Forerunner of Nizhny Novgorod — a legendary city on the site of which modern Nizhny Novgorod stands.
Background
There are many theories about the city that preceded Nizhny Novgorod.
In the writings of historians, the thesis that Nizhny Novgorod arose on the site of an earlier city first appears in the 18th century.
Priority here apparently belongs to V. N. Tatishchev, who wrote in his "Russian History": "6729 (1221). Grand Prince Yuri founded a city against the Bulgars at the mouth of the Oka River, naming it Novgrad Nizhny, for there had previously been a Bulgarian city."
Compared with the chronicle sources that have come down to us — including those that V. N. Tatishchev is known to have used (the Nikon Chronicle, the Resurrection Chronicle) — the historian's account contains two interpolations: 1) the city at the mouth of the Oka was founded "against the Bulgars"; 2) "for there had previously been a Bulgarian city there" [emphasis ours. — B.P.]. The reason for the first interpolation is not in doubt: it is the product of a logical inference by the author, who noticed the preceding chronicle entry for 6728 (1220), which recounts Grand Prince of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich's war with Volga Bulgaria. This inference by V. N. Tatishchev does, however, somewhat distort historical reality, since defense "against the Bulgars," judging by subsequent events of the 1220s–1230s, was not the sole purpose behind the founding of Nizhny Novgorod. That this interpolation was made by V. N. Tatishchev himself is eloquently demonstrated by its absence in the text of the second edition of the "Russian History": "Novgrad Nizhny. 6729 (1221). Grand Prince Yuri sent his commanders with troops and ordered them to build a new city at the mouth of the Oka River, where there had long been a Bulgarian city, destroyed by the Russians."
The origin of Tatishchev's second interpolation is unclear. Although its grammatical construction — "be bo tu preyezhe" — seems to point to an Old Russian source (in the second edition the text was modernized: "where there had long been a Bulgarian city"), this phrase is absent from the surviving chronicle compilations, and the likelihood that he used some other authoritative but lost source is vanishingly small in light of what scholars today know about the sources of the "Russian History" and V. N. Tatishchev's authorial methods. It therefore seems more plausible that the interpolation was composed by the historian himself — either on the basis of his own logical inferences or on the basis of a local source (possibly folkloric) analogous to the one later known to N. I. Khramtsovsky.
In his book "A Brief Sketch of the History and Description of Nizhny Novgorod," N. I. Khramtsovsky recounts a legend that on the site of Nizhny Novgorod there formerly stood the city of the Mordva chieftain Abram, besieged by the Suzdal prince Mstislav in 1171. In the battle that followed, Abram perished, but Mstislav and his retinue were also unable to consolidate their hold on the city and retreated to Suzdal. As the source of the legend, N. I. Khramtsovsky cited the account of an unnamed "antiquarian" — the owner of ancient books — and noted that although the legend does not coincide with the chronicle sources, "at its core it does not contradict the chroniclers and historians and confirms that on the site of present-day Nizhny Novgorod there was a city or large settlement of indigenous people, which in all probability was ravaged in 1171…." But this conclusion by the historian of his native region must be acknowledged as too hasty. Judging by the mention in the legend of the prince's name (Mstislav) and by the highly realistic figures for the numbers of warriors on both sides — figures uncharacteristic of folklore — the source of the account of "Abram's little town" is not local oral tradition but rather an authored narrative by an educated person familiar with the Laurentian Chronicle's entry for 6680 (1171) and subsequent years concerning campaigns into the Volga Region. It is noteworthy in this connection that when A. S. Gatsitsky republished the legend of "Abram's little town" in his "Nizhegorodka," while on the whole rejecting the theory of a predecessor settlement, he quoted P. I. Melnikov's opinion (in a footnote to the 1877 edition): "This legend is of a very suspicious nature with regard to its authenticity."
Indeed, the reliability of the account of a Mordva predecessor town to Nizhny Novgorod is confirmed neither by written nor by folkloric sources. More like a work of folklore is another legend cited by both N. I. Khramtsovsky and A. S. Gatsitsky: it was prophesied to the Mordva chieftain Skvorets that after his death strife would arise among his descendants; according to the legend, these internecine conflicts did indeed weaken the local tribes, and Andrei Bogolyubsky drove them away from the mouth of the Oka. The legend seemed plausible to contemporaries as well, so much so that S. M. Soloviev included it in his "History of Russia from Ancient Times" — without, however, citing Khramtsovsky's book. Toponymic legends explaining local place names (in this case — Dyatlov Hills) are widely current in many regions of Russia (there are similar ones in Gorodets — for example, about Cape Shikhan). There is therefore no reason to doubt that they existed (in one form or another) in Tatishchev's day, when he passed through Nizhny Novgorod in 1741, and in the time of P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky, who studied them carefully. Folkloric traditions of the 18th–19th centuries about the settlement patterns of Finno-Ugric tribes cannot, of course, be accepted as proof of the existence of a city that preceded Nizhny Novgorod.
