Texts from the total dictation. The connection between the ancient people of Siberia and the Slavs: About the name of the rivers The name of the rivers is more ancient than all other total dictation

Part 1. St. Petersburg. Neva

My grandfather was born in Kronstadt, my wife is from Leningrad, so in St. Petersburg I feel not quite a stranger. However, in Russia it is difficult to find a person in whose life this city would mean nothing. We are all connected in one way or another with him, and through him with each other.

There is little greenery in St. Petersburg, but there is a lot of water and sky. The city is spread out on a plain, and the sky above it is immense. You can enjoy the performances played on this stage by clouds and sunsets for a long time. The actors are controlled by the best director in the world - the wind. The scenery of roofs, domes and spiers remains unchanged, but never gets bored.

In 1941, Hitler decided to starve out Leningraders and wipe the city off the face of the earth. “The Fuhrer did not understand that the order to blow up Leningrad was tantamount to an order to blow up the Alps,” noted writer Daniil Granin. St. Petersburg is a stone bulk, which, in its unity and power, has equals among European capitals. It has preserved over eighteen thousand buildings built before 1917. This is more than in London and Paris, not to mention Moscow.

Through the indestructible labyrinth carved out of stone, the Neva flows through its tributaries, channels and canals. Unlike the sky, the water here is not free, it speaks to the power of the empire, which managed to forge it in granite. In summer, fishermen with fishing rods stand by the parapets on the embankments. Under their feet are plastic bags in which the caught fish tremble. The same roach and smelt fishermen stood here under Pushkin. The bastions of the Peter and Paul Fortress then turned gray as well, the Bronze Horseman poked his horse. Except that the Winter Palace was dark red and not green, as it is now.

It seems that nothing around reminds us that in the twentieth century a crack in Russian history passed through St. Petersburg. His beauty allows us to forget about the unimaginable trials he endured.

Part 2. Perm. Kama

When from the left bank of the Kama, on which my native Perm lies, you look at the right bank with its forests turning blue to the horizon, you feel the fragility of the border between civilization and the primordial forest element. Only a strip of water separates them, and it also unites them. If as a child you lived in a city on a large river, you were lucky: you understand the essence of life better than those who were deprived of this happiness.

In my childhood, sterlet was still found in Kama. In the old days, it was sent to St. Petersburg to the royal table, and in order not to deteriorate on the way, cotton wool soaked in cognac was placed under the gills. As a boy, I saw a small sturgeon on the sand with a jagged back stained with fuel oil: the whole Kama was then covered in fuel oil from tugboats. These dirty hard workers dragged rafts and barges behind them. Children ran on the decks and clothes dried in the sun. Endless strings of stapled, slimy logs vanished along with the tugs and barges. Kama became cleaner, but the sterlet never returned to it.

It was said that Perm, like Moscow and Rome, lay on seven hills. It was enough to feel the breath of history blowing over my wooden city, studded with factory pipes. Its streets run either parallel to the Kama or perpendicular to it. Before the revolution, the first ones were called by the churches that stood on them, such as, for example, Voznesenskaya or Pokrovskaya. The latter bore the names of the places where the roads flowing from them led: Siberian, Solikamsk, Verkhoturskaya. Where they intersected, the heavenly met the earthly. Here I realized that sooner or later converges with the mountain, you just need to be patient and wait.

Permians argue that it is not the Kama that flows into the Volga, but, on the contrary, the Volga flows into the Kama. It does not matter to me which of these two great rivers is a tributary of the other. In any case, Kama is the river that flows through my heart.

Part 3. Ulan-Ude. Selenga

The names of the rivers are older than all other names put on the maps. We do not always understand their meaning, so the Selenga keeps the secret of its name. It came not either from the Buryat word "sel", which means "spill", or from the Evenk "sele", that is, "iron", but I heard in it the name of the Greek goddess of the moon, Selena. Squeezed by forested hills, often shrouded in fog, the Selenga was for me a mysterious “moon river”. In the noise of its current, I, a young lieutenant, seemed to be a promise of love and happiness. It seemed that they were waiting for me ahead as immutably as Baikal was waiting for the Selenga.

Maybe she promised the same to the twenty-year-old lieutenant Anatoly Pepelyaev, the future white general and poet. Shortly before the First World War, he secretly married his chosen one in a poor rural church on the banks of the Selenga. The noble father did not give his son a blessing for an unequal marriage. The bride was the granddaughter of the exiles and the daughter of a simple railroad worker from Verkhneudinsk, as Ulan-Ude used to be called.

I found this city almost the same as Pepelyaev saw it. In the market, Buryats who came from the outback in traditional blue robes traded lamb and women in museum sundresses walked around. They sold circles of frozen milk strung on their hands like rolls. They were “family”, as the Old Believers, who used to live in large families, are called in Transbaikalia. True, something appeared that didn’t exist under Pepelyaev. I remember how the most original of all the monuments to Lenin I had seen was placed on the main square: on a low pedestal, a huge, without neck and torso, granite head of the leader, resembling the head of a giant hero from “ Ruslan and Lyudmila. It still stands in the capital of Buryatia and has become one of its symbols. Here history and modernity, Orthodoxy and Buddhism do not reject or suppress each other. Ulan-Ude gave me hope that this is possible in other places.

3. Toponymy of Ancient India

Onomastics is a branch of linguistics that studies proper names. Toponymy is the names of geographical objects, a section of onomastics. Maps carry information of deep antiquity, imprinted in the names of rivers, mountains, villages.

Migrations of ancient peoples occurred constantly and over vast territories. Tribes and peoples, leaving the inhabited areas, carried with them culture, traditions, language. The areas of distribution of the language of the ancient Siberian population are truly enormous. The entire territory occupied today by speakers of Nostratic languages ​​is an area of ​​prehistoric and early historical migrations of the ancient peoples of Siberia. Nostratic (nostra - our) languages ​​are languages ​​that have a significant fund of words of common origin. The Nostratic languages ​​include: Indo-European, Altaic, Uralic, Semitic-Hamitic, Dravidian. Along with the “our” language, the toponymy of the Siberian ancestral home, our toponymy, also spread.

As examples that will testify to the relationship of geographical names, and, consequently, the inhabitants of these places that gave names, we will mainly use hydronyms - the name of rivers (after all, India is a country of rivers).

A striking convergence of toponyms is found on the material of Vasyugan (Central region of Western Siberia). There are in the very center of the Vasyugan swamps, among the small tributaries of the Chizhapka River (the ancient name of Chizhapka is Tor), there are rivers with the names Nevolga, Tevolga. But we know that until now the etymology of the name of the Volga is determined by linguists extremely uncertainly. Rivers with such native names run in the center of Siberia, and why not connect the name of the Volga with the names of the Nevolga and Tevolga.

And the names of the rivers of southern India: Indus, Ganges? There is no doubt that the "protonyms" for them were the Siberian rivers. Indigirka (Ind mountain), Indiga, Angara. Let's take a broader look at the migration of Siberian hydronyms to the territory of the countries of the Ancient East. These migrations took place only in one direction from north to south, and not vice versa, as we are led to believe. And in vain they convince: is it really possible to believe that the Sumerians went to the Ob region: from heat to frost, and from the "fertile crescent" to the taiga and tundra. There is no, even circumstantial, evidence.

The great Siberian river Ob: it is believed that its name is derived from the Aryan "aba", "apa" (river, water). But when did the Indo-Iranians live in northern Siberia? They were not there, their ancestors lived there, who gave their language to the Iranians and Slavs as a legacy. It had a great river and other names: Indus and Nile. Many naturalists and travelers of antiquity noted in their writings the blueness of the Ob's water. It really does look like sea water. That is why the Ob was called blue, in Sanskrit nil, ind. Yes, like this: both the Indus and the Nile (Egyptian) have their "parent", who gave the name, our Ob. From the banks of the Ob, our distant ancestors carried the coveted name of the great river to the southern countries. The Proto-Slavs also took the name of the Ob to the Urals and to the center of modern Russia. The rivers Ufa (a tributary of the Belaya-Ra) and Upa (a tributary of the Oka) are the "daughters" of the Siberian Ob.

Surprisingly, next to the Upa River there is (in the center of Russia) the Ugra River. Confirmation that the word “upa” among Russians means “water” is the word “ladle”, later a ladle (to catch water, Florinsky V.M). They preserved the ancient name of the river and less significant rivers: in the Urals - Obva; in the south of Siberia (Novokuznetsk) - Aba, Abushka, Kondo(b)ma; in the Angara region - Chudoba, Soba, Bedoba; in Central Russia - Sob, Serdoba, Kondoba (Maloletko, 2005).

The Aryans in their sacred book "Avesta" called the Ob the Blessed, it sounded: "Wahvi Datia". In a later language, the name began to sound like Vakh (Veh, Vas, Vasis). Even today this name is preserved in the name of one of the major tributaries of the Ob - the river. Vakh (at the mouth of the Vakh river stands the city of Nizhnevartovsk). We also know the Vasyugan River (Vakh-yugan, Vakh-river).

About the Ob, as about the main river of the Aryans, Abulkasim Firdousi wrote in the immortal poem "Shahnameh". The city of Visagan is also mentioned there.

The ancient name of the Ob has been preserved, which used to sound like "indus" in the name of another historical river of the East - the Tigris. The name of this river from ancient times and among different peoples was as follows: among the Akkadians - Idiqlat, the name is clearly derived from the Sumerian - Idigna or Idigina, which means "fast river". From this name came the names of the Tigris among other peoples of the region: (Digla) - among the Arabs; Tigris - among the Greeks; Dijle - among the Kurds; Dicle - among the Turks; Tigra / Tigr - among the Persians; Hidekel - among the Jews. Etymologically justified Sumerian "id" (river) is derived from indus (hind).

The name Obi became a protonym for Nile as well. Nile, by the way, is a Sanskrit word meaning blue. The Egyptians called their river Itera and Hapi (Ḥ "pī). Hapi - this is how Egyptologists voice another name for the Nile, but it could also sound more "Aryan": HAPA (apa, aba), which means river, water. And this is already a direct indication of the ethnos of the ancient Egyptians (races of masters and pharaohs).

Euphrates river. The Sumerian name of the river deserves special attention, it sounded Purat / Pura (in Akkadian, purattu). The meaning of the Sumerian word is derived, as linguists assure, only through the Finno-Ugric language (Samoyed), where pur means a river, just a river. Recall that the connection between Sumerian and Finno-Ugric is noted by many linguists and Sumerologists. However, in the Russian language there is the word "pond", which also means river / water (example, spudded), pond = dam - a later meaning (Maloletko A.M.). The reader should know about the Siberian river Pur and its tributaries Pyaku-Pur and Ayvaseda-Pur from geography. There are such rivers in the north of Siberia. Pur (Siberian) and could give the name to the Euphrates. But perhaps not the Pur, but the Prut, a river in Eastern Europe, a tributary of the Danube. In ancient times, the Prut was referred to as Poros (Poras), Porata (Porata), the Arabs would call the river "Euphrates". In the Ob-Tomsk interfluve and near Novosibirsk, rivers with the name Poros flow. Porosie in Siberia! But Porosye is the area of ​​​​settlement of glades and dulebs in the Dnieper region (we note this).

