Who are the Polovtsy? Where did the Polovtsy come from, how did they become an instrument in internecine strife in Russia, and where did they eventually go Where did the Polovtsy come from? One of them is that the people that gave the name to the entire conglomerate are far from always the most numerous in it - due to objective or subjective factors, it is promoted to the leading place in the emerging ethnic array, becomes its core. The Polovtsy did not come to an empty place. The first component that joined the new ethnic community here was the population that had previously been part of the Khazar Khaganate - the Bulgarians and Alans. The remnants of the Pecheneg and Guz hordes played a more significant role. This is confirmed by the fact that, firstly, according to anthropology, outwardly nomads of the 10th-13th centuries almost did not differ from the inhabitants of the steppes of the 8th - early 10th centuries, and secondly, an extraordinary variety of funeral rites is recorded in this territory. A custom that came exclusively with the Polovtsy was the erection of sanctuaries dedicated to the cult of male or female ancestors. Thus, from the end of the 10th century, a mixture of three kindred peoples took place in this region, a single Turkic-speaking community was formed, but the process was interrupted by the Mongol invasion. Polovtsy - nomads The Polovtsy were a classic nomadic pastoral people. The herds included cattle, sheep, and even camels, but the main wealth of the nomad was the horse. Initially, they led a year-round so-called camp nomadism: finding a place rich in food for livestock, they located their dwellings there, but when the food was depleted, they set off in search of a new territory. At first, the steppe could painlessly provide for everyone. However, as a result of demographic growth, the transition to a more rational management of the economy - seasonal nomadism - has become an urgent task. It implies a clear division of pastures into winter and summer ones, the folding of territories and routes assigned to each group. Dynastic marriages Dynastic marriages have always been a tool of diplomacy. The Polovtsians were no exception here. However, relations were not based on parity - the Russian princes willingly married the daughters of the Polovtsian princes, but did not send their relatives in marriage. An unwritten medieval law worked here: representatives of the ruling dynasty could only be married to an equal. It is characteristic that the same Svyatopolk married the daughter of Tugorkan, having suffered a crushing defeat from him, that is, being in a deliberately weaker position. However, he did not give his daughter or sister, but he took the girl from the steppe. Thus, the Polovtsians were recognized as an influential, but not equal force. But if the baptism of the future wife seemed even pleasing to God, then the “betrayal” of their faith was not possible, which is why the Polovtsian rulers failed to get the daughters of Russian princes married. Only one case is known when a Russian princess (the widowed mother of Svyatoslav Vladimirovich) married a Polovtsian prince - however, for this she had to run away from home. Be that as it may, by the time of the Mongol invasion, the Russian and Polovtsian aristocracies were closely intertwined with family ties, the cultures of both peoples were mutually enriched. The Polovtsy were an instrument in internecine strife The Polovtsy were not the first dangerous neighbor of Russia - the threat from the steppe has always accompanied the life of the country. But unlike the Pechenegs, these nomads met not with a single state, but with a group of principalities at war with each other. At first, the Polovtsian hordes did not seek to conquer Russia, being satisfied with small raids. Only when in 1068 the combined forces of the three princes were defeated on the Lta (Alta) river, did the power of the new nomadic neighbor become apparent. But the danger was not realized by the rulers - the Polovtsy, always ready for war and robbery, began to be used in the fight against each other. Oleg Svyatoslavich was the first to do this in 1078, bringing the "nasty" to fight Vsevolod Yaroslavich. In the future, he repeatedly repeated this "reception" in the internecine struggle, for which he was named the author of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" Oleg Gorislavich. But the contradictions between the Russian and Polovtsian princes did not always allow them to unite. Volodymyr Monomakh fought especially actively against the established tradition, while he himself was the son of a Polovtsy. In 1103, the Dolobsky Congress took place, at which Vladimir managed to organize the first expedition to the territory of the enemy. The result was the defeat of the Polovtsian army, which lost not only ordinary soldiers, but also twenty representatives of the highest nobility. The continuation of this policy led to the fact that the Polovtsy were forced to migrate away from the borders of Rus After the death of Vladimir Monomakh, the princes again began to bring the Polovtsy to fight each other, weakening the military and economic potential of the country. In the second half of the century, there was another surge of active confrontation, which was led by Prince Konchak in the steppe. It was to him that Igor Svyatoslavich was captured in 1185, as described in the Tale of Igor's Campaign. In the 1190s, raids became less and less, and at the beginning of the 13th century, the military activity of the steppe neighbors also subsided. Further development of relations was interrupted by the Mongols who came. The southern regions of Russia were endlessly subjected not only to raids, but also to the "drives" of the Polovtsy, which devastated these lands. After all, even just the movement of the army of nomads (and there were cases when they went here with the whole economy) destroyed crops, the military threat forced merchants to choose other paths. Thus, this people contributed a lot to shifting the center of the country's historical development. The Polovtsy were friends not only with the Russians, but also with the Georgians. The Polovtsy were noted for their active participation in history not only in Russia. Expelled by Vladimir Monomakh from the Northern Donets, they partially migrated to Ciscaucasia under the leadership of Prince Atrak. Here, Georgia turned to them for help, constantly being raided from the mountainous regions of the Caucasus. Atrak willingly entered the service of King David and even intermarried with him, giving his daughter in marriage. He brought with him not the entire horde, but only part of it, which then remained in Georgia. From the beginning of the XII century, the Polovtsy actively penetrated the territory of Bulgaria, which was then under the rule of Byzantium. Here they were engaged in cattle breeding or tried to enter the service of the empire. Apparently, they include Peter and Ivan Aseni, who raised an uprising against Constantinople. With the tangible support of the Cuman detachments, they managed to defeat Byzantium, in 1187 the Second Bulgarian Kingdom was founded, headed by Peter. At the beginning of the 13th century, the influx of Polovtsy into the country intensified, and the eastern branch of the ethnic group already participated in it, bringing with it the tradition of stone sculptures. Here, however, they quickly became Christianized, and then disappeared among the local population. For Bulgaria, this was not the first experience of "digesting" the Turkic people. The Mongol invasion "pushed" the Polovtsians to the west, gradually, from 1228, they moved to Hungary. In 1237, the recently powerful prince Kotyan turned to the Hungarian king Bela IV. The Hungarian leadership agreed to the provision of the eastern outskirts of the state, knowing about the strength of the impending army of Batu. The Polovtsy wandered in the territories allotted to them, causing discontent among the neighboring principalities, which were subjected to periodic robberies. Bela's heir, Stefan, married one of Kotyan's daughters, but then, under the pretext of treason, executed his father-in-law. This led to the first uprising of freedom-loving settlers. The next rebellion of the Polovtsy was caused by an attempt to force them to Christianize. It was only in the 14th century that they completely settled down, became Catholics and began to dissolve, although they still retained their military specificity and even in the 19th century they still remembered the prayer “Our Father” in their native language. We do not know anything about whether the Polovtsy had a written language. Our knowledge about the Polovtsy is rather limited due to the fact that this people did not create their own written sources. We can see a huge number of stone sculptures, but we will not find any inscriptions there. We draw information about this people from its neighbors. Standing apart is the 164-page notebook of a missionary-translator of the late 13th - early 14th century Alfabetum Persicum, Comanicum et Latinum Anonymi..., better known as the Codex Cumanicus. The time of the appearance of the monument is determined by the period from 1303 to 1362, the place of writing is the Crimean city of Kafu (Feodosia). By origin, content, graphic and linguistic features, the dictionary is divided into two parts, Italian and German. The first is written in three columns: Latin words, their translation into Persian and Polovtsian. The German part contains dictionaries, grammar notes, Polovtsian riddles and Christian texts. The Italian component is more significant for historians, since it reflected the economic needs of communication with the Polovtsians. In it we find such words as "bazaar", "merchant", "changer", "price", "coin", listing goods and crafts. In addition, it contains words that characterize a person, city, nature. The list of Polovtsian titles is of great importance. Although, apparently, the manuscript was partially rewritten from an earlier original, was not created at once, which is why it is not a “cut” of reality, but still allows us to understand what the Polovtsy were doing, what goods they were interested in, we can see their borrowing of Old Russian words and, most importantly, to reconstruct the hierarchy of their society. Polovtsian women Stone statues of ancestors, which are called stone or Polovtsian women, were a specific feature of the Polovtsian culture. This name appeared because of the underlined chest, always hanging on the stomach, which obviously carried a symbolic meaning - feeding the family. Moreover, a rather significant percentage of male statues was recorded, which depict a mustache or even a beard and at the same time there is a breast identical to that of a woman. XII century - the heyday of the Polovtsian culture and the mass production of stone statues, there are also faces in which the desire for portrait resemblance is noticeable. The production of idols from stone was expensive, and less wealthy representatives of society could only afford wooden figures, which, unfortunately, have not come down to us. Statues were placed on the tops of mounds or hills in square or rectangular sanctuaries made of flagstone. Most often they placed male and female statues - the ancestors of the kosh - facing east, but there were also sanctuaries with a cluster of figures. At their foot, archaeologists found the bones of rams, once they discovered the remains of a child. Obviously, the cult of ancestors played a significant role in the life of the Polovtsians. For us, the importance of this feature of their culture is that it allows us to clearly determine where the people roamed. Attitude towards women In Polovtsian society, women enjoyed considerable freedom, although they had a significant part of the household responsibilities. There is a clear gender division of activities both in the craft and in cattle breeding: women were in charge of goats, sheep and cows, men - horses and camels. During military campaigns, all the worries for the defense and economic activities of nomads were thrown onto the shoulders of the weaker sex. Perhaps sometimes they had to become the head of the kosh. At least two female burials were found with wands made of precious metals, which were symbols of the leader of a larger or smaller association. At the same time, women did not remain aloof from military affairs. In the era of military democracy, girls took part in general campaigns, the defense of the nomad camp during the absence of her husband also assumed the presence of military skills. A stone statue of a heroic girl has come down to us. The size of the statue is one and a half to two times the common one, the chest is “tightened”, unlike the traditional image, it is covered with elements of armor. She is armed with a saber, a dagger and a quiver for arrows, nevertheless her headdress is undoubtedly feminine. This type of female warriors is reflected in Russian epics under the name of Polanits. Where did the Polovtsy go? Not a single people disappears without a trace. History does not know cases of complete physical extermination of the population by alien invaders. The Polovtsians have not gone anywhere either. Partly they went to the Danube and even ended up in Egypt, but the bulk remained in their native steppes. For at least a hundred years they retained their customs, albeit in a modified form. Apparently, the Mongols forbade the creation of new sanctuaries dedicated to the Polovtsian warriors, which led to the appearance of "pit" places of worship. In a hill or mound, recesses were dug out, not visible from afar, inside which the pattern of placement of statues, traditional for the previous period, was repeated. But even with the cessation of the existence of this custom, the Polovtsy did not disappear. The Mongols came to the Russian steppes with their families, and did not move as a whole tribe. And the same process took place with them as with the Polovtsians centuries earlier: after giving a name to the new people, they themselves dissolved in it, having adopted its language and culture. Thus, the Mongols became a bridge from the modern peoples of Russia to the annalistic Cumans.

