More than 20 years ago, the little-known magazine Zhar-Ptitsa, published in Russian in San Francisco (USA) by rotaprint method, published a series of articles by two Russian emigrants - the writer Yu. P. Mirolyubov and the etymologist-assyrologist A. A. Kur. In a sensational spirit, these authors, who were very far from special studies in Russian history, reported on the discovery of the oldest supposedly source on the history of the Eastern Slavs - the so - called Vlesov Book (it mentions Veles, Vles-the god of cattle and money among the Eastern Slavs). They claimed that the find is an original monument, compiled around 880 by pagan priests who used signs of the pre-Cyrillic alphabet. The book was written, according to Mirolyubov, on plaques (in the amount of about 35). In 1919, during the offensive of the White Guard troops on Moscow, a certain F. A. Izenbek, a colonel in the Volunteer Army, found these plaques in some landowner's estate either in the Kursk or Orel province; the estate belonged to the princes Zadonsky (or Donskoy, Dontsov), or princes Kurakin. The text of the Vlesova Kniga was published in the same emigrant magazine in 1954-1959.

This information was already alarming. There was no princely family of Zadonsk (or Donskoy, Dontsov) in Russia. Inquiries made by one of the Kurakins did not confirm the existence of an estate belonging to this family in the specified provinces. Who is Isenbeck, whom Mirolyubiv allegedly saw in 1925 the notorious "tablets" in Belgium, where both of them lived after fleeing from revolutionary Russia? It is noteworthy that neither of them showed them to anyone, including specialists from the University of Brussels. The "tablets" (if they existed) disappeared after Isenbeck's death (August 1941), leaving only the copies (drawings and photographs) taken by Mirolyubiv and forwarded to the Russian Museum - Archive in San Francisco.

Despite many dark and unclear moments in the history of the discovery of the "tablets", there were people who believed Mirolyubov. Among them was S. Y. Paramonov, an entomologist who fled Kiev in 1943 along with the Nazi occupiers, then moved to Australia and received the position of government entomologist there. In addition to his main specialty, he studied history and literary studies. In the 1950s and 1960s, he published (under the pseudonym Sergey Lesnoy) a number of books about the origin of the Slavs, the history of Ancient Russia, "The Lay of Igor's Regiment"; in some of them he reported on the above-mentioned "tablets". Finally, in 1966, he published an essay dedicated to them, "Vlesova Kniga" (vol. 1, Winnipeg, 1966). S. Lesnoy's dilettantism in the humanities, pseudoscientific nature, and extremely low level of his work in this field have long been noted by Soviet scientists.

It is characteristic that those persons who became available to the text of the "tablets", for many years remained silent - about this seemingly unique monument. All of them were random people in science. S. Lesnoy even in the field closest to him (for example, in the works about "dark places" "Words about Igor's Regiment", associated with references to natural phenomena) proved to be an amateur. "His' research, '"the Department of Ancient Russian Literature of the Pushkin House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR noted in Trudy," is a vicious, shameful phenomenon in the history of studying the Lay of Igor's Regiment, and in the full sense it is a dark place in the study of the great monument. " 1
1 N. V. Charlemagne. Sergey Paramonov and "The Word about Igor's Regiment". TODRL. T. XVI. M.-L. 1960, p. 616. A note to this work stated: "The Editorial Board of the TODRL does not consider it possible to enter into a dispute with S. Lesny on philological, historical and other issues due to his complete incompetence in the humanities" (ibid., p. 611).

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So, since the discovery of the "tablets", none of the specialists abroad have been engaged in them. In the late 1950s, a photo of the text of one of them (more precisely, a photo from Prorisi or a copy of Mirolyubiv) was sent by S. Lesny for conclusion to the Committee of Slavists of the USSR. In the review given by Academician V. V. Vinogradov on April 15, 1959, and in the article by L. P. Zhukovskaya 2, this text was characterized as a fake. This was established by analyzing the graphics, paleography, and spelling of the text, the reproduction of which is very far from scientific methods (making a photo not from a "tablet", but from a drawing or copy, the presence of retouching).

