According to the third Novgorod record, beating had lasted for five weeks, there were very few days when 500-600 people were not launched into eternity. Sometimes the number of victims increased to fifteen hundreds a day. First Pskov record says that in general, about 60,000 people of both sexes were killed…
Be that as it may, horrible massacre reached appalling dimensions, and when Ivan had no one to kill, he directed his anger at inanimate objects. He attacked the monasteries with particular ferocity, suspecting them of betrayal. Probably, he began to destroy trade and industry of this big town for the same reason. All shops in towns and in the suburbs were robbed and rased, as well as houses. Czar was present there. Guardsmen, if to believe records, were knocking about and doing the same things in 200-250 miles from Novgorod…
Novgorod could never recover from that strike.”
***
K. Waliszewski “Ivan the Terrible” (p. 113-114):
Especially wise men were destroyed and persecuted. For example, archbishop of Novgorod was put on the mare. Ivan the Terrible called that mare “archbishop’s wife”, saying, “You are not an archbishop, you are a buffoon.” And they were shepherded by whips to Moscow in front of crowd’s eyes. They tried to win freedom of speech, freedom of thought and conduct by these methods. We remember that archbishop of Novgorod was elected by people!..
“Fiction of the existence of a high morality at a low level of cultural development is refuted by history… Naive Muscovites consider themselves to be superior to all others. They generously give out promises and they are not going to carry them out. There is an absolute lack of confidence among them. Father shuns his son, the son does not trust his mother, and no one lends a copeck without gage. It is noted by Germans Buchau and Ulfeld, Swede Pearson and Litvin Mihalon…
Their words are confirmed by Englishmen Fletcher and Jenkinson, “One can say justly… that almost all without distinction Russians don’t believe in what they are told and they do not earn the smallest trust themselves…” But they go further and mark the feature which I had indicated earlier – this is violence. But Fletcher excuses it, explaining, “Nation which is treated harshly and cruelly by rulers and high classes becomes outrageous with others, especially with the weaker…” This phenomenon is observed in the history of all the barbarians, but especially in this country… In this case national historians tried to shift the blame to the Mongol invasion in vain, saying as if that invasion spoiled the morals, corrupted people, accustomed them to violence and trickery.”
***
Diderot about “Order” of Catherine II for deputies of Committee on the conclusion of the laws,
“Russian empress, without doubt, is a despot.”
***
“MERITS” OF CATHERINE II TO UKRAINIAN PEOPLE,
1762-1763 – Catherine II issued two manifestos about foreign colonization of Ukraine-Rus: Serbs, Bulgarians, Moldovans, Germans from Prussia, Austria and other countries recruited. Foreigners were given 65 acres of land per capita, they were exempted from taxation. Ukrainians had to provide carts free to transport their future landlords.
1763 – decree of Catherine II, banning the teaching in Ukrainian in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
1764 – direction of Catherine II for prince O. Vyazemsky on russification of Ukraine, the Baltic states, Finland and Smolensk.
1764 – cancellation of Ukrainian Hetman by Catherine II, liquidation of Ukrainian educational and cultural institutions and taking power from Ukrainian-speaking officials.
1764 – cancellation of Ukrainian Hetman state.
1765 – liquidation of Cossacks’ settlements and schools in Sloboda by Catherine II.
1766 – the Synod issued a strict edict for Kiev-Pechersk Lavra to print only those books which are printed in Moscow Printing and validated by the Synod.
1768 – suppression of anti-Polish uprising in the Right-bank Ukraine-Russia by Moscow troops under the leadership of Gaunt and Zaliznyak, known under the name Koliivshchina, after their insidious and treacherous seizure by Muscovites who were fighting with Poles.
1769 – the Synod’s order, according to which Ukrainian books were replaced by Russian ones in the churches.
1769 – the Synod of Russian Orthodox Church prohibited Kiev-Pechersk Lavra to print primers in Ukrainian and it ordered to take away all available primers.
1775 – insidious attack of the Moscow troops on Zaporizhian Sich and its destruction after decisive help of Cossacks to Muscovites in Moscow-Turkish War in 1768-1774. Robbery of the Cossacks, spoliation and expulsion of many of them to Siberia. Closure of Ukrainian schools in the regimental offices. Twenty-five years of imprisonment of the last Kosh Ottaman Petro Kalnyshevskiy in Solovki up to his death in 1803 at the age of 112 years.
1777 – plan of eviction of the Crimean Tatars from the Crimea, Ukrainians from Ukraine, and resettlement of Muscovites from Moscow to their habitable places. A. Suvorov evicted from the south of Ukraine 32 000 men for a few days to implement the plan.
1777 – after the death from persecution and poverty of great Ukrainian composer, academician of Bologna Academy of Music Maxim Berezovsky (was born in 1745 in Sluhov), government of Catherine II prohibits the discharge of his works and eliminates many of his manuscripts.
1780 – burning of the library of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy which had been collected for more than 150 years and it was one of the richest libraries in East Europe.
1781 – destruction of the remnants of the Cossack government on the Left Bank and the introduction of Russian control in 1783.
1782 – Catherine II created commission for the establishment of public schools in Russia, their task was introduction of a single form of learning and teaching exclusively in Russian in all schools of the empire.
1783 – enslavement of the peasants of Left-bank Ukraine.
1784 – there were 866 Ukrainian schools on the territory of the seven regiments of Hetman in 1747 (information about three of them is not preserved), that is one school per every thousand of population. Population tripled at the end of the century, and the number of schools decreased by half, not a single Ukrainian school was among them.
1784 – the Synod ordered Samuel, metropolitan of Kiev and Galich, to punish students and to dismiss teachers of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy for deviation from Russian language.
1785 – order of Catherine II to say a service in Russian in all churches of the empire. Russian language is implemented in all schools of Ukraine.
1786 – the Synod ordered metropolitan of Kiev to control printing of Lavra, that there was no difference from Moscow editions, and to inroduce education system, licensed for the whole empire, in the Kiev-Mohyla Academy.
1789 – “A comparative dictionary of all languages” was published at the initiative of Catherine II in St. Petersburg, Ukrainian language was defined as Russian language distorted by Polish.
1793 – Muscovites suppressed an uprising in the village of Turban and severely punished the peasants: more than twenty peasants died, unable to withstand torture, or were shot, the rest were exiled to Siberia or to other provinces after flogging.
(Newspaper “Day”, № 159, 21.09.2006)
***
V. Belinsky, author of “The Country Moksel”,
I have higher education. I am a civil engineer by profession, as well as the author of this novel study. I graduated from Odessa Institute of Civil Engineering. Now I’m a teacher of this Institute. I’m not so naïve as it could seem. I knew something and guessed that not everything was so simple and uniquely in our common history. I knew that Peter I had stolen the old name of our country from us and ordered to call Moscow state as Russian. But it was a discovery for me that Catherine II had destroyed all the ancient chronicles. That’s why, maybe, they can’t find a famous library of Ivan the Terrible? If Catherine II really had destroyed all documentary curiosities of the past, it would have been a crime before later generations. I feel sorry for the Russians. In my opinion, it’s better to be the heir to the Great Tartar-Mongol Empire than to be rootless Ivans with falsified history and with a stolen name of the country.