The origin of this group of nomadic tribes has been poorly studied and there is still much unclear here. Numerous attempts to generalize the available historical, archaeological and linguistic material have not yet led to the formation of a unified view on this problem. To this day, the remark of thirty years ago by one of the experts in this field remains valid that “the creation of a (fundamental) study on the ethnic and political history of the Kipchaks from ancient times to the late Middle Ages is one of the unsolved problems of historical science” ( Kuzeev R. G. The origin of the Bashkir people. Ethnic composition, history of settlement. M., 1974. P. 168 ).

It is obvious, however, that the concepts of a people, nationality or ethnic group are inapplicable to it, for the most diverse sources indicate that behind the ethnic terms "Kipchaks", "Kumans", "Polovtsy" hides a motley conglomerate of steppe tribes and clans, in which there were originally both Turkic and Mongolian ethno-cultural components*. The largest tribal ramifications of the Kypchaks are noted in the writings of eastern authors of the 13th-14th centuries. Thus, the Encyclopedia of An-Nuwayri singles out tribes in their composition: Toxoba, Ieta, Burjoglu, Burly, Kanguoglu, Anjoglu, Durut, Karabaroglu, Juznan, Karabirkli, Kotyan (Ibn Khaldun adds that "all the listed tribes are not from the same clan") . According to Ad-Dimashka, the Kipchaks who moved to Khorezm were called tau, buzanki, bashkyrd. The Tale of Bygone Years also knows tribal associations of the Polovtsy: Turpey, Elktukovichi, and others. The Mongolian admixture among the Kuman-Kypchak tribes, fixed by archeology, was quite noticeable to contemporaries. Regarding the Toksoba tribe (“Toksobichi” of the Russian chronicles), there is Ibn-Khaldun’s testimony about his origin “from the Tatars” (in this context, the Mongols). The testimony of Ibn al-Asir is also indicative that the Mongols, wanting to split the Kipchak-Alanian union, reminded the Kipchaks: "We and you are one people and from one tribe..."

*Despite a certain ethnographic and linguistic proximity, these tribes and clans could hardly have had a single ancestry, since the differences in everyday life, religious rites and, apparently, in anthropological appearance were still very significant, which explains the discrepancy in the ethnographic descriptions of the Cumans -Kypchaks. For example, Guillaume de Rubruk (XIII century) put the funeral customs of different ethnic groups under a single “Cuman” funeral rite: “Comans pour a large hill over the deceased and erect a statue of him, facing east and holding a bowl in his hand in front of his navel. They also build pyramids for the rich, that is, pointed houses, and in some places I saw large towers made of bricks, in some places stone houses ... I saw one recently deceased, near whom they hung 16 horse skins on high poles, four from each sides of the world; and they set before him koumiss to drink, and meat to eat, although they said of him that he was baptized. I saw other burials in the direction to the east, namely large squares paved with stones, some round, others quadrangular, and then four long stones erected on the four sides of the world on this side of the square. He also notices that the men among the “comans” are busy with various chores: “they make bows and arrows, prepare stirrups and bridles, make saddles, build houses and carts, guard horses and milk mares, shake the koumiss itself ... make bags in which it preserve, protect also camels and pack them. Meanwhile, another Western European traveler of the XIII century. Plano Carpini, from his observations of the “comans”, got the impression that, compared to women, men “do nothing at all”, except that they have “partly the care of the herds ... hunt and practice shooting”, etc.

