Aleksandr Maiorov (2001 – 2021)
Nicholas Zharkikh
Shortened text of the section. Full text in ukrainian version.
Aleksandr Vyacheslavovich Maiorov was born in 1969 in Zaporizhzhia, lives and works in St. Petersburg. His scientific works are devoted exclusively to Rus’ of the 13th century, and then mainly to southern Rus’ and the campaign of Batu. They are of great interest to my topic.
The last few days – after the Muscovites were driven away from Kyiv – are surprisingly quiet, even the usual clapping of anti-aircraft defenses does not heard. But the battle for Izyum rages on, Mariupol continues to hold on against everything possible and impossible, and information about the crimes of Muscovites in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine is spreading. In particular, in Bucha, in addition to the 67 civilians I already mentioned, the prosecutor’s office is studying the corpses of another 410 residents tortured and killed by Muscovites.
In such conditions, I try to stay within the framework of academism (April 5, 2022 at 8:30), although I consider Russian historians complicit in the crimes that Muscovites commit in Ukraine. They are complicit not only as citizens of their country, but also as professionals who convinced the Russian authorities that no Ukraine exists.
Disappointment awaits them – Ukraine does exist, and their scientific works will end up on the same shelf as the works of the theorist of Hitlerism, Alfred Rosenberg.
Maiorov A. V. . – St. Petersburg: University Book, 2001. – 623 p.
The book as a whole is devoted to the history of the Galician principality from the middle of the 11th to the middle of the 13th century and therefore lies outside my narrow subject. But the author also examines the activities of the Olgovychs princes in those episodes when they interfered in the affairs of the Galician principality. I will consider these subdivisions of the work.
Photos of Chernihiv destroyed by the Muscovites, which for obvious reasons was not published during the siege, began to appear on the Internet (for complete idiots and Muscovites, let me explain – these photos could be used to correct enemy fire!). I’m afraid to watch them, maybe later…
Still continuing (April 6, 2022 at 8:00 a.m.)
The next subsection that interests me is called "Intervention of Chernihiv princes in the Galician affairs: Danylo Romanovych and Michael Vsevolodovych» [p. 560 – 583].
Here again we see Tatishchev’s "details" regarding the war of 1235 [p. 563 – 564], the Gustynja chronicle was also used [p. 563].
O. Maiorov’s complete trust in Tatishchev’s records forces us to place his book in the pre-scientific stage of historiography: everything that was written at least five minutes before this author is declared a "source".
that Muscovites destroyed the railway station in Mykolaiv. I have never been to Mykolaiv, a city named after the same Saint Nicholas of Mirlikia as I am. Can I be indifferent because it is 400 km away and does not affect me directly?
Well, continuing (April 7, 2022 at 8:15 am).
Maiorov A. from the Mongol-Tatars in 1239 – "The truth is established by the court of history." Collection in honor of Fedir Pavlovich Shevchenko, K., 2004, vol. 2, p. 128 – 144.
Although the references to Tatishchev and Zotov in this article are not decisive, they confirm the above conclusion that the author’s works are examples of pre-scientific historiography.
Individual observations in the article can be accepted, but the reconstruction of the "original story" is generally unacceptable. It seems to me that my version, which involves inserting only one phrase into the IpatL text, is more careful. I try to do operations with a scalpel, not an ax.
Maiorov A. V. against Mongol-Tatars in 1239 (From the commentary to the Galician-Volyn chronicle). – Proceedings of the Department of Old Russian Literature, 2009, vol. 60, p. 311-326.
This article is a Russian translation of the 2004 article discussed above, and this is not even mentioned in the text. The Russians are probably ashamed to admit that they are reprinting articles from Ukrainian publications.
: Sumy region has been liberated from Muscovites, but they still remain in 6 regions of eastern and southern Ukraine and are going to start a new offensive operation there.
The war continues, and our defenders continue to die. And I always remember this (April 8, 2022 at 8:00 am).
Maiorov A. V. Rus, Byzantium and Western Europe. – St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 2011 – 754 p. On the Academy website this book is divided into two files, probably for technical reasons: ; .
