February 2, 2020
Passed away Valentin Yanin — historian, archaeologist. Researcher of birch bark letters, who discovered much new about the state structure Novgorod Rus.
In the Middle Ages, Novgorod was divided into five koners—self-governing settlements—which together formed a federation known throughout Europe as "Novgorod." Each of these settlements was a kind of "state within a state." While jointly deciding matters of state governance, the five Novgorod koners were constantly at odds with one another, often taking up arms against one another, uniting, and then quarreling again.
Born in 1929 Vyatka. Her father was a sanitary doctor, her mother a teacher. Soon after Valya's birth, they moved to Orekhovo-Zuyevo. In 1937, her grandfather was arrested for his "kulak" origins (he died in the Mordovian camps), and her father narrowly escaped the repressions.
In those years, a popular explanation for the OGPU acronym was "Oh, Lord! Help me escape!" And conversely, "If you run away, they'll catch you and rip your head off."
Before the war, he became interested in numismatics; later, this hobby would determine his scientific specialization.
In 1946, he graduated from high school with a gold medal and was accepted into the history department at Moscow State University without taking entrance exams. He chose the archaeology department, and his supervisor was a Slavic archaeologist. Artemy Artsikhovsky. Captivated by his lectures, the students “had no other choice” than to go on an archaeological expedition to Novgorod:
What I remember most was the effect of the top layer. When we tore out the burdock and elderberry bushes by the roots (their smell has since become a loathsome reminder of the war and the fire) and uncovered the first layer, a line of locked padlocks was revealed. Residents, leaving Novgorod in 1941, locked their homes with their meager belongings, expecting to return, but when they returned, they found only a ruin overgrown with elderberry.
He wrote his thesis on the numismatics of pre-Mongol Rus', a topic he later defended as a candidate. He entered graduate school in the summer of 1951, just as the first 10 birch bark manuscripts were discovered during another expedition to Novgorod: seven of them were found at his excavation site.
Upon learning of the new finds, I sent A.V. Artsikhovsky a telegram in verse: "I'm thrilled by your success. I've given up on exams. While congratulating you on the new certificates, I curse my departure." In response, A.V. sent me a letter with the texts of the certificates he'd found without me.
The finds ranged widely in genre—economic records, private letters, business orders, complaints, and even literary texts. The following year, the expedition discovered 74 birch bark letters: "A greeting from Faley to Esif. I sent you birch bark..."
It's easy to estimate that from the depths of time [letters] have reached us at a speed of two millimeters per year. It's unlikely that in the history of postal service there's an example of a slower "transportation" of correspondence.
In 1957, Charter No. 298 was discovered—a small rectangle listing names in honorifics. Archaeologists assumed it was an election ballot:
Public life in the Novgorod Republic was organized and regulated. The chronicle, for example, reports that Novgorodians sat rather than stood at the veche, which doesn't fit the usual image of a rowdy crowd. As for elections, with widespread literacy, they were quite naturally conducted not by shouting but by casting ballots.
In 1962, he became the head of the Novgorod Archaeological Expedition at Moscow State University. He also published the book "Novgorod Mayors," which served as the basis for his doctoral dissertation. He described key features of Novgorod's veche system and established that state reforms were the result of intense political struggle between boyar factions.
He was the first to use birch bark letters as a historical source.
The author of over 700 scientific papers and 23 popular science books, he participated in the "discoveries of the century": in 2000, an expedition led by him discovered the 11th-century Novgorod Psalter—the earliest known book from Ancient Rus'.
Archaeologists joke that the less cultured a person is, the thicker the cultural layer he leaves behind.
He passed away 4 days before his 91st birthday.