by Mikhail Moshkin
[REGNUM] On December 28, Vladimir Putin signed the previously approved parliamentary renaming of the city of Rostov in the Yaroslavl region to Rostov the Great. The initiative to change the name of the oldest city of the Golden Ring was introduced to the State Duma by Yaroslavl regional deputies back in October, and the bill was approved by the State Duma on November 17.
Adding the epithet "Great" to the official name of the city will not only consolidate the historically established name, but will also correspond to the cultural and historical status - such arguments were given by the government in its response. And, we will add, now there will be fewer reasons to confuse the two Rostovs - the ancient capital city on Lake Nero and the "new building" from the time of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on the Don.
With similar goals in mind, Novgorod was made Great again in 1999. It had been called that way before, unofficially, to clarify that it was not Nizhny that was meant. And now the titles of the Novgorod Republic times have been officially restored. With the expression "Lord (or Gospodar) Veliky Novgorod" known from the epics, everything is clear - it has been recorded since the 14th century, since the fourth century after the city's foundation. But with Rostov the Great, everything, as they say, is not so clear.
This story, like the onions for which the Yaroslavl region is famous, has several layers.
The first, superficial layer: the expression “Rostov the Great” is almost colloquial, and it appeared in order not to confuse the tourist town on the Golden Ring with Rostov-papa.
The second layer is a little deeper. The name "Rostov the Great" appeared many centuries before the fortress of St. Demetrius of Rostov was built on the Don in 1761. Rostov was called Great if not in the legendary eras before the Varangians were called to Russia (in the "Tale of Bygone Years" it is written that Rurik " began to distribute cities to his men: Polotsk to this one, Rostov to this one", which means that a city with this name already existed), then under the first known prince of Rostov and the greatest of the Kiev princes, Yaroslav the Wise. In any case, since time immemorial.
This version is popular, sounds quite plausible, and respects the city, first mentioned in 862, perhaps later than Kiev or Veliky Novgorod, but almost three centuries earlier than Moscow. After all, in Soviet dictionaries and encyclopedias, for example, in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of 1955 or in the Soviet Historical Encyclopedia, they wrote directly: "Known in Ancient Rus under the name Rostov the Great" or "Rostov Yaroslavsky, in the 12th-17th centuries Rostov the Great."
Rostov the Great has long been called so and rightfully so. At least, this is what the “second layer” version says, briefly formulated in a recent TASS report : “Rostov the Great, founded in 862 by Rurik, is the oldest of the cities of the Golden Ring. ”
But the third level is where the revelations begin. If you go to the website of the Rostov Kremlin State Museum-Reserve, you can find an article published in 1999 by its research fellow, historian Sergei Sazonov. The scientist refutes the established version, but no refutations of Sazonov's version have appeared since then. Moreover, the Rostov historian did not "rip off the covers," but reminded us of a half-forgotten fact.
"During the 19th and 20th centuries, the name of the city of Rostov with the definition "Great" became widespread in literature. An earlier use of this definition is found in 1847 in the work of M. Tolstoy " Ancient Shrines of Rostov the Great ". Judging by the fact that the author considered it necessary to explain to the reader the reasons that allowed him to include the definition "Great" in the name of the city, he had no predecessors," wrote Sazonov.
That is, it turns out that not under Rurik, not under Yaroslav the Wise, and not in the 12th century, but in 1847 the name came from the pen of an almost contemporary author. Then, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the name “Rostov the Great” gets into the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedia, and from there into popular and even respectable pre-revolutionary and Soviet publications.
The author of the article about the "ancient shrines of Rostov", from which the name "Rostov the Great" went viral, is Mikhail Vladimirovich Tolstoy, a representative of the count's family, as ramified as the Rurikovich family. A contemporary of the famous distant relatives Lev Nikolaevich and Alexei Konstantinovich, a cousin of Dmitry Andreevich Tolstoy, the chief prosecutor of the Synod and the president of the Academy of Sciences.
Count Mikhail Tolstoy himself, now completely forgotten, was known as a historian, albeit with a narrow specialization - as a church historian. More precisely, a church historian. His most famous work is "The Life and Miracles of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker." The Count also wrote "Lives of the Saints of God Who Lived within the Borders of the Current Yaroslavl Diocese," a description of the holy places of Pskov and Rostov the Great. But strictly speaking, Mikhail Tolstoy was not a medievalist, that is, a specialist in the Middle Ages.