It would seem that all this should have put an end to the further dissemination of information about the so-called Forest Book. However, in the article by V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev (Nedelya, 1976, No. 18), readers were again informed about the existence of a monument, which (if its authenticity is proved) should be ranked among the discoveries that supposedly shed new light on the ancient history of the Eastern Slavs. However, the authors put the question as if in an alternative way: the monument, which they call the "mysterious chronicle" or "Vlesovaya Kniga", may be, from their point of view, either a fake, "an interesting hoax", or "an invaluable monument of world culture"; the "consequence" of the "Vlesovaya Kniga", they write, "it's not finished yet, and the scientific trial hasn't passed a final verdict on her." The content of the article shows that V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev are inclined to consider the "mysterious chronicle" written on "tablets" as a reliable and authentic source. Since its content is "unusual", "does not fit into the framework of existing ideas about the antiquity of Slavic writing", insofar as it is pointedly noted in the introductory words to the article, "distrust was the first reaction of some scientists". Thus, the authors seem to dissociate themselves from scientists who express doubts about the authenticity of the"Forest Book".

The question of its authenticity is important because it deals with the Eastern Slavs, their economic activities, beliefs, clashes with neighbors and other events that took place from the beginning of the first millennium BC to almost the end of the IX century AD, that is, for almost two thousand years. it is believed that the ancestor of Rusyuvs was Bogummr and that "in the time of Bogumir, that is, at the end of the second millennium BC, both in Northern India and in present-day Hungary, tribes of pastoralists came from Central Asia, identical in economic structure, customs, rituals, gods, pots and appearance. They are very similar to the ancient Slagayan-Rus depicted in the "Forest Book". The article also stated that " ancient writing was used by the inhabitants of the areas from the Danube to the Yellow River more than two thousand years before the Phoenicians, in the IV millennium BC."

With the same" extraordinary ease " V. Skurlatez and N. Nikolaev approach the circumstances of finding the monument advertised by them and to assess its content and language. "At the beginning of this milestone,"they write," in an ancient estate near Orel, a loose bundle of old tablets covered with unknown inscriptions was found." A fog of mystery also envelops the entire subsequent presentation, leading readers into obvious confusion. The authors are inclined to think that the "Vlesova kniga" was written in the Russian pre-Cyrillic script, which used signs that preceded those that were included by Cyril in the version of the Slavic alphabet compiled in 863. It is quite possible that there was some kind of "Russian letter"before Cyril. But V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev are wrong when they say: "Unfortunately, even this very idea is rarely allowed," and they make a significant conclusion: "And where they don't wait, they don't look for it." Further, they express their thoughts on the ways in which the search should be conducted: about the runic writings of Germanic and Turkic-Mongol tribes and peoples with whom the ancient Slavs-Russ" actively communicated"; Alan-Khazar inscriptions on stones and jars of the VIII-IX centuries. (their signs "almost coincide with the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet and especially Glagolitic"); the Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew, ancient Greek and other writing systems. In the context of the emergence and development of ancient writing systems, ancient Slavic-Russian monuments of the pre - Christian era could have appeared; "This is probably the evidence of the Vlesova Kniga, "V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev conclude. Unfortunately, these authors are not alone in trying to usmot-

2 L. P. Zhukovskaya. Fake pre-Cyrillic manuscript (On the question of the method for detecting forgeries). "Questions of linguistics", 1960, N 2, pp. 142-144.

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ret vo "Vlesovaya kniga" reliable source. From time to time, messages of this kind continue to appear 3 .

