Questions of the history of nomadic peoples, their role in the general historical process and their position in the modern world occupy a prominent place in the works of A. Toynbee. In the most complete and systematic form, his concept on these issues is presented in the third volume of "Studies in History", where there are a number of special essays on nomadism and nomads .1
Toynbee's review of the history of nomads begins with those distant times when man first learned to tame wild animals, which made the transition of primitive hunters and farmers to nomadic cattle breeding possible in the future. In the steppes of Eurasia and Africa, this happened, according to him, 5-6 thousand years ago. After reviewing the thousands-year history of nomads, their relationship with the natural environment and sedentary neighbors, Toynbee came to the conclusion that in our time nomadism is doomed to be forcibly displaced by sedentary peoples, which in the Eurasian steppe zone began in the XVII century, and in modern society, led and guided by "Western civilization", is close to its full completion. "This Western civilization," he writes, " is erasing nomadism from the face of the earth ... as one of the episodes of that grandiose social revolution, during which over the past 150 years all the inhabited lands on our planet, all navigable seas, all generations of people were united into a single world economic order... In this global society with its dynamic economy, there is no place for an underdeveloped civilization and a stagnant economy of nomadic hordes. " 2
The conclusion about the inevitable displacement of nomadism by the carriers of settled cultures is a logical consequence of its entire concept, the main place in which is occupied by the thesis about the eternal opposition and irreconcilability of the material and spiritual interests of nomadic inhabitants of the steppes and the population of settled oases, which is caused by supposedly objective, independent of the will of both natural and physical factors 3 that This is because of the nature of nomadic pastoralism and forces the nomads to move forever in the same orbit, always repeating the same operations, as a result of which the nomadic society is deprived of internal incentives for development. Such a society, according to Toynbee, has no history4, which, however, does not mean that

1 A. Toynbee. A Study of History. Vol. III. L. 1934. "A. The Problem of the Growth of Civilisations: The Esquimaux; The Nomads; The Osmanlis". "Annex I. The Conductivity of Nomadism". "Annex II. The Causes of the Occasional Eruptions of the Nomads Out of Their Domain on the Steppes into the Adjoining Domains of the Sedentary Societies Round About Them". "Annex III. The Political Career of Mohammed".

2 Ibid., pp. 20 - 21.

3 Ibid., p. 17.

4 Ibid., p. 16.

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the nomads left no trace in world history. The immutability of their life, as he believes, was broken from time to time, the state of rest gave way to bursts of violent activity, they invaded the possessions of settled peoples, took the path of conquest. But in all cases, without exception, the transition from quiescence to activity was not the result of internal but of external causes, related either to natural factors, i.e., climatic changes, or to social factors, by which Toynbee means the political situation in neighboring sedentary societies.

He sees the basis of the first group of reasons in the objective law of changing periods of aridization (increased aridity) with periods of humidization (excessive moisture). Under the conditions of aridization, nomads leave their usual orbits of movement and start searching for new pastures for their flocks, which inevitably leads to an invasion of the borders of settled neighbors. But when aridization is replaced by humidization and steppe regions become suitable for grain cultivation, then settled peoples, seeking to expand arable land, invade the nomads ' possessions, deprive them of pasture territories, forcing them to switch to sedentary forms of economy and life. As for the "social factor", which the author of the Study of History reduces to changes in the internal political situation in settled societies, Toynbee is talking about such periods when this settled society is experiencing a state of decline, which forms a kind of vacuum into which nomads are spontaneously absorbed. Both groups of reasons for nomad activism, according to Toynbee, act as blind forces of nature that determine the entire history of nomads, the entire system of their relations with the peoples of settled cultures, both in the distant past and in the modern world. These are the final conclusions drawn from Toynbee's concept. He tries to confirm these conclusions with a large number of randomly selected examples from ancient, medieval, modern and modern history.

It is well known that at the very core of Toynbee's historiosophy lies the claim that the initial impetus for the development of society is provided by the so-called "challenge" from the external environment and the "response" of society to it. History, according to Toynbee, is a continuous succession of such "challenges" and "responses." The failure of society to properly respond to the next "challenge" puts an end to its development, it perishes. Based on this, he argues that nomadic societies arise as a "response" to a" challenge " from the natural conditions of the steppes, just as the culture of the Eskimos owes its appearance to a "challenge" from the surrounding ice, and the culture of the Polynesians - from the ocean. Climate changes, increased aridization, etc. lead to the transformation of primitive hunters and farmers into nomadic pastoralists.

This concept is based mainly on the materials of the American expedition of R. Pampelli, who conducted research in Transcaspia in 1903-1904, and on the conclusions of the American climatologist E. Huntingdon5 . But how justified is this approach? Archaeology was not the main goal of this expedition. In 1903, it did not have a single archaeologist at all, all its participants were physical geographers or geologists. The expedition leader himself is also a geologist. In 1904, the German archaeologist G. Schmidt was included in its composition. Stopping at the village of Anau (near Ashgabat), the expedition on March 26 to-

5 "Explorations in Turkestan: Expedition of 1903 under the Direction of Raphael Pumpelly". Washington. 1905; "Explorations in Turkestan: Expedition of 1904. Prehistoric Civilisation of Anau". Washington. 1908. In these two books, special sections are written by E. Huntington.

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Chala Yi completed the excavation of the two hills on June 7, taking about 75 days to complete .6 It is quite obvious that the author of the Study of History was at least hasty in constructing his concept on such a shaky foundation.

