(ABOUT L. N. GUMILYOV'S BOOK "THE SEARCH FOR A FICTIONAL KINGDOM", MOSCOW, 1970, 432 p. The print run is 9,500. Price 1 rub. 64 kopecks.)

Another book by Doctor of Historical Sciences L. N. Gumilyov on the history of the Great Steppe was published; this time the author did not focus on the early history of the Turkic tribes, but gave a broad picture of the entire steppe world on the eve and at the time of the formation of the Chingizid Empire. As a literary device to unite the West and the East, L. N. Gumilev used a medieval legend about the kingdom of Prester John, which was supposedly located somewhere in Asia.

Judging by the free access to a large number of diverse sources, the book is obviously the result of research, although the process of analysis is not always shown and the author often hides behind his paradoxes. Thus, speaking about the impossibility of reconciling conflicting sources, he writes: "And then I thought: I will take the obviously correct judgment that Genghis Khan was and his empire existed, and the obviously dubious one that Presbyter John reigned in the "Three Indies", and compare them at random. Suddenly, this combination will turn out to be an organic concept by itself, since I will already have positive and negative values. So I did" (p. 10). The author treats his predecessors very haughtily, considering that he is not obliged to give either a description of the sources or a review of the scientific literature of the issue, because "you can't make one horse out of thousands of mice" (p.381). Here "mice" are the works of researchers of previous years, and "horse" is a book by L. N. Gumilyov himself. Elsewhere, the author defines the place of scientific research in a very peculiar way: "The moment of insight does not precede the study of the problem and does not crown it, but lies somewhere in the middle, a little closer to the beginning... And the search in the proper sense of the word begins later, because it is worth searching only when you know what you are looking for " (p.403). One of these insights (which, obviously, preceded the scientific search) is devoted to chapter XIII, called somewhat pretentiously - " The experience of overcoming self-deception "(pp. 305-345). In this chapter, devoted to the Russian history of the 12th and 13th centuries, I will focus in more detail.

For all students of Russian history at this time, each new Oriental study is extremely important, revealing the relationship of Russian principalities with the vast and diverse steppe world. From the orientalist, Russian scholars expect new interesting generalizations, revealing what was beyond the horizon of the ancient chroniclers, who wrote about the Polovtsians and Tatars only when their troops attacked Russia. Unfortunately, L. N. Gumilyov immediately disappoints us.

Speaking about the relations between Russia and the Polovtsians in the 12th century, he gets off with a few paradoxes: "The Polovtsians entered the system of the Kievan Principality in the same way as, for example, the Polotsk or Novgorod land, without losing their autonomy" (p. 312). " From the fall of the Khazar Khaganate in 965 to the foundation of the Golden Horde in 1241, there was no steppe state of any kind. unification did not exist, and there was no danger to the Russian land from the steppe" (p.312). I refuse to understand this phrase! Was there not a grand campaign of Sharukan in 1068, which defeated the troops of all the sons of Yaroslav the Wise? Didn't the chronicler write in 1185: "Byashe okanny and godless and damned Konchak went with a lot of Polovtsians to Russia, pohupyasya, yak captivate though grads Rusky and pozheshi fire"?1. The chronicles are full of colorful descriptions of the Polovtsian campaigns, during which

1 "Ipatiev chronicle". PSRL. Vol. II. SPB. 1908, stb. 634.

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during which dozens of Russian cities, including Kiev, were ravaged and burned. But what do the Polovtsian raids mean if our orientalist did not notice the campaigns of Batu against Russia in 1237-1238 (Ryazan-Vladimir lands), 1239 (Left bank of the Dnieper), 1240 (Kiev and Volhynia) - after all, in his careless phrase on page 312, he said that before 1241 (!) there was no danger from the steppe for Russia, and on page 309 he claims that the Polovtsians were not dangerous and that it was "simply absurd"to call for a fight against them in 1185. What is it-a typo, a red word, or a concept?

