LEGEND ABOUT GARDARIK.

Epics and legends about the Russian land are closely connected with another no less famous legend about the country of Gardarik. So in the Scandinavian countries it was customary to call the Russian land.
Gardarika (Isl. Garðaríka or Garðavelda, Swedish Gårdarike) is the ancient Scandinavian name of the Old Russian state, known to the Vikings in the Middle Ages. The term was originally translated without significant grounds as "a country of cities", implying the Novgorod land. Since the middle of the 20th century, an opinion has been formed in Western historical science that the toponym meant a chain of Old Norse fortresses from Lyubica and Ladoga along the Volkhov River.
The word is formed according to the model X + ríki (state, country), which served to designate the state. The toponym is based on the root garđ- (related to the Indo-European gard-), meaning 1) “fence, fence, fortification”, 2) “yard, enclosed space”, 3) “yard, possession, farm (in Iceland), house ( in Norway)" . Here "city" in the sense of "fortress, fortification." The kinship of the Scandinavian "guard" and the Old Russian "city, city" played an important role in the formation of the toponym Gardariki.
The toponym Gardarik is first found in a geographical work of the last quarter of the 12th century. It was also reflected in the codes of royal sagas recorded in the first third of the 13th century. According to F. A. Brown, the form Garðaríki is the creation of the Icelanders who wrote down the sagas (starting from the end of the 12th century). Until that time (in the X-XII centuries), the form Garđar was used to designate Rus' throughout the Scandinavian peninsula. So Rus' is represented in the skald.
Judging by the above encyclopedic interpretations of the concept of Gardarik, we are dealing with a very flattering epithet of ancient Rus', which was bestowed upon it by the Scandinavian Vikings. And if we take into account the fact that in Western Europe it is very difficult to find a more or less significant city that would not have been attacked by the Vikings, then this epithet takes on an absolutely fantastic coloring. It turns out that for these "sea kings", well known from Portugal to Byzantium, only one state could be called the country of cities, as if all the rest were countries of villages and villages.
Trying to somehow explain this passage, many researchers blindly declare that “There were a lot of cities in ancient Kievan Rus. That is why Western European chronicles call it Gardarika, or the country of cities. In the written sources of the 9th-10th centuries that have come down to us, at least 24 Russian cities are mentioned, but scientists believe that there were much more of them. (newciv.relarn.ru/work/2-09/All of all/str_18.htm)
Of course, 24 cities for medieval Europe is not a small figure, but if it is extrapolated to the expanses of the Russian Plain, then it will inevitably turn into a mockery of reality. Calling Kievan Rus a country of cities means not knowing anything concrete about it. However, the same cannot be said about the Vikings. Throughout their history, they were the most painful "ulcer" for all the peoples of the ecumene, with the exception of Rus'. Moreover, Ancient Rus', directly or indirectly, owed many of its military and political successes to the Vikings and Varangians, who from ancient times were in the service of princely squads. Moreover, they sacredly cherished their Russian ancestry, which went back in time immemorial to the banks of the Don-father. And perhaps for this reason, they have always been the most faithful helpers in maintaining peace and tranquility in this holy land of the Gods.
Whatever it was, but the name of Gardarik in relation to Rus' was used by the Vikings, not at all because of the abundance of large and small cities subject to Kyiv, but for several other reasons. In order to deal with them, we need to go back to the time of the Russian Khaganate, when by the beginning of the 9th century, the banks of the Don and Donets were literally dotted with majestic white stone castles. No country in the world knew at that time such a construction boom, when such a huge number of fortresses, cities and castles would have been erected in a relatively short period, tens of thousands of cubic meters of building materials were spent on the construction of each of them. And all this against the background of the unrestrained development of production relations based on the highest technologies of that time, among which it is necessary to single out not only the most unique technologies of pottery production, but mainly achievements in the field of metallurgy. According to legend, the famous Damascus swords were actually produced in numerous metallurgical centers of the Russian land. In any case, no one really knew the secret of their production in Damascus, but during the excavations of the Don cities, blanks for their production are very often found. Sometimes in huge quantities.
No less impressive are the successes in the field of agriculture, where viticulture should be highlighted. All this, along with active trade and military power, contributed to the fact that the Don dews had not only silk clothes inaccessible to very wealthy people of other states, but also prestigious housing, often made of baked bricks and under tiled roofs. Fragments of these dwellings could be observed at the Kobyakovsky settlement at the beginning of the 20th century. As for fortresses and castles, they were usually built from snow-white chalk blocks, less often from limestone, sandstone, raw and baked bricks. The height of the fortress walls sometimes exceeded 10 meters, and the height of the towers 15. The constant improvement of construction technologies has led to the emergence of real masterpieces of fortification art, which is the famous Right-Bank Tsimlyansk Castle.

Right-bank Tsimlyansk fortress. Reconstruction based on excavations and plan of 1743
Watercolor by Oleg Fedorov.

From the stone blocks of which Starocherkassk was subsequently rebuilt. However, the top of building ambitions should be considered the mysterious Semikarakorsk fortress.
“In the works on archeology, the Semikarakorsk fortress was rarely mentioned because of the opinion that it was completely destroyed during plowing already in the 20th century. As for historians, including foreign ones, they do not mention it at all in their numerous reconstructions of the history of the kaganate. It is possible that most of them simply did not know and do not know about its existence.
The excavations of 1971-1974, begun at great risk of finding nothing but miserable ruins, led to the discovery of perhaps the best-preserved fortress of the kaganate in the steppe zone. Built according to the “square-in-square” system, it consisted of the fortress itself, measuring 215 x 200 m, and located inside the citadel, 85 x 80 m. But it was not so much the size that surprised me, but the building material: raw brick, and of extremely high quality. Its format is specific: 25 x 25 x 5 cm. The fortress walls have been preserved to a height of up to a meter, and a donjon built into one of the walls is up to two meters (!). With a wall thickness of about 2 m, their height could reach 5-6 m. Initially, it was assumed that buildings made of mud bricks should also be expected inside the fortress, but as the work continued, it turned out that there was a continuous array of ruined buildings made of baked bricks. That is why the assumption arose that the fortress was intended for the kagans: after all, only they had the privilege of living in brick buildings, as medieval historiographers wrote about.
The fortress and the citadel with a total length of six-meter walls of almost a kilometer - this is the "calling card" of the kaganate, which was able and affordable to build such a scale. You can calculate the amount of work done. At least 2 million pieces of mud brick were used to build the walls of the fortress and the citadel (according to other estimates, at least 3.5 million pieces - A.L.). In addition, at least several dozen (including the shell of the walls, several hundred thousand pieces - A.L.) thousand bricks were fired for the construction of buildings inside the citadel. One of the most time-consuming processes was digging clay for bricks and transporting sand. The total volume of the walls of the fortress was about 9 thousand cubic meters. Adding the tower on the northern wall, the donjon, the gates and the probable losses during transportation and during production, we will get about 10 (20!, - ​​A.L.) thousand cubic meters of finished brick, together with a binder solution. It was such an array of clay and sand that had to be mined, delivered and processed. But to this we must add the delivery of hundreds of tons of water for the solution. The big problem was to protect the prepared bricks from rain, for which, most likely, reed coverings were used. Let's add the preparation of reeds. Let's add the content of horses and bulls, necessary for mixing the solution. In the process of drying itself, the bricks had to be repeatedly turned over for uniform evaporation of moisture in order to avoid deformation and cracking. Finally, for firing, the construction of furnaces and the procurement of fuel were required. So, in the conditions of the Don climate, when winter frosts did not allow brick molding, all this work took at least two years.
This example shows that the construction of a fortress requires not only production skills, but, no less important, the ability to organize the whole thing. Accordingly, the fortress should be perceived not only as an archaeological monument of fortification, but a monument of construction. Maybe mostly in the latter capacity.
The excavations at Semikarakorskaya ended in 1974 and have not been resumed since then, and what was dug out was covered with earth, in other words, buried. The reason is the same as on Mayatskaya. To continue excavations of the Semkarakorsk fortress without carrying out conservation means to lose it. Walls left out in the open will quickly collapse. The development of methods for the preservation of mud bricks requires long and expensive experiments. But the mothballed walls should be covered in pavilions. It is not even worth thinking about the fact that the state will finance these works.
Fortunately, today the fortress itself and the territory surrounding it have not yet awakened the appetite of potential landowners. However, you should not delude yourself, since this prosperity can end at any moment: after all, there is not even a Security Obligation for a unique monument. (Flerov)
From all of the above, we can conclude that in the early Middle Ages, on the banks of the Don and Donets, there was the most land of cities - Gardarika. It would be more correct to say the country of fortresses and castles, as follows from the literal translation of this Scandinavian term. It remains only to testify our assumption by written sources. As the first witness, we will draw the Book of Veles, which says that Ruskolan had 300 strong cities. Approximately the same amount, based on archeological data, is also given in the book by E. Galkina, "Secrets of the Russian Khaganate." However, this figure is not the limit. The so-called "Bavarian geographer" gives us absolutely fantastic results.
The Bavarian Geographer (or the East Frankish Table of Tribes) is a list of peoples and tribes, predominantly of Slavic origin, who inhabited the regions east of the Frankish state in the 9th century.
The document on two sheets was discovered in 1722 in the Bavarian State Library (Munich), where it is currently kept. This is a postscript at the end of a manuscript containing a treatise on the geometry of Boethius. The Bavarian duke acquired it in 1571 along with the archives of the antiquary Hermann Schedel (1410-1485). It was introduced into scientific circulation by the French ambassador in Munich, Count du Bois, who published a translation of the monument into French in the middle of the 18th century. The name "Bavarian Geographer" was given to the document by the Polish writer and scientist Jan Potocki in 1796. This name is associated with the place of the find; by origin, the monument is most likely not associated with Bavaria, but with Swabia (see below). In Russian historiography, "The Bavarian Geographer" was first used by N. M. Karamzin (according to du Bua's translation).
The peculiarity of this geographical treatise is that the peoples and states adjacent to the author have a maximum of several dozen cities.
(list taken from Petr Zolin)

(3) Linons (Linaa) - a people who have 7 cities.
(4-6) Not far from them sit those who are called Bethenici (Bethenici), Smeldingi (Smeldingon) and Morizani (Morizani), who have 11 cities.
(7) Sitting next to them are those who are called Hefelds (Hehfeldi, Gevellers; Gavolians) and who have 8 cities.
(8) Next to them lies a region called Sorbi (Surbi); in the region there is a numerous people, having 50 cities.
(9) Next to them are those who are called the Talamians (Talaminzi, Dolemnitsy; Dolenchane) and who have 13 cities.
(10) Beheimars (Beheimare, Bohemians - Czechs), who have 15 cities.
(11) The Marharii (Moravians) have 40 cities.
(12) Vulgarii (Uulgarii, Bulgarians, Hungarians?) - a huge area and numerous people - have only 5 cities, since most of the people live outside them, and therefore have no need in cities.
(13) There is a people called Merehanos; it has 30 cities. Point opposite the Bulgarians, on the other side of the Danube.

However, as we move east, the order of numbers is constantly growing, and after the Dniester it becomes simply unthinkable.

