION

Studying the history of my native country, I had the opportunity to get acquainted with a sufficient number of materials that, in various aspects, illuminate the distant past of Russia.

In the printed literature there are a large number of interpretations of the origin and evolution of the Russian people and the emergence of the first statehood on Russian soil.

This is a natural process when researchers try to get to the bottom of the truth. Means, many of them are not satisfied with the current state of affairs in Russian history, which means that there are enough facts that do not fit into the version of the history of the Russian state offered by academic science.

And what does our science offer? The clearest example of the academic point of view on Russian history is the book “History. Complete course "(multimedia tutor for preparing for the exam, 2013 edition).

Introducing this book, I will simply quote a few excerpts from it that will allow you the reader to understand the essence of the academic concept of the history of Russia, offered by our the science ... I would add that he not only offers, but also defends his point of view with all the administrative resources available to science.

So, I am quoting….

« The oldest history of the Slavs contains a lot RIDDLES (emphasized by the author and further), but from the standpoint of modern historians it boils down to the following.

First, in the 3rd - middle of the 2nd millennium BC. SOME Proto-Indo-European community from UNCLEAR areas around the Black Sea (possibly from the peninsula of Asia Minor) moved to Europe».

And further. " There are several versions of historians about the place where exactly the Slavic community was formed.(theories of the emergence of the Slavs): the first was put forward the Carpathian-Danube theory(the homeland of the Slavs is the area between the Carpathians and the Danube), in the XX century. was born and became the main Vistula-Oder theory(the Slavs arose north of the Carpathians), then academician B. Rybakov put forward a compromise theory according to which the Slavs arose SOMEWHERE in Eastern Europe - from the Elbe to the Dnieper. Finally, there is a version that the ancestral home of the Slavs was the Eastern Black Sea region, and their ancestors - one of the branches of the Scythians - Scythians-Pahari». Etc.

To this it is also necessary to add the explanation of the name of the Slavs produced in the book - "comes from the words" word "and" to know ", that is, it means people whose language is understandable, in contrast to the" Germans "(kind of dumb) - that is how the Slavs called foreigners" ... Agree, all this is very interesting and even entertaining.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but all these arguments like - RIDDLES, SOME, UNCLEAR, SOMEONE, not only do not satisfy, but also suggest that this is some kind of deliberate distortion of the available facts.

I proceed from the premise that academic science should have the strength and means to understand and bring clarity and certainty to our history. Judging by the above, there is no clarity and no certainty. Why science does not, but I have, though not complete, but extensive information about the ancient history of the Russian people. And I presented my concept of Russian history in the manuscript "On the Ancient History of Russia."

Really, among our Russian scientists-historians there is not a single patriot, not a single decent person who would criticize the lies that have been imposed on us all for about 300 years, and would professionally unravel the "riddles" posed by science. Otherwise, it is not science. What I presented to you above cannot be called science.

Where in the word SLAVS is there or is there a meaning "word" ??? Where can we conclude about the presence in the word SLAVS meaning "to be in charge" ??? SLAVS- means "glorious". This is the direct and most correct message that comes to mind, and this value is already about 5 thousand years old (if not more). And that's why "glorious", this must be dealt with. But we have an answer to this question.

Ibid, in the book “History. Full course "explained VERSIONS the origin of the word "Rus": ": ... either from the name of the Ros river - the right tributary of the Dnieper(this version was proposed by academician B. Rybakov, but today it is considered obsolete), either from the name of the Vikings(according to the chronicle of Nestor), either from the word Roots, which means"Boat rowers", which was then transformed into"Ruotsi" (modern version) ".

Dear Sirs Scientists - Fear God! Talk about such things in the 21st century. And the worst thing is that our children are hammered by this, deliberately forming in them an inferiority complex and dependence on the West.

The book presented is further noted. " The most important source about the events of Russian history from ancient times to the beginning of the 12th century. - the first Russian chronicle(the oldest surviving) - "The Tale of Bygone Years", the first edition of which was created by the monk of the Kiev-Pechora monastery Nestor around 1113.". And on this "Document"(why in quotes it will be clear a little later) academic science builds its own concept of the history of Russia.

Yes, there are many other interesting documents that illuminate our ancient history. But for some reason it is Nestor's chronicle that is the main one among the academicians.

Let's see what historians rely on in their delusion. The main message of official science is as follows. The Russian princely dynasty originated in Novgorod.

In 859, the northern Slavic tribes expelled the Varangian-Normans ("northern people"), immigrants from Scandinavia, across the sea, who had recently imposed tribute on them. However, civil wars begin in Novgorod. To end the bloodshed, in 862, at the invitation of the Novgorodians, the Varangian prince Rurik came to "reign". The Norman squad with its leader was a stabilizing factor in the struggle for power between the boyar clans. "

We put forward our counterarguments to this point of view, refuting dogmas of academic science:

The Russian princely dynasty originated long before the appearance of Rurik in Novgorod. Before that, Gostomysl ruled there, who was the 19th (!!!) in a row the prince from the famous prince Vandal (Vandalarius - 365 year of birth)

Rurik was the grandson of Gostomysl (the son of Gostomysl's middle daughter), which means that Rurik was Russian by blood.

There were no internecine wars in Novgorod. After the death of Gostomysl, his eldest grandson Vadim sat down to reign there. And Rurik was invited only to reign in Ladoga.

Rurik's squad was a destabilizing factor in Russia, with the help of which Rurik and his relatives seized power in Novgorod by force.

Not a single sane person would dream of inviting a stranger to reign, who has nothing to do with the current dynasty of princes, and even more so from some of the Normans who had just been expelled from the country across the sea and who were paid tribute.

All the arguments presented will be revealed a little later. But even this is enough to demonstrate that the “most important source” of academic science does not correspond in its content to real events. To this we can also briefly add that Dir and Askold had nothing to do with Rurik, they were not Varangians and even more so brothers, as our historical science presents us.

What is the "Tale of Bygone Years"? This is most likely a literary work, not a chronicle.

The chronicler Nestor focuses on the baptism of Rus by Prince Vladimir from the Rurik family. All events before baptism prepare the reader for this culmination, all subsequent ones remind of its importance. Russia appears to emerge from the darkness of the past nothingness shortly before its baptism.

The author of the "Tale ..." is not very interested in the pre-Christian past of the Slavs, although at his disposal then, 1000 years before us, he probably had historical information, various myths and legends, and possibly manuscripts inherited from the pagan era. It is on such materials and information that have survived from those times that we will then build the real history of ancient Russia. It turns out that Nestor deliberately distorted the history of the Russian people, and in other words was fulfilling someone's order.