There are amazing convergences with the Indo-Aryan names and the oronyms (names of the mountains) of Siberia. We are talking about the mountains of Sayano-Altai: Borus, Brus, and the connection of their names with the Indo-Iranian ones: Elbrus, Elburs, Khara-Brus, Khara Berezaite. This connection is obvious. There is also a connection here with Slavic words: timber, bar (whetstone), timber (stone mace). Apparently, the timber was originally a stone. The Ural Mountains, among the Russians, are Stone. Elbrus is mountains (stones).

Interestingly, the lingonberry is called an Indian grape - Vaccinium Vitis Idaea. It is clear that this berry can also grow in the mountains, including in the mountains of Hindustan, in the Himalayas, but it is unlikely that it is the hallmark of the Indian flora. Most likely, the Indian grape is the Siberian grape from India Superior.

The word "Siberia". This is not only a toponym, but also an ethnonym, which was used quite widely in ancient times. This topic is essential for our study, so we will dwell here in detail.

According to linguists, supposedly, the toponym "Sibir" means in the Turkic (?) or Finno-Ugric (?) languages ​​a swampy, watery area. That is, it is a tracing-paper from the Indo-European word "India", which, as we know, means "country of rivers", "river". From this point of view, Siberia is India. True, there is the same etymology of the word "Siberia" in the Indo-European language: sibi - swamp, ar - "land", "place" in the Sindian language. Example: toponym Sibensis swamp near Tamatarkha (later - Tmutarakan). So Siberia is an Indo-European word. Moreover, there is no word "Siberian" in either Turkic or Finno-Ugric.

Here is what Tatar historians write about this: “The lands along the Irtysh, Tobol, Tara were known under the name "Siberia" long before they were conquered by Russia. Later, the capital of the Tatars was named after this name. Mr. Fisher claims that the Tatars who lived on the Irtysh did not know this word at all, it was spread thanks to the Russians. Gradually, the name Siberia covered the lands along the Irtysh, Tobol and Tara, i.e. Khanate of Kuchum. Later, this name, thanks to the conquests of the Russians, spread even further and rolled to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. It is known that Russian tsars began to call themselves Siberian tsars from 1563. In ancient times, the name Siberia was used only to designate the lands in the lower reaches of the Ob. Karamzin wrote that long before the conquest of the Irtysh by the Moscow army in 1483, Tatars were not seen in the places where the present city of Siberia is located. The prince there, no doubt, was Yugra or Ostyak. His name was Latyk. It follows from this that the Ishim Nogai, in alliance with the Tyumen Tatars of the lower reaches of the Tobol, conquered this territory no earlier than the 16th century, and the city of Siberia, in all likelihood, was not built by them. Having captured the city, they only renamed it Isk. Taking into account the name of the city Isker (Iske Ur - the old entrance), we must agree with Karamzin. His words also explain to us why the Tatars of the Irtysh region did not know the word "Siberia" and that the city that Mohammed made his capital could not be called Siberia in any way. And if so, then there are no grounds for asserting that the name of the entire region originates from the name of the city.

In the 17th century, Philipp Avril (1685), a missionary, a Jesuit who collected information in Moscow about the route to China through Siberia, wrote: “... all the lands in the vicinity of the Ob, which make up Siberia itself, which received this name from the Slavic word “siberia”, meaning north".

Let us now decide with what specific people the ethnonym "Siberians" should be equated. Consider some of the most obvious contenders from ancient times. Firstly, these are the Hurrian tribes of the Subir (Sibur, Subartu), secondly, these are the Hunnic tribe of the Savirs and, thirdly, these are the Slavic Serbs and the North. Upon closer examination of the materials regarding all applicants, their common root (source) becomes obvious.

The Hurrian state of Mitanni (XVIII - XIII centuries BC) was located in the upper reaches of the Euphrates River basin (Purat - Prut, Poros), in the north of Mesopotamia. The Hurrians settled in the north of Mesopotamia as early as the 3rd millennium BC. Modern encyclopedic sources report that the Hurrian tribes (the name "Hurri" is a self-name and means "Eastern", from the Hurrian "Hurri" - "morning, east") belong to the Caucasian-Iberian group of the Caucasian language family. And according to one of the recognized theories, this family is related to the Yenisei (Siberian) languages. We will add to this information that the word "hurri" is transcribed into Russian from "hurry" as "HARI". There is a hypothesis that the self-name of the "Harians" is associated with the self-name of the Aryans (Hari ~ Arya), but it (the hypothesis) is very unanimously rejected by the "scientific community". By all appearances, this hypothesis is rejected in vain.

This follows from the fact that the connections of the Hurrians took place with the regions of the North Caucasus, and the migrations were multi-stage, in several waves. The North Caucasus and the Black Sea region are mounds, animal style, pit burials - the pre-Scythian (Aryan) culture, whose ties with the Ural-Siberian world are undeniable. Researchers note that the Hurrians did not destroy or oust the local population anywhere, but peacefully coexisted everywhere: after their invasion, no noticeable fundamental changes in material culture were found anywhere. The English archaeologist Leonard Woolley described the Hurrians as follows: "Mixing easily with other peoples, they were unsurpassed intermediaries in the transmission of cultural ideas." Let's note this characteristic for ourselves - they remind us of someone these harii, these subirs-siburs-sibirs.

Regarding the name Subir, as the Sumerians called the Hurrians, we know that the country of Subir in Sumerian was called Su-bir, Subar, Subur or Subartu (Subartu), in Ugaritic sources (Amarna letters) this country is called SBR (Sbr).

As regards the history and culture of the Hurrian state of Mitanni, several curious facts should be noted. So the names of the Mitannian kings sounded as follows: PashaTatar (Parshatatar), SavushTatar (Shaushtatar), Artatama, ArtaSamara (Artashumara). The Mitannians believed in the Aryan gods: Mithra, Varuna, Indra. The warriors of the Mitannians were called Marya (MARYA), in Sanskrit the word "Marya" also means warriors. In the Mari language, marya is a person. There was a god among the Mitannians Savushka, there is a god with the same name among our Volga peoples; the surname Savushkin is far from uncommon in Russia.

Now once again that the issue of the direction of migrations and the connection between the ancestors of the Selkups, Kets and other Ural-Siberian peoples with the Sumerians, Subartu and Elam has long been discussed in the scientific literature. Science also knows the close connection between the culture and language of Sumer, Elam and Subartu. That is, it can be argued that these ties are due to the early migrations of the Siberian peoples to the territory of Mesopotamia and Iran.

G.I. Pelikh in his work “The Origin of the Selkups” (Tomsk, Tomsk State University, 1972) convincingly showed the kinship between the ancestors of the Selkups and the Sumerians. Tomsk scientist A.M. Maloletko in his multi-volume work "The Ancient Peoples of Siberia" (Tomsk, Tomsk State University, volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) proved the uniqueness of the linguistic and cultural ties between the peoples of the Ancient East and the ancient peoples of Siberia. His conclusion is that these peoples are kindred. True, Aleksey Mikhailovich interprets the direction of connections (migrations) the other way around, that is, in his opinion, it turns out that these are the Sumerians, Elamites, Siburs (Hurrians) migrated from the southern regions to the north, into the taiga, into the tundra. It can't be, there's no proof.

We can, with more than sufficient arguments, substantiate the thesis about the southern orientation of the migrations of ancient mankind simply by referring to the Avesta and the Rig Veda. Archaeological finds of circumpolar archeology in recent decades testify precisely to the earlier cultural development of the northern regions by man than the southern ones. But this is a separate topic, which is already being successfully developed in Russia today. I will refer once again to the work of N.S. Novgorodov "Siberian ancestral home". It is impossible not to mention the world bestseller Tilak B.G. "The Arctic Homeland in the Vedas" (M., 2001), works by V.N. Demin.

Returning to the above information, we can assume that the ethnonym "Subir" is of Siberian origin. Ancient migrants from the northern regions of Siberia reached the Caucasus and the Black Sea region (Tamarkha, Sindon, Meotida-Mitanni) somewhat later migrated to the north of Mesopotamia. Another part of the ancestors of the Sibureans, Sumerians, Elamites remained on the territory of Western Siberia, it was they who were captured by historians as the people of Siberia.

A curious fact confirming our hypothesis was brought to us by ancient cuneiform written sources. Some documents mention the city of the Hurrians-Siburians, the capital of the state of Mitanni - Vasugani (Wassuganni). An amazing coincidence or natural conditionality, but in Siberia, in relative proximity to the location of the medieval city of Siberia, there is a vast country, which today is called Vasyugan. Vasyuganye is an extremely flooded and swampy region (Siberian is a swamp). It got its name from its main river - Vasyugan. The hydronym Vasyugan is derived from VAC or VAH (Vakh, Avest. good, Ketsk. - river) and Yugan (Khant. river). "Good River" from Avest.-Khant. or "River River" from Ketsk.-Khant. Still, the Iranian (Avestan) interpretation is preferable, since we know from the Avesta that the name of the great Aryan river Ob is Vakhvi Datia (Blessed), where the same root is “vakh” (you), meaning “good”.

Wassuganni, Washshukanni, Vasukhani. This is the name of the capital of the ancient Aryan state of Mitanni, which was located in the upper reaches of the Euphrates River (Purat, Poros), north of ancient Babylon. Vassyugani is derived from Sanskrit - a place where there is a lot of wealth (good).

Vasyugan - a river in Western Siberia, the left tributary of the river. Obi. The vast area of ​​​​the basin of the Vasyugan River (good river) and its tributaries is called the Vasyugan; a significant part of the territory of Vasyugan is occupied by the largest Vasyugan swamps on the planet (53 thousand km in the Novosibirsk, Omsk and Tomsk regions). Vasyugan swamps are, first of all, a huge storage of fresh water reserves (400 cubic km), a habitat for rare species of birds (golden eagle, white-tailed eagle) and reindeer.

Another fact from the field of linguistics, indirectly confirming the Siberian origin of the Hurrians-Siburians and their neighbors, the Elamites. Elam is an ancient state in southern Asia, east of Mesopotamia. The culture and religion of Elam is close in relation to Sumer and Sibur. The Dravidian language of the inhabitants of Elam, which is recognized by most linguists, makes us associate their culture with the inhabitants of India, the Negroid autochthons of the Hindustan Peninsula, where the Dravidian languages ​​are still widespread. We read in the TSB (Great Soviet Encyclopedia): The Dravidians are a group of peoples in India (190 million people), Pakestane, Iran, Afghanistan (195 million people). They belong to the South Indian race. Dravidian languages. Indigenous people of Hindustan.