(18) Glopeani, who have 400 or a little more cities.
(19) The Zuireani have 325 cities.
(20) Busani have 231 cities.
(21) Sittici - an area in which the people and fortified cities are countless.
(22) Stadici, in which there are 516 cities and people without number.
(23) Sebbirozi have 90 cities.
(24) Unlitsy (Unlizi, tell?) - a numerous people, 418 cities.
(25) The Neriuani have 78 cities.
(26) Attorosi (Attorozi) have 148 cities, the people are the most unbridled.
(27) The Eptaradici have 243 cities.
(28) The Uuilerozii have 180 cities.
(29) Zabrozi have 212 cities.
(30) Znetalici have 74 cities.
(31) Aturezani have 104 cities.
(32) Chozirozi have 250 cities.
(33) Lendici (Lendizi) have 98 cities.
(34) Thafnezi has 257 cities.
(35) Zeruyans (Zeriuani), who alone have a kingdom and from whom all the tribes of the Slavs, as they say, originate and lead their kind (most likely, northerners: P. Z.).
“What our beloved officialdom does not like is the mention of tens and hundreds of early medieval cities (of course, settlements with a neighborhood of villages, graveyards) among the Slavic peoples in the middle of the 9th century. Yes, even on the lands of the district of Rus' ...
Relations between these local formations were clearly a process of internal diplomacy of peoples at a time when, as Christianization progressed, Great Scythia turned into Great Rus'. Yes, and the history of many medieval cities of Rus', which often originated from early medieval and ancient settlements, is noted by the source quite objectively. Therefore, the source did not attract much attention for a long time. Thousands of cities in Rus' and in the region by the middle of the 9th century. Just think about it?!" (Peter Zolin)
You can think. It's hard to believe. However, as we have seen more than once, any myth carries at least a grain of the real state of affairs. And they are such that despite the fantastic number of cities located and adjacent to the Russian Kaganate (literally the Russian Empire), their significant superiority in relation to the countries of Western Europe is beyond doubt. In fact, we have before us direct written evidence of what exactly the inhabitants of Western Europe meant when they called Rus' a country of cities (fortresses and castles).
Ruskolan…
Recall that the "Bavarian Geographer" describes the events that took place long before Kievan Rus with its 24 cities. In addition, it is especially worth noting the fact that the root rozi (dew) is very often found in the ethnonyms of the peoples of Gardariki, which directly indicates that we are dealing with the Russian land. Along with this, it is noteworthy that the remark that "Zeriuani (northerners), who alone have a kingdom and from whom all the tribes of the Slavs, as they claim, originate and are descended from," fully confirms our assumption that initially political the center of the Russian land was in the land of the northerners, from where the Donets became known as Seversky, and where we observe the largest concentration of cities and settlements of the Saltov-Mayatsky archaeological culture, corresponding to the Russian Khaganate and the epic Russian land.
It seems that we managed to reveal the secret of the legendary Gardariki, the myths and legends about which actually turned out to be very close to the reality that took place in the early Middle Ages, on the territory of the Russian land.

THE LEGEND ABOUT RURIK.

Legends, myths, there were legends, how different they are. In what an unthinkable way time and space are refracted in them. How unrecognizably the characters and fates of the prototypes of mythical heroes change. How elusive hints. What a fantastic allegory. In what a Gordian knot an outwardly simple plot is tied.
Many years ago, I happened to hear not a myth, not a legend, but something like a saying, that “Prince Rurik de was from the Don Cossacks” and, like Stenka Razin, raged on the Black Sea, but on the Caspian Sea, until he was invited to the Novgorod table.
However, there are a lot of sayings like this one. But it is not possible to find a grain of truth in them. After all, they are not talking about mythical characters, but about historical figures, whose fate is pretty well reflected in written sources. And although many Russian historians are trying with all their might to present Rurik as a semi-mythical hero, in fact he is an absolutely real person, about whom there is no less written evidence than about his descendants.

If we generalize and average all the available data, then in the person of Rurik we will get an outstanding representative of the Obodrite people, which included the legendary “Slavic sea robbers”, from the tribe of the Vagrs, the Varangians of Russian chronicles. The state of the Western Obodrites in the early Middle Ages was called Vandalia or Slovenia. Both toponyms go back to the Ilmen Slovenes, who, approximately in the 6th-7th centuries AD. settled the Baltic coast between the Elbe (Labe) and the Rhine. The fact that this was so, and nothing else, is eloquently evidenced by the data of archeology, which does not see a fundamental difference in the material cultures of Slovenes and Obodrites (Mecklenburg and Novgorod).
However, in the VIII-IX centuries. the lands of Slovenia began to be subjected to ever-increasing pressure from the state of the Franks. In the first half of the 9th century, this pressure ended with the occupation of a significant part of Slovenia, including the family estates of the Rurik family, which predetermined his future fate as one of the most prominent representatives of the "Slavic sea robbers", the Varangians.
By the time he was called to reign in the lands of Ilmenskaya Slovenia, he was already one of the most famous personalities in Western Europe, having won fame in great victories in Germany, Denmark, England, France, Portugal, Spain, etc. his indestructible fleets were seen by the inhabitants of Hamburg and Hedeby, Paris and Orleans, London and Lisbon, Seville and La Coruña. All this clearly indicates that the saying that Rurik was a Don Cossack was born for the sake of boredom. Although..?! It's like looking.
Leo Tolstoy, said that the Cossacks created Russia, putting into these words only the visible part of Russian history. But if we evaluate the part that is still hidden from us, then this statement will become prophetic. And if so, then we have a real prospect in search of the threads connecting Rurik with the Don and the Cossacks.
Firstly, I would like to return to the ancient Russian chronicles and legends in which the process of the movement of the ancient ancestors of the Slavs is clearly traced, from the shores of the Don and the Black Sea to the north to the Ilmen lands, under the leadership of Sloven and Rus. In the future, one of the descendants of Slovenia, named Vandal, conquered all the western countries, and put his subjects there to rule. Exploring this vector of development of migration processes in the first centuries of our era, it is easy to make sure that the shores of the Baltic were inhabited by people from the southern Russian steppes, which found its direct reflection in the Scandinavian sagas. As for the Wagrs and Vikings, they, being in fact the military class of their peoples, are as close as possible to the Cossacks not only in origin, but also in social status and behavior. It was not for nothing that G. Vernadsky argued that the movement of the Vikings (sea kings), and with them the Vagrs (Slavic sea robbers), originated on the Don, which indicates a direct genetic connection between the Cossacks and the Vagrs. And if this is so, then Rurik, with some reservations, can be considered a Cossack family. It is curious that the appearance of his grandson exactly matched the appearance of the Sich Cossacks.
Secondly, and this is very important, the Vagry of Rurik came to the Slovenian lands, under the name of Rus, which automatically put a sign of identity between them and the inhabitants of the Russian land in the Don region. Belonging to Rus' ensured the legitimacy of Rurik's rule and the legitimacy of his claims not only to Ladoga, but also to Kyiv, which, after the death of the Russian land, was given the title of "mother of Russian cities."
Thirdly, we see a very trusting relationship between Rurik and Prophetic Oleg, who symbolized the remnants of the elite of the Russian Khaganate. These relations were so close that Rurik could easily leave Novgorod for several years and go to Obodrite Stargorod to settle disputes in his western possessions. At the same time, trusting Oleg, and also the upbringing of his son.
Fourthly, we know that Rurik had direct family ties with the Slovenian elite, to which his grandfather Gostomysl belonged. In this regard, the study of V. Varenik is interesting, which convincingly showed the existence of strong ethnic and cultural ties between the Novgorodians and the Don Cossacks.
Fifthly, in the Arabic tradition, in particular in al-Haraqi, in his book “The Limit of Comprehension Regarding the Division of the Heavenly Spheres”, Meotida is called the Varangian Sea. Other authors, in particular al-Masudi, identify the Varangian sea - the Baltic, with Meotida, which most eloquently indicates the presence of strong ties between Meotida and the Baltic.
We could list the threads that connected Rurik with the Don and the Cossacks for a long time, up to the legends about his ancestry from the Roman Caesars, to which the Don Cossack ataman Odoacer belonged, and about his relationship with Lithuania (Lithuanians), who came from the Don shores, and for many centuries they kept the name of Rus, and their princes long before Moscow were called princes of "all Russia." But as it seems, it is already clear that by calling Rurik a Cossack, we will sin a little before the truth. Or maybe we don’t sin, but let’s call the realities of that time by their real names. The only thing that we apparently cannot do is to tie the deeds and exploits of Rurik to the Don shores. Although there are some clues in this direction.

(based on the unpublished book "There were also myths of the Don antiquity")

Andrey Leonov

Rus'-Gardariki-Ruthenia - "Country of the wicker"

The origin of the name Rus has long occupied the minds of researchers. There are many versions based on different semantic meanings of the roots rus/ros. This article proposes a version in which various, seemingly dissimilar, names of ancient Rus', such as Gardariki, Rus, Ruthenia, are in the same semantic (semantic) field, going back to a single basic concept of "wattle".

Gardariki

It is believed that the name Gardariki (Garðariki), used by the Scandinavians in relation to ancient Rus', means "country of cities". This word consists of two roots: garð - meaning in Old Norse 1) "fence, fence, fortification", 2) "yard, enclosed space", 3) "yard, possession, farm, house" and the root riki - "country, state. kingdom". A chronologically earlier name, preceding Gardariki, was the toponym Garða, the plural form of garðr. In the Old Norse texts, there are also composite names of cities that include the root garðr. These are the names of the ancient Russian cities Holmgarðr (Novgorod), Kœnugarðr (Kyiv), as well as Miklagarðr - Constantinople.

Interpretations of the toponym Garðariki vary. So, according to some researchers, for example, V. Thomsen, the meaning of the Old Norse garðr coincided with the meaning of the Russian word city. E. A. Rydzevskaya agrees with the “country of cities”, with the objection that, under the influence of folk etymology, the Russian word “city” was remade into a consonant Scandinavian word “gard”, although it had a different meaning. Other experts believe that the term Gardariki meant not cities, but fortified points (fortresses) of the Scandinavians in the Slavic lands, which is closer in meaning to the Scandinavian "guard". The Russian term "city" originally had the same meaning of fortified settlements. Over time, both terms were desemantized and could already designate cities in the modern sense.

When analyzing the use of the toponym Gardariki, it should be borne in mind that in Scandinavia itself, names with garðr do not refer to cities or urban-type settlements, but only to farms or rural settlements, which is in full accordance with the meaning of the word garðr itself in the Old Norse languages. To designate cities or fortresses in the sense of the Latin terms urbs or arx, Old Norse had the words - by, staðr, borg.

