Federal Agency for Health and social development RF

Northern State Medical University

Faculty of Management

TEST

discipline History of the Fatherland

on the topic:

"People and customs of Ancient Rus'"

students Bobykina Olga Viktorovna

code: EZS - 080802

specialty: 080103.65, course 1

"National economy"

form of education: part-time

Checked by: teacher Igumnova M.B.

Arkhangelsk

Introduction

1 Appearance of the ancient Slavs

2 The nature of the Slavs

3 Marriage and family relations

4 Business activities

5 Culture

6 Social organization

7 Religious performances

Conclusion

List of used literature

INTRODUCTION

There is no undoubtedly reliable information about the origin of the Slavic tribes, since it was so long ago that they were not preserved, or maybe not. Only the Greeks and Romans retained information about our ancient homeland.

The initial information about the Slavs was mythical and unreliable and refers to the journey of the Argonauts, made "12 centuries before the birth of Christ". Karamzin in his history of the Russian state writes: "... a great part of Europe and Asia, now called Russia, in its temperate climates was originally inhabited, but wild, immersed in the depths of ignorance, peoples who did not mark their existence with any of their own historical monuments" .

The first information about the Slavs was given to us by Herodotus, who wrote in 445 BC, while calling them Scythians. "Scythians, called different names, led a nomadic life, ... most of all they loved freedom; they did not know any arts, except for one: "everywhere to overtake enemies, and everywhere to hide from them."

Speaking about the nature of “Russian Scythia”, Herodotus described it as follows: “this land ... was an boundless plain, smooth and treeless; only between Taurida and the Dnieper mouth were forests ... winter lasts there for 8 months, and the air at this time, according to the Scythians, is filled with flying feathers, that is, snow; that the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov freezes, the inhabitants ride sleighs through its motionless depths, and even horsemen fight on the water, thickening from the cold; that thunder rumbles and lightning shines with them only in summer.

Byzantine chronicles mention the Slavs already at the end of the 5th century, describing “the properties, way of life and wars, habits and customs of the Slavs, different from the nature of the German and Sarmatian tribes: proof that this people was little known to the Greeks, living in the depths of Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Prussia, in countries remote and, as it were, impervious to their curiosity.

The Arab traveler Ibn Rusta writes about the Slavic lands as follows: “... between the countries of the Pechenegs and the Slavs, the distance is 10 days of travel ... The path in this direction goes along the steppes and roadless lands through streams and dense forests. The country of the Slavs is flat and wooded, and they live in it.

Karamzin writes that the Slavs “under this name, worthy of warlike and brave people, for it can be produced from glory, and the people whose existence we hardly knew, has occupied a great part of Europe since the sixth century.”

Thus, not having enough information about where and when the Slavs appeared on the territory of modern Russia, we will consider what they were like and how they lived long before the formation of the state.

1 Appearance of the ancient Slavs

Undoubtedly, the nature of the nature where the Slavs lived influenced their constitution, life, and character.

Severe weather conditions have also shaped the nature of the movements of people themselves. If a milder climate favors unhurried, measured movements, then “the inhabitant of midnight lands loves movement, warming his blood with it; loves activity; gets used to endure frequent changes in the air, and is strengthened by patience. According to the description of modern historians, the Slavs were cheerful, strong, tireless. It seems that it is possible, without any comments, to quote here an excerpt from Karamzin's “History of the Russian State”: “Despising the bad weather characteristic of the northern climate, they endured hunger and every need; they ate the coarsest, raw food; surprised the Greeks with their speed; with extreme ease they ascended steepnesses, descended into clefts; boldly rushed into dangerous swamps and into deep rivers. Thinking without a doubt that main beauty the husband has a fortress in the body, strength in the hands and ease in movements, the Slavs cared little about their appearance: in the mud, in the dust, without any neatness in clothes, they appeared in a large gathering of people. The Greeks, condemning this impurity, praise their harmony, tall stature and manly pleasantness of the face. Sunbathing from the hot rays of the sun, they seemed swarthy, and all, without exception, were fair-haired, like other native Europeans. In his notes to the edition of the above-mentioned work, Karamzin notes: “Some write that the Slavs were washed three times in their entire lives: on their birthday, marriage and death.”

In a word, in the descriptions of contemporaries, we see the Slavs as healthy, strong, beautiful people.

As for clothing, we have almost no information on this subject. It is only known that it was quite simple and was designed to shelter from the weather, bypassing luxury and pretentiousness: “The Slavs in the 6th century fought without caftans, some even without shirts, in some ports. The skins of animals, forest and domestic, warmed them in cold weather. Women wore a long dress, adorned with beads and metals obtained in the war or bartered from foreign merchants. Some historians even say that clothes were changed only when they had already completely lost their suitability.

2 The nature of the Slavs

Herodotus describes the character of the ancient Scythian Slavs as follows: “in the hope of their courage and large numbers, they were not afraid of any enemy; they drank the blood of slain enemies, using their dressed skin instead of clothes, and skulls instead of vessels, and in the form of a sword they worshiped the god of war, as the head of other imaginary gods. The ambassadors described their people as quiet and peaceful. But in the 6th century, the Slavs proved to Greece that courage was their natural property. “For some time, the Slavs fled battles in open fields and were afraid of fortresses; but having learned how the ranks of the Roman Legions can be torn apart by a swift and bold attack, they did not refuse to fight anywhere, and soon learned to take fortified places. The Greek chronicles do not mention any main or general commander of the Slavs: they had only private leaders; they fought not with a wall, not in close ranks, but in scattered crowds, and always on foot, following not a general command, not a single thought of the chief, but the suggestion of their own special, personal courage and courage; not knowing prudent caution, which foresees danger and protects people, but rushing straight into the middle of enemies.

Byzantine historians write that the Slavs, “beyond their ordinary courage, had a special art of fighting in gorges, hiding in the grass, astonishing enemies with an instant attack and capturing them.”

The art of the Slavs is also unusually surprising to contemporaries. long time to be in the rivers and breathe freely through the through canes, exposing their end to the surface of the water, which testifies to their ingenuity and patience. " ancient weapons Slavic consisted of swords, darts, arrows smeared with poison, and large, very heavy shields.

The courage of the Slavs also admired, since those who were captured “endured any torture with amazing firmness, without a cry or a groan; they died in agony and did not answer a word to the enemy's questions about the number and plan of their army.

But in peacetime, the Slavs were famous (do not take it for a tautology!) Good nature: “they knew neither guile nor anger; kept the ancient simplicity of morals, unknown to the then Greeks; treated the captives kindly and always appointed a period for their slavery, giving them free, either redeem themselves and return to the fatherland, or live with them in freedom and brotherhood.

Just as rare, apparently, in other nations was Slavic hospitality, which has been preserved in our customs and character to this day. “Every traveler was for them, as it were, sacred: they met him with kindness, treated him with joy, saw him off with a blessing and handed him over to each other. The owner was responsible to the people for the safety of the stranger, and whoever failed to save the guest from trouble or trouble, the neighbors took revenge for this insult as for their own. The Slav, leaving the house, left the door open and food ready for the wanderer. Merchants, artisans willingly visited the Slavs, among whom there were neither thieves nor robbers for them, but a poor man who did not have a way to treat a foreigner well was allowed to steal everything he needed from a rich neighbor: an important duty of hospitality justified the crime itself. In addition, "the Slav considered it permissible to steal for the treat of a wanderer, because with this treat he exalted the glory of the whole family, the whole village, which therefore condescendingly looked at the theft: it was a treat at the expense of the whole family."

Solovyov explains hospitality by a number of reasons: the opportunity to have fun while listening to travel stories; the opportunity to learn a lot of new things: “there was nothing to be afraid of a lonely person, you could learn a lot from him”; religious fear: “every dwelling, the hearth of every house was the seat of a household deity; a wanderer who entered the house was given under the protection of this deity; to offend a wanderer meant to offend a deity”; and, finally, the glorification of a kind: “the wanderer, well received and treated, spread the good glory about the man and the hospitable family.”

Introduction

Russian literature is nearly a thousand years old. This is one of the oldest literatures in Europe. Its beginning dates back to the second half of the 10th century. Of this great millennium, more than seven hundred years belong to the period that is customarily called "ancient Russian literature."

Literature arose suddenly. The leap into the realm of literature took place simultaneously with the appearance of Christianity and the church in Rus', and was prepared by the entire previous cultural development of the Russian people.

The artistic value of ancient Russian literature has not yet been truly determined.

