Biography. Boris Aleksandrovich Rybakov: biography of Rybakov and the party line

The idol of Russian neo-pagans, academician Boris Rybakov, was... an amateur in history, religious studies, art history, cartography, and folklore. A venerable, authoritative, talented, brilliant amateur. And his fierce passion for establishing one specific historical picture that elevates the Russian people prevented him from realizing and overcoming his amateurism. Artsikhovsky is credited with a laconic description of Rybakov: “a brilliant dropout.”

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Once, in the restaurant of the Leningrad House of Scientists on Palace Embankment, where I went for lunch with Professor Karger, then director of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Archeology, we met Academician Rybakov. We sat down at the same table for lunch. He couldn't stand me, but dinner passed with friendly conversation. Rybakov told how on the train he was traveling in a compartment with a lady and her little daughter. The girl was looking out the window and suddenly screamed: “Mom, look, there’s a cow walking there, and there’s something else nearby.” “I looked out the window,” Rybakov commented, “that “something” was a horse.” The conversation was about the loss of closeness to nature and the death of historical knowledge...

This December will mark 10 years since the death of Academician Boris Aleksandrovich Rybakov. For more than 30 years - the entire Khrushchev and Brezhnev era - he autocratically led Soviet archaeological science. His short biographies (there are many of them) are written in a hagiographical style - from them his personality, his successes, weaknesses and tragedy cannot be understood. A more sober analysis is needed. It so happened that I, his undoubted opponent, wrote the most detailed biography of this scientist (“The Governor of Soviet Archeology” in the volume “Technology of Power” and a chapter in my published history of Russian archeology). I tried to be objective. This was not so difficult for me, because, despite the critical attitude towards his concepts and position, I had sincere admiration for his talent.

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On the Internet you can find information that I consider Rybakov responsible for my arrest in the early 80s. This is wrong. The academician never stooped to such methods of struggle. His speeches at party meetings about the need to combat ideological violations in Leningrad created an unpleasant atmosphere around me, but the order to include me in the “Leningrad wave” of arrests, as far as I can imagine, was, of course, not from the archaeological authorities (and not from the Leningrad security forces - for it was a surprise to them), but from the Science Department of the Central Committee.

Rybakov was born in 1908 into a wealthy Old Believer family. My father was the owner of a ready-made dress shop and taught at the Ryabushinsky Old Believer Institute. The family had a cult of ancient Russian history; everything old and ancient was theirs. During the revolution, his father was imprisoned, the boy was sent to the Labor Family orphanage, where it was hardly easy for the son of a bourgeois to adapt. His Russian Old Believer self-awareness also suffered. Russia collapsed, separate states were formed on the outskirts, and many Jews, Poles, Georgians, Latvians and other nationalities came to power in the capital itself. It became dangerous to be proud of your Russian ancestors - you could get accused of great-power chauvinism. The teenager, apparently, then had an underlying feeling of protest.

This suppressed murmur of wounded national pride is felt at the core of Rybakov’s entire worldview. All his life he could not stand Jews - his Russian colleagues (Kuzmina, Fedorov, etc.) write about this.

In 1924, he graduated from school and got a job as a salesman for the newspaper “Rabochy Put” - he earned seniority and entered the University, the Faculty of History and Ethnology. He chose archeology and specialized in Slavic-Russian antiquities with prof. V.A. Gorodtsov, and of the historians I especially listened to Academician. M.K. Lyubavsky, prof. Yu.V. Gauthier and S.V. Bakhrushin. He was greatly influenced by graduate student A.V. Artsikhovsky.

Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov. Photo: Wikipedia, author – Victor Chkhaidze

After serving in the army (1930-31), in the Proletarian Division, he got a job at the Archive of the October Revolution, and began reading the first course of lectures at the Academy of Communist Education named after. N.K. Krupskaya. As if on purpose, fate threw him into the most proletarian-sounding areas. However, he soon saw in the Bolsheviks a force that was restoring the statehood dear to his heart, and became imbued with devotion to the new state and its ideology. He joined the party in 1951 and never deviated from the party line. This party line leaned more and more towards his inner convictions.