Outside of Scandinavia, the names of all cities in Europe were made out mainly by the term borg (For example, Romaborg - Rome). Names with the root garðr- are used only to designate Rus' (Garðar, Garðariki) and Russian cities: Novgorod (Holmgarðr) and Kyiv (Kœnugarðr), as well as Constantinople (Miklagarðr). In relation to Russian cities, the term hofuð garðar - "main cities" was also used (instead of the traditional hofuð borgar)

These circumstances give reason to believe that the terms with the root garðr, used in relation to Rus' and Russian cities, initially have a slightly different semantics than the concept of "city" or "fortification, fortress, outpost".
The most probable semantic meaning of the Scandinavian term "guard" in relation to ancient Russian cities, in my opinion, was the concept of "fence", and not just any fence, but a wattle fence. It is this semantics - “wicker fence, wattle fence” that could originally be present in the Old Norse word “guard” and in names with this root. This follows even from a cursory digression regarding the origin and original semantic meanings of the word "guard" and its analogues in different languages:

etymology of the term "guard":

The word guard has different ancient forms in various Germanic languages: garðr (Old Norse), gard (Old Saxon), garda (Old Frisian), geard (Old English) gart (Old High German). The same root, according to linguists, is present in the Latin word hortus, the ancient Greek χορτος, the ancient Church Slavonic city.
The main early meaning of this word in different languages ​​is precisely “fence, fence, hedge” (from which the later meanings of “yard, garden, city” come from, as objects surrounded by a fence).
However, an even deeper original meaning of the word "guard" is most likely the concept of "curved", including "flexible stick". In this sense, the Scandinavian word "guard" is connected in meaning with the consonant Russian word "pole" (given the palatalized transition of "g" to "zh" in the Slavic languages), and these words obviously have a common original root. Already from the meaning "pole" / "guard" the subsequent concept of "wattle fence" arises, as a structure consisting of bent interlaced poles. (For example, the Latvian word zardi, akin to the word pole, means exactly “fence”)
A confirming example of the fact that the semantics of the word "guard" was originally based on the concept of "curved, twisted, twisted" is the consonant word "curtain" (curtain). This word, through the German gordine and the French courtine, comes from the Latin cortina "rounding, steep".
Probably related forms of the word "guard" in its original meaning are the forms of the word "cord" (corde), meaning something "twisted, woven." And then the Old High German hurd, which actually means “wicker fence, fence” (Similarly, the English word fense, meaning “fence”, could also originally mean “wattle”, evidence of which is the phonetically close Greek word ifanse (ùφανση) with the meaning “weave” )

Thus, the term "guard" in the Scandinavian languages ​​could initially be understood as a fence woven from flexible poles that surrounded the courtyards. And in ancient Rus', this tradition of wickerwork, apparently, was a striking characteristic feature of Russian settlements, in contrast to modern Europe, which was the reason for the name Gardariki - “country of wickerwork”. And even until recently, the wattle fence is far from uncommon for the Russian farmstead.

China-towns of Rus'

Another reason for the name "wattle country" could be Kitay-gorod - also a characteristic feature of the Russian town-planning tradition.
According to a number of researchers, the name Kitai-Gorod comes from the word "whale", which in the Old Russian language meant something woven, in particular a wattle fence:
“According to I. E. Zabelin, the nickname China means, in all likelihood, braided: for China is a rope woven or twisted from grass, straw or twigs, with which odonya is knitted. The fact that a thin forest is used for the construction of earthen walls confirms this assumption. .
Kitai-gorod was a part of the city surrounded by a “wattle fence” (or a rampart, poured between the wattle fences). Here is how the chronicler describes the construction of the Kitaigorod wall in Moscow:
“In the summer of 7042 ... and having arranged the cunning wisely: start from a stone wall and gossip a thin forest near a large tree and pour the earth inside and firmly affirm ... and call the name of China to the city” .
However, this tradition of Kitai-Gorod is older than the well-known Moscow Kitay-Gorod and is not limited to it. Kita-"wattle fence" that surrounded Kitay-gorod was found in many ancient cities of Rus' (for example, Vladimir, Pronsk, the city of Kitay near Kiev, dating back to the 5th-6th centuries).
“On the ramparts of the Kyiv settlement of the 5th-6th centuries. (near the Historical Museum) imprints of wooden "piles" with an interval of 15-30 cm from each other. These are traces of the former "Chinese-city construction" of the fortress wall ("whale" - wickerwork).
It turns out that a kitay-city wall (wicker, twig, twig) was built on the Kievsky Val, stuffed inside with earth, which had a covered passage on top – fence with loopholes. Outside, the wall was coated with clay (from a fiery sign) and whitewashed with lime (like Ukrainian huts with the same walls). The whole fortress looked white stone and beautifully crowned any hill or mountain.
The Kitai-Gorod wall was not inferior in combat quality to the stone one. Cannonballs, and in ancient times – stones of vices (stone-throwers) simply got stuck in such a wall (a break was obtained in a stone one). The disadvantage of any Chinese city was its fragility.
These are the "white-stone" in appearance, sparkling in the sun fortresses crowned the Kiev mountains: Borichev (with Klinets and Uzdykhalnitsa), Kiev, Detinka, Khorevitsa, Shchekavitsa (possibly Gorodets on Pochaina) back in the 9th-10th centuries. Other fortified towns near Borichev and Kiev were also wattle: Kitaev (Kitaev Pustyn), Kitay-gorod, as well as Vyshgorod, Roden, Vitichev, Pereyaslavl ... By the way, Dietmar of Merseburg called Kiev – Kitava, and the Arabs – Kitav".

Rus

Initially, the name Rus could also mean "wattle fence".
In the dictionary of M. Fasmer, the Russian word "rusi" is recorded, with the meaning "top" (fishing wicker tackle). This word is related to the ancient Germanic word ruse (its other forms: riusa, rusa, russa, ryssja), which meant the same wicker fishing tackle, as well as a wicker fence installed in the riverbed to catch fish. This fishing wattle fence was also called Hurden, which is close in phonetics and, probably, in origin to the word "guard", which we examined above.
Thus, the term Rus can also initially go back to the concept of "wicker" and mean a wicker fence-wattle.

ill. Fishing wattle Hurden (Reusen) in an 1800 engraving,

ill. "Rusi" braids (German: Reusen) in the arsenal of East Timor fishermen

Ruthenium

As you know, Rus' in the Middle Ages was also called Ruthenia. It is generally accepted that this is the Latin name of Rus'. However, this name may also have a Germanic origin from the root rute, with the meaning "rod" (what the wattle consists of).

Having considered the semantics of the three common names of Ancient Rus' - Gardariki, Rus, Ruthenia, we see that these names are in the same semantic field, meaning, in the most acceptable context, "wattle".

Once the Scandinavians-Normans, having got into ancient Rus', called it Gardarika - “the country of cities”. There were much more of them than in the homeland of the Normans - in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland. The Normans also saw the then lands of Western Europe, which stood on the former territories of the Roman Empire - the edges of French, German and Italian. They were familiar with the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. But for some reason, the Scandinavians did not call the kingdom-states there a “country of cities”, giving this honor to the ancient Rus. What struck the harsh Vikings who saw a lot?

More than a thousand years ago, our ancestors created a special type of city: "fabric", consisting of estates. The type of city is organic and livable.

If we make the planned urban revolution, then Russia (no longer the Russian Federation!) will become a new Gardarika. The country has thousands of new city-states, settlements of the future, built, as Krupnov and his associates dream, on the principles of local urbanization. But only now family estates are available to every hardworking and hardworking person, and not just to the oligarch, rich man or pop diva, as in today's Erephia. Creativity flourishes in the new policies. They become the focus of scientific research and pilot work, completely new agricultural technology and never-before-seen centers of education.

Energetically, our noopolis cities are independent. Some of them are powered by wind farms that look like tall pipes. Some have relied on thermal engines. Some preferred small nuclear installations. Some cities have built hydrogen energy stations and solar panels improved with nanotech. Or maybe they combine installations of different types. Somewhere the latest fashion is home electrical installations assembled from biorhodopsin batteries. There are no problems with heating either: it is provided by inexpensive electricity or autonomous Zaboronsky gas generators-heaters that work on wood chocks. Therefore, in our world, we are not dependent on oil magnates, Gazprom, or monopoly power plants.

Life here is free from the dominance of thieving and stupid officials-"androids" that strangled life and creativity in Moscow and other megacities. Here is a paradise for creators from the New Reality. The inhabitants of Novaya Gardariki have a developed self-government and build their own lives - they do not need any Luzhkovs and packs of his prefects. Life itself requires developed systems of self-government - because only they are suitable for network systems with decentralized energy, super communications, new transport and production based on future technologies. Bureaucrats are not allowed here. They are a foreign body in our Gardarik.

Spitting on the selfish interests of old corporations, the citizens of the policies of Supernova Russia choose the newest technologies, which bring the fastest and cheapest solution to problems. Can we provide ourselves with electricity for several million rubles? Let's - build a tower installation. Someone can treat cancer in a matter of weeks, and at the same time does not need expensive Western medicines for 3-5 thousand dollars a pack? Come to us, since they spread rot in the old cities? You invented an airship that will replace the convoy of trucks and a squadron of helicopters? Do it in our system: several policies and enterprises will cooperate for this, create a "virtual corporation". You know how to create modern systems of water supply and water treatment, and you are striving to destroy the old housing and communal monopolies, fearing for their profits? Welcome to us, to Gardarika. We will take your systems, making their creator a respected and wealthy person.

We don’t give a damn about the old monopolies in the field of communications and telecommunications in our policies: we use wireless ultra-broadband and Korobeinikov communications.

In Supernova Russia - Gardarik, there is no need to build so many large power plants, spending mind-boggling resources and tons of money on this. After all, the specific current consumption has decreased. Our policies have acquired decentralized sources of kilowatt-hours. Our new houses no longer consume as much heat as the current panel boxes. Reduced energy consumption in housing and communal services. And the new industry turned out to be much more economical than the current one. She, of course, needs large stations - but now they need three times less than in the USSR with the same production volumes (we can’t even talk about RF indicators).

Well, if we add together the effects of all innovations, what will be embodied in New Gardarika? Its citizens will be able to live as richly and freely as anyone before. We will beat the Americans, the Europeans, and the Japanese here. And all why? After all, in Neogardarik we do not have to spend millions of man-years and tens of billions of dollars every year to feed the industrial Moloch. To extract for it tens of millions of tons of oil and hundreds of billions of cubic meters of gas, mountains of coal and millions of tons of steel. After all, our life support systems and at home consume much less resources than today. We use the energy of the sun, wind and flowing water more. Mineral resources are saved by our mini-nuclear plants. In many cases, metal was replaced by basalt fabric and heavy-duty ceramics. Well, the new industry is breaking all records in terms of efficiency and resource saving. Everything is fundamentally simple here.

As a result, we have freed up oceans of resources, human labor, time and money. We have formed super-profits: both in terms of resources and in terms of money. Now we can invest them in the best school in the world. Our children will be able to read as early as three years of age, and complete secondary education by the age of fourteen. And then - to receive super-education, which develops their abilities. Moreover, in combination with classes in new palestras: athletic schools. At the output, we get a downright ancient Hellenic ideal. A developed person both mentally and physically. Possessing incredible vitality and unbreakable health.

We will leave the old cities. For in them there is no future for our people. They are our graves. New Russia will direct the released resources to grandiose health development programs, the construction of transport development corridors, scientific research and space missions. Each of these directions will generate a powerful stream of new scientific discoveries and technologies unheard of before. That is why the power, wealth and development of Russia will grow from five to five years. And so - up to unprecedented breakthroughs that will give us superpower: to mastering the energy of thermonuclear, using the earth's magnetic field, creating "superintelligent man" and thinking human communities, to building installations for the production of finished things by recombining atoms. And so - until the development of the Moon, Mars, satellites of Jupiter, the depths of the ocean.

Saving the resources that today are mediocrely consumed by imperfect high-rise housing, outdated housing and communal services and energy systems, and monstrously costly construction, we will create an innovative Armed Forces. We will reliably ensure the security of the country. And there will be nothing to fear from the American space challenge.

This is the mission of the Dictatorship of Development that we dream of. She must start a new "Manhattan" project - but not to create another Superbomb, but in the field of manor urbanization.

And many components of such a New Reality already exist today, in the Russian Federation itself. Thanks to titan people like Popov. They live and fight alongside us. There are still many of them. Both they and we are people of the new Reality.