Russian literature of the 11th - 17th centuries developed in peculiar conditions. She was handwritten. Printing, which appeared in Moscow in the middle of the 16th century, very little changed the nature and methods of dissemination of literary works. Mainly and in the 17th century literary works continued, as before, to be distributed by correspondence.

Some of the ancient Russian literary works were read and copied over several centuries. Others quickly disappeared, but parts that scribes liked were included in other works, since the sense of copyright had not yet developed enough to protect the author's text from changes or borrowings from other works.

None of the works ancient Rus'- translated or original - does not stand apart. All of them complement each other in the picture of the world they create. We often talk about the internal patterns of development of literary images in works new literature and that the actions of the characters are due to their characters. Each hero of the new literature reacts in his own way to the influences of the outside world. That is why the actions of the actors can even be "unexpected" for the authors, as if dictated to the authors by the actors themselves.

There is a similar conditionality in ancient literature. The hero behaves as he is supposed to behave, but he is not supposed to follow the laws of a natural character, but according to the laws of that category of heroes to which the hero belongs in feudal society. For example, the ideal commander should be pious and should pray before going on a campaign. And in the "Life of Alexander Nevsky" it is described how Alexander enters the temple of Sophia and prays with tears to God for granting him victory. The ideal commander must defeat a numerous enemy with a few forces, and God helps him.

The writers of Ancient Rus' had a very definite attitude towards the image of a person. The main thing is not external beauty, the beauty of the face and body, but the beauty of the soul.

In the views of the ancient Russians, only the Lord God was the bearer of absolute, ideal beauty. Man is His creation, God's creature. The beauty of a person depends on how fully the Divine principle was expressed in him, that is, his ability to desire to follow the commandments of the Lord, to work on the improvement of his soul.

The more a person worked on it, the more he, as it were, lit up from the inside. inner light which God sent him as his Grace. The rich spiritual life of any person could work a miracle: to make an ugly person beautiful. This requires a righteous, pious way of life (especially through prayer, repentance, fasting). This means that the Spiritual sphere was perceived, first of all, aesthetically; saw the highest beauty in her. She did not need physical beauty.

The ideal of man in ancient Rus' was considered primarily by the holy ascetics, in whom they saw direct mediators between sinful man and the divine sphere. Every era had its heroes. On the example of several works, let us consider how the theme of man and his deeds developed in ancient Russian literature. But first, let's consider the periodization of the history of ancient Russian literature.1. Periodization of the history of ancient Russian literature

Works of literature of Ancient Rus' are always attached to a specific historical event, to a specific historical person. These are stories about battles (about victories and defeats), about princely crimes, about walking in the holy land and just about real existing people: most often about saints and princes-commanders. There are stories about icons and about the construction of churches, about miracles that are believed in, about phenomena that supposedly happened. But not new works on clearly fictional plots.

Literature accompanies Russian reality, Russian history in a huge stream, follows it on its heels. Fearing lies, writers base their works on documents, which they consider to be all previous writing.

The literature of Ancient Rus' is evidence of life. That is why history itself, to a certain extent, establishes the periodization of literature.

The literature of the 11th - the first third of the 13th century can be regarded as a single literature of Kievan Rus. This is the century of a single ancient Russian state. The century of the first Russian lives - Boris and Gleb and the first monument of Russian chronicle writing that has come down to us - "The Tale of Bygone Years".

Next comes comparative short period Mongol-Tatar invasion, when stories about the invasion of the Mongol-Tatar troops into Rus', about the battle on Kalka, "The Word about the destruction of the Russian land" and "The Life of Alexander Nevsky" are created. Literature is compressed to one theme, but this theme manifests itself with unusual intensity, and the features of the monumental-historical style acquire a tragic imprint and lyrical elation of high patriotic feeling.

The next period, the end of the 14th century, the first half of the 15th century is the century of the Pre-Renaissance, coinciding with the economic and cultural revival of the Russian land in the years immediately preceding and following the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. This is a period of expressive-emotional style and a patriotic upsurge in literature, a period of revival of chronicle writing and historical narrative.

The victory won by the Russians over the Mongol-Tatars on the Kulikovo field made a huge impression not only on contemporaries. This explains the fact that a number of literary monuments are dedicated to the Mamaev battle: "Zadonshchina", "The Legend of Mamaev massacre" and etc.

In the second half of the 15th century, new phenomena were discovered in Russian literature: monuments of translated literature became widespread, journalism developed.

Since the middle of the 16th century, the official stream has been increasingly affecting literature. The 17th century is the century of transition to the literature of modern times. This is the age of the development of the individual principle in everything: in the very type of the writer and his work, the age of the development of individual tastes and styles, professional writing and a sense of copyright ownership.

Such is the periodization of the history of ancient Russian literature. There is no need to consider all the monuments that existed in Ancient Rus'. On the example of several works, let us consider how the theme of man and his deeds developed in ancient Russian literature.

Man in the literature of ancient Rus'

One of the first, most important genres of emerging Russian literature was the chronicle genre. The oldest chronicle that has actually come down to us is The Tale of Bygone Years, presumably created around 1113. It is here that we first learn about the people of Ancient Rus'.

Kyiv scribes argued that the history of Rus' is similar to the history of other Christian states. There were also Christian ascetics here, who tried by personal example to induce the people to accept new faith: Princess Olga was baptized in Constantinople and urged her son Svyatoslav to also become a Christian. There were in Rus' their martyrs and their saints, for example, Boris and Gleb, who were killed on the orders of their brother Svyatopolk, but did not violate the Christian precepts of brotherly love and obedience to the elder.

Two lives were written on the plot of the martyrdom of Boris and Gleb. The author of one of them "Reading about the life and destruction of Boris and Gleb" is the chronicler Nestor. The creation of the church cult of Boris and Gleb pursued two goals. Firstly, the canonization of the first Russian saints raised the church authority of Rus'. Secondly, he affirmed the state idea, according to which all Russian princes are brothers, and at the same time emphasized the obligation to "subjugate" the younger princes to the elder ones.

"Reading" Nestor, indeed, contains all the elements of the canonical life: it begins with an extensive introduction, with an explanation of the reasons why the author decides to start working on the life, with a brief summary world history from Adam to the baptism of Rus'. In the actual hagiographic part, Nestor tells about the childhood years of Boris and Gleb, about the piety that distinguished the brothers even in childhood and youth; in the story of their death, the hagiographic element is even stronger: they are preparing to accept death as a solemn and intended suffering from birth. In "Reading", in accordance with the requirements of the genre, there is also a story about the miracles that take place after the death of the saints, about the miraculous "finding" of their relics, about the healing of the sick at their tomb.

Thus, Saints Boris and Gleb entered Russian literature as people who honored Christian precepts.

Another work hagiographic genre can be considered "The Tale of the Life of Alexander Nevsky", written, as D.S. Likhachev, Metropolitan Kirill between 1263 - 1280.

The characteristics of Alexander Nevsky in the work are diverse. In accordance with hagiographic canons, his "church virtues" are emphasized. And at the same time, Alexander, majestic and beautiful in appearance. Courageous and invincible commander. In his military actions, Alexander is swift, selfless and merciless. Having received the news of the arrival of the Swedes on the Neva. Alexander "burned his heart", "with a small retinue" he rushes to the enemy. The swiftness of Alexander, his military prowess is characteristic of all episodes that talk about the military exploits of the prince. Here he appears as an epic hero.

For the author, Alexander is not only a hero-commander and a wise statesman, but also a man before the military prowess and statesmanship of which he bows. For the enemies of the Russian land, the prince is terrible and merciless. This is the ideal of a wise prince - a ruler and commander. Until the 16th century, The Tale of the Life of Alexander Nevsky was a kind of standard for depicting Russian princes when describing their military exploits.

It is impossible not to tell about another outstanding personality of ancient Rus'. Vladimir Monomakh is a prominent statesman, firmly guarding the interests of the Russian land, a man of great intelligence and literary talent. He won devoted love for himself and great respect from his contemporaries and posterity.

Under the year 1096 in the "Tale of Bygone Years" according to the Laurentian list is placed the "Instruction" of Vladimir Monomakh, combined with his letter to Prince Oleg of Chernigov. "Instruction" addressed by Monomakh to his children and continued by his autobiography. In his "Instruction" Vladimir Monomakh appears as a wise man with great life experience, a noble, humane-minded person, always thinking about the good of his state, calling for the protection of the weak from the strong and those in power. At the same time, this prince is energetic, enterprising, endowed with military prowess, spending his whole life in tireless work and in dangerous military campaigns. When ambassadors from his brothers come to him with a proposal to expel the Rostislavichs from their inheritance and take away their parish, he refuses to do this, because he does not want to break the oath of the cross. He advises to take an oath only if the swearer can keep it, but, having sworn, one must keep the promise so as not to destroy one's soul.