From the second half of the 30s, a turn in domestic policy began - from declarative internationalism to Russian patriotism and nationalism. Did Rybakov catch the change in course earlier than others? No, he didn't adjust. He always adhered to nationalist convictions, but previously he had to restrain himself, but now they came to court.

Since 1931 he has worked at the Historical Museum, since 1937 at the Institute of the History of Material Culture (later Archaeology) and since 1939 at the Department of Archeology of Moscow State University, where he became dean. During the pre-war five years, at the Institute and the State Historical Museum, he completed the work of studying the ancient Russian craft that made his name. Rybakov established the presence of craft workshops and showed the importance of crafts in Rus', finding a correspondence with the instructions of written sources in archaeological material. He showed that before the Tatar invasion, Rus' was at a high level of economic development. In 1942, he defended his dissertation on this manuscript, and the published work received the Stalin Prize. In 1953 he was elected corresponding member, in 1958 - academician.

The last years of the Stalin era were years of takeoff for Rybakov. The hunt for cosmopolitans and critics, the case of pest doctors and other reprisals fly by without affecting him at all. During these years, his concept of the origin of the Slavs took shape. Slavic statehood, according to this concept, matured long before Kievan Rus, in the Zarubinets and brilliant Chernyakhov cultures. Its roots go even deeper, much deeper - into the depths of the third millennium BC, into the Trypillian culture.

He declared the rich treasures of the nomads and the bright, Roman-influenced cultures of the burial fields of Ukraine (attributed by many archaeologists to Germanic ones) to be early Slavic. Rybakov clearly did not like the reliably early Slavic culture of the 8th-9th centuries, known only as the “Romensko-Borshevskaya”: rough molded ceramics (this is after Chernyakhov’s, made on a circle!), almost no weapons or skills. For the most part, he simply ignored this culture.

He also did not like the Khazar Khaganate: the Turks, in addition to the Jewish religion, according to the chronicles, exacted tribute from the Slavs, and even the first Russian princes were called “Kagans” - unbearable for pride. Rybakov publishes several works in which he seeks to prove that, contrary to prof. Artamonov, the territory of the Kaganate was very small, so it could not play a special role in the history of the Slavs. According to Rybakov, the Khazars carried out almost no productive activity - the state was supposedly parasitic.

At first he rejected the role of the Normans in Rus', then under the pressure of facts (he is a professional) he was forced to admit, but he downplayed it in every possible way - well, just think, they called in mercenaries and made them princes.

By the mid-50s, Rybakov clearly emerged as the leader of Ottovan-Russian archeology. When, after the 20th Party Congress, a change of bosses began in many industries, the management took a liking to the 48-year-old prominent archaeologist, a recognized authority. And Rybakov really showed himself to be a leader, smart and powerful. He started major projects, in particular the publication of a multi-volume Corpus (Code) of the country's archaeological sources. It was planned to release 150 volumes over 15 years. But, like everything else with us, the implementation deviated greatly from the plans. By 1990 (double the deadline), only 83 issues had been published (although many of them were very valuable). But they came out less and less often. Already by the beginning of the 80s, strength began to dry up, and it became clear that 150 volumes were very few to present the entire set of sources, but even this milestone was unattainable in the foreseeable future.

Since the Code had stalled by the early 80s, Rybakov conceived another impressive series - “Archaeology of the USSR” in 20 volumes. Over the course of a decade, 12 volumes were published, very different and mostly outdated by the time of release, as is usually the case with such collective academic publications. In a word, we wanted the best, but it worked out.

Since the time he headed the Institute, the purely archaeological focus of his own research has been stopped. During the 60s, he would still travel to the field, supervise excavations, and later his articles on archaeological finds would sometimes appear, but none of his numerous monographs would henceforth be strictly archaeological. From that time on, he appears in his books only as a historian, religious scholar, art critic, cartographer, folklorist using archaeological materials. In most of these sciences he was, however, an amateur. A venerable, authoritative, talented, brilliant amateur. And his fierce passion for establishing one specific historical picture that elevates the Russian people prevented him from realizing and overcoming his amateurism. Artsikhovsky is credited with a laconic description of Rybakov: “a brilliant dropout.”