The Pampelli expedition, writes Toynbee, "... shed a bright light on the origin and culture of nomadism "7, proving that in Transcaspia, as well as in the valleys of the Lower Tigris, Euphrates and Lower Nile, the ancient settlers, faced with the" challenge " of aridization, were forced to abandon hunting as the main source of livelihood and development. go to land cultivation. Thus, the transformation of a primitive hunter into a farmer is portrayed as a" response "of the society of that time to the" challenge " of the changed climatic conditions. But the most important discovery made in Anau, according to Toynbee, was that agriculture preceded nomadic pastoralism, although farmers of that time already knew how to tame and raise cattle. By taming ruminants, says Toynbee, Eurasian man found that he had regained the mobility that he had lost in the process of his transformation from a hunter who was not connected with a permanent habitat, to a sedentary farmer who could not leave the plowed field for a long time. This mobility was used in two ways by the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppe in the context of a new wave of aridization. Those communities that left the most drought-stricken deep areas of the steppe and settled on its outskirts, where they could lead the usual life of settled farmers and pastoralists, 8 followed one path; those communities that separated from the former , abandoned the search for places for new settled settlements and began to move across the steppe with their families and flocks, followed the other and herds, marking the beginning of nomadic cattle breeding and a nomadic way of life. This happened, in his opinion, in the IV - III millennium BC, simultaneously with the birth of the ancient civilizations of Sumer and Egypt .9
In addition to the materials of the Pampelli expedition, Toynbee makes extensive use of nomad literature, ranging from the works of ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine historians to the works of modern Western European authors. The original literature of the peoples of the East, the works of Russian and Soviet scientists, not translated into Western languages, remained out of his sight. Nor did he pay much attention to the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. Meanwhile, the leading role in revealing the secrets of the distant and near past of the peoples of Eurasia belongs to the scientists of our Homeland. It is impossible to list Russian and Soviet archaeologists, ethnographers, linguists, literary critics and historians whose works shed light on many important problems of the early history of these peoples. Scientific research in this area was especially widespread in the period between 1935 and 1960, when in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Siberia, and the Far East, Soviet scientists carried out numerous archaeological, anthropological, and ethnographic studies that provided the richest and most reliable material, on the basis of which numerous monographs and major generalizations were written and published. works on the history of Turkmenistan, Karakalpakstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Khakassia, Tuva, Buryatia, Bashkiria, Kalmykia, etc. As a result of these works, there are much fewer "white spots" on the historical map of Eurasia, in the past of its peoples - nomadic and settled - and objectively historical ones are already quite clearly defined

6 "Explorations in Turkestan: Expedition of 1904...", p. XXVII.

7 A. Toynbee. Op. cit., p. 8.

8 Ibid., pp. 11, 67.

9 Ibid., p. 404.

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patterns of their development from ancient times to the present day 10 . Toynbee did not use these conclusions. In his last volume, Studies of History, published in 1961, he still relies on the materials of the R. Pampelli expedition to study the problems of the history of Eurasia and nomadism.

Another main source that feeds the concept of A. Toynbee is the climatological theory of E. Huntington, according to which the location of climatic zones on earth is subject to periodic changes. The climate seems to be constantly pulsating, and this directly affects people's lives, bringing them prosperity in one case, and decline in the other. Huntington is a consistent geographical determinist with a pronounced bias towards racism and geopolitics. Speaking about the fate of the peoples of Central Asia, the causes of the death of the ancient civilizations of the East, the great movements of peoples and the conquering campaigns of nomads, Huntington argued that climatic factors, in particular the progressive aridization of the corresponding territories, played a decisive role in all these events. Huntington's climatological theory has met and still meets serious objections from the leading representatives of geographical science not only in the USSR, but also in the USA and England. The overwhelming majority of Soviet scientists, fully armed with scientific arguments, resolutely rejected Huntington's views as contradicting objective facts .11 So, Huntington's theory, as it turns out, is also a scientifically unreliable source. The author of the" Study of History " passed by the extensive literature devoted to climate problems.

This is what the Toynbee Laboratory looks like from the point of view of its source research equipment. As for the methodology of his research activities, it is almost entirely reduced to analogies, which literally fill the pages of" Studies of History " devoted to nomads and nomadism. Arbitrary combinations, comparisons, and juxtapositions of various historical facts, even if separated from each other by centuries and millennia, as well as continents, but similar in some external features-these are the techniques by which Toynbee created his concept.

Describing the seasonal migrations of nomads, Toynbee finds that under normal conditions a nomadic community moves within these grazing areas, returning again and again to their seasonal camps, covering distances from hundreds to thousands of miles. "These year-long periodic movements within certain territories are what is literally and essentially called the 'road map'.

10 See B. Y. Vladimirtsov. Public Order of the Mongols, Moscow: L. 1934; A. A. Marushchenko. Architectural monuments of Turkmenistan. Issue 1. M.-L. 1939; S. V. Kiselev. Drevnyaya istoriya Yuzhnoi Sibiri [Ancient History of Southern Siberia]. Ancient agricultural tribes of Southern Turkmenistan and their relations with Iran and India. "Vestnik drevnoi istorii", 1957, No. 1; his. Central Asia and the Ancient East, Moscow, L. 1964; S. I. Rudenko. On the question of the forms of pastoral farming and nomads. "Materials on ethnography". Issue 1. L. 1961; I. Ya. Zlatkin. History of the Dzungarian Khanate, Moscow, 1964, et al.