Monomakh is especially persistent in advising to protect all the destitute and calls for descent even in relation to criminals. The old must be revered as a father, and the young as brothers.

Monomakh calls his children to an active life, to constant work, and convinces them never to be in laziness and not indulge in depravity. You can’t rely on anyone, you yourself need to enter into everything and supervise everything, so that no trouble happens.

Listing many of his "paths" and "catches" (campaigns and hunts), Monomakh means by personal example to teach his children and all those who read his "grammar", which was written not only for the children of the prince.

Vladimir Monomakh condemns civil strife, seeks to mitigate feudal exploitation, which reached cruel forms in the 11th century, and to establish firm and unified power in Rus'.

Monomakh does not seek to compose a complete biography in his "Instruction", but conveyed only a chain of examples from his own life, which he considered instructive. In this ability to choose from one's life what is not of personal, but of civic interest, lies the originality of Monomakh's autobiography.

Monomakh's review appears in the "Instruction" as if against his will, which achieves a special artistic persuasiveness. Subsequently, Vladimir Monomakh was idealized by the Russian chronicle.

For posterity, "Instruction" was a kind of reference book in moral education.

The 17th century entered Russian literature as "rebellious". Riots and rebellions reflected irreconcilable social contradictions pre-Petrine Rus'. This was also the culture of the 17th century, which lost that external unity, that relative solidity that was characteristic of the Middle Ages. Fiction remains anonymous. The share of author's works has increased. The literature of the lower classes of society appeared. These lower ranks - the poor clergy, clerks, literate peasantry - spoke in an independent and free language of parody and satire.

Among the translated and original short stories are stories and legends.

"The Tale of Karp Sutulov" has come down to us in a single, moreover, now lost list (the collection, which included the story, was divided into separate notebooks; some of them have not survived). The Russian merchant Karp Sutulov, going on a trading trip, punishes his wife Tatyana, if necessary, to ask for money from his friend, Afanasy Berdov, also a merchant. In response to Tatyana's request, the unworthy friend of her husband covets her love. Tatyana goes for advice to the priest, who turns out to be no better than Afanasy Berdov, then to the bishop. But even in this archpastor, who gave a dinner of chastity, a sinful passion flared up. Tatyana feigningly decides to give in, and all three of them make appointments at her home. The first is Afanasy Berdov. When the priest knocks on the gate, Tatyana tells Athanasius that her husband has returned, and hides the first guest in a chest. In the same way, she gets rid of the priest and the bishop - in the latter case, the maid who was persuaded by her turns out to be the culprit of the commotion. The case ends with the fact that the disgraced seekers are taken from the chests in the voivodship yard.

This is a typical fairy tale short story with slow action, with repeated repetitions, with a folklore three-part construction - and an unexpected, entertaining ending: after the disgrace of the harassers, the division of money between the "strict" governor and the "pious" Tatyana follows. The Russian flavor of the novella is only superficial layering. The Sutulovs and Berdovs really belong to eminent merchant families of pre-Petrine Rus'. Tatyana's husband goes "to buy his own to the Lithuanian land" - the usual merchant route for Russia in the 17th century to Vilna. The action takes place in the voivodeship courtyard - this is also a Russian reality. However, all these realities do not affect the plot structure. Names and Russian circumstances are the scenes of the action, they can be easily eliminated and replaced, and we get a "universal" passing plot, not necessarily connected with the Russian urban life of the 17th century. According to the plot, "The Tale of Karp Sutulov" is a typical picaresque novel in the spirit of Boccaccio.

Today, our knowledge of Ancient Rus' is similar to mythology. Free people, brave princes and heroes, milky rivers with jelly banks. The real story is less poetic, but no less interesting for that.

"Kyiv Rus" was not

The name "Kievan Rus" appeared in the 19th century in the writings of Mikhail Maksimovich and other historians in memory of the primacy of Kyiv. Already in the very first centuries of Rus', the state consisted of several separate principalities, living their own lives and quite independently. With the nominal subordination of the lands to Kyiv, Rus' was not united. Such a system was common in the early feudal states of Europe, where each feudal lord had the right to own land and all the people on it.

"From the Varangians" anywhere

The path "From the Varangians to the Greeks" along the Dnieper was not an independent trade artery. Rather, it is a collective name for land, river and sea ​​routes between the Baltic and Byzantium. This is evidenced by a small number of Byzantine coins and large Arab hoards. No coin hoards were found at all on an important stretch of the route. The difficulties of the way along the Dnieper were the complexity of the portages and the rapids (in summer and autumn the rapids were impassable). Although the Dnieper played important role, such rivers as the Pripyat, the Neman and the Western Dvina served no less as a link with Europe and Scandinavia. The path "from the Germans to the Khazars" was just as branched.

The walls of ancient temples hid organs

In Kievan Rus, one could see organs and not see bells in churches. Although bells existed in large cathedrals, in small churches they were often replaced by flat beaters. After the Mongol conquests, the organs were lost and forgotten, and the first bell makers came back from Western Europe. about the organs in ancient Russian era writes the researcher of musical culture Tatyana Vladyshevskaya. On one of the frescoes Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv "Skomorokhi" depicts a scene with playing the organ.

Polochans - "relatives" of the Poles

The language of the Old Russian population is considered East Slavic. However, archaeologists and linguists do not quite agree with this. The ancestors of the Novgorod Slovenes and part of the Krivichi (Polochans) did not come from the southern expanses from the Carpathians to the right bank of the Dnieper, but from the West. Researchers see the West Slavic "trace" in the finds of ceramics and birch bark records. A prominent historian and researcher Vladimir Sedov is also inclined to this version. Household items and features of rituals are similar among the Ilmen and Baltic Slavs.

The princes had an oriental appearance

Appearance Kyiv princes was not always truly "Slavic" as it is commonly represented. It's all about subtle Kyiv diplomacy, accompanied by dynastic marriages, both with European dynasties and with nomads - Alans, Yases, Polovtsy. The Polovtsian wives of the Russian princes Svyatopolk Izyaslavich and Vsevolod Vladimirovich are known. On some reconstructions, Russian princes have Mongoloid features.

Not in Russian, but in Pskov

Novgorod and Pskov dialects differed from other dialects of Ancient Rus'. They had features inherent in the languages ​​of the Polabs and Poles, and even completely archaic, Proto-Slavic. Known Parallels: kirky-"church", hede- "gray". The rest of the dialects were very similar to each other, although they were not so common language like a modern Russian. Despite the differences, ordinary Novgorodians and Kievans could understand each other quite well: the words reflected the life common to all Slavs.

"Non-people" veche were the norm

Veches were not always truly popular gatherings, as chronicles beautifully say. Set not free people did not have any rights. Often the veche gathered only the most influential and wealthy people. At the same time, any crowded gathering of free people could be called a veche, that's just the concept of "freedom" in the 9th-10th centuries. was still rather vague: people were completely dependent on the feudal lords. Therefore, even veche squares accommodated only a limited number of "best" people.

Rusyns never lived in Rus'

The fate of the East Slavic people of the Ruthenians was very strange. Rusyns in old treaties and chronicles were usually called the inhabitants of Rus'. But the Carpathian people of the Rusyns never live much to the west of the borders of Rus', if one could talk about borders in that distant era. According to one version, these people were nicknamed Rusyns because of the Hungarians, Romanians or Poles, similar to Russian dialects; according to another, the name was brought by the Tivertsy who migrated to the west and caught, having been under the rule of Kyiv.

"White spots" in the most prominent place

We know almost nothing about the first Ruriks. The events described in The Tale of Bygone Years were already legendary at the time of writing, and the evidence from archaeologists and later chronicles is scarce and ambiguous. Written treaties mention certain Helga, Inger, Sfendoslav, but the dates of the events differ in different sources. The role of the Kyiv "Varangian" Askold in the formation of Russian statehood is not very clear either. And that's not to mention eternal disputes around the personality of Rurik.

"Capital" was a border fortress

Kyiv was far from the center of Russian lands, but was the southern border fortress of Rus', while being located in the very north modern Ukraine. Cities south of Kyiv and its environs, as a rule, served as centers of nomadic tribes: Torks, Alans, Polovtsy, or were predominantly of defensive importance (for example, Pereyaslavl).