Move on. Once the chronicle speaks of the events of the XII century, the author did not live earlier. But this raises the question: how could the author, living in a Kiev monastery in the 12th century, know what was in Veliky Novgorod in the 9th century, given the enormous difficulties of the roads of that time and the "illiteracy" of the whole country?

There is only one answer - I just couldn't! !! Therefore, the entire Nestorov Chronicle is a simple composition from the words of others or from rumors and later times. And this is convincingly proved in the book by S. Valyansky and D. Kalyuzhny "The Forgotten History of Russia".

It says that “the oldest of all the copies of the Tale of Bygone Years, the Radziwilovsky, was made only at the beginning of the 17th century. Its pages contain traces of the rough work of the forger, who tore out one sheet, inserted a sheet about the vocation of the Varangians and prepared a place for inserting the lost "chronological sheet". And this material, fabricated by someone, is taken as a source of knowledge ???

And for the reader, it will be even more surprising to find out what this list has found, i.e. presented to the whole world, our tsar Peter Alekseevich, about whom in famous circles there have been rumors for a long time that the tsar is "not real". I mean the moment of the "substitution" of the real Tsar Peter, who went to study in Holland, accompanied by 20 (!!!) noble children, and returned from there with only one Menshikov, while all the others either died or disappeared in flourishing years in Holland. Interesting, isn't it.

In their research, S. Valyansky and D. Kalyuzhny highlighted another interesting fact in the chronicle, which concerns the sexual maturity of our ancestors.

It turns out that in comparison with other princely dynasties, for example, Germany and England, "our princes in the period from X to XII century reached sexual maturity only in the thirtieth year of their life." This is so late in comparison with other dynasties that "it is impossible to believe such a chronology, which means that the chronicles depicting the activities of representatives of these dynasties cannot be considered reliable either."

There are other important points related to the content of the chronicle. For example, in the annals of Nestor, information about comets, eclipses of the moon and the sun was not noted or were shifted in time. Also in the annals there is no information about the Crusades and, especially about "the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidels." " What monk would not rejoice over this and would not devote not one, but many pages to this day as a joyful event for the entire Christian world?»

But if the chronicler did not see the celestial eclipses that took place before his eyes, and did not know about the events that thundered all over the world during his lifetime, then how could he know anything about the prince, who was summoned 250 years before him? In any case, the so-called "initial chronicle" passes entirely to the position of the late apocrypha ", i.e. essay, the authorship of which is not confirmed and is unlikely. Here are the things.

We will also refer to the opinion of our first historian V. Tatishchev. He noted that "all Russian historians considered Nestor the chronicler as the first and foremost writer." But V. Tatishchev did not understand why Nestor himself did not mention any ancient authors, including about Bishop Joachim.

V. Tatishchev was sure, and from the legends it was clear that the ancient stories were written, but did not come down to us. The historian believed unequivocally that long before Nestor there were writers, for example, Joachim of Novgorod. But his story for some reason remained unknown to Nestor.

And it is quite undeniable, in the opinion of V. Tatishchev, that the Polish authors had (i.e. existed) Joachim's story, since Nestor did not mention many cases, while the northern (Polish) authors did. V. Tatishchev also noted that “ all the manuscripts that he had, although they had a beginning from Nestor, but in continuation, none of them exactly coincided with the other, in one it is, in the other the other is added or reduced ».

E. Klassen thoroughly analyzed the question of what is the basis of the conviction about the beginning of the independence of the Russian people or about its statehood only from the time of the vocation of Rurik. On the chronicle of Nestor or on the conclusion about his legend L. Schletser.

From the chronicle, the author himself believed, it is clear and undoubtedly clear that the tribes who summoned the Varangians, led a political life, state, since they already constituted a union, a community of 4 tribes - Rus, Chudi, Slavs, Krivichi, which occupied up to 1 million square miles in the northeastern corner of Europe and had cities - Novgorod, Staraya Ladoga, Staraya Rusu, Smolensk, Rostov, Polotsk, Belozersk, Izborsk, Lyubech, Pskov, Vyshgorod, Pereyaslavl.

The Bavarian geographer counted 148 (!) Cities among the Eastern Slavs... Among the savages, E. Klassen believed, and we agree with him, for such a length of life, one cannot even assume mutual relations, and even less unity of thoughts, which was expressed in Russia, Chudi, Slavs and Krivichi regarding the challenge of princes to the throne ... And the most important thing, savages have no cities!

S. Lesnoy also mentioned Nestor in his research. He noted that “ Nestor wrote not so much the history of Russia or southern Russia as the Rurik dynasty. As a comparison with the Joachim and the 3rd Novgorod chronicles shows, Nestor deliberately narrowed his history down. The history of the north, i.e. He almost passed over Novgorod Rus in silence.

He was the chronicler of the Rurik dynasty, and his tasks did not include the description of other dynasties, so he omitted the history of southern Russia, which has nothing to do with the Rurik dynasty. And most importantly, information about pre-Oleg Russia could have been preserved by pagan priests or persons clearly hostile to Christianity. But it was monks like Nestor who destroyed the slightest traces reminiscent of paganism. ».

And: " Nestor kept silent about this reign(Gostomysla), just by mentioning the fact itself. And one can understand why: he wrote the chronicle of southern, Kiev, Rus, and the history of the northern did not interest him. It took him away from the tasks assigned to him by the church.

This is evident from the fact that he considered Oleg the first prince in Russia. He does not consider Rurik a Russian prince, because Novgorod was not called Russian at that time, but was called Slovenian. Perhaps Nestor would not have mentioned Rurik at all, if not for his son Igor: it was impossible not to say who his father was. "

This is the actual state of affairs with our ancient history. The primary foundation of our state history in academic science is the "Tale of Bygone Years", which, in fact, is falsified document - forgery.

They consolidated this state of affairs with our history further Foreigners summoned by the sovereigns to write Russian history. Not only did they not know Russian, but they openly despised everything Russian, the country in which they lived.

The clearest example is Academician L. Schletser (1735 - 1809). Let us present one of Schletzer's "conclusions" regarding the most ancient Russian history (we are talking about the 7th century !!!):

« A terrible emptiness reigns everywhere in central and northern Russia. Not the slightest trace of cities anywhere that now adorn Russia. Nowhere is there any memorable name that would provide the spirit of the historian with excellent pictures of the past. Where beautiful fields now delight the eye of the astonished traveler, there used to be only dark forests and swamps. Where now enlightened people have united in peaceful societies, wild animals lived there before and half-wild people ».

Let us briefly summarize what has been said. Nestor was the ideologist of the Rurik princes, the personification of their interests. To recognize that the Novgorod princes are older than the Rurikovichs, that the Russian princely dynasty existed long before Rurik, - was considered unacceptable.

This undermined the right of the Rurikids to primordial power, and therefore it was mercilessly rooted out. That is why in the "Tale of Bygone Years" there is not a word about Slovenia and Ruse, which marked the beginning of Russian statehood on the banks of the Volkhov.

