Christian mission in Northern Black Sea region and its geopolitical significance

Author(s):  
P. Kusenkov

The spread of Christianity in the Northern Black Sea Region was a continuation of the vector of cultural expansion into this region, outlined in Antiquity and opposing the region’s stable geopolitical ties in the latitudinal direction, with the steppe world of the nomads of Eurasia. The stages of this process were: the Great Greek colonization on Pontus Euxinus; the spread of Pax Romana to the territory of Crimea; the Christianization of the region and the strengthening of Byzantium in the Northern Black Sea Region through an alliance with the Khazaria and the creation of the Klimata-Cherson thema; finally, the emergence of Italian trading posts and the emergence of Genoese Gazaria. The success of the Christian mission of Byzantium would not have been possible without the oncoming movement from the north, which determined the reception of the Byzantine civilization by Rus’-Russia and predefined the geopolitical contours of the modern world. In the opposite direction there was an advance to the south of Rus’ and the formation of the path “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, sea voyages of the Rus’ princes to Constantinople, the capture of Korsun’Cherson by Vladimir the Saint and the baptism of Rus’, the inclusion of Russia in the system of the Byzantine church administration. At the new historical stage, after the fall of Byzantium, the role of the Christian Orthodox empire passed to Russia, and the processes of intercivilizational interaction in the region changed their vector. But even in the new conditions, the meridional dimension remains incomparably more important than the latitudinal dimension: a fact that determines the future geopolitical perspective.

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-312
Author(s):  
Yu. O. Andryushchenko ◽  
V. S. Gavrilenko ◽  
V. A. Kostiushyn ◽  
V. N. Kucherenko ◽  
A. S. Mezinov ◽  
...  

Abstract In the article is analyzed own field data of the authors and scientific publications on the wintering of Anserinae in the Azov-Black Sea region of Ukraine in 1900–2017, but the main data was obtained in frame of international mid-winter counts (IWC) in 2005–2017. It was found that 9 species of Anserinae occur in this region during the different seasons of the year: Anser anser — nesting, wintering and migrating; Rufibrenta ruficollis, A. albifrons, A. erythropus, A. fabalis — migrating and wintering; Branta canadensis, Branta leucopsis, Branta bernicla, Chen caerulescens — vagrant or birds which flew away from captivity (zoo etc.). Eulabeia indica — is possible vagrant species. The most numerous wintering species is A. albifrons, common — Rufibrenta ruficollis, not numerous — Anser anser, the other species are not met annually and registered in a very small number. There was almost tenfold drop in number of wintering geese in the Azov-Black Sea region of Ukraine during the period of counts. The main reasons of such reducing of geese amount are the followwing: weather and climate conditions, changes in the forage acessibility, hunting and poaching pressure, poisoning as a result of deratization of agricultural lands, and from 2014 — the militarization of the Syvash area and stop of water supplying of Crimea through the North Crimean channell. It is likely that the factors mentioned above led to relocating of wintering areas of Anserinae, and resulted in decreasing of their amount in this region.


Author(s):  
Valenina Mordvinceva ◽  
Sabine Reinhold

This chapter surveys the Iron Age in the region extending from the western Black Sea to the North Caucasus. As in many parts of Europe, this was the first period in which written sources named peoples, places, and historical events. The Black Sea saw Greek colonization from the seventh century BC and its northern shore later became the homeland of the important Bosporan kingdom. For a long time, researchers sought to identify tribes named by authors such as Herodotus by archaeological means, but this ethno-deterministic perspective has come under critique. Publication of important new data from across the region now permits us to draw a more coherent picture of successive cultures and of interactions between different parts of this vast area, shedding new light both on local histories and on the role ‘The East’ played in the history of Iron Age Europe.


Author(s):  
Vitalij Sinika ◽  
Sergey Lysenko ◽  
Sergey Razumov ◽  
Nikolaj Telnov ◽  
Sylwia Łukasik

The article publishes and analyzes materials obtained during the study of the Scythian barrow 11 of the “Garden” group excavated in 2018 near village Glinoe, Slobodzeya district, on the left bank of the Lower Dniester, for the first time.The barrow was surrounded by a circular ditch and contained four burials – one infant and three female. The tools from the barrow are represented by knives, spindle-whorls, needle. The only piece of tableware was found and it was a wooden bowl. The adornments (a pair of earrings, two bead necklaces, one bead bracelet, two “elbow bracelets”) were also discovered. Earrings with conical bulges on one of the endings testify to the Thracian influence on the material culture of the Scythians of the North-West Black Sea region. All female graves contained mirrors. Two of them are identical, and both were laid under the body of the buried. One of the mirrors has handle aforethoughtly broken in antiquity. The cult objects are a pendant made of a dog’s tooth and a stone slab, the arrowheads are the only weapons. The barrow dates back to the second half (preferably the third quarter) of the 4th century BC. Finding a quiver set in the grave 4 of barrow 11 of Glinoe/”Garden” group made the authors to analyze the burials of the so-called Scythian “amazons” of the North Black Sea region. It turned out that many of them were attributed with flagrant violations of scientific methods as burials of women-warriors, which is nothing more than modern “myth-making”. As a result, the authors claim that an open-minded analysis allows us to distinguish three groups of Scythian burials with weapons: 1) containing weapons, placement of which reflects certain “ethnographic” features of the rite or the special status of buried; 2) containing arrowheads that may indicate hunting; 3) the burials of warriors with diverse and numerous weapons.


Author(s):  
Paul Huddie

The year 2014 marked the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the Crimean War, 1854–6. It was during that anniversary year that the names of Crimea, Sevastopol, Simferopol and the Black Sea re-entered the lexicon of Ireland, and so did the terms ‘Russian aggression’, ‘territorial violation’ and ‘weak neighbour’. Coincidentally, those same places and terms, and the sheer extent to which they perpetuated within Irish and even world media as well as popular parlance, had not been seen nor heard since 1854. It was in that year that the British and French Empires committed themselves to war in the wider Black Sea region and beyond against the Russian Empire. The latter had demonstrated clear aggression, initially diplomatic and later military, against its perceived-to-be-weak neighbour and long-term adversary in the region, the Ottoman Empire, or Turkey. As part of that aggression Russia invaded the latter’s vassal principalities in the north-western Balkans, namely Wallachia and Moldavia (part of modern-day Romania), collectively known as the Danubian Principalities. Russia had previously taken Crimea from the Ottomans in 1783....


2018 ◽  
Vol 931 ◽  
pp. 790-796
Author(s):  
Viktoria V. Pishchulina

A one-apsidal hall church is always a reflection of so-called “vulgar” Christianity, thus revealing the important peculiarities of the spatial culture of the region where it is erected. In this region we can mark two periods when such temples were built: VI-VII c. and X-XII c. The first period is associated with the missionary activity by Byzantine Empire, Antioch, Caucasian Albania which was conditioned by both geopolitical interests (Byzantian Empire, Antioch) and the shift of The Great Silk Way to the north (Caucasian Albania). The second, as the research has shown, is connected with the migration of the peoples of Abkhazia, the abzakhs to this territory in the XII-XIII c. and the development of contacts with the Crimea. In the North Black Sea Region the one-apsidal hall church appears as early as in the VI c. – in the territory of Abkhazia we know about ten such temples. The temples of this type in the area of Big Sochi are dated back to the VII-VIII c. In the first Abhzaian temples we can reveal the influence of denominational centers – Byzantian Empire, Antioch, Caucasian Albania. In the temples of the Black Sea coast of both periods – introduction of the samples from Abkhazia.


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