Political geography of the SRG

Nicholas Zharkikh

Shortened text of the section. Full text in ukrainian version.

Political bodies and their capitals

In the text of the SRG there is no mention of political bodies as such, but many capitals of political bodies of different times are mentioned. Jerusalem (269), the capital of the ancient Jewish state from (approximately) 1000 BC, is definitely in the first place here.

Naturally, other settlements important for the functioning of political bodies should be grouped around the capitals. To count them, I draw circles with a radius of 50 and 100 km around the capitals. The diameters of these circles, if anyone has not forgotten school science, are 100 and 200 km.

A table with 18 lines. Of the 17 political bodies that were in the SRG strip, 7 existed in the middle of the 15th century, at the time of the compilation of the SRG (they are highlighted in bold in the table). But the status of their capitals is not indicated in the SRG in any way, and according to the rules of positivism, we have to say that the scribe of the SRG had no idea about politics, principalities, and states.

We can see that the territory around Vilno (15 settlements), followed by Kyiv (13 settlements), is the most detailed. If the Hypatian Chronicle was used for the outskirts of Kyiv, what could be the source for the central part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania?

One can suppose the scribe of the SRG here use information from some well-informed resident of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, for example, a resident of Slutsk. This could explain why the Lithuanian block of the SRG begins with Slutsk, which is completely random under other reviews.

In total, there are 45 objects in 50-km zones around the capitals, and 104 objects in 100-km zones. This is 13 % and 31 % of the 340 localized objects. Most of these objects are more than 100 km away from the capitals. That is, the metropolitan regions were not the subject of special interest of the SRG scribe, which is best seen on the example of Veliky Novgorod.

Moreover, neither the political bodies themselves nor the belonging of the objects to them are of interest to the writer of the SRG. And this applied both to long-disappeared principalities and to those that existed at the time of work on the SRG.

Headlines in SRG and political history / geography

Until this moment, I paid almost no attention to the headings in the text of the SRG, although they are inseparable components of the text. To facilitate the analysis, we will collect these headings in one place.

Of the nine headings, almost every one is an enigma that cannot be solved.

The SRG begins with an ambitious promise to submit names all towns. This in no way corresponds to the content of the list, where, in particular, the principality of Tver is systematically absent, and something could be collected on the outskirts of the described territory. The fact that not only towns (fortifications), but also ordinary villages and even tracts are included in the list, was already mentioned above (in the section "Types of objects").

Further, the title promises Rus’ towns, but Jerusalem, Suceava and Vilna are by no means Rus’. It remains to assume that "Rus" determined only the most general direction of the work, and its implementation depended on the materials that managed to attract.

Why does the title say "distant towns" first, and then "nearby" ones? Let me remind you my opinion – the SRG was written in Novgorod, and the towns of the "Novgorod" and "Pskov" groups must have been considered "nearby" to him, and all the others – "distant".

Then the next question arises – why didn’t the scribe start with "nearby" towns, which were better known to him anyway? Here we have to launch into further improbable elucidations, for example, to assume that the work plan was changed in the process of execution.

Further, the "Bulgarian" and "Moldavian" groups have no headings, while the "Podillja" group has two headings, both of which are false, because it contains neither Bulgarian nor Wallachian objects.

I think that the work on the SRG began with the processing of the Hypatian Chronicle, and extracts from it were given the title "A se Kyivskie grody" (= There are Kyivan towns) – when there was no general title for the entire list yet. Further headings no longer contain the word "towns" – apparently, it was considered that the first mention was enough.

The title of the block of Smolensk towns gives another mystery. The Smolensk Principality was conquered by the Lithuanians in 1405 and was never restored. That is, from the point of view of modern political geography, all the towns listed in the block are Lithuanian.

But the scribe of the SRG was indifferent to politics and probably used some document of Smolensk origin, because the block begins with the capital – Smolensk (which is a rarity in the SRG). The block mentions Mstislavl, although it is believed that Algirdas captured it back in 1359. It turns out that this hypothetical Smolensk document originated from an earlier time, from the 1st half 14th century. But then why does it not mention Toropets, which the same Algirdas captured in 1362? It turns out that the principality of Smolensk never existed within the boundaries outlined by the SRG. Another riddle.

Thus, the headings in the SWG cannot be a source for either political history or political geography (for the time when the SRG was compiled). The purpose of creating headlines and the principle of their formation cannot be convincingly explained.

What is missing in the SRG

It is also necessary to talk about what could be presented in the SRG, and what is not there in reality.

The most obvious gap is the complete systematic absence of the Tver principality, although it was the closest to Novgorod and had close ties with it. The systematic absence suggests that it was not an accidental loss of a sheet – it is some incomprehensible idea for us.

There is absolutely no mention of church structures in the SRG. Even the Jerusalem Patriarchate is not mentioned, there are no mention of the seats of Russian metropolitans (Kyiv, Vladimir, Moscow, Smolensk), or the seats of dioceses. This topic is systematically absent, it can be stated that it was deliberately ignored by the SRG scribe.

There is absolutely no mention of monasteries in SRG. Neither the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery, nor the Yuryev Monastery in Novgorod, nor the Trinity Sergius Monastery near Moscow (already quite famous in the middle of the 15th century) were included in the SRG. This is also a systemic absence, and it is also a conscious choice of the SRG scribe.

There are almost no saints in the SRG. Not even such a Jesus Christ, who (Christians believe) was crucified in Jerusalem, is not mentioned. Jerusalem is there, but Christ is not. In Kyiv, one could mention Prince Volodymyr and Princess Olga, who in mid-15th century were certainly venerated as saints. In Vyshgorod there was an opportunity to mention the holy princes Boris and Hleb, but there is no such mention either.