In the same way, Nestor ignores the last prince of the Doryurik dynasty - Gostomysla, a person who is absolutely historical and mentioned in other primary sources, not to mention information from oral folk legends.

That is why "The Tale of Bygone Years" can in no way be considered a source about our antiquity, and our historical science is obliged to recognize this fact and in the shortest possible time create a real true history our state. Our society needs this so much, it will greatly help in the moral education of our youth, not to mention the fundamental position - without knowing the past, you cannot build the future!

We have previously prepared two manuscripts about the facts of the most ancient Russian history and statehood among the Rus: "On the Ancient History of Russia" and "The History of the Rusich according to the Veles Book".

It presents convincing evidence of the high culture of the ancient Slavs and the presence of statehood among our ancestors long before the arrival of Rurik in Novgorod. In this study, it is supposed to continue work in this direction in order to present a version of the history of the Russian people from ancient times based on factual data.

In this work, we will rely mainly on chronicle materials that were not widely circulated and are not perceived by academic science as historical sources. Among them: "The Legend of Slovenia and Ruse", "Veles's Book", "Budinsky Izbornik", "Genealogy of the Slavic-Russian people, its kings, elders and princes from the progenitor Noah to the Grand Duke Rurik and the princes of Rostov", "Tales of Zakharikha" other.

***

You can download the book here.

5. Brief summary of the history of Ancient Russia

Our work, as it is obviously clear to the reader, does not represent the results of many years of work, where everything is put in order and systematized. We have to print, so to speak, on the go, without waiting for the sometimes necessary polishing, for it is better to give at least something than to give nothing. Circumstances do not allow the publication of the work in the form we would like ("do not trample on the devil").

The chapter essays we publish do not follow the order, but the degree of readiness for publication.

However, it has already been published quite well, so we consider it necessary to summarize some of the results already in a systematic form - hence the proposed synopsis. Of course, this synopsis mainly emphasizes everything new, which corrects, supplements and clarifies our usual ideas.

1. The beginning of the history of Ancient Rus goes back to ancient times. Already from the first centuries of our era, on the lands occupied by the Eastern Slavs, we find a consistent and coherent series of material cultures, passing almost without interruption into the culture of Russia, already recorded by history.

If there are some gaps in the archaeological data, then they quickly disappear, and the general trend in the accumulation of material in this direction is quite clear.

One can argue about the sequence, time, relationship of these cultures, but that in the first centuries of our era, at least on the Middle Dnieper and the upper reaches of the Dniester and the Bug, there were Slavs, there is no reason to argue.

2. The beginning of the written history of Russia must be attributed to the end of the 8th century. From this point on, history provides a coherent series of events without large gaps, naming names, places, telling about events and (indirectly) giving dates. The earliest accurate news of the "Rusyns" dates back to 477 (their attack on the city of Yuvava, now Salzburg).

3. It is not possible to indicate at least approximately the date of the beginning of Rus, because there were two "Rus": southern, Kiev, in the region of the Dnieper and Dniester, and northern, Novgorod, in the region of Ladoga and Ilmen. Their original stories were different, isolated, and traces of their written stories are in varying degrees of preservation. Therefore, it would be more correct to consider both stories separately until the moment when they merged under Oleg into one common thread.

4. The written history of both Novgorod and Kievan pre-Olegovoy Rus can be traced back to the end of the 8th century, however, in previous centuries there are, so to speak, isolated islands of their history, which are not yet possible to connect with a continuous history. However, the hope has not been lost that there will be intermediate links and the beginning of these stories will be shifted even further deeper.

In fact, no one has done this yet, because only with the publication of this work can a well-grounded and meaningful search begin. They didn’t look for it because they were convinced that there was nothing to look for.

5. A completely new page of pre-Askold Russia is opened by the recently found "Vlesov book" ("Isenbek's tablets"), a chronicle written on tablets, almost certainly by pagan priests. The text, however, has not yet been fully published, the source itself has not been read, and its reliability has not been investigated. "Vlesova's book" speaks of events at least 300-400 years before Askold, there are even dates, but how to translate them into our time reckoning is not clear. In view of all this, we have not yet analyzed this period.

6. Already the first glimpses of written history find both Rus in the form of fully formed states, with their own dynasties (in Novgorod, eight generations are noted before Burivoy), they entered into offensive and defensive alliances, various treaties, fought, made peace, etc.

Before us, in both cases, states that have gone far in the formation of a class society, with a fairly high state of material culture, with their own, sufficiently developed crafts, with international trade, etc. The eighth century, apparently, differs little in this respect from the ninth, when we find both Rus in an already feudalized form.

The views of Schlözer and others that the Eastern Slavs of the 8th and 9th centuries. were savages, in their way of life similar to animals and birds, from the point of view of modern science can be called simply wild, extremely ignorant.

7. History captures Novgorod Rus at the end of the VIII century. defending in the person of Prince Burivoy its independence from the Varangians, apparently, the Scandinavians. After a long struggle, the Varangians nevertheless captured Novgorod, and Burivy fled to a distant part of his possessions beyond the reach of the Varangians. It was this moment of payment of tribute to the Varangians by Novgorodians that was marked, presumably, by the first Russian chronicler.

The Novgorodians, however, did not endure the oppression of the Scandinavians for long, begging from Burivoy his son Gostomysl, they raised a revolt and drove out the Varangians (this is noted in the chronicle). The long and glorious reign of Gostomysl began.

8. Nestor was completely silent about this reign (mentioning only the fact itself, dully), and one can understand why: he wrote the history of southern, Kievan Rus and the history of northern Russia did not interest him, moreover, it took him deeply away from his immediate tasks. That this was so is evident from the indisputable fact that he considered Oleg the first prince in Russia, he does not consider Rurik a Russian prince, because Novgorod was not considered a Russian state at that time, but was considered a "Slovenian" one. It is possible that Nestor would not have mentioned Rurik at all, if not for his son Igor, about whom it was impossible not to say who his father was. By the end of his life, Gostomysl had lost all four sons, and he was faced with the difficult question of succession to the throne. His choice fell on Rurik, the grandson of his middle daughter Umila, who was married to one of the overseas princes. His desire (in a veiled form - in the form of a dream-foreshadowing) became known to everyone and was received favorably.

After the death of Gostomysl, however, troubles began, ending in an agreement between the northern tribes on the choice of a common prince. He hesitated between the following proposals: 1) to elect a prince from among his own; 2) invite from the Danube Slavs; 3) from Kiev, from the glades; 4) invite from the Khazars; 5) to elect a prince from the overseas Varangians. The last proposal won out: the wish of Gostomysl was fulfilled, and the old Slavic dynasty was restored, but along the female line.

