At school, the child was assigned a responsible task: to make a family door, paste photos of relatives. To be honest, I spent five hours on this task. She drew herself, pasted family photos, her daughter alone would not have coped. Well, I spontaneously immersed myself in history. You will also be interested to know how our ancestors lived.

Look into the past

If you study the history of the family, you can get confused. You need to start with the last name that was given to you at birth. Special companies that have access to the archives will decipher the meaning of the surname. They will name the great and famous people who were in your family. The cost of the service is not cheap and you will have to wait, but the result will surprise you. Modern people are not very interested in knowing how the nomadic Slavs lived, caused rain and loved nature. But you can look into the last century.

USSR and our ancestors

The Soviet Union is a bright period in people's lives. When the mighty power was reunited, our great-grandparents were young (as we are now). The best years were ahead. But, the Soviet regime and repressions broke the plans. And then it was worse: famine, war, devastation. All men were obliged to serve (5 years in the army), and then - "to defend their homeland." Find photos of your great-grandfather, he will definitely be dressed in a military uniform.

In the post-war period, there was a belief in a better life. Agriculture began to develop actively. Collective farms were opened. Women worked in the fields no less than men. The work was difficult (from morning to late evening). Girls had no right to take sick leave or maternity leave!

The elite and intelligentsia lived in cities. They are more fortunate. Our ancestors lived modestly in the villages. There were not even amenities in the houses, I generally keep quiet about the TV.

Another horrific fact: the villagers were undocumented. But, they lived together, the holidays walked the whole streets, shared food and secrets.

Dawn in life

During the period of stagnation, our ancestors began to enjoy the benefits of civilization. They:

• went to the city;
• went to the sea;
• visited the cinema;
• bought cars.

Our ancestors lived one day. Constantly dreamed of good things. It remains for us to bring their plans to life. Remember: we are the pride of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

Helpful1 Not very good

Comments0

Recently I was looking at old photographs of my grandparents and great-grandmothers. While watching, I thought about how our ancestors lived in the 20th century. Of course, everything is different, but some common features can be found. It has always been interesting to live in Russia, we still have an important country, and not some kind of Ireland, but we live, on average, poorer than our European neighbors.

Our ancestors lived in the USSR

About 30 years ago there was such a country with a size of 22 million square meters. km and with a population of almost 300 million people. Even in the United States, there was then less population and territory. The USSR is well remembered by our parents. There were a lot of good and strange things. For example, it was difficult for a Soviet person to travel abroad, so they traveled mainly in their own country and with minimal comfort, which is reflected in the film "Be My Husband". My ancestors in the 1970s and 1980s spent their holidays in the following places in the summer:

• Moscow and Leningrad. They served not only as cultural capitals, but also as all-Union stores.
• Baltic. Three republics played the role of internal foreign countries. There it was better with consumer goods, and the standard of living was the envy of everyone else.
• Crimea. A popular resort, which is reflected in many films, for example, "Three plus two."
• Georgia and Armenia. People traveled to these republics for the sake of the subtropical climate of Adjara and delicious food.

The Soviet period was remembered by almost every family for the processes of urbanization. That is, in the twenties, the population was still mostly rural, and in the 1950s-1980s, large-scale housing construction was going on. This period is reflected in the cinema, for example, in the film "Prize", as well as in painting the picture - "Wedding on Tomorrow Street".

Our ancestors lived in the Russian Empire

In my childhood there were still old people who were born before the revolution. However, we remember pre-revolutionary Russia poorly, despite all the flattering words addressed to her after 1991. Alas, the majority of Russians' ancestors then were illiterate or semi-literate and lived in the countryside. You can look at the life of pre-revolutionary Russia in the famous photographs of Prokudin-Gorsky. I've looked at everything!

Useful0 Not very

Comments0

Using the benefits of civilization, such as a washing machine, diapers for a child, a telephone, I sometimes think about how people used to live without all this. It turns out that they lived normally - they just did not know that it was possible to live better, and therefore put up with their fate. Read on for details.

The lifestyle of our ancestors

Getting acquainted with the life of our ancestors, sometimes you wonder ... All life is a continuous struggle for survival. The main goal was not to die of hunger.

