Scratch the Russian and you will find the Tatar meaning. “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar.” There is no such saying. — That is, you are not a supporter of the Norman theory

However, I’m lying. Once during my vacation, I finally moved further than a hundred meters from home.

This is me to Agavr agavr went to Radio Culture to discuss Bushkov’s book “Genghis Khan. Unknown Asia". The book is complete, sorry, ge with a capital G, but that’s not what I’m talking about now.

The cover of this book by a famous whistleblower of historians is decorated with a quote:

“Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar. A. Pushkin».

I didn't like the signature right away. No, no doubt, after Lenin was abolished, all quotes are traditionally attributed to our everything, but I somehow doubted that Pushkin was engaged in Tatar research.

And I started digging. I discovered a lot of interesting things. The quote is more than popular; as usual, all famous personalities ranging from Homer to Panikovsky are named as authors. But most often those who quote, without further ado, simply declare it a proverb. For example, Putin, almost our everything, put it this way: “We, you know, they say: “If you rub every Russian properly, a Tatar will appear there.”

An aside - I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks this saying evokes allusions to the fairy tale about Aladdin, where the role of the lamp is Russian, and the role of the genie is Tatar?

But I digress. In general, it seemed that there was no way to find the end - they blurted out the quote and used it. But there are no barriers to an inquisitive mind, especially if this mind does not want to shake a rattle in front of the heiresses, justifying itself by preparing for a radio appearance.

I won’t bore you with the history of my searches, I’ll go straight to the main thing - I finally dug up the original source. And as a result, he added to his collection of distorted quotes.

You know, I am becoming more and more convinced that there are practically no exact quotes left in popular use. At all. All popular expressions are either shamelessly distorted, or cut off to the point of distorting the meaning, or originally had a completely different meaning.

“Russian with Tatar,” as it turned out, belong precisely to the third category. To make it clear what this category is, let me remind you of the famous: “Religion is the opium of the people.” Formally, the quotation from Marx is practically not distorted (he said “Religion is the opium of the people”), but de facto the meaning has been considerably changed. In the original, the bearded mind spoke not about the intoxicating, but about the analgesic properties of opium (Religion is the sigh of an oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world...), which, you see, considerably shifts the emphasis.

So, about the Tatars. As a result of the research, it turned out that Putin was wrong. This is not what we say at all.

The expression “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar” came to us from the French language, and in the original it sounds like this: “Grattez le Russe, et vous verrez un Tartare.” There this saying is also very popular, so much so that the authorship has not yet been accurately established; this catchphrase was attributed to various historical figures: Joseph de Maistre, Napoleon I, Prince de Ligne, etc.

But the meaning put into this saying by the French is very specific and completely different.

In fact, the phrase about the Russian and the Tatar is just a short version of the famous quote from the famous essay “La Russie en 1839”. The same one that was given to the world by the famous marquis, freemason and pederast Astolphe de Custine. For those who haven’t read it, let me remind you that the book “Russia in 1839” still retains the title of “the bible of Russophobes.” Well, Custine speaks, naturally, about his own, about his obsession. This is how his thesis sounds in expanded form:

It is as a kind of quintessence, a kind of distillation of Russophobia, that our European educated classics loved to quote the phrase “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar.” In particular, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky often sinned with this, exposing the machinations of evil Europeans - both in the “Diary of a Writer” and in “The Teenager”... It was from their writings that this aphorism went to the people.

Well, our people, as usual, have distorted everything. As a result, the dubious maxim “Under the thin shell of feigned culture, Russians still hide cannibalistic savages” turned into a peaceful and generally true thesis “A Russian and a Tatar are brothers forever.”

Sorry if I'm afraid

“Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar”

In general, it seemed that there was no way to find the end - they blurted out the quote and used it. But there are no barriers to an inquisitive mind, especially if this mind does not want to shake a rattle in front of the heiresses, justifying itself by preparing for a radio appearance.

I’ll go straight to the main thing - I finally dug up the original source.

So, about the Tatars. As a result of the research, it turned out that Putin was wrong. This is not what we say at all.

But the meaning put into this saying by the French is very specific and completely different.

“After all, a little more than a hundred years ago they were real Tatars. And under the outer veneer of European elegance, most of these upstart civilizations retained the bearskin - they just put the fur on it inside. But just scratch them a little and you will see how the wool comes out and bristles.”
It is as a kind of quintessence, a kind of distillation of Russophobia, that our European educated classics loved to quote the phrase “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar.” In particular, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky often sinned with this, exposing the machinations of evil Europeans - both in the “Diary of a Writer” and in “The Teenager”... It was from their writings that this aphorism went to the people.

The original is "Opium des Volkes", not "Opium für das Volk". The translation of the original is completely unambiguous: “opium of the people”, “opium belonging to the people”, “people’s opium” in the sense of “folk remedy”.

From my discussion with the famous network banderlog, who attributed the phrase about the Tatar to Turgenev:

This is a very common technique in theoretical Russophobia. Brought to complete perfection by the shitty Shtepa. The name of some great Russian is taken, and then a suitable quote is inserted into him. “As the Russian classic Turgenev said (Tolstoy, Gorbachev, Khryun Morzhov...) all Russian goats (fuckers, freaks, microcephalics).” End of quote. What, you don’t agree to admit that you are a piece of dung? What a shame, because the great Hryun Morzhov himself said this! Fall on your face, you insignificant ones! After all, Hryun Morzhov himself! etc. and so on.

Not without pleasure, I conducted an online investigation on the topic “who said “meow”, in the sense of which classic the phrase about scratching a Russian belongs to. Turgenev found himself in good company:

“Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar” (Karamzin)

It was not for nothing that the great Russian writer N.S. Leskov said that if you scratch a Russian, you will find a Tatar.

And when Dostoevsky wrote: “scratch any Russian and you will see a Tatar”

A.S. himself Pushkin said - Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar

As Klyuchevsky used to say, scratch a Russian and you will see a Tatar

Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar (as in Shestov).