Moreover, there is no reliable evidence that they ever had a common self-name. “Kumans”, “Kypchaks”, “Polovtsy” - all these ethnonyms (more precisely, pseudo-ethnonyms, as we will see below) are preserved exclusively in the written monuments of neighboring peoples, and without the slightest indication that they were taken from the vocabulary of the steppe people themselves. Even the term "tribal union" does not fit the definition of this steppe community, since it lacked any unifying center - a ruling tribe, a supra-tribal governing body or a "royal" family. There were separate Kipchak khans, but there was never a khan of all Kipchaks ( Bartold V. V. History of the Turkish-Mongolian peoples. Op. M., 1968. T.V. FROM. 209 ). Therefore, we should be talking about a rather loose and amorphous tribal formation, whose formation into a special ethnic group, outlined in the second half of the 12th and early 13th centuries, was interrupted by the Mongols, after which the Kuman-Kypchak tribes served as an ethnic substrate for the formation of a number of peoples of Eastern Europe, North Caucasus, Central Asia and Western Siberia - Tatars, Bashkirs, Nogais, Karachays, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turkmens, Uzbeks, Altaians, etc.

The first information about the "Kipchaks" dates back to the 40s. VIII century, when the Turkic Khaganate finally collapsed in the Central Asian region (the so-called Second Turkic Khaganate, restored in 687-691 on the site of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, defeated by the Chinese in 630), which could not resist the uprising of subject tribes. The winners, among whom the Uighurs played the leading role, gave the defeated Turks the contemptuous nickname "Kypchaks" *, which in Turkic meant something like "fugitives", "outcasts", "losers", "ill-fated", "ill-fated", "worthless" .

* The earliest mention of the word "Kypchak" (and, moreover, in connection with the Turks) is found precisely in the ancient Uyghur writing— on the "Selenginsky stone", a stone stele with runic (Orkhon) inscriptions, installed in the upper reaches of the river. Selengi by the ruler of the Uighur Khaganate Eletmish Bilge-Kagan (747-759). In 1909, the monument was discovered and studied by the Finnish scientist G. J. Ramstedt. The text embossed on its northern side is seriously damaged, including the fourth line, which has a gap in the initial part. Ramstedt proposed a conjecture for it: “when the Kypchak Turks ruled over us for fifty years ...” At present, this reconstruction is generally recognized, and the word “Kypchak” is usually given an ethnic meaning (“the people of the Kypchak Turks”), which is actually assumed is not necessary, since the ancient Turkic inscriptions do not know cases of merging or identification of paired ethnonyms. Taking into account the aforementioned nominal meaning of the word "Kypchak", the beginning of the line should be read: "when the despicable Turks ...".

But a politically colored term, hardly suitable for ethnic self-awareness, would hardly have been so tenacious if it had not undergone further metamorphoses - and above all, in the perception of the vanquished themselves, who, along with the tribal political structure (in the form of the Turkic Khaganate), also lost the possibility of a reliable ethnic self-identification surrounded by related Turkic-speaking tribes. It is very likely that at least in some tribal groups of the defeated Turks (forced back to the foothills of the Altai), under the influence of a catastrophic defeat that drastically changed their socio-political status, there was a radical breakdown of tribal and political self-consciousness, which resulted in their adoption of the name "Kypchak" as a new autoethnonym. Such a substitution could be facilitated by the notion of an inseparable connection between an object (being) and its name (name), which is characteristic of religious and magical thinking. The researchers note that “the Turkic and Mongolian peoples still have a once very extensive class of amulets. So, children or adults, usually after the death of a previous child or family member (clan), as well as after a serious illness or experienced mortal danger, are given a talisman name with a derogatory meaning or a new protective name, which should mislead the persecuting person (family, clan) supernatural the forces that caused the misfortune. By virtue of such ideas, for the Turks, who experienced the malice of hostile spirits*, the means of salvation could just as well be “accepting a nickname-amulet with a derogatory meaning (“ill-fated”, “worthless”), which most likely arose as a substitution of the ethnonym in ritual practice" Klyashtorny S.G., Sultanov T.I. Kazakhstan: a chronicle of three millennia. Alma-Ata, 1992. From. 120-126 ).

* In the legends of the Seyanto tribe, which at one time also suffered a heavy defeat from the Uighurs, the victory of the latter is directly explained by the intervention of supernatural forces: “Before the Seyanto were destroyed, someone asked for food in their tribe. They took the guest to the yurt. The wife looked at the guest - it turns out that he has a wolf's head (the wolf is the mythical ancestor of the Uighurs.— S. Ts.). The owner didn't notice. After the guest had eaten, the wife told the people of the tribe. Together they chased after him, reached Mount Yudugun. We saw two people there. They said, “We are spirits. Seyanto will be destroyed”… And now the seedyanto are really defeated under this mountain.”

Subsequently, the word "Kypchak" was subjected to further rethinking. This process was associated with a new growth in the political significance of the Turks - "Kipchaks". Having retreated to the south of Western Siberia, they found themselves in the vicinity of the Kimaks *, together with whom, after the death of the Uighur Khaganate (which fell around 840 under the blows of the Yenisei Kirghiz), they created the Kimak Khaganate - a state formation based on the domination of nomads over the local settled population. Approximately at the same time, when the "Kipchaks" again become part of the ruling elite, the semantics of their tribal nickname also changes. Now they began to bring it closer to the Turkic word "kabuk" / "kavuk" - "empty, hollow tree" **. To explain the new etymology of the pseudo-ethnonym (completely unfounded from a scientific point of view), a corresponding genealogical legend was invented. It is curious that later it penetrated even into the epic of the Uighurs, who forgot the original meaning of the nickname "Kypchak". According to the Oghuz legend, narrated in detail by Rashid ad-Din (1247-1318) and Abu-l-Ghazi (1603-1663), Oghuz Khan, the legendary progenitor of the Oghuz, including the Uighurs, “was defeated by of the It-Barak tribe, with whom he fought... At that time, a certain pregnant woman, her husband who was killed in the war, climbed into the hollow of a large tree and gave birth to a child... He became in the position of the child of Oguz; the latter called him Kypchak. This word is derived from the word Kobuk, which in Turkic means "a tree with a rotten core." Abu-l-Gazi also notes: “In the ancient Turkic language, a hollow tree is called “kypchak”. All Kypchaks descend from this boy.” Another version of the legend is given by Muhammad Haydar (c. 1499-1551) in his Oguz-name: “And then Oguz-kagan came with an army to the river called Itil (Volga). Itil is a big river. Oguz-kagan saw her and said: “How can we cross the Itil stream?” There was one burly bek in the army. His name was Ulug Ordu bey... This bek cut down trees... On those trees he settled down and crossed. Oguz-kagan was delighted and said: Oh, be a bek here, be a Kypchak-bek! Not later than the second half of the ninth century. this pseudo-ethnonym was borrowed by Arab writers, firmly rooting it in their literary tradition (“Kipchaks”, as one of the divisions of the Turkic tribes, are already mentioned in the “Book of Ways and Countries” by Ibn Khordadbeh (c. 820-c. 912).