Oddly enough, but it turns out to be a concept. It turns out that we needlessly exaggerate the scale of Batu's devastation of Russia, and that in fact "the two campaigns won by the Mongols in 1237-1238 and 1240 did not significantly (?) reduce the Russian military potential," as L. N. Gumilev declares on pages 328-329. Is this new view based on any new sources? No, of course not. Did the author pay close attention to the entire sum of old sources? Simultaneously with the book by L. N. Gumilyov, the same publishing house published a collection of articles "Tatar-Mongols in Asia and Europe", where L. V. Cherepnin, an excellent expert on sources, gave a convincing picture of the defeat of Russia by Batu, who destroyed "many cities, they are not numbers" 2 .

L. N. Gumilyov, who was involved in archeology, should have known that the colorful verbal descriptions of contemporaries are documented by huge archaeological material: dozens of Russian urban centers were forever abandoned after the Batu pogrom; the campaigns of 1237-1241 were a disaster that destroyed the military reserves of precisely those principalities that had long accumulated forces to fight the steppe. L. N. Gumilev's complete denial of the Polovtsian danger in the twelfth century and his attempt to downplay the results of the Tatar-Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century are sharply at odds with scientific data and can be explained not by the attraction of new sources, not by the erudition of an orientalist, but by the author's preconceived idea, his favorite deduction (see pp. 6 and 345).

The insight that led L. N. Gumilyov to falsify history contains a very simple idea: "The Word about Igor's Regiment" has nothing to do with Igor or his campaign of 1185 ("a skirmish that had no military or political significance", p. 308). "The Word" is a pamphlet created in 1249 - 1252, "composition of the anti-Nomadic and anti-Nestorian direction", " a literary arrow aimed at the chest of the pious Prince Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky "(p. 341-342); "under the masks of princes of the XII century, figures of the XIII century must hide" (p.334).

For the first time, this set of novelties of historical thought was published in 1966, in the midst of disputes with the outrageous "concept" of Mazon - Zimin, which attributed the creation of the "Word" to the XVIII century.3 Historians correctly ignored this article, which was published in 500 copies, without devoting special reviews to it. But now, when the dating of the 12th-century" Lay of Igor's Regiment " has been confirmed by a number of new studies by linguists (Slavists and Turkologists), literary critics, and historians, the re-publication of Gumilyov's innovations (with a circulation of 9,500 copies) is already alarming. The author himself also felt alarmed, surrounding his theses with many arguments about how to search for historical truth (p. 9-24), and even writing a special instruction on the construction of hypotheses (p.381 - 403), where he defends the right to lack of evidence (p. 402 - 403). The editor did his ward author a disservice by revealing his rapid method of producing books: "In order to achieve what is done in this book by conventional methods, you would have to write at least four monographs that are accessible only to a narrow circle of specialists, and spend your whole life on it. L. N. Gumilyov's method made it possible to avoid such a waste of effort... It can be briefly described as the application of historical deduction to accumulated material, in contrast to the generally accepted inductive method" (preface by S. I. Kropotkin). Rudenko to the book under consideration, pp. 5-6).

The basis, the key position (p. 311) for transferring the "Lay of Igor's Regiment" to the XIII century. for L. N. Gumilyov, such words as "Khinova" and "Deremela"appeared. The word "Khinova", usually considered a memory of the first Turks of our ste-

2 "Tatar-Mongols in Asia and Europe", Moscow, 1970, pp. 185-191.

3 L. N. Gumilev. Mongols of the XIII century and "The Word about Igor's Regiment". "Reports" of the Department of Ethnography of the Geographical Society of the USSR. Issue 2. L. 1966.

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Pei-gunnach, L. N. Gumilev connects with the name of the Jurchen empire Kin-Jin on the Pacific coast. According to the author, this name was brought to Russia by the Mongols, who replaced the sound " k "with " x". Gumilev ignores the fact that the Kin Empire, which was separated from Russia by 5 thousand km, ceased to exist several years before the Mongols appeared in Russia, and that in no source, neither in Russian, nor in eastern or Western Europe, the Tatar-Mongols were never called "Khins". Gumilyov interpreted the word "Deremela" from the same standpoint, which has long been considered a designation for one of the Lithuanian Yatvyaz tribes (Derme).4 L. N. Gumilyov declares this word to be a Mongolian name: "If we assume that among the defeated Roman and Mstislav was a detachment of a Mongolian Baskak named Darmala, who controlled the area that lay in the territory of the Russian Empire . between the country of the Yatvyags and the Polovtsian steppe, there are no contradictions with phonetics and text " (p. 320).