However, a deeper study of the topic clarified the question of the Dravidian language of the ancient Elamites in the following way. The ancient Dravidians are natives of Siberia, since the Dravidian languages ​​are related to the Finno-Ugric, Uralic languages. So, according to A.M. The kinship of the Finno-Ugric and Dravidian languages ​​was proved in his works by O. Schroeder (1925) for a very young age: “... the Dravidian- and Finno-speaking peoples have been in contact for a long time.” T. Barrow (1947) substantiated the genetic connection between the Uralic and Dravidian languages. R. Caldwell, an English learned bishop, also wrote about this. Consequently, the ancient Dravidians are not black-skinned inhabitants of the south of Hindustan, but migrants from the north of Asia, from Siberia, where speakers of the Uralic, Finno-Ugric languages ​​\u200b\u200bhave lived and still live. This fact is indicative of the fact that on its basis it is possible to draw a conclusion about the early, pre-Aryan migrations of the inhabitants of Siberia, speakers of the Uralic languages ​​to Mesopotamia, Sibur and Elam. But Dravidian-speaking, or rather Ural-speaking, migrants settled in India, occupied the south and southwest of Asia. And this fact is also remarkable in that it highlights the early, pre-Aryan (previously the middle of the 2nd millennium BC) migrations of the northern peoples to the region of Hindustan.

Thus, we considered the possibility of related similarities between the name of Siberia and the name of the Hurrian tribe of Siburs, who migrated between the Euphrates and the Tigris from the territory of Upper India (Pura-Prut-Poros and Indus-Ob). This probability is high, but the time period separating the Hurrians-Siburians and Siberians of the Middle Ages, when Siberia became Siberia, is too long. This is where the next contender for the title of "protonym" for Siberia exists - these are the SERBS of Siberia, the North Caucasus and the Black Sea, the Hunnic tribe SAVIR (Sabirs).

It is known that the Huns came to Europe from the east, from Siberia, and stopped in the Volga and Black Sea regions. It was among the tribes united by the Huns and the tribe of Sabirs (Savirs). The Hun movement to the west captured part of the Siberian population, and significant masses of people migrated to Europe. It is known that the Savirs of Siberia, as well as the Serbs and Savirs of the Volga region, the Black Sea region, and the North Caucasus are one and the same people. We will consider this issue in the next chapter, and now we will continue our linguistic (toponymic) research.

About Savirs, Sabirs and Serbs. Encyclopedias and dictionaries report that Raska is the medieval name of the Serbian Principality, since 1217 - the kingdom of Raska. Raska is also a tributary of the Serbian Morava River, in Serbia. By the name of this river, a part of inner Serbia was called the Rash land or Rashchii. The capital of Raska was the city of Ras (today Stari Ras). Another name for this city is Arsa (Arsa, Arta).

Arsa is also the city with which Artania, the Third Rus', is identified; on medieval maps, Arsa is located on the territory of Siberia.

It is legitimate to assume that Raska is Rasia. It is very plausible that the name is from the word Ra (s), river (Ra, Cancer, Ras, Ros, Rakha, Raha, Raga, aRAKs, Iranian., Slavs.), and denotes the country of the river inhabitants of the Ross-races, the same Sinds , Sindons (Issedons), Indians, Wends, Siberians, but on the banks of the river Ra (s). We do not forget that in ancient times the Volga was called Ra, and that the Serbs lived for some time along this river, when they were called Savirs-Sabirs (Siberians) and, later, Serbs. In the same places, the Severskaya land (Savir-north) is later known.
Ancient Proto-Slavic migrations are traced by hydronyms: ra-ras, aba-apa, prut-pur, don, danube, ind, yin, yin.

Thus, returning to Siberia and to our topic, we state that the name Siberia should definitely be identified with the Serbs, Sebers, North - Slavs. Such a deep retreat from India to Serbia, that is, to Siberia, allowed us to reach the ancient inhabitants of India (Siberia) - the Proto-Slavs, who in the Middle Ages in the Volga region called themselves rivermen, and their country Rashka, Rasia. The earlier name of their country, when they were Siberian, they pronounced it as SRB, Serbia, Serika (Siberia).

An additional confirmation of the hypothesis of the Siberian ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans and, therefore, the Proto-Slavs is another curious thought. The ancestral home of any ethnic group can be determined using the tools of linguists. Based on the analysis of words and concepts of orientation in the space of their home, their home by representatives of this ancient community. During the formation of the language and the formation of the conceptual apparatus, people also marked with sound signs (words) the directions to sunrise and sunset (east, west), directions to the place where the sun is highest and hottest (south), where the sun does not exist at all (north, it is dark black there, northerners from Chernihiv region). It is these landmarks that are the marks for finding the ancestral home of the Russian, or more broadly, the Slavic ethnos in the space of Eurasia. The Slavs became an ethnic group on the territory of Eurasia, more precisely, Eurosiberia.

So, the Slavs left the area where the sunset was in the west, the sunrise was in the east, the hottest and highest sun was in the south, and the sun never appeared in the north. Where is this place? If the directions for sunrise and sunset have directions in Russian that are irrelevant to anything, then south and north are directions that are clearly tied to something. After all, the north is not “solar”, and the south is not “zenith” or “sun top”. The task is to find place names with these names on the map, better of course, on the ancient map. They exist, these places, even on a modern map.

Fig.3.1. Yugra is the north of Eurosiberia.

We list the toponyms related to the sought-for concepts. North: Severn (river in Great Britain), Siberia (Sibir, Shibir, sbr). Regarding the Severn River, in ancient times it was called Sabrina, and is unlikely to have a direct bearing on the early history of the Slavs in Asia. Siberia is a toponym that comes from the Russian word for "north".

South: South (river, right part of the Sev. Dvina), Yugan (river in the Tyumen region, left tributary of the Ob), Yugra (an ethnonym of the Khanty and Mansi, an ancient toponym - the territory from the lower reaches of the Pechora to the lower reaches of the Ob), south, south ( yakha) is a Finno-Ugric hydronym "river". According to the research of the famous linguist Dragunkin, the words “yakha” and “yuga” (river) are derivatives (pronounced by the Ugrians) from the Slavic “river” (Lutsi-yakha = Russian river, literally). Yugra thus - rivermen, river inhabitants. Words with the formant "south" are toponyms related mainly to the territories of today's Finno-Ugric peoples in the Northern Urals. Both south and north are toponyms referring to a relatively small area of ​​northern Eurasia.

Let us consider in detail the geographical map of this territory (Fig. 3.1). The south is definitely Yugra, therefore, the north is the opposite direction, that is, Novaya Zemlya. Novaya Zemlya, in accordance with our preliminary calculations, is the territory of settlement of the Proto-Slavs. Surprisingly, the Novaya Zemlya archipelago was called Matka by Russian Pomors in ancient times. The uterus is the mother, it is the motherland. The uterus is our ancestral home? In the 15th century, the traveler Mavro Urbino wrote, referring to the message of F. Callimachus to Pope Innocent the Eighth, that Russians from Biarmia (Perm), sailing in the North Sea, discovered an unknown island inhabited by the Slavic people 107 years before this message. The Russians called this island Philopodia, on the maps it is depicted under the name Novaya Zemlya.

On one of the small islands of the archipelago, the settlement of Sever-sale still exists. North in the direction where the North, Siberians, Serbs probably lived and where they came from.

The word "north" is very significant in Russian and other Indo-European languages. Here is what D.V. writes about this word. Skurlatov: “Sometimes an ethnonym cannot be explained from the language spoken by this ethnic group. For example, the Slavic ethnonyms "North" and "Serb" together with the ethnonyms "Saur", "Savir", "Sabir" are often raised to the Indo-Aryan root "Svar" (sun, light, sky). "North" then means "the people of the Sun", "the people of the sky". And the sky god Svarog could well be the tribal god of the Savrs - Savirs - the North.

The Iranian parallel to the Indo-Aryan "swar" is "khvar". Hence the toponym Khorezm - from "Khvarzem" ("Land of the Sun"). The names "Khvalynsk (Caspian) Sea", "Volyn", the name of the god Khors are associated with this root, and even the ethnonym "Croat". In an Iranianized environment, the transition of the more Indo-Aryan "sorb" into "Chorv" is generally phonetically acceptable. Note that the Serbs and Croats in the first centuries of the new era lived side by side in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, surrounded by the tribes of the Sarmatian Union. Probably, the division of the Aryans into Indo-Aryans and Iranians and their linguistic differences were also duplicated in the Serbs-Croats.

Another explanation for the etymology of "north" is from the Iranian root "sev" ("black"). Such names of the rivers of the Left-bank Ukraine and Yugoslavia ascend to it: Sev and Sava. The main city of the Seversk land, as it were, the Center of the North ("black") - Chernihiv. Didn’t the Black Sea also get its name from the “North” tribe, which dominated among the same Sarmatians on its Taman-Kerch shores, where, after a millennium, the thoughts of Novgorod-Seversky Prince Igor rushed during his ill-fated campaign of 1185? Then both "Chernihiv" and "Chernoe" are, as it were, Slavic tracing paper from Iranian derivatives from the root "sev". But our connection of the north with the black side of the horizon is also justified.

So, the north-Serbs lived in the North in Siberia, in the country of rivers and swamps, in India Superior (India Superior), in Serik (Serbika).

This year, about 600 Kirov residents took part in the action.

The works were checked by teachers of the Faculty of Philology and Media Communications of Vyatka State University. Experts told where the participants of the action most often made mistakes.

More punctuation errors were made, quotation marks were forgotten somewhere, geographical names were written incorrectly (for example, Ulan-Ude, although the names were written on the blackboard). Wrong in words. So, for example, in the sentence: "They sold ice-cream milk circles strung on their hands, like rolls." The verbal adjective ICE CREAM was written with two -H-, but you need one. The verbal adjective is formed from the imperfective verb - to freeze, which means we write one -N-, - says Natalya Naumova, head of the department of the Russian language, culture of speech and teaching methods at Vyatka State University.

Another common mistake is writing the application of the "giant hero" (in the text: "... similar to the head of the giant hero from "Ruslan and Lyudmila""). For some reason, the listeners thought that "giant" is the name of a giant, they wrote it with a capital letter. But in Russian there is no such proper name. Most likely, the participants either forgot about the characters from Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila, or simply did not know.

Now all the results of the dictation are recorded in personal accounts. The organizers do not have the right to announce the scores (these are the conditions for holding the action throughout Russia), but it is already known that this year the Kirovites wrote a dictation better than in the past. Some participants noted that the text of the dictation was easier this year. Philologists also suggest that the preparatory lessons (and there were four within the framework of the city-wide project of the newspaper My Pro City and Vyatka State University) influenced the results of the Kirovites.

Recall that the organizers of the Total Dictation in Kirov were the newspaper "My Pro City" and Vyatka State University. Kirov residents wrote the third part of the text of the writer Leonid Yuzefovich "City on the River". Original text:

Part 3. Ulan-Ude. Selenga

The names of the rivers are older than all other names on maps. We do not always understand their meaning, so the Selenga keeps the secret of its name. It came either from the Buryat word "sel", which means "spill", or from the Evenki "sele", that is, "iron", but I heard in it the name of the Greek goddess of the moon, Selena. Squeezed by forested hills, often shrouded in mist, the Selenga was for me a mysterious “moon river”. In the noise of its current, I, a young lieutenant, seemed to be a promise of love and happiness. It seemed that they were waiting for me ahead as immutably as Baikal was waiting for the Selenga.

Maybe she promised the same to the twenty-year-old lieutenant Anatoly Pepelyaev, the future white general and poet. Shortly before the First World War, he secretly married his chosen one in a poor rural church on the banks of the Selenga. The noble father did not give his son a blessing for an unequal marriage. The bride was the granddaughter of the exiles and the daughter of a simple railroad worker from Verkhneudinsk, as Ulan-Ude used to be called.