*Apparently, the "bookish" ethnonym, which Arab authors applied to a group of tribes of Mongolian origin, at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th centuries. settled within the borders of the middle reaches of the Irtysh and adjacent regions from the south. Separate hordes of Kimaks wintered on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and in "Shah-name" it is even called the Kimak Sea.
** The image of a tree plays a significant role in the mythology of nomads. Sometimes they even talk about the "obsession" of the Turks with the idea of ​​a tree (The traditional worldview of the Turks of Southern Siberia. Sign and ritual. Novosibirsk, 1990 , With. 43). Some Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia bear the name of some tree with which they associate themselves. The tree as a family sanctuary was also revered in Central Asia among the Uzbeks of the Kangly tribe.

At the beginning of the XI century. the invasion of the Khitans (or Kara-Kytays, immigrants from Mongolia) forced the Kimak-"Kypchak" tribes to leave their homes. Their resettlement went in two directions: south - to the Syr Darya, to the northern borders of Khorezm, and west - to the Volga region. In the first migration flow, the “Kipchak” element prevailed, in the second, the Kimak element. As a result, the term "Kypchak", commonly used in the Arab world, did not become widespread in Byzantium, Western Europe and Russia, where the newcomers were mainly called "Kumans" and "Polovtsy".

The origin of the name "Kuman" is quite convincingly revealed through its phonetic parallel in the form of the word "Kuban" (the Turkic languages ​​are characterized by the alternation of "m" and "b"), which, in turn, goes back to the adjective "cube", denoting pale yellow color. Among the ancient Turks, the color semantics of the name of the tribe often correlated with its geographical position. Yellow color in this tradition could symbolize the western direction. Thus, the pseudo-ethnonym "Kumans" / "Kubans" adopted by the Byzantines and Western Europeans, apparently, was in circulation among the Kimak-"Kypchak" tribes to designate their western grouping, which in the second half of the 11th-early 12th centuries. occupied the steppes between the Dnieper and the Volga. This, of course, does not exclude the possibility of the existence of a special tribe called "Kuban" / "Kuman" - the ancestors of the Kumandins of the Northern Altai ( Potapov L.P. From the ethnic history of the Kumandins // History, archeology and ethnography of Central Asia. M., 1968. C. 316-323; see also: www.kunstkamera.ru/siberia— official website of the Department of Siberian Ethnography of the MAE RAS ). To characterize the relationship between the ethnic terms "Kuman" and "Kypchak", it is also worth noting that in the "Kuman-Kypchak" environment itself, they were by no means synonymous. The epic of the Turkic-speaking peoples does not confuse them either. Only in the late Nogai epic poem "Forty Nogai Bogatyrs" are there such lines: "The country of the Cumans, my Kipchaks, / Let good fellows ride horses!" ( Ait deseniz, aytayym (“If you ask, I will sing…”). Cherkessk, 1971. From. 6 ). However, rather distant and no longer quite adequate ideas about the historical realities of the 13th century are most likely reproduced here.

Despite the fact that the name "Kumans" was well known in ancient Russia, here another name was assigned to them. — "polovtsy". The identity of the Polovtsians and Cumans is indicated by the chronicle expression: “Kumane rekshe Polovtsy”, that is, “Kumans called Polovtsy” (see the article “The Tale of Bygone Years” under 1096, the Laurentian Chronicle under 1185, the Ipatiev Chronicle under 1292) . V. V. Bartold believed that the "Cuman" ethnonymy penetrated into the ancient Russian chronicles from Byzantium. However, this is contradicted, for example, by the presence of "Prince Kuman" in the chronicle list of the Polovtsian khans killed during the 1103 campaign of the Russian army in the steppe.

A curious etymological confusion is associated with the word "Polovtsy", which played such an important role in historiography that it even distorted the ideas of scientists about the ethnogenesis of the "Kumans" / "Kipchaks". Its true meaning turned out to be incomprehensible to the Slavic neighbors of Russia — Poles and Czechs, who, seeing in it a derivative of the Old Slavonic "plav" — straw, translated it by the term "floaters" (Plawci / Plauci), formed from the adjective "floating" (plavi, plowy) — the West Slavic analogue of the Old Russian “sexual”, that is, yellow-white, whitish-straw. In historical literature, the explanation of the word "Polovtsian" from "sexual" was first proposed in 1875 by A. Kunik (see his note on p. 387 in the book: Dorn B. Caspian. About the campaigns of ancient Russians in Tabaristan. // Notes of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. T. 26. Book. 1. St. Petersburg, 1875 ). Since then, the opinion has been firmly rooted in science that “such names as the Polovtsy-Plavtsy ... are not ethnic, but serve only to explain the appearance of the people. The ethnonyms "Polovtsy", "Plavtsy", etc. denote pale yellow, straw yellow, — names that served to designate the hair color of this people "( Rasovsky D. A. Polovtsy // Seminarium Kondakovianum. T. VII. Prague, 1935, With. 253; of the latest researchers see, for example: Pletneva S. A. Polovtsy. M., Science, 1990, With. 35-36). It is well known that fair-haired people are indeed found among the Turks. As a result, on the pages of many historical works of the twentieth century. Polovtsy appeared in the image of "blue-eyed blondes" — descendants of the Caucasians of Central Asia and Western Siberia, who underwent in the VIII-IX centuries. Turkization. Here is just one characteristic statement: “As you know, hair pigmentation is inextricably linked with a certain eye color. Unlike the rest of the Turks, black-haired and brown-eyed, the white-skinned Polovtsians appeared in a golden halo of hair over bright blue eyes ... Such a characteristic color scheme of the Polovtsy, which aroused the admiration of contemporaries, for the historian turns out to be a kind of "genealogical evidence", helping to connect their origin with the mysterious Dinlins of Chinese chronicles (“the blond people” who lived in the 1st-2nd centuries near the northern borders of China. — S. Ts.) ... and through them — with people of the so-called "Afanasiev culture", whose burials of the III millennium BC. e. were discovered by archaeologists in the Baikal region. Thus, in the ocean of time, the Polovtsy appear before us as the descendants of the most ancient Europeans, ousted from East and Central Asia by the once widespread expansion of the Mongoloid peoples. “Turkified” once “Dinlins”, they lost their ancient homeland, changed their language and the general Turkic stream brought them to the expanse of the Black Sea steppes ... already the last remnants of the once strong and numerous, and now dying out and losing their appearance among others, the golden-haired people, already marked by signs of their Asian of the past " ( Nikitin A.L. Foundations of Russian history. M., 2001, With. 430-431).

The long-term adherence of researchers to this view of the origin of the Polovtsy causes only bewilderment. Don't know what to be surprised more — the enacted fantasy of historians who went all out, not only without even indirect evidence of the Caucasoid appearance of the Polovtsy — neighbors of Russia, but also contrary to all anthropological and ethnographic data, unequivocally confirming their belonging to the Mongoloid race, or the illegibility of linguists, who, it would seem, could know that in the case of the origin of the words "Polovtsy", "Polovtsy" from "sexual" stress in they would certainly have had the last syllable (as in the words "Solovets", "Solovtsy" — derivatives of "solovy").