The content of the book is as follows:
1. "Constitutional project" by Roman Mstislavich: origin and verification. – p. 19 – 110.
This section is devoted to the analysis of Tatishchev’s works (the only "source" of this "project") and therefore belongs to the historiography of the 18th century. Therefore, it lies outside the scope of my topic, as well as the next two sections.
7. Between Rome and Nicaea: Russian princes and ecumenical processes in the mid-13th century – p. 635-708.
Maiorov O. M. Galicia-Volyn prince Roman Mstislavich. – Bila Tserkva: Publisher Oleksandr Pshonkivsky, 2011, vol. 1 – 318 p.; vol. 2 – 462 p.
This thick book is not available on the Internet, I cannot say anything about it.
Maiorov A. V. The story of Batu’s invasion in the Hypatian chronicle. – Rossica antiqua, 2012, No. 1, p. 33 – 94 (); No. 2, p. 43 – 133 ().
This article promises a lot of interesting things on my narrow topic.
The news of the Pskov annals about the date of the fall of Chernihiv was retold without criticism of the text [part 1, p. 76]. An attempt to "support" it with the very vague records of Rashid ad-Din and Yuan-Shi [part 1, p. 79] unconvincing – due to the great temporal and territorial distance of the writers of these texts from the events themselves.
In Kramatorsk from a rocket attack by Muscovites on April 8, 2022 .
Does Aleksandr Maiorov know in his St. Petersburg that he is an accomplice to this war crime? He didn’t shoot? And Putin did not shoot, and Minister Shoigu did not shoot. But Maiorov is a citizen of Russia, and he elected this criminal government that kills Ukrainians. A citizen is not only a right, but also a duty, and personal [dis]will has no meaning here. He is a citizen of a criminal state, therefore, an accomplice in its crimes.
Well, as long as I’m not in Kramatorsk and I haven’t been killed – I’ll continue (April 9 at 9:40).
Considering the chronology of the siege of Kyiv, A. M. right rejected the date of the Pskov chronicles [part 2, p. 54], though mistakenly trusted the same dates of the same Pskov chronicles regarding previous events. He also rejected the date of December 6 – according to A. M., it derives from the 14th-15th centuries [part 2, p. 55]. At this point, I would like to see a more detailed justification – where this date first appeared and how it was further spread.
about new shelling of Kharkiv with serious destruction (April 10, 2022). No, not St. Petersburg yet, so I can not worry about A. Maiorov’s life.
Although… War has a lot of dimensions, and one should not think: if it "arrived", then it must be a missile. It can come from a completely unexpected direction…
And I continue (April 10, 2022 at 8:00 a.m.).
Thus, some of A. M.’s observations in this article seem interesting. At the same time, especially for my narrow topic, it gives little new in comparison with the article of 2004, and this new is not all acceptable.
I look at the sky and think: somewhat can come to a Russian scientist from a completely unexpected direction. Too much when he was born in Ukraine, betrayed the land of his parents and joined the criminal Moscow regime, hoping for "Moscow sables".
If, for example, he is arrested… And they begin to find out who the resident is and what tasks of Ukrainian intelligence he performed while working under the cover of a "university professor"… That would be good! The traitor would get his reward!
And I will continue while I have the opportunity (April 11, 2022 at 8:20 am).
Maiorov A. V. . – Rusyn, 2012, No. 4, p. 56-72.
A. M.’s article in this Chekist magazine repeats the content of the previous article in the "scientific", "academic" and "respectable" magazine. Large blocks of text are borrowed without any changes. I will repeat: such auto-plagiarism is natural, but I cannot understand: what does publication in this "magazine" add to science in general and to the scientific reputation of the author in particular.
Unless the money that the "magazine" pays its authors? Or the task that the resident set the "author" and which should serve as a cover for something more interesting?
Maiorov A. V. . The daughter of the Byzantine emperor in Galicia-Volyn Rus’: a princess and a nun. – Bila Tserkva: Oleksandr Pshonkivsky [Publisher], 2013. – 220 p.