Rus' - the state of the slave trade

An important article of the wealth of Ancient Rus' was the slave trade. They traded not only captured foreigners, but also Slavs. The latter were in great demand in the Eastern markets. Arabic sources of the 10th-11th centuries describe in colors the way of slaves from Rus' to the countries of the Caliphate and the Mediterranean. The slave trade was beneficial to the princes, the large cities on the Volga and the Dnieper were the centers of the slave trade. A huge number of people in Rus' were not free, they could be sold into slavery to foreign merchants for debts. One of the main slave traders were Jewish radonites.

Khazars "inherited" in Kyiv

During the reign of the Khazars (IX-X centuries), in addition to the Turkic tribute collectors, there was a large diaspora of Jews in Kyiv. Monuments of that era are still reflected in the "Kiev letter", which contains the correspondence in Hebrew of Kyiv Jews with other Jewish communities. The manuscript is kept in the Cambridge Library. One of the three main Kyiv gates was called Zhidovskie. In one of the early Byzantine documents, Kyiv is called Sambatas, which, according to one of the versions, can be translated from the Khazar as “upper fortress”.

Kyiv - Third Rome

Ancient Kyiv, before the Mongol yoke, occupied an area of ​​​​about 300 hectares during its heyday, the number of churches went to hundreds, for the first time in the history of Rus', the planning of quarters was used in it, making the streets slender. The city was admired by Europeans, Arabs, Byzantines and called the rival of Constantinople. However, from all the abundance of that time, almost not a single building remained, not counting the St. Sophia Cathedral, a couple of rebuilt churches and the recreated Golden Gate. The first white-stone church (Desyatinnaya), where the people of Kiev fled from the Mongol raid, was destroyed already in the 13th century.

Russian fortresses older than Rus'

One of the first stone fortresses of Rus' was the stone-and-earth fortress in Ladoga (Lyubshanskaya, 7th century), founded by the Slovenes. The Scandinavian fortress that stood on the other side of the Volkhov was still made of wood. Built in the era of the Prophetic Oleg, the new stone fortress was in no way inferior to similar fortresses in Europe. It was she who was called Aldegyuborg in the Scandinavian sagas. One of the first strongholds on the southern border was a fortress in Pereyaslavl-Yuzhny. Among Russian cities, only a few could boast of stone defensive architecture. These are Izborsk (XI century), Pskov (XII century) and later Koporye (XIII century). Kyiv in ancient Russian times was almost completely wooden. The oldest stone fortress was Andrey Bogolyubsky's castle near Vladimir, although it is more famous for its decorative part.

Cyrillic was almost never used

The Glagolitic alphabet, the first written alphabet of the Slavs, did not take root in Rus', although it was known and could be translated. Glagolitic letters were used only in some documents. It was she who in the first centuries of Rus' was associated with the preacher Cyril and was called "Cyrillic". The Glagolitic was often used as a secret script. The first inscription in Cyrillic proper was a strange inscription “goroukhshcha” or “gorushna” on an earthenware vessel from the Gnezdovo barrow. The inscription appeared shortly before the baptism of the people of Kiev. The origin and exact interpretation of this word is still controversial.

Old Russian universe

Lake Ladoga was called the “Great Lake Nevo” after the Neva River. The ending "-o" was common (for example: Onego, Nero, Volgo). The Baltic Sea was called the Varangian, the Black Sea - the Russian, the Caspian - the Khvalis, the Azov - the Surozh, and the White - the Studyon. The Balkan Slavs, on the contrary, called the Aegean Sea the White (Bialo Sea). The Great Don was not called the Don, but its right tributary, the Seversky Donets. Ural mountains in the old days they called it the Big Stone.

Heir of Great Moravia

With the decline of Great Moravia, the largest Slavic power for its time, the rise of Kyiv and the gradual Christianization of Rus' began. So, the annalistic white Croats got out from under the influence of the collapsing Moravia, and fell under the attraction of Rus'. Their neighbors, Volhynians and Buzhans, have long been involved in Byzantine trade along the Bug, which is why they were known as translators during Oleg's campaigns. The role of the Moravian scribes, who were oppressed by the Latins with the collapse of the state, is unknown, but the largest number of translations of Great Moravian Christian books (about 39) was in Kievan Rus.

Alcohol and sugar free

There was no alcoholism as a phenomenon in Rus'. Wine spirit came to the country after Tatar-Mongol yoke, even brewing in classical form did not work out. The strength of drinks was usually not higher than 1-2%. They drank nutritious honey, as well as intoxicated or set (low alcohol), digests, kvass.

Ordinary people in Ancient Rus' did not eat butter, did not know spices like mustard and bay leaves, as well as sugar. They cooked turnips, the table abounded with cereals, dishes from berries and mushrooms. Instead of tea, they drank decoctions of fireweed, which would later become known as “Koporsky tea” or Ivan tea. Kissels were unsweetened and made from cereals. They also ate a lot of game: pigeons, hares, deer, wild boars. Traditional dairy dishes were sour cream and cottage cheese.

Two "Bulgaria" in the service of Rus'

These two most powerful neighbors of Rus' had a huge impact on her. After the decline of Moravia, both countries, which arose on the fragments of Great Bulgaria, are flourishing. The first country said goodbye to the "Bulgarian" past, dissolving into the Slavic majority, converted to Orthodoxy and adopted Byzantine culture. The second, following the Arab world, became Islamic, but retained the Bulgarian language as the state language.

The center of Slavic literature moved to Bulgaria, at that time its territory expanded so much that it included part of the future Rus'. A variant of the Old Bulgarian language became the language of the Church. It has been used in numerous lives and teachings. Bulgaria, in turn, sought to restore order in trade along the Volga, suppressing the attacks of foreign bandits and robbers. The normalization of the Volga trade provided the princely possessions with an abundance of oriental goods. Bulgaria influenced Rus' with culture and literacy, and Bulgaria contributed to its wealth and prosperity.

Forgotten "megacities" of Rus'

Kyiv and Novgorod were not the only major cities of Rus'; it was not for nothing that it was nicknamed “Gardarika” (country of cities) in Scandinavia. Before the rise of Kyiv, one of the largest settlements in all of Eastern and Northern Europe was Gnezdovo, the ancestor city of Smolensk. The name is conditional, since Smolensk itself is on the sidelines. But perhaps we know his name from the sagas - Surnes. The most populated were also Ladoga, symbolically considered the "first capital", and the Timerevskoye settlement near Yaroslavl, which was built opposite the famous neighboring city.

"Rus", "Roksolania", "Gardarika" and not only

The Balts called the country “Krevia” after the neighboring Krivichi, the Latin “Ruthenia” took root in Europe, less often “Roksolania”, Scandinavian sagas called Rus' “Gardarika” (country of cities), Chud and Finns “Venemaa” or “Venaya” (from the Wends), the Arabs called the main population of the country "As-Sakaliba" (Slavs, Slavs)

Slavs outside the borders

Traces of the Slavs could be found outside the state of Rurikovich. Many cities along the middle Volga and in the Crimea were multinational and populated, including Slavs. Before the Polovtsian invasion, many Slavic towns existed on the Don. The Slavic names of many Byzantine Black Sea cities are known - Korchev, Korsun, Surozh, Gusliev. This speaks of the constant presence of Russian merchants. The Chud cities of Estland (modern Estonia) - Kolyvan, Yuryev, Bear's Head, Klin - with varying success passed into the hands of the Slavs, then the Germans, then the local tribes. Along the Western Dvina, the Krivichi settled interspersed with the Balts. In the zone of influence of Russian merchants was Nevgin (Daugavpils), in Latgale - Rezhitsa and Ochela. Chronicles constantly mention the campaigns of Russian princes on the Danube and the capture of local cities. So, for example, the Galician prince Yaroslav Osmomysl "locked the door of the Danube with a key."

Both pirates and nomads

Fugitive people of various volosts of Rus' formed independent associations long before the Cossacks. Berladniks were known, who inhabited the southern steppes, the main city of which was Berlady in the Carpathian region. They often attacked Russian cities, but at the same time they participated in joint campaigns with Russian princes. Chronicles also introduce us to wanderers, a mixed population of unknown origin, who had much in common with Berladniks.