Ivan Bunin's remark - if you scratch any Russian, you will find a Tatar

Scratch any Russian - you will scrape off a Tatar, Gogol said

It’s, as Kuprin said, scratch any Russian, you’ll get a Tatar

paraphrasing the statement of V.V. Rozanov (“Scratch any Russian, and you will find a Tatar”),

“Scratch any Russian, you will find a Tatar,” President Vladimir Putin said not so long ago.

This is an arctic fox. Complete and comprehensive. Soon there will not be a single Russian classic who will not be credited with the authorship of this nasty and bad phrase. For - Hryun Morzhov himself, no big deal!

The end of the favorite maydaun myth about the “horde”. A word for geneticists

Russians are one of the most purebred peoples in Eurasia.
Recent joint research by Russian, British and Estonian genetic scientists has put a big, bold end to the common Russophobic myth that has been infiltrated into people’s minds for decades - they say, “scratch a Russian and you will definitely find a Tatar.”

The results of a large-scale experiment published in the scientific journal “The American Journal of Human Genetics” clearly state that “despite the popular opinions about the strong Tatar and Mongol admixture in the blood of Russians, which their ancestors inherited during the Tatar-Mongol invasion, the haplogroups of the Turkic peoples and other Asian ethnic groups left virtually no trace on the population of the modern northwestern, central and southern regions.”

Like this. We can safely put an end to this long-standing dispute and consider further discussions on this issue simply inappropriate.

We are not Tatars. We are not Tatars. The so-called “Mongol-Tatar yoke” - which in reality did not exist (see video) - did not have any influence on Russian genes. We Russians did not have and do not have any admixture of Turkic “Horde blood”.

Moreover, genetic scientists, summing up their research, declare the almost complete identity of the genotypes of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, thereby proving that we were and remain one people: “genetic variations of the Y chromosome of the inhabitants of the central and southern regions of Ancient Rus' turned out to be practically identical to those of Ukrainians and Belarusians.”

One of the project leaders, Russian geneticist Oleg Balanovsky, admitted in an interview with Gazeta.ru that Russians are an almost monolithic people from a genetic point of view, destroying another myth: “everyone is mixed up, there are no longer pure Russians.” Just the opposite - there were Russians and there are Russians. One people, one nation, a monolithic nationality with a clearly defined special genotype.

Further, examining the materials of remains from ancient burials, scientists found that “Slavic tribes developed these lands (Central and Southern Russia) long before the mass resettlement of the main part of the ancient Russians to them in the 7th-9th centuries.” That is, the lands of Central and Southern Russia were inhabited by Russians (Rusichs) already, at least in the first centuries AD. If not before.

This allows us to debunk another Russophobic myth - that Moscow and the surrounding areas were supposedly inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes from ancient times and that Russians there are “aliens.” We, as geneticists have proven, are not aliens, but completely autochthonous inhabitants of Central Russia, where Russians have lived since time immemorial. “Despite the fact that these lands were inhabited even before the last glaciation of our planet about 20 thousand years ago, there is no evidence directly indicating the presence of any “original” peoples living in this territory,” the report states. That is, there is no evidence that any other tribes lived on our lands before us, whom we supposedly displaced or assimilated. If I can put it this way, we have been living here since the creation of the world.

Scientists also determined the far boundaries of the habitat of our ancestors: “analysis of bone remains indicates that the main zone of contact between Caucasians and people of the Mongoloid type was in Western Siberia.” And if you consider that archaeologists who excavated the most ancient burials of the 1st millennium BC. on the territory of Altai, they found the remains of distinctly Caucasoid people there (not to mention the world-famous Arkaim) - the conclusion is obvious. Our ancestors (ancient Russians, proto-Slavs) originally lived throughout the entire territory of modern Russia, including Siberia, and quite possibly the Far East. So the campaign of Ermak Timofeevich and his comrades beyond the Urals, from this point of view, was a completely legitimate return of previously lost territories.

That's it, friends. Modern science is destroying Russophobic stereotypes and myths, cutting the ground from under the feet of our liberal “friends”. Their further speculations on these topics are completely beyond the bounds of common sense, being of interest exclusively to psychiatrists who study the mechanisms of obsessive delusions...

The creator of DNA genealogy, Anatoly Klesov, about the Tatar project, the fallacy of the Norman theory and the descendants of the Bulgars exterminated in Hungary

The conclusions of Moscow geneticists that the Crimean, Siberian and Volga Tatars do not have a common ancestor are erroneous, says famous chemist, ex-professor of Moscow State University and ex-professor of Harvard Medical School Anatoly Klesov. In an interview with BUSINESS Online, the Russian-American scientist spoke about the search for 13 million rubles for the study of the Tatars, the origin of Russians from three main clans and the difference between DNA genealogy and population genetics.

Anatoly Klesov: “Each ethnic group has its own standards of beauty. That’s why they usually marry their own people, unless it’s kidnapping, of course. Even from the Tatars we see how different everyone is.” Photo: Igor Dubskikh

“GENGISH KHAN BELONGED TO ONE CLAN, BUT THE TATAR HAD A MASS OF DIFFERENT CLANES”

— Anatoly Alekseevich, a group of scientists led by Oleg and Elena Balanovsky studied the Tatars of Eurasia. We wrote about this, but the reaction of local historians and ethnologists of Tatarstan was negative, the text received many comments. Do you agree with the conclusion of geneticists that the Crimean, Siberian and Volga Tatars do not have a common ancestor?

- No, I don’t agree. I wrote in the Bulletin of the Academy of DNA Genealogy why I think so. To begin with, the formulation of the question itself is incorrect, because all Tatars - Crimean, Astrakhan, Kasimov, Siberian, Mishar, and others - have a set of clans. They cannot have a common ancestor. Each genus has its own common ancestor. So there is always a bunch of common ancestors. Therefore, it makes no sense to say that the Tatars do not have a common ancestor, because they cannot have a common ancestor. It's like Russians have three main families. It also makes no sense to say that Russians have one common ancestor.