The lack of proof behind such theories was recognized by P. I. Melnikov himself, who attempted to broaden the range of sources and arguments in support of the hypothesis about the existence of an "Old Gorodok." The report delivered by the noted writer and local historian at the Fourth Archaeological Congress in Kazan in 1877 opened a new chapter in the history of the question. The author described the origins of the city predecessor to Nizhny Novgorod somewhat inconsistently: while regarding the city as Mordva rather than Bulgarian (unlike V. N. Tatishchev — "the Mordva lived here, and that little town was Mordva"), P. I. Melnikov in the very next sentence asserted that it was "a Suzdal old town," built by "Suzdal princes for the collection of tribute from the Mordva" and situated "upstream along the Oka from the place where Yuri Vsevolodovich later founded the new, lower city."
Thus, according to P. I. Melnikov's reasoning, it was precisely because of this "upper old town" on Gremyachaya Gora that the city founded by Yuri Vsevolodovich received the name "Nizhny (Lower) Novy (New) Gorod." The fate of the "old town," in the author's version, was as follows: in 1445 it was briefly seized by the Khan of the Golden Horde, Ulu-Makhmet (Ulug-Muhammad), and later the "old town" was destroyed by a landslide. In support of his theory, P. I. Melnikov drew on chronicle and folkloric sources: 1) the Sophia II Chronicle — an all-Russian compilation of the 16th century — where an entry for 1445 mentions the "old" and "lesser" Nizhny Novgorod; 2) a copy of the "Nizhny Novgorod Chronicle," where an undated account of a landslide that destroyed a settlement of the Annunciation Monastery mentions an "Old Gorodok" built by the "grand Suzdal princes"; 3) "local Russian and Mordva traditions," in particular, "a Mordva song about the settling of Russians on the banks of the Oka" — though the actual texts or plots of these traditions and the song are not cited in the report. Doubts are also raised by the epigraphic source — an "inscription that was on the wall of the Nizhny Novgorod Cathedral of the Archangel" — about which P. I. Melnikov himself remarked: "It has not existed since the addition of a heated church to the Cathedral of the Archangel back in the 18th century; it was copied onto a board hung in the porch, but its wording has been altered and bears no resemblance to the ancient original." It is no coincidence that this epigraphic source is not used at all in the author's system of argumentation. A conspicuous weakness of the study is the complete absence of any archaeological evidence for the existence of the "Old Gorodok" on Gremyachaya Gora.
As a result, P. I. Melnikov was able only to confirm: first, the existence of an "old" and a "lesser" Nizhny Novgorod in the 15th century (though this had been known since the time of N. M. Karamzin); and second, the location of the "Old Gorodok" in the surrounding lands once inhabited by the Mordva. But how "old" this gorodok actually was — that is, whether it could be older than Nizhny Novgorod — remained unanswered, since the sources cited by the author do not confirm the founding of the "Old Gorodok" before 1221. It is precisely for this reason that P. I. Melnikov's hypothesis about a city that preceded Nizhny Novgorod (Mordva or Suzdal?) found no support in the scholarly circles of his day. Thus A. V. Exemplyarsky, in his essay on the Grand Principality of Nizhny Novgorod, dated the founding of Nizhny Novgorod to 1221, allowing that "its fortifications could have been completed both before and after 1222."
Historians and local researchers were slow to return to consideration of the "Old Gorodok" theory. L. M. Kapterev, in his book, followed the traditional account of the founding of a Russian city at the mouth of the Oka in 1221. In 1946, however, Professor N. M. Dobrotvor of the Gorky Pedagogical Institute revived the topic of a city predecessor to Nizhny Novgorod, which had seemed to be consigned to the past. As noted in the scholarly chronicle, "N. M. Dobrotvor advanced the hypothesis that it was possible for Slavs to have settled the region of the mouth of the Oka long before the founding of Nizhny Novgorod. In his opinion, it was not impossible that Bryakhimov (Ibragimov), mentioned in the chronicles, was a city located at the mouth of the Oka." In his popular-science pamphlet, N. M. Dobrotvor put forward a thoroughly fantastic version of events: "In the region of the city of Gorky, from the most remote times, Slavs engaged in agriculture lived. (…) Even considerably earlier [i.e., before 1088, about which N. M. Dobrotvor had written a few lines above. — B.P.], during the movement of the Bulgars northward along the Volga, the Bulgarian khan Ibrahim (Bryakhim) settled, as one must suppose [emphasis here and below ours. — B.P.], in the region of present-day Gorky, seizing an ancient Slavic settlement (Dyatlov Hills). The encampment of the Bulgarian khan Ibrahim came to be called the city of Bryakhimov (or Ibragimov)… It was nonetheless a Russian city! The chronicler called Bryakhimov the Great City… [In 1220] the city of Oshel was taken by the Russians. It is possible that the chronicle's name Oshel refers to that same Great City (Bryakhimov)." Why "one must suppose" that Bryakhimov arose on the site of Nizhny Novgorod, N. M. Dobrotvor never explained, and he did not burden himself with proving the existence of an "ancient Slavic agricultural settlement" at all. The identification of Oshel with Bryakhimov and the Great Bulgarian City cannot, of course, be taken seriously and reveals the author's ignorance of the historical geography of Volga Bulgaria.