At dawn, the women got up and went to prepare food for their livestock and family, and then went to the fields. The men did the hard work.

Our ancestors had many children throughout the ages. Children got easier work - they had to nurse the younger ones, herd geese, guard the hut.

When you read about the life of ancient people, it becomes sad that in their life there was no place for creativity, self-realization, emotions, pleasures and joy. More precisely, all this was, but not on such a scale as in our time, but meagerly and for a short time.

But, however, people then were physically healthier and more resilient, lived in harmony with nature.

Our ancestors could realize themselves, perhaps, through their craft. However, it was also routine, according to the pattern. A blacksmith might hate his job, but he couldn't do anything else, and that's why he forged horseshoes for the rest of his days.

Someone will say that women should have been happy that they had many children. But, alas, in such conditions of life, which our distant great-grandmothers got, there was no time for love and rapture. And often children were perceived as a burden, or vice versa, a labor force.

How were the names of our ancestors

In the Middle Ages, many different professions and crafts began to appear. The most popular were:

• blacksmith;
• potter;
• tanner;
• a carpenter;
• weaver;
• undertaker.

And in view of the fact that our ancestors always lived in large clans, for convenience, each family was called by the occupation of the owner.

So, the Kozhevnikovs, Kravtsovs, Melnikovs, Zemtsovs appeared (in the old days, beekeepers were called Zemstvo), Furmanovs (cab drivers were previously called furmans).

Useful0 Not very

Comments0

During the winter holidays, my son and I, while in Omsk, visited the local local history museum. The exposition turned out to be quite large, and by the end my child was already tired, but it was still difficult to take him away from there. He was especially interested in the way of life of distant ancestors, and I was interested in later times.

Ancient people on Omsk land

The exposition included the following stages:

• stone Age;
• bronze age;
• iron age.

As we were told on the tour, people in these parts lived already in the Stone Age. While hunting, they obtained food for themselves with the help of stones and pointed sticks, dressed in skins, and huts covered with animal skins served as a shelter from bad weather.

Siberians two centuries ago

Siberian peasants lived in communities in which great importance was attached to helping each other and the poor. For example, houses were usually built all together. The family household consisted of a log hut with a stove, a summer house, a bathhouse, a servants' house, a barn and a cellar with a well. At the same time, part of the outbuildings was under one roof.

The head of the family was the Bolshak - the oldest man. He made all the decisions himself, distributed the work, and only in special cases consulted with the others. If the family did not like their elder, they turned to the community so that someone else from their relatives could replace him. Among women, the rules are big.

The whole year the family worked hard: they plowed the land, sowed, mowed, grazed cattle. Stocks replenished the collection of berries and mushrooms, fishing. Not having pharmacies and doctors nearby, women collected herbs, and each housewife had several medicinal tinctures just in case.

Settlers of Siberia

Whenever I encountered Siberians, I was surprised by the diversity of surnames. It is simply impossible to determine nationality from them. And after visiting the museum, I realized what was the matter.

It turns out that Siberia has experienced more than one resettlement. When freely, when involuntarily, people from different regions moved here. Natives of the same places settled together, therefore, in the territory of the region, there are still national villages in which they try to preserve their traditions.

Useful0 Not very

Comments0

Express Tour of Antiquity

Pirogovo occupies 150 hectares. In the 70s, when the museum was created, exhibits - houses, huts, churches, sheds - were brought here disassembled and restored bit by bit. The entire territory was divided into six regions:

• Carpathians;
• Podillya;
• Polissya;
• Dnieper;
• Sloboda;

And at each site they recreated the life of the people who lived there and even tried to display the features of the plant world. In total, there are more than three hundred exhibits in Pirogovo.

How did our ancestors live?

To the right of the field, the peaks of twilight turn blue. This is the Carpathian region. All buildings are made of wood, because there is something, and there is plenty of forest there. There is also a small, by the way, functioning, wooden church - very pious people have always lived in the Carpathians. The color scheme of the costumes of the inhabitants of the Carpathians is rather restrained with a predominance of white, red and black colors.