11 See L. S. Berg. On climate change in the historical era. "Zemlevedenie", 1911, N 3; it is the same. Klimat i zhizn [Climate and Life], Moscow, 1947; A. I. Voeikov. Does Turkestan and Central Asia continue to dry up? "Meteorological Bulletin", Vol. XXX. Ptgr. 1921, N 1-2; V. K. Yatsunsky. Istoricheskaya geografiya [Historical Geography], Moscow, 1955; A.V. Shnitkov. General features of cyclical fluctuations in the level of lakes and moisture content of the territory of Eurasia due to solar activity. "Bulletin of the Commission for the Study of the Sun". Moscow-L. 1949; his. Variability of the total moisture content of the Northern Hemisphere continents. "Notes of the Geographical Society of the USSR", vol. 16, new series, Moscow-L. 1957, et al. L. N. Gumilyov holds a special position. See I. Ya. Zlatkin. Not synthesis, but eclecticism. (Regarding the concept of L. N. Gumilyov). "Peoples of Asia and Africa", 1970, N 3.

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"nomadism "(a Greek word meaning cattle grazing)"12 . One cannot disagree with this definition. However, according to Toynbee, nomadism also includes movements of a different type, occurring at intervals of tens or even hundreds of years rather than 12 months, and the length of routes that cannot be compared with the usual movements of nomadic hordes. By movements of this type, Toynbee means nomadic invasions of settled peoples. At the same time, he argues that such aggressive actions are not a manifestation of their own initiative and will of nomads, but are an inevitable consequence of changing climatic conditions or pressure from their settled neighbors .13 Thus, according to the concept of A. Toynbee, the nature of nomadism and sedentary peasant farming is antagonistic. According to Toynbee, the encroachments of sedentary peasants in nomadic societies and the encroachments of nomads in areas of sedentary civilizations are similar in that they are subject to the same factors that are beyond the control of either nomads or sedentary peasants.

Having attributed the beginning of nomadism to the IV-III millennium BC, Toynbee from the same time leads the history of armed conflicts between nomads and settled peoples, which he brought together in a chronological table covering the time from 2025 BC to 1875 AD. This huge, almost four-thousand-year period of time he divided into 13 three-hundred years segments that reflected the alternation of periods of military activity of nomads who invaded the possessions of settled peoples, and periods of counter-offensives of settled peoples who invaded the possessions of nomads. This table mentions the campaigns of Chaldeans and Arameans, Jews and Libyans, Thracians and Assyrians, Cimmerians and Scythians, Sarmatians and Goths, Agathirsians and Arabs, Iberians and Huns, Xianbis and Celts, Carthaginians and Numidians, Saks and Massagets, Avars and Magyars, Khazars and Bulgars, Bashkirs and Yakuts, Pechenegs and Cumans Russians and Mongols, Franks and Kipchaks, Slovaks and Seljuks, Guzs and Chinese, Uzbeks and Kazakhs, Malians and Tuaregs, Kalmyks and Nogais, Manchus and Dzungars, etc. etc.

Even the most cursory analysis of this table reveals a purely mechanical accumulation of a wide variety of events, often not comparable in scale and historical significance, in nature and goals, when wars of conquest and peaceful migrations, acts of open military aggression and... a change of religious beliefs are put on the same level. Despite these obvious weaknesses in the table, Toynbee draws a number of serious conclusions from it. These include the claim that Indo-European nomads were successively replaced by Turkic-speaking nomads in the steppes of Eurasia, while the nomads of Indo-European origin-contemporaries of the Sumerian and Prakitan civilizations-were, in his opinion, the monopoly owners of the Eurasian steppes until the third century BC, when the Turkic-speaking nomads who appeared here and continuously increased began to crowd them and by the IV-V centuries A.D. they were finally driven out of there. The Turkic-speaking nomads reigned supreme in Eurasia until the thirteenth century, when the Mongol-speaking nomads began to gradually absorb their predecessors. The process started by the Mongols in the 13th century was continued, according to Toynbee, by the Kalmyks in the 17th century. But if in the 13th century the Mongols sought to subjugate the Turkic-speaking nomads, but did not intend to expel them, then the Kalmyks allegedly intended to transform the steppes from the Eastern Gobi to the r. Don and from Kukunor to r. Ob is a huge Mongolian-speaking domain.

12 A. Toynbee. Op. cit., p. 395.

13 Ibid., pp. 15 - 16.

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However, their "aggression" was interrupted in the third quarter of the 18th century by the simultaneous invasion of the Eurasian steppes by China and Russia. If not for the crushing blows inflicted by these powers, the expansion of the Kalmyks would undoubtedly have developed further, and then their victims would have been the Turkic-speaking Kazakhs, who in the XVIII century would have repeated the fate of the Iranian-speaking Sarmatians, who were expelled from their homes by the Xiongnu in the IV century AD.

So, Toynbee solves the problems of history quite simply, guided by the principle: if something similar happened in the past, then it cannot be otherwise in the present and future, regardless of specific historical conditions. Only this can explain the origin of Toynbee's fantastic conclusion that the Kalmyks in the seventeenth century planned to create a grandiose Mongol-speaking domain from the Don almost to Khingan and from the Ob to Kukunor, with the expulsion of the Kazakhs from Eurasia, and that only the "simultaneous invasion" of China and Russia prevented them from implementing this plan. This conclusion contradicts immutable historical facts .14 The same chronological chart suggested Toynbee that the most important historical events that took place in the steppes of Eurasia and Africa were synchronized. He gives many examples of more or less simultaneous incursions of nomads into the borders of settled peoples, beginning in the seventh century BC and ending in the eighteenth century. And in this case, he puts the conquests of the Juanjuans and the Arabs, the Huns and Kalmyks, the Khazars and Mongols, the Ottoman Turks and Cumans, etc., on the same level. It is also striking that he ignores the cases of asynchrony of some important historical events (for example, the activation of the Xiongnu, then the Turks and Mongols in Eurasia did not cause any responses in Africa, the speech of the Arabs in the VII century AD did not affect Eurasia in any way, etc.), which some of Toynbee's critics have already noticed 15 . Further, he notes that in the middle of the XIV century, the Genghis Khanids ' power was almost simultaneously opposed by the peoples under their control: the Chinese expelled the Mongols from China, Timur overthrew the descendants of Chagatai and Jochi in Central Asia, and even earlier the Khazar Khaganate and the Uyghur empire were conquered by Judaism and Manichaeism (?!)

