On July 22, 1240, Novgorod Prince Alexander Yaroslavich smashed the Swedish force on the spit of rivers Neva and Izhora. People gave this battle the name of Nevskaya and started calling Alexander nothing less than his now famous Prince Alexander Nevsky!
It’s no secret that one of the most distinguishing characteristics of our nation is the tendency to self-humiliation, based on inherited modesty. It drives us in our attempts to simplify, belittle and shade whatever was done by our great ancestors, then to compare, juxtapose and parallel their exploits with the feats of other nations, and eventually to remember the great deeds of other nations more often than our own and, what is worse, to love foreign heroes more than ours.
Here are some simple examples. We know more about 300 Spartans, than about the detachment of Evpatiy Kolovrat; we know a lot more about the rebellion of Roman slaves and their Thracian leader Spartacus, than about the Don Cossack Kondratiy Bulavin. We seem to know all about Harry Potter and almost nothing about Alyosha Popovich.
The above-said observations do not seem to apply to Alexander Nevsky who got the highest number of votes during the Face of Russia poll arranged during the TV show on VGTRK Channel – more than such heroes as Dmitry Donskoi and Suvorov, Peter the Great and Lomonosov, Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Lenin and Stalin.
A number of avowed and reputable intellectuals make public statements with an insatiable self-destructive passion, representing the Battle on the Neva as just an insignificant episode in the history of ancient Rus’. They say this was not even a battle, but rather a skirmish of two small detachments on the outskirts of Novgorod lands. What kind of groundbreaking event are you talking about?
And there’s no way to rein them in or bring them down a peg…
Indeed there were not very many people fighting on the banks of the Neva in 1240. Generally speaking, much fewer people inhabited our planet almost 800 years ago and there were even fewer qualified troops. But that battle was not accidental or devoid of profound meanings. This was not a gangster’s raid on wretched Swedish frontier guards by the Russian prince, as RAS academician Pivovarov construes.
About three years before the battle Pope Gregory IX had provoked Swedes to announce a Crusade against the Finnish tribes and Russian North. They made thorough preparations and gathered a serious force in the delta of the Neva. Interestingly enough, the knights from the Livonian Order marched on Pskov and Izborsk about the same time.
Prince Alexander was also preparing for the Swedish aggression and was timely notified about the disembarkation of Jarl Birger’s forces. The Prince’s tactic was carefully calibrated and weighed and did not resemble a wild raid. Hence the triumph of the Russian host supported by Izhora tribes; commander of the Swedish force Jarl Birger was literally hit in his eye by Alexander’s lance and left this perishable world.
Not all are overexcited about studying the twists and turns of military history in summer of 1240, to be sure. After all, one can go to Saint Petersburg and visit a diorama museum in Ust-Izhora shedding light on that remote battle.
Two other issues are much more relevant.
The first observation deals with the fact that little time had passed in 1240 since the invasion of Mongol hordes which desolated Holy Rus’ and so the hearts of many Russian people were still full of horror and fear. The message about the military victory was tremendously important for all those who doubted, feared, or lost faith in themselves or their Fatherland. For stronger in spirit the Prince’s success was also quite significant, since it was comparable to the effect of Kulikovo Battlefield, Borodino and Stalingrad.
The second factor is the dictum uttered by Alexander, as he was getting ready to enter the battlefield (later this maxim was used as a motto by many people living on this Earth): “God favors the righteous rather than the mighty!” Who knows what Prince Alexander actually meant in those days? Perhaps the 19-year-old warrior thought that the one fighting for his land always had at least moral advantage over the aggressor, and did not bother much about philosophy?
But it happened so that the maxim uttered by Nevsky took on other in-depth meanings. We see it today on case studies from today’s life. Many now rely on their might and do not think about righteousness at all; hence the depressing and discouraging results as well as apocalyptic expectations paralyzing the will.
In a recent KVN game a boy quoted Tyutchev: “You’ll never grasp Russia with your wit, or measure it with a common yardstick. She has a very special stature and one can only… fear Russia” (in place of “believe in Russia”).
It appears that Prince Alexander thought differently 772 years ago.
Mikhail Bykov