The question of geneticists is incorrectly posed; one must ask: does everyone have a more or less common set of ancestors? There is not just one common ancestor, but if the common ancestors in their set are more or less the same in both places, then there is, of course, a connection between them. And what is written in that article [by the Balanovskys] is incorrect, since the question itself is incorrect. That’s why the Tatars were indignant - they are all one community. As they say, when our people are beaten, it doesn’t matter whether we have common ancestors. In such a situation, defending ourselves, we can give our lives for ours. Russian or Soviet soldiers fought on the battlefield not because they had a common ancestor, but because they were beating ours.

The Tatar population itself is composite, but this composition is similar everywhere. My article in Vestnik is not directed against Balanovsky at all, I just think that his statement of the problem is wrong. So I understand why the article was met with outrage. We must approach such issues with caution. A dry scientific study is one thing, but an explanation of what kind of families the Tatars have, what common ancestors they have and when they separated, how the Tatars from the Golden Horde came to Lithuania and now speak not Turkic, but Lithuanian, Polish and Belarusian languages is another. How did this happen? In general, a lot of interesting questions.

- Do you have answers to these questions?

- No, but there is a part. I didn't do this on purpose. But we have already formulated the Tatar project. This year I wanted to fly to the Crimean Tatars to connect them to it, but they were not ready. Probably due to the fact that the Moscow Tatars were not ready. In June, I spoke to the latter - I took the first step to prepare them.

— Our publication is especially interested in the Kazan Tatars. Do you have any idea where they came from? Geneticist, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Evgeniy Lilin once told me: “Try to tell some Tatar that Genghis Khan was not a relative of all Tatars, you’ll immediately get punched in the face.” So where did they come from? What are the haplogroups?

— Genghis Khan belonged to one clan, but the Tatars have a lot of different clans. So all Tatars cannot be descendants of Genghis Khan. Someone - yes. But this is just one line. I understand that this may irritate the Tatars, but it looks like Genghis Khan wasn't even a Mongol. Literally 10 years after his death, a book was published by a thorough Arab historian who studied Genghis Khan. So he wrote that Genghis Khan did not have the characteristics of a steppe dweller at all; it seems that he never was a steppe dweller. When they were chasing him, he ran and hid in the forests and had a good sense of direction there; his favorite pastime was picking mushrooms and berries. Find me a Mongolian who picks mushrooms and berries in the forests. He and his brother were fishing with a seine. Find a steppe dweller who is fishing. There are many such facts. Moreover, he was a bourgein - blue-eyed, which also somehow doesn’t fit in very well. I don’t know who he was, but it seems that he was either in the R1a or R1b group ( names of haplogroups — approx. ed.). But the fact that he was not a steppe dweller is most likely. Therefore, this should not upset the Tatars in any way, since they have both R1a and R1b. That is, he is not at all alien to the Tatars by birth. And if we find out more precisely, then I think the Tatars will be interested.

But among the Siberian, Volga and Lithuanian Tatars, the set of common ancestors is really close to each other.

“ONCE SOME SCIENCE TRY TO IMPOSE ITS SOLUTION ON OTHERS, THERE ARE ALWAYS DISAGREEMENTS”

— They say that the Crimean Tatars have completely different ancestors.

- No, they have the same R1a groups, but another thing is that the Crimean ones are more fragmented - there are more births than others, that is, there is a lot of mixture. But there were Greeks in Crimea, and there were others too. So the Crimean Tatars may be more diverse in their origins.

I think that the Tatars need to be dealt with; this is a complex problem. That’s why we made a Tatar project and are waiting for the Tatars themselves to be interested in it. Then it will be possible to discuss the project in more detail, all these issues, organization, how to do it technically. We have a laboratory. Question: how to secure financing? I would not like to take money from every Tatar, but I would like the government of Tatarstan to immediately allocate a large sum of money. 13 million rubles is not a huge amount of money for Tatarstan; you can already study a thousand people. It will be possible to make a thousand Kazan Tatars, a thousand Astrakhan Tatars, a thousand Crimean Tatars, a thousand Lithuanian Tatars, and this will already be a group that is nowhere near the size of the material in the world. Then there will be a lot of options for discussion. I would like the initiative to come from the Tatars themselves.

But the research must be carried out with the participation of Tatar linguists, archaeologists, ethnologists, anthropologists, and someone from the government in order to achieve consensus on each issue. We don't need conflicts. Let's sit down together and discuss. We may be wrong in the interpretation - great, let's look for a solution together. Support is needed from everywhere. I know from experience that whenever one science tries to impose its solution on others, there are always dissenters.

— So, are there still any Mongolian traces left in the Tatars or Russians? Geneticists say that there are no such traces.

— If there is, then at a very small level. Let's say that 100 years ago some Mongolian came to study at the institute and stayed. Technically, such traces can exist. But there is no evidence that the Mongols were noticeable. There is also very little Tatar blood among Russians. Therefore, the saying “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar,” which was introduced by the great historian Nikolai Karamzin, is incorrect. He also lived according to concepts: he proceeded from the fact that there was a yoke, there was an invasion, there was violence, children had to be born. Therefore, in Russian there is a Tatar trace everywhere, scratch it and you will find it. Neither one, nor the other, nor the third is incorrect, because in the group most represented among both Russians and Tatars, it is R1a, where R is a large genus, it has a subgenus - R1, which includes another subgenus. So it is different for Russians and Tatars. They have different indexes. The Russians mostly have the Z280, and the Tatars have the Z93. They are descended from the same common ancestor, but Z280 is one line and Z93 is another. They separated about 5 thousand years ago, long before the days of the yoke. Geneticists, studying mutations, build a phylogenetic tree - which mutation occurred when and which branch came from where. It turns out like a tree. So 5 thousand years ago there was a common ancestor for both Z280 and Z93. That’s when the lines that became dominant among the Russians and Tatars diverged.

- Why did they separate? Any suggestions?

- They separate all the time. Why does a tree split into branches? It happened.

“ALL THESE ARE FABLES THAT THE SCANDINAVIANS LIVED IN Rus'”

- So who is the common distant, distant ancestor?