So he turned to folklore and revived the “historical school” of Vsevolod Miller. In Russian epics he saw a presentation of history by the people themselves. In his books and articles, he began to reconstruct history based on epics. The largest folklorist, Prof., spoke out against him. V.Ya. Propp, who showed that the heroic epic is a specific artistic genre that greatly distorts history, creating one from different heroes, transferring it to another time and making heroes out of available material.

Similar works by B.A. Rybakov’s ideas in various sciences were scandalously unproven and were replete with elementary errors. The matter was aggravated by ignorance of foreign languages.

Of his books of the 80s, the most significant, from the point of view of an archaeologist, are two monumental monographs on Slavic paganism - “The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” (1981) and “The Paganism of Ancient Rus'” (1987). Written with extreme talent and inventiveness, they are a delight to read. I read them myself with pleasure. But I don’t believe what I read.

Rybakov borrowed from early researchers the idea of ​​Rod as the main and almost the only god of the Eastern Slavs. The rest of the gods - Perun, Veles and others - are only his hypostases. Meanwhile, such a god is not directly mentioned in any source, and the name itself arose from an incorrect reading of late Greek manuscripts about star divination - “genealogy” (in the Slavic translation “genealogy”). Rybakov connects the Belarusian holiday “komoeditsa” with the Greek and then Latin “comedy” (comoedia) and interprets it as a pagan holiday of the bear: from the Greek “komos” - “bear,” he explains. Where did he get this translation from? In Greek, “bear” is “arktos”, and “komos” is “a procession of revelers, mummers”. All, absolutely all of his linguistic excursions, of which there are many in this volume, are performed at the same level.

A number of Rybakov’s works contained an amazingly beautiful hypothesis about the beginning of urban life in Kyiv three centuries before the first cultural layer. The chronicle contains a legend about the founder of the city of Kiy, and some episodes of this legend are vaguely reminiscent of the events with a certain Anta leader of the 5th century, Khilbudiy, reported by Greek sources. This means, Rybakov decided, Khilbudiy is Kiy, and the city was founded in the 5th century. The critics were not satisfied; they babbled something about the vagueness of the legend, about the absence of a cultural layer. Rybakov presented the most compelling argument: at his suggestion, in the early 80s, the Central Committee of the Party and the Government of the USSR adopted a joint Resolution on the celebration of the sesquicentennial anniversary of Kiev in 1982. Opponents had to remain silent. Foreign delegations were invited, luxurious anniversary volumes were published, and scientific conferences were convened. The hype continued for three years. Everything is based on Rybakov’s hypothesis.

Writer, historian, Slavicist, archaeologist, scientist, researcher Boris Rybakov is rightly called one of those who contributed invaluable contribution in the development of modern paganism, in the strengthening of native faith, in the raising of ancient traditions. Rybakov Boris Aleksandrovich has become a real “guiding star” for those who are interested in paganism, interested in the roots of the Slavic people, beliefs, history, and traditions. His books are so comprehensive and so scrupulously and accurately delve into the essence of every detail that by reading even one or two of his works, you can clarify for yourself many points, foundations and subtleties of Slavic paganism.

(May 21, 1908 - December 27, 2001) was a professor, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, archaeologist, historian. In addition, he was the dean of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, vice-rector of Moscow State University, director of the Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute of History of the USSR, academician-secretary of the Department of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, member of the International Committee of Slavists, and so on. He has many awards and prizes, including: Hero of Socialist Labor, Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III degree, Three Orders of Lenin, Order of the October Revolution, Order of the Red Banner of Labor, Order of Friendship of Peoples, Lenin Prize, Stalin Prize and others. His contribution to the development of Soviet and Slavic historiography is simply invaluable. Boris Rybakov’s first work is considered to be “The Craft of Ancient Rus',” which was originally his doctoral dissertation and was then published. “The Craft of Ancient Rus'” was awarded the Stalin Prize.