Whether business Poltava and Dnieper! Little white huts, stoves painted with cheerful patterns, red boots, bright wreaths, a crane-crane - all according to Gogol.

And here is Polissya. Here you can already smell the damp impassable thickets of the forests of the northern part of Ukraine. Attention is drawn to wooden beehives, knocked out of a single tree trunk. In these parts, beekeeping has long been developed.

Note to tourists

Guests are invited to plunge into the atmosphere of an old Ukrainian village:

• try a variety of liqueurs;
• taste national dishes;
• attend various master classes;
• participate in fairs and festivities.

In general, learning about the life of ancestors in Pirogovo is fascinating, beautiful and tasty.

Useful0 Not very

The whole life of working people was spent in work. They sowed and reaped bread, cut huts. They plowed with roe deer and plows, harrowed with wooden harrows, sowed by hand from a basket, harvested with sickles, threshed with flails, mowed grass with pink salmon scythes. Since the land could not feed the peasant, he was forced to look for work on the side. Many peasants annually left the village for crafts - they went on foot to hire at sawmills in Arkhangelsk.

The daily routine of a peasant family

The peasant family was the basis for the transfer of all labor skills, customs, and mores. The husband performed men's work - plowed, mowed, carried firewood, hay: the horse was in his full control.

Wife - mother led all women's work. She stinged, threshed, spun, weaved, cared for livestock, cooked food, kept records of supplies.

From the age of 8-10, boys were taught to do men's work, girls - to women's. The daily routine in a peasant family has been consecrated for centuries. And he hardly changed.

Hostess Morning

The hostess gets up first in the house. Having washed herself, she begins to fuss at the stove: she opens the damper, throws dry firewood into the stove crosswise - and the flame quickly embraces the entire rear half of the stove.

Just before the fire, she puts cast irons with water for brewing feed for animals: This is an unshakable rule in the household, cattle always come first, she needs to be given food before you sit down at the table. And then food is prepared for the family - for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The stove is heated only once a day, in the morning. Therefore, the hostess must foresee everything and prepare for the whole day.

Master's Morning

The owner is already on his feet. He went to the barnyard, he also has a lot to do there: remove manure, throw hay from the wind. Meanwhile, the children wake up and line up at the washstand.

The washstand has a common canvas handguard.

And every day, whether in the morning or in the evening, the tired hostess and the owner prayed before the images, they bowed. They prayed for everyday things: that the cow would calve safely, that the horse would not get sick, that the rain would fall on the rye crops in time, that there would be no hunger, and that bread would be born. On the weekends, we went to church. Each village had its own parish.

List of used literature:

Bostrem L. Arkhangelsk Museum of Wooden Architecture. Arkhangelsk, 1984. Volkov V. Russian village. "White City" M. 2005.

Gnezdov S. V. Ringing of your bells Russia. 1997

Kostomarov N.I., Home life and customs of the Great Russian people. M., Economics, 1993

Opolovnikov A.V. Huts in the North // Forest and Man. M. Timber industry. 1980

Plotnikov N. Exhibition prescriptions. / Chronicle of the North. Historical and local history collection. Arkhangelsk. 1990

Historians believe that since ancient times, the Eastern Slavs settled in the VI century in the middle reaches of the Dnieper, approximately where the city of Kyiv is now located. The settlement of the Slavic tribes went up the Dnieper and its tributaries.
Dense forests began here - first deciduous, and to the north - mixed and coniferous (we talked about this natural area). The settlers found themselves in unusual conditions.