10. Given the current state of our knowledge, there is no longer any doubt about the following: 1) the vocation of the Varangians is an unquestionably historical fact, confirmed by three independent sources - Russians like Nestor, the Joachim Chronicle, Mecklenburg legend (see below); 2) the chronicler called "Varangians" not only the Scandinavians, but also the inhabitants of the western part of the Baltic coast in general, among them were the Western Slavs (which was sent for the prince not to the Swedes, not to the Norwegians and not to the Gotland, is clear from the chronicle) : in this case, we could only talk about the Western Slavs; 3) the names Rurik, Sineus, as we have shown, are Slavic names, and that Rurik's mother was a Slav, the daughter of Gostomysl, is clearly shown by the Joachim Chronicle; 4) in 1840, the Frenchman Marmier recorded a local legend while exploring Mecklenburg that the prince of the Slavic tribe, encouraging Godlav, had three sons, Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, went to Russia, drove away other Varangians and began to reign there. This testimony of a Frenchman, who has nothing to do with the dispute about the vocation of the Varangians, shows that Rurik was a Slav after his father. It turns out that the "vocation of the Varangians" is noted from two sides: in the Russian chronicle, that is, in the country where Rurik came, and in the folk tradition in Mecklenburg, that is, in the country from where Rurik came. The Norman theory has absolutely no foundation under it - recall that not a single source, written or preserved in folk memory among the peoples of the Germanic root in the West, knows nothing about the vocation of the Varangians, and this is understandable: the vocation concerned the Slavic, not the Germanic tribes. Only a complete obscurantist can now defend the Norman theory.

11. For 17 years of his reign (first in Ladoga for four years, then in Novgorod) Rurik managed to consolidate the tribes of Northern Russia, but force was also used in Novgorod: Vadim the Brave, the leader, and others were killed, while other Novgorodians fled to Kiev, away from the Rurik regime, which seemed to them like slavery (it is quite natural that Rurik also brought with him the methods of administration he had learned under a less democratic state system).

Rurik also managed to help Kievan Rus in liberation from the yoke of the Khazars - he sent Askold to help them, but the merger of the Novgorod and Kiev states did not happen.

12. Death captured Rurik at a time when his son Igor was still a boy, carried in his arms. Oleg, a Norwegian, Igor's uncle by his mother, who was a Norwegian princess, became the regent of Northern Russia. Since Oleg was the governor of Rurik and at the same time actually exercised reign in the state, various chronicles call him either the governor or the prince.

Having received the news that the people of Kiev were dissatisfied with Askold (because of his Christian sympathies, I suppose), Oleg set off on a campaign to the south, taking with him the young Igor as material proof of his rights to reign. Askold was betrayed by the Kievites, killed, and Oleg occupied Kiev without a fight.

Then Oleg took a step of great importance - he moved the capital of the united East Slavic state to Kiev. From that moment on, Northern Russia began to gradually take on the name “Rus” (“Rus was nicknamed from the Varangians”), this moment, both in essence and formally, is the beginning of that Russia, which we know from our chronicles. The founder of this united state was quite by accident the Norwegian Oleg because of Igor's childhood. This is the only grain of truth in the entire Norman theory, but we must not forget that being on the throne of a blood prince does not mean that the country where this prince comes from determines the course of development, culture, organization, etc. of this state - Russian culture, the Russian state was created by its own, East Slavic or, in a simpler terminology, Russian hands.

13. The very word "Rus", "Rusyn" came from the south and then spread to the White Sea. There is every reason to think that it appeared on the Middle Dnieper already in historical times from somewhere in the south. In any case, in 477 the famous Odoacer, the ruler of Rome, was at the same time a "rex ruthenorum". The memory of this was preserved among the people even during the time of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, for he, addressing the people with an appeal to rise up against Poland, considers Odoacer to be the direct ancestor of the Cossacks.

Taking into account the existence among the Central European and South Slavs of the legend about Chech, Lech and Ruse, we can assume with a certain probability that Russia, as the name of the state, is borrowed from the name of a leader like Ital (Italy), Hellas (Ancient Greece, hence the "Hellenes" ), Pelops (Peloponnese), etc., of which we have hundreds of examples in history, up to at least Amerigo Vespucci, who gave the name to America. The very name Rus is probably just a nickname - he was Rus, that is, he had light brown hair.

14. Having united the forces of Novgorod and Kievan Rus, Oleg quickly subdued almost all the other tribes of the Eastern Slavs and close Finno-Ugric peoples and, having collected a huge army, made a successful campaign against Byzantium in 907. By the 907 treaty, peaceful relations were restored and the conditions for further existence were determined. However, in 911, a very detailed treaty was concluded, this time already exclusively related to peaceful relations and regulating them in all aspects of their relationship.

All this time Igor remained in Kiev. In 911, Oleg arranged the marriage of Igor with a Pskov woman Olga from the Gostomysl clan, his relative. Her Slavic name was Prekrasa.

Oleg died, apparently, during his trip to his homeland in his old age.

15. The history of Kievan pre-Olegovoy Rus proceeded in a completely different way and was isolated from the Scandinavians. First of all, it was much more turbulent than the history of Northern Russia. In the north, the political situation was much simpler: the neighbors of Rus were at a very low level of culture (mainly hunting) and did not pose a serious threat to the Novgorod Slovenes.

The Scandinavians were the only factor that could play a role, but their role was temporary, insignificant and superficial.

The situation was quite different in the south. For centuries, Russia was here under the economic and cultural influence of Byzantium and partly Rome. In addition, almost every century a new wave of newcomers from the east dramatically changed the situation in the Black Sea region and indirectly influenced Russia.

If statehood arose earlier in the south than in the north, the line of its development was much more discontinuous. Russia (so to speak) was created here and disintegrated many times, for the waves of aliens were sometimes of great strength. Hence the absence of a continuous line of development of the state in the south.

We cannot now clarify when, but Kievan Rus, apparently, began to be called Rus here not from time immemorial, but by some Rusyn tribe who came up from the south and captured the glades with Kiev. We have evidence that already in the first half of the 7th century. Southern Russia extended its influence even to the distant Caspian Sea. The ruler of Derbent, Shahriar, already in 644 definitely said that the Rus and the Khazars were his two main enemies and that the Rus were “enemies to the whole world” (meaning to the Arab).

If Theophanes' message is interpreted correctly, and this, apparently, is so, then we find in 774 Russia already in certain relations with Byzantium.

Finally, in the first half of the 9th century. (839) we find Russia concluding an agreement with Byzantium on friendship, and its ambassadors are received with great courtesy (this fact did not get into the Russian chronicles, but was mentioned by Western European chronicles).