Boris Rybakov was famous archaeologist. He conducted excavations in Moscow, Zvenigorod, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl Russian, Belgorod Kiev, Tmutarakan, Putivl, Alexandrov and other historical lands where ancient Slavic cultures existed. Boris Rybakov, being an outspoken Slavist who held deeply patriotic views and expressed his point of view on the uniqueness and majesty of the entire Slavic people, was not afraid to criticize other writers, researchers and scientists, to make real revolutions in historical chronicles and long-established concepts. At the same time, his points of view are always carefully worked out so that the next discovery does not later turn out to be a “false sensation.” In this sense, Boris Rybakov was very scrupulous, and you can see this for yourself by reading his works. Over more than 70 years of activity, he has published several books, hundreds of articles and reviews.

Here I want to introduce you to a wonderful book by a writer, scientist, Slavic scholar who enjoys indisputable authority, called "Paganism of the Ancient Slavs". This book, among some others, is considered one of Rybakov’s largest and most extensive works. The study was written in 1981 and, together with another book that was published in 1987 and called “The Paganism of Ancient Rus',” is a complete guide to the world of Slavic beliefs. Many writers and historians tried to create works that would be so extensive and all-encompassing, but, perhaps, only Boris Rybakov succeeded brilliantly.

Being one of the greatest experts on Slavic culture, Boris Rybakov created a truly unique work that is worth getting acquainted with. Fundamental research into the paganism of Rus', from the earliest times to almost the present. Rybakov begins his research from the very origins - from the Stone Age, which dates back to the first finds of ancient people, from the most ancient ideas about higher beings - two Rozhanitsa elk cows and ending with Perun, whom he placed at the very top of the pantheon of pagan Gods. Thus, starting his research from pre-Slavic times, Rybakov unwinds the tangled tangle, dotting all the dots and filling in the voids that existed before. Of course, people, even such scientists as Boris Rybakov, whom we are talking about here, are far from ideal and may make mistakes somewhere. Many authors and other historians are trying to rethink what Rybakov created, strengthen something, question something and put forward their point of view. However, the foundation that Boris Rybakov laid for modern people who are interested in their past, the origins of their existence, simply cannot be overestimated.

In the book “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” you will get acquainted with the Gods and ancient traditions, analysis and decoding of ancient messages in the form of drawings, patterns, inscriptions, embroideries, carvings, and so on. In addition, Boris Rybakov dwells in detail on fairy tales, myths, legends and traditions of our ancestors. He collects the entire vast layer of information together, creating a single, accurate and clear picture of the world of the ancient pagan Slav.

Buy books by Boris Rybakov “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs”

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Born on May 21 (June 3), 1908 in Moscow in a Russian Old Believer family. The scientist’s father graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow State University, was the author of works on the history of the schism, and was also the founder and director of the Old Believer Teachers’ Institute, created in 1911 with funds from S. P. Ryabushinsky. Mother, Claudia Andreevna Blokhina, graduated from the philological faculty of the Higher Women's Courses of V.I. Gerye and worked as a teacher.

He received a good education at home, and in 1917, at the age of 9, he was sent to a private gymnasium. Since 1921, he lived with his mother in Moscow in Goncharnaya Sloboda in the building of the Labor Family orphanage. In 1926 he entered the Faculty of History and Ethnology of Moscow State University, from which he graduated in 1930. For 6 months he served as a cadet in the Red Army, in the artillery regiment of the 1st division in Moscow, and in 1931 he entered service in the Department of Early Feudalism of the Historical Museum. He considered the famous historian S.V. Bakhrushin to be his teacher.

In the course of many years of work on colossal collections, the State Historical Museum prepared a fundamental work, “The Craft of Ancient Rus',” defended in 1942 as a doctoral dissertation during evacuation in Ashgabat, published in a separate edition in 1948, and awarded the Stalin Prize in 1949. In the late 1940s - early 1950s, he participated in the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans”, publishing a number of articles in scientific journals on the role of Jews and Judaism in the history of the Khazar Kaganate. In 1951 he joined the CPSU(b).

Director of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1956-1987, academician of the Czechoslovak (1960) and Polish (1970) Academy of Sciences, honorary doctor of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (1964); member of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistorical Sciences (since 1958) and member of the International Committee of Slavists (since 1963); repeatedly represented Soviet historical science at International Congresses. Since 1958, president of the USSR-Greece society.