Sea pirates from Rus' were ushkuyniki. Initially, these were Novgorodians who were engaged in raids and trade on the Volga, Kama, in Bulgaria and the Baltic. They even undertook campaigns in the Cis-Urals - to Yugra. Later, they separated from Novgorod and even found their own capital in the city of Khlynov on Vyatka. Perhaps it was the ushkuyniki, together with the Karelians, who ruined ancient capital Sweden - Sigtuna in 1187.

Good people of ancient Rus'

Charity- here is a word with a very controversial meaning and with a very simple meaning. Many people interpret it differently, and everyone understands it the same way. Ask what it means to be kind to your neighbor, and you may get as many answers as you have. But put them right in front of an accident, in front of a suffering person with the question of what to do - and everyone will be ready to help in any way they can. The feeling of compassion is so simple and direct that one wants to help even when the sufferer does not ask for help, even when help is harmful and even dangerous to him, when he can abuse it. At leisure, one can reflect and argue about the terms of government loans to the needy, organization and comparative value state and public assistance, the attitude of both to private charity, the delivery of earnings to the needy, the demoralizing effect of gratuitous benefits. At leisure, when the trouble is over, and we will think about all this and argue. But when you see that a person is drowning, the first movement is to rush to his aid, without asking how and why he fell into the water and what moral impression our help will make on him.

When discussing the participation that the government, zemstvo and society can take in helping the people, it is necessary to distinguish between various elements and motives: economic policy, which takes measures to bring the labor and economy of the people out of unfavorable conditions, and the consequences of assistance, which may turn out to be unfavorable from the point of view of police and public discipline, and the possibility of all sorts of abuses. All these are considerations which are within the competence of the respective departments, but which need not be mixed with charity in the proper sense. Only such charity is open to us, private individuals, and it can be guided only by a moral impulse, a feeling of compassion for the suffering. If only to help him stay alive and well, and if he makes bad use of our help, it is his fault, which, after the need has passed, the authorities and influences to be corrected will take care to correct. This is how we understood private charity in the old days; so, no doubt, we also understand it, having inherited through historical education the good concepts and skills of antiquity.

Poverty of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky.

From the Royal Chronicler

Over the course of centuries, under the leadership of the Church, ancient Russian society diligently learned to understand and fulfill the second of the two main commandments, which contain all the law and the prophets - the commandment to love one's neighbor. With social disorder, lack of security for the weak and protection for the offended, the practice of this commandment was directed mainly in one direction: love for one's neighbor was believed, first of all, in the feat of compassion for the suffering, personal alms were recognized as its first requirement. The idea of ​​this almsgiving relied on the basis of practical moralizing; the need for this feat was brought up by all the then means of spiritual and moral pedagogy.

To love your neighbor is, first of all, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to visit the prisoner in prison. Humanity really means poverty. Charity was not so much an auxiliary means of public improvement, but a necessary condition for personal moral health: it was more necessary for the poor man himself than for the beggar. The healing power of alms was relied not so much on wiping away the tears of the afflicted, giving him part of his property, but on looking at his tears and suffering, to suffer with him himself, to experience that feeling called philanthropy.

The ancient Russian philanthropist, "lover of Christ", thought less about raising the level of social welfare with a good deed than about raising the level of his own spiritual perfection. When two ancient Russian hands met, one with a request for Christ's sake, the other with alms in the name of Christ, it was difficult to say which of them gave more alms to the other: the need of one and the help of the other merged in the interaction of the brotherly love of both. That is why Ancient Rus' understood and valued only personal, direct, charity, alms given from hand to hand, moreover, “otay”, secretly, not only from a prying eye, but also from its own “shui” ( left hand. – Note. ed.).

The beggar was for the philanthropist the best pilgrimage, prayer intercessor, spiritual benefactor. “The holy alms enter into paradise,” they said in the old days, “the poor are fed by the rich, and the rich of the poor are saved by prayer.” The philanthropist needed to see with his own eyes the human need that he alleviated in order to receive spiritual benefit; the needy had to see his benefactor in order to know whom to pray for. Old Russian tsars, on the eve of big holidays, early in the morning, made secret exits to prisons and almshouses, where they handed out alms to prisoners and detainees from their own hands, and also visited poor people who lived separately.

How difficult it is to study and treat diseases according to a drawing or a mannequin of a diseased organism, so seemed ineffective absentee alms. By virtue of the same view of the importance of charitable work, begging was considered in Ancient Rus' not an economic burden for the people, not an ulcer of public order, but one of the main means moral education people, which is a practical institution of public goodness attached to the Church. Just as a patient is needed in a clinic in order to learn how to treat diseases, so in ancient Russian society an orphaned and wretched person was needed in order to cultivate the ability and skill to love a person. Almsgiving was an additional act of church worship, a practical requirement of the rule that faith without works is dead. As a living instrument of spiritual salvation, the old Russian man needed a beggar at all important moments of his personal and family life especially in sad moments. From it he created perfect image, who liked to wear in thought, as the personification of his best feelings and thoughts. If by a miraculous act of legislation or economic progress and medical knowledge all the poor and miserable in Ancient Rus' suddenly disappeared, who knows, perhaps the ancient Russian merciful would feel some moral awkwardness, like a person left without a staff on which he used to rely; he would have a shortage in the supply of means for his spiritual dispensation.

It is difficult to say to what extent such a view of charity contributed to the improvement of the Old Russian community. No methods of sociological study can calculate how much good this daily, silent, thousand-armed charity poured into human relations, how much it taught people to love a person and weaned the poor from hating the rich. The significance of such personal almsgiving was revealed more clearly and more tangibly when the need for charitable assistance was caused not by the grief of individual unhappy lives, but by the people's physical disaster. The nature of our country has long been kind, but sometimes it has been the wayward mother of its people, who, perhaps, himself caused her waywardness by his inability to deal with her. Shortfalls and crop failures were not uncommon in Ancient Rus'. The lack of economic communication and administrative discipline turned local shortages of food into starvation disasters.

Such a disaster happened in early XVII c., under Tsar Boris. In 1601, as soon as the spring sowing was over, terrible rains poured down and poured all summer. Field work has stopped. The bread did not ripen, until August it was impossible to start harvesting, and on Assumption Day a hard frost unexpectedly hit and beat the unripe bread, which almost all remained in the field. People fed themselves on the remnants of old bread, and the next year they sowed the crops of the new crop, somehow harvested, with cold; but nothing came up, everything remained in the ground, and a three-year famine set in. The tsar did not spare the treasury, generously distributed alms in Moscow, undertook extensive construction in order to deliver earnings to those in need.

Having heard about this, the people poured into Moscow in droves from the lean provinces, which increased the need for the capital. Severe mortality began: only in three state-owned metropolitan skudels, where the tsar ordered to pick up homeless victims, in two years and four months they counted 127 thousand. But the trouble was largely artificial. There was enough bread left over from previous harvests. Later, when the impostors flooded Rus' with gangs of Poles and Cossacks, who, with their devastation, stopped sowing in vast areas, for many years this spare grain was enough not only for their own, but also for enemies. At the first sign of crop failure, grain speculation began to play out. The big landowners locked up their warehouses.

The buyers put everything into circulation: money, utensils, expensive clothes, in order to pick up the sold bread. Both of them did not let any grain on the market, waiting for high prices, rejoicing, in the words of a contemporary, at the profits, “the end of things is not understanding, troubles are woven together and the people are embarrassing.” Grain prices were raised to a terrible height: a quarter of rye from the then 20 kopecks soon rose to 6 rubles, equal to our 60 rubles, that is, it rose in price by 30 times! The king took strict and decisive measures against evil, banned distilling and brewing, ordered to look for buyers and beat mercilessly in the markets with a whip, rewrite their stocks and sell a little at retail, prescribed mandatory prices and punished with heavy fines those who hid their supplies.

The surviving monument revealed to us one of the private charitable activities that at that time worked below, in the field, when the tsar was struggling with a national disaster above. At that time, a widow-landowner, the wife of a wealthy provincial nobleman, Ulyana Ustinovna Osorina, lived on her estate. She was a simple, ordinary, kind woman of Ancient Rus', modest, afraid of something to become higher than those around her. She differed from others only in that pity for the poor and wretched—the feeling with which a Russian woman is born into the world—was subtler and deeper in her, manifested itself more intensely than in many others, and, developing from continuous practice, gradually filled her whole being, became the main stimulus of her moral life, the every minute attraction of her eternally active heart.