— The most ancient, which has already been studied quite well, is Z645. He lived 5.5 thousand years ago. According to all data, this was the beginning of the Aryans. Their origin is written in the book by Lev Samuilovich Klein. So, as some hotheads say, this historical ancient tribe has nothing to do with fascism. Data from historians, linguists, and ethnologists agree that 5.5 thousand years ago there was a single tribe that had marks in DNA genealogy; it spoke the language of the Indo-European group. Branches diverged from them 5 thousand years ago - Z280, Z93 and Z284. And Z284 are Scandinavians, this group stayed there and never went anywhere. So these are all fables that the Scandinavians lived in Rus'.

— So you are not a supporter of the Norman theory?

- Absolutely. This does not exist at all and cannot exist. Scandinavians have clearly defined marks, Russians do not have them at all. The Scandinavians did not come here to make it noticeable. And where they are, there are a ton of marks - of course, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the north of France and all the British Isles. There is darkness there. They walked in that direction, but not in our direction. So these are all stories, that there were many of them here, tens of thousands of people, that they brought crafts and so on. There are none! When I tell population geneticists about this, they are silent and do not dispute it, but they also do not comment, because it does not agree with the accepted concept. Population geneticists, including the Balanovskys, do not deviate one step from the accepted concept.

“AT LEAST A FEW WESTERN SLAVS CAN BE FOUND AMONG THE TATARS FOR SOMEHOW”

- Let's return to the ancestor of the Russians and Tatars, to the common family. Tell me, did he live in this territory all the time? Where did he come from?

— A pronounced vector of movement of the descendants of the Z645 group is visible; they traveled a long way to the east to Altai and further to China.

-Where did they come from? From the Balkans?

- Looks like it's from the Balkans. This is not entirely clear yet. But they clearly came from Europe, apparently from the Balkans. They were heading east. During this movement they formed Z280 and Z93. Z280 is the northern part from approximately Belarus to the Urals. And Z93 is the southern part. It so happened that some went there, others went there. Group Z93 moved through forest and forest-steppe territories, reached the Urals through Central Asia, it went to India, Iran, China, the Middle East and became the Altai Scythians. These are all relatives of the Tatars, closer than the Russians, since they are all Z93. Although everyone descends from a common ancestor, the Tatars are one step closer to the very ones who moved. The enemies would say that the Russians were lazy, sitting in one place in the north and not moving anywhere. And the Z93 have come a long way, apparently they were more passionate for some reason. It is from them that the Tatars originated, because Z93 dominates among them. When they reached Altai, they became Scythians, as historians called them. Then they went back, became nomads, and the Kyrgyz were formed from them. This is a huge passionate group, it was they who created Iran and the Persians, they created ancient Syria. In Syria there was the Mitanni kingdom, these were also Z93. In Iran - Z93, in India the highest castes - Z93, Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Pashtuns - Z93.

That is, the Z280 remained higher, they moved to the Baltic - the Baltic Slavs appeared, they had their own range, they went south, to the Adriatic. Venets and Wends are all Z280. Therefore, it turned out that Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Czechs, Slovaks and others are a huge range of the Z280. They had the very first Fatyanovo culture - they were actually the Old Russians. So Z280 and Z93 are two parallel branches, they practically did not intersect.

— But the Tatars are quite diverse in appearance. What explains this?

- This is explained by the fact that there is no homogeneity anywhere. Z93 entered Russian lands, then married either Russian, or Polish, or Ukrainian women. They weren't isolated. This is how Slavic lines, especially Western Slavic ones, came to them. This is not even a Z280 or a Z93, but an M458 - these are Western Slavs. Among the Tatars they are also represented by 10–15 percent. In fact, it would be more correct to say that there are three main groups: Z280 (sort of northern and central Russians), Z93 (Tatars and the eastern part) and M458 (Western Slavs). Therefore, here the saying “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar” is incorrect: if you do not scratch, you will not find him.

“Then scratch a Tatar and you’ll find a Russian, right?”

— Yes, it turns out that for some reason you can find at least a few Western Slavs among the Tatars, as well as some Russians. Moreover, there were many mixed marriages. Moreover, I have the feeling that Tatars took Russian wives more often than Russian men took Tatar women. The Tatars can argue with me, maybe they will be right, but I have a feeling from these figures that it’s more likely that women came to the Tatars. But this also needs to be studied, I would not insist on this. So the picture is complex and interesting.

“THE MEN - DESCENDANTS OF THE BULGARS IN HUNGARY WERE ALL EXTERIFIED”

— What can you say about the Bulgars, whose descendants the Tatars consider themselves to be?

“They talk a lot about this now, but little is studied. It would be ideal to raise the Bulgar burials (and there are plenty of them), the museums are full of bones. DNA is extracted from them, and it is immediately clear who they are - Z280, Z93 or someone else, or maybe M458. There is no way I can deny this.

The Bulgars marched from the Urals and Volga to Hungary. The paradox is that even though the Bulgars went to Hungary, brought Finno-Ugric languages there, and formed Hungary, there are no men from this group there. There are legends that the Tatar-Mongols exterminated them. When they came to them, they did not surrender, did not pay tribute, they entered into battle, and the Tatar-Mongols had a principle: either the city surrenders or is destroyed. Therefore, it seems that the male descendants of the Bulgars in Hungary were all exterminated, but the women continued to pass on the language. This fact is often underestimated, that women pass on language through their children.

If you lift the bones, it will be clear who these Bulgars were, what the route was, because they walked, a trail remained, and it is clear from it who these people were.

- So, do they have anything to do with today’s Tatars?

- This is what we need to find out. The Tatars believe that they have. As a rule, if they believe, it means there are fundamentals; there is no smoke without fire. I think this is most likely what will happen. It is unlikely that stable legends and myths will suddenly turn out to be incorrect; this rarely happens.

“They used to be sure that the earth was flat, but that turned out not to be the case...

- Of course, it happens, so you always have to be careful. This is how science is built: this is how it is for now, and tomorrow new data will appear.

