"On the Kulikovo field": Why scientists still argue about the place of the legendary battle

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

From childhood, we know that the famous Battle of Kulikovo took place “on the Kulikovo field”. Anyone can even go to this very field in the Tula region, where for a century and a half there has been a huge monument in honor of the legendary battle, and next to it there is a museum and other tourist infrastructure. At the same time, scientists continue to argue whether there was a "Mamaye massacre" and what was its true scale. They have many reasons for such doubts.

Classic version

In 1380, when the army of Dmitry Donskoy defeated Mamai, none of the victorious Russians thought that the place of the battle needed to be somehow fixed on the ground. A simple mention in the annals was enough for them. According to her, the army took the battle, crossing

At the beginning of the 19th century, thanks to the efforts of the historian and writer Nikolai Karamzin, ancient chronicle legends turned into a popular hobby of educated nobles. One of the members of Karamzin's circle and a great admirer of Russian history was the director of schools in the Tula province, landowner Stepan Nechaev. As he suggested, it was on his lands that the famous battle took place.

The idea sounded quite sensible: at the mouth of the Nepryadva River, which flows into the Don, there really was a large-scale field. Most likely, Russian troops crossed over to it from the north, from the left bank of the Nepryadva. On the right bank, on the initiative of Nechaev, a column-monument was erected by the architect Alexander Bryullov, brother of the famous artist Karl Bryullov.

Historians have reconstructed the battle, and for a long time the classical scheme wandered from book to book, from textbook to textbook. According to her, the battle was very large-scale, as it was said in the annals: Russian chroniclers indicated the number of up to 200 thousand soldiers, and German chroniclers even spoke about 400 thousand on each side.

Nechaev popularized the place he had found with might and main and even opened the first museum, where he brought the artifacts of the medieval era that he was buying (weapons, armor, and so on). He was quite sincere in his aspiration and did not try to falsify the find. Subsequently, a temple was built on the Kulikovo field, barely having time to finish it because of the revolution. And in the Soviet years, a full-fledged museum-reserve was created on a permanent basis on the territory of the field.

Doubts of archaeologists

In the 1980s, archaeologists began to study the Kulikovo field and faced a problem: there were almost no finds. The remains of the killed soldiers were not found in any form: neither scattered bodies, which in large numbers should have remained on the battlefield, nor burials of the fallen. The remains of weapons during the excavation came across, but they were incredibly few. Separate fragments of spears, chain mail, axes could in no way be evidence of a battle in which hundreds of thousands of people took part.

Archaeological searches in the Kulikovo field and its environs continue to this day, but neither modern georadars nor powerful metal detectors help. Excavations still yield, albeit extremely interesting, but very isolated finds. They found explanations for this. The Russian army, for example, could carry away all the fallen soldiers from the battlefield, since they had to be buried with dignity, and the armor was also expensive. But why, then, did the remains of the enemy soldiers disappear? Agricultural fertilizers with ammonium nitrate, which corroded iron in the course of many years of agricultural work in the 20th century, could also have an effect.

Later studies showed that earlier there was much more forest on the right bank of the Nepryadva, and this became a serious argument for the doubters. If the Kulikovo field occupied a much smaller area than today, how could tens and hundreds of thousands have fought on it? So a version appeared that the battle was not so big. With each passing decade, scientists are increasingly daring to reduce the number of prospective troops, bringing it to several thousand.

Finally, skepticism is reinforced by the fact that the elements of weapons found on the Kulikovo field do not necessarily belong to the era of Dmitry Donskoy and Mamai. It is reliably known that it was at this place that clashes with the Crimean Tatars took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, and it is not always easy to accurately date the finds. Could it be that the "Mamaevo Massacre" did take place elsewhere?

Alternative hypotheses

Some researchers suggested that the place where the Nepryadva flows into the Don is not necessarily located on the southern, right bank. This is how the "left bank" hypothesis appeared. However, she, too, was quickly questioned due to the terrain. If the right bank still somehow had open areas 2-3 kilometers long in ancient times, then on the left bank there was a continuous forest.

Attentive historians have noticed that there is no exact designation of the place in the annals. The word "mouth" was understood as both "mouth" in the modern sense (the confluence of a river into another body of water) and "source". So, in the annals we can readily read about the Orekhovy Island “the mouth of the Neva”, where the Oreshek fortress (Shlisselburg) is now located, and the Neva in this place flows out of Lake Ladoga, and does not flow into it.

Perhaps it really was about the source of the Nepryadva, and the indication "beyond the Don" meant only an approximate indication of the area located beyond the Don. By the way, it is at the source of Nepryadva that one can find a “great and pure” field suitable for the chronicle description. There may be other assumptions, because it is obvious that the chroniclers did not give us exact geographic coordinates.

Despite the fact that we do not know exactly where the Battle of Kulikovo took place and how many troops participated in it, one should not discount its significance. It was she who undermined the basis of the long Horde yoke in Russia and served as the impetus for the creation of the future united Moscow state. And if scientists suddenly make us happy with the discovery of the Kulikov field in a new place, then the monument to the battle can be moved.