When Southern Russia fell under the political domination of the Khazars is not specified. Apparently, it was not very long and to a large extent nominal (it all came down mainly to the payment of tribute). At least, there is evidence indicating that Southern Russia had sufficient autonomy: it fought and concluded peace treaties, without involving Khazaria in them at all. Most likely, Russia simply bought itself off from its neighbor, that is, it did what Byzantium and Rome did.

In 860 Russia undertook a punitive expedition to Constantinople for violation of the treaty by the Greeks, the murder of several Russians, etc. The revenge was terrible. The Russians returned home, satiated with revenge and with a huge amount of loot. This event got into the Russian chronicles from the Greek chronicles, but in a distorted form and with a chronological error (the campaign was not in 852, but in 860).

Soon, however, peaceful relations were restored, and by 867 an event of tremendous cultural significance took place: Russia received a bishop from Byzantium and partially adopted Christianity, a few years later there was already an archbishopric in Russia.

The campaign in 874 by Askold against Byzantium was unsuccessful, and one can think that this made it easier for Oleg to capture Kiev.

16. After Oleg, the first prince of united Russia, a Norwegian, who reigned only because of his childhood, his nephew, the legal heir, Igor, was reigned by the latter. Igor's father Rurik is a Slav, his mother is a Norwegian princess, Igor was born in Russia and was married to Olga from Pskov, a Slav from the Gostomysl clan. His reign was not very successful. Although he kept the tribes united by Oleg in subjection, his campaign against Byzantium ended in failure. The second campaign, although it did without shedding blood and brought indemnity from the Greeks, was nevertheless completed with an agreement less profitable than Oleg's agreement with the Greeks. His murder by the Drevlyans led to Olga's regency and her war with the Drevlyans, for her son Svetoslav was still a little boy.

It should be noted that the murder of Igor was due to his greed - having received tribute from the Drevlyans, he began to demand it a second time: this had already caused indignation of the Drevlyans. Interestingly, the Russian chronicles are silent about the cause of Igor's death, while Byzantine sources say more about this: Igor was captured by the Drevlyans, tied to two spruces, bent down, then the ate was released, and Igor was torn apart.

The legends of the chronicle about Olga's revenge reflect her anger at such an inhuman reprisal against her husband.

17. Olga was a pure-blooded Slav, a Pskov woman, the sleigh she rode was kept for a long time in Pskov, which was even noted in the chronicle. Having avenged the Drevlyans for the death of her husband, she managed to keep all the other tribes in subjection, put things in order within the state and did not deal with external wars. The state under Olga's reasonable management grew stronger and followed the path of prosperity.

Olga's baptism took place, apparently, in 955 in Constantinople. Her conversion to Christianity was of a private and, apparently, secret nature. Christianity did not have noticeable success under her, she did not manage to convert her son Svetoslav to Christianity, despite all her efforts. The people in the mass were still on the side of paganism.

18. Not long before her death, Svetoslav, a pure Slav by blood, who walked firmly in the same line with the people in his paganism, ascended the throne. Strong in body and spirit, Svetoslav was a typical conqueror, for whom the real interests of the people were alien. In the struggle, in the spoils taken in the war, he saw the purpose of life and neglected the interests of the state.

It is in vain that modern Soviet historians see in his actions the steps of a reasonable, useful statesman - Svetoslav was an adventurer like Richard the Lionheart, all of whose aspirations were to fight.

He was not at all interested in the affairs of Novgorod; about Kiev, he bluntly stated that he was "unlovely" to live there. History has long ago pronounced its correct verdict on him through the lips of the Kievites-contemporaries. "Prince," they said, "you are looking for someone else's land, but you neglect your own."

The positive in his attempt was that he annexed some of the East Slavic tribes more firmly and completely defeated the Khazars. Under him, the borders of Russia approached its ethnographic borders.

Ambitious dreams even led Svetoslav to the idea of ​​capturing Constantinople, but the war with Byzantium in Bulgaria ended in failure, and on the way to Kiev he was killed by the Pechenegs in an ambush on the Dnieper.

19. Yaropolk was the son of Svetoslav, apparently from a Hungarian princess. Probably, under the influence of his grandmother Olga, he had a great affection for Christians, this caused great discontent among the people with Yaropolk, whom the chronicles portray as a gentle and fair person. He was not a Christian, but his obvious sympathy for Christianity gave rise to the fact that the bones of him and his brother Oleg were subsequently baptized.

We do not know what caused his collision with his brother Oleg, but as a result, Oleg died while fleeing, being thrown together with his horse into a ditch on a narrow bridge.

In the death of Oleg, Vladimir, Yaropolk's middle brother, but from a different mother, saw danger for himself and fled from Novgorod across the sea for military help from the Vikings.

Returning with the Vikings (who they were by nationality, in fact, is unknown), Vladimir occupied Novgorod. In Polotsk, during a clash with the Polotsk prince Rogvolod, he captured the latter's daughter, who refused to match him and was already married to Yaropolk, made her his wife by force, and thus aggravated the discord with his brother.

Thanks to the bribery of the governor Yaropolk Dobrynya, Vladimir's maternal uncle, Vladimir gained the upper hand in the battle. From subsequent events it is clear that Vladimir promised the governors of Yaropolk a firm course towards paganism. When Yaropolk was treacherously killed (we should not forget that Vladimir was a fratricide), Vladimir finally sat down in Kiev and began to erect idols, fulfilling his promise.

20. Vladimir was the illegitimate son of Svetoslav and Malusha, the housekeeper for Princess Olga.

The transformation of the Slav Malusha by the Normanists into the Scandinavian Malfred is an example of a shameless scientific lie: her father was Malko from the city of Lyubech - an obvious Slav, her brother was Dobrynya, whose name clearly speaks of his nationality, she herself was Malusha, a local courtyard girl, and not without reason a proud Polotsk Princess Rogneda refused to marry Vladimir, the son of a slave (“I don’t want rosuti robichich”), but accepted the offer of Yaropolk, a son from the same father, but from a noble mother.

21. Vladimir was a true son of the Russian people both in origin and in his politics. Fighting numerous wars, he united all the East Slavic tribes, including Chervona Rus (Galicia), and extended the boundaries of his state to ethnographic boundaries.

In contrast to his father, he did not wage wars of conquest and, having brought the borders of the state to ethnographic limits, fully engaged in the consolidation of the forces of the state.

By marrying a Byzantine princess, the first bride of all Europe, whose hand was denied to the son of the German emperor, Vladimir covered his semi-plebeian origin and placed the dynasty on a par with the most noble dynasties in Europe.

There is evidence suggesting that he achieved from Byzantium and a higher rank in the ladder of the sovereign hierarchy. At least on the coins he was depicted wearing a crown and royal vestments.