Meanwhile, an extensive literature has accumulated on the problem of the existence of writing among the Eastern Slavs of the pre-Christian period, and the very existence of pre-Cyrillic writing - "proto-Cyrillic", as well as "proto-glagolitic" - was studied by pre-revolutionary and Soviet scientists .4 Formation of the "Proto-Cyrillic alphabet" (based on the use of Greek alphanumeric letters) they belonged to the VII-VIII centuries. Chernorizets Khrabr in the legend "On writing" (late IX - early X century) reports about the pagan Slavs that they did not have "books" and letters, but used "lines" and "cuts"; this more ancient style of writing, the so-called pictographic, or figured, began to be used, according to the latest sources. research (for example, on "calendar signs" on vases and jugs of the Chernyakhov culture), already in the II-V centuries. The above and many other evidence sources have long shown that in the pre-Christian period, the Eastern Slavs used some kind of letter that has not survived to our time (or different types of it) due to the growing needs of their social development, at first at the time of the formation of small and disparate tribal collectives of larger, complex and strong associations-tribes and unions then in the era of maturation in the environment of the last elements of class relations and statehood. The proto-Cyrillic script may have been used to write those books and documents of the pre-Christian era that the ancient authors mention in a low voice.

"Vlesova kniga" can not be attributed to the number of monuments of that time. The fact is that forgeries of an ancient text can be quite easily identified, knowing the patterns of language development, by a comparative historical study of related languages and dialects. As you know, languages develop in time, but this development is not equally realized in space. As a result, at a certain time and in a certain territory, a language is characterized by a combination of only its inherent features. This allows you to identify previous and subsequent stages in the development of language traits. Historians who are familiar with Old Russian and medieval written sources of Novgorod origin are well aware of, for example, "tsokanye" - indistinguishability in writing (due to indistinguishability in oral speech!) letters C and H. Similarly, if the scribe did not hear the difference between F and fita, he confused both letters. Having a foothold.in his pronunciation, the same Old Russian scribe will not confuse M and Zh. R and P, Z and K, but can confuse H and C, F and fitu, etc.; later, the incorrect use of the letters E-yat, O - A, etc. will begin.Many spelling errors are based on the coincidence of unstressed vowels. However, in the manuscripts of the XII-XIII centuries. (if we exclude Smolensk with their early mixing of E and yat) there are no such errors, since at that time all the named sounds were pronounced differently in accordance with their origin (etymology).

A forger who wants to fake an ancient language, if the text he creates is large enough, will certainly make some ridiculous mistake, which cannot be found in the original text either because of its chronological reference, or because of territorial (therefore, linguistic and ethnic) relevance. For example, Academician I. I. Sreznevsky wrote about the forger of the first third of the XIX century A. I. Sulakadzev: "In forgeries, he used the wrong language out of ignorance of the correct one, sometimes very wild." 5
"Vlesova kniga" is issued for a text written before the Slavs had Glagolitic and Cyrillic letters. At that time, they (all Slavs!) there were only open (ending in a vowel sound) syllables, nasal vowels O and E, special sounds yat, B, B; after soft consonants, only certain vowel sounds could follow, and after hard ones, on the contrary, others. There were other features of phonetics and morphology that later disappeared or changed in different languages. But the spelling of the" tablets " shows that the person who wrote them did not know how to denote nasal letters: he reproduced them in accordance with the way it was done in Polish much later; at the same time, the author of the letters did not know how to indicate nasal letters.

3 See, for example, the notes of V. Vilinbakhov and V. Starostin. "Nedelya", 1976, N 33; D. Zhukova -".Ogonyok", 1977, N 13, p. 29.

4 See, for example: V. A. IstriN. 1100 years of the Slavic alphabet, Moscow, 1969.

5 "Correspondence of A. Kh. Vostokov in time order with explanatory notes by I. Sreznevsky". "Collection of the Department of Russian Language and Literature", vol. V, vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1873, p. 412.