Scientific views

B. A. Rybakov was a major archaeologist. His scientific activity began with excavations of Vyatiche mounds in the Moscow region. He conducted large-scale excavations in Moscow, Veliky Novgorod, Zvenigorod, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl Russky, Belgorod Kiev, Tmutarakan, Putivl, Alexandrov and many others. etc. He completely excavated the ancient Russian castles of Lyubech and Vitichev, which made it possible to reconstruct the appearance of a small ancient Russian city. Hundreds of future historians and archaeologists learned the “excavation craft” at these excavations. Many students of B. A. Rybakov became famous scientists, in particular, S. A. Pletneva, an expert on the nomadic peoples of the Steppe, the Khazars, Pechenegs and Polovtsians.

All his life B. A. Rybakov adhered to patriotic, anti-Normanist convictions. According to L. S. Klein, he was “not just a patriot, but undoubtedly a Russian nationalist... an ultra-patriot - he was inclined to ardently exaggerate the true successes and advantages of the Russian people in everything, placing them above all their neighbors.” Thus, Rybakov was convinced of the deep autochthony of the Slavic population on the territory of Ukraine, connecting both the Scythians and even the Trypillians with the Slavs. The presence of a Gothic state on the territory of Ukraine was denied, and the Chernyakhov culture, traditionally associated with the Goths, was proclaimed a Slavic culture. The largest centers of the Slavs, and first of all, Kyiv, in Rybakov’s interpretation, existed from time immemorial.

Among the most controversial constructions of Rybakov are attempts to produce the Slavs from the Scythian ploughmen, who lived in the Black Sea region during the time of the “father of history” Herodotus (5th century BC). In the book “Kievan Rus and the Russian principalities in the XII-XIII centuries,” he attributed the beginning of the history of the Slavs to the XV century BC. e. In the Serpentine Ramparts, the historian saw evidence of a clash between the Slavs and the Cimmerians (according to the generally accepted point of view, they left the Black Sea region 1000 years before the Slavs appeared there): “The Slavs used captured Cimmerians in the construction of their first fortifications,” says the scientist.

Many of Rybakov’s scientific works contained fundamental conclusions about the life, everyday life and level of socio-economic and cultural development of the population of Eastern Europe. For example, in the book “Craft of Ancient Rus'” the researcher was able to trace the genesis and stages of development of craft production among the Eastern Slavs from the 6th to the 15th centuries, and also identified dozens of craft industries. Rybakov’s goal was to show that pre-Mongol Rus' not only did not lag behind the countries of Western Europe in its economic development, as many scientists had previously argued, but in some indicators it was ahead of these countries.

In the monograph “Ancient Rus'. Tales. Epics. Chronicles" he drew parallels between epic stories and Russian chronicles. He put forward the hypothesis that individual weather records in the Kievan state began to be made not in the 11th century, but already in the second half of the 9th-10th centuries.

The scientist examined the Old Russian chronicles in detail, proposed versions of the authorship of individual chronicle fragments, subjected to a thorough analysis the original news of the 18th century historian V. N. Tatishchev and came to the conclusion that they were based on trustworthy Old Russian sources, and that V. N. Tatishchev was not involved in falsification stories.

B. A. Rybakov also thoroughly studied such wonderful monuments of ancient Russian literature as “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and “The Prayer of Daniil the Zatochnik.” He put forward a hypothesis according to which the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was the Kiev boyar Pyotr Borislavich. According to another hypothesis of Rybakov, the outstanding thinker and publicist of the late 12th - early 13th centuries, Daniil Zatochnik, was a grand-ducal chronicler at the courts of Vsevolod the Big Nest and his son Constantine.