I found this city almost the same as Pepelyaev saw it. In the market, Buryats who came from the outback in traditional blue robes traded lamb and women in museum sundresses walked around. They sold circles of frozen milk strung on their hands like rolls. They were “family”, as the Old Believers, who used to live in large families, are called in Transbaikalia. True, something appeared that did not exist under Pepelyaev. I remember how the most original of all the monuments to Lenin I have seen was placed on the main square: on a low pedestal, a huge granite head of the leader, without a neck and torso, was rounded, similar to the head of a giant hero from Ruslan and Lyudmila. It still stands in the capital of Buryatia and has become one of its symbols. Here history and modernity, Orthodoxy and Buddhism do not reject or suppress each other. Ulan-Ude gave me hope that this is possible in other places.

You can get your work and a certificate of participation in the international action from April 12 from 17.00 to 19.00 at the address: Moskovskaya, 36 (the main building of Vyatka State University). You must have a passport or other document confirming your identity with you.

Total dictation: examples of texts.

War and Peace (L.N. Tolstoy). 2004 text

The next day, having said goodbye to only one count, without waiting for the ladies to leave, Prince Andrei went home.

It was already the beginning of June, when Prince Andrei, returning home, drove again into that birch grove in which this old, gnarled oak struck him so strangely and memorable. The bells rang even more muffled in the forest than a month and a half ago; everything was full, shady and dense; and young spruce trees scattered throughout the forest did not disturb the general beauty and, imitation of the general character, tenderly turned green with fluffy young shoots.

The whole day was hot, a thunderstorm was gathering somewhere, but only a small cloud splashed on the dust of the road and on the succulent leaves. The left side of the forest was dark, in shadow; the right one, wet and glossy, shone in the sun, slightly swaying in the wind. Everything was in bloom; the nightingales chirped and rolled now close, now far away.

“Yes, here, in this forest, there was this oak, with which we agreed,” thought Prince Andrei. “Yes, where is he,” thought Prince Andrei again, looking at the left side of the road and without knowing it, not recognizing him, admired the oak he was looking for. The old oak tree, all transformed, stretched out in a tent of juicy, dark greenery, was thrilled, slightly swaying in the rays of the evening sun. No clumsy fingers, no sores, no old distrust and grief - nothing was visible. Juicy, young leaves broke through the tough, hundred-year-old bark without knots, so that it was impossible to believe that this old man had produced them. “Yes, this is the same oak tree,” thought Prince Andrei, and a causeless, spring feeling of joy and renewal suddenly came over him. All the best moments of his life were suddenly remembered to him at the same time. And Austerlitz with a high sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, excited by the beauty of the night, and this night, and the moon, - and he suddenly remembered all this.

“No, life is not over at the age of 31, suddenly, Prince Andrei decided completely, without change. Not only do I know everything that is in me, it is necessary that everyone knows this: both Pierre and this girl who wanted to fly into the sky, it is necessary that everyone knows me, so that my life goes not for me alone so that they do not live so independently of my life, so that it is reflected on everyone and that they all live with me together!

Volokolamsk Highway (Alexander Beck, text 2005)

In the evening we set out on a night march to the Ruza River, thirty kilometers from Volokolamsk. A resident of southern Kazakhstan, I am used to late winter, but here, in the Moscow region, in early October it was already freezing in the morning. At dawn, along the frost-bitten road, along the hardened mud uprooted by wheels, we approached the village of Novlyanskoye. Leaving the battalion near the village, in the forest, I went with the company commanders for reconnaissance. My battalion was measured seven kilometers along the coast of the winding Ruza. In battle, according to our regulations, such a sector is large even for a regiment. This, however, did not disturb. I was sure that if the enemy ever really came here, he would be met at our seven kilometers not by a battalion, but by five or ten battalions. With such a calculation, I thought, it is necessary to prepare fortifications.

Don't expect me to paint nature. I don't know if the view before us was beautiful or not. On the dark mirror of the narrow, sluggish Ruza, large, as if carved leaves were spread out, on which, probably, white lilies bloomed in summer. Maybe it's beautiful, but I noticed for myself: a crappy little river, it is shallow and convenient for the enemy to cross. However, the coastal slopes on our side were inaccessible to tanks: gleaming with freshly cut clay, keeping traces of shovels, a sheer ledge, called in military language the scarp, fell to the water.

Beyond the river one could see the distance - open fields and individual massifs, or, as they say, wedges, forests. In one place, somewhat obliquely from the village of Novlyanskoye, the forest on the opposite bank almost immediately adjoined the water. In it, perhaps, there was everything that an artist who painted a Russian autumn forest would wish for, but this ledge seemed disgusting to me: here, most likely, the enemy, hiding from our fire, could concentrate for an attack. To hell with these pines and firs! Cut them out! Move the forest away from the river! Although none of us, as it was said, did not expect battles here soon, we were given the task of equipping a defensive line, and we had to carry it out with complete conscientiousness, as it should be for officers and soldiers of the Red Army.

Lake Taimyr (Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, text 2006)

Almost in the very center of the polar station of the country there is a huge Taimyr lake. It stretches from west to east in a long shining strip. Blocks of stone rise to the north, black ridges looming behind them. Until recently, people did not look at all here. Only along the course of the rivers can one find traces of human presence. Spring waters sometimes bring torn nets, floats, broken oars and other simple fishing accessories from the upper reaches.

At the swampy shores of the lake, the tundra is bare, only in some places snow spots turn white and glisten in the sun. Driven by the force of inertia, a huge ice field presses against the shores. The permafrost, bound by an ice shell, still firmly holds its legs. Ice at the mouth of rivers and small rivers will stand for a long time, and the lake will be cleared in ten days. And then the sandy shore, flooded with light, will turn into a mysterious glow of sleepy water, and then - into solemn silhouettes, vague outlines of the opposite shore.

On a clear windy day, inhaling the smells of the awakened earth, we wander through the thawed patches of the tundra and observe a lot of curious phenomena. The combination of the high sky with the cold wind is unusual. Every now and then a partridge runs out from under the feet, falling to the ground; breaks off and immediately, like a shot, a tiny little knick-knack falls to the ground. Trying to lead the uninvited visitor away from its nest, the little sandpiper begins to tumble at its very feet. At the base of the stone placer, a voracious arctic fox, covered with shreds of faded wool, makes its way. Having caught up with the fragments of stones, the arctic fox makes a well-calculated jump and presses down the mouse that has jumped out with its paws. Farther on, a stoat, holding a silver fish in its teeth, gallops towards the heaped boulders.

Near slowly melting glaciers, plants will soon begin to revive and bloom. The first to bloom are kandyk and Goryanka, which develop and fight for life even under a transparent cover of ice. In August, the first mushrooms will appear among the polar birch creeping on the hills.

The tundra overgrown with miserable vegetation has its own wonderful aromas. Summer will come, and the wind will shake the corollas of flowers, the buzz will fly by and the bumblebee will sit on the flower.

The sky is overcast again, the wind starts to whistle furiously. It's time to return to the wooden house of the polar station, where it smells deliciously of baked bread and the comfort of human habitation. Tomorrow we will start reconnaissance work.

Sotnikov (Vasil Bykov, text 2007)

All the last days Sotnikov was as if in prostration. He felt badly: he was exhausted without water and food. And he silently, half-consciously, sat among a close crowd of people on thorny, dry grass without any special thoughts in his head, and, probably, therefore, he did not immediately understand the meaning of the feverish whisper next to him: “At least one, but I will kill. Doesn't matter…". Sotnikov cautiously glanced aside: that same lieutenant of his neighbor, unnoticed by others, was pulling out an ordinary penknife from under dirty bandages on his leg, and such determination lurked in his eyes that Sotnikov thought: you can’t keep this.

Two escorts, having come together, lit a cigarette from a lighter, one on a horse, a little further away, vigilantly examined the column.

They sat still in the sun, maybe fifteen minutes, until some command was heard from the hill, and the Germans began to raise the column. Sotnikov already knew what the neighbor had decided on, who immediately began to take him away from the column, closer to the escort. This escort was a strong, squat German, like everyone else, with a machine gun on his chest, in a tight tunic sweating under his arms; from under the wet bed, from the edges of the cloth cap, something completely different from Aryan was knocked out - a black, almost resin forelock. The German hurriedly finished smoking his cigarette, spat through his teeth and, apparently intending to drive some prisoner, impatiently took two steps towards the column. At the same instant, the lieutenant, like a kite, rushed at him from behind and plunged the knife up to the handle into his tanned neck.

With a short grunt, the German donkey sank to the ground, someone at a distance shouted: “Polundra!” - and several people, as if they were thrown by a spring from the column, rushed into the field. Sotnikov also rushed away.

The confusion of the Germans lasted about five seconds, no more, immediately bursts hit in several places - the first bullets passed over his head. But he ran. It seems that never in his life he raced with such frantic speed, and in several wide leaps he ran up a hillock with pines. The bullets were already densely and randomly piercing the pine thicket, he was showered with needles from all sides, and he rushed on, not making out his way, as far as possible, now and then repeating to himself with joyful amazement: “Alive! Alive!

Naulaka: A Story of West and East (Rudyard Kipling, 2008 text)

After about ten minutes Tarvin began to guess that all these tired, exhausted people represented the interests of half a dozen different firms in Calcutta and Bombay. Like every spring, they besieged the royal palace without any hope of success, trying to get at least something in the accounts from the debtor, which was the king himself. His Majesty ordered everything in a row, indiscriminately, and in huge quantities - he really did not like to pay for purchases. He bought guns, travel bags, mirrors, expensive mantelpieces, embroideries, glittering Christmas tree decorations, saddles and harnesses, mail coaches, carriages with four horses, perfumes, surgical instruments, candlesticks, Chinese porcelain - by the piece or in bulk, for cash or credit, as His Royal Majesty pleases. Losing interest in the acquired things, he immediately lost his desire to pay for them, since there was little that occupied his jaded imagination for more than twenty minutes. Sometimes it happened that the very purchase of a thing satisfied him in full, and the boxes with precious contents that arrived from Calcutta remained unpacked. The peace that reigned in the Indian Empire prevented him from taking up arms and directing them against his fellow kings, and he lost the only joy and fun that had entertained himself and his ancestors for millennia. And yet he could play this game even now, though in a slightly modified form - fighting with the clerks, who were trying in vain to get a bill from him.

So, on one side stood the political resident of the state himself, planted in this place in order to teach the king the art of government, and most importantly, economy and frugality, and on the other side - more precisely, at the palace gates, there was usually a traveling salesman, in whose soul contempt for the malicious defaulter and the reverence for the king inherent in every Englishman fought.