In a new place, the Slavs usually settled along the banks of rivers and lakes in several large family groups. True, families then consisted of 15-20 people: the head of the family with his wife, their adult sons with their wives, their children, and sometimes grandchildren. Three - four yards settled together.
In the houses of the Slavs, the floor was deepened into the ground by a meter, the walls were made of thin tree trunks - poles, peeled of branches and bark. The poles are interconnected with wooden spikes, connected with flexible bark for strength. The roof is also made of poles, and on it is a thick layer of straw.
In the corner was a stove made of stone - it heated the house, they cooked food on it. The stove was heated in black - this means that there was no chimney, and all the smoke came out through windows, doors, holes in the roof. Inside such a house it was always cool, dark and damp. The windows cut in the walls were covered with boards or straw at night and in the cold - after all, there were no glasses then.
In the house, all the free space was occupied by a table and 2-3 benches. In the corner lay several armfuls of hay covered with animal skins - these are beds.
The life of the settlers was not easy. Like all primitive peoples, the Slavs were engaged in gathering and hunting. They collected honey, berries, mushrooms, nuts, hunted wild boars, elks, bears, fished in the rivers. Now we also go to the forest to pick mushrooms, berries, and fish. But for us it is a rest, and for our ancestors it was a huge work, and not easy. After all, products had to be prepared for the whole family.
Since ancient times, the Slavs have been engaged in agriculture. They plowed with wooden plows on bulls. They sowed rye and wheat.

However, in a dense forest, clearings suitable for agriculture are rare, and the lands are infertile. the forests had to be burned to make room for arable land and to fertilize the land with ash. In addition, forest predators and "dashing people" - robbers constantly threatened.
In addition, the ancient Slavs developed beekeeping (beekeeping). Where did this word come from? Since ancient times, honey has been a commodity, medicine and one of the main delicacies. But it was very difficult to get it. The Slavs lured the bees with honey, and then traced their path to the hollow. Finally came up with board- a stump of a tree with a hollow or a hollowed-out block of wood.

Bort

The path "from the Varangians to the Greeks"

The caravan was accompanied by a strong guard. In the lower reaches of the Dnieper there were river rapids, it was necessary to again pull the boats ashore and drag them again. Here, steppe nomads waited for caravans, who robbed merchants and took travelers prisoner.
Having passed the rapids, the caravan entered the Black Sea and sailed to the city of Constantinople (Istanbul).
Along the trade route, new cities, various industries arose, and the surrounding residents were drawn to them. And travelers acquaint the population with new goods, with the culture of other peoples, with the news in the world.
Populating new lands, people gave names to new rivers, cities, towns, mountains.
The settlement of the Eastern Slavs in Eastern Europe was peaceful, but they were often attacked by nomadic tribes. Therefore, the Slavs were forced to master the science of war. Tall, strong Slavs were known as brave warriors. Fighting with enemies, they lured them into impenetrable forest jungles and swamps.
The constant struggle with the nomads claimed thousands of lives and distracted from peaceful labor. Nevertheless, the Slavs slowly but stubbornly moved along the path of state formation.

And now I propose to check the acquired knowledge by answering the quiz questions.

On July 16, 2017, the Moscow historical park Kolomenskoye will host the Battle of a Thousand Swords festival, where Russian reenactors and guests from Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland and other countries will present the life of medieval Rus' and its neighbors. It will be a military holiday, the main decoration of which will, of course, be the Battle. The holiday will take place on the site of the Dyakovo settlement, an ancient settlement of the 5th century. On the eve of the festival, the Ratobortsy Historical Projects Agency prepared several materials about the life of our ancestors especially for Utra.

Photo: Historical Projects Agency Ratobortsy

We now live in a time when, after several decades of wandering around the world, many began to return to the question "who are we?". It seems to someone that the question is rhetorical, and everything is clear - get out, read Karamzin. And this question has never bothered someone, and never will. But if you ask where and when Rus' went, who the Russians are, then many will immediately begin to get confused. It is necessary to clarify this issue, we decided. As Vovchik Malay said in the book "Generation P", so that one could "just explain to anyone from Harvard: tyr-pyr-eight-holes, and it's not good to look like that."

So, let's start our story about Ancient Rus'. As pundits say, our civilization on Earth is not the first, nor the second, nor the last. And the peoples settled on the territory of the planet in different centuries and from different starting points. Ethnic groups mixed, various tribes formed and disappeared. Natural disasters came, the climate changed, flora and fauna, even the poles, they say, moved. The ice melted, the ocean level rose, the center of gravity of the planet changed, a giant wave swept over the continents. The survivors gathered in heaps, forming new tribes, and everything began again. All this happened so slowly that it is hard to imagine. It would be more difficult to observe, perhaps, only how coal is formed.

