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Vasnetsov Viktor Mikhailovich (1848 — 1926)
Fight of Scythians and Slavs, 1881
Oil on canvas
The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
In spring 1880 the young artist Viktor Vasnetsov experienced crisis: the creative conflict and rupture with Peredvizhniki, loneliness, empty pockets, no doubt his own creative consistency. Faithful to its principle to gather around him are not paintings, but the talents, which need only to open, a businessman and philanthropist, Savva Ivanovich Mamontov support young wizard, suggested subjects for his new paintings, and paid them in advance. These were mamontovskoy road - Donetsk-Mariupol, which became operational in 1882, linking the Donetsk coal basin and the port of Mariupol. The construction of railway track is extremely promising area of southern Russia came to a qualitatively new level of development. Although this building has gained a lot of critics, Savva Ivanovich know what to do. It wanted the prospects of this line have been disclosed in the relevant scenes, symbols, which he conceived, were to decorate the halls of the Donetsk railway. And Vasnetsov says the three-panel painting: «Fight of Scythians and Slavs» (past the edge of Donetsk), " Three queens of the underground kingdom" (Donetsk subsoil wealth) and the « Flying Carpet» (a new highway, a symbol of the new speed). Board did not agree to have the painting, considering them irrelevant to the office, and then Mamontov bought two canvases himself - "Flying Carpet" and "Three queens of the underground kingdom", and his brother, Anatoly Ivanovich bought "Fight of Scythians and Slavs". Vasnetsov in this picture allows for the historical inaccuracy. The painting depicts the battle the Scythians with the Slavs, although it is not possible.
We know history that nearly the entire north-eastern part of Europe, of Asia, between the Aral and Caspian Seas, between 45 and 55 ° north latitude, and most of Asia Minor was once occupied by people who were playing a great role in world history. The actions of the people is stretched to the south, north and west. The Greeks called these people the Scythians and divided it into several tribes (Herodotus).
So the Greeks called the people, whom they did not know. Details about it are based only on the testimony of caravan of travelers and traders. In the Scythians did not have a generic name that people, including awareness and Herodotus himself, he said: The Scythians themselves called skolotami.
The Greeks, on the one made by habit to call people at random they invented the name - the Scythians, have continued to use this name when he was already known to them was at first a nickname Armat, and then under another, formidable to Byzantium, the name of Rousseau, Greek emperors kept in constant fear and repeatedly drives and in awe.
Anne Room, Kinnam and Konstantin Bagryanorodny call them even the Scythians, when all other historians have called the Rousseau.
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