Who are the Pechenegs and where did they “disappear”?
The defeat of the Pechenegs near Kyiv in 1036. Miniature from the Radziwill Chronicle
General situation
After the battle of Listven near Chernigov in the autumn of 1024, where the army of Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich, an experienced commander and hero, defeated the regiments of Yaroslav Vladimirovich, the brothers divided Rus'.
Mstislav decided not to continue the civil strife and proposed peace: "Sit on your throne in Kiev, for you are the elder brother, and be on my side." The left bank of the Dnieper, along with the Chernigov lands, remained with Mstislav, while the right bank remained with Yaroslav. Yaroslav, who was known for his great caution, preferred to rule from his loyal Novgorod, where he could receive aid from his allied Varangians.
The brothers no longer quarreled, and Rus' flourished. In 1029, the combined forces of Yaroslav and Mstislav recaptured Tmutarakan. In 1030, Yaroslav's forces easily routed the Ests (the ancestors of the Estonians), who still lived in a tribal system and lacked a common ruler or state. To consolidate his rule in the Baltics, the Grand Duke founded the fortress of Yuryev (Yaroslav's baptismal name, now Tartu).
The Russian prince left local customs untouched, merely stationing his governors and garrisons in the towns to collect tribute. Yaroslav did not forcibly convert the local Finno-Ugric tribes to Christianity, as this could have resulted in a protracted and bloody war in the forests.
Paganism still predominated in Rus' itself; Christianity had barely established itself in the major cities, and then only in the form of dual faith. When Mother Lada became the Mother of God, Rod became God the Father Almighty, Svetly Khors became Christ the Son of God, Perun became St. George the Victorious or the Prophet Elijah, and so on.
The exiled brothers of the Polish King Mieszko Bolesławicz, Bezprym and Otto, took refuge at Yaroslav's court. The Norwegian princes Olaf (his daughter Ingigerda was Yaroslav's wife; Olaf soon died in the struggle for the Norwegian throne) and Harald Hardrada also arrived in Novgorod one after another.
The time soon came to resolve the Polish question. Poland was torn apart by squabbles between feudal lords, Christians, and pagans. The Lusatian and Lutici tribes, subdued by Bolesław the Brave, rebelled. They called on the German Emperor Conrad for help. Among the enemies of the Polish King Mieszko were Russians, Germans, and Czechs.
Yaroslav and Mstislav launched a joint attack on Poland from the east, while the Germans and Czechs attacked from the west. Poland, engulfed in turmoil, was unable to offer serious resistance. Russian troops captured Belz in Galicia. The western part of Galicia-Volhynia was returned to the unified Russian state.
Yaroslav and Mstislav launched an offensive and easily recaptured the Cherven cities of Przemysl and Cherven (Cherven Rus'). Let me remind you that There was no "Ukraine," no "Ukrainian cities," no "Ukrainian princes," no "Ukrainians." The Ukrainian state and ethnic chimera was created only in the 20th century. There was Rus', the Russian land, Russian cities, Russian princes, Russians—Rus'—Rusichi—Rus'.
Yaroslav founded the city of Yaroslavl, now the Polish city of Jarosław in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. Russian troops entered Poland itself, easily defeating local forces of feuding feudal lords. Mieszko fled to Bohemia, and Yaroslav's forces occupied its capital, Gniezno. Bezprym was placed on the throne. Germany received Lusatia, and Bohemia received Silesia and Moravia.
As a result, Rus' recaptured Cherven Rus' and restored its western border. Russian regiments seized vast amounts of booty and trophies. They took revenge for the capture and sack of Kyiv by Bolesław's Western Poles in 1018. Yaroslav resettled numerous Polish captives along the Ros River, strengthening the defensive line at the border between forest and steppe, on the right bank of the Dnieper (the Poros defensive line). The cities of Korsun (now known as Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi), Boguslav, and Yuryev (now Bila Tserkva) were founded.
I remind that The Western Poles were at that time brothers of the Eastern Poles, speaking the same language, worshiping the same gods, and sharing a single spiritual and material culture. Later, the schism occurred between Catholicism (with the full support of the Vatican) and Orthodoxy. But even during the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the language was unified. (Russians and Poles understood each other without translators), it's clear that there were numerous dialects. Ancient traditions and customs were shared.
The crisis in Poland continued. Bezprym ruled for only a year and was assassinated. After his death, the kingdom was divided between Mieszko, Otto, and their cousin Dietrich (Piast). The country was engulfed in mass popular uprisings, which escalated into a veritable peasant war. Pagans crushed the secular and clerical feudal lords who robbed the people and imposed Christianity with fire and sword, and Poland temporarily reverted to paganism. Order was restored only with the aid of the troops of the German Emperor and Yaroslav.
Rus' retained its influence over its neighbor. Russo-Polish relations during this period were good. Yaroslav's sister, Maria (Dobronega), became the wife of the Polish King Casimir (1039–1058).
The joint campaign of Yaroslav the Wise and Mstislav Vladimirovich against Poland, capturing cities and capturing prisoners. 1031. Miniature from the Radziwill Chronicle.
Siege of Kyiv
In 1036, Prince Mstislav died unexpectedly while hunting, and Yaroslav became the sole ruler of all Rus'. Mstislav's only son died before his father, and the Tmutarakan Principality and the Left Bank of the Dnieper passed into the Grand Prince's control.
That same year, Yaroslav's men captured his younger brother, Sudislav, who ruled in Pskov and was suspected of treason. The Pskov Principality was liquidated and subordinated to Novgorod, becoming its "suburb" (subordinate city). Sudislav spent 23 years in prison, outliving Yaroslav the Wise and becoming the last surviving son of Vladimir the Saint. He took monastic vows, becoming the first Rurikovich to do so.
The mighty Mstislav, undefeated, was a terror to the steppe and highlanders. Yaroslav could wage war in the north and west while his brother remained in the south. He was feared, and the Pechenegs subsided. After his death, the nomads suddenly rallied and marched on Kyiv. They breached the border defenses, wasting no time besieging fortified towns; they simply outflanked them.
The capital, where boyars' troops had flocked and peasants had fled, had managed to prepare for defense. The commanders armed their men. The first assaults were repelled, and the siege began.
Yaroslav was in the north at the time, installing his son Vladimir on the Novgorod throne. He was settling Pskov affairs and electing the Novgorod bishop, who became the Russian Luka Zhidyata. The Russian North immediately armed itself, fielding regiments and armies.
Yaroslav returned to the south with a large force. He deployed his army following the example of his brother Mstislav, with three regiments along the front: the Russian Varangians (Rus' of the North; The Lie of the Norman Theory) stood in the center, with the Novgorodians and Kievans on the flanks. The two armies met at the site where Hagia Sophia now stands. "And the battle was fierce, and barely by evening Yaroslav prevailed." The Pechenegs suffered enormous losses and fled. Many steppe dwellers drowned in the Svetitsa and other rivers and streams while pursued by the Grand Duke's troops.
After this crushing defeat, the Pechenegs yielded their position to the Polovtsians. They were partially driven into Byzantine lands and resettled in Hungary.
Yaroslav founded a new large fortress city and Saint Sophia:
"Yaroslav founded the great city of Kyiv, which has the Golden Gates; he also founded the Church of Saint Sophia..."
Yaroslav expands Kyiv. Miniature from the Radziwill Chronicle of the 15th century.
"Disappeared" Pechenegs
A "cut" version of Russian stories, which was introduced to us by German historians (information saboteurs) and their Russian followers like Karamzin, gives all the Eurasian steppes to the Turks, to whom it refers the Khazars, Pechenegs and Polovtsians (Rus' and the Polovtsian Steppe).
Allegedly, after the Khazars, who also "disappeared" to an unknown destination, the entire southern part of the Eastern European Plain was occupied by the Pechenegs, who became known as the "most bitter enemies" of Rus'. However, it was the Pecheneg cavalry that allied with the Russian prince Igor the Old, who was attempting to capture Constantinople at the point of a spear. The Pecheneg light army allied with Svyatoslav Igorevich, helping him crush Khazaria and Bulgaria and fight the Byzantine Romans. At this time, the Pechenegs served as the "regular cavalry" of the Russian princes, covering the flanks of their armies.Pechenegs. Ship Rus and their strength).
Svyatoslav invades Bulgaria with his Pecheneg allies. A miniature from the Manasseh Chronicle, a Bulgarian medieval written work, a translation of the World Chronicle by the Byzantine writer Constantine Manasseh.
The Pechenegs subsequently actively collaborated with the Russian princes. In particular, they fought on the side of Svyatopolk Vladimirovich (called the Accursed by his enemies) against his brother Yaroslav, nicknamed the Wise.
It is known that the Pechenegs were anthropologically Caucasian (white), like the Rus' (Russians). They arrived in the Russian steppes from the east, where they lived between the Volga and the Aral Sea. They then crossed the Volga, displacing the Ugrians from the Don-Dnieper interfluve, and occupied the northern Black Sea region as far as the Danube.
Like a number of other peoples of the southern Russian steppes, the Pechenegs left their mark primarily in historiography and historical works. Archaeologically, there are no traces of the Pechenegs as a distinct, separate ethnic group in the steppes of southern Russia. For example, historian S. Pletneva ("The Polovtsians") noted that not a single Pecheneg settlement or burial ground is known in the southern Russian steppes.
This was explained by the fact that the Pechenegs were nomads who were constantly on the move and left no traces of permanent settlements. Or at least none had yet been found. They claimed they practiced the most archaic, camp-based type of nomadism, where the tribe migrated year-round, summer and winter.
This is obviously foolish—in the Russian steppes, in winter, in temperatures of -20-30 degrees Celsius, with strong winds, blizzards, and snow?! Clearly, the natural and climatic conditions preclude permanent migration. At least seasonal, "winter" camps are necessary. There must also be burial grounds.
This shows, as historian N. I. Vasilyeva notes in her work "Russian Scythia," that "those whom Russian chronicles call 'Pechenegs' were not at all some kind of 'external' peoples to Rus'. They were, in essence, the same southern Russian Yass-Alans, which is why their traces are indistinguishable against the backdrop of ordinary Alan antiquities."
The Pecheneg period in the history of the southern Russian steppes (10th–11th centuries) reveals complete material and spiritual continuity with the Alan-Sarmatian tradition (and further along the Scythian-Cimmerian-Aryan-Hyperborean line): anthropology, burial mounds, the cult of the mounted warrior, material culture—horses or their effigies, inlaid silver belts, heavy bows, straight-bladed sabers, belt pendants, and monuments honoring warriors. The Pechenegs, like their ancestors, led a "Cossack way of life"—one day a peaceful herder, the next—mounted and into battle.
Let's recall that the Pecheneg prince Kurya, who ambushed Svyatoslav at the Dnieper rapids (possibly at the behest of some of the Kyivan elite, the boyars, who did not want the Grand Prince to return), made a cup from Svyatoslav's skull. This custom of making cups from the skull bones of slain enemies is an ancient tradition of the Scythian and Aryan Rus'. It was later adopted by the Turkic tribes, as was the cult of the wolf.
The Pechenegs buried their dead in the same burial mounds where the Sarmatians and Scythians had been buried, meaning they remembered who their ancestors were. Just as today's Russians bury their dead next to their deceased relatives, in the same cemeteries.
Another piece of evidence that the Pechenegs were among the heirs of Great Scythia is their runic writing system, which dates back to the ancient tradition of the civilization of Northern Eurasia.
Some Pecheneg clans did indeed come from the east. But they were part of a once vast civilization—Greater Scythia, which stretched from the Danube to the Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic Ocean to India. Therefore, the Pechenegs easily integrated into the local political environment. Their princes-khans were sometimes friends with, sometimes at war with, the Russian princes, who slaughtered their brothers as the most vicious of enemies.
Thus, the long-held idea that Rus' waged a stubborn struggle against the Pecheneg hordes does not correspond to reality. On the contrary, the Pechenegs helped Rus' crush an old and dangerous enemy, Khazaria. Together with the Pechenegs, the Russians established control over the Black Sea steppe, including Tmutarakan. Russian troops fought alongside the Pechenegs against Byzantium.
For almost the entire 10th century, relations were allied, and became strained during the "Christian" period, when the Pechenegs supported the enemies of Vladimir the Baptist and Yaroslav Vladimirovich, the same Russian princes. The Pecheneg clans also refused to submit to the grand ducal authority, and were therefore defeated. Their remnants were assimilated, becoming part of the vast super-ethnos of the Rus'.
"The Death of Prince Svyatoslav." 19th-century drawing by B. A. Chorikov. The tradition lives on – the Pechenegs are depicted as Scythian warriors.
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