Maiorov A. V. – the wife of a Galician-Volhynian Prince. – Byzantinoslavica, 2014, vol. 72, no. 1-2, pp. 188-233.
Maiorov A. V. . Córka imperatora byzantyńskiego na Rusi Halicko Wołyńskiej (ca. 1176..1180 – after 1253). – Kraków: Avalon, 2016. – 370 p.
These three works are available online, but I don’t want to read them. The illustrious Harun ar-Rashid said: “If these books contain the same as the Qur’an, then they are unnecessary; and if they contain something that is not in the Qur’an, then they are harmful."
These books contain what is not in the sources, and no amount of pages can substitute for that.
Maiorov A. V. . – Bulletin of the Udmurt State University, 2013, No. 3, p. 26-36.
The article contains subsections: "Peace negotiations Grand Duke Yury Vsevolodovich with the Tatars", "Goals of the Western campaign of the Mongols", "Battle at Kolomna", "Death of Khan Kulkan and its consequences".
In general, the article presents a completely different picture of the Tatars’ march to North-Eastern Rus’ than the previous historiographical tradition. The assumptions and conclusions made deserve further study.
Maiorov A. V. . – Questions of history, 2015, No. 9, p. 95 – 111.
In general, the "secret" discovered by A. Maiorov resembles the anecdotal answer of a careless biology student, who during an exam to a question about fish said: "It is known that fish do not have fur, but if they had it…"
But the war can come to different cities of Russia in the form of refusal of bank cards, and in the form of disappearance of food from stores. Russians like to say "we can do it again" – why not repeat the famine during the blockade of Leningrad? And hunger does not distinguish who is a professor and who is not.
Hoping to see how Muscovites beg each other for a crust of bread – I continue (April 12, 2022 at 8:10 am).
Maiorov A. V. : to the interpretation of one news of Rashid-ad-Din. – Studia slavica et balcanica petropolitana, 2015, No. 1, p. 182 – 193.
The article is not directly related to my narrow topic.
Maiorov A. V. : controversial and unresolved issues. – Rusyn, 2015, No. 1, p. 12 – 24.
In simple language, where there are no traces of destruction, there was no resistance to the Tatars, and where there are such traces, there was also no resistance to the Tatars. Such subjectivism in the interpretation of archaeological data says: A. M. knows well what and how it happened, and these data are mercilessly bent to "strengthen" his concept. (And this despite the fact that the interpretation of archaeological data, in particular, their narrow dating, is a very difficult task).
Maiorov A. V. : struggle for Halych and Kyiv. – Stratum plus, 2016, No. 5, p. 49-56.
Assumptions based on previous false assumptions are automatically false.
Maiorov A. V. in 1239–1240s: controversial and unresolved questions. – Journal of Slavic military studies, 2016, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 473-499.
This article is not available for free, and I am not intended to pay $47 for it. I think that all the previous assumptions of A. M. are repeated there, only in foreign characters.
Maiorov A. V. : to disputes about the duration of the prince’s trip to the Horde. – Stratum plus, 2016, No. 6, p. 195 – 202.
A. M.’s assumption is that Daniil went to Batu by Tatar mail – just like John from Plano Carpini and then Rubruk. For my narrow topic, it is interesting that A. M. advocates an early date for Daniil’s trip – October 1245 – March 1246 [p. 201].
Maiorov A. V. . – Russian literature, 2016, No. 2, p. 51-59.
In this article, A. M. considers very confused messages from the chronicles (written around 1259, 2000 km from Kyiv) and (written at the end of the 13th century, 2200 km from Kyiv).
The Dnieper and Danube were apparently insurmountable obstacles for the Mongols. In order to cross them, the invaders had to wait for strong winter frosts, capable of freezing the rivers with ice, temporarily halting their advance [p. 58].
It is of course absolutely wrong. Why – we’ll talk tomorrow.
Barely I had write that in Russia they would look for the guilty and arrest the enemies of the people, – a rumor spread on the Internet that Surkov had already been arrested. No, not the poet Aleksey Surkov, who died in 1983 (although anything can happen in Russia, and such a thing cannot be ruled out), but the adviser to the president, Vladyslav Surkov. And he is not even Ukrainian, but a former Chechen! All the more so former Ukrainians should think about it!