“Men moved more compactly, women, as a rule, came to the village to visit their husbands. Therefore, for women it is more difficult to trace their specific historical trace. The woman spins the carousel all the time” / Photo: “BUSINESS Online”

“RUSSIANS HAVE THREE MAIN GROUPS - R1A,I2A And N1S1"

— Not only Tatars live in Tatarstan, but also Russians. How homogeneous are Russians? And who are the Russians?

— Russians are a family of three main clans and many small ones. Like any ethnic group, there are dominant ones and there are less dominant ones. Take the same Lithuanians and Latvians. The Russians came to the Baltic and added their lines. Experience shows that Russians have much more ancient ancestors than the Balts. Excavations show that those orders lived there for another 8 thousand years, when there was no trace of the Finno-Ugrians. So they came and started a family. So in the Baltic there are basically two groups - R1a and N1c. As for the second, the Yakuts are of the same group. It seems, what is the connection between the Yakuts, Latvians and Lithuanians? Again, women are changing anthropology. There were Mongols there, and they gave birth to children of Mongoloid appearance, despite the fact that the Yakuts may have originally been Caucasian. Let me give you the example of Alexander Pushkin: he has a Negroid part, but he has R1a. Hannibal, through the female lines, brought Negroid to Pushkin. And the original haplogroup is R1a.

If you go somewhere to Russian villages, you won’t find many blacks, American Indians, Australian aborigines - they didn’t make it there. They usually marry their own people. If you take a Russian, it is unlikely that he will be married to a Mongolian; the Mongols even have a different standard of beauty, for example, a face like the moon, while the Russians have a completely different one: Turgenev’s girls did not have a face like the moon. And in general, each ethnic group has its own standards of beauty. That’s why they usually marry their own people, unless it’s kidnapping, of course. Even from the Tatars we see how different everyone is.

And the Russians were made up of three different clans. One of them is those who can be linguistically called Eastern Slavs - R1a-Z280. A subgenus was added to them - also R1a, but already M458 - Western Slavs, there are a lot of them in Belarus, Poland, but there are also a lot of them among Russians. In principle, they are all the same, but the shares are slightly different. The second genus is the southern Slavs, the Danube Slavs - those about whom The Tale of Bygone Years talks. This is haplogroup I2a. They are the youngest, formed only 2 thousand years ago. But in fact, they are very ancient, they have been found since the time of the glacier, but they were destroyed, and we see the darkness of bones in excavations, and among modern people they appeared only 2 thousand years ago. Some survived and gave birth to abundant offspring. And when you look at where the common ancestor was - only 2 thousand years ago, then a gap - and they found fossils 7-8 thousand years ago. If Veles’ book is ever recognized, then an interesting thing will turn out: Veles’ book is the Eastern Slavs, and “The Tale of Bygone Years” is the Southern Slavs.

And the third group N is just the Balts, Pomors, and Komi. This vector also came from Altai, but in a different way - northern. They walked from Altai to the north, walked along the Ural Mountains and crossed somewhere over them. In general, R1a, R1b, N, and Q came from Altai. In general, it was such a cradle of nations, a kindergarten, let’s say. Many people actually came from there. Group Q also left Altai, went north through the Bering Strait and became the American Indians. R1a took the same southern route from there and went to Europe. R1b also went from Altai, but through Northern Kazakhstan and the Volga region, it also went to Europe. And N, as I already said, went north and dispersed: some became Finns, others - Lithuanians and Latvians, and others - Bulgars. Studying ancient remains and modern peoples provides a clearer picture of who went where.

So the Russians have three main groups - R1a, I2a and N1с1 (renamed N1a1 this year). These three main clans formed into the Slavs, although there are three different clans. So the Serbs are ours, the Bulgarians in general too. Same thing for the Poles. But Poles and Russians were separated by religion; in fact, they are the same people.

— I know what you think: Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are one people.

- The data proves this. And the Poles are there too. But I usually don’t mention Poles, because people are less interested in them. But in fact, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and East Germans are relatives. In East Germany, the former Slavs are also all “marked”. There were also solid Slavic lands there. Remember, Pushkin wrote about Buyan Island? So in fact, Ruyan, also known as Rügen, is a Slavic island. When Ilya Sergeevich Glazunov was there during excavations, he asked what was found, and the archaeologists answered him: “Everything here is Slavic, down to the magma.” The way it is. There was also a huge settlement of pagans. They were stormed by Westerners to impose Christianity, and they died there. Then, if you take from Berlin up to the Baltic, look at the names of cities and towns: they are all Slavic - they end in -ov and -ev, that’s what they were called by their last names. When I talk about this, I say that during the tragedy of the Great Patriotic War, they fought against their own: R1a - former Slavs - here and there. It would be a civil war if people knew that they were actually brothers. East Germans are more similar to Russians; those who visit there see a completely different psychotype than in West Germany.

“THATARS HAVE MORE SIMILARITY IN THE Collective, BUT BASHKIRS ARE MOVED TO THE SIDEWAY, THEY ARE NOT TATARS”

— The Balanovsky group studied the Volga Tatars and came to the conclusion that group N dominates1cand R1a, less than R1b. Do you agree with this arrangement?

- This means that in this sample that was studied, this is the situation. If you take another one and get the same thing, then everything is correct. Or there may be shifts in the other direction, which also happens. This is a descriptive model only.

— But Rafael Khakimov said that it is useless to study the gene pool of the Tatars without knowledge of history.

- Right.

- But you know that history is a largely political science.

— I would say this: the study of peoples must necessarily include a set of information on history, linguistics, DNA genealogy, and anthropology. Each one individually can lead us in the wrong direction. But, unfortunately, there is almost no such thing. Academician Ivanov was once asked: why don’t you consider anthropological data in your studies of history and linguistics? And he says: “They do something else.” That's the problem, but it should be the same thing.

— What is the connection between the Tatars and Bashkirs?

— They have a lot in common, R1a and Z93 also dominate, but the Bashkirs have more R1b, this is a different subbranch. Where they came from also needs to be clarified. I would not give an explanation now, because there is still a lot that is unclear. But they have a certain bias in the totality of different genera. I would say that the Tatars are more similar in aggregate, and the Bashkirs are shifted to the side, they are not Tatars.