CLAY MAG

“Look, now I’m going to cut glass with it,” says an elderly, imposing-looking man, picking up a piece of strange dense material resembling a shard from an antique vase. He runs it over the bottle, leaving a deep furrow in the green of the glass.

Do you know what it is? Skeleton, new material. It is 1.9 times stronger than natural diamond. Skeleton is a specially processed carbon...

This is how the Russian architect Vladimir Popov presents the skeleton. Inexpensive material of the future that can be done everywhere. Super lightweight and super strong. I am amazed at what I see. Popov rings the bells hanging from the ceiling of the room. They are ceramic - but they sound like metal. And their durability is wow! Great! When I was in school in 1983, I saw a series of reports by Vladimir Tsvetov about the Japanese economic and high-tech miracle. Once he showed a car engine that the Japanese made from heavy-duty ceramics. And now Maxim Kalashnikov sees something similar - but in the Russian version.

Popov is an amazing and obsessed person. Great innovator. Born General Designer. If we succeed in building the civilization of the future in Russia, then Popov will become one of its most outstanding creators. With the help of ceramic materials developed by him “with comrades”, it is possible to make a complete revolution in the construction of residential buildings. They can be assembled from lightweight and durable parts, inside which channels are laid - cavities for thermal insulation. Assemble on the frame - as from the designer. And ecospheric single-family homesteads. And - if desired - apartment buildings. Moreover, their durability will be fantastic, and the price - ridiculously low. And all because there is a complete rejection of reinforced concrete. What is it made from? From expensive cement. But clay for ceramic construction is available anywhere in the world. In any place in Russia, Africa, America, Asia... Popov's technologies make it possible to produce durable ceramic constructions quite cheaply almost everywhere. Having such technologies, it is possible to turn the cities of indigenous Great Russia into toys - Vladimir, Suzdal, Uglich, Myshkin, Novgorod and Pskov. And what about the Far East, the Kuriles and Sakhalin can be adjusted!

Imagine a magical city of houses. One-family homesteads. Decorated with platbands, pleasing to the eye with tiled roofs. They stand among gardens and green groves. The air is clean and transparent. The Russian river flows its unhurried waters. Among the groups of houses rise tall, thick towers six meters in diameter, like factory chimneys. But not a puff of smoke comes out of them. These are wind farms. Air is constantly moving inside them, thrust is created - and it rotates the horizontal turbines located in the towers. Houses receive electricity and heat without consuming a gram of coal, or a drop of fuel oil, or crumbs of uranium, or anything. cubic meters of gas. Eternal communications are laid to the houses - pipes made of basalt fiber. They are able to serve for many centuries without change and repair. Free electricity powers carbon-fired heating elements in bright and airy homes - and they're warm in the winter. And in the summer there is a pleasant coolness. Sewage and waste products are treated and processed in special facilities with the help of bacteria...

Popov and his associates were able to invent a technology for grinding clay (and other materials) to particles of one to three microns in size, and not 1-3 millimeters, as in a brick factory. A unique electric motor with permanent magnets came in handy, which provides a rotation speed of 28-30 thousand revolutions per minute with a meager consumption of electricity. With the help of such motors, unique mills are made. It is possible to grind a substance to a fraction of fifty angstroms, a thousand times less than a millimeter. A unique permanent magnet motor with two counter-rotating rotors was made in 1993. It became the basis for miracle mills. They also made a wonderful gearless circular saw out of it, which cuts materials with two disks rotating towards each other. I'm watching a training film. The saw cuts everything like a knife through butter. Here it is - in comparison with the usual "Bulgarian". Lord, how slow the latter is compared to the assembly of the "priests"! And the cut is as if polished. There are no gearboxes - there is no power loss, as in conventional technologies, when a five-kilowatt motor loses half its power in the gearbox - for the sake of increasing the rotation speed. And even more. There are no brushes and windings in such a Russian electric motor. It works with a ten-year maintenance-free service life guarantee.

Combining such technologies, we reduce operating costs to almost zero, - says the architect. - Imagine: you do not need to repair the house every ten years. It is not necessary to shift pipes every three years. No need to change electric motors every three to four months. In industry, such motors would reduce energy consumption by four to five times. Each of our technologies leads to the solution of the strategic tasks of the state.

Thanks to such engines, people can build a “porcelain house” for themselves from local materials. Nothing needs to be brought from afar or imported. Need a cladding? Here it is - ceramic. It has no analogues anywhere in the world. It can be given a strength grade of 2 thousand. And you can - and 150-200. At the same time, it does not burn, perfectly insulates heat and does not let in sounds. It does not crumble, like any foam-foam rubber. Energy consumption for ceramic structures is half that for the production of bricks.

Super speed mills - two coaxial discs spinning at incredible speed towards each other. Any material is poured between them: clay, sawdust, grain. The material itself is accelerated to unthinkable speed and its particles begin to grind each other. And the speed is about 50-60 thousand revolutions per minute for each disk. The discs are made of skeleton, and therefore do not wear out themselves.

Super-speed mills make it possible to make first-class faience from any Russian clay. We don't need Europe anymore. Do at least building structures - at least plumbing. You can make healthy, chemical-free clay textured floors. Heated - because warm air can be let in through the capillaries inside them. In a house with such floors, walk barefoot all day - you will not catch a cold. Take a bath in a real pool. Fine-coated carbon heating tapes keep you warm with little electricity.

Skeleton itself can rightfully be considered a material with a great future. It is electrically conductive, surpassing copper in this indicator and approaching silver. It slightly expands when heated. Skeleton, according to Popov, can be used to make almost eternal bearings. Today, when we have lost the Soviet powder metallurgy, which produced an excellent metal for bearings, when the Russian Federation depends on imports, skeleton is becoming a salvation for the bearing industry.

Popov and his friends do not use any chemical processes in principle.

Here he shows visitors his ceramic blocks. Hitting them with an iron rod.

Clay is my favorite building material. It was used thousands of years ago, and will be used in the distant future, - says the architect. - No production of solid bricks for blunt masonry! Thanks to our technologies, thanks to the achieved strength of ceramics, we make figured structures with a voidage of up to 90 percent. That is, during construction, we can replace ten bricks with one of our ceramic blocks, which by weight is equal to only one and a half bricks. See what a savings! We press our material, vitrify it. He is dry. We assemble a house from 10 and 20 brick blocks. We don't need mortar or concrete. Ceramic blocks have an ideal shape, tightly fitting one to the other...

Ceramics, says Popov, allows you to build beautiful houses with figured decorations. The wretchedness, the simplification of the current construction, which lead to the impoverishment of thinking, the withering away of the sense of beauty, is being destroyed. The ceramic house is beautiful arches, platbands, windows and window sills. “The cost of beauty cannot be superfluous. Our ancestors lived in beauty - and we must live the same way! Our world must be based on knowledge, love and beauty,” our “clay magician” likes to repeat. He shows mosaic blocks of joyful colors for cladding houses. They have a strength grade of 700 and 900 units. The technology for their manufacture was ready in the late 1980s. But it still remains unknown in the country.

At the same time, all the elements of the "porcelain house" are exceptionally high-strength: the foundation blocks, the cladding, and the actual "bricks". Houses made of such material are absolutely waterproof and do not freeze through.

An ecological cleaning system is thought out. Our counterpart demonstrates a porous material. It is populated with a certain culture of bacteria, placed in a container with a volume of two or three cubic meters. The sewage of the manor house gets there, and during the day the microorganisms purify it. Further, the water can be used both for your pool and for local irrigation, and even - with further purification - as drinking water. The services of huge centralized systems - the city's Vodokanals - are not needed. If this technology is applied in today's large cities, the size of treatment facilities can be reduced by an order of magnitude.

We have learned to recycle everything, Popov smiles. - For us, there is no concept of "waste". One of our smart guys developed the technology of road construction from waste. Sandy loam, loam, sand, slag and ash, which lie in our billions of tons, acid and alkaline plums - everything goes into business. And the output is a material that over the years does not lose, but increases its strength. The roadbed is laid on a special substrate - reinforced flexible meshes made of basalt and glass fibers. They do not rot, do not rust, are not subject to induced currents. Because such roads do not care about the Russian difficult climate.

We have accumulated so many technologies that even three lives will not be enough to implement them, - the architect smiles with a slight sadness.

NOOSPHERIC WIZARD

- Everything that you have seen, taken together, creates the main technology - the technology of a healthy life in your home! - convinces Vladimir Popov.
In fact, he and his comrades are creating technologies for noospheric urbanization. Everything for the construction of healthy, harmonious settlements of tomorrow. Those that are called upon to save Russian civilization from death in a metropolitan dead end. Those that will breathe new life into Russia.
In his house you will not find hot water pipes and radiators. Everything is based on thermal tapes and pipes, on carbon elements hidden behind the paintings on the walls.

We have a unit that I dream of implementing. We called it "thermal transformer". This turbo expander will strategically change the technology of life in any home, says the architect. - Our ancestors many centuries ago put a small stove in the basement of the tower or in the basement of the church and heated the entire tower or temple at its expense. Hot air from the stove heated the entire space through a system of capillaries. We, on the basis of our high-speed engines, made an apparatus with a very unusual turbine and heat exchanger. We take air from the street, drive it through this unit - and from a kilowatt of power of our machine we get two kilowatts of cold with a temperature of up to minus forty degrees and three kilowatts of heat - with a temperature of up to one hundred and fifty. Here to you at once: both the refrigerator - and heating. And the dimensions of the unit are two hundred millimeters in diameter and half a meter in length. Let's try to compare it with a foreign domestic air conditioner... Our system does not produce any condensate. In the summer, you can put it outside at one end - and cool the house. In winter - on the contrary, to heat. And the refrigerator in the house is no longer needed ...

Ceramics is not the only miracle material. "Priests" are also engaged in wood. In their opinion, today it is simply criminal to take raw, unprocessed timber out of the country. From wood, they also create such that there are no limits to surprise.

First, the tree must be dried. But what are conventional dryers? They dehydrate the wood for a long time, with huge energy costs. Our noospheric wizards managed to build their own dryer: a cylinder with a diameter of 3.2 meters and a length of seven meters. It digs vertically into the ground. Immediately ensured the safety and convenience of the process, savings on thermal insulation. The unit uses the same "thermal transformer". The dryer is two-chamber, with "cycle transfer": freezing - heating. The unit itself has interesting properties: for one kilowatt of its power, there are 280 cubic meters of air exchange per hour. Thanks to this, the wood is dried not from the outside, but from the inside: moisture is sucked out of the capillaries of the wood. It decreases in volume by a maximum of fifteen percent - but leaves the drying unit as a dry, dense, high-quality material. There are no microcracks in it: after all, unlike the usual drying, the escaping moisture does not tear the wood from the inside. Strength increases by 50-80 percent.

The process is waste-free: after all, not finished boards and beams are loaded into the unit, but a tree trunk, butt. And only then, for example, boards are sawn from processed wood. How? Yes, all the same high-speed double-disk saws that give polished cuts and a minimum of sawdust. It turns out a solid savings on cutting, grinding and jointing of wood. Few wastes are ground in a super mill, resulting in a material of high homogeneity. Then make particle boards: super-dense, not soaking, durable. (The chipboard "priests" is 80 percent stronger than usual).