Meanwhile, after detailed research by E. Ch. Skrzhinskaya ( Skrzhinskaya E. Ch. Polovtsy. Experience of the historical study of ethnikon. // Byzantine time book. 1986. T. 46, pp. 255-276; Skrzhinskaya E. Ch. Russia, Italy and Byzantium in the Middle Ages. SPb., 2000, With. 38-87) the question of the origin and original meaning of the ancient Russian name "Polovtsy" can be considered finally resolved. The researcher drew attention to a characteristic feature of the geographical representations of the Kyiv chroniclers of the 11th-12th centuries, namely, their stable division of the territory of the Middle Dnieper into two sides: “this”, “this” (that is, “this”, or “Russian”, which lay like and Kyiv, on the western bank of the Dnieper) and “on” (“that”, or “Polovtsian”, stretching east from the Dnieper right bank to the Volga itself *). The latter was also designated as “he is the floor”, “this floor” (“one side”, “that side”)**. From here it became clear that “the word“ Polovtsian ”is formed according to the habitat of nomads - like another word — “tozemets” (inhabitant of “that land”)”, because “for the Russian people, the Polovtsy were inhabitants of that (“that”), alien side of the Dnieper (about him half = Polovtsy) and in this capacity differed from “their filthy”, black hoods who lived on this ("this"), their side of the river. In this opposition, a specific Russian ethnicon “they floorboards” ***, or simply “floorboards”, was born, which was transformed in the process of development of the Old Russian language into “Polovtsi” ( Skrzhinskaya. Russia, Italy, p. 81, 87). It is quite natural that outside the framework of this geographical tradition, the peculiar South Russian term turned out to be inaccessible to understanding, as a result of which it was misinterpreted not only by Western Slavs, but even by educated people of Muscovite Russia. The latest etymologies of the word "Polovtsy", common among Moscow scribes of the late 15th-early 16th centuries, can be judged from the surviving news of foreign writers. So, the Polish scientist and historian Matvey Mekhovsky heard that “the Polovtsy in Russian means “hunters” or “robbers”, since they often raided the Russians, plundered their property, as the Tatars do in our time” ( "Tractatus diabus Sarmatiis, Asiana et Europiana", 1517). Consequently, his informant was based on the old Russian "fishing" — hunting. And according to Sigismund Herberstein, the ambassador of the Austrian emperor at the court of Grand Duke Vasily III, Muscovites of that time produced the word "Polovtsy" from "field". It should be added that neither then, nor earlier, in the pre-Mongol era, did the Russian people mix the adjective "sexual" here.

* Wed. with the chronicle: “the whole Polovtsian land, what (is.— S. Ts.) between the Volga and the Dnieper.
** “Hearing Svyatopolk coming Yaroslav, build a beschic howl, Russ and Pechenegs, and go against him to Lyubich on the floor of the Dnieper, and Yaroslav [stood] on this [side]” (article under 1015).
*** In the Kyiv Chronicle under 1172, it is said that Prince Gleb Yuryevich "went to the other side [of the Dnieper] to join him with the Polovtsy." The Dictionary of M. Fasmer also fixes the concept of "Onopolets, Onopolovets" - living on the other side of the river, derived from the Church Slavonic "about his gender" (Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. M., 1971. T. 3, p. 142).

The complete ignorance of the "Kipchaks" by ancient Russian literature indicates that in Russia initially and throughout the entire "Polovtsian" period of relations with the steppe, they dealt exclusively with the Kimak (Kuman) group of Polovtsy. In this regard, the “Polovtsy Yemyakove” mentioned in the annals are indicative. The Yemeks were one of the dominant tribes in the Kimak tribal union.

To be continued

Where did the Polovtsy come from, how did they become a tool in internecine strife in Russia, and where did they eventually go

Where did the Polovtsy come from

The formation of the Polovtsian ethnos took place according to the same patterns for all the peoples of the Middle Ages and antiquity. One of them is that the people that gave the name to the entire conglomerate are far from always the most numerous in it - due to objective or subjective factors, it is promoted to the leading place in the emerging ethnic array, becomes its core. The Polovtsy did not come to an empty place.

The first component that joined the new ethnic community here was the population that had previously been part of the Khazar Khaganate - the Bulgarians and Alans. The remnants of the Pecheneg and Guz hordes played a more significant role. This is confirmed by the fact that, firstly, according to anthropology, outwardly nomads of the 10th-13th centuries almost did not differ from the inhabitants of the steppes of the 8th - early 10th centuries, and secondly, an extraordinary variety of funeral rites is recorded in this territory. A custom that came exclusively with the Polovtsy was the erection of sanctuaries dedicated to the cult of male or female ancestors. Thus, from the end of the 10th century, a mixture of three kindred peoples took place in this region, a single Turkic-speaking community was formed, but the process was interrupted by the Mongol invasion.

Polovtsy - nomads
The Polovtsians were a classic nomadic pastoral people. The herds included cattle, sheep, and even camels, but the main wealth of the nomad was the horse. Initially, they led a year-round so-called camp nomadism: finding a place rich in food for livestock, they located their dwellings there, but when the food was depleted, they set off in search of a new territory. At first, the steppe could painlessly provide for everyone. However, as a result of demographic growth, the transition to a more rational management of the economy - seasonal nomadism - has become an urgent task. It implies a clear division of pastures into winter and summer ones, the folding of territories and routes assigned to each group.

Dynastic marriages
Dynastic marriages have always been a tool of diplomacy. The Polovtsians were no exception here. However, relations were not based on parity - the Russian princes willingly married the daughters of the Polovtsian princes, but did not send their relatives in marriage. An unwritten medieval law worked here: representatives of the ruling dynasty could only be married to an equal. It is characteristic that the same Svyatopolk married the daughter of Tugorkan, having suffered a crushing defeat from him, that is, being in a deliberately weaker position. However, he did not give his daughter or sister, but he took the girl from the steppe. Thus, the Polovtsians were recognized as an influential, but not equal force.

But if the baptism of the future wife seemed even pleasing to God, then the “betrayal” of their faith was not possible, which is why the Polovtsian rulers failed to get the daughters of Russian princes married. Only one case is known when a Russian princess (the widowed mother of Svyatoslav Vladimirovich) married a Polovtsian prince - however, for this she had to run away from home.

Be that as it may, by the time of the Mongol invasion, the Russian and Polovtsian aristocracies were closely intertwined with family ties, the cultures of both peoples were mutually enriched.

The Polovtsians were a tool in internecine strife
The Polovtsians were not the first dangerous neighbor of Russia - the threat from the steppe has always accompanied the life of the country. But unlike the Pechenegs, these nomads met not with a single state, but with a group of principalities at war with each other. At first, the Polovtsian hordes did not seek to conquer Russia, being satisfied with small raids. Only when in 1068 the combined forces of the three princes were defeated on the Lta (Alta) river, did the power of the new nomadic neighbor become apparent. But the danger was not realized by the rulers - the Polovtsy, always ready for war and robbery, began to be used in the fight against each other. Oleg Svyatoslavich was the first to do this in 1078, bringing the "nasty" to fight Vsevolod Yaroslavich. In the future, he repeatedly repeated this "reception" in the internecine struggle, for which he was named the author of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" Oleg Gorislavich.
But the contradictions between the Russian and Polovtsian princes did not always allow them to unite. Volodymyr Monomakh fought especially actively against the established tradition, while he himself was the son of a Polovtsy. In 1103, the Dolobsky Congress took place, at which Vladimir managed to organize the first expedition to the territory of the enemy.

