Translated material
Pskovitch
Chronicle.
Chapter 9
Valentin SEDOV,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In the Middle Ages, all the inhabitants of the Pskov land were called Pskovians (Novgorodians called them Pleskovichs), who politically constituted the Pskov feudal republic. Pskov was a capital city. Suburbs were subordinate to him - small fortress towns that performed administrative, military and other functions in their rural district. In the fifteenth century in the Pskov land there were 12 suburbs, among which the most significant were Izborsk, Ostrov, Opochka, Gdov, Voronach.
According to the research of V. L. Yanin, the beginning of the state independence of the Pskov land dates back to the 30s of the XII century. Prior to that, Pskov was a suburb of Novgorod. In 1137, the people of Pskov summoned Prince Vsevolod Mstislavich, who had been expelled from Novgorod, to Pskov and gave his supporters all possible support. From that time on, Pskov had its own princely table; politically, the Pskov state became completely independent from Novgorod. There was some dependence in church relations - the Pskov land was part of the Novgorod diocese, the bishops of Pskov were subordinate to the Novgorod rulers. Later, Vsevolod Mstislavich was canonized in Pskov and was considered one of the most revered local saints.
What was the reason for the independent development of the Pskov land and what were its inhabitants of Pskov? This question is answered by archaeological materials.
The largest tribal formation of the Slavs in the North-West were the Krivichi. Settling over a wide area, they differentiated into several groups. Among them, a separate ethnographic unit stands out - the Pskov Krivichi, the beginning of the formation of which dates back to the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e.
The monuments of the early Pskov Krivichi were long mounds - collective tombs containing burials according to the rite of cremation. One of the notable features of these mounds is the bottom ash-coal layers. They have a ritual meaning. They were formed after the burning of the cult fire, with which the place chosen for the burial mound was consecrated. There are no similar ash-coal layers in the burial mounds of other Slavic tribes in Eastern Europe. But similar ritual bonfires, as can be judged from the stone burial grounds of the Esto-Liv tribes, were characteristic of the Baltic-Finnish population. The Finnish-speaking population in the process of Slavic migration in the basins of Lake Pskov and Ilmen in a significant mass did not leave their places of residence and mixed with the newcomers. Consequently, the Krivichs were not only the newcomer Slavs themselves, but also the Finnish-speaking natives who were included in the ethnogenetic process of Slavization, as well as the Balts, carried away by the Slavic migration. The ritual of cleansing by fire sites for burial structures has become one of the striking ethnographic features of the Pskov group of Krivichi.
In the VII-IX centuries. the lands of the Ilmensky basin are being developed by the Slovenes of Novgorod. Their funerary monuments are hills - high, steep-sided mounds, not at all similar to the Krivichi long barrows. The tribes of the Long Mound culture who lived here join the Slovenes. Actually Krivichi remains the territory of the basins of the Great River and Lake Pskov.
In the IX-X centuries. the custom of building long mounds in the Pskov region disappears. Collective tombs are replaced by round (hemispherical) mounds with individual burials, first according to the rite of cremation, and from the 11th century. - according to the rite of burial. The ritual of cleansing the sites of future burial mounds by fire is invariably preserved here in the 9th-12th centuries. For ritual bonfires, mainly brushwood and straw were used. During the burial of the dead, the deceased was laid on a platform formed after the burning of a fire. In later mounds, when the dead began to be buried in grave pits, the latter were dug out after the area intended for the mound was cleared by fire.
As you know, many of the East Slavic ethno-tribal formations are distinguished by archaeologists by specific female adornments - temporal rings. So, the Slovenes of Novgorod were characterized by rhombic shield rings, the Vyatichi - seven-lobed, the Smolensk-Polotsk Krivichi - bracelet-shaped with tied ends ... The Pskov Krivichi did not have specific temporal rings, their women wore common Slavic rings on their temples - ring-shaped, less often three-beaded. The women's costume was complemented by neck necklaces made of a small number of small glass beads of blue, green, yellow and white colors, sometimes supplemented with lunar pendants, coins or coin-like pendants. Hands were decorated with metal bracelets and rings of all-Russian types. More often than in other areas of the East Slavic settlement, Pskov women wore horseshoe-shaped chest clasps, which was due to close contacts with the Baltic-Finnish and Baltic world.
The features revealed during the study of the mounds lead researchers to the conclusion that the Pskov Krivichi were a special ethnographic formation of the Eastern Slavs. Some isolation of the Pskov Krivichi is also revealed according to the data of dialectology. The Pskov group of dialects of the Old Russian language, judging by the written monuments of the 12th-14th centuries, is characterized by specific archaic phenomena. They allow us to believe that the Pskov dialect goes back to the tribal dialect of the Pskov Krivichi.
The archaeological features of the latter make it possible to determine in detail the territory of the settlement of the Pskov Krivichi in the 9th-12th centuries. They inhabited the basin of the Velikaya River, the coast of Lake Pskov and the district of Gdov. It turns out that the ethnographic area of the Pskov Krivichi corresponds to the state territory of the Pskov Republic - the Pskov land. Other historically developed lands of Ancient Rus' were also formed on the basis of ethno-tribal formations of the Eastern Slavs. In the Middle Ages, such correspondences were common in Western Europe. The Pskov land was the same formation as Saxony, Bavaria, Frisia or Thuringia. Unlike the latter, in Rus' it so happened that the inhabitants of historical lands were named not by ethnonyms, but by capital cities. The ethnonym Krivichi in the Pskov land was forgotten, their descendants began to be called Pskov.
The fact that the inhabitants of the Pskov land in ancient times were called Krivichi is evidenced by the chronicles. So, from the chronicle legend about the calling of the Varangians to Rus', it follows that Izborsk stood in the old Krivichi land; in the Arkhangelsk chronicler, direct news of Izborsk as a once large Krivichi city has been preserved. Another evidence of this is the forms of the Latvian name of the Russians krievs (Krievija - Russia), clearly derived from the ethnonym Krivichi, with whom the Latgalians - the most eastern Latvian tribe - initially and for a long time neighbored and contacted. Later, this ethnonym spread among the Latvians to the entire Russian population.