"Khinova" and "Deremela" most insidiously failed L. N. Gumilev, who tried to use them to talk about the Mongolisms of the XIII century in a Russian poem of the XII century. The "Lay of Igor's Regiment" refers to the victories of Prince Roman Mstislavich of Volyn and his neighbor Prince Mstislav over such lands as " Khinova, Lithuania, Yatvyaz, Deremela...", but the fact is that Roman died on October 14, 1205 and, naturally, could not defeat any Mongol Baskaks who appeared here only four decades after his death. If we believe L. N. Gumilev that the author of "The Lay of Igor's Regiment" under the "mask" of Yaroslav Osmomysl meant Daniel Galitsky (p. 336), then how can we assume that he, the author of "The Word", did not know that Daniel's father was killed by the Poles long before the invasion of the Tatars? Not to mention that it would be more natural to put on this mask not on a stranger to Daniel, but on his own father, sung in the same poem - Roman Volynsky.

The "masquerade" conceived by L. N. Gumilyov primarily sins of bad faith. The author did not bother to look at the annals of the twelfth century (there is not a single reference!) and very carelessly used the excellent commentary of D. S. Likhachev, from which he drew some information (see p.307). L. N. Gumilev considers the great Vsevolod, who can "scatter the Volga with oars, and pour out the Don of Sheloma", in the poem as a mask of his grandson Andrey Yaroslavich: "It is more than strange to call Vsevolod the Big Nest, the enemy of Svyatoslav and Igor, to the south" (p. 335). How does L. N. Gumilyov know that in 1185 Vsevolod Yuryevich was hostile to Svyatoslav of Kiev and Igor Seversky? After all, you need to know that after the battle on the Vlen, the enemies reconciled, that " Vsevolod Suddalsky... I have accepted great love with Svyatoslav and have made a match with him, and may I make my own match for his son Mensago. " 5 And the next day, 1183. Vsevolod received great military assistance from Svyatoslav: Svyatoslav's son Vladimir went with Vsevolod to march on Volga Bulgaria with Kiev regiments. Why was it so strange to call on an ally to help you when Konchak was threatening Kiev? Similarly, we will find nothing in the annals about Vsevolod's alleged hostility to Igor, who is married to his own niece.

The height of swagger and complete disregard for sources is the section dedicated to Igor's father-in-law Yaroslav Osmomysl, so solemnly sung by the author of The Word. Regarding the fact that the author of the poem appealed to Yaroslav to stand up for the Russian land, L. N. Gumilev writes :" If the appeal is taken literally, then this is nonsense " (p. 336). This turns out to be nonsense because Yaroslav was allegedly deprived by the boyars "not only of power, but also of his personal life" (p. 336). I will continue quoting this remarkable passage, which depicts the" fast method " of using third-hand sources: "In 1187, the boyars burned the prince's mistress, Nastasya, and forced Yaroslav to disinherit his beloved son (from Nastasya), and after his death, which occurred at the same time, they put the eldest son, a drunkard, on the Galician throne" (page 336). L. N. Gumilyov received some remote information from Galician history, which he hopelessly confused. Let's analyze them point by point. First, the burning of Nastasya did not take place in 1187, but in 1171, 16 years before the death of Yaroslav, who allegedly "happened at the same time." Secondly, during this 16-year period, you can not

4 A.V. Solovyov. Deremela in "The Lay of Igor's Regiment". "Historical notes", 1948, N 25, pp. 100-103.

5 "Ipatiev chronicle". PSRL. Vol. II, p. 571.