An attempt to provide evidence for N. M. Dobrotvor's theory was made in one of his early works by the Nizhny Novgorod historian I. A. Kiryanov, who identified "Abram's gorodok" with the Bulgarian city of Bryakhimov. Central to I. A. Kiryanov's reasoning were etymological comparisons ("Abram > Ibrahim > Bryakhim-") and the localization of Bryakhimov in two copies of the "Kazan History" as a city on the Oka. However, the Old Russian "Tale of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God" (12th century), as well as the earliest and most authoritative copies of the "Kazan History" (17th century), place the city of Bryakhimov on the Kama, so the reading in two later copies — "on the Oka River" — is a clear scribal error in the exemplar from which those copies derive. This is presumably why I. A. Kiryanov, in his subsequent works, revised his position, abandoning his support for the "predecessor city" theory and accepting the traditional account of the founding of Nizhny Novgorod in 1221.
Archaeological investigations carried out intensively within the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin in the 1960s–1970s enabled I. A. Kiryanov and V. F. Chernikov to draw a fundamentally important conclusion: the fortress founded by Yuri Vsevolodovich in 1221 on Chasovaya Hill at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga was built directly on virgin ground, not on the site of any pre-existing settlement. No evidence whatsoever of a 12th-century city having existed there was found.
An important stage in the history of the "Old Gorodok" question was an article published in 1975 by Prof. V. A. Kuchkin, one of the most authoritative specialists in the history of Northeastern Rus. This work by the Moscow scholar, devoted to the study of 15th-century chronicle accounts of the "old" and "lesser" Nizhny Novgorod, also contains an analysis of P. I. Melnikov's hypothesis about a predecessor city. A comparative analysis of the accounts under 1445 found in the Ermolinsk, Sophia II, and Lvov Chronicles, in the Moscow Chronicle Compilation of 1479 (and the compilations derived from it — the Simeonov, Resurrection, and the compilations of 1497 and 1518), as well as the account of the campaign of 1469, allowed V. A. Kuchkin to draw a well-founded conclusion: the "old" Nizhny Novgorod of the 1445 chronicle entries is the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin; the "lesser" city is one of the fortifications (in V. A. Kuchkin's words, a "predgradiye," an "fortified ostrog") of Nizhny Novgorod. The scholar demonstrated the insufficiency of P. I. Melnikov's argument and the erroneousness of a number of his logical inferences. It emerged that in the passage from the "Nizhny Novgorod Chronicle" about the landslide in the Annunciation Settlement ("…from above onto the settlement and onto the old town and buried in the settlement…"), the words "and onto the old town" turned out to be a later interpolation absent from earlier copies of that text. Moreover, "the description of the 'lesser' city as 'new' was entirely P. I. Melnikov's own invention. The source — the Sophia II Chronicle — knew only the term 'lesser' city… This correction to the chronicle's testimony, minor at first glance, was needed by P. I. Melnikov in order to make his final conclusions about the construction of Nizhny Novgorod and the origin of its name more convincing." In the end, P. I. Melnikov's assertion about the existence of an "Old Gorodok" on Gremyachaya Gora proves entirely arbitrary, and on the basis of the sources he adduced, as V. A. Kuchkin writes, "no conclusions can be drawn about the emergence of Nizhny Novgorod and the origin of its name. For that, other data are needed."
It might seem that after such a conclusion by an authoritative scholar, reviving the "Old Gorodok" theory in any of its variants (a Bulgarian city, a Mordva "Abram's gorodok," a Suzdal predecessor city to Nizhny Novgorod) would require the discovery of "other data" — that is, sources unknown to scholarship: chronicle, documentary, or archaeological. Yet Professor N. F. Filatov of Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) University, who came forward in the late 1980s with his own original concept of the emergence of Nizhny Novgorod, managed without any additional sources. In broad outline, N. F. Filatov's concept is as follows