Moscow, Nauka Publishing House, 1969, 439 p. The print run is 2200. Price 1 rub. 60 kopecks.

July 26, 1971 marks the twenty-first anniversary of the discovery of the first birch bark letter. The sensation of discovery has long been the property of popular science literature, but even now, when the number of documents that have become known on birch bark has reached 506 (488 of them in Novgorod), the discovery of each new text

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Interest in new finds of birch bark letters is increasing every year because the rapid expansion of their number increasingly demonstrates the breadth and depth of the possibilities of this historical source. The process of collecting this source, introducing newly found certificates to the scientific literature, reading and commenting on them, in themselves strengthen the idea of the infinity of the flow of new information, next to which what is known now (meaning traditional sources) will one day seem like a small stream. But if you look at the total number of birch bark letters known today, not from the point of view of the future, but from the point of view of today, you can see how much new they have already given in comparison with what historiography had some twenty years ago.

The work of the famous Soviet researcher of the Russian Middle Ages, L. V. Cherepnin, allows us to comprehensively evaluate this new historical source. His book is the first attempt to classify birch bark texts published by 1965 (415 documents). Undoubtedly, any large group of sources can be organized in different ways, depending on the tasks facing the researcher. The purpose of the book by L. V. Cherepnin is to characterize the complex of birch bark letters as a source of new knowledge about the social system of Ancient Russia. And this goal is unmistakably set. After all, the vast majority of birch bark letters appear to us as a product of social relations, reflecting in concrete facts those patterns that are the main subject of historical research.

From the very beginning, the author faced a significant source-study difficulty. A very large group of birch bark letters consists of fragments, sometimes fragmented to such an extent that they seem to have lost the reliable meaning of their content. Therefore, the refusal to interpret many birch bark texts has already become the norm from the moment of their first publication. Researchers preferred to return again and again to the interpretation of whole documents, using the figures of the total number of finds, as a rule, only to repeat the long-established thesis about the widespread spread of literacy in Ancient Russia. If L. V. Cherepnin had not set himself the task of making more documents speak than his predecessors, we would have received another corrected and authoritatively supplemented commentary, developing only those discussions that inevitably arise at the time of each new publication. However, the author chose a different path.

L. V. Cherepnin's research is based on a brilliant solution of the original problem-to read what seems unreadable. Based on a correct and fruitful assumption about the semantic proximity of birch bark and parchment texts, the author turned to the entire range of currently known written documents of the XI - XV centuries (primarily acts) in search of textual coincidences. The study of whole birch-bark documents convinced him that in some cases the forms of birch - bark letters are similar to parchment texts, in others-detailed terms of office management. Both these forms and these terms were reconstructed by him in fragmented documents, which made it possible to understand their meaning and purpose. As a result, the number of absolutely incomprehensible documents was reduced to 51. In other words, 364 letters from among the examined ones were found to have preserved the value of the source. This result is all the more striking because all the author's reconstructions seem to be sufficiently reasoned.

The methodical method used by L. V. Cherepnins naturally became the basis for the classification of birch bark letters proposed by him. Some of them turned out to be closely connected with the oldest Russian code, showing the application in practice of the legal norms of Russian Truth; others joined the previously known acts of land relations, deepening the early boundary of their existence for several centuries; for others, their inseparable connection with the provisions of the Novgorod and Pskov court documents was established; the fourth demonstrated their belonging to the that record the duties of different population groups. Hence arise the categories of classification that are so important for the historian: "Court and judicial proceedings", "Land and land owners", "Peasants and serfs", "Tribute and Taxes".

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feudal rent", "Craft, trade, city", "Political history, church, everyday life". Together, these headings, which contain eloquent materials, give a comprehensive picture of ancient Russian society in its development during the XI-XV centuries.

Literally all the details of this picture have been clarified to one degree or another by the researcher. Therefore, it is not possible to dwell in a brief review on the coverage of all the new things contained in the monograph, and on the criticism of all those conclusions that, for one reason or another, seem controversial. I will only mention what I think is most significant, while making a reservation that the conclusion from the study does not necessarily need to be understood only as theses specially formulated by its author.

Among such unformulated conclusions is the basis contained in the research materials for correctly understanding the essence of Novgorod as a historical phenomenon. Both economically and politically, Novgorod was not even limited to the smallest extent by the line of its outer city fortifications and even by the ring of suburban monasteries. There is no border between Novgorod and Novgorod land. Rural districts up to the borders of the Novgorod land were only a continuation of the urban estates of the Novgorod feudal lords, or quickly turned into such a continuation of urban estates. In other words, the economic base of Novgorod was located outside the city. To a large extent, such a structure is generally characteristic of medieval states based on land ownership. However, the difference between Novgorod is that all Novgorod landowners are actually concentrated in the city. In their holdings, they are represented by managers or conditional landholders. Isn't that why the Novgorod land doesn't know other cities or permanently inhabited boyar castles? Other Novgorod cities appeared in the XIII-XV centuries for the defense of Novgorod.

Moreover, the archaeological survey of Novgorod reveals, as it were, a different facet of the same feature. During 40 years of excavations in Novgorod, only huge urban estates with an area of about 1,500 square meters were discovered in it. meters. Smaller manors for the X - XV centuries. archeology in this city does not know. However, traces of the presence of the population of all classes, including handicraft, are found precisely on these huge estates, an indispensable element of which was the manor house. Apparently, there are grounds to assume that the urban land of Novgorod was in the feudal ownership of the largest landowners, which excluded the ownership of it by other categories of the population.