- But there are Tatars from Siberia, and Astrakhan, and others.

— The question is: what do they have in common?

- So they only have a common name?

- Not just the name. The Slavs are the same - not only the name is common, but also the language, although the history diverges in different directions. Therefore, the Bashkirs are in many ways similar to the Tatars, but different in the combination of clans. They have a lot of R1b, which is only 5 percent for Russians, and not much for Tatars either. So we can only guess where they came from. Either these are ancient groups, or military specialists like Demidov’s people came to the Middle Ages, under Peter, and they brought their group from Europe. For example, let's take the literary character of Fandorin as an analogy - he is Dutch, he brought his Dutch group to Russia, the children came, the main character of Fandorin himself is already Russian, and he most likely had R1b.

— Y-chromosome is transmitted only through the male line. Does this mean that only men can find out their origins?

- No. The Y chromosome is the male marker. Why is it being used more widely? Because men moved more compactly, women, as a rule, came to the village to visit their husbands, they did not move in formation, did not go somewhere in columns, there were no separate female migrations. Where would they go separately? But there were male migrations. For example, the army of Alexander the Great marched from Greece to India, they left behind both a trail and fossils, and women were around all the time. Take a harem: there is an owner, if the eunuch is correct and does not spoil the picture, then everyone will have one Y-chromosome of the owner of the harem, and each woman will have her own, that is, the offspring will have a darkness of mitochondrial DNA and only one Y-chromosome. Therefore, for women it is more difficult to trace their specific historical trace. The woman spins the carousel all the time.

“I AM NOT A Sword Swallower, I DO NOT CLAIM FOR GENETICS”

— The Balanovsky geneticists mentioned in our conversation criticize you and consider you a pseudoscientist. Why do you think?

- This is, to put it bluntly, a small but noisy group. And there is a large segment of my silent support. The Balanovskys carry out very aggressive attacks on DNA genealogy and on me personally. There are several reasons for this. When I started doing DNA genealogy, which is my profession...

“They say that there is no such science as DNA genealogy.”

- Welcome to science. Quantum mechanics didn’t exist recently either. Sciences emerge, people create new directions, their own methodology appears. Sciences are not divided by objects. Let's say physicists study the hydrogen atom in one way, and chemists in another. Therefore, chemists do not understand physicists well, and vice versa. There was a Nobel Prize winner in medicine, Albert Szent-Györgyi, who said: “Give a chemist a dynamo, and the first thing he will do is dissolve it in hydrochloric acid.” Do you understand? The chemist will dissolve it in hydrochloric acid, because his task is to check what it consists of, what elements are there. So does DNA genealogy. Population genetics is one thing, but DNA genealogy is something completely different. The whole point is that DNA genealogy is a different field.

— Isn’t this population genetics?

— Yes, not population genetics, we have a different methodology, different calculation and descriptive tools. The encyclopedias say that the main task of population genetics is to find the relationship between genotype and phenotype. The genotype is your genes, DNA, and the phenotype is what you look like, as well as what hereditary diseases you have. Take, for example, Jews, they have many hereditary diseases, while Tatars have completely different hereditary diseases. Why? Here is the question of population genetics: what is different about them, that, say, the bouquet of diseases is different? In general, a phenotype is a manifestation of a genotype. Hair color, anthropology - these are the questions of population genetics.

- Aren’t you doing this?

- Absolutely not. We don't study genes at all.

- So there is a connection between genotype and phenotype?

- Of course have. The way you look is a reflection of your genes, what your dad and mom gave you. Your skin is not black, you are not a black woman. And if dad were a black man (or mom), you would have a pronounced mixed race, or even black skin color. There are genes responsible for skin color, the width of the nose, the brow ridges, the shape of the neck - everything is reflected in the genes. This is not what DNA genealogy does. The fact is that DNA genealogy does not deal with genes at all, and population genetics is genetics even by name. In science, it is accepted that the second word defines science. Let's say physical chemistry is chemistry, and chemical physics is physics.

— So what does DNA genealogy do?

— Population geneticists also work on DNA, but in a different, more descriptive way. What does a population geneticist do? He comes, for example, to the village of Gadyukino, Yaroslavl region, and writes down: the carrier of the haplogroup is such and such - such and such a percentage, another - such and such a percentage. They do descriptive information, but this is not DNA genealogy. And genealogy is actually a historical science, but based on DNA.

- So you also study Y?-chromosomes?

- Yes, but I study DNA fragments, isolated chromosomes. In general, chromosomes are not that interesting to me. We don't deal with genes. What is DNA genealogy? When fragments are studied based on DNA and they show who the ancestor of a person was, where he moved, what archaeological cultures were along this path, what languages those people spoke. This is not genetics at all, so the focus is completely different.

I am a chemist by birth with considerable experience in the medical sciences. I have never studied genetics. And when critics write that he is not a geneticist, I say: “What difference does it make? I’m not a sword swallower, I don’t pretend to be a geneticist either.” Therefore, the reproach that I am not a geneticist is ridiculous. I do not pretend to be a geneticist, I am a chemist, a person who deals with medicine, cancer diseases, their causes, inflammatory pathologies, for which I receive most of my salary. So I can pay for DNA genealogy. So I have nothing to do with genetics. But geneticists apparently don’t understand it at all. They say that a non-specialist delved into genetics. I didn’t go! I don’t understand it, I don’t intend to understand it. I don’t need it, there are thousands of geneticists for that. I do what no one else can do except me. I always work at the intersection of sciences.

- What sciences are these? Story...

— The main one is physical chemistry. As a physical chemist, I study the laws of DNA mutations, and DNA mutations are determined by rate laws. I look at the DNA and see: these are mutations, for some reason they occur slowly in some areas, faster in others, and even faster in others. Geneticists don't do this, and that's my specialty. For example, I am developing computer programs that allow you not to count manually, but to give a DNA fragment and in a second receive information about when an ancestor lived. I study archaeological cultures. This is not what genetics does. I’m also studying why so many mutations have accumulated in one culture, and a different number in another. When there is more in this one than in this one, it means that the direction was going in that direction, because the mutation is growing all the time. I trace how culture developed archaeologically, how migration took place from Europe to Altai, China, and India. I look at the paths people took. Since they did not walk silently, but talked, it means that tongues also walked with them. I make an assumption by describing which languages could be transferred and at what speed they changed. I can take a set of languages and, based on certain morphemes and lexemes, tell when they diverged, say Russian and Persian.