In his works, such as “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” (1981), “Kievan Rus and the Russian principalities of the XII-XIII centuries.” (1982), “The Paganism of Ancient Rus'” (1987), B. A. Rybakov actually recreated a whole layer of pre-Christian beliefs of the Eastern Slavs, causing accusations of fantastic speculation and the absence of a unified methodology. For example, in the image of the Serpent Gorynych, the academician saw a vague memory of the Slavs about some prehistoric animal, for example, a mammoth. The epic legend about the meeting of the hero with the Serpent on the Kalinov Bridge across the fiery river, according to Rybakov, is nothing more than

Teacher

B. A. Rybakov began his teaching career in 1933 at the Academy of Communist Education named after. N.K. Krupskaya and the Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute. For over 60 years he worked at the history department of Moscow University. M.V. Lomonosov: in 1939-1943 - associate professor, from 1943 - professor, in 1950-1952 - dean, 1953-1962 - head of the department of domestic history of the period of feudalism, in recent years - as an Honored Professor of Moscow State University. Thousands of students have attended his general and special lecture courses, and hundreds have taken his pro-seminar classes. Several dozen doctors and candidates of historical sciences consider B. A. Rybakov their teacher. There is a whole “Rybakovsky” school of historians. Millions of schoolchildren and many thousands of students studied from his textbooks.

Positions, titles, awards

• Hero of Socialist Labor (1978)
• Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III degree (May 31, 1998) - for services to the state, great personal contribution to the development of domestic science and training of scientific personnel
• Three Orders of Lenin
• Order of the October Revolution
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• Order of the Badge of Honor (1953)
• Lenin Prize (1976)
• Stalin Prize (1949, 1952)
• Prize named after Academician B. D. Grekov

B. A. Rybakov performed a lot of administrative work: in 1952-1954. he was vice-rector of Moscow State University. Then for 40 years he headed the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, academician-secretary of the Department of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, honorary member of the Czechoslovak, Polish and Bulgarian Academies of Sciences, Honored Professor of Moscow University. M. V. Lomonosova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Honorary Doctor of the Krakow Jagiellonian University.

In the sixth continuous auditorium of the first humanities building of Moscow State University there hangs a memorial plaque in honor of Boris Aleksandrovich Rybakov.

Criticism

Many venerable historians and archaeologists, who had previously demonstrated their “friendship” with B. A. Rybakov and, as a rule, spoke favorably of his works that were truly controversial in terms of conclusions and hypotheses, from the beginning of the 1990s gradually began to have a cool attitude towards both to himself and to his works on the history of Ancient Rus'.

In public reviews of the scientific merits of B. A. Rybakov, some well-known authors, for example L. S. Klein, Ya. S. Lurie, D. S. Likhachev, A. P. Novoseltsev, characterized him as an amateur. Objections are raised, in particular, by Rybakov’s constructions about the Slavic affiliation of the Trypillian and Chernyakhov cultures, amateur excursions into linguistics, and searches in ornamental embroideries of the 19th-20th centuries. the most reliable evidence regarding the spiritual life of the Slavs before the adoption of Christianity.

According to L. S. Klein, Rybakov “deepened Kyiv for half a millennium (attributing its foundation to the end of the 5th century), although as an archaeologist he should have known that in Kyiv there is no Slavic cultural layer older than the 9th century.” This allowed the authorities of Soviet Ukraine to celebrate the 1500th anniversary of Kyiv in 1982, a city where even 9th-century layers can hardly be interpreted as urban.

At the same time, among Moscow university scientists and teachers and the leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a generally positive attitude towards the merits of B. A. Rybakov remained. In 1998, on the occasion of the scientist’s 90th birthday, a group of historians, philologists, archaeologists and art historians from his school published a voluminous collection of articles, “The Culture of the Slavs and Rus',” with a detailed biographical sketch of A. A. Medyntseva used as a preface.

Publications

Over more than 70 years of his scientific activity, the following monographs were published:

• "Radzimichy" (1932)
• "Craft of Ancient Rus'" (1948)
• "Antiquities of Chernigov" (1949)
• "Ancient Rus'. Tales. Epics. Chronicles" (1963)
• "The first centuries of Russian history" (1964)
• "Russian dated inscriptions of the XI-XIV centuries" (1964)
• “Russian applied art of the X-XIII centuries” (1971)
• “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign and His Contemporaries” (1971)
• “Russian chroniclers and the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”” (1972)
• "Russian maps of Muscovy in the 15th - early 16th centuries" (1974)
• “Herodotus Scythia. Historical and geographical analysis" (1979)
  • Reissue - M.: Eksmo; Algorithm, 2010. - 272 p. - ISBN 978-5-699-42815-1.
• "The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs" (1981)
• “Kievan Rus and Russian principalities of the 12th-13th centuries” (1982)
• “The Paganism of Ancient Rus'” (1987)
• “Peter Borislavich. Search for the author of “Tales of Igor’s Campaign” (1991)
• “Strigolniki. Russian humanists of the 14th century" (1993)
• collection of scientific works “From the cultural history of ancient Rus'. Research and notes." - M., Moscow Publishing House. University, 1984. - 240 pp., 66 ill. - 20,500 copies.
• popular science book “The Initial Centuries of Russian History” (1984)
• over 400 articles and reviews, including large sections for the two-volume “History of the Culture of Ancient Rus'. Pre-Mongol period" (1948, 1951) and "Essays on Russian culture of the XIII-XV centuries." (1969, 1970), as well as important sections of university and school textbooks.

A very large number of various scientific studies were published under the editorship of B. A. Rybakov: the first six volumes of “History of the USSR from Ancient Times”, multi-volume ones - “Code of Archaeological Sources”, “Archaeology of the USSR”, “Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles”, etc.

In the history of Soviet and Russian science there were odious scientists: agronomist Trofim Lysenko with his attacks on genetics, mathematician Anatoly Fomenko with the project “New Chronology”. Boris Rybakov could also be included in their company, whose bold hypotheses about the history of Rus' left his colleagues perplexed if he were not such a controversial figure.

On the one hand, Rybakov was a very authoritative, titled scientist: laureate of the Stalin Prize, Hero of Socialist Labor, full member of the Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Doctor of Historical Sciences and one of the founders of the European University in St. Petersburg, Lev Klein, wrote about Rybakov: “For more than 30 years - the entire Khrushchev and Brezhnev era - he autocratically led Soviet archaeological science.” On the other hand, many of the academician’s views were fiercely criticized by his colleagues.

Rybakov and the test of glory

Rybakov’s scientific interests began to develop in childhood. He came from an intellectual Old Believer family: his father Alexander Stepanovich headed the Old Believer Theological Institute, the first educational institution for training clergy of “ancient piety.” In the family of Boris Rybakov, according to his student Alexei Chernetsov, they were reverent about the past. The academician, as can be seen from his career, loved antiquity, was interested in religious dissent, Slavic paganism, and was a nationalist.

After school, Rybakov entered the ethnological faculty of Moscow State University and studied to become a historian-archaeologist. His scientific career began with a study of the East Slavic tribal union of the Radimichi, about which he wrote a Ph.D. thesis and defended it in 1939.

At the end of the 1930s, he became famous, putting to shame a major specialist in ancient Russian literature, Alexander Orlov. Orlov compiled a list of ancient inscriptions, which Rybakov criticized. “The then young Rybakov, he was then just over 30 years old, wrote a rather harsh review, where he added one third to the list of things with inscriptions. You understand that this is a pretty good slap in the face to one of the representatives of the old, pre-revolutionary generation,” said Chernetsov. According to him, Rybakov was generally a remarkable expert on chronicle texts and could tell the genealogy of the ancient Russian princes offhand, bending his fingers.

Nine years later, Rybakov completed his work on the degree of Doctor of Science “Craft of Ancient Rus'”. For it he was given the Stalin Prize. “The dissertation played a major role in his career. For its time, it is an incredibly powerful work.<...>After that, his development, perhaps, went downward... how to say... he became a little arrogant, - said Chernetsov. - I think that later high ranks hampered him to some extent. He had no time for careful work. He was eager to present his ideas. Boris Alexandrovich loved himself in art a little more than art in itself."

Fishermen and the search for ancient Rus'

Having received his doctorate, Rybakov soon became an academician and director of the Institute of Archeology. This began his career takeoff, which coincided with changes in science and politics.

Since the early 1930s, Soviet linguistics was dominated by the “new doctrine of language” of Nikolai Marr. This pseudoscientific theory proclaimed the class essence of language, and explained its origin and change by the change and development of socio-economic formations. In 1950, the “new teaching about language” came to an end: Stalin wrote the work “Marxism and Questions of Linguistics,” in which he criticized Marrism.