"By establishing synchronicity,"Toynbee concludes," both in the series of nomad breakthroughs from the steppe to sedentary oases and in the series of invasions by their sedentary neighbors from oases to the steppe, we can see that nomad breakthroughs and oasis - dwelling invasions tend to alternate, replacing each other. " 16 In support of this idea, he again gives a whole series of examples. Here are just a few of them. In the sixteenth century, the Russians conquered from the successors of the Mongol conquerors strategically important positions on the Volga, which six centuries earlier had already belonged to the Slavs, who then took them from the successors of the Khazars. But in the seventeenth century, the newly established border along the lower Volga was suddenly broken by a new horde of nomads, whom Toynbee calls the " Torgut Kalmyks." It was only after 1771, when this Kalmyk flood rolled back, that the dominant position of settled civilization was finally established, although "even today,"he writes," it would be rash to claim that the last chapter of this chess - like history has completely exhausted itself. " 17
A. Toynbee is convinced that his table proves the existence of a certain regularity of nomad invasions within the limits of their settled territories.-

14 "Essays on the history of the Kalmyk ASSR", Moscow, 1967; M. Kichikov. Formation of the Kalmyk state in Russia. Elista. 1968; I. Ya. Zlatkin. History of the Dzungarian Khanate, etc.

15 A. Toynbee. Op. cit., p. 454. Here the author quotes extensively from Hudson's personal, unpublished letter, which contains these criticisms.

16 Ibid., p. 425.

17 Ibid., p. 428.

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dey and encroachments of settled peoples in the domain of nomads. This, in his opinion, suggests that the bursts of activity of nomads are as rhythmic and regular as their seasonal migrations. To explain this rhythmicity, he refers to Huntington's climatological theory. The causal relationships of the phenomena under consideration are drawn to him as follows: in a favorable climatic year, life in the steppe and oases flows normally and calmly, the number of herds and population increases in the steppe, crops expand in the oases; but now the transition to drying begins; nomads are the first to feel this, whose life and economy are increasingly affected by the reduction and the deterioration of pasture lands, conflicts arise between tribes caused by their common spontaneous craving for better pastures and water sources; in the course of these conflicts, the weak are defeated and driven out, but conflicts escalate and become more frequent; in the end, the distressed tribes are driven out of the steppe and turn on settled peoples in search of a way out. This explains Toynbee's frequent historical events, when nomad invasions followed in waves, when the first horde was pushed by the second, and so on. In this way, as a result of Aridization, the Iranians displaced the Aryans from the steppe, the Scythians-the Cimmerians, the Yuezhi - the Saks, the Xiongnu - the Yuezhi, the Khazars - the Avars, the Pechenegs - the Magyars, the Cumans - the Guzs, the Anaza - Shamars, and so on . 18 According to Huntington's diagrams, the first decades of the fourteenth century were characterized by a rapid increase in humidization. This gives Toynbee reason to state that if the aridization of the first decades of the 13th century led to a rapid activation of the Mongols, then the strengthening of humidization a hundred years later coincided with their retreat along the entire Eurasian front, accompanied by the invasions of the Wallachians, Moldovans, Lithuanians and Dnieper Cossacks into the possessions of the Golden Horde, the conversion to Islam of its Khans, ulus rulers Chagatai, il-khans of Iran and Khans of Dzungaria, as well as the expulsion of the Yuan dynasty from China and the defeats of the Chagataids and Jochids in battles with Timur's troops.

Thus, physical and geographical factors make it possible, in Toynbee's opinion, to answer questions that cannot otherwise be convincingly explained: namely, why did the Mongols rise with such unprecedented force on all Eurasian fronts in the thirteenth century, and then with such exceptional humility give up all positions to their recent opponents only one century later? opponents? And he answers: "As they advanced, taking possession of the countries, the calamities of drought and famine spurred them on, and they went forward. At the same time, when they left Ukraine, the oases of Transoxania and China, they knew that their native steppes... they were once again abundant, covered with heaven-sent luxuriant vegetation. " 19 This "explanation" of the reasons for the Mongol conquests of the 13th century, as well as the reasons for the collapse of their empire in the 14th century, is far from the truth. First, according to historical geography, it is by no means indisputable to attribute the beginning of the 13th century to the period of Aridization, and in connection with this, references to drought as the cause of the Mongol conquests hang in the air. Secondly, Toynbee ignores the fact that the struggle of conquered and oppressed peoples against conquerors and oppressors is a simple tool of the natural forces of nature. Toynbee himself gives a number of examples of nomadic activity caused not by climatic, but by "social" factors, as well as a combination of both. According to his general conclusion, all cases known to science of nomad invasions of settled oases and the inhabitants of the latter in the possession of nomads can be reduced to

18 Ibid., p. 437.

19 Ibid., p. 440.

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three reasons - climate, social vacuum, and a combination of the first two.