— So you are also a linguist?

- To the extent that I can work with changes and failures. So I can give a linguist a head start on these concepts. By the way, structural linguistics deals with similar things, but they believe, for example, that it is not entirely correct. And I can see why they count incorrectly... because they don't know how to determine the rate of change in words. Therefore, I go to the intersection of science between physical chemistry and DNA, but not with genetics, which has its own apparatus.

Anatoly Alekseevich Klesov born on November 20, 1946 in Chernyakhovsk, Kaliningrad region of the RSFSR.

In 1969 he graduated from Moscow State University. In 1972 he defended his PhD thesis on the topic “The relationship between the structure and reactivity of alpha-chymotrypsin substrates”, and in 1977 - his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Kinetic-thermodynamic foundations of the substrate specificity of enzymatic catalysis”. He worked at Moscow State University, where in 1979–1981 he was a professor at the Department of Chemical Enzymology of the Faculty of Chemistry.

Since 1981 he moved to the Institute of Biochemistry named after. Bach Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where until 1992 he held the position of head of the laboratory.

In 1990, Klesov moved to Newton, a suburb of Boston in the USA. From 1989 to 1998, he served as visiting professor of biochemistry at Harvard Medical School.

From 1996 to 2006, R&D manager and vice president of a polymer composites company in the industrial sector, Boston. At the same time (since 2000) - senior vice president of the company and chief scientist for the development of new anticancer drugs.

Member of the World Academy of Sciences and Arts (founded by Albert Einstein) since 1987, academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Georgia. Founder of the Russian Academy of DNA Genealogy. Author of more than 30 books in Russian and English.

There are many stranger nations in our country. It is not right. We should not be strangers to each other. I'll start with Tatars are the second largest ethnic group in Russia, there are almost 6 million of them. Who are the Tatars? The history of this ethnonym, as often happened in the Middle Ages, is a history of ethnographic confusion.

In the 11th-12th centuries, the steppes of Central Asia were inhabited by various Mongol-speaking tribes: Naiman, Mongols, Kereits, Merkits and Tatars. The latter wandered along the borders of the Chinese state. Therefore, in China the name Tatars was transferred to other Mongolian tribes in the meaning of “barbarians.” Actually, the Chinese called the Tatars white Tatars, the Mongols who lived to the north were called black Tatars, and the Mongolian tribes who lived even further, in the Siberian forests, were called wild Tatars.

At the beginning of the 13th century, Genghis Khan launched a punitive campaign against the real Tatars in revenge for the poisoning of his father. The order that the Mongol ruler gave to his soldiers has been preserved: to destroy everyone taller than the cart axle. As a result of this massacre, the Tatars as a military-political force were wiped off the face of the earth. But, as the Persian historian Rashid ad-Din testifies, “because of their extreme greatness and honorable position, other Turkic clans, with all the differences in their ranks and names, became known by their name, and all were called Tatars.”

The Mongols themselves never called themselves Tatars. However, Khorezm and Arab merchants, who were constantly in contact with the Chinese, brought the name “Tatars” to Europe even before the appearance of Batu Khan’s troops here. Europeans compared the ethnonym “Tatars” with the Greek name for hell - Tartarus. Later, European historians and geographers used the term Tartaria as a synonym for the "barbarian East". For example, on some European maps of the 15th-16th centuries, Moscow Rus' is designated as “Moscow Tartary” or “European Tartary”.

As for modern Tatars, neither by origin nor by language they have absolutely nothing to do with the Tatars of the 12th-13th centuries. The Volga, Crimean, Astrakhan and other modern Tatars inherited only the name from the Central Asian Tatars.

The modern Tatar people do not have a single ethnic root. Among his ancestors were the Huns, Volga Bulgars, Kipchaks, Nogais, Mongols, Kimaks and other Turkic-Mongolian peoples. But the formation of modern Tatars was even more influenced by the Finno-Ugrians and Russians. According to anthropological data, more than 60% of Tatars have predominantly Caucasian features, and only 30% have Turkic-Mongolian features.

The emergence of the Ulus Jochi on the banks of the Volga was an important milestone in the history of the Tatars. During the era of Genghisids, Tatar history became truly global. The system of public administration and finance and the postal (yam) service inherited by Moscow have reached perfection. More than 150 cities arose where the endless Polovtsian steppes recently stretched. Their names alone sound like a fairy tale: Gulstan (land of flowers), Saray (palace), Aktobe (white vault).

Some cities were much larger than Western European ones in size and population. For example, if Rome in the 14th century had 35 thousand inhabitants, and Paris - 58 thousand, then the capital of the Horde, the city of Sarai, had more than 100 thousand. According to the testimony of Arab travelers, Sarai had palaces, mosques, temples of other religions, schools, public gardens, baths, and running water. Not only merchants and warriors lived here, but also poets. All religions in the Golden Horde enjoyed equal freedom. According to the laws of Genghis Khan, insulting religion was punishable by death. The clergy of each religion were exempt from paying taxes.

During the era of the Golden Horde, there was enormous potential for the reproduction of Tatar culture. But the Kazan Khanate continued this path mostly by inertia. Among the fragments of the Golden Horde that scattered along the borders of Rus', Kazan was of greatest importance to Moscow due to its geographical proximity. Spread on the banks of the Volga, among dense forests, the Muslim state was a curious phenomenon. As a state entity, the Kazan Khanate arose in the 30s of the 15th century and during the short period of its existence it was able to demonstrate its cultural identity in the Islamic world.