So. In the history of our civilization there was a time that historians call the Age of Migration of Peoples. In the 4th century AD, there was an invasion of the Huns into Europe, and then it went and went. Everything churned and moved. The ancestors of the Slavs, the Wends, described by Herodotus as early as the 5th century BC, lived between the Oder and Dnieper rivers. Their resettlement took place in three directions - to the Balkan Peninsula, in the interfluve of the Elbe and Oder, and to the East European Plain. Thus, three branches of the Slavs were formed, which exist to this day: Eastern, Western and Southern Slavs. We know the names of the tribes that have been preserved in the annals - these are the glades, the Drevlyans, the northerners, the Radimichi, the Vyatichi, the Krivichi, the Dregovichi, the Dulebs, the Volynians, the Croats, the Ulichi, the Tivertsy, the Polochans, the Ilmen Slovenes.

Photo: Historical Projects Agency Ratobortsy

By the 6th century AD the Slavs were at the stage of decomposition of the primitive communal system, its place was gradually occupied by the so-called military democracy. The tribes expanded their possessions, and the military strength of each tribe or alliance of tribes became increasingly important. The squad began to play a key position in society, and the prince stood at its head. Accordingly, how many squads, so many princes, and if the tribe settled widely and set up several cities, there will be several princes there. In the 9th century, we can already talk about the established borders of the principalities, call this formation Ancient Russia with its center in the city of Kyiv.

It is very easy to find maps of Rus' of the 9th-10th centuries in Internet search engines. On them we will see that the territory of Ancient Rus' was not localized around the capital. It stretched from south to north from the Black Sea to the Baltic and Lake Onega, and from west to east - from the modern Belarusian city of Brest to Murom. That is, to the border of the Finno-Ugric tribes, partially including them in its composition (recall that Ilya Muromets came to the Kyiv prince from the village of Karacharova).

Photo: Historical Projects Agency Ratobortsy

The territory is huge, not only in those days, but also in today's times. Now there is not a single European country of this size, there was none at that time. One problem - all the princes were equal among themselves, recognizing the supremacy of the prince, who sits in Kyiv. Why in Kyiv? Because since ancient times, the Slavs preferred to settle on the banks of rivers, and when active trade was established, they became rich and attracted the most active and creative people to those settlements that stood on trade routes. The Slavs actively traded with the south and east, and "the path from the Varangians to the Greeks" passed just along the Dnieper.

A few words about the squad and the peasantry. The peasant at that time was free and could change his place of residence, since there were plenty of free deaf places. Ways to enslave him had not yet been invented, the social conditions were not the same. The princely warriors were also free people and did not depend on the prince in any way. Their interest was in joint military booty. The prince, who was more like a military leader for the squad, could immediately lose her favor if military luck did not accompany him all the time. But over the course of a couple of centuries, this system of relations has changed. The combatants began to receive land allotments from the prince, to grow into households and their own small squads. There was a need to fix the peasants on their land. The squad turned into a local noble army.

Photo: Historical Projects Agency Ratobortsy

Of course, the life of the principalities was not like an idyll. The princes envied each other, quarreled, went to war with each other, gratifying their ambitions. This happened primarily because inheritance rights were not transferred from father to son, but vertically - through brothers. The princes multiplied, seating their sons on thrones in different cities and towns. So large principalities were divided into so-called appanages. Each brother was given his inheritance, which he ruled, defended, collected tribute from the people and gave part of it to the Grand Duke. So the princes began to compete.

This all went on for a long time, until in the XIII century the reverse process of gathering small principalities into large ones began. This was due to external factors - firstly, the need to repulse an external enemy, which for both Europe and Rus' became the Horde Mongols. Secondly, trade and political centers were shifting. Trade along the Dnieper faded, new trade routes opened, for example, along the Volga. Ancient Rus gave birth to such political formations as Kievan, Vladimir-Suzdal and Novgorod Rus. As a result, everything came down to a confrontation between two large state associations - the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. But that's a completely different story.