Today, a European-made drying chamber with a volume of twenty cubic meters only requires 350-400 kilowatts of installed power for heating, and the "priest's thing" - only 25 kW. If in the first drying lasts from seven to thirty days, then in our "miracle" - no more than one day. You understand how much savings you get, how much the cost of construction falls. You can build in huge volumes using wood. Especially where we need to create centers of growth: in Siberia and the Far East.

And here is a silica fiber. An excellent substitute for glass wool, which is dangerous for human lungs. White fluffy fabric. Excellent thermal insulator and finishing material. Consumers in Europe and the United States buy it from priests in thousands of cubic meters, but not in the Russian Federation. Popov's son lined the kiln with silica cloth. It seems to be only a two-centimeter layer - but what an effect! Inside the furnace - a heat of 1100 degrees, and on its surface - only fifty. Finish with this material (with a layer of only a centimeter) Popov's ceramic houses - and they are not afraid of fifty-degree frosts.

And what about fabrics made of basalt and glass fibers, what does Popov show? Created a huge range of those. Finishing materials, any kind of grids for construction - instead of a rusting metal chain-link. Lightweight, flexible and durable. What about glass and basalt fiber pipes? Their "priests" have learned to make a diameter of up to 3.6 meters. Pipes are made for a specific task. Need a pipe for sewerage with relatively low strength - please. A pipe is needed for high pressures (for pumping gas, oil - even antifreeze!) - and they will do it: by winding more layers of fiber and providing it with a strong lining. And no rust, no corrosion! These pipes last almost forever. Unlike plastic, they do not have internal stresses. With the help of such pipes, the future settlements of Russian civilization will receive sewerage, water supply and “threads” for oil and gas workers, which will be able to work for decades without any repairs. Like the aqueducts of the ancient Romans. We will not have to exhaust millions of tons of expensive steel and a lot of human labor for all this.

What about carbon fiber materials (CFW)? They are terrific heaters. Cheap and safe, not requiring large amounts of electricity due to the very high heat transfer. With their help, you can make economical devices for heating ceramic and wooden houses. And to power them - from "pipes" - wind power plants. And down with Chubais with his generating and distribution companies! Enormous money is released to build a new life. We save them in order to spend on the birth and upbringing of children, on science and creativity.

The "priests" even make heating elements for shoes - in the form of an insole for a soldier's boot heated from a "finger-type" battery. And here is a ten-meter cord. Consumes 150 watts of energy, while heating up to 80 degrees. You can wrap it around any open pipe, connect it to a low-voltage source - and not be afraid that the object will freeze.

The technologies of the "priests" allow you to make rubber, for the manufacture of which you do not need a single gram of soot. What is soot? To get a ton of it, you need to burn ten tons of oil. And the rubber of the priests uses a natural mineral instead of soot (which one is the secret of the creators).

And here is the now despised gypsum. Or rather, gypsum fiber, - continues Popov, holding white U-shaped structures in his hands. - Also an excellent thermal insulator. But we know how to make material from gypsum with a strength of “grade six hundred”. It is stronger than many types of concrete, not to mention brick. To give any color to such material is not a problem for us. The surface of the structures, as you can see, is almost polished. Finishing elements are the most magnificent: stucco, cornices, window sills. These are walls that can be washed: instead of the unfortunate Italian tiles. And there are billions of tons of this gypsum in the country ...

I am responsible for my creative teams. I have been working with many people for decades. We don't need profit. We need people to build production using our technology, and that we have a service contract with them for the maintenance and development of the same technology. We don't need Mercedes and dachas in the Canary Islands. Another thing is more important: the opportunity to "blind" something new - immediately test it - and put it into practice. Without breaking the technology, without destroying the production line...

In the films that the architect's friends gave me, I even saw a glider equipped with high-speed permanent magnet electric motors. Here it is, a step towards the old dream of man: a clean electric plane. Popov dreams of building life in Russia in a completely new way. Or, rather, on the original, forgotten principles, but now - with the help of the latest technologies. He dreams of building life in new settlements on the principles of the old Russian Zemstvo - with people taking care of their land, with the improvement of life in it, with a system of consumer cooperatives.

What is this in essence? noospheric civilization. The one where healthy and strong, smart and creative people will live. The one where children's laughter will sound, where families will have three offspring - at least. Images of cities-policies, garden cities in the midst of magnificent nature rise before my eyes. Breathe deeply here. Here you literally drink the intoxicating air of freedom. Freedom from the power of monster corporations with their smoky factories and power plants.

Why pay two or three thousand dollars per square meter of a new building! With monthly fees for primitive housing and communal services! A miracle can be created here and now, in a matter of days and weeks, from raw materials that lie under your feet. To hell with the costs in billions of dollars and euros for the purchase of all imports: we will make our own - not just the same, but much better! Something that no one else on the planet can do. And then look down on the inhabitants of Western countries: oh, you live in houses with cardboard walls? Oh well...

Do not believe anyone who says that the country cannot completely solve the housing problem in just ten years! All technologies for this have already been created and are being successfully applied.

MONOPOLY ATTACKER: THE CREATOR OF "BLITZ HOUSES"

Today we have plenty to choose from. Take a man whom I happen to write about in my books. Sergey Sibiryakov lives in the Russian Federation, who believes that every working person in Russia should buy a house for his family. And this means that a three-story cottage should cost no more than a car. Fantastic? No. The development of modern technologies makes it possible to bring down prices not only for computers, but also for consumer real estate.

In the early 2000s, Sibiryakov left the civil service (and he managed to be a general of the tax police) and, together with his comrades, tried to bring to the market a prefabricated building without a foundation C08. Assembled in just eight hours from ready-made "puff" panels on a metal frame, it was supposed to go on sale for $ 150 per square meter. Sergey even joined the Unity party (the current Edrossia) and tried to put forward, as a point of its program, the large-scale construction of "lightning" houses. According to him, the program promised an explosive effect. Mortgages could develop rapidly: after all, ordinary people secured their city apartments; could get money to build two or three cottages outside the city. Yes, and it would be easier to repay the loan: after all, C08 is being built not in several months, but in a matter of hours. Interest simply run up for such a time do not have time.
By 2006, his team had created a next-generation pre-fabricated home where metal parts were kept to a minimum... This is a home with at least 140 square meters of living space. This time - not without a foundation: six concrete blocks play its role. But the highlight of the development is that the metal in the frame of the new house has been replaced with glued beams.

“Six thousand rubles per square meter is the selling price, which includes exterior and interior decoration, installation of the house and removed communications,” Sergei Sibiryakov told me in the spring of 2006. - We have moved away from using a large amount of metal in order to reduce the cost of construction and at the same time not lose quality ...

An off-grade forest has become a saving material, from which a thick glued laminated timber is made. The production of such can be put everywhere, having spent 500 thousand dollars on it. The production of timber is launched in just two months and requires ten workers. It supplies the builders of "lightning houses" with frame components, jambs, doors and windows. And even furniture. Complete freedom from monopolists and the influence of external factors is gained. And there is an excess of off-grade forest in the Russian Federation today. The technology of glued beams makes it possible to make 9-meter thick (25 by 25 cm) beams from waste wood. They are simply glued and pressed from one and a half meter bars. Thanks to the use of advanced technology, assembling a house (instead of one work shift in 2002) now takes only three hours. In fact, an unparalleled "set technology" was born (from the English set - a set, a set, a circle of people connected by common interests).

What is the essence of technology? Instead of an expensive foundation, concrete blocks buried in the ground are used. The house itself (depending on the modification) consists of 17-20 large sandwich panels. The panel itself is layered, consisting of two layers of formwork (DSP or impregnated plywood), between which there is a heater. Which? There are hundreds of them on the market. And in general, sandwiches are completed according to the wishes of the customer. Already at the factory, sanitary ware and all sorts of built-in units are attached to the inside of the panels - up to plasma TV screens. On site, a team of assemblers attach the panels to the timber frame. The method of high-quality connection of panels at the joints is the "know-how" of the company. It's all about the special adhesive.

All parts of the structure are delivered to the assembly site either in a forty-foot sea container (if the “transport shoulder” is more than a thousand kilometers), or in two trailers, where all parts are inserted into special cassettes. This is the essence of the most technologically advanced “set method”.

Then there will be a set-method, a set-house, a set-meter, a set-repair, - Sergey told me. - We are moving away from all European standards and renovations. In the production of houses, we are as close as possible to the Ford conveyor technology. There will also be a set standard for the new housing policy: at least 25 square meters of space per person...

According to Sibiryakov, he and his comrades are ready to launch mass production of new-type houses in the regions, using the areas of bankrupt enterprises. Production can be set up within four months. Preparation - three months. On the fourth - 200 houses from the assembly line. On the fifth - already three hundred. And then - up to a thousand or two monthly. Up to 15 thousand houses per year on one small site. And you can organize them almost anywhere.

But will it be possible to throw the new technology into the current reality of the Russian Federation? There is hope. The situation at the top is clearly changing. In 2006, the pro-presidential United Russia party announced that it was betting on cottage construction in the suburbs. And the president said that he would strictly demand that the governors increase the volume of housing construction. Say, if you want to stay in office - ensure the growth of square meters put into operation, and at affordable prices. And how to do it? Indeed, in cities it is often impossible to increase the volume of cheap construction. We have to first demolish the old and dilapidated houses, relocate their inhabitants. It is clear that in such conditions the price per unit area of ​​new housing is prohibitive. In addition, during the years of domination of all sorts of liberals in the country, many house-building plants, plants for the production of cement and reinforced concrete products were killed. Like it or not, but promises will have to be kept, resorting to new technologies. Sibiryakov is counting on this.

Today he has no problem meeting with this or that governor. The fame of the new house-building technology has already spread throughout Rus'. Sergei Anatolyevich is also included in all conceivable commissions for the implementation of the “national projects” announced by the Kremlin. There's just not enough use for it. Everything, for now, goes into words. At the level of governors and "first persons" - delight and words of support. But everything gets bogged down, as if in a swamp, as soon as the matter descends to the level of second-person performers. Any substitutes. Those who actually distribute contracts and plots of land. Those who have a building complex at hand. They are in this business. They do not need cheap prefabricated housing.

Until recently, I thought that it was impossible to break through such a wall, - our interlocutor continues. - For five years we fought against a barrier of officials and bribe-takers. Leave everything as it is - and all national projects will perish in this quagmire. As long as the president and his inner circle in the capital do not push through the decisions made with cannon-piercing power, until the governors take the plans under personal control, until they are fired for speaking their tongue, but not really building, there will be no sense.

Therefore, I do not communicate with the first persons anymore. It is much more useful to negotiate with advisers of people in power and businessmen close to them. They spin in the system. If we interest them, then they will go to the governors. So, we are working with three heads of regions in the Volga region.

On the other hand, there is one more reserve - work with consumer cooperatives of those who have received a plot of land and want to build a country house on the security of their city apartment ...

Smart people understand that in order for mortgages to really work, they need technologies for cheap and fast construction. And that means the old construction giants will have to deal with a fast and energetic competitor...

It took Sibiryakov a year to open the first production for three hundred houses a year. (This happened in May 2007). And if you count from the first samples of the blitz-house - so all seven years. Oh, how many malevolent hoots in Internet forums during this time! “Well, where are your houses for a few megabucks?”, “This is another utopia, Sibiryakov will not succeed!” And Sibiryakov, in spite of everything, achieved his goal. Alas, in the current Russian Federation, for one person who does the job - ten of those who stand nearby do not do a damn thing, but only croak gloatingly.