Nevsky Prospekt (Nikolai Gogol, text 2009)

There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospekt, at least in St. Petersburg; for him he is everything. What does not shine this street - the beauty of our capital! I know that none of its pale and bureaucratic inhabitants would exchange for all the benefits of Nevsky Prospekt. Not only someone who is twenty-five years old, has a beautiful mustache and a wonderfully tailored frock coat, but even someone who has white hair popping up on his chin and a head as smooth as a silver dish, and he is delighted with Nevsky Prospekt. And ladies! Oh, Nevsky Prospekt is even more pleasant for ladies. And who doesn't like it? As soon as you ascend Nevsky Prospekt, it already smells of one festivities. Even if you have some necessary, necessary business, but, having ascended it, you will surely forget about every business. Here is the only place where people are shown not out of necessity, where their need and mercantile interest, embracing the whole of St. Petersburg, have not driven them.

Nevsky Prospekt is the general communication of St. Petersburg. Here, a resident of the Petersburg or Vyborg part, who has not visited his friend at Peski or at the Moscow Gate for several years, can be sure that he will certainly meet him. No address-calendar and reference place will deliver such true news as Nevsky Prospekt. Almighty Nevsky Prospekt! The only entertainment of the poor in the festivities of St. Petersburg! How cleanly its sidewalks are swept, and, God, how many feet have left their footprints on it! And the clumsy dirty boot of a retired soldier, under the weight of which, it seems, the very granite is cracking, and the miniature, light as smoke, slipper of a young lady, turning her head to the shiny windows of the store, like a sunflower to the sun, and the rattling saber of a hopeful ensign, seeing a sharp scratch on it - everything takes out on it the power of strength or the power of weakness. What a quick phantasmagoria takes place on it in just one day!

What is the reason for the decline of the Russian language and does it exist at all? (Boris Strugatsky, text 2010)

There is no decline, and there cannot be. It’s just that censorship was softened, and in part, thank God, it was completely abolished, and what we used to hear in pubs and gateways now delights our ears, coming from the stage and from television screens. We tend to consider this the onset of lack of culture and the decline of the Language, but lack of culture, like any devastation, is not in books and not on the stage, it is in the souls and in the heads. And with the latter, in my opinion, nothing significant has happened in recent years. Unless our bosses, again, thank God, diverted from ideology and got carried away more by sawing the budget. So the languages ​​have blossomed, and the Language has been enriched with remarkable innovations in the widest range - from “hedging the GKO portfolio with the help of futures” to the emergence of Internet jargon.

Talk about the decline in general and Language in particular is, in fact, the result of the lack of clear instructions from above. Appropriate indications will appear - and the decline will stop as if by itself, immediately giving way to some kind of "new flourishing" and universal sovereign "good air".

Literature is flourishing, finally remaining almost without censorship and in the shadow of liberal laws concerning book publishing. The reader is spoiled to the limit. Every year, several dozen books of such a level of significance appear that, if any of them appeared on the shelves 25 years ago, it would immediately become a sensation of the year, and today it causes only condescendingly approving grumbling of criticism. Talk about the notorious “crisis of literature” does not subside, the public demands the immediate appearance of new Bulgakov, Chekhov, thick ones, forgetting, as usual, that any classic is necessarily a “product of the time”, like good wine and, in general, like all good things. Do not pull the tree up by the branches: it will not grow faster from this. However, there is nothing wrong with talking about a crisis: there is little benefit from them, but there is no harm either.

And Language, as before, lives its own life, slow and incomprehensible, constantly changing and at the same time always remaining itself. Anything can happen to the Russian language: perestroika, transformation, transformation, but not extinction. It is too big, powerful, flexible, dynamic and unpredictable to take and suddenly disappear. Unless - together with us.

Spelling as a law of nature (Dmitry Bykov, text 2011)

The question of why literacy is needed is widely and passionately discussed. It would seem that today, when even a computer program is able to correct not only spelling, but also meaning, the average Russian does not need to know the countless and sometimes meaningless subtleties of his native spelling. I'm not talking about commas that are unlucky twice. At first, in the liberal nineties, they were placed anywhere or ignored altogether, claiming that this was an author's mark. Schoolchildren still widely use the unwritten rule: "If you don't know what to put, put a dash." No wonder it is called so - "a sign of despair." Then, in the stable zero, people began to fearfully play it safe and put commas where they were not needed at all. True, all this confusion with signs does not affect the meaning of the message. Why then write well?

I think this is something like those necessary conventions that replace our specific canine scent when sniffing. A somewhat developed interlocutor, having received an electronic message, identifies the author by a thousand little things: of course, he does not see the handwriting, unless the message came in a bottle, but a letter from a philologist containing spelling errors can be erased without finishing.

It is known that at the end of the war, the Germans, who used Russian labor, threatened to extort a special receipt from the Slavic slaves: "Someone treated me wonderfully and deserves indulgence." The soldiers-liberators, having occupied one of the suburbs of Berlin, read a letter proudly presented by the owner with a dozen gross errors, signed by a student of Moscow University. The extent of the author's sincerity became immediately apparent to them, and the philistine slave owner paid the price for his vile forethought.

Today we have almost no chance to quickly understand who is in front of us: the methods of disguise are cunning and numerous. You can imitate the mind, sociability, even, perhaps, intelligence. It is impossible to play only literacy - a refined form of politeness, the last identification mark of humble and memoryful people who respect the laws of language as the highest form of the laws of nature.

Part 1. Do you care? (Zakhar Prilepin, text 2012)
Recently, one often hears peremptory statements, for example: "I don't owe anything to anyone." They are repeated, considering it good form, by a considerable number of people of all ages, especially young people. And the older and wiser are even more cynical in their judgments: “There is no need to do anything, because while the Russians, having forgotten about the greatness that has fallen under the bench, quietly drink, everything goes on as usual.” Have we really become more inert and emotionally passive today than ever? Now it is not easy to understand, eventually time will tell. If a country called Russia suddenly discovers that it has lost a significant part of its territory and a significant proportion of its population, it will be possible to say that at the beginning of the 2000s we really had nothing to do and that in these years we were engaged in more important things than preserving statehood, national identity and territorial integrity. But if the country survives, then the complaints about the indifference of citizens to the fate of the Motherland were at least groundless.

Nevertheless, there are grounds for a disappointing forecast. Quite often there are young people who perceive themselves not as a link in an unbroken chain of generations, but nothing less than the crown of creation. But there are obvious things: life itself and the existence of the earth on which we walk are possible only because our ancestors treated everything differently.

I remember my old people: how beautiful they were and, my God, how young they were in their military photographs! And how happy they were that we, their children and grandchildren, were tangled among them, thin-legged and tanned, blooming and overcooked in the sun. For some reason, we decided that previous generations owed us, and we, as a new subspecies of individuals, are not responsible for anything and do not want to be indebted to anyone.

There is only one way to preserve the land given to us and the freedom of the people - to gradually and persistently get rid of the mass paroxysms of individualism, so that public statements about independence from the past and non-participation in the future of their homeland become at least a sign of bad taste.

Part 2. I care

Recently, categorical statements such as: "I owe nothing to anyone" are often heard. They are repeated by many, especially young people who consider themselves the crown of creation. It is no coincidence that the position of extreme individualism is a sign of almost good taste today. But first of all, we are social beings and live according to the laws and traditions of society.

Most often, traditional Russian plots are stupid: a pipe has habitually burst there, something has ignited here - and three districts were left either without heat, or without light, or without one or the other. No one is surprised for a long time, because this seems to have happened before.

The fate of society is directly related to the state as such and the actions of those who govern it. The state can ask, strongly recommend, order, in the end force us to do something.

A reasonable question arises: who and what needs to be done with people so that they are concerned not only with their own fate, but also with something more?

Now there is a lot of talk about the awakening of civic consciousness. It seems that society, regardless of someone else's will and orders from above, is recovering. And in this process, as we are convinced, the main thing is to “start with yourself”. I personally started: I screwed in a light bulb in the entrance, paid taxes, improved the demographic situation, provided several people with jobs. And what? And where is the result? It seems to me that while I am busy with small things, someone is doing their own, huge ones, and the vector of application of forces is completely different for us.

Meanwhile, everything that we have: from the land we walk on to the ideals we believe in, is not the result of “small deeds” and cautious steps, but of global projects, huge achievements, and selfless devotion. People are transformed only when they burst into the world with all their might. A person becomes a person in a search, in a feat, in labor, and not in petty introspection, turning the soul inside out.

It is much better to start to change the world around you, because you finally want a big country, big cares for it, big results, big earth and sky. Give a map with a real scale so that at least half a globe can be seen!

Part 3. And we care!

There is a quiet, like an itch, feeling that the state on this earth owes nothing to anyone. Maybe that's why lately we hear so often from people that I, they say, don't owe anything to anyone. And now I don’t understand: how can we all survive here and who will defend this country when it collapses?

If you seriously believe that Russia has exhausted the resources of resilience and we have no future, then, the right word, maybe it’s not worth worrying about? We have good reasons: the people are broken, all empires fall apart sooner or later, and therefore we have no chance.

Russian history, I do not argue, provoked such declarations. Nevertheless, our ancestors never believed in these skeptical nonsense. Who decided that we no longer have a chance, and, for example, the Chinese have more than enough of them? After all, they also have a multinational country that has survived revolutions and wars.

In fact, we live in a funny state. Here, in order to realize your elementary rights - to have a roof over your head and daily bread, you need to perform somersaults of extraordinary beauty: change your native places and jobs, get an education in order to work outside your specialty, go over your heads, and preferably on your hands. You can't just be a peasant, a nurse, an engineer, just a military man - it's not recommended at all.

But for all the, so to speak, "unprofitability" of the population, tens of millions of adult men and women live in Russia - capable, enterprising, enterprising, ready to plow and sow, build and rebuild, give birth and raise children. Therefore, a voluntary farewell to the national future is not at all a sign of common sense and balanced decisions, but a natural betrayal. You can’t give up positions, throw flags and run wherever your eyes look, without even making an attempt to protect your home. This, of course, is a figure of speech inspired by the history and smoke of the fatherland, in which the spiritual and cultural upsurge, the mass desire for reorganization have always been associated with great upheavals and wars. But they were crowned with Victories, which no one can achieve. And we must earn the right to be the heirs of these Victories!

Part 1. Gospel from the Internet (Dina Rubina, text 2013)

Once, many years ago, I got into a conversation with a familiar programmer and, among other remarks, I remember his phrase that a kind of ingenious thing was invented, thanks to which all the knowledge of mankind will become available to any subject - the World Wide Web.

This is amazing,” I said politely, always bored with the word “humanity” and hating the word “individual”.

Imagine,” he continued, “that for a dissertation on the production of pottery among the Etruscans, for example, you no longer need to dig into the archives, but just type in a certain code, and everything you need to work will appear on your computer screen.

But this is wonderful! I exclaimed.

Meanwhile he continued:

Unheard-of opportunities are opening up before mankind - in science, in art, in politics. Everyone will be able to convey their word to the attention of millions. At the same time, any person, he added, will become much more accessible to special services and not protected from all sorts of intruders, especially when hundreds of thousands of online communities emerge.

But it's terrible ... - I thought.

Many years have passed, but I remember this conversation very well. And today, having changed a dozen computers, corresponding - to the accompaniment of the keyboard - with hundreds of correspondents, running another request from Google to Yandex and mentally blessing the great invention, I still can’t unequivocally answer myself: the Internet is “great” or “terrible” ?