22. Vladimir's adoption of Christianity as a state religion played a huge role in the life of Rus. This step was taken after long weighing, testing of various faiths and was an exclusively political step that propelled Russia into the ranks of the primary states of Europe.

The baptism of Vladimir took place in Korsun (in the Crimea) in the late autumn of 989 or in the early spring of 990.

The baptism of Rus in Kiev took place in 990 (not 988!). The discrepancy in the dates and place of Vladimir's baptism in different sources is explained by the fact that religious sources tried to hide the fact that Vladimir converted to Christianity not for moral, but for state reasons. For the canonization of Vladimir, these sources sought to portray the matter in such a way that baptism was a personal desire of Vladimir, in this case they saw the basis for canonization, which Byzantium refused and refused. Therefore, they called the year of baptism 988, and the place - Russia.

The new religion served as a powerful tool for uniting a multi-tribal state into one whole, created a common language (the language of a religious cult) and thus led to the Russification of non-Russian tribes and strengthened the position of the prince (God was an autocrat in heaven, the prince was on earth), 23. Vladimir introduced remarkable innovations: compulsory education of literacy and, in general, the science of children of wealthy classes, caring for the sick and the weak, reasonable, humane laws were issued (for example, the death penalty was abolished, apparently for the first time in Europe). The desire to learn and borrow something good from other peoples gave Vladimir the basis for sending special embassies to Constantinople, Rome, Egypt, Jerusalem, Babylon, etc., precisely for the "oversight" of other people's laws, customs, etc., thereby pushed Russia on the path of rapid cultural development.

Vladimir himself was a man with an extremely broad outlook, but at the same time he was not a dry, "head" man: he loved feasts, merriment, art, women, etc. Moreover, his feasts were not an act of a person closed in his contentment, - he feasted with all the people and was extremely generous.

It was this closeness to the people that created him a tender nickname - the Red Sun, the people loved him selflessly and carried this love in epics to the present time.

During the existence of Russia, and then Russia, there were only two giants: Vladimir the Great and Peter the Great. Both drastically changed the entire life of the people: one by the introduction of Christianity and humanity, science, the other by a secondary rapprochement with Europe after 300 years of Tatar darkness.

However, as individuals, they are incomparable - Vladimir is covered with the love of the people and a grateful memory, the people are silent about Peter, and not without reason, for Peter was not distinguished by his humanity.

24. We know very little about the Cursed Light Shelf. After the death of Vladimir, he immediately committed a triple fratricide and seized power into his own hands. Yaroslav, warned in time by his sister, survived and in the battle that followed then gained the upper hand. The light regiment fled somewhere abroad and it is not known where he died in a fever.

The desire of some Catholic historians to portray the Light Regiment as a bright person because of his sympathy for Rome clearly shows the depth of their moral downfall: a person cursed by all the people, they enroll as their friends and are proud of their proximity to the triple fratricide.

25. Who was Yaroslav's mother is still not established with certainty. The chronicle claims that he was the son of Rogneda. To what extent the repulsive picture of mastering Rogneda corresponds to reality, we do not know. We know, however, that, having seized her by right of a conqueror, he made her a real, legitimate wife, probably because of her princely family. There is evidence that, having married Anna, Vladimir officially notified Rogneda about his conversion to Christianity and his marriage, that is, he showed full respect for her. Whether Rogneda was a Scandinavian or a Slav is unknown. It is only known that her father was Rogvolod "from across the sea", but he could also be an overseas Slav like Godlav, the father of Rurik.

The statements of the Normanists are only a guess, far from indisputable, especially since the name Rogvolod (analogy: Vsevolod) is a Slavic name, and Rogneda herself was so "Scandinavian" that she used the most typical Slavic detail in refusing Vladimir (not a Slavic woman would not have put it that way).

Yaroslav's whole life was spent in close contact with Novgorod. Having become the Grand Duke in Kiev, he gave special rights to Novgorod, unfortunately, what they were, history has not preserved. The Novgorodians were very proud of these rights and kept them until their defeat by Moscow, first by Ivan III, and then finally by Ivan IV.

In general, in Kievan Rus, Novgorod was the second capital, and the prince, who was sitting in Novgorod, was usually a candidate for the throne in Kiev.

Yaroslav fought quite a lot, but these were most of the war for power. He almost never waged external wars of conquest. Under him, Russia took one of the most brilliant places in Europe. First of all, this was facilitated by wide dynastic ties: Byzantium, France, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Germany, etc. were associated with Russia by marriages with members of the Yaroslav family. Suffice it to say that his daughter Anna ruled France.

Under him Kiev was expanded, fortified and decorated. Foreigners saw in him a rival of Constantinople. Crafts and trade flourished. The culture reached a very high degree of development, it was the apogee of Ancient Russia.

At this point, we will stop presenting the synopsis for now.

From the foregoing, it is clear that the actual picture of events in Ancient Russia was significantly different than it usually seems. How and why could it happen that historians have created the wrong picture?

The first reason: insufficient elaboration of Russian primary sources. Russian chronicles and other sources such as "Russkaya Pravda", contracts, letters, various records and inscriptions, etc. have been studied very insufficiently. There are hundreds of places that are understood differently, or rather, they are not understood at all. Naturally, having such source material, historians have a poor command of it and cannot take from the historical heritage what is there in reality.

Not only individual words, expressions or phrases remain dark, the entire context often turns out to be dark for various reasons. The chronology of events is often shaky, and sometimes not at all correct. Many passages are misinterpreted, but these misleading explanations have already become canon, and no one turns to the original source to find out the truth. There is no summary of the chronicle, where the text would have been verified against all available lists, and we still cannot read it without omissions, insertions, errors, omissions, etc. The collection of all the chronicles has not yet been published, a lot has been done, but not completed. There are annalistic lists that have not yet been published. Finally, many works, such as Tatishchev's History, containing extracts from original but now extinct manuscripts, have become bibliographic rarities. Many works published in Latin or even in German in the 18th and 19th centuries have remained untranslated.

For all this colossal rough work, historians do not have enough hands, and help from philologists, dialectologists, geographers, and generally just people interested in history is extremely necessary.

The second reason: insufficient elaboration of foreign primary sources concerning the history of Russia. The huge Latin, Greek and other languages ​​heritage has not been translated or commented on, and yet from these sources we sometimes learn much more than from Russian chronicles, for example, about the wars of Svetoslav. Russia did not live in a void, but among other peoples, therefore, without a detailed knowledge of chronicles, acts, treaties, stories, hagiographic literature, reports of travelers, etc., the true history of Russia cannot be written. We find the most interesting information from Muslim writers, but apart from the outdated and bibliographic rarity of Harkavi's work, we have nothing. Dlugosz's "History of Poland" in Latin, written using ancient Russians, now dead chronicles, has not been translated at all, and so on.