The ice has broken. And, in addition to ceramic houses, we can potentially cover the country with Sibiryakov's prefabricated mansions.
But that's not all...

ALTERNATIVE HOUSING CODE - THE KEY TO THE REVIVAL OF RUSSIA! In the constitution of the Russian Federation, the declaration of human rights, there is the right of every person to housing. It just doesn’t specify what kind of housing it is - a homeless hut or an oligarch’s villa. For example, the new housing code has reduced the sanitary standard for living space from 12 m2 to 6 m2. Moreover, these 6 m2 can be anywhere: both in a shabby hostel and in an overcrowded communal apartment. So what should be the housing of the XXI century in Russia - the richest country in the world, and located in the cold climate zone? What objective norms and standards should be guided by so that the constitution, the declaration of human rights, the recommendations of the WHO (World Health Organization) would not be an empty phrase and a destructive sanitary norm of the new housing code of 6 m2?

Such norms and standards have long been calculated by hygienists in relation to the climatic conditions of Russia. They are 20 m! residential and 10 auxiliary (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) total 30 m2 per person. A separate apartment, or a 3 (or more) room apartment with a total area of ​​90-150 m2 per family, and if the family is large, then several apartments, based on the approved standard. In the suburbs and countryside, this is a separate house with a similar living area. This standard should be considered a social sanitary minimum. It arises from the need to eliminate or reduce to a safe level mortality, the spread of dangerous diseases, a decrease in the immune status of a person caused by overcrowding, threatening the stability and security of society as a whole.

Former Presidential Affairs Manager P.P. Borodin responsibly stated from the TV screen that there are enough resources in the Russian Federation for each family to have a house of 1000 m2. And he is absolutely right. In order to provide all citizens of the Russian Federation with a socially sanitary minimum, it is necessary to build 25-30 million 3-room apartments or houses in the suburbs and rural areas of the same footage within 4-5 years.

The cost of such housing is $ 10,000 for an apartment or individual house of a similar standard. Do not confuse real estate value and cost. Real estate value includes speculation, kickbacks, roofs, and so on. Since housing with a socially sanitary minimum will not be sold, but provided, its cost will be equal to the cost of construction - $ 10,000 for a 3-room apartment or a similar individual house. The cost of this social program will amount to 250-300 billion dollars.

The stabilization fund of the Russian Federation significantly exceeds the named amount. To build the planned housing, it is necessary to master 60-70 billion dollars every year. There are about 15 thousand construction companies and organizations in the Russian Federation. Even a small construction company is capable of mastering 4-5 million dollars a year. Large companies master 3-5 million dollars in a few days. And this will not be a waste of the stabilization fund, but will be its reservation in the most reliable form - in the form of an investment in real estate. This will not cause a surge in inflation, since the money from the stabilization fund will not enter the market in bulk, since there will be no sales, but distribution. Thus, not only the problem with housing will be solved, but also the demographic problem, which rests on the lack of adequate housing for young families, will be reduced. In addition, it will become an impetus for the development of industry and the country as a whole.

DOME HOUSES GREBNEV

“Is a man a yolk to live in a sphere? Are you a brick to live in a cube?

These words, written on the stand of the Griffin firm, made me stop. It was in April 2007, at the exhibition "High Technologies of the 21st Century". This is how the author of this book got acquainted with Grebnev's noospheric architecture.

The designs of his houses capture the imagination. Imagine the buildings, as if descended from the pages of the great Efremov's novels. Each estate looks like a small town of bright, light-looking domes. They are connected by galleries and wide terraces, similar to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Wide windows are cut in the domes, flooding the interior of the dwelling with natural light. The tops of some domes are transparent.
V.N. Grebnev, who came up with the concept and technology for building noospheric houses, claims that a hemisphere is the most natural shape in the world. Such houses organically fit into nature, live in harmony with it. This is not a house of right angles, which is forced to resist everything: winds, rains, snow. Right angles are not inherent in living things. Man himself consists not of angles, but of roundness.

“... The strength of the sphere is ensured by the uniform distribution of loads on all points of the surface. It works brilliantly in compression and deflection. These are axioms.

One house-egg Vitaly Grebnev has already built in Saltykovka near Moscow

The sphere is the best shape for a house with wind and snow loads. A sphere has the largest volume with the smallest surface area. Material consumption, labor intensity and time of sphere creation are minimal. Since the sphere is made seamless, heat losses are minimized; the heating system of the house is minimal. Everything you need to make spheres is based on 2-3 machines. Roof-roof repair is not needed, because it does not flow. The question of ventilation is an opening and hermetically closing hole at the top of the sphere.

House-sphere is cheap to operate: there is no need to repair facades, ceilings, attics, paint facades and roofs.
In view of the lightness and strength of the spheres, it is advisable to build them in seismically hazardous areas.

Special foundation blocks are not needed, the volume is “pulled out” whole from the freezing depth (for different soils - different technologies).

A fully erected sphere is much more difficult to destroy with explosions; even pierced in one or more places, it does not lose its constructive abilities and does not add up.

It is convenient to erect spheres in hard-to-reach places: mountain recreation centers, geological reconnaissance bases, in residential villages in the North. All equipment is delivered to inaccessible places by helicopter.

The use of spherical compositions gives new shaping in such objects as swimming pools, greenhouses, baths, greenhouses, kiosks, parking lots, pavilions, shops, cafes, video halls, fitness centers, offices, gyms, boarding houses, children's camps, etc.
It is possible to create spherical multi-tiered urban structures using minimal areas for foundations, developing spatial compositions above the tracks.

Cable-stayed structures will successfully fit into spherical ensembles: spatial transitions, large cantilever extensions of balconies and platforms, inclusion of the earth landscape and the water surface.

In the plan, it is possible to produce spatial volumes of any shape. In one of the areas, it is desirable to leave areas with living plant turf and flowers, on which you can walk barefoot in winter, restoring your energy.

Having fine-tuned the technologies for manufacturing spheres of various sizes at the construction site, we will create cheap - that is, the way nature should be - and always new construction. Where the architect will be the one who builds his own house.

Such construction will make a person’s dwelling not as “precious”, labor-intensive and material-intensive as it is today. Accordingly, he will form in him a greater degree of freedom, mobility and independence in his mind ... "

This is what Grebnev says on his website. "For the construction of his houses of the future, he created a special material: polystyrene concrete with a specific gravity of 300-400 kg / m3. In fact, polystyrene concrete is an ultralight concrete on a cement binder and expanded polystyrene aggregate. Since September 1999 Grebnev building material was introduced into GOST (R51263-99).

So, the domes are covered with plaster with reinforced additives from the outside, treated with water-repellent compounds. From the inside - puttied, and then painted or upholstered with something. The foundation consists of a sand cushion, ASG (300-400 mm thick), waterproofing, reinforced concrete rings of various diameters 250 mm thick, a polystyrene concrete cushion 200 mm thick - as a heater. The very top of the dome is made transparent, covered with sheets of cellular polycarbonate or triplex with ventilation holes.

As the developers of domed houses say, polystyrene concrete is the first material acceptable for this technology now. But they are also looking for other, new types of building materials. Grebnev's team was interested, for example, in technologies based on foamed silica - such as Ecolit and Silpor. Their creators met with the architect. The prospects are very tempting, although so far these materials are more expensive than polystyrene concrete. But experiments on these technologies have already begun.

“We have technologies aimed at erecting building volumes in 2-5 days, depending on the purpose,” writes V.N. Grebnev. “The time has come to change the attitude to construction. Whether according to our technologies or according to others, we must build differently: faster, easier and cheaper. In tune with nature, the world. We have taken the first steps in this direction…”

Even today, we, the reader, can build a thousand new cities in the country. Garden cities. Cities from family estates. Noopolises. Let the skeptics grumble: they say that high-rise buildings are cheaper, individual houses are ruinous because, they say, they will have to be supplied with electricity from remote stations, and much larger sewer and water systems will have to be built for them. Lord, we don’t need all this in our noopolises! We have decentralized energy, individual systems for water purification, disposal of dirty effluents and waste. And we do not want to be in multi-storey boxes, in the cramped cubic capacity of apartments.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Before you, readers, essays about people from Tomorrow. This is the power of which the Dictatorship of Development is able to use for the lightning-fast revival of Russia. They are the ones behind the magical "door in the wall".

It is very difficult for us to live in the present world, reader. We are like travelers between two realities.
Priests, Sibiryakovs, Grebnevs, Novoselovs, Bazievs and other geniuses live in one reality. In this "world-behind-the-door" people can do almost everything. There are no barriers to high creativity. Everything is here to raise Russia to the heights of world power in just a few years, providing her with mountains of wealth and full bins of bread.

Local residents are able to make ceramic houses and miracle power plants. They have marvelous organizational techniques that can break the bureaucracy and turn communities of citizens into creative teams that work miracles of efficiency and ingenuity. They cross people and computers in the same "brain trusts". They design light space planes and build ekranoplanes. They test solar panels that work even at night. Airships are made with some kind of super-effort. They invent and make a variety of devices and additives that greatly reduce fuel consumption in engines, power plant furnaces, and ship engines. Someone manages to create drugs that treat cancerous tumors, but in this way - underground, so as not to end up in jail. Someone knows how to influence plants with electromagnetic fields in such a way that their productivity increases significantly. Someone knows how to teach children as well as anyone in the world, producing geniuses. And someone is already controlling the weather from ground-based low-power installations.

And so on, reader friend. If the Motherland calls these people, if it sets tasks for them, they will move mountains. In just a few years, the People of the New Reality can transform a country that was dying yesterday and despised by the entire developed world. Most of these people are Slavs. Great Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. But there are Jews, Georgians, and Armenians in this cohort. In a word, the participants of that Red, Russian-Soviet project.

Thanks to the People of the New Reality (LNR), we can spend not four or two trillion dollars on saving the country, but much less. The regime intends to pour half a trillion dollars into the energy industry alone. Half of this amount would be enough for us to build a “venture Russia” and completely transform the country in just five to seven years. We are able to compress development cycles, winning many years. Already in the 2010s, we will be able not to catch up with the West, but to jump over it. But here's the catch: not a single LPR known to us is involved in Putin's national projects.

We regularly visit this "world-behind-the-door" - literally, in a parallel Reality. Every trip there, every meeting with the brave Russian-Russian creators inspires hope in the soul. It ignites in us a fiery faith in the great future of our country. In the fact that we will survive, multiply in number, strengthen - and bring back much of what we have lost. Or maybe more. But immediately anxiety creeps into the heart: this Reality is poor. There are no crazy billions and millions here. And about our "world-behind-the-door" millions of unfortunate Russians know almost nothing, muzzled by poverty and the eternal race for a piece of bread. They don't talk about him on TV or in the papers. Moreover, they strive to silence him all the time, to crush him.

Step - and we return to another reality. The one that the vast majority of those living in the expanses of the deceased USSR consider the only one. In it, striped flags flutter over government buildings, black limousines drive through the streets. Raw oligarchs and High State Officials rule the ball here. Here everyone is crazy about Profit, Low Inflation, they are eager for the WTO, they idolize oil rigs and pipelines.

Lord, how difficult it is to return to this Land of Fools. How sickening it is to see the lean mugs of officials and priests, to watch the senseless swarming of glamorous creatures and empty-headed pops. We feel ourselves in an incorrect, twisted reality, where others can seriously call the naked king - dressed, scientifically substantiating the need to remove the tonsils through the anus. Where potential clients of prisons and psychiatric hospitals are revered by the "salt of the earth" and the "Russian elite". The country of Gazprom under a tricolor cloth and a mutant eagle is a revived theater of the absurd.