Even before her marriage, living with her aunt after the death of her parents, she sheathed all the orphans and infirm widows in her village, and often the candle in her room did not go out until dawn. Upon her marriage, her mother-in-law entrusted her with housekeeping, and her daughter-in-law turned out to be a smart and efficient housewife. But the habitual thought of the poor and the wretched did not leave her amid domestic and family troubles. She deeply learned the Christian commandment of secret almsgiving. It used to be that her husband would be sent to the royal service somewhere in Astrakhan for two or three years.

She stayed at home and whiled away the lonely evenings, she sewed and spun. She sold her needlework and secretly distributed the proceeds to the beggars who came to her at night. Not considering herself entitled to take something from home stocks without asking her mother-in-law, she once even resorted to a little slyness for a charitable purpose, which it is permissible to tell about, because her respectful son did not hide it in his mother's biography. Ulyana was very moderate in her food, she only dined, did not have breakfast and did not have an afternoon snack, which greatly worried her mother-in-law, who was afraid for the health of her young daughter-in-law.

One of the frequent crop failures happened in Rus', and famine set in in the Murom region. Uliana intensified her usual secret almsgiving and, needing new funds, suddenly began to demand for herself full breakfasts and afternoon snacks, which, of course, were distributed to the starving. The mother-in-law remarked to her half-jokingly: “What has happened to you, my daughter? When there was plenty of bread, you used to not be called to either breakfast or afternoon tea, but now, when everyone has nothing to eat, what a desire for food fell on you. - “Until I had children,” the daughter-in-law answered, “food didn’t even come to my mind, but when the guys went to be born, I became emaciated and just can’t eat, not only during the day, but often at night I’m drawn to food ; only I am ashamed, mother, to ask you. The mother-in-law was satisfied with the explanation of her good liar and allowed her to take food as much as she liked, day and night.

This constantly aroused compassionate love for her neighbor, offended by life, helped Ulyana easily step over the most inveterate social prejudices of Ancient Rus'.

A deep legal and moral abyss lay between the ancient Russian master and his serf: the latter was for the former, according to the law, not a person, but a simple thing. Following the original native custom, and perhaps even Greco-Roman law, which did not criminalize the death of a slave from the beatings of the master, Russian legislation as early as the 14th century. proclaimed that if the master “sinned”, with an unsuccessful blow he killed his serf or serf, for this he would not be subjected to trial and responsibility. The Church long and in vain cried out against such an attitude towards serfs. Filling the yards of wealthy landowners by dozens, poorly dressed and always kept from hand to mouth, the servants made up a crowd of domestic beggars, more miserable compared to free public beggars. The ancient Russian church sermon pointed to them to the gentlemen as the closest object of their compassion, urging them to take care of their servants before holding out their hand with a charitable penny to a beggar standing on the church porch. There were many servants in Ulyana's estate. She fed and clothed her well, did not spoil her, but spared her, did not leave her idle, but gave everyone work according to her strength and did not demand personal services from her, she did everything for herself, did not even allow her to take off her shoes and give water to wash . At the same time, she did not allow herself to address the serfs with nicknames, with which soul-owning Rus', right up to February 19, 1861, shouted at her people: Vanka, Mashka, but she called each and every one by her real name. Who, what social theories taught her, a simple rural mistress of the 16th century, to become in such a direct and deliberate relationship with the lower subservient brethren?

Righteous Juliana during the famine gives alms to the poor

She was already in old age when her last and most difficult charitable test befell her. The crafty demon, a good hater, who had long fussed around this annoying woman and was always put to shame by her, once out of anger threatened her: “Wait a minute! Will you feed strangers with me when I make you starve to death in your old age. Such a good-natured and pious combination explains in the biography the origin of the misfortune that befell the good woman. Having buried her husband, raised her sons and placed them in the royal service, she was already thinking about the eternal dispensation of her own soul, but she still smoldered before God with love for her neighbor, like a burning wax candle smoldering before the icon. Poverty did not allow her to be a thrifty mistress. She counted on household food only for a year, distributing the rest to those in need. The poor man was for her some kind of bottomless savings mug, where she, with insatiable hoarding, hid everything and hid all her savings and surpluses. Sometimes she didn’t have a penny left in her house from alms, and she borrowed money from her sons, with which she sewed winter clothes for the poor, and herself, already under 60 years old, went all winter without a fur coat.

The beginning of the terrible famine three years under Tsar Boris found her completely unprepared in the Nizhny Novgorod estate. She did not collect any grain from her fields, there were no stocks, almost all the cattle fell from lack of food. But she did not lose heart, but cheerfully set to work, sold the rest of the cattle, clothes, dishes, everything valuable in the house and bought bread with the proceeds, which she distributed to the hungry, did not let a single one who asked empty-handed and took special care of feeding her family. servants. Then many prudent gentlemen simply drove their serfs from the yards so as not to feed them, but did not give them vacation pay, so that later they could be returned to captivity. Abandoned to the mercy of fate in the midst of general panic, the serfs began to steal and rob.

Ulyana tried most of all to prevent her servants from doing this and kept them with her as much as she had strength. Finally, she reached the last stage of poverty, robbed herself clean, so that there was nothing to go to church. Having exhausted herself, having used up all the bread to the last grain, she announced to her serf household that she could no longer feed her, whoever wants, let her take her fortresses or vacation pay and go free with God. Some left her, and she saw them off with prayer and blessing; but others renounced their will, declared that they would not go, would rather die with their mistress than leave her. She sent her faithful servants through the forests and fields to collect tree bark and quinoa and began to bake bread from these surrogates, which she fed with children and serfs, even managed to share with the beggars, “because at that time there were no number of beggars,” she succinctly remarks biographer.

The surrounding landowners reproachfully said to these beggars: “Why do you go to her? What to take from her? She herself is starving." “And we’ll say this,” the beggars said, “we went around a lot of villages where we were served real bread, and we didn’t eat it as much as we liked, like the bread of this widow - what do you call her?” Many beggars did not even know how to call her by name. Then the neighbors-landlords began to send to Ulyana for her outlandish bread: after tasting it, they found that the beggars were right, and with surprise they said among themselves: the masters of her serfs bake bread! With what love it is necessary to give a beggar a piece of bread that is not chemically irreproachable, so that this piece becomes the subject of a poetic legend as soon as it is eaten! For two years she endured such poverty and did not grieve, did not grumble, did not give madness to God, did not become exhausted from poverty, on the contrary, she was cheerful as never before. Thus ends the biographer's account of his mother's last exploit. She died shortly after the end of the famine, at the beginning of 1604. The traditions of our past have not preserved for us a sublime and more touching example of charitable love for one's neighbor.

No one counted, no one historical monument he did not write down how many Ulyans were then in the Russian land, and how many hungry tears they wiped away with their kind hands. It must be assumed that there were enough of both, because the Russian land survived those terrible years, deceiving the expectations of its enemies. Here, private philanthropy went hand in hand with the efforts of the state authorities. But this is not always the case. Private philanthropy suffers from some disadvantages. Usually she provides occasional and fleeting help, and often not a real need. It is easily abused: evoked by one of the deepest and most uncalculative feelings that there is in the moral reserve of the human heart, it cannot follow its own effects. It is pure in its source, but easily corrupted in its course. Here it is against the will of benefactors and may deviate from the requirements of the public good and order.

Peter the Great, striving to set in motion the entire available labor force of his people, armed himself against idle begging fed by private alms. In 1705, he ordered clerks to be sent around Moscow with soldiers and bailiffs to catch wandering beggars and punish them, take their money away, not give them alms, but seize those who file and subject them to a fine; philanthropists had to deliver their alms to the almshouses that existed at the churches. Peter armed himself against private alms in the name of public charity, as an institution, as a system of charitable institutions. Public charity has its advantages: yielding to private alms in energy and quality of motives, in moral and educational action on both sides, it is more selective and more effective in its practical results, it provides more reliable assistance to the needy, gives him permanent shelter.