There is no collection of Georgian, Armenian authors - a collection of passages about Ancient Rus. Who can do this if not for Russian historians and philologists: to fish out at least brief excerpts about Russia from foreign sources, not for foreigners? Meanwhile, we see that data from foreign sources are sometimes extremely important, for example, in the question of the time and baptism of Vladimir the Great.

The publication of the collection of foreign authors has not even begun. Of course, neglecting such material, it is impossible to write a true, genuine story, just as it is impossible to entrust this matter to foreigners, it is enough to look at the writings of Baumgarten, Taube, Stender-Petersen, etc.

The third reason (and perhaps the main one): the imperfection of the scientific method of historians. This is expressed in the following:

1) Historians do not primarily strive for accuracy, one example with the main date of Russian chronology is enough. The chronicle takes the beginning of Russian chronology 6360 "from the Creation of the world"; it is natural to find out what this year is in reckoning "from the birth of Christ." There are several opinions: some believe that Christ was born in 5500, others in 5506, and still others, finally, in 5508 - "from the Creation of the world." Any researcher who follows the exact, logical method, first of all, will ask himself the question: what kind of reckoning was adopted by the Russian chronicles? A few lines below this is said indirectly, you just need to do two arithmetic operations - addition and subtraction. Not a single historian did this, as a result, instead of 860, the 852nd was taken as the basis. The difference of 8 years for the main date is serious, further errors stemmed from it. They also did not notice that the Greek preacher, telling the history of the world to Vladimir, bluntly said that the latter was born in 5500, and not 5508 from the Creation of the world. Where there is no precision, there is no science.

2) Historians perceive facts as something pointless, out of connection with time, space and conditions, examples: a) when listing events from the Creation of the world, the reckoning "from" and "to" is always going on in the annals; if we add up all the numbers, we will not get the required 6360, but 54 years less; this has been noticed, but the reason has not been disclosed. Meanwhile, the text says: "From David and from the beginning of the kingdom of Solomon." How can there be a period from the reign of two kings at once? It is clear that there was a copyist's omission in the text: the period from David to Solomon was indicated, but the scribe skipped 2-3 words, and there was a pass of 54 years. Such an elementary thing has not been discovered, although it is accessible to any smart boy; b) it is well known that the meaning of many Russian words has changed over time, which means that extreme caution should be exercised when reading ancient texts, especially if it concerns the Church Slavonic language, this was not taken into account, hence the false readings: “start to call the Rus land” at all does not mean that from that time the Russian land received its name (this is simply illogical, stupid), but means that the Russian land was first mentioned in the Greek chronicle; further: "belted the whole of Russia by itself" does not at all mean "they took all of Russia with them", but "took for themselves", that is, divided among themselves, the whole of Russia, - after all, in ancient times they said "drink your wife by yourself", what it meant to "take for yourself"; finally - “from the Varangians you got the nickname Rus” does not at all mean that because of the Varangians Slovenes began to be called Rus, and the Varangians they began to be called Rus, for the newcomers did not make a distinction between the Novgorodians and the Kievans, for them it was a single tribe, etc. Our history is replete with such false readings; c) historians do not distinguish between what is assumed and what is proven, it is enough for someone, especially an authority, to express a probable assumption, as it is done by the canon, and no one thinks that this is only a probable hypothesis; d) historians tend to be out of control of fantasy and do not feel any responsibility for what has been said; it is enough for someone to say that the Russians of Egyptian origin, as they begin to reckon with, begin to comment on absolute stupidity, pay attention to it and even pick it up; f) among historians there is not what there is among representatives of the exact sciences: punishment for their mistakes; it is enough for a historian to defend his doctoral dissertation, that is, to prove his ability for scientific research, as he opens up the broadest field for uncontrolled activity, interpreted as freedom of scientific thought.

As a result, history is littered with thousands of ridiculous theories, statements, false interpretations. For representatives of the exact sciences, it is different, there, after a scientist made a number of major mistakes, they cease to reckon with him, and he is soon almost automatically thrown out of the environment of scientists. Among the representatives of the exact sciences, it cannot happen that, writing (let us say, as a comparison) the history of Ancient Russia in the Normanist spirit, the scientist did not say that there are anti-Normanist schools, did not discuss all the "pro" and "contra", etc. - his scientific conscience, his scientific "credo" cannot allow this; historians do it easily and with impunity.

The fourth reason: the extraordinary compliance of historians to the pressure of the powers that be. Once upon a time historians were generally praised, of course for money and honor, of their masters. In the present era, when we already have universities and academies of sciences, it would seem that historians should have found objectivity, at least for the presentation of what was a thousand years ago, but this is not, and the heavy legacy still weighs on the historical science.

If personal servility now no longer has as much place as before, there are other forms of servility: political, national, religious, etc. What is, for example, one religious servility of the renegades of Baumgarten, Taube and others before Catholicism. And yet they are trusted as scientists, although they sometimes descended to the level of scientific fraud. Their studies are so biased that they cannot be taken into account by true science.

Norman theory was also purely political, that is, satisfying the interests of German chauvinism, which took refuge at the throne in Russia. Objectively examining our history, we see that the Scandinavians-Germans did not play any significant role in it. They were neither conquerors nor organizers. They emerged as a mercenary military force and were immediately removed when internal military conflicts ended. In domestic politics, they also never played any role, for example, we do not know of a single palace coup in which the Scandinavians would play a role.

Everything was invented by idle pro-German historians who did not want to draw attention to the indisputable fact that in foreign sources, which were primarily supposed to talk about the conquest of Russia, about the rights of the Germans to the throne, etc., there is not a word about the foundations of the Norman theory ...

Nowhere in Russia did the Scandinavians form separate settlements and there were no Scandinavian groups of women, old people and children. There were only visitors, or immigrants, but very few.

The entire Norman theory is based only on a false interpretation of the Russian chronicles. Normanists completely arbitrarily inserted or discarded words, replaced letters in words, thereby changing the meaning altogether, arranged their own punctuation, etc., in a word, they got what they wanted to get. All their writings are just a bunch of worthless, scribbled paper.

Finally, there is a special kind of distortion of historical truth, which satisfies mainly personal pride. It is especially used by people of foreign origin, but educated in Russia. These persons, having returned to their homeland after 1917 and knowing excellent Russian language, enjoy great authority in themselves, but direct their activities towards falsification of the history of Russia either because they want to flatter their national chauvinism, or to satisfy their feelings of hatred towards those who deprived them of a warm, familiar place. Both paths bring them both fame and money.