The reader is entitled to ask why these questions are raised in a review of a book that does not concern such subjects at all. The answer is simple. The main advantage of L. V. Tcherepnin's book is the characteristic of birch bark letters as a source for solving common problems of Russian history, for which the mutually confirming testimony of the Russian Truth, the Novgorod and Pskov court letters, and acts of North-Eastern Russia provide a single basis. But this advantage also turns out to be the main drawback: the specific features that were unique to Novgorod remain out of the researcher's field of vision. However, this is not the author's fault.

The question of what is not in L. V. Cherepnin's book is not raised because it is easiest to criticize any book for what is not in it. Summing up the results is always intended to indicate the direction of further research. For future researchers, along with finding out what has already been done, it is equally important to establish what needs to be done. With regard to the reviewed work, the most important fact is that in the book by L. V. Cherepnin, the characterization of birch bark letters as a historical source is artificially limited by the framework of the historian's usual approach to writing " histories.

Meanwhile, birch bark letters in the circle of historical sources occupy a very peculiar place, being on the border between written and material monuments. Their archaeological characterization is not limited to extracting stratigraphic data to date documents. Each birch bark certificate is found in a complex composed of both other certificates included in it and the remains of buildings, layers of the cultural layer, a set of household items, which together is more important-

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the neck. Significance for understanding birch bark documents If data on their origin is more than essential for working on parchment acts, then for working on birch bark, the passport with the coordinates of the find and the stratigraphic date is only a small part of the original document characteristics. Science, which has a variety of information about the fate on which this or that birch bark letter was found, does not have the right to refuse to use this information to understand the discovery under study. It is obvious that the study of birch bark letters from this point of view should constitute the next stage of their characterization as a historical source. But it is necessary to demand the continuation of work in this direction for archaeologists who extract birch bark letters from the cultural layer.

From the point of view of these immediate tasks, only one reproach can be made to the author of the book under review, regarding the false, in my opinion, thesis that the already discovered birch bark letters in some general part represent the remains of family archives.The harm of such a thesis is that the author on its basis admits the possibility of significant corrections to stratigraphic data. A striking example is letter No. 69, discovered in a layer of the late 13th century, but dated by L. V. Cherepnin to the middle of the 14th century.

From the ideal point of view, the constructions of L. V. Cherepnin seem to have no objections. In fact, if significant groups of birch-bark documents were similar to parchment acts, and the latter, due to the importance of their content, had to be carefully preserved, why not also carefully preserve the documents on birch bark? It is likely that birch bark constantly replenished the family archives. However, is there any evidence that such archives have already been discovered? L. V. Cherepnin refers to the Mishinichi-Onziforovich "archive", which includes several dozen documents found at the excavations. But the circumstances of the discovery sharply contradict this understanding of this complex. Letters with the names of Bartholomew and Luke were found in the layer of the first half of the XIV century, Tsmots of Onciphorus - in the layer of the middle of the XIV century, letters of Maxim - in the layer of the second half of the XIV century, letters of Yuri Onciforovich-in the layer of the turn of the XIV-XV centuries, letters of the closest descendants of Yuri - in the layer of the first quarter of the XV century. In other words, each time they fell into the ground from the hands of the addressees themselves. By the way, it was the correspondence of stratigraphic and chronicle dates that served as the main means of attributing them. What kind of archive is this? The sum of the Mishinichi-Onziforovich letters became an archive only after they were discovered during excavations, when these documents were first collected together.

It seems that birch bark as a writing material could not be an object of long-term storage at all. Now birch bark letters are kept clamped in glass, in compliance with the necessary temperature and humidity regime. In ancient times, as now, a scroll of birch bark under normal conditions had to twist and crack, collapsing along these cracks. If, in addition, we take into account that literally every 20 - 30 years the city blocks of wooden Novgorod were destroyed by fires, it is not difficult to conclude that the only possible place for preserving family archives could only be stone temples, where an ordinary document on birch bark was hardly placed, such as a record of debtors, a private letter about buying salt or sending a loshak. The condition for preserving birch bark for centuries turned out to be that it was thrown away and trampled in wet ground. In addition, given the similarity of the forms of birch bark and parchment documents, the former could hardly ever serve as an official act, if only for the reason that lead seals, which were widespread in Novgorod since the first half of the XII century, could not be applied to birch bark. They remain the only evidence of the former existence of another type of mass written document - the official parchment act, which was by no means replaced by birch bark letters.

Returning to gramota No. 69, I note that the difference of 140 years between the stratigraphic date and the date accepted by the author of the document is too large even for the source study characteristics of a passport-free parchment document. In archaeological terms, it can be expressed differently: 140 years is equal to approximately one and a half meters of the cultural layer, penetrated by five or six fire layers. This is why the stratigraphic units of the

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dates are more trustworthy. In this connection, the author's reference to the fact that when dating the first ten documents, the opinions of researchers differed seems superfluous. The first ten letters were found in 1951, long before the dendrochronological dating method was used, and the controversies of those years are important only for memoirists. To a certain extent, this also applies to certificate No. 69.

In recent years, the complex of Novgorod birch bark certificates has been supplemented with 73 more documents. In some cases, these documents contradict some particular conclusions of the researcher. However, most of them confirm the observations of L. V. Cherepnin and provide new valuable materials. Comparing them with the reviewed book is appropriate in a special edition.

I would like to express the hope that the book of L. V. Cherepnin will benefit not only future researchers By justifying the high value of any birch bark letter, even a hard-to-read scrap, it contributes to the protection of the Novgorod cultural layer from destruction during the current construction of the Antiquities of Russian cities need such protection.

Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences V. L. Yanin

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