It is also worth noting how Toynbee treats the question of the influence of the religions of settled peoples on nomadic ones. He concludes that this influence can be twofold, depending on whether the conversion to a new religion occurs in the conditions when nomads develop the conquered territory, or it finds them in old habitats and in traditional conditions of migration from one seasonal pasture to another. In the first case, as the history of the Khazar Khaganate, the Golden Horde, the Il-Khans ' state, and the Chagatai ulus allegedly attests, Judaism and Islam, which became the official religions of the nomads, played the role of "social solvents", softened their belligerent character traits and thereby accelerated their political collapse. In the second case, the new religions had the opposite effect on the nomads, playing the role of a stimulator in the transition from a state of rest to activity. For example, the preachings of Muhammad and the grandiose explosion of Arab Muslim activity were preceded by the penetration of Judaism and Christianity into Arabia. The Seljuk invasion of Abbasid lands in Asia in the eleventh century was preceded by the infiltration of Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Nestorianism into the northeastern regions of Eurasia, and the Kalmyks ' advance in the seventeenth century. What happened immediately after their transition to yellow-capped Lamaism, etc., is not this a special, spiritual form of the challenge-and-answer movement, Toynbee asks. And if so, doesn't this mean that nomads can't be classified as peoples without a history? And he answers: to the extent that the spiritual challenge-and-response movement can be traced in cases of this kind, those affected by this movement do not belong to the nomads themselves, but to the inhabitants of settled oases. 20 Resorting to unacceptable modernization, he writes that Muhammad was not a nomadic pastoralist, but a wandering "merchant", his relatives in Mecca were "businessmen", and his followers in Medina were farmers, and if the nomadic Arabs in the seventh century embarked on the path of great conquests, this is explained by the fact that among them were groups alien to the nomadic Arabs to a certain extent, who took over the spiritual and military-political leadership of the movement. The same, according to Toynbee, was the case in the steppes of Eurasia. The religious influences that affected and probably accelerated the Mongol movements in the thirteenth century came from oases inhabited by Uyghurs. And yellow-capped Lamaism, adopted by the Mongols and Kalmyks in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, influenced the new converts by relying on artificial oases created by them in the form of Lamaist monasteries.

All these constructions are necessary for Toynbee in order to once again reinforce his main position, according to which nomads are peoples without a history, and their invasions from the steppes to the oases are just a mechanical manifestation of powerful physical and social forces, like volcanic eruptions.

Based on this concept, as well as on the thesis of the eternal and irreconcilable antagonism between nomadic and sedentary peoples, Toynbee solves modern problems of life of nomadic peoples. This process of" eliminating nomadism " serves as a common denominator, to which it reduces the most diverse processes of the modern history of nomadic peoples: the strengthening of the political and economic position of the Wahhabi ruler in Arabia, the suppression of the national liberation movement in Libya by the Italian fascists in 1931, and the socio-economic processes in Inner Mongolia and Manchuria,

20 Ibid., p. 452.

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and many other phenomena that are actually connected not with the mythical "challenge-and-response" scheme, but with very specific economic, social and political factors that make up the essence of the modern era.

Toynbee's" patterns " for the Old World are also found in American history. Here, to confirm his scheme, he attracts cowboys, who also belong to the category of nomadic peoples. In his opinion, the history of American nomadic cattle breeding, that is, cowboying, in an abbreviated form repeats the history of the nomads of the Old World. And if, for one reason or another, the growth of sedentary society in North America was halted and the prairies were left to the cowboys, the world would see in the New World a complete repeat of the history of Old World nomadism .21 Equally fantastic is Toynbee's attempt to explain the history of the formation and development of the Ottoman Empire from the standpoint of his concept.

It was already mentioned above that Toynbee attributes the emergence of nomadic cattle breeding to the IV-III millennium BC and considers its appearance to be a" response "of the then society to the" challenge " of climate aridization. But after all, our planet in those distant times was not so densely populated as in the XIX-XX centuries, and there was a lot of free land; what necessity forced people to change more favorable living conditions to less favorable ones, which prevented them from settling in oases, experiencing much less adversity from aridization? Toynbee does not answer these questions.

F. Engels, as is well known, considered the separation from the general mass of barbarian tribes, whose cattle breeding and care became the main branch of labor, a great progressive act that marked the first major social division of labor. For him, there was no doubt that the accumulation of domesticated animals was the reason for the transition to pastoral life, that the transition to nomadic pastoralism was a natural consequence of the growth in the number of herds .22 Climatic factors, of course, played and continue to play an important role in the life of nomads, as well as in the life of farmers, especially at the dawn of their social development; these factors had a decisive influence on the formation of grassy plains, without which nomadic cattle breeding could not have developed, reflecting the growth of productive forces and labor productivity. In the later history of nomadic pastoralism, climatic factors played and continue to play a role to the extent that the forage productivity of pasture territories depended on them and still depends on them. "The eastern continent, the so-called Old World," writes F. Engels had almost all the domesticable animals and all the cultivable cereals except one; the western continent, America, of all the domesticable mammals , had only the llama, and then only in one part of the south, and of all the cultivated cereals only one, but the best, maize. As a result of this difference in natural conditions, the population of each hemisphere has since developed in its own special way ... " 23 . This statement also contains an answer to the question of why the history of America does not know nomadic pastoralism, similar to Eurasian and African, although the change in the epochs of aridization and humidization, it would seem, should have equally affected the inhabitants of both the New and Old Worlds.

Statements made by F. Engels as early as 1884, fully confirmed by the research of Soviet and many foreign historians.-

21 Ibid., p. 21.

22 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 21, p. 31.