The fifth reason, or rather, the consequence of all four previous ones taken together: ignoring sources that contradict Norman theory. The Joachim Chronicle, which contains the history of Northern Russia up to Rurik, has been declared unreliable and pushed into the shadows, many passages of Nikon, Tver and other chronicles are not actually included in history, at most, they are given with the official remark: “The origin of this news in this chronicle is unknown ". "Vlesova's book", the discovery of which was announced at the very beginning of 1954, still has not aroused enough interest, professional historians are silent about it. Why? Because it blows up all the roots of their historical creed. Let us assume that "Vlesov's book" is a fake, but it must be proved! In fact, we see complete indifference.

It is quite natural that it is impossible to write a true story without using all historical sources.

Here it is necessary to say about the Russian chronicle. It was a long and complex process and can be divided into four stages:

1. The era of pagan annals, the era of the "Vlesovaya kniga". This chronicle, apparently, was used only in the most insignificant extent, for the subsequent chronicles were all Christian and the use of pagans was a religious crime. Not only referring to such a source, but even holding it in one's hands was punishable. Evidently, the Christian chroniclers were aware of the existence of this chronicle, but not directly, but indirectly, through folk legends. This era has not been studied at all by science, but it will probably make huge changes in our history.

2. The era of the chronicle, that is, the weather recording of events in a very brief form. From this era, only traces remain in the southern records. We called this era conditionally Askold, because there are absolutely accurately dated weather records with small, purely Kiev events of Askold's time. It made no sense for the later chroniclers to invent such news as the fall of large rains, a plague of locusts, etc., such news is, of course, authentic.

3. The era of the first chronicle, the era when an attempt was made for the first time to give the history of Russia, that is, a consistent and detailed presentation of events, often with an explanation of the conditions and motives for actions, and all this against the background of general history. This era should be called Joachim's. The first chronicle, apparently, was from Novgorod, but it is in Joachim's record that all other Novgorod chronicles are basically only an abbreviated presentation of Nestor's (see below).

Therefore, Joachim should be considered the first chronicler, and not Nestor, who lived almost a hundred years after the writing of the Joachim Chronicle. Joachim, being a bishop (+ 1030), an envoy of Byzantium, undoubtedly a Slav by nationality, for only persons with knowledge of the Russian language could be sent to convert Novgorodians to Christianity, was undoubtedly a highly educated person. Hence the wide plan of the chronicle, and references to Greek sources, and the adoption of the reign of the Greek emperor as the basis of chronology, and the mention of the spread of Christianity among the Central European and southern Slavs, etc.

4. The era of Nestor, the era of tendentious history based on the "protrusion" of the Rurik dynasty, obscuring the presence of several ancient East Slavic states (at least Novgorod, Polotsk), obscuring the history of a long and stubborn struggle against paganism, etc.

Nestor, a simple monk, with an outlook undoubtedly narrower than that of Bishop Joachim, borrowed from the latter all the introduction to the chronicle and threw away everything that related to Novgorod and could interfere with its main task - the exaltation of the Kiev princes.

To this he added a number of folk legends about historical figures, not caring especially about their accuracy and consistency, he used some official documents, old chronicle records and ... a vinaigrette from Russian history, suitable for the general reader, was ready.

Being ideologically purposeful, this vinaigrette played into the hands of the Kiev princes and therefore was recognized in official history. The chronicle of Joachim and documents similar to it were pushed far into the archives and gradually withdrawn from circulation. Only a happy accident saved the old Joachim Chronicle within the framework of an uneducated monk and transferred part of it into the hands of Tatishchev.

Historiographers did not understand the essence of the Russian chronicle and took the Nestorov version, which is undoubtedly tendentious, for the real history.

They simply did not believe the Joachim Chronicle, for it completely destroyed the established canon.

Testing research thought was suppressed by political tendencies.

Nowadays, there is no need to talk about the vocation of the Scandinavian Varangians (they invited the Western Slavs, who were also called “Varangians”), so the Joachim Chronicle emerges by itself, and the rest of the historical truth is restored along with it.

Justice requires us to note that the restoration of truth is entirely ours. Before us, no historian has understood the true meaning of the Joachim Chronicle.

So, historians have not figured out the relative value of various primary sources, hence further mistakes. Chronicle records already existed under Askold. 872 can be considered the first exact date of the original Russian chronicle, mentioning the murder of Askold's son by the Bulgarians.

With the appearance of the Rurikids in Kiev, which apparently caused the defeat of primary Christianity there, the chronicle probably stopped, resuming only almost 100 years later. Only this can explain the striking poverty and lack of specificity of the information of the chronicle in the era of the first Rurikovichs.

In the epoch of Vladimir the Great, the chronicle records apparently begin again, and then, presumably around 1000, the first real (Joachim's) chronicle appears. It is hardly worth adding that there was no Shakhmatov's Primary Code or Likhachev's Legend of the Spread of Christianity in Russia — these are scholarly fictions that have not been confirmed by facts. Finally, the impartiality of the chronicle is a harmful myth that the historian should not allow himself to be drugged.

Now let's move on to some general conclusions of our synopsis. Our former historians were completely silent, and modern historians (mainly Soviet) are just beginning to talk about the ancient, Doryurikian history of Russia. Until now, Russia has surfaced on the arena of history completely unexpectedly, unjustifiably, like a meteor that has fallen from the sky.

In fact, the history of Russia (even with the very name “Rus”) can be traced several centuries deeper.

Under other names, the Slavs (including the Eastern ones) appear already in the first centuries of our era, and there is nothing surprising if, over time, it will be finally proved that the "Scythian-plowmen" of Herodotus were the Eastern Slavs.

Thus, the entire pre-written and significant part of written history has been taken away from us. The tragedy is that a completely Norman theory still reigns in Western European science, the era of medieval prejudices still reigns there, and a number of brilliant minds stand completely aside from the development of the true history of Russia in the aspect of the whole of Europe. The saddest thing is that even petty charlatanism is mixed with obscurantism.

Further, on the basis of the latest historical, archaeological and other data, it can be considered irrefutably established that the culture of Ancient Rus, the entire level of its life, was much higher, richer, more diverse and, most importantly, more independent than the Normanists claimed.

At the time of the appearance of Rurik in Northern Russia (or rather, Slovenia), the East Slavic tribes from the mouth of the Volkhov to the mouth of the Dniester, from the Carpathians to Rostov and Suzdal were already at a very high stage of development. These were sedentary, predominantly agricultural tribes with numerous cities and a significant population.

A number of crafts were widespread, and many of them were of a very high standard. Art, its own, local, did not lag behind other aspects of life, testifying to significant material well-being. There is no need to doubt this now, for in Russia molds for casting various complex jewelry, material for this casting, defective specimens and the very products are found right there. Nobody can say now that defective things were brought from abroad.

It is very likely that already at the time of Rurik in Russia there was a special kind of writing, as evidenced by the birch bark letters of Novgorod, the "Vlesova Kniga" and other material monuments.