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time there are places on the" tablets " that show changes that will later occur in Serbian, although these processes are mutually exclusive. The Vlesovaya Kniga reflects the confusion of E and yat, which will appear only in Smolensk charters at the beginning of the XIII century, the hardening of hissing and C is an even later process in Slavic languages; the verb form BJ is given instead of the existing bJ; the feminine word uses a masculine numeral; there are a number of absurdities in the declension of nouns, in the formation of participles, etc., etc.

The content of the" Vlesovaya Kniga " and its language (which can be judged at least from the passage given in the article by V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev) indicate that this is a clear forgery. Authors who try to prove the opposite are not at all saved by arguments about "a completely unexpected picture of the distant past of the Slavs." In the "Forest Book" we are talking about the Slavs-pastoralists who lived "one thousand three hundred years before Germanrich" - 13 centuries before the Gothic leader of the middle of the IV century. Germanarich (that is, at the beginning of the I millennium BC). Neither the author of the Tale of Bygone Years (early 12th century), who had many sources, nor the authors of Perov's stories, chronicles, and supposed chronicles of the late 10th and 11th centuries report such information about Slavic tribes and princes, even in the 5th and 10th centuries, as the Vlesov Book, supposedly compiled at the end of the 9th century, contains about at times much more remote, separated from its "appearance" by almost two millennia! V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev are not saved by the historical parallels associated with the characteristics of the movements of pastoral tribes from Central Asia to Europe, among which, in their opinion, there could be Slavs. This" original version of the steppe Central Asian origin of our ancestors"is supported by the authors, with reference to historians-" Eurasians", as well as Italian archaeologists conducting excavations in Pakistan, although it has long been proven that the Slavs long before that (back in the III millennium BC, during the Tripoli culture). they were farmers and autochthonous, that is, they lived in the Middle Dnieper region.

The text of the "Vlesova Kniga", which tells about the Slavic forefathers Bohumir and Ora, their daughters and sons, from whom the names of the Slavic tribes (Drevlyans, Krivichi, Polyane, Northerners, Rus) came, is so naive that even V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev are forced to admit that its language "is really not fully understood", that the text contains "linguistically seemingly contradictory language formations". Nevertheless, they claim that the " scribes "in the Oak Book" knew what they were writing about", and many ancient peoples wrote on the tree (further it is said about the Boyan, who "spread his thoughts on the tree", and about birch bark letters, and about a fir stick from the Kyrgyz Acektash with a carved mark on it "Talas inscription", etc.).

V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev, who provide a number of correct information about the oldest stages of the history of the Eastern Slavs, the development of their writing, mostly filled their article with arguments and parallels that do not rely on the latest scientific achievements. The authors, in fact, did not pay attention to the review of V. V. Vinogradov (and not L., as in V. Skurlatov and N. Nikolaev), the most authoritative expert on the history of the Russian language. Meanwhile, the opinion he expressed about the "Forest Book", as one of Sulakadzev's forgeries, has good reasons. Academician M. N. Speransky noted the" crude and naive "forgery of Sulakadzev, called by the latter" Perun and Veles broadcasting in the Kiev temples to the priests Moveslav, Drevoslav and others...". In 1812, an excerpt from these supposedly ancient "broadcasts", believing in them, was translated into modern Russian by G. R. Derzhavin. Sulakadzev had a kind of" museum", which kept both original manuscripts (often with inserts in the margins of the forger himself) and forgeries made by him. In the catalog of his collection of manuscripts, Sulakadzev mentions, among other things, sources carved on boards, for example, the" pre-ancient " synodic. There is also an essay " Patriarchs (that is, patriarchs. - Author). On 45 beech boards of Yagipa, Ghana, smerda IX in " 6 . How can we not remember that the so-called "Vlesov Book" was brought to the last quarter of the IX century.

V. I. Buganov, L. P. Zhukovskaya, Academician B. A. Rybakov

6 M. V. Speransky. Russian forgeries of manuscripts in the early 19th century. (Bardia and Sulakadzev). "Problems of source studies". Issue V. M. 1956, pp. 68, 91, 101.

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