Rostov the Great appeared from the pen of Count Tolstoy and subsequent authors in an atmosphere of a kind of “historical romanticism” of the times of Nicholas I and Alexander II, notes historian Sazonov.
A modern specialist writes: “The fact that this innovation turned out to be so tenacious… indicates the presence of some rational basis in it, satisfying the real need for a more precise identification of the city.” That is, the need not to confuse Rostov in the Yaroslavl province (and then region) with Rostov-on-Don.
So, we are back to the beginning, to the first, most "vulgar" version of the origin of the name? And the antiquity of the name "Rostov the Great" is a fake, like the "Veles Book", "Great Tartary" or "Slavic Vedas"? Not quite so, or even not at all so.
But to understand it you will have to get down to the fourth level.
Mikhail Tolstoy may have been a romantic conservative with a penchant for fantasy, but he was not a falsifier. And in his conclusions, the Count relied on one specific fact. Specifically, on the Ipatiev Chronicle, or more precisely on the entry in it from the summer of 6659 from the creation of the world (1159 AD).
It tells of one of the episodes of the then "game of thrones" - the war for the Kiev "table", which the Rostov-Suzdal prince Yuri Dolgoruky waged with his nephews Izyaslav and Rostislav Mstislavich. At a certain point, the nephews were supported by Yuri Dolgoruky's elder brother, Prince Vyacheslav Vladimirovich.
Prince Yuri Dolgoruky at the city walls. Miniature from the chronicles
And so, in the midst of civil strife, Vyacheslav writes to his brother Yuri, persuading him: abandon your claims to the Kiev throne and go home - "to your Pereyaslavl and to Kuresk (that is, to Kursk)... and there you have Rostov the Great." That is, " and there you have Rostov the Great."
On this basis, Mikhail Vladimirovich Tolstoy in his article of 1847 made Rostov Great again. He does, however, state there that "Rostov is called Great in many places in the chronicles." But this, as modern historians believe, is already the count's fantasy.
After this paragraph of the Ipatiev Chronicle, the combination "Rostov the Great" does not appear in any chronicle or source of all subsequent centuries. Historian Sergei Sazonov, citing the chronicle, believes that "Rostov the Great" is simply "Rostov the Great, rich, populous." But this, we note, is also just a version.
And most importantly, the debates about the antiquity of the name do not cancel out the real historical greatness of this city, whose inhabitants were baptized a little later than in Kiev, and became the conductors of the Orthodox faith and culture throughout the north-east of Europe. From the time of the baptizer of Rus' Vladimir the Saint until the Mongol invasion, Rostov was the main center of the north-eastern possessions of the large (though not very friendly) Rurikovich family.
The Rostov-Suzdal prince was the founder of Moscow, Yuri Dolgoruky, and only under his son Andrei Bogolyubsky did the primacy among cities pass from Suzdal and Rostov to Vladimir. But even later the city remained a stronghold of Russian Orthodoxy, especially from the end of the 17th century, when under Metropolitan Jonah a grandiose bishop's residence was founded, now known as the Rostov Kremlin.
Even after the provincial reform of Catherine II, when the city became a district town, Rostov did not become a backwater - only the Nizhny Novgorod Fair could compete with the Rostov Fair, which arose at the end of the 18th century, and local merchants traded in St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Volga region and even Turkestan. At the same time, one of the main local crafts with an "ancient" flair arose - Rostov enamel, painting on enamel, which became one of Russia's export brands, in demand from Greek monasteries to Parisian exhibitions.
And the fact that it was Rostov that “played the role” of medieval Moscow in Leonid Gaidai’s “non-science fiction, not entirely realistic and not strictly historical film” “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession” is in itself a contribution to Russian culture, now of modern times.
One can agree with senator from the Yaroslavl region Natalia Kosikhina, when in August she called the renaming of Rostov an important step towards a “new prosperous future” for the city itself and its residents – there will be more opportunities for the development of ancient crafts and new start-ups, tourism and more.