The result was the defeat of the Polovtsian army, which lost not only ordinary soldiers, but also twenty representatives of the highest nobility. The continuation of this policy led to the fact that the Polovtsians were forced to migrate away from the borders of Rus
After the death of Vladimir Monomakh, the princes again began to bring the Polovtsians to fight each other, weakening the military and economic potential of the country. In the second half of the century, there was another surge of active confrontation, which was led by Prince Konchak in the steppe. It was to him that Igor Svyatoslavich was captured in 1185, as described in the Tale of Igor's Campaign. In the 1190s, raids became less and less, and at the beginning of the 13th century, the military activity of the steppe neighbors also subsided.
Further development of relations was interrupted by the Mongols who came. The southern regions of Russia were endlessly subjected not only to raids, but also to the "drives" of the Polovtsy, which devastated these lands. After all, even just the movement of the army of nomads (and there were cases when they went here with the whole economy) destroyed crops, the military threat forced merchants to choose other paths. Thus, this people contributed a lot to shifting the center of the country's historical development.

The Polovtsy were friends not only with the Russians, but also with the Georgians
The Polovtsians were noted for their active participation in history not only in Russia. Expelled by Vladimir Monomakh from the Northern Donets, they partially migrated to Ciscaucasia under the leadership of Prince Atrak. Here, Georgia turned to them for help, constantly being raided from the mountainous regions of the Caucasus. Atrak willingly entered the service of King David and even intermarried with him, giving his daughter in marriage. He brought with him not the entire horde, but only part of it, which then remained in Georgia.

From the beginning of the XII century, the Polovtsy actively penetrated the territory of Bulgaria, which was then under the rule of Byzantium. Here they were engaged in cattle breeding or tried to enter the service of the empire. Apparently, they include Peter and Ivan Aseni, who raised an uprising against Constantinople. With the tangible support of the Cuman detachments, they managed to defeat Byzantium, in 1187 the Second Bulgarian Kingdom was founded, headed by Peter.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the influx of Polovtsy into the country intensified, and the eastern branch of the ethnic group already participated in it, bringing with it the tradition of stone sculptures. Here, however, they quickly became Christianized, and then disappeared among the local population. For Bulgaria, this was not the first experience of "digesting" the Turkic people. The Mongol invasion "pushed" the Polovtsians to the west, gradually, from 1228, they moved to Hungary. In 1237, the recently powerful prince Kotyan turned to the Hungarian king Bela IV. The Hungarian leadership agreed to the provision of the eastern outskirts of the state, knowing about the strength of the impending army of Batu.
The Polovtsy wandered in the territories allotted to them, causing discontent among the neighboring principalities, which were subjected to periodic robberies. Bela's heir, Stefan, married one of Kotyan's daughters, but then, under the pretext of treason, executed his father-in-law. This led to the first uprising of freedom-loving settlers. The next rebellion of the Polovtsy was caused by an attempt to force them to Christianize. It was only in the 14th century that they completely settled down, became Catholics and began to dissolve, although they still retained their military specificity and even in the 19th century they still remembered the prayer “Our Father” in their native language.

We do not know anything about whether the Polovtsy had a written language
Our knowledge of the Polovtsy is rather limited due to the fact that this people has not created their own written sources. We can see a huge number of stone sculptures, but we will not find any inscriptions there. We draw information about this people from its neighbors. Standing apart is the 164-page notebook of a missionary-translator of the late 13th - early 14th century Alfabetum Persicum, Comanicum et Latinum Anonymi..., better known as the Codex Cumanicus. The time of the appearance of the monument is determined by the period from 1303 to 1362, the place of writing is the Crimean city of Kafu (Feodosia). By origin, content, graphic and linguistic features, the dictionary is divided into two parts, Italian and German. The first is written in three columns: Latin words, their translation into Persian and Polovtsian. The German part contains dictionaries, grammar notes, Polovtsian riddles and Christian texts. The Italian component is more significant for historians, since it reflected the economic needs of communication with the Polovtsians. In it we find such words as "bazaar", "merchant", "changer", "price", "coin", listing goods and crafts. In addition, it contains words that characterize a person, city, nature. The list of Polovtsian titles is of great importance.
Although, apparently, the manuscript was partially rewritten from an earlier original, was not created at once, which is why it is not a “cut” of reality, but still allows us to understand what the Polovtsy were doing, what goods they were interested in, we can see their borrowing of Old Russian words and, most importantly, to reconstruct the hierarchy of their society.
Polovtsian women
A specific feature of the Polovtsian culture was the stone statues of ancestors, which are called stone or Polovtsian women. This name appeared because of the underlined chest, always hanging on the stomach, which obviously carried a symbolic meaning - feeding the family. Moreover, a rather significant percentage of male statues was recorded, which depict a mustache or even a beard and at the same time there is a breast identical to that of a woman.
XII century - the heyday of the Polovtsian culture and the mass production of stone statues, there are also faces in which the desire for portrait resemblance is noticeable. The production of idols from stone was expensive, and less wealthy representatives of society could only afford wooden figures, which, unfortunately, have not come down to us. Statues were placed on the tops of mounds or hills in square or rectangular sanctuaries made of flagstone. Most often they placed male and female statues - the ancestors of the kosh - facing east, but there were also sanctuaries with a cluster of figures. At their foot, archaeologists found the bones of rams, once they discovered the remains of a child. Obviously, the cult of ancestors played a significant role in the life of the Polovtsians. For us, the importance of this feature of their culture is that it allows us to clearly determine where the people roamed.

Attitude towards women
In Polovtsian society, women enjoyed considerable freedom, although they had a significant part of the household duties. There is a clear gender division of activities both in the craft and in cattle breeding: women were in charge of goats, sheep and cows, men - horses and camels. During military campaigns, all the worries for the defense and economic activities of nomads were thrown onto the shoulders of the weaker sex. Perhaps sometimes they had to become the head of the kosh. At least two female burials were found with wands made of precious metals, which were symbols of the leader of a larger or smaller association. At the same time, women did not remain aloof from military affairs. In the era of military democracy, girls took part in general campaigns, the defense of the nomad camp during the absence of her husband also assumed the presence of military skills. A stone statue of a heroic girl has come down to us. The size of the statue is one and a half to two times the common one, the chest is “tightened”, unlike the traditional image, it is covered with elements of armor. She is armed with a saber, a dagger and a quiver for arrows, nevertheless her headdress is undoubtedly feminine. This type of female warriors is reflected in Russian epics under the name of Polanits.

Where did the Polovtsy go?
No nation disappears without a trace. History does not know cases of complete physical extermination of the population by alien invaders. The Polovtsians have not gone anywhere either. Partly they went to the Danube and even ended up in Egypt, but the bulk remained in their native steppes. For at least a hundred years they retained their customs, albeit in a modified form. Apparently, the Mongols forbade the creation of new sanctuaries dedicated to the Polovtsian warriors, which led to the appearance of "pit" places of worship. In a hill or mound, recesses were dug out, not visible from afar, inside which the pattern of placement of statues, traditional for the previous period, was repeated.

But even with the cessation of the existence of this custom, the Polovtsy did not disappear. The Mongols came to the Russian steppes with their families, and did not move as a whole tribe. And the same process took place with them as with the Polovtsians centuries earlier: after giving a name to the new people, they themselves dissolved in it, having adopted its language and culture. Thus, the Mongols became a bridge from the modern peoples of Russia to the annalistic Cumans.

Descendants of the ferocious Polovtsians: who are they and what do they look like today.