23 Ibid., p. 30.

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first of all, and mainly with the materials of archaeological excavations. A lot of indisputable data obtained by science and sufficiently covered in the literature allows us to consider the question of the factors that caused the formation of nomadic pastoral farming and everyday life in the steppes of Eurasia in ancient times sufficiently clarified and resolved. Toynbee's position on this issue is untenable. As for the question of the time of the appearance of nomadic cattle breeding, referring it to the IV-III millennium BC, Toynbee contradicts his own definition of nomadism as an economy, the distinctive feature of which is periodic seasonal movements in order to provide livestock with feed, which implies that nomadic cattle breeding becomes such only when it is fully developed. it separated itself from agriculture and became the main productive activity of a certain society. But such cattle breeding was not either six, five or four thousand years ago. Even the excavations at Anau, to which Toynbee refers, do not give grounds for claims about such an ancient origin of nomadism. On the contrary, they show that cattle breeding there was not nomadic, but sedentary, combined with agriculture. Soviet archaeology has convincingly shown that nomadic pastoralism in the Eurasian steppes did not originate earlier than the beginning of the first millennium BC and developed into a developed system only at the turn of our era, and in different regions of Eurasia this process went unevenly and at different times.

The fallacy of Toynbee's thesis that nomadic peoples have no history, since their development does not fit into the "challenge-and-response" scheme, is convincingly revealed when considering the evolution of the forms of economic, social and cultural life of such a nomadic people as the Mongols. The past of this people gives the researcher extensive opportunities to identify objective patterns of development of nomadic societies. Of course, the process of development of other nomadic peoples of Eurasia and Africa differs more or less significantly from the history of the Mongols, and yet it is the path of this people, which can be judged on the basis of a large number of Mongolian chronicles and historical works, that provides reliable material for studying the general patterns of development of nomadic civilizations. And it is precisely the facts firmly established by Mongolian studies that refute the concept of A. Toynbee.

It is known that the Mongols were first mentioned in written sources at the end of the first millennium AD. By that time, the Eurasian steppes had already served as an arena for the activities of the Xiongnu, Xianbi, Ruan-Ruan, Turks, Kyrgyz, Uyghurs, Khitan and Jurchen. They were replaced by the Mongols, who formed their own state at the beginning of the XIII century. It is now well known that Genghis Khan's empire was a state headed by a young class of feudalizing Mongol aristocracy, full of strength and predatory appetites; in this state feudalism as a definite mode of production was finally established; here, by the middle of the thirteenth century, the transition period from a primitive communal to a feudal society ended. But where and when did this transition period begin? Today, historical science does not yet have sufficient data to answer this question. However, all the news about the union of the Xiongnu, formed in the third century BC, suggests that this first major state formation of nomads in East and Central Asia was a milestone on the path of transition from the pre-class system to feudalism. So, one and a half millennia (from the third century BC-the supposed beginning of the transition period-to the XIII century AD). - its undisputed completion) - this is the time (and in reality, apparently, even longer) that it took the nomadic inhabitants of this part of Eurasia to overcome the path from primitive hunting-

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the role of the nomadic pastoralist and non-nomadic pastoralist farming system in the early feudal society, in which nomadic pastoralism was the main branch of labor. This was the main objective historical pattern of this one-and-a-half-thousand-year period in the development of these peoples. At the same time, the formation of Turkic-speaking, Mongolian-speaking and Tungusic-speaking nationalities was underway. It would, of course, be a mistake to think of this transition period as a kind of uniform and one-line movement. Typical of the historical process at the time under consideration in Eurasia was a zigzag movement, with an alternation of progressive shifts and backward steps.

Toynbee sees nothing in the history of nomadic peoples but a monotonous development in a circle, interspersed with wars. He passes by the facts depicting progressive shifts in the technique and technology of nomadic cattle breeding, in the everyday life and culture of nomads. If he had been less dependent on the scheme he had created, he would have compiled a table of technical, social, and cultural gains instead of the dubious chronological table of nomad military activity. In it, he would have to note that in the steppes of Southern Siberia in the first half of the first millennium BC. e. for the first time in history, a horse-drawn wagon began to be introduced, weaving and metalworking were developed, that in the V - III centuries BC. e. the horse began to play a leading role in the economy, cattle brands and horse harness appeared that at the turn of the new era, the "Great Silk Road" was laid across the Eurasian steppes, which contributed to the involvement of nomads in the then world turnover of goods and ideas, that at the beginning of the new era, horse harness was supplemented with such important technical innovations as the saddle and bit; that in the VI century AD, the Turkic nomads developed their own writing, that among the nomads of East and Central Asia in the sixth century. for the first time there were cities as military and commercial centers; that in the XIII century. The Mongols also developed their own written language, that it marked the beginning of a rich literature, that the Mongols created their own customary and written law, rich oral folk art, which gave the world such examples as "Gesar" and "Jangar"; that urban-type settlements arose, domestic crafts were developed, cattle breeding techniques were improved, that in the XVII century the Mongols were able to create their own language. - XVIII centuries. The Western Mongols in Dzungaria had the beginnings of manufacturing, etc., etc.

The history of the Mongols suggests that the nomadic form of pastoral farming and nomadic life are by no means an absolute obstacle to the progressive development of the economy, social system and culture. The experience of the Mongols proves that the feudal mode of production among nomadic peoples can go beyond early feudalism and enter the stage of developed feudal relations. The history of the Western Mongols (Oirats) showed, in particular, that even in the conditions of complete predominance of nomadic cattle breeding, rudimentary forms of manufacturing production and a developed trade exchange are possible. From all this it follows that the objective possibilities for the development of nomadic society, while not, of course, unlimited, allow it to move forward to the stage at which the separation of handicrafts from agriculture and the transition to machine production begins. Whether or not a society reaches this stage depends not on whether the nomadic or sedentary type of economy prevails in it, but on many other factors of an international and domestic nature, which are subject to special study and clarification in each individual case.