The 120-year neighborhood between Moscow and Kazan was marked by fourteen major wars, not counting almost annual border skirmishes. However, for a long time both sides did not seek to conquer each other. Everything changed when Moscow realized itself as the “third Rome,” that is, the last defender of the Orthodox faith. Already in 1523, Metropolitan Daniel outlined the future path of Moscow politics, saying: “The Grand Duke will take all the land of Kazan.” Three decades later, Ivan the Terrible fulfilled this prediction.

On August 20, 1552, a 50,000-strong Russian army camped under the walls of Kazan. The city was defended by 35 thousand selected soldiers. About ten thousand more Tatar horsemen were hiding in the surrounding forests and alarming the Russians with sudden raids from the rear.

The siege of Kazan lasted five weeks. After the sudden attacks of the Tatars from the direction of the forest, the cold autumn rains annoyed the Russian army most of all. The thoroughly wet warriors even thought that the bad weather was being sent to them by Kazan sorcerers, who, according to the testimony of Prince Kurbsky, went out onto the wall at sunrise and performed all sorts of spells. All this time, a tunnel was being built under one of the Kazan towers. On the night of October 1, the work was completed. 48 barrels of gunpowder were placed in the tunnel. At dawn there was a monstrous explosion. It was terrible to see, the chronicler wrote, many tortured corpses and mutilated people flying in the air at a terrible height.

The Russian army rushed to attack. The royal banners were already fluttering on the city walls when Ivan the Terrible himself rode up to the city with his guards regiments. The presence of the Tsar gave new strength to the Moscow warriors. Despite the desperate resistance of the Tatars, Kazan fell a few hours later. There were so many killed on both sides that in some places the piles of bodies lay level with the city walls.

The death of the Kazan Khanate, of course, did not mean the death of the Tatar people. On the contrary, it was within Russia that, in fact, the Tatar nation was formed, which finally received its truly national-state formation - the Republic of Tatarstan.

The Moscow state never confined itself to narrow national-religious boundaries. Historians have calculated that among the nine hundred most ancient noble families of Russia, Great Russians make up only one third, while 300 families come from Lithuania, and the other 300 come from Tatar lands.

Ivan the Terrible's Moscow seemed to Western Europeans to be an Asian city not only for its unusual architecture and buildings, but also for the number of Muslims living in it. One English traveler, who visited Moscow in 1557 and was invited to the royal feast, noted that the tsar himself sat at the first table with his sons and the Kazan kings, at the second table sat Metropolitan Macarius with the Orthodox clergy, and the third table was entirely allocated to the Circassian princes. In addition, another two thousand noble Tatars were feasting in other chambers. They were not given the last place in the government service. Subsequently, the Tatar clans gave Russia a huge number of intellectuals, prominent military and social and political figures.

Over the centuries, the culture of the Tatars was also absorbed by Russia, and now many native Tatar words, household items, and culinary dishes have entered the consciousness of Russian people as if they were their own. According to Valishevsky, when going out into the street, a Russian person put on a shoe, army coat, zipun, caftan, bashlyk, and cap. In a fight, he used his fist. Being a judge, he ordered to put shackles on the convicted person and give him a whip. Setting off on a long journey, he sat in the sleigh with the coachman. And getting up from the mail sleigh, he went into a tavern, which replaced the ancient Russian tavern.

After the capture of Kazan in 1552, the culture of the Tatar people was preserved, first of all, thanks to Islam. Islam (in its Sunni version) is the traditional religion of the Tatars. The exception is a small group of them, which was converted to Orthodoxy in the 16th-18th centuries. That’s what they call themselves: “Kryashen” - baptized.

Islam in the Volga region established itself in 922, when the ruler of Volga Bulgaria voluntarily converted to the Muslim faith. But even more important was the “Islamic revolution” of Khan Uzbek, who at the beginning of the 14th century made Islam the state religion of the Golden Horde (by the way, contrary to the laws of Genghis Khan on the equality of religions). As a result, the Kazan Khanate became the northernmost stronghold of world Islam.

In Russian-Tatar history there was a sad period of acute religious confrontation. The first decades after the capture of Kazan were marked by persecution of Islam and the forced introduction of Christianity among the Tatars. Only the reforms of Catherine II fully legalized the Muslim clergy. In 1788, the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly was opened - a governing body of Muslims, with its center in Ufa.

But what can be said about the “orphan of Kazan” or about uninvited guests? Russians have long said that “the old proverb is said for a reason” and therefore “there is no trial or punishment for the proverb.” Silencing inconvenient proverbs is not the best way to achieve interethnic understanding.

So, Ushakov’s “Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language” explains the origin of the expression “Kazan orphan” as follows. Initially, this was said “about the Tatar mirzas (princes), who, after the conquest of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan the Terrible, tried to receive all kinds of concessions from the Russian tsars, complaining about their bitter fate.”

Indeed, the Moscow sovereigns considered it their duty to win over the Tatar Murzas, especially if they decided to change their faith. According to documents, such “Kazan orphans” received about a thousand rubles in annual salaries. Whereas, for example, a Russian doctor was entitled to only 30 rubles a year. Naturally, this state of affairs gave rise to envy among Russian service people. Later, the idiom “Kazan orphan” lost its historical and ethnic connotation - this is how they began to talk about anyone who just pretends to be unhappy, trying to evoke sympathy.

Now about the Tatar and the guest: which of them is “worse” and which is “better”. The Tatars of the Golden Horde, if they happened to come to a subordinate country, behaved in it like gentlemen. Our chronicles are full of stories about oppression by the Tatar Baskaks and the greed of the Khan's courtiers. It was then that they began to say: “A guest in the yard - and trouble in the yard”; “And the guests did not know how the owner was tied up”; “The edge is not big, but the devil brings a guest and takes away the last one.” Well, and - “an uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar.” When times changed, the Tatars, in turn, learned what the Russian “uninvited guest” was like. The Tatars also have many offensive sayings about Russians. What can you do about it?

History is the irreparable past. What happened, happened. Only the truth heals morals, politics, and interethnic relations. But it should be remembered that the truth of history is not bare facts, but an understanding of the past in order to live correctly in the present and future.

Sergei Tsvetkov, historian