Rybakov took part in the defeat. “When traditional Indo-European studies began to be imposed instead of Marr’s theory, Rybakov and Alexander Lvovich Mongait went to St. Petersburg, where the Marrists had a nest, and began to teach archaeologists how to study the history of languages ​​and peoples in a Marxist, Stalinist way,” Chernetsov said.

Another important event was the anti-Semitic and chauvinist “fight against cosmopolitanism” of 1948–1953. At this time, statist-patriotic sentiments were intensifying in society and science: propaganda glorified the great ancestors, the government promoted theories that belittled foreign influence, and in 1950 Rybakov published the work “On the Question of the Role of the Khazar Khaganate.” In it, he wrote that the Khazars, whose elite professed Judaism, did not particularly influence the formation of the ancient Russian state and culture.

At the same time, the Norman theory was criticized in Soviet science. Rybakov was an anti-Normanist and consistently tried to “make ancient” Kyiv in order to prove that statehood in Rus' arose long before the Scandinavian Rurik was called to reign.

"Rybakov is one of the few Russian scientists with a very strong Ukrainophile, Kiev-centric bias. He believed that Kievan Rus is, first of all, Ukraine. He considered everything southern to be advanced, and Vladimir, Novgorod - some kind of periphery. That is why he wanted to ancientize this Southern Rus But this is just a curiosity: because of the hints in the Tale of Bygone Years, one might think that [the legendary founder of Kiev] Kiy was a contemporary of Justinian, who lived in the 5th–6th centuries. It’s something like with the anniversary of Kazan: they found an ancient Western European coin there - the city immediately became very ancient,” explained Chernetsov. According to him, there is no reliable evidence that Kyiv appeared earlier than the 9th century.

Rybakov succeeded in making Kyiv ancient. At least, the authorities believed in this version and in 1982 they organized a celebration of the 1500th anniversary of the city.

This same obsessive desire to debunk the Norman theory explains Rybakov’s interest in the Chernyakhov culture, which existed in the Black Sea region in the 2nd–4th centuries. Now it is associated with the Gothic state of Oium, but Rybakov argued that East Slavic culture and statehood originated here. However, archaeological finds refute this hypothesis. “Suffice it to say that Chernyakhov ceramics were much better than in Rus' in the 12th–13th centuries. At least in the main center. Very neat, elegant dishes,” Chernetsov said.

In the 80s, Rybakov became seriously interested in paganism and wrote two books about the pre-Christian beliefs of the ancient Slavs. “He loved Slavic paganism very much, but this love was overly aestheticized. He was looking for some extraordinary beauties, which in the pre-state era, in savagery, are hardly worth looking for,” Chernetsov said. In books about paganism there are also etymological researches by Rybakov, which cause laughter. For example, he wrote that the word “priest” comes from the word “to eat.” Here, too, the academician was based more on personal preferences than on facts.

Rybakov and the party line

It is unlikely that Rybakov was an opportunist. Most likely, his ideas simply coincided successfully with the bends of the party line. “Rybakov never supported Marr’s absolutely crazy theory,” Chernetsov said, agreeing with this. Klein wrote about the same thing: “No, he did not adjust. He always adhered to nationalist convictions, but before he had to restrain himself, but now they have come to court.”

According to the recollections of his colleagues, Rybakov was a good organizer and leader, a talented, temperamental person who knew how to infect others with his passion. But most of Rybakov’s ideas outside the framework of archeology - in history, linguistics, folklore - were amateurish and were smashed by competent critics. Anti-Normanism, the desire to “age” the Slavs, his ideas about Slavic paganism - all this is made up of nothing. “The works of B.A. Rybakov in various sciences were scandalously unproven and replete with elementary errors,” wrote Klein.

His outstanding successes were due not so much to his professionalism as to fortunate circumstances, the whims of the ideologists and authorities of the time when he began his career. However, to his credit, Rybakov did not adapt to ideology, but simply consistently adhered to his views even when they were unpopular.

Maxim Abdulaev, correspondent of the popular science portal "Attic"

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