In the hope that the Russians will arrest all these "also Ukrainians" themselves – I continue (April 13, 2022 at 8:00 a.m.).
The amount of water in the river is determined by the average flow. It is measured either in cubic kilometers per year or cubic meters per second (in this case, the average flow during the year is divided by the number of seconds in the year). So, we have the following numbers:
– Yangtze River – 30,166 m³/s (and how can you imagine the Tatars marching to Burma without crossing the Yangtze River, which, by the way, never freezes?);
– Volga – 8,000 m³/s (and how can you imagine conquering Eastern Europe without crossing the Volga?);
– Danube – 6,400 m³/s (and how can you imagine a war in Hungary and access to the coast of the Adriatic Sea without crossing the Danube?);
– Yellow River – 2,571 m³/s (and how can you imagine the conquest of China by the Tatars without multiple crossings the Yellow River back and forth?);
Tatars crossed all these rivers many times in different directions without the slightest problem (at least such problems are not recorded in written sources).
The conclusion is simple: if you don’t know how to cross rivers, don’t fight. And the Tatars fought, so they knew how to cross.
Maiorov A. V. : the two dates. – Slavonic and East European review, 2016, vol. 94, no. 4, pp. 702 – 714.
This is a translation of the article discussed above, including the impossibility of crossing:
Both the Dnieper and the Danube appear to have been insurmountable obstacles for the Mongols. To cross them, the invaders had to wait until hardwinter frost would lock the rivers and thus halted their advance [p. 712].
Maiorov A. V. : from maneuverer to martyr. – Kritika, 2017, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 237-256.
This is a translation of the 2015 article "The Secret of the Death of Michael of Chernihiv", in particular, here we have:
The residents of Neumarkt may, however, have mistaken the detachment of a Russian prince for a Mongol vanguard or intelligence gathering unit [p. 250 = Mystery, p. 111].
Only an unforeseen contingency – the unexpected assault of the Germans in Neumarkt against his retinue and supply wagons – prevented the Russian prince from implementing his plan to join the battle. Instead he returned to Mazovia after the defeat and the death of the Silesian duke [p. 252 = Mystery, p. 112].
Maiorov A. V. Diplomacy, war and a witch: peace negotiations before the Mongol invasion of Rus’. – In: Alexander V. Maiorov and Roman Hautala (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Mongols and Central-Eastern Europe, London and New York: Routledge, 2021, pp. 36 – 81.
This article is not freely available online. Knowing what A. M. wrote on the topic of these negotiations earlier, one can think that the same thoughts are presented here in Latin characters.
Maiorov A. V. : goals and results. – Journal of the Royal Asian Society, 2021, Series 3, vol. 31, p. 1 – 28.
In this article, A. M. analyzes the migration of the Tatars to the west in 1221-1223, in particular, he cites a quote from C. de Bridia:
"blood ran on both sides up to the horses’ bridles, according to those who took part in this war" [p. 4]
Well, the further the author keep himself from the event, the higher the level of blood rises in his work, so that the Hypatian chronicle with his infant Vasyl, who drowned in blood, is overcomed.
Considering A. Maiorov’s creative work as a whole (as of the beginning of 2022), it should be noted his great attention to source studies, which puts his science at a much higher level than all the works we considered above.
During the considered 20 years, A. M. gradually got rid of some ideas that were worth getting rid of. Thus, after 2001, the "Froyanov school" with its "inter-communal wars" imperceptibly disappeared, the last references to Tatishchev and Zotov date back to 2012. This is also definitely a positive movement in the direction from pre-scientific historiography towards scientific one.
Unfortunately, by using C. de Bridia, who in terms of fiction surpasses Tatishchev and Zotov combined, A. M. showed that pre-scientific historiography continues to beckon him.
Two provisions of A. M. are especially important for my narrow topic: 1, the reality of the "treaty" of the three princes with the Tatars in 1239; 2, the intention of Michael Vsevolodovych to fight with the Tatars in 1241. I consider them erroneous.