Thomas Mann wrote: “...Where you are, there is the world - a narrow circle in which you live, learn and act; the rest is fog…”

The Internet - for good or for evil - dispelled the fog, turning on its merciless searchlights, piercing countries and continents with cutting light to the smallest grain of sand, and at the same time the fragile human soul. And what, by the way, has happened over the past twenty years with this notorious soul, before which dazzling opportunities for self-expression have opened up?

The Internet for me is the third turning point in the history of human culture - after the appearance of the language and the invention of the book. In ancient Greece, a speaker speaking in a square in Athens was heard by no more than twenty thousand people. This was the sonic limit of communication: the geography of the language is the tribe. Then came a book that expanded the circle of communication to the geography of the country. With the invention of the World Wide Web, a new stage of human existence in space arose: the geography of the Internet is the globe!

Part 2: The Dangers of Paradise

The Internet for me is the third turning point in the history of human culture - after the appearance of the language and the invention of the book. In ancient Greece, a speaker speaking in a square in Athens was heard by no more than twenty thousand people. This was the sonic limit of communication: the geography of the language is the tribe. Then came a book that expanded the circle of communication to the geography of the country.

And now there was a dizzying, unprecedented opportunity to instantly deliver the word to countless people. Another change of spaces: the geography of the Internet is the globe. And this is another revolution, and a revolution always breaks quickly, only it builds slowly.

Over time, a new hierarchy of mankind will arise, a new humane civilization. In the meantime ... while the "reverse side" of this grand opening-breakthrough dominates the Internet - its destructive power. It is no coincidence that the World Wide Web becomes a tool in the hands of terrorists, hackers and fanatics of all stripes.

The most obvious fact of our time is that the Internet, which has unthinkably expanded the ability of the common man to speak and act, is at the heart of the current "uprising of the masses." This phenomenon, which arose in the first half of the twentieth century, caused by the vulgarization of culture - material and spiritual - gave rise to both communism and Nazism. Today it is turned to the "mass" in any person, feeds on it and satisfies it in all respects - from linguistic to political and consumer, because it brought the desired "bread and circuses" incredibly close to the people, including the lowest ones. This confidant, preacher and confessor of the crowds turns into “noise” everything he touches, everything that life gives; breeds vulgarity, ignorance and aggression, giving them an unheard of, bewitching way out not just outside, but to the whole world. The most dangerous thing is that this playful and very intelligent "child" of the new civilization destroys the criteria - the spiritual, moral and behavioral codes of the existence of human society. What to do, in the Internet space everyone is equal in the most common sense of the word. And I think: is it not too high a price we pay for a great opportunity to talk with a distant friend, read a rare book, see a brilliant picture and hear a great opera? Was this grandiose discovery too early? In other words, has mankind grown up to itself?

Part 3. Evil for good or good for evil?

Questions relating to the mighty Internet are quite existential, as is the question of what we do in this world.

There is no instrument that can determine the obvious benefit and the equally obvious evil that all great inventions bring us, just as there is no way to separate one from the other.

I would not be in a hurry to criticize the Internet too sharply for all the sins of mankind, - objected my friend, a famous physicist who has lived in Paris for a long time (by the way, we met him via the Internet). - From my point of view, this is a wonderful thing, if only because talented and smart people got the opportunity to communicate, unite and thereby contribute to the great discoveries of modern times. Think, for example, about polar explorers in Antarctica: isn't Internet communication a great boon for them? And the plebs will remain plebs, with or without the Internet. At one time, monsters of the style of Hitler or Mussolini, with only radio and the press, managed to influence the masses with murderous influence. Yes, and the book has always been a very powerful tool: on paper, you can print Shakespeare's poetry and Chekhov's prose, or you can print manuals on terrorism and calls for pogroms - paper will endure everything, just like the Internet. This invention does not in itself fall into the categories of good or evil, just like fire, dynamite, alcohol, nitrates or nuclear energy. It all depends on who is using it. It's so obvious that it's even boring to discuss. Write better about how difficult it is to become an adult in our age, how entire generations are doomed to eternal and irreversible immaturity ...

That is all the same about the World Wide Web? I bluntly stated. - Just there I read the other day: "The best thing that life has given me is a childhood without the Internet."

So what? we, in fact, do in this world, I think, penetrating deeper and deeper into its secrets, trying to get to the bottom of the innermost spring, whose crystal power will quench our thirst for immortality? And does it exist, this spring, or does each next generation, which has removed another veil from the great mystery, only be able to muddy the pure waters of being, given to us by the unknowable genius of the Universe?

Train Chusovskaya - Tagil (Alexey Ivanov, text 2014)

Part 1. On the train through childhood

"Chusovskaya - Tagil" ... I traveled by this train only in the summer.

A string of wagons and a locomotive - angular and massive, it smelled of hot metal and, for some reason, tar. Every day this train departed from the old Chusovoy station, which no longer exists, and the conductors stood in the open doors, putting out yellow flags.

The railway turned decisively from the Chusovaya River into a hollow between the mountains, and then for many hours in a row the train beat fractionally through the dense ravines. From above, the motionless summer sun was frying, and the Urals were swaying around in the blue and haze: either some taiga plant would put up a thick pipe of red brick over the forest, then a gray-gray rock above the valley would sparkle with mica, then in an abandoned quarry, like a rolled coin, a quiet lake would flash . The whole surrounding world outside the window could suddenly fall down - this car raced along a short, like a sigh, bridge over a flat river, riddled with boulders. More than once the train was carried out onto tall embankments, and it flew with a howl at the level of the spruce tops, almost in the sky, and around in a spiral, like circles in a whirlpool, the horizon unfolded with sloping ridges, on which something strange flashed.

The semaphore switched scale, and after grandiose panoramas, the train slowed down at modest sidings with dead ends, where the red-hot wheels of forgotten cars stuck to the red rails. Here, the windows of wooden stations were decorated with architraves, signs “Do not walk along the tracks!” rusted, and under them dogs slept in dandelions. Cows grazed in the weeds of the drainage ditches, and stray raspberries grew behind the creviced plank platforms. The hoarse whistle of the train floated over the station like a local hawk that had long since lost the greatness of a predator and was now stealing chickens from the front gardens, snatching sparrows from the gable slate roof of the sawmill.

Going through the details in my memory, I don’t know and don’t even understand what kind of magical country this train is traveling through - through the Urals or through my childhood.

Part 2. Train and people

"Chusovskaya - Tagil" ... Solar train.

Then, in childhood, everything was different: the days were longer, and the land was larger, and the bread was not imported. I liked my fellow travelers, I was fascinated by the mystery of their life, revealed to me by chance, as if in passing. Here is a clean old woman unfolding a newspaper in which onion feathers, cabbage pies and hard-boiled eggs are neatly folded. Here is an unshaven dad rocking his little daughter sitting on his lap, and there is so much tenderness in that cautious movement with which this man, clumsy and awkward, covers the girl with the skirt of his tattered jacket ... Here are the demobilized demobilized men drinking vodka: it seems, stunned with happiness, they are discordantly they cackle, fraternize, but suddenly, as if remembering something, they begin to fight, then cry from the inability to express the suffering they do not understand, hug again and sing songs. And only after many years I realized how stale the soul is when you live away from home for a long time.

Once, at some station, I saw how all the conductors went to the buffet and chatted, and the train suddenly slowly floated along the platform. The aunts flew out onto the platform and, cursing the jockey driver who didn’t give a whistle, they rushed after him in a crowd, and from the doors of the last car the head of the train shamelessly whistled with two fingers, like a fan at the stadium. Of course, the joke is rude, but no one was offended, and then they all laughed together.

Here, bewildered parents taxied their children to the train on motorcycles with sidecars, kissed and had bitter fun, played harmonicas and used to dance. Here, the conductors told the passengers to calculate how much the ticket costs and bring them “without change”, and the passengers honestly rummaged through their wallets and wallets, looking for a change. Here everyone was involved in the general movement and experienced it in their own way. You could go out into the vestibule, open the door outside, sit on the iron steps and just look at the world, and no one would scold you.

"Chusovskaya - Tagil", the train of my childhood ...

Part 3. When the train returns

My mom and dad worked as engineers, they couldn’t afford the Black Sea, so during the summer holidays they united with friends and on the Chusovskaya - Tagil train they left in cheerful companies for family hikes along the Ural rivers. In those years, the very order of life was as if specially adapted for friendship: all the parents worked together, and all the children studied together. Perhaps this is what is called harmony.

Our dashing and powerful dads threw backpacks with padded sleeping bags and canvas tents heavy as if they were made of sheet iron onto the luggage racks, and our naive mothers, fearing that the children would not find out about the plans of adults, asked in a whisper: “But for the evening they took ? My father, the strongest and most cheerful, not at all embarrassed and not even smiling, answered: “Of course! A loaf of white and a loaf of red.

And we, children, rode towards wonderful adventures - to where there are merciless suns, impregnable rocks and fiery dawns, and we had wonderful dreams while we slept on hard wagon shelves, and these dreams are the most amazing! - have always come true. A hospitable and friendly world opened up before us, life went off into the distance, into a blinding infinity, the future seemed beautiful, and we rolled there in a creaky, shabby carriage. In the railway schedule, our train was listed as a suburban one, but we knew that it was an ultra-long-distance train.

And now the future has become real - not beautiful, but the way it seems to be. I live in it and get to know the homeland through which my train travels better, and it is getting closer to me, but, alas, I remember my childhood less and less, and it is farther and farther away from me - this is very, very sad. However, my present will also soon become the past, and then the same train will take me not to the future, but to the past - the same way, but in the opposite direction of time.

"Chusovskaya - Tagil", the solar train of my childhood.

Magic lantern. (Evgeny Vodolazkin, text 2015)

Part 1. Dacha

Professor's dacha on the coast of the Gulf of Finland. In the absence of the owner, a friend of my father, our family was allowed to live there. Even decades later, I remember how, after a tiring road from the city, the coolness of a wooden house enveloped me, how the body, shaken and disintegrated in the carriage, gathered up. This coolness was not associated with freshness, rather, oddly enough, with an intoxicating mustiness, in which the aromas of old books and numerous ocean trophies merged, it was not clear how the law professor got it. Dried starfish, mother-of-pearl shells, carved masks, a pith helmet, and even a pipefish quill lay on the shelves, spreading a salty smell.

Gently pushing aside the seafood, I took books from the shelves, sat Turkish-style in an armchair with boxwood armrests and read. He leafed through the pages with his right hand, while his left clutched a piece of bread with butter and sugar. I ate thoughtfully and read, and the sugar creaked on my teeth. These were Jules Verne novels or magazine descriptions of exotic countries bound in leather - an unknown world, inaccessible and infinitely far from jurisprudence. At his dacha, the professor obviously collected what he had dreamed of since childhood, which was not provided for by his current position and was not regulated by the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire. In the countries dear to his heart, I suspect there were no laws at all.

From time to time I raised my eyes from the book and, watching the fading of the bay outside the window, tried to understand how lawyers become. Have you dreamed about it since childhood? Doubtful. As a child, I dreamed of being a conductor or, say, a fire chief, but never a lawyer. I also imagined that I stayed in this cool room forever, I live in it, as if in a capsule, and outside the window there are changes, coups, earthquakes, and there is no more sugar, no butter, not even the Russian Empire - and only I am still sitting and I read, I read ... Later life showed that I guessed right with sugar and butter, but to sit and read - this, alas, did not work out.