The idea of ​​public charity, of course, was aroused with particular force in times of national disasters, when the quantity of good is required before being asked about the quality of motives for good deeds. So it was in the Time of Troubles. In 1609 the second impostor besieged Moscow. The phenomena of Borisov's time were repeated. There was a terrible famine in the capital. The grain merchants staged a strike, began to buy supplies everywhere and did not let anything on the market, waiting for the greatest rise in prices. For a quarter of rye, they began to ask for 9 rubles of that time, that is, over 100 rubles. with our money. Tsar Vasily Shuisky ordered to sell bread at a specified price - the merchants did not obey. He put into effect the strictness of the laws - merchants stopped the risky delivery of the bread they bought from the provinces to the besieged capital. Moreover, opposition journalism poured out of Moscow streets and markets from thousands of mouths, they began to say that all troubles, and the enemy's sword, and hunger fall on the people because the tsar is unhappy. Then an unprecedented people's assembly was convened at the Moscow Assumption Cathedral. Patriarch Hermogenes delivered a powerful sermon on love and mercy; behind him the tsar himself delivered a speech, imploring the kulaks not to buy up grain, not to raise prices. But the struggle of both higher authorities, church and state, with popular psychology and political economy was unsuccessful. Then a bright thought, one of those that often come to the mind of good people, dawned on the tsar and the patriarch. The Old Russian monastery has always been a spare granary for the needy, for the wealth of the Church, as the pastors of our Church used to say, is the wealth of the poor.

Then lived at the Trinity Compound in Moscow, the cellar of the Trinity Sergius Monastery, Father Avraamy, who had significant stocks of bread. The tsar and the patriarch persuaded him to send several hundred quarters to the Moscow market for 2 rubles. for a quarter. It was more a psychological than a political-economic operation: the cellar threw only 200 measures of rye into the market of the crowded capital; but the goal was achieved. The merchants were frightened when a rumor spread that all the grain reserves of this rich monastery, which were considered inexhaustible, had gone to the market, and the price of bread had fallen to 2 rubles for a long time. After some time, Abraham repeated this operation with the same amount of bread and with the same success.

The 17th century had the sad advantage of hard experience to understand and appreciate the importance of the issue of public charity raised at the Stoglavy Cathedral, as a matter of legislation and administration, and to transfer it from the sphere of action of personal moral feeling to the area of ​​public improvement. Severe trials have led to the idea that state power, by timely measures, can weaken or prevent the calamities of the needy masses and even direct private charity.

In 1654, the war with Poland for Little Russia began and continued under very unfavorable conditions. The epidemic devastated villages and villages and reduced grain production. The fall in the rate of credit issued in 1656 copper money with the nominal value of silver increased the high cost: the price of bread, which had doubled since the beginning of the war, rose to 30-40 rubles in other places by the beginning of the 1660s. for a quarter of rye with our money. In 1660, knowledgeable people from the Moscow merchants, who were called for a conference with the boyars on the reasons for the high cost and the means to eliminate it, among other things pointed out the extraordinary development of distillation and brewing, and proposed to stop the sale of wine in drinking establishments, close wineries, and also take measures against the buying up of grain and to prevent buyers and kulaks from entering grain markets before noon. Finally, to rewrite the stocks of grain prepared by the buyers, transport them to Moscow to the state account and sell them to poor people, and the buyers will be paid from the treasury at their price in money. As soon as the gravity of the situation forced us to think about the mechanism of national economic turnover, we immediately felt vividly what the state power could do to eliminate the confusion that arose in it.

In these hard years stood close to the king a man who good example showed how it is possible to combine private charity with public and build on a sense of personal compassion sustainable system charitable institutions.

It was F. M. Rtishchev, a close bed-keeper, how to say, chief chamberlain at the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and then his butler, that is, the minister of the court. This man is one of the best memories bequeathed to us by ancient Russian antiquity. One of the first planters of scientific education in Moscow in the 17th century, he belonged to the great state minds of Alekseev's time, which was so abundant in great minds. He was also credited with the idea of ​​the aforementioned credit operation with copper money, which represented unprecedented news in the then financial policy, and it was not his fault if the experiment ended unsuccessfully. Much employed in the service, enjoying the full confidence of the king and queen and the great respect of the court society, the educator of Tsarevich Alexei, Rtishchev set the task of his private life to serve suffering and needy humanity. Helping one's neighbor was a constant need of his heart, and his view of himself and his neighbor imparted to this need the character of a responsible but unassuming moral duty.

Rtishchev belonged to those rare and slightly strange people who have no pride at all, at least in the simple walking sense of the word. Contrary to natural instincts and primordial human habits, in Christ's commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, he considered himself capable of fulfilling only the first part. He loved himself only for his neighbor, considering himself the least of his neighbors, about whom it is not a sin to think about only when there is no one else to think about. Totally evangelical right cheek which itself, without boasting and calculation, was substituted for the one who hit on the left, as if it were a requirement of physical law or secular decency, and not a feat of humility.

Andreevsky Monastery near Moscow, where a school was founded in 1647.

19th century lithograph from an old engraving

Rtishchev did not understand resentment, just as some do not know the taste in wine, not considering this as abstinence, but simply not understanding how it is possible to drink such an unpleasant and useless thing. He was the first to meet his offender with a request for forgiveness and reconciliation. From the height of his social position, he did not know how to slide an arrogant gaze over people's heads, stopping at them only to count them. A person was not only a counting unit for him, especially a poor and suffering person. high position it only expanded, how to say, the space of his philanthropy, giving him the opportunity to see how many people live in the world who need help, and his compassionate feeling was not content with helping the first suffering he met. From the height of ancient Russian compassion for personal, specific grief, for this or that unfortunate person, Rtishchev knew how to rise to the ability to sympathize with human misfortune, as a common evil, and deal with it, as with his own personal disaster. Therefore, he wanted to turn the random and intermittent calls of personal charity into a permanent public organization that would pick up the masses of the toiling and burdened, making it easier for them to bear the heavy duty of life.

Procession in Moscow in the 17th century

The impressions of the Polish war could only reinforce this idea. The tsar himself went on a campaign, and Rtishchev accompanied him as the head of his camp apartment. Being in his position in the rear of the army, Rtishchev saw the horrors that the war leaves behind, and which the belligerents themselves usually do not notice - those who become their first victims. The rear of the army - ordeal and the best school of philanthropy: he will already relentlessly love a person who does not carry away hatred of people from the dressing line.

Rtishchev looked at the disgusting work of the war as at the harvest of his heart, as at a sadly plentiful charitable harvest. He suffered from his legs, and it was difficult for him to ride. On the way, he gathered in heaps of sick, wounded, beaten and devastated into his carriage, so that sometimes there was no place left for him, and, having mounted a horse, he trailed behind his impromptu field infirmary to the nearest town, where he immediately rented a house, where, himself groaning in pain, he dumped his groaning and groaning brethren, arranged for her maintenance and care for her, and even in some unknown way recruited medical staff, “naziratai and physicians to them and caregivers arranged, for their repose and healing from their estate, exhausting them,” how pretentious notes his biographer. So the chief chamberlain of his majesty's court turned by itself into a mourner of the Red Cross, which he also arranged at his own expense.

However, in this case he had a secret financial and cordial accomplice, which the same chatty biographer betrayed to history. In his silent pocket, Rtishchev carried a significant amount for the war, quietly slipped to him by Tsarina Marya Ilyinichnaya, and the biographer makes it clear with an indiscreet hint that before the campaign they agreed to accept even captured enemies in need of hospital care in the temporary military hospitals they had conceived. We must bow to the ground to the memory of these people who, by the silent exegesis of their deeds, teach us to understand the words of Christ: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you." Similar cases were repeated in the Livonian campaign of the king, when in 1656 the war with Sweden began.

It can be assumed that the field observations and impressions did not remain without influence on the plan of public charity, drawn up in the mind of Rtishchev. This plan was designed for the most painful ulcers of the then Russian life. First of all, the Crimean Tatars in the XVI and XVII centuries. made a profitable trade for themselves from robber attacks on the Russian land, where they took thousands and tens of thousands of prisoners, who were sold to Turkey and other countries. In order to save and return these prisoners home, the Moscow government arranged for their redemption at public expense, for which they introduced a special general tax, Polonian money. This ransom was called "general alms", in which everyone had to participate: both the king and all "Orthodox Christians", his subjects. By agreement with the robbers, the procedure for bringing in captive goods and the tariff at which it was redeemed were established, depending on the social status of the captives. Redemption rates in the time of Rtishchev were quite high: for the people who stood at the very bottom of the then society, peasants and serfs, about 250 rubles were assigned from the state. on our money per person; for people of the upper classes paid thousands. But state support for ransom was not enough.

Having seen enough of the suffering of prisoners during campaigns, Rtishchev entered into an agreement with a Greek merchant living in Russia, who, doing business with the Mohammedan East, redeemed many captive Christians at his own expense. To this good man, Rtishchev transferred a capital of 17 thousand rubles with our money, to which the Greek, who had taken over the ransom operation, added his contribution, and thus a kind of charitable company was formed to redeem Russian prisoners from the Tatars. But, true to his agreement with the tsarina, Rtishchev did not forget the foreigners whom he brought captive to Russia, and eased their plight with his intercession and alms.