Here, solid uncles in suits, making smart faces, decide - how to equip Russia? They consider how many tens and hundreds of billions of "conventional units" should be spent on new cement plants and monster oil refineries. How much gas and oil to produce in excess of the current one, in order to buy equipment and technologies of yesterday from the West with the proceeds of "grandmothers". How to build more stupid, unhealthy and uneconomical reinforced concrete boxes, stuffing more millions of unfortunate people into them - and they call it the "affordable housing program." Respectable uncles, wrinkling their foreheads, tell us every hour that we Russians - backward, absurd, incapable of anything - should be content with the role of a raw materials appendage of successful peoples. These “androids”, sitting under white-blue-red panels and golden double-headed eagles, annually bury incalculable billions in the repair of asphalt roads and the laying of iron pipes, knock out money to burn millions of tons of valuable hydrocarbons in the boilers of outdated boiler houses.

When you see this "elite", your fists clench in rage. It seems that the "Russian" officials and oligarchs are frozen in their ideas in the times of half a century ago. Lord, yes, only a third of the funds that these blockheads are going to waste senselessly and stupidly would be enough for us, the people of Parallel Reality, to make Russia a flowering garden! There is nothing surprising. Let's take any “android” that settled down near the oil and gas “pipe” or sat down in the “high Cabinet-Where-The-State-Budget is shared”. We have a clear image of a great future burning in our heads. And they don't have it. Instead, there is only a liberal mess and an all-consuming desire to fill a personal pocket. "Android" is much richer than us, Tomorrow People. He has many luxurious cars and houses, he has a huge fortune, a private jet and a herd of long-legged "chicks". But, compared to us, mentally he is a nonentity. He reads almost nothing, being content with information that packs of gray referents and assistants are preparing for him. He, in the struggle for money and power, has no time to find out what is being done in scientific laboratories here and abroad. He does not know about the revolutions taking place in the world in energy, electronics, housing construction. At best, fragmentary, mosaic information reaches him. We know about all this. We can look into Tomorrow and come up with something completely new. And we have a whole picture of the world in our heads.

The LNR could completely put an end to this idiocy. But we, the People of the New Reality, are cut off from power and money. They are among the "androids", among the caste of the dominating dullness. For those who sit on the oil and gas pipeline and do not want to do a damn thing. Year after year, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens die under their rule.

Our task is to change the situation. Turn into a development dictatorship.

We need to unite, look for and support each other. And become strong.

It is terribly painful for us, people of Development, people of the New Reality, to live in the Russian Federation. But we live and fight. And we are building plans for the great future of the country.

Do you know what we'll do once we're in power?

For the People of the New Reality can potentially do almost everything.

Today, the LNR is dangerous for the “elite” of the Russian Federation, because their inventions threaten to take away its profits and influence, send to the dump many bureaucratic-oligarchic clans that live off old, costly technologies. It is the People of the New Reality who will bear the main burden of saving the country and turning it into a hotbed of a civilization never seen before.

But here's the problem: for the most part, such miracle people were forged in the Soviet era. Soviet science and education, industry and the enormous tasks that the country was then solving. Now the organic system "science-education-production" is broken and severely destroyed - like a DNA chain under the influence of hard radioactive radiation. Now the LPR is born very little. Much less than in the Soviet Union! The supply of New Reality People is limited. They are getting older and older, many of them are dying. Too few young people are replacing them: the bad reality of the Russian Federation is affecting. And therefore, the time allotted to us for a breakthrough is limited to only a few years. Further - it will be too late. Losses in human capital and technology” will become irreversible…

Supernova Reality #2 2007

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Russia is a young country, and the history of the early Middle Ages is deliberately distorted and partly falsified, and that's what is lying, you need to know.

Here she is - Gardarika - neither Gradorika nor Gorodorika. See map.

Country with Novgards, Belgards, Stargards and Holmgards. With the legendary city of Pillar, which our scientists, I'm sorry, don't want to find.

And Holmgard from Pomerania can be turned into Novgorod only by those who really want it. There is no other connection. Vorpommern, now in Germany, one Part in Poland. There is also a German district directly "Shlafe-Slava". But in general, this is the same Gardarike - a country with cities one on top of the other, and the city is still "garda" in Koszubian. Therefore, the Scandinavians called the country Gardarike. And the Holmgards were there, and the Nevogards, and the Starogards, and the Belgards, etc. And they still are. The local Slavs (former owners) still call the city "guard" and "guard". Their language is completely Slavic. And it looks like the language of the ancient Novgorodians. Moreover, the connection between Novgorod and Pomorye has been known for a long time, and most likely Novgorod was at first a colony of Gardarike. And I didn’t come up with it at all: the language, anthropological data, wooden log cabins, and ceramics are similar. And the fact that Gardarike is not Rus' is a fact. Moreover, the fact that the Scandinavian sagas have nothing to do with our Novgorod or Kyiv is also a fact. Here is their scene. At the same time, for example, there is no need to look for Borislav either: there was one such specific prince here. And so on. And Holmgard in Novgorod does not need to be redone.

Adam Bremensky:

“Slavia is ten times larger than our Saxony, if we include the Czechs in it

and the Poles living on the other side of the Odra, who DO NOT DIFFER FROM THE RESIDENTS

GLORY NEITHER BY YOUR APPEARANCE, NOR LANGUAGE…

There are many Slavic peoples.

Among them are the most western Wagris living on the border with the Transalbings.

Their city, lying by the sea Aldinburg (Stargrad). Then follow the encouragers,

who are now called reregs, and their city is Magnopolis (Velegrad is a city

Veles). To the east of us (from Hamburg) live the polabings (polabs), the city

which is called Racisburg (Ratibor - "War Forest"). Behind them are lingons

from Dolechans and RATARI by the river Pena and the city of Dymin. There is the limit of the Hamburg

diocese. Khizhans and throughpenians live north of the Pena River, Dolenchans and

RATARI - to the south. These four nations, because of their bravery, are called

wiltz, or LUTICH. There are also other Slavic tribes who

live between Laba and Odra…of all of them, THE MOST POWERFUL ARE

RATARS living in the center ...

Their city is the WORLD FAMOUS RETRA (Radigost, Radigoshch) - the seat of

idolatry, a huge temple was built there in honor of the demons, the main

which Radigost. His image is made of gold, the bed of purple.

The city itself has nine gates and is surrounded on all sides by a deep lake,

through which a log bridge was built for crossing, but through it

only those walking for the sake of sacrifice or questioning are allowed to cross

oracle ... They say that FROM HAMBURG TO THE TEMPLE IS A FOUR DAY WAY.

"Polabsky phenomenon": little-known pages of Slavic history(popular essay)

In the era of the early Middle Ages (V-XI centuries), the territory between the river. Laboy

(Elba), r. Saloi (Zale) and r. Odra was inhabited by West Slavic tribes,

received in science the conditional name of "Polabian Slavs". Most

large and stable associations of the Polabian Slavs were tribes

obodrites (bodrichs), who lived along the Baltic coast between Lower Laba and

Odra, and Lyutich, who were sitting a little to the south - along the Middle Laba. In the south of the region,

between the rivers Laba and Sala, the Serbo-Lusatian tribal union was located.

To the east of the Obodrites, in Pomerania, between the Odra and the Vistula, the Pomeranians lived.

In the period from the 7th century. according to the 8th century among the Polabian Slavs on the basis of tribal unions

so-called. tribal principalities. Gathered around the tribal princes

permanent squads, consisting of elite warriors. By the 9th century in places

fortified cities grew up in tribal centers: Branibor (Brandenburg) -

the center of the Lutic-Gavolians, Retra is the main center of all four Lutic

tribes; Mikelin (Mecklenburg), Ljubica (Lübeck), Rarog (or Rerik) - in the ground

obodrites, and others.

conditions of military democracy, against the backdrop of continuous clashes with

German neighbors, it was hard to create a solid authoritarian government. Only

in the 11th century, after the uprising against the Germans, on the lands of the Bodrichi and Lutichi

for a short time, the Obodrite state arose, which existed until the middle. 12th century

The Baltic Slavs were good sailors: through their port cities -

Lyubica, Rarog, Szczecin, Kolobrzeg - they carried on a brisk trade with the countries

Western Europe and Russia, exporting grain, salt and salted fish from their land,

handicrafts, and carrying out transit transportation. All in all,

the Pomeranians, like all the northern merchant warriors of that time, “warmed” with might and main

the Baltic Sea, i.e. traded and piracy. In connection with this, there is

there are good reasons to believe that the Novgorod Slovenes called to

the reign of the Varangian Rurik was of Slavic, not Scandinavian origin.

Normanist historians are trying to prove that Rurik of Novgorod is none other than

as known from European chronicles, Rurik of Jutland - in the original name

it doesn’t even sound “Rurik”, but “Hrerek”. However, with the same success

connect Rurik with some lucky Polabian prince named Rerek

(after all, in Old Slavonic “rerek” means “falcon” - quite a suitable name

for the prince - remember from childhood the fairy tale "Finist-Clear Falcon"). For "Northern

Rus'" he will also be "Varangian from across the sea."

And, in fact, why call on some little-known

East Slavic lands of the Varangian-Dan from small Jutland (Denmark), if

next to (!) is a glorious, rich, populous, warlike, and

the main thing is the Slavic, "overseas" land of Polabs and Pomeranians? Besides

recent historical research on "Northern Rus'" traces a clear

connection of the northern East Slavic tribes (Novgorod Slovenes, Krivichi) with

Western "Baltic Slavs" - this is the name of the whole set

Polabian and Pomeranian Slavs. (Maybe our White Sea Pomors from that and

are called "pomors", what were they called before, in hoary antiquity? Maybe

did they become excellent sailors there - in the Baltic Pomorie? Such

hypotheses are found in the works of the undeservedly forgotten Slavic scholar of the 19th

century A.F. Hilferding, who studied the folklore of Russian Pomorye.)

The Slavs of Polabye and Pomerania developed a peculiar pagan culture.

Usually pagan Slavs did not create monumental temples, preferring

to worship their gods in the open air in temples and tremies,

located in sacred groves or at sacred springs. Polabskie

Slavs in some of their cities and in some places erected

luxurious wooden temples, decorated with intricate carvings and sculptural

images of gods made of metal, stone and wood.

The most famous was the temple of the god Svyatovit in the city of Arkona on

the island of Ruyan (Rügen). It was a place of pilgrimage not only for the Slavs, but

and all neighboring pagan tribes. Perhaps the island of Ruyan became a prototype

Buyan Islands from Russian folk tales: “Past the skeleton of Buyan to the kingdom

glorious Saltan" ran the way from Western Europe - through the Baltic, Neva,

Ladoga, Volkhov, Volga, Caspian - to the Arab countries. (For reference: in

recent years of archaeological study of Staraya Ladoga, the oldest

transit port at the mouth of the Volkhov, dendrodating was received - 753).

In the land of the Luticians in the city of Retre (Radigoshche), the temple of the god Radegast was famous.

The city of Retra itself was also remarkable - according to the descriptions, it had

nine gates. All this only emphasizes the wealth of the region.