Toynbee portrays the nomad society as consisting of no different shepherds who share the same interests, have the same antipathy to the settled peasants, and share the same values.

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interested in dominating the settled peoples. However, in painting this far-from-true picture, Toynbee ignores such well-known facts as the division of the Mongols into "white" and "black" bones, into "noble" (noyons) and "rabble" (kharachu), he passes by the decrees of Genghis Khan and his successors, by the Mongol-Oirat laws of 1640 G. and the decrees of Galdan Khan, past the numerous indications of the Mongolian chronicles, long described and analyzed in the literature 24 . He passes by numerous testimonies about the struggle of ordinary Mongols against feudalization in the pre-Genghis Khan period, about the serfdom nature of the legislation of Genghis Khan, about the flight of ordinary Mongols from the Noyons and the brutal persecution of fugitives by the latter, etc. Toynbee does not want to admit that the nomad society, like any other, in the era of feudalism consists of a class of feudal lords who monopolize the main means of production - land, and a class of nomadic workers who are deprived of land ownership and therefore economically, and therefore politically, dependent on the feudal lords. This was the case not only with the Mongols, but also with the trend of development of all nomadic peoples, although this objective historical pattern did not fully manifest itself in each of them. Looking at the historical past of the Mongols, we can clearly see that the feudal class was always mainly interested in conquests, which acted as their initiator and organizer, that it was he who got the lion's share of the spoils of war, it was he who turned into the master of the conquered people, whose labor he parasitically exploited.

Reading Toynbee's discussion of the interrelationships between nomadic and sedentary peoples, one cannot help but be struck by the tenacity with which he strives to fit historical facts into the abstract scheme he has constructed, to fit the living history of peoples into its Procrustean bed.

Another F. Engels, speaking of the historical significance of distinguishing pastoral tribes from the general mass of barbarians, wrote: "They had, in comparison with the barbarians, not only milk, dairy products and meat in much larger quantities, but also skins, wool, goat's down and an ever-increasing amount of yarn and fabrics with the increase in the mass of raw materials. This made regular exchange possible for the first time. ...After the separation of pastoral tribes, we find all conditions ready for exchange between members of different tribes, for its development and consolidation as a permanent institution. ...Cattle became a commodity ... " 25. K. Marx, in his turn, studying the historical process of exchange development, established: "Nomadic peoples are the first to develop the form of money, since all their property is in a mobile, therefore directly alienable, form, and since their way of life constantly brings them into contact with foreign communities and thereby encourages the exchange of products."26
All Mongolian, Russian and Chinese sources - chronicles, archival documents, works of ancient and medieval authors - fully confirm these statements of the founders of scientific socialism, and irrefutably testify to the great importance of trade in the life of nomadic societies and in their relations with settled neighbors. And the more specialized nomadic cattle breeding station is-

24 E. Bretschneider. Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources. L. 1888; A. Mostaert. Erdeni-yin Tobci. Mongolian Chronicle by Sagang Secen. Cambridge (Mass.). 1956; S. Y. Schmidt. Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen und ihres Furstenhauses. Leipzig. 1829; Ch. R. Bawden. The Mongol Chronicle Altan Tobci. Wiesbaden, 1958, et al.

25 K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 21, p. 160

26 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 23, p. 99.

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As such a society developed, the problem of exchange with settled peoples became all the more important for it. This trade was a necessary condition and prerequisite for the development of nomadic pastoralism; without such trade, nomadic pastoralism itself was impossible.27 As a rule, the question of peace or war between a nomadic people and its settled neighbor was connected with trade exchange. And if the nature of the relationship between Russia and its nomadic periphery was at all times significantly different from that between China and its periphery, if the number and severity of armed conflicts between Russia and its nomadic neighbors were many times smaller than that between China and its neighbors, then one of the main factors explaining this difference is the fact that This is due to the different trade policies of these countries. China had little economic interest in trade exchanges with the nomads, while for the latter, in particular for the Mongols, it was the only possible market for their surplus products until the seventeenth century, and also the only possible source of supply for agricultural products and urban crafts. A lot of data suggests that the only nomadic commodity that was in some demand in China was horses, which were purchased for the needs of the army. Apparently, it is the lack of serious economic interest in trade exchange with neighbors that explains the traditional Chinese interpretation of it as an expression of vassalage and suzerainty. Russia's trade with its nomadic periphery was different. Russia was much more economically interested in trade exchange with its nomadic neighbors, so that the severity of the contradiction noted above was significantly mitigated, and in other periods, for example, in the XVI - XVIII centuries, it was completely reduced to a minimum. Trade between the Russian state and the nomadic inhabitants of the border steppe strip never stopped for a long time, as a result of which one of the important reasons for armed conflicts disappeared. One might think that this is precisely the reason why the relationship between the nomadic "steppe" and the "Russian oasis", to use Toynbee's terminology, has developed far less dramatically throughout history than that between China and its nomadic periphery.