Moscow unpaved street of the 17th century. she was very untidy: in the midst of the dirt, misfortune, idleness and vice sat, crawled and lay nearby; beggars and cripples screamed for alms to passers-by, drunks lay on the ground. Rtishchev made up a team of messengers who picked up these people from the streets to a special house arranged by him at his own expense, where the sick were treated, and the drunks were sobered up and then, having been provided with the necessary, they were released, replacing them with new patients. For the elderly, the blind and other cripples who suffered from incurable ailments, Rtishchev bought another house, spending his money on their maintenance. recent earnings. This house, under the name of the Hospital of Fyodor Rtishchev, existed even after his death, supported by voluntary donations.

So Rtishchev formed two types of charitable institutions: an outpatient shelter for those in need of temporary assistance and a permanent shelter - an almshouse for people whom philanthropy was supposed to take into its own hands until their death. But he listened to people's needs outside of Moscow, and here he continued the work of his predecessor, Ulyana Osoryina: by the way, his mother's name was Ulyana. There was a famine in the Vologda region. The local archbishop helped the starving as much as he could. Rtishchev, having spent money on his Moscow establishments, sold all his extra clothes, all extra household utensils, which he, a rich gentleman, had a lot of, and sent the proceeds to the Vologda lord, who, adding to the donation and his small share, fed a lot of the poor people.

With careful and deeply compassionate attention, Rtishchev stopped before a new kind of people in need of compassionate attention, which in the time of Juliana was only in its infancy: in the 17th century. the serfdom of the peasants developed. The personal freedom of the peasants was one of those sacrifices which our state in the 17th century was forced to bring in the struggle for its integrity and external security. Biographer Rtishchev outlined his attitude to this new field of charity with only two or three features, but with features that touched to the depths of the soul.

Being a large landowner, he once had, in need of money, to sell his village of Ilyinskoye. Having bargained with the buyer, he himself voluntarily reduced the agreed price, but at the same time led the new owner to the image and made him swear that he would not increase the philanthropic duties that the peasants of the village were serving in favor of the former master - an unusual and slightly strange form of a verbal bill, taken on the conscience of the drawer. Supporting the inventory of his peasants with generous loans, he was most afraid of upsetting this economy with unbearable dues and corvée work, and frowned with displeasure every time he noticed an increase in the lord's income in the reports of the managers.

known to care old Russian man about the afterlife dispensation of one's soul with the help of contributions, posthumous prayer and commemoration. Rtishchev bequeathed his estates to his daughter and son-in-law, Prince Odoevsky. He ordered the heirs to release all his servants to freedom. Then the legislation had not yet developed a procedure for the dismissal of serfs with land by entire societies. “This is how you arrange my soul,” Rtishchev said before his death to his son-in-law and daughter, “in memory of me, be kind to my peasants, whom I strengthened for you, own them preferentially, do not demand from them work and dues beyond their strength-possibility, because they are our brothers; this is my last and greatest request to you.”

Rtishchev knew how to sympathize with the situation of entire societies or institutions, as one sympathizes with the grief of individuals. We all remember lovely story, read by us at school in the textbook. Near Arzamas, Rtishchev had land, for which private buyers gave him up to 17 thousand rubles for our money. But he knew that the Arzamas people desperately needed the land, and offered the city to buy it at least for a reduced price. But the urban society was so poor that they could not pay any decent price, and did not know what to do. Rtishchev gave him land.

Contemporaries who observed the court of Tsar Alexei, their own and others, left very little news about the minister of this court, Rtishchev. One foreign ambassador, who was then visiting Moscow, said of him that, barely 40 years old, he surpassed the prudence of many old people. Rtishchev did not move forward. He was one of those modest people who do not like to walk in the front ranks, but by staying behind and raising the lights high above their heads, they light the way for advanced people.

It was especially difficult to keep track of his charitable activities. But he was understood and remembered among the lower brethren, for whom he laid down his soul. His biographer, describing his death, conveys a very naive story, Rtishchev died in 1673, only 47 years old. Two days before his death, a 12-year-old girl who lived in his house, whom he cherished for her meek disposition, after praying, as was customary in this house, went to bed and, drowsing, sees: her sick owner is sitting, so cheerful and smart and he has a crown on his head. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fine fellow, also smartly dressed, comes up to him and says: “Tsarevich Alexei is calling you.” And this prince, a pupil of Rtishchev, was then already dead. “Wait a little, you can’t do it yet,” the owner answered. The good guy left. Soon two others of the same kind came and again said: "Tsarevich Alexei is calling you." The owner got up and went, and two babies, his daughter and niece, clung to his legs, and did not want to leave him. He pushed them aside, saying, "Go away, or I'll take you with me." The owner came out of the ward, and then a ladder appeared in front of him from the earth to the very sky, and he climbed this ladder, and there a young man with golden wings appeared on the heights of heaven, extended his hand to the owner and grabbed him. In this dream of the girl, told in Rtishchev's girl's room, all the noble tears of poor people, wiped away by the owner, poured out. Much was said about his death itself. In the last moments, already fully prepared, he called the beggars into his bedroom to give them the last alms from his own hands, then lay down and forgot himself. Suddenly his fading eyes lit up, as if illuminated by some kind of vision, his face revived, and he smiled merrily: with such a look he froze. Suffer all your life, do good and die with a cheerful smile - a well-deserved end to such a life.

B. Kustodiev.Moscow school of the 17th century.1907

There is no news left about whether Rtishchev's attitude towards serfs found an echo in the landowning society; but his charity, apparently, did not remain without influence on the legislation. Good ideas, supported by good guides and examples, are easily clothed in the flesh and blood of a kind, in customs, laws, and institutions. The imprudent private charity of Ancient Rus' nourished the craft of begging, became a means of nourishing idleness, and itself often turned into a cold fulfillment of church decency, into distributing kopecks to those who ask instead of helping those in need. Merciful people like Juliania and Rtishchev restored the true Christian meaning of almsgiving, the source of which is a warm compassionate feeling, and the goal is the destruction of need, poverty, and suffering. In the same direction, after Rtishchev, legislation begins to operate.

Since the time of Alekseev's successor, there has been a long series of decrees against idle artisan begging and private manual alms. On the other hand, the state power lends a hand to the church for friendly work on the organization of charitable institutions. Under Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, the Moscow beggars were sorted out: the truly helpless were ordered to be kept at public expense in a special shelter, and healthy lazy people were given work, perhaps in workers' houses conceived at the same time.

It was supposed to build two charitable institutions in Moscow, a hospital and an almshouse for the sick, the beggars, who were wandering and lying on the streets, so that they would not wander and wallow there: apparently, institutions similar to those built by Rtishchev were supposed. At the church council of 1681, the tsar proposed to the patriarch and bishops that they arrange similar shelters for the poor in provincial towns, and the council accepted the proposal. So a private initiative of kind and influential person gave a direct or indirect impetus to the idea of ​​organizing a whole system of church-state charitable institutions. He not only revived, no doubt, the zeal of well-meaning givers for a good deed, but also suggested its very organization, the desirable and possible forms in which it was to be clothed.

After all, the memory of these kind people is dear to them, because their example in difficult times not only encourages them to act, but also teaches them how to act. Juliana and Rtishchev are examples of Russian charity. The same feeling suggested to them different methods of action, in accordance with the situation of each. One did more charitable work at home, in her close rural circle; the other operated mainly on the wide metropolitan square and street. For one, beneficence was an expression of personal pity; the other wanted to transform it into an organized public philanthropy. But, going in different ways, both went to the same goal: without losing sight of the moral and educational significance of charity, they looked at it as a continuous struggle with human need, the grief of a helpless neighbor. It was they and similar educators who carried this view through a number of centuries, and it still lives in our society, actively revealing itself whenever it is needed. How much Ulyan, imperceptibly and without noise, is now waging this struggle through the backwaters of areas stricken with want! There are, without a doubt, the Rtishchevs, and they will not be transferred. According to the covenant of their lives, they will act even when they themselves are forgotten. From my historical distance they will not cease to shine, like beacons in the midst of the darkness of the night, illuminating our path and not needing their own light. And the covenant of their life is this: to live means to love your neighbor, that is, to help him live; nothing more means to live and nothing more to live for.