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to speak of the weakness of Yaroslav of Galicia; the neighboring princes were very afraid of the terrible prince, and when his son Vladimir ran away from Galich, the neighbors were afraid to shelter the fugitive. In 1173, he was sent away by the Prince of Lutsk, "be afraid to live in your parish", and in 1184, the princes fearfully passed the prince from hand to hand: "Roman, watching out for his father, do not let him sleep with you", (Ingvar), "watching out for his father and do not accept him"; nor Neither Svyatopolk of Turov nor Davyd Smolensky accepted the son of Yaroslav Galitsky. Even the distant Vsevolod Bolshoe Gnezdo did not shelter his own nephew: he "won't find any peace there." How can one write that Yaroslav was deprived of power by the boyars, if Yaroslav expelled the legitimate heir, the favorite of the boyars, Prince Vladimir, and during the journey of two and a half thousand kilometers only one prince, his brother-in-law Igor, dared to accept the exile? The third discrepancy between Gumilev and historical facts is his claim that the Galician boyars in 1187 forced Yaroslav to disinherit his beloved son, that is, Oleg "Nastasich". The chronicle of 1187 tells the exact opposite. The chronicler, echoing the author of "The Lay of Igor's Regiment", paints Yaroslav as a powerful monarch who commands numerous commanders. Yaroslav firmly stated his will to the boyars who were called to the bed of the dying prince: "Behold, az, walking alone with his thin head, held the whole Galich land. And here I order my place to Olgov, my sons to my menshii, and to Volodimir I give Przemysl." After that, Yaroslav Osmomysl forced the boyars to swear an oath to the side son from his mistress - "byashet bo Oleg Nastaschich and be nice to him, and Volodimer did not gozhashe in his will and that division did not give him Galich." After reading all this in the chronicle (or finding out in some other way), L. N. Gumilev gave everything the opposite meaning and expressed such doubt about the author of the "Words about Igor's Regiment": "To call a prince who is deprived of power and influence and is dying of nervous injuries to decisive actions is absurd, but if we If we read "Daniel of Galicia" under the name of Yaroslav Osmomysl, then everything will fall into place" (p.336).

But we must remember once again that by the time of writing The Lay of Igor's Regiment, by the mid-1180s, a decade and a half had already passed since Yaroslav experienced "nervous injuries", and (however absurd this may be from the point of view of L. N. Gumilyov) that in July 1184 Yaroslav sent his voivodes to help Svyatoslav of Kiev against Kobyak. Why did the appeal to a powerful prince, whose daughter could have fallen into the hands of the Polovtsians in the burned Putivl, become absurd and nonsense 10 months after the defeat of Kobyak with the help of Galician troops?

Starting with the consideration of arguments in favor of his constructions, L. N. Gumilev promised to "stand firmly on the ground of indubitable facts" (p. 313). Well, not all promises are easy to keep.

Without touching on the many other carelessness and errors that abound in the forty pages of the book under consideration, I will focus on the issue to which L. N. Gumilyov himself assigns a decisive place. The essence of this question can be stated as follows: L. N. Gumilev thinks that "The Word about Igor's Regiment" was written in the middle of the XIII century. in order to express a veiled disapproval of Alexander Nevsky's friendship with Khan Sartak, a Nestorian Christian (pp. 331-332). This hypothesis is based on the following four strands of "complex deduction": 1. Identification of Troyan in the "Lay of Igor's Regiment" with the Nestorian Christian Trinity (p. 324). 2. Recognition of Oleg Gorislavich as a secret heretic, and Boyan as Oleg's agent who went to the Tien Shan (or beyond the Caucasus) to the Nestorians (p. 324). 322-325). 3. Identification of the Diva "The Legend of Igor's Regiment" with the Mongolian deity (p. 323). 4. Recognition of Prince Igor as a fighter against Nestorianism (p. 332 and 340). While we are aware of the futility of a detailed examination of such propositions, we should still review the author's system of arguments and see if he has managed to "stand firmly on the ground of unquestionable facts"in this section.

The first thesis is not proved by L. N. Gumilev, but is postulated: "Let's assume that "Trojan" is a literal translation of the concept of "trinity", but not from Greek and not by a Russian translator, but by a person whose native language lacked the category of grammatical gender. That is, it is a translation of the term "Uch-Yduk" made by a Turk into Russian " (p.324). Since no evidence is provided, we will not analyze this thesis. One can only express surprise that the obliging Turk, who took care of the Russian people, did not use the Russian term "trinity",

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he invented a Trojan for them. And what did this mysterious translator translate from Turkic? Gumilev declares the Trojan Ages to be the time after the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon in 449 and 451, which anathematized the Nestorians, without any justification (p.325). It is difficult to agree, but there is nothing to refute.