Of course, it would be a mistake to explain all the wars of nomadic peoples with sedentary ones, all the raids of nomads on settled settlements, only and exclusively by the absence of exchange markets. Since nomadic society was divided into classes, its foreign policy has become the prerogative of the ruling class. Not nomads in general, but their feudal rulers conceived and carried out wars of conquest. The Mongolian chronicles report many times about the congresses of khans and princes, at which questions about wars and campaigns were decided, but there is not a single message in them that would speak about the participation of working Mongols in such meetings. The Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century were organized by feudal lords; they were not caused by aridization and humidization, not by the eternal enmity between nomads and settled peasants, not by the fundamental differences in their way of life, methods of management and social structure, not by the antagonism between the "steppe" and the "oasis" , or even by the lack of markets for cattle products, but by the predatory interests of the Mongol feudal class, who saw in these

27 See B. Y. Vladimirtsov. Edict. op.; N. Ya. Bichurin. Collection of information about the peoples who lived in Central Asia in ancient times. Hch. I-III. M.-L. 1952-1953; D. Z. Pokotilov. History of the Eastern Mongols during the Ming Dynasty. 1368-1634. St. Petersburg. 1893; V. L. Kotvich. Russian archival documents on relations with the Oirats in the XVIII century Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk, 1919, NN 12-15, 16-18; I. Ya. Zlatkin. History of the Dzungarian Khanate; "Essays on the History of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic".

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wars are a means to gain new sources of wealth. In this respect, Mongol feudal lords are no different from any other feudal lords, including non-nomadic feudal lords.

Speaking about the history of relations between nomadic steppe and sedentary oases, Toynbee admits many factual inaccuracies that cannot be enumerated. It is enough to refer, for example, to his story about the alleged aggressiveness of the "Torgut Kalmyks" in the XVII - XVIII centuries, allegedly trying to form a vast Mongol-speaking domain from the Gobi to the Don and from the Kukunor to the Ob, which is not confirmed by any evidence, as well as the version about the invasion of the steppe of China and Russia that took place at the same time. In fact, everything was completely different, as can be seen from reading the documents, including those published in special publications and used in numerous researchs28 .

It remains to be seen whether Toynbee is right about the historical doom of nomadism. Yes, in a sense, he is right. The objective specifics of the economy and social system of nomadic pastoralists at a certain stage of their development make their transition to sedentary forms of management and life inevitable as an indispensable condition and a decisive prerequisite for their further progress. Nomads are brought to the transition to sedentarism due to the facts inherent in their own internal development; nomadic forms of production and life at a certain stage exhaust their inherent development potential. In our time, the nomadic pastoral society is, of course, an anachronism, and the nations that have gone ahead should consider it their duty to help the lagging peoples so that they too can speed up the movement and catch up with the advanced nations. But, adhering to the thesis about the inevitability of violent methods of expelling nomads, the author of the "Study of History" suggests as the only possible way to solve the problem of nomadism, which capitalism and its satellites - imperialism and colonialism-were and are. This path has been experienced and continues to be experienced not only by nomads, but also by many sedentary peoples of the world. Toynbee himself admits that in Kenya the Massai nomadic tribes were driven out to give way to European planters, in Libya the Italian colonialists suppressed nomadic resistance by force of arms, airplanes and armored vehicles "solved the problem of nomadism" in the Sahara regions, etc. You can easily increase the number of such examples, pointing out, in particular, the role of "Western Europe". civilizations" in recent Nigerian events, in attempts to overthrow progressive regimes in a number of African and Asian countries inhabited by more or less significant masses of nomads, and so on "From all the sedentary civilizations, writes Toynbee, with which nomadic societies have encountered during almost five thousand years of contact... only our Western civilization brings the fratricidal war between them to an end. " 29 He considers this war natural and inevitable. However, there are forces at work in the political life of the modern world that make it possible to solve the problem of nomadism without forcible displacement. It is enough to refer to the experience of the peoples of Soviet Central Asia, as well as Mongolia, who either long ago ceased to be nomadic pastoralists, or will cease to be such in the near future. This is not to say that Toynbee knows nothing about this experience. Nevertheless, he also tries to squeeze this version of evolution into the

28 N. N. Bantysh-Kamensky. Diplomatic meeting of affairs between the Russian and Chinese states. Kazan. 1882; V. L. Kotvich. Edict. op.; I. Ya. Zlatkin. History of the Dzungarian Khanate; "Essays on the history of the Kalmyk ASSR"; "Materials on the history of Russian-Mongolian relations", Moscow, 1959; M. Kichikov. Edict op.

29 A. Toynbee. Op. cit., p. 20.

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the framework of his contrived scheme with the help of the "social solvent" thesis, to which Toynbee also refers the communist ideology, which he likens to the religions of settled peoples .30
Can we say that all this was written in 1934, and explain Toynbee's strange conclusions by the lack of sufficient information at his disposal? No, that's not the point. And a quarter of a century later, in 1960, when he was completing volume XII of his Study of History, he did not consider it necessary to make any corrections to his reasoning. Do we need to talk here about the grandiose transformations in the field of economy, social relations, culture, science, and domestic life of former nomads that took place in the Soviet Union and in the Mongolian People's Republic? Numerous documentary publications, monographic studies, and eyewitness accounts - both Soviet and foreign-attest to the depth and scope of these transformations. The experience of the Central Asian republics of the USSR, as well as the MNR, allows us to consider it proven that in the modern world there are two options for solving the problem of nomadism. One of them is the way of forcible displacement of nomads, the other is the way of revolutionary breaking of archaic forms of economy, social system and domestic life, carried out by the nomad workers themselves under the leadership of Marxist-Leninist parties. Relying on the unselfish help of the socialist countries, on the alliance and support of the international working class, nomadic peoples make the transition to sedentary forms of life in a more or less short time, a transition suggested by the experience of former nomads who were convinced of its timeliness and expediency. This path was taken, in particular, by the people of Mongolia.

30 Ibid., p. 19.

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