The history of the Slavs of Polabya ​​is dramatic: being frontier residents, they

constantly under pressure from the German world. First there were

predatory raids of the Saxons and Franks-Merovingians, then, in the VIII-IX centuries. -

campaigns of Charlemagne and the invasion of the Danes (Danes). After education

East Frankish state, from ser. 9th century, a systematic

German Drang nach Osten. In the X century. representatives of the Saxon dynasty

Ottonov managed to subdue the Polabian Slavs and impose tribute on them. But in 983

an uprising broke out. Soon the Germans lost the Slavic lands they occupied

with the exception of the region of the Lusatian Serbs. By the way, in this land so far

is the city of Zerbst (Serbsk) - the capital of the Principality of Anhalt-Zerbst -

from which came the notorious princess Sophia Augusta Frederica -

future Catherine II.

In XI - early. XII centuries .., during the time of the obodrite princes Krutoy and Niklot,

Slavs successfully resisted German aggression. In 1147 against

Polabian and Pomeranian pagan Slavs was declared a pan-European

Goff, recognize that the religious motives of the confrontation between Christian Germans and

pagan Slavs recede into the background before economic problems

and national, facing the Germanic tribes. They are limited

poor natural resources, without coercion, they fought even with

those neighbors who accepted Christianity a long time ago.

In the second half of the XII century. the country of the Polabian Slavs was eventually

conquered. This occupied territory in modern times became the heart of

Germany. Here, a little east of the Slavic Branibor, began to grow

small town - the current Berlin.

The fate of the Polabs and Pomeranians is tragic: they to some extent restrained the German

"onslaught on the East", covering the Poles, Czechs and, possibly, the Russians. But

since they remained inveterate pagans, help from the brothers of the Slavs,

those who converted to Christianity did not wait. It turned out a vicious circle:

they did not accept Christianity, as they fought against the Christian Germans, but,

having not accepted baptism, they were left without the help of fraternal peoples.

And yet - not everything is so bad - after all, a lot of

Slavic blood. As they say: dig a Russian and you will find a Tatar, and

dig an East German and you'll find a Slav. Perhaps that is why

Catherine the Second understood Russia so easily and glorified not only herself, but

and the Russian empire. And such "Varangians" as she were always welcome in Rus'.

***

Andrey POLYAEV

P.S. Especially for the Ukrainian comrades, I found the homeland of the Ukrainians. Everything is very simple.

This is Uckermark in the north of Brandenburg, on the border with Pomerania - the homeland of the Rus / Rug.

GUARDS. Rus' - THE COUNTRY OF CITIES

* Gardariki - (country of cities) the former European name of Northern Rus' with the capital Staraya Ladoga - the predecessor of Novgorod.
* Gardar, or Gardariki is the name of Ancient Rus' in general, and not of its cities.
* The ancient Scandinavians called Kievan Rus Gardarika - "Country of cities". And for good reason, the German Bishop Titmar of Merserburg counted about 400 churches alone in Kyiv during the time of St. Vladimir.
* The country of cities - Gardarika - was the name of Ancient Rus' in the Scandinavian sagas of the 9th century. The most ancient cities of the northwest were the shield of our land. Until now, they are witnesses of glory, wealth, greatness and spiritual strength.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, says: Gardariki (Isl. Garðaríki, Garðaveldi, Swedish Gårdarike) is the ancient Scandinavian name of the Old Russian state, known to the Vikings in the Middle Ages. The term is translated as "country of cities". Peter Dikman wrote in one of his gothic stories: "Golmogardia and Gordoriki, the region lying between Lake Ladoga and Peipus (Chudskoe) lakes, in which the main city of Oldengoburg"
The toponym Gardariki is first found in a geographical work of the last quarter of the 12th century. It was also reflected in the codes of royal sagas recorded in the first third of the 13th century. According to F. A. Brown, the form Garðaríki is the creation of the Icelanders who wrote down the sagas (starting from the end of the 12th century). Until that time (in the 10th-12th centuries), the form Garđar was used to designate Rus' throughout the Scandinavian peninsula. This is how Rus' is represented in skaldic poems of the 9th-12th centuries, as well as in runic inscriptions on stones.
In the Scandinavian sources of the XIV century, the principalities of Gardariki are called Holmgard, Kenugard, and Palteskja.
The Slavic chronicle of Helmold contains the following description: “The Danes also call Rus' Ostrogard for the reason that, being located in the east, it abounds with all blessings. It is also called Hunigard, because the Huns first lived in these places ... ... Its main city is Hue.

Lands of Gardariki-Rus - Varangians. Kolbyagi. Rus. Slavs. Merya. Bulgars. Khazars.
Gardariki is a country of many cities... Indeed, there were many cities in Rus'. Here are just the most important of them: Kiev, Novgorod, Belozersk, Murom, Polotsk, Rostov, Smolensk, Pskov, Chernigov, Uglich, Bryansk, Suzdal, Yaroslavl, Kursk, Ryazan, Vladimir, Moscow, Kostroma, Pereslavl, Tver. In them, beavers, beekeepers, trappers, tar smokers, lycoders and other "industrialists".
Monuments of ancient Russian literature have preserved relatively few local names, which inseparably include the word "gorod", - Novgorod (Novgorod the Great and Novgorod "in the land of Rustei", that is, Novgorod Seversky), Vyshgorod, Zvenigorod, Belgorod - but it is implied with any such name as Pereyaslavl, Vsevolozh, Glebl, Volodimer (Vladimir Volynsky), that is, the city of Pereyaslav, Vsevolod, Gleb, etc.

All the free people of Gardariki were somehow involved in trade relations. Some produced goods in the form of hemp, flax, linen fabrics, others were engaged in beekeeping, others hunted fur-bearing animals, the fourth grew bread, the fifth smelted ore, the sixth made the necessary products from wood in the form of kitchen utensils and tableware, as well as chests, tubs and barrels in which honey was transported. And everywhere merchants lived or came, buying goods for sale. There were no lands in Gardarik-Rus that were not covered by trade relations.

The Byzantines give the earliest idea of ​​how trade was conducted in Rus'. Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus at the beginning of the tenth century describes the life of a Russian merchant in this way.
With the first cold weather, as soon as the opportunity arose to move around the non-torque Russian expanses on a sleigh, the merchants left the cities and rushed into the outback. There, in places specially adapted for "guests" - churchyards - they bought up everything that the villagers mined and produced during the year: hemp, wax, honey, furs, iron products, woolen cloth and linen, ropes, canvas, hops, lard and beef fat, sheepskins and skins. Even walrus tusks. In harvest years - also grain.
"From the Greeks" they brought wine, silk, art objects - icons and jewelry, fruits and glassware to Rus'. However, for all the importance of trade with the southern neighbor, the Russians and other countries were not neglected. From the countries of the East, they brought spices, precious stones, silk and satin fabrics, weapons of the famous Damascus steel and horses. Some of these goods settled in Rus', some went further west through the largest trading center in Northern Europe - Novgorod. In response, the Europeans supplied Rus' with fabrics, needles, weapons, glassware, wine, salt, beer and metals - iron, copper, tin, lead.

Large merchant ships and boats adapted for the carriage of goods sailed along the rivers and seas. Large ships reached the shores of many countries, and merchants could buy goods in bulk directly at the place of their manufacture, thereby saving money on price differences.

In addition to the fact that Rus' was called Gardarika, the country of many cities, it is equally important to remember that it is also Garda Rica - a country surrounded by the Serpentine Wall. It was a reliable shield against the raids of nomads from the south in the form of a colossal defensive rampart, which went down in history as Zmiev Val.

The structure of the shaft consisted of hundreds of layers. The core of the structure is a palisade made of mature oak, with a diameter of up to 49 cm. Inside the shafts there was a wooden structure that gave stability, strengthened the earth embankment and gave the shaft the necessary height and steepness. The logs were stacked in log cabins and covered with earth, and wooden walls also stood directly on the ramparts themselves. The total height of the fortifications reached in places up to 12 meters. Scientists have calculated that just for the construction of just one kilometer of the shaft, at least 3 thousand cubic meters of wood would be required.

Archaeologists have concluded that the ramparts were created over a millennium. Kyiv researcher A.S. Bugai repeatedly removed coal from the base of the ramparts, which got there during the construction period. The results of the analyzes showed that the age of the finds is very solid and is determined (for various samples taken from different shafts) from 2100 to 1200 years! In other words, the ramparts surveyed by A.S. Bugai were built in the period from the 2nd century BC to the 7th century AD, that is, long before the emergence of Kievan Rus ... Serpent ramparts are huge structures, the total length of which is several times greater than the Troyan ramparts .

Novgorod, which arose on the river, becomes the northern capital of Gardariki-Rus. Volkhov, near the lake Ilmen. This city is the main trading center of the northern part of Rus'. From here began the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks. As in all cities of Rus', there was a fortress in Novgorod. The Novgorod Kremlin is a typical fortification for storing merchant goods, for protecting the population in case of enemy raids and other needs.

Kievan Rus arose on the trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks" on the lands of the East Slavic tribes - the Ilmen Slovenes, Krivichi, Polyans, then embracing the Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Polochans,
radimichi, northerners, vyatichi.
According to the chronicle legend, the founders of Kyiv are the rulers of the Polyan tribe - the brothers Kyi, Shchek and Khoriv. According to archaeological excavations conducted in Kyiv in the 19th-20th centuries, already in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. there was a settlement on the site of Kyiv. Arab writers of the 10th century (al-Istarkhi, Ibn Khordadbeh, Ibn-Khaukal) later speak of Kuyab as a large city. Ibn Haukal wrote: "The king lives in a city called Kuyaba, which is larger than Bolgar ... Russ constantly trade with Khazar and Rum (Byzantium)."

From Hyperborea, Gardariki-Rus inherited a lot of secret Knowledge, which was used by the Magi. They helped merchants and the entire population to live a full and interesting life. So in Ancient Rus' there was a secret calendar, which guided many residents. Singers-guselniki moved around all the lands, bringing news to the people about what was happening in Rus' and abroad.

From the lips of the Magi, kalik passersby, storytellers and epic writers, the people knew about the ancient cities of the Northern Land, like Arkaim, and built their cities in the form of circles, including a fortified settlement and adjacent economic sites, a burial ground and a number of unfortified settlements.

Since ancient times, Russians loved to bathe in baths. Each family had its own bath. There were also public baths for citizens and visitors. They knew how and loved various entertainments. Free, cheerful, good-natured, they loved a joke and a sharp word.
Old Russian baths

Our ancestors have never been indifferent to beauty. For their beloved children, there were the most affectionate, most significant names taken from the ancient sources about the Goddesses and Gods they worshiped, names of spiritual significance. Svetozar (glor.) - illuminating with light, Svyatoslav - consecrated with glory, Yaroslav (glory.) - shining with glory, Mikhail<Михей>- similar to God, Ilya - the fortress of the Lord, Vladimir (Slavic) - to own the world, Anna - mercy, Grace, Lyudmila (Slavic) - dear to people, Olga (Scand.) - saint, Rada (Old Russian) - joyful, Lada (peace, well-being).

No matter how people of other countries call ancient Rus', no matter how they attribute alien traits to it, or no matter how they attract it to their history, Rus' remains Russia - the direct heir to Hyperborea, Ruskolani! And the Russian people are the direct descendants of the Hyperboreans, the Aryans-Rus, who have absorbed the best features of their ancestors - pride, honor, dignity, readiness for a feat, gullibility, responsiveness, tolerance, and, most importantly, spirituality.