The second thesis is " the deviation of the second most important prince in Russia into heresy "(p. 325). This refers to Oleg Svyatoslavich, who, according to L. N. Gumilev, "was supposed to inherit the golden table of Kiev, and he was declared an outcast, deprived of a place in the succession to the throne" (p. 309). Again, the Russian chronicles are bad: they do not confirm the words of L. N. Gumilyov. In 1078, which is discussed in the "Lay of Igor's Regiment", Oleg was not the second most important prince and did not stand in the line of succession to the throne. Vsevolod, the son of Yaroslav the Wise, reigned in Kiev; after him, his nephews, the sons of Izyaslav, Svyatopolk and Yaropolk, could reign. Next in seniority were the sons of Svyatoslav Yaroslavich: Gleb, David, Roman and - only in fourth place-Oleg. Since David outlived Oleg by eight years, Oleg could not claim either the second place in Russia or a place in the queue for the Grand ducal throne until the end of his life. L. N. Gumilyov's statement about the conflict between Oleg and the Kiev metropolia, which he repeated three times (p. 310, 325 and 344), is also incorrect; Oleg was summoned (and not in 1078, but in 1096) to the court of princes and bishops, and the metropolitan was not even mentioned. Oleg Gorislavich's Nestorianism is not justified by the author in any way. The only proof is L. N. Gumilyov's exclamation to Oleg, who suffered from his cousins, the Khazars and the Greeks: "Should he not have looked for another version of the Christian faith? And then his friend... Boyan found a way "from the middle of the field to the mountains", to where full-fledged Christians lived" (p. 325), that is, Central Asian Nestorians. L. N. Gumilyov thinks that in this way he explains the "dark fragments"of the" Lay of Igor's Regiment".

L. N. Gumilev sees the third proof of the "good acquaintance" of the contemporaries of the "Words about Igor's Regiment" with the Far Eastern symbols that they could only learn from the Mongols "(p. 327) in the fact that Boyan "spreads his thoughts along the tree "(this is supposedly peculiar only to the Mongols), and in the presence of the poem of the image of the evil Diva. Div, according to L. N. Gumilyov, is the devil in his Mongolian version. As proof, he cites a well-known passage from the chronicle (this is his only reference to the chronicle under 1250), which describes the religious customs of the Tatars. But, having made seven mistakes in five lines (instead of" blood-drinking", the typesetters typed "bloodshed", etc.), L. N. Gumilev rapes the text and creates some unprecedented "devil" (p.326), which supposedly corresponds to the Diva "Words about Igor's Regiment". But this creature is not in the text of the chronicle itself - it says that the Tatar nobility worships the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the devil and their ancestors in hell. There are two different categories of objects of worship: first, nature (earth and sky) and, second, hell and its inhabitants with the owner of this place at the head. There is no "devil"; it is made up by Gumilev from the end of one phrase and the beginning of another. Meanwhile, immediately after all the assumptions about Oleg, Boyan and "devil", L. N. Gumilev proceeds to broad conclusions: "So, we have come to a decision. Nestorianism was so well known in Russia in the thirteenth century that readers of Slovo did not need detailed explanations, but caught the author's thoughts by hints" (p.326). This obsessive thought about Nestorianism does not give rest to L. N. Gumilev, and he creates the fourth support of his hypothesis or, better to say, his "insight", since hypotheses are built on the basis of facts.

Four times (pp. 308, 332, 340, 344) L. N. Gumilyov writes about Igor's "pilgrimage" to Kiev after his return from captivity. The pilgrimage is not easy. Happy readers of the thirteenth century understood the essence of it "with half a word" (p. 331): "For example, it was enough to force the hero of the story, Prince Igor, to make a pilgrimage to the icon of the Virgin of Pirogoshcha, so that the reader would understand that this hero was not at all a friend of those baptized Tatars who called Mary "the Mother of God", and thus attitude to the Tatars themselves" (pp. 331-332).

In the special section "The Pilgrimage of Prince Igor" (p.340), the author, without relying on the understanding of readers of the XX century, reveals his understanding of the events of 1185. He, L. N. Gumilyov, is surprised by the alleged discrepancy between the chronicler and the poet's assessment of events: the chronicler talks about the hardships of the Seversk land and Posemye,

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and the author of the" Word " rejoices: "For the sake of the country, hail the merry ones." "Who should I trust?" - exclaims the historian and answers himself: "Of course, the chronicles!", and he goes on to comment on the poem: "One might think that this is an attack against the enemies of the Mother of God," that is, against the Nestorians. Four pages later, Gumilev repeats his explanation again: "In the proposed aspect, the ending of the "Word"is explained. Igor's trip on a pilgrimage to Kiev is described as the greatest achievement... This is pure didactics: here, they say, Olgovich, the grandson of the enemy of the Kiev metropolitanate, a friend of Boyan, "prowling in the path of Troyan," and he was reconciled to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and then the whole Russian land rejoiced. And you, Prince Alexander, should have done the same , and that would have been the end of the filth! This is the meaning of the whole work of genius... "(p. 344). This firework display of names and interpretations requires a point-by-point analysis.

1. Did Igor go to Kiev on a pilgrimage as a pious pilgrim to be reconciled to the Blessed Virgin? After returning from captivity to the ravaged Seversk land, Igor "went to his brother Yaroslav to Chernigov, asking for help on the Posemye." For the same purpose, he went to Kiev to Svyatoslav and Rurik. The Pirogoshchaya church (not the icon) is mentioned in the" Word " as a topographical landmark: Igor leaves Kiev, goes down the Borichev vzvoz and goes to Pirogoshchey on Podil, that is, to the crossing of the Dnieper.

2. How can you compare different sections of the chronicle and "Words" that tell about different events in reverse order, and be surprised at their inconsistency? You do not need to pathetically exclaim - "Who to believe?", but you should carefully read the text about which you are writing. Both in the chronicle and in the" Word " are equally spoken about the troubles and misfortunes, about melancholy and sadness after the defeat of Igor and the arrival of Gzak on Posemye. Both the" Word "and the chronicle express joy over the release of Igor from captivity: "For the sake of the country, the cities are happy"; " and Svyatoslav was glad to see him (Igor)" "and Rurik was also glad to see him"6. And L. N. Gumilev began to compare the chronicler's record about the May campaign Gzak on Posemye with a description of Igor's return from captivity at a later time, when Gzak had already returned from a campaign, and was surprised by the dissimilarity of the passages he had taken out of context and mixed up. There is something to be surprised about.

3. How can we seriously talk about Igor's "reconciliation" with the Mother of God? The chronicle story of the campaign of 1185 depicts Igor as extremely religious, to the point of sweetness pious; he even escapes from captivity, wearing shrines. According to what indirect data (in the complete absence of direct ones) can we talk about his "quarrel" with the Mother of God, which required a long trip (although there were churches of the Mother of God in every city) and reconciliation with her? And did the Russian land rejoice in the fictional reconciliation, and not in the deliverance of the prince from captivity?

Summing up, we see that the attempt to transfer the "Lay of Igor's Regiment" to the middle of the 13th century is not justified and absolutely unproven; the alleged discrepancy between the appeals of the author of the "Word" and the historical reality of 1185 is based on a monstrous distortion of the chronicles, and the desire of L. N. Gumilyov to declare the author of the "Word" at all costs"the enemy of the Central Asian Nestorians is simply bewildering and is also based on unfair manipulation of historical sources. Reading the Russian section of L. N. Gumilyov's book can be called a journey to a fictional realm.

Having completed his chaotic excursion into the ancient Russian world, which was alien to him, L. N. Gumilev, overcoming modesty, writes:: "The reader may have a question: why, in almost two centuries of intense study of the monument, has no one stumbled upon the idea proposed here, which even now seems to many philologists to be a paradoxical speculation? Is the author of this book more learned and capable than the brilliant galaxy of Slavists? No way! It is not a matter of personal ability, but of approach" (p. 345). Apart from the above, there is nothing to add to this assessment that L. N. Gumilev gave to himself, his method of "insights" and writing books "without effort".

There are serious concerns about the appearance of an ill-conceived concept that does not rely on either Russian or Eastern sources. It is impossible so casually, without evidence, indiscriminately, without data for revision, to reject the existing views in our Soviet science on the history of Russian-Polovtsian and Russian-Tatar relations.-

6 Ibid., p. 651.

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in the XI-XIII centuries. The thirteenth chapter of L. N. Gumilyov's book can only bring harm to the gullible reader; it is not "overcoming self-deception", but an attempt to deceive all those who do not have the opportunity to delve into checking the factual basis of L. N. Gumilyov's "insights".

Academician B. A. Rybakov

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