Part 2. Park

We are in Polezhaevsky Park, mid-June. The river Ligovka flows there, it is quite small, but in the park it turns into a lake. On the water - boats, on the grass - checkered blankets, fringed tablecloths, samovars. I watch as a company sitting nearby starts a gramophone. I don’t remember who exactly is sitting, but I can still see the handle turning. After a moment there is music - hoarse, stuttering, but still music.

A box full of small, cold, singing, even from the outside and invisible - I did not have such a thing. And how I wanted to have it: take care of it, cherish it, put it by the stove in the winter, but most importantly, wind it up with regal carelessness, as they do a long-familiar thing. The rotation of the handle seemed to me a simple and at the same time non-obvious cause of flowing sounds, a kind of universal master key to beauty. There was something Mozartian in this, something like a wave of a conductor's baton, reviving dumb instruments and also not quite explainable by earthly laws. I used to conduct by myself, humming the tunes I heard, and I did pretty well. If it weren't for the dream of becoming a firemaster, then I would like to be, of course, a conductor.

On that June day we also saw the conductor. With an orchestra obedient to his hand, he slowly moved away from the shore. It was not a park orchestra, not a wind orchestra - a symphony one. He stood on a raft, not knowing how to fit in, and his music spread over the water, and the rest listened to it half-heartedly. Boats and ducks floated around the raft, now the creak of the oarlocks, now the quacking were heard, but all this easily grew into the music and was received by the conductor favorably on the whole. Surrounded by musicians, the conductor was at the same time lonely: there is an incomprehensible tragedy in this profession. He, perhaps, is not expressed as clearly as that of the firemaster, since he is not connected either with fire or with external circumstances in general, but this inner, hidden nature of him burns hearts all the more.

Part 3. Nevsky

I saw how they drove along the Nevsky to put out a fire - in early autumn, at the end of the day. Ahead on a black horse is a “leap” (as the advanced rider of the fire wagon was called), with a pipe at his mouth, like an angel of the Apocalypse. The leap trumpets, clearing the way, and everyone rushes in all directions. The cab drivers whip the horses, press them to the side of the road and freeze, standing half-turned towards the firemen. And now, along the seething Nevsky in the resulting void, a chariot carrying firefighters rushes: they sit on a long bench, back to back, in copper helmets, and the banner of the fire department flutters over them; at the banner - the fireman, he rings the bell. In their dispassion, the firefighters are tragic, on their faces there are reflections of a flame that has already flared up somewhere, already somewhere waiting for them, invisible for the time being.

Fiery yellow leaves from the Catherine's Garden, where there is a fire, sadly fly down on those traveling. My mother and I are standing by the wrought-iron grate and watching how the weightlessness of the leaves is transferred to the convoy: it slowly breaks away from the paving stones and flies over the Nevsky Prospect at a low altitude. A wagon with a steam pump floats behind the line with firefighters (steam from the boiler, smoke from the chimney), followed by a medical van to rescue the burnt. I cry, and my mother says that I should not be afraid, but I am crying not from fear - from an excess of feelings, from admiration for the courage and great glory of these people, because they float so majestically past the frozen crowd to the sound of bells.

I really wanted to become a fireman, and every time I saw firefighters, I turned to them with a silent request to accept me into their ranks. She, of course, was not heard, but now, years later, I do not regret it. Then, driving along the Nevsky on the imperial, I invariably imagined that I was heading for a fire: I behaved solemnly and a little sadly, and did not know how everything would turn out there when extinguishing, and caught enthusiastic glances, and at the greetings of the crowd, slightly tilting my head to one side answered with one eye.

This ancient-ancient-ancient world! (Alexander Usachev, text 2016)

Part 1. Briefly about the history of the theater

It is said that the ancient Greeks were very fond of grapes and after harvesting they held a festival in honor of Dionysus, the god of grapes. The retinue of Dionysus was made up of goat-footed creatures - satyrs. Depicting them, the Hellenes put on goat skins, galloped wildly and sang - in a word, they selflessly indulged in fun. Such performances were called tragedies, which in ancient Greek meant "singing goats." Subsequently, the Hellenes thought about what else to dedicate such games to?
Ordinary people have always been interested in knowing how the rich live. The playwright Sophocles began to write plays about kings, and it immediately became clear: kings often cry and their personal life is unsafe and by no means simple. And in order to make the story entertaining, Sophocles decided to attract actors who could play his works - this is how the theater appeared.
At first, art lovers were very unhappy: only those who sat in the front row saw the action, and, since tickets were not yet provided for then, the strongest and tallest occupied the best seats. Then the Hellenes decided to eliminate this inequality and built an amphitheater, where each next row was higher than the previous one, and everything that happened on the stage became visible to everyone who came to the performance.
The performance usually involved not only actors, but also the choir, broadcasting on behalf of the people. For example, a hero entered the arena and said:
"I'm going to do something bad now!"
- To do bad shamelessly! howled the choir.
“All right,” the hero agreed reluctantly on reflection. "Then I'll go and do something good."
“Doing good is good,” the choir approved of him, thus, as if inadvertently pushing the hero to death: after all, as it should be in tragedy, retribution inevitably comes for good deeds.
True, sometimes a “god from the machine” appeared (a machine was called a special crane on which the “god” was lowered onto the stage) and unexpectedly saved the hero. Whether it was really a real god or still an actor is still unclear, but it is known for certain that both the word “machine” and theatrical cranes were invented in ancient Greece.

Part 2. Briefly about the history of writing

In those ancient times, when the Sumerians came to the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates, they spoke an incomprehensible language: after all, the Sumerians were the discoverers of new lands and their language was like that of real scouts - secret, encrypted. No one had and does not have such a language, except perhaps for other intelligence officers.
Meanwhile, the people in Mesopotamia were already using wedges with might and main: young men knocked wedges under the girls (this is how they courted them); swords and knives forged from Damascus steel were wedge-shaped; even cranes in the sky - and they flew in a wedge. The Sumerians saw so many wedges around them that they invented writing - wedges. This is how cuneiform writing, the oldest writing system in the world, was born.
During the lessons in the Sumerian school, students squeezed out wedges on clay tablets with wooden sticks, and therefore everything around was smeared with clay - from floor to ceiling. The cleaners eventually became furious, because such study at school is nothing but dirt, and they have to keep it clean. And in order to maintain cleanliness, it must be clean, otherwise there is nothing to maintain.
But in ancient Egypt, writing consisted of drawings. The Egyptians thought: why write the word "bull" if you can just draw this bull? The ancient Greeks (or Hellenes, as they called themselves) later called such words-drawings hieroglyphs. Writing lessons in ancient Egyptian were more like drawing lessons, and drawing hieroglyphs was a real art.
“Well, no,” said the Phoenicians. – We are hard-working people, artisans and sailors, and we do not need sophisticated calligraphy, let us have simpler writing.
And they came up with letters - this is how the alphabet turned out. People began to write in letters, and the further, the faster. And the faster they wrote, the uglier they got. Doctors wrote the most: they wrote prescriptions. Therefore, some of them still have such a handwriting that they seem to write letters, but hieroglyphs come out.

Part 3. Briefly about the history of the Olympic Games

The ancient Greeks came up with the Olympic Games while they were waging one of their never-ending wars. There were two main reasons: firstly, during battles, soldiers and officers had no time to go in for sports, but the Hellenes (as the ancient Greeks called themselves) tried to train all the time not busy with exercises in philosophy; secondly, the soldiers wanted to return home as soon as possible, and vacation in the war was not provided. It was clear that the troops needed a truce and that the only way to declare it could be the Olympic Games: after all, an indispensable condition for the Olympics is an end to the war.
At first, the Hellenes wanted to hold the Olympic Games annually, but later they realized that frequent breaks in hostilities endlessly lengthen wars, so the Olympic Games began to be announced only once every four years. Of course, there were no Winter Games in those days, because there were no ice arenas or ski slopes in Hellas.
Any citizen could participate in the Olympic Games, but the rich could afford expensive sports equipment, while the poor could not. To prevent the rich from defeating the poor just because their sports equipment is better, all athletes measured their strength and agility naked.
Why were the games called the Olympic Games? - you ask. - Did the gods from Olympus also take part in them?
No, the gods, apart from quarrels among themselves, did not engage in any other sport, but they loved to follow sports competitions from the skies with undisguised excitement from mortals. And to make it more convenient for the gods to observe the ups and downs of the competition, the first stadium was built in the sanctuary, which was called Olympia - this is how the games got their name.
The gods, even for the time of the games, concluded a truce between themselves and swore not to help their chosen ones. Moreover, they even allowed the Hellenes to consider the winners as gods - however, temporary, only for one day. Olympic champions were awarded olive and laurel wreaths: medals had not yet been invented, and laurel in ancient Greece was worth its weight in gold, so a laurel wreath then was the same as a gold medal today.

City on the river (Leonid Yuzefovich, text 2017)

Part 1. St. Petersburg. Neva
My grandfather was born in Kronstadt, my wife is from Leningrad, so in St. Petersburg I feel not quite a stranger. However, in Russia it is difficult to find a person in whose life this city would mean nothing. We are all connected in one way or another with him, and through him with each other.

There is little greenery in St. Petersburg, but there is a lot of water and sky. The city is spread out on a plain, and the sky above it is immense. You can enjoy the performances played on this stage by clouds and sunsets for a long time. The actors are controlled by the best director in the world - the wind. The scenery of roofs, domes and spiers remains unchanged, but never gets bored.
In 1941, Hitler decided to starve out Leningraders and wipe the city off the face of the earth. “The Fuhrer did not understand that the order to blow up Leningrad was tantamount to an order to blow up the Alps,” noted writer Daniil Granin. St. Petersburg is a stone bulk, which in its unity and power has no equal among European capitals. It has preserved over eighteen thousand buildings built before 1917. This is more than in London and Paris, not to mention Moscow.
The Neva with its tributaries, channels and canals flows through an indestructible labyrinth carved from stone. Unlike the sky, the water here is not free, it speaks of the power of the empire, which managed to forge it in granite. In summer, fishermen with fishing rods stand by the parapets on the embankments. Under their feet are plastic bags in which caught fish tremble. The same roach and fish catchers stood here under Pushkin. The bastions of the Peter and Paul Fortress turned gray then, and the Bronze Horseman reared his horse. Except that the Winter Palace was dark red, not green, as it is now.
It seems that nothing around reminds us that in the twentieth century a crack in Russian history passed through St. Petersburg. His beauty allows us to forget about the unimaginable trials he endured.

Part 2. Perm. Kama
When from the left bank of the Kama, on which my native Perm lies, you look at the right bank with its forests turning blue to the horizon, you feel the fragility of the border between civilization and the primordial forest element. Only a strip of water separates them, and it also unites them. If as a child you lived in a city on a large river, you were lucky: you understand the essence of life better than those who were deprived of this happiness.
In my childhood, sterlet was still found in Kama. In the old days, it was sent to St. Petersburg to the royal table, and in order not to deteriorate on the way, cotton wool soaked in cognac was placed under the gills. As a boy, I saw a small sturgeon on the sand with a jagged back stained with fuel oil: the whole Kama was then covered in fuel oil from tugboats. These dirty hard workers dragged rafts and barges behind them. Children ran on the decks and clothes dried in the sun. Endless strings of stapled, slimy logs vanished along with the tugs and barges. Kama became cleaner, but the sterlet never returned to it.
It was said that Perm, like Moscow and Rome, lay on seven hills. It was enough to feel the breath of history blowing over my wooden city, studded with factory pipes. Its streets run either parallel to the Kama or perpendicular to it. Before the revolution, the first ones were called by the churches that stood on them, such as, for example, Voznesenskaya or Pokrovskaya. The latter bore the names of the places where the roads flowing from them led: Siberian, Solikamsk, Verkhoturskaya. Where they intersected, the heavenly met the earthly. Here I realized that sooner or later converges with the mountain, you just need to be patient and wait.
Permians argue that it is not the Kama that flows into the Volga, but, on the contrary, the Volga flows into the Kama. It does not matter to me which of these two great rivers is a tributary of the other. In any case, Kama is the river that flows through my heart.

Part 3. Ulan-Ude. Selenga
The names of the rivers are older than all other names on maps. We do not always understand their meaning, so the Selenga keeps the secret of its name. It came either from the Buryat word "sel", which means "spill", or from the Evenki "sele", that is, "iron", but I heard in it the name of the Greek goddess of the moon, Selena. Squeezed by forested hills, often shrouded in mist, the Selenga was for me a mysterious “moon river”. In the noise of its current, I, a young lieutenant, seemed to be a promise of love and happiness. It seemed that they were waiting for me ahead as immutably as Baikal was waiting for the Selenga.
Maybe she promised the same to the twenty-year-old lieutenant Anatoly Pepelyaev, the future white general and poet. Shortly before the First World War, he secretly married his chosen one in a poor rural church on the banks of the Selenga. The noble father did not give his son a blessing for an unequal marriage. The bride was the granddaughter of the exiles and the daughter of a simple railroad worker from Verkhneudinsk, as Ulan-Ude used to be called.
I found this city almost the same as Pepelyaev saw it. In the market, Buryats who came from the outback in traditional blue robes traded lamb and women in museum sundresses walked around. They sold circles of frozen milk strung on their hands like rolls. They were “family”, as the Old Believers, who used to live in large families, are called in Transbaikalia. True, something appeared that did not exist under Pepelyaev. I remember how the most original of all the monuments to Lenin I have seen was placed on the main square: on a low pedestal, a huge granite head of the leader, without a neck and torso, was rounded, similar to the head of a giant hero from Ruslan and Lyudmila. It still stands in the capital of Buryatia and has become one of its symbols. Here history and modernity, Orthodoxy and Buddhism do not reject or suppress each other. Ulan-Ude gave me hope that this is possible in other places.

Language teacher.
Part 1. Morning
Every morning, still by the light of the stars, Yakob Ivanovich Bach woke up and, lying under a thick quilted duck down feather bed, listened to the world. The quiet discordant sounds of someone else's life flowing somewhere around him and above him calmed him down. Winds blew over the rooftops - heavy in winter, densely mixed with snow and ice grains, resilient in spring, breathing moisture and heavenly electricity, sluggish, dry in summer, mixed with dust and light feather grass seed. Dogs barked, welcoming the sleepy owners who came out onto the porch, and cattle roared in a bass voice on their way to the watering place. The world breathed, crackled, whistled, mooed, clapped its hooves, rang and sang in different voices.

The sounds of his own life were so meager and blatantly insignificant that Bach forgot how to hear them: he isolated them in the general sound stream and let them pass by his ears. The glass of the only window in the room rattled under the gusts of wind; That, perhaps, is all. It was much more interesting to listen to the great life. Sometimes, after listening, Bach even forgot that he himself was a part of this world, that he could, having gone out onto the porch, join the polyphony: sing something provocative, or slam the door loudly, or, at worst, just sneeze. But Bach preferred to listen.

At six in the morning, carefully dressed and combed, he was already standing at the school bell tower with a pocket watch in his hands. After waiting for both hands to merge into a single line (hours at six, minutes at twelve), he pulled the rope with all his strength - and the bronze bell resounded. Over many years of practice, Bach achieved such mastery in this matter that the sound of a blow was heard exactly at the moment when the minute hand touched the zenith of the dial, and not a second later. A moment later, everyone in the village turned towards the sound and whispered a short prayer. A new day has dawned...

Part 2. Day
... Over the years of teaching, each of which resembled the previous one and did not stand out in anything special, Yakob Ivanovich was so used to pronouncing the same words and reading the same tasks that he learned to mentally split inside his body: his tongue muttered the text of the next grammatical rule, the hand clamped in it with a ruler languidly slapped the back of the head of an overly talkative student, the legs sedately carried the body around the classroom from the pulpit to the back wall, then back, back and forth. And the thought dozed, lulled by his own voice and measured shaking of his head in time with unhurried steps.

German speech was the only subject during which Bach's thought regained its former freshness and vivacity. We started the lesson with oral exercises. The students were asked to tell something, Bach listened and translated: he turned short dialect turns into elegant phrases of literary German. They moved slowly, sentence by sentence, word by word, as if they were walking somewhere in deep snow, trail after trail. Yakob Ivanovich did not like to delve into the alphabet and calligraphy and, having finished with conversations, hastily rushed the lesson to the poetic part: verses poured generously on young shaggy heads, like water from a pelvis on a bath day.

Bach's love for poetry burned even in his youth. Then it seemed that he did not eat potato soup and sauerkraut, but only ballads and hymns. It seemed that he could feed everyone around with them - that's why he became a teacher. Until now, reciting his favorite stanzas in class, Bach still felt a cool flutter of delight in his chest. The children did not share the teacher's passion: their faces, usually playful or concentrated, acquired a submissive somnambulistic expression with the very first sounds of poetic lines. German romanticism had an effect on the class better than sleeping pills. Perhaps the reading of poetry could be used to calm the naughty audience instead of the usual screams and hits with a ruler ...

Part 3. Evening
... Bach descended from the porch of the school and found himself on the square, at the foot of the majestic church with a spacious prayer hall in the lace of lancet windows and a huge bell tower resembling a sharpened pencil. I walked past neat wooden houses with sky-blue, berry-red and corn-yellow architraves; past planed fences; past boats overturned in anticipation of the flood; past front gardens with rowan bushes. He walked so swiftly, loudly crunching his boots in the snow or squelching his boots in the spring mud, that one might think that he had a dozen urgent matters that should certainly be settled today ...

Passers-by, noticing the mincing figure of the teacher, sometimes called out to him and talked about the school successes of their offspring. However, he, out of breath from a quick walk, answered reluctantly, in short phrases: time was running out. In confirmation, he took out a watch from his pocket, threw a contrite glance at them and, shaking his head, ran on. Where he fled, Bach himself could not explain.

I must say, there was another reason for his haste: when talking with people, Yakob Ivanovich stuttered. His trained language, which worked steadily and without fail during the lessons and without a single hesitation uttered the multi-component words of literary German, easily gave out such complex subordinating knees that some student would forget even the beginning until he listened to the end. The same language suddenly began to refuse the owner when Bach switched to a dialect in conversations with his fellow villagers. To read by heart passages from Faust, for example, the tongue desired; to tell the neighbor: “But your dunce has been mischievous again today!” didn’t want to in any way, stuck to the palate and interfered between the teeth, like an oversized and poorly cooked dumpling. It seemed to Bach that stuttering intensified over the years, but it was difficult to verify this: he talked with people less and less often ... So a life flowed in which there was everything except life itself, calm, full of penny joys and meager anxieties, in some way even happy .

How was the Total Dictation in 2018? First, they showed a recording of the author of this year's text - the writer Guzel Yakhina, who spoke about its creation, and also read part of the text. After the author's reading, silence reigned in the hall, and then the young people began vying to express doubt that they would be able to write the dictation, since it seemed to them very difficult.

This year's "Total Dictation" consists of three texts - "Morning", "Day" and "Evening". All of them are part of Guzel Yakhina's new book "My Children" about the literature teacher Jacob Bach. You can get into the ranks of the Total Dictation testers in different ways: you can sign up as a volunteer, or you can, for example, be an excellent student last year - they receive a mailing list with an invitation to fill out a questionnaire and get the opportunity to rise one step higher to take part in the test this year.

Last year, an employee of the Internet promotion department of the AST publishing house decided to see with her own eyes how the verification of written work goes. Like all the colossal work on the preparation of the dictation, the verification is carried out only on a volunteer basis, payment for it is not provided. But the sea of ​​excellent impressions and interesting communication is provided. For example, in 2017, all papers written in Moscow were checked at the Russian State University for the Humanities under the guidance of several members of the Total Dictation expert council - in one of the classrooms it was Vladimir Markovich Pakhomov, PhD in Philology and editor-in-chief of the Gramota.ru portal.

This year, the Sunday working day of the inspection did not start at 9 in the morning, as before, but at 10 - they gave a little indulgence. First, the experts analyzed the text. In Moscow last year they wrote the third part of Leonid Yuzefovich's text “Ulan-Ude. Selenga" (full text of "Total Dictation" 2017 already available on the official website).

The assessment of "Total Dictation" is very different from our school memories. Firstly, because this dictation is, first of all, a celebration of the Russian language, and not a harsh test of knowledge, after which you can get a bad mark from your parents. And secondly, because the authors of the texts are writers, creative people, in many places a large choice of punctuation marks is allowed. The same applies to "dictators" - those who read the text of the dictation on the sites: there were cases when the actors read the text in such a way that after each sentence they wanted to put an exclamation mark.

Absolutely all acceptable options are provided in the “Inspector's Memo” and are analyzed by an expert before starting the check. Before compiling a memo to the text, the committee makes a selection of random entries to see which passages caused the most discrepancy and to anticipate any opportunities for reading and punctuation. After all, even when it seems that everything is unambiguous, it means that you do not have enough imagination - anything can happen at the "Total Dictation"!

In 2017, the Muscovites who wrote the dictation had to figure out the etymology of the name of the Buryat river Selenga, find out what the city of Ulan-Ude used to be called and why, according to the writer Leonid Yuzefovich, the most original monument to Lenin he saw resembles the hero from Ruslan and Lyudmila. Appeared in the text and Anatoly Pepelyaev, the hero of the novel.

Even after analyzing all the acceptable options, questions may remain - for this, an expert is constantly on duty in the audience (and also checks the work in parallel). The leaders of the dictation expect that each participant must master at least 50 works - then they will be able to do everything on time. It does not do without curiosities - they are collected in a special "piggy bank". For example, this year the phrase "hero-giant" in some works appeared as "hero from Pauline." To take their mind off the test, the participants sat and fantasized about what kind of place this was.

In the middle of the day there is a break for lunch - the organizers treat. Checking the work lasts up to about 18 hours, although, of course, you can leave at any time - it is better to check less work, but of high quality. And as a keepsake for all inspectors, there is an excellent red pen with the inscription: “Total Dictation 2017 was tested with this pen.”