The Polovtsians are one of the most mysterious steppe peoples, which entered Russian history thanks to raids on principalities and repeated attempts by the rulers of Russian lands, if not to defeat the steppe people, then at least to negotiate with them. The Polovtsy themselves were defeated by the Mongols and settled over a significant part of the territory of Europe and Asia. Now there is no people who could directly trace their ancestry to the Polovtsians. And yet they certainly have descendants.

Polovtsy. Nicholas Roerich.

In the steppe (Dashti-Kipchak - Kipchak, or Polovtsian steppe) lived not only the Polovtsy, but also other peoples, who are either united with the Polovtsians, or considered independent: for example, the Cumans and Kuns. Most likely, the Polovtsians were not a "monolithic" ethnic group, but were divided into tribes. Arab historians of the early Middle Ages distinguish 11 tribes, Russian chronicles also indicate that different tribes of the Polovtsy lived west and east of the Dnieper, east of the Volga, near the Seversky Donets.

Location map of nomadic tribes.

Many Russian princes were descendants of the Polovtsians - their fathers often married noble Polovtsian girls. Not so long ago, a dispute broke out about how Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky actually looked. According to the reconstruction of Mikhail Gerasimov, in his appearance Mongoloid features were combined with Caucasoid ones. However, some modern researchers, for example, Vladimir Zvyagin, believe that there were no Mongoloid features in the appearance of the prince at all.

What Andrey Bogolyubsky looked like: reconstruction by V.N. Zvyagin (left) and M.M. Gerasimov (right).

What did the Polovtsy themselves look like?

Khan Polovtsy reconstruction.

There is no consensus among researchers on this matter. In the sources of the XI-XII centuries, the Polovtsians are often called "yellow". The Russian word also probably comes from the word "sexual", that is, yellow, straw.

Armor and weapons of the Polovtsian warrior.

Some historians believe that among the ancestors of the Polovtsy were the “Dinlins” described by the Chinese: people who lived in Southern Siberia and were blondes. But the authoritative researcher of the Polovtsy Svetlana Pletneva, who has repeatedly worked with materials from the mounds, does not agree with the hypothesis of the "fairness" of the Polovtsian ethnos. “Yellow” can be a self-name of a part of the nationality in order to distinguish itself, to oppose the rest (in the same period there were, for example, “black” Bulgarians).

Polovtsian town.

According to Pletneva, the bulk of the Polovtsians were brown-eyed and dark-haired - these are Turks with an admixture of Mongoloidity. It is quite possible that among them were people of different types of appearance - the Polovtsians willingly took Slav women as wives and concubines, though not of princely families. The princes never gave their daughters and sisters to the steppes. In the Polovtsian pastures there were also Russians who were captured in battle, as well as slaves.

Polovtsian from Sarkel, reconstruction

The Hungarian king from the Polovtsians and the "Polovtsian Hungarians"
Part of the history of Hungary is directly connected with the Cumans. Several Polovtsian families settled on its territory already in 1091. In 1238, pressed by the Mongols, the Polovtsy, led by Khan Kotyan, settled there with the permission of King Bela IV, who needed allies.
In Hungary, as in some other European countries, the Polovtsians were called "Kumans". The lands on which they began to live were called Kunság (Kunshag, Kumaniya). In total, up to 40 thousand people arrived at the new place of residence.

Khan Kotyan even gave his daughter to Bela's son Istvan. He and the Polovtsian Irzhebet (Ershebet) had a boy, Laszlo. For his origin, he was nicknamed "Kun".

King Laszlo Kun.

According to his images, he did not look at all like a Caucasian without an admixture of Mongoloid features. Rather, these portraits remind us of those familiar from textbooks on the history of the reconstruction of the external appearance of the steppes.

Laszlo's personal guard consisted of his fellow tribesmen, he appreciated the customs and traditions of the people of his mother. Despite the fact that he was officially a Christian, he and other Cumans even prayed in Cuman (Polovtsian).

The Cumans-Cumans gradually assimilated. For some time, until the end of the 14th century, they wore national clothes, lived in yurts, but gradually adopted the culture of the Hungarians. The Cuman language was supplanted by Hungarian, communal lands became the property of the nobility, who also wanted to look "more Hungarian". The Kunshag region in the 16th century was subordinated to the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the wars, up to half of the Polovtsy-Kipchaks died. A century later, the language completely disappeared.

Now the distant descendants of the steppes do not outwardly differ from the rest of the inhabitants of Hungary - they are Caucasians.

Cumans in Bulgaria

Polovtsy arrived in Bulgaria for several centuries in a row. In the XII century, the territory was under the rule of Byzantium, the Polovtsian settlers were engaged in cattle breeding there, tried to enter the service.

Engraving from an ancient chronicle.

In the XIII century, the number of steppe dwellers who moved to Bulgaria increased. Some of them came from Hungary after the death of Khan Kotyan. But in Bulgaria, they quickly mixed with the locals, adopted Christianity and lost their special ethnic features. It is possible that Polovtsian blood flows in a certain number of Bulgarians now. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to accurately identify the genetic characteristics of the Polovtsy, because there are plenty of Turkic features in the Bulgarian ethnos due to its origin. Bulgarians also have a Caucasoid appearance.

Bulgarian girls.

Polovtsian blood in Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Uzbeks and Tatars

Polovtsian warrior in the captured Russian city.

Many Cumans did not migrate - they mixed with the Tatar-Mongols. The Arab historian Al-Omari (Shihabuddin al-Umari) wrote that, having joined the Golden Horde, the Polovtsians switched to the position of subjects. The Tatar-Mongols who settled on the territory of the Polovtsian steppe gradually mixed with the Polovtsians. Al-Omari concludes that after several generations the Tatars began to look like the Polovtsians: “as if from the same (with them) clan”, because they began to live on their lands.

In the future, these peoples settled in different territories and took part in the ethnogenesis of many modern nations, including the Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Kirghiz and other Turkic-speaking peoples. The types of appearance for each of these (and those listed in the title of the section) nations are different, but in each there is a share of Polovtsian blood.

Crimean Tatars.

The Polovtsy are also among the ancestors of the Crimean Tatars. The steppe dialect of the Crimean Tatar language belongs to the Kypchak group of Turkic languages, and Kypchak is a descendant of the Polovtsian. The Polovtsy mixed with the descendants of the Huns, Pechenegs, Khazars. Now the majority of the Crimean Tatars are Caucasoids (80%), the steppe Crimean Tatars have a Caucasoid-Mongoloid appearance.

The Polovtsy remained in the history of Russia as the worst enemies of Vladimir Monomakh and cruel mercenaries from the times of internecine wars. The tribes that worshiped the sky terrorized the Old Russian state for almost two centuries.

Who are the Polovtsy?

In 1055, Prince Vsevolod Yaroslavich of Pereyaslavl, returning from a campaign against the Torques, met a detachment of new nomads, previously unknown in Russia, led by Khan Bolush. The meeting was peaceful, the new "acquaintances" received the Russian name "Polovtsy" and the future neighbors dispersed. Since 1064, in Byzantine and since 1068 in Hungarian sources, Cumans and Kuns are mentioned, also previously unknown in Europe. They were to play a significant role in the history of Eastern Europe, turning into formidable enemies and insidious allies of the ancient Russian princes, becoming mercenaries in a fratricidal civil strife. The presence of the Polovtsians, Kumans, Kuns, who appeared and disappeared at the same time, did not go unnoticed, and the questions of who they were and where they came from still worry historians.

According to the traditional version, all four of the above-mentioned peoples were a single Turkic-speaking people, which was called differently in different parts of the world. Their ancestors, the Sars, lived on the territory of Altai and the eastern Tien Shan, but the state they formed was defeated by the Chinese in 630. The rest went to the steppes of eastern Kazakhstan, where they got their new name "Kipchaks", which, according to legend, means "ill-fated". Under this name, they are mentioned in many medieval Arab-Persian sources. However, both in Russian and in Byzantine sources, the Kipchaks are not found at all, and a people similar in description is called "Kumans", "Kuns" or "Polovtsians". Moreover, the etymology of the latter remains unclear. Perhaps the word comes from the old Russian “polov”, which means “yellow”. According to scientists, this may indicate that this people had light hair color and belonged to the western branch of the Kipchaks - “Sary-Kipchaks” (Kuns and Cumans belonged to the eastern and had a Mongoloid appearance). According to another version, the term "Polovtsy" could come from the familiar word "field", and designate all the inhabitants of the fields, regardless of their tribal affiliation.

The official version has many weaknesses. Firstly, if all the above-mentioned peoples initially represented a single people - the Kipchaks, then in this case, how to explain that neither Byzantium, nor Russia, nor Europe, this toponym was unknown. In the countries of Islam, where the Kipchaks were known firsthand, on the contrary, they did not hear about the Polovtsians or Cumans at all. Archeology comes to the aid of the unofficial version, according to which, the main archaeological finds of the Polovtsian culture - stone women erected on mounds in honor of the soldiers who fell in battle, were characteristic only of the Polovtsy and Kipchaks. The Cumans, despite their worship of the sky and the cult of the mother goddess, did not leave such monuments.

All these arguments "against" allow many modern researchers to move away from the canon of studying the Polovtsians, Cumans and Kuns as one and the same tribe. According to the candidate of sciences, Evstigneev, the Polovtsy-Sars are the Turgesh, who for some reason fled from their territories to Semirechie.

Weapons of civil strife

The Polovtsians had no intention of remaining a "good neighbor" of Kievan Rus. As befits nomads, they soon mastered the tactics of sudden raids: they set up ambushes, attacked by surprise, swept away an unprepared enemy in their path. Armed with bows and arrows, sabers and short spears, the Polovtsian warriors rushed into battle, at a gallop bombarding the enemy with a bunch of arrows. They went "raid" through the cities, robbing and killing people, driving them into captivity.

In addition to the shock cavalry, their strength also lay in the developed strategy, as well as in new technologies for that time, such as heavy crossbows and "liquid fire", which they borrowed, obviously, from China since the days of living in Altai.

However, as long as centralized power was maintained in Russia, thanks to the order of succession to the throne established under Yaroslav the Wise, their raids remained only a seasonal disaster, and certain diplomatic relations even began between Russia and the nomads. A lively trade was carried on, the population communicated widely in the border regions Among the Russian princes, dynastic marriages with the daughters of the Polovtsian khans became popular. The two cultures coexisted in a fragile neutrality that could not last long.

In 1073, the triumvirate of the three sons of Yaroslav the Wise: Izyaslav, Svyatoslav, Vsevolod, to whom he bequeathed Kievan Rus, fell apart. Svyatoslav and Vsevolod accused their older brother of conspiring against them and striving to become "autocratic", like his father. This was the birth of a great and long turmoil in Russia, which the Polovtsy took advantage of. Without taking sides to the end, they willingly took the side of the man who promised them big "profits". So, the first prince who resorted to their help, Prince Oleg Svyatoslavich, whom his uncles disinherited, allowed them to rob and burn Russian cities, for which he was nicknamed Oleg Gorislavich.

Subsequently, the call of the Cumans as allies in the internecine struggle became a common practice. In alliance with the nomads, Yaroslav's grandson Oleg Gorislavich expelled Vladimir Monomakh from Chernigov, he also got Murom, driving out Vladimir's son Izyaslav. As a result, the warring princes faced a real danger of losing their own territories. In 1097, on the initiative of Vladimir Monomakh, then Prince of Pereslavl, the Lubech Congress was convened, which was supposed to end the internecine war. The princes agreed that from now on everyone had to own his "fatherland". Even the prince of Kyiv, who formally remained the head of state, could not violate the borders. Thus, fragmentation was officially fixed in Russia with good intentions. The only thing that even then united the Russian lands was a common fear of the Polovtsian invasions.

Monomakh's War

The most ardent enemy of the Polovtsians among the Russian princes was Vladimir Monomakh, during whose great reign the practice of using the Polovtsian troops for the purpose of fratricide was temporarily stopped. Chronicles, which, however, actively corresponded with him, tell about him as the most influential prince in Russia, who was known as a patriot who spared neither strength nor life for the defense of Russian lands. Having suffered defeats from the Polovtsians, in alliance with whom stood his brother and his worst enemy - Oleg Svyatoslavich, he developed a completely new strategy in the fight against the nomads - to fight on their own territory. Unlike the Polovtsian detachments, which were strong in sudden raids, the Russian squads gained an advantage in open battle. The Polovtsian "lava" broke against the long spears and shields of Russian foot soldiers, and the Russian cavalry, surrounding the steppes, did not allow them to run away on their famous light-winged horses. Even the time of the campaign was thought out: until early spring, when the Russian horses, which were fed with hay and grain, were stronger than the Polovtsian horses that were emaciated on pasture.

Monomakh's favorite tactics also gave an advantage: he provided the enemy with the opportunity to attack first, preferring defense at the expense of footmen, since by attacking the enemy exhausted himself much more than the defending Russian warrior. During one of these attacks, when the infantry took the main blow, the Russian cavalry went around from the flanks and hit the rear. This decided the outcome of the battle. Vladimir Monomakh needed just a few trips to the Polovtsian lands to rid Russia of the Polovtsian threat for a long time. In the last years of his life, Monomakh sent his son Yaropolk with an army beyond the Don, on a campaign against the nomads, but he did not find them there. The Polovtsy migrated away from the borders of Russia, to the Caucasian foothills.

"Polovtsian women", like other stone women - not necessarily the image of a woman, among them there are many male faces. Even the very etymology of the word “woman” comes from the Turkic “balbal”, which means “ancestor”, “grandfather-father”, and is associated with the cult of veneration of ancestors, and not at all with female beings. Although, according to another version, stone women are traces of a matriarchy that has gone into the past, as well as a cult of veneration of the mother goddess, among the Polovtsians - Umai, who personified the earthly principle. The only obligatory attribute is the hands folded on the stomach, holding the bowl for sacrifices, and the chest, which is also found in men, and is obviously associated with the feeding of the clan.

According to the beliefs of the Polovtsy, who professed shamanism and tengrism (worship of the sky), the dead were endowed with a special power that allowed them to help their descendants. Therefore, a Polovtsian passing by had to make a sacrifice to the statue (judging by the finds, these were usually rams) in order to enlist its support. Here is how the 12th-century Azerbaijani poet Nizami, whose wife was a Polovtsy, describes this ceremony:
“And before the idol the Kipchak back bends...
The rider hesitates before him, and, holding his horse,
He stoops an arrow, bending down, among the grasses,
Every shepherd who drives the flock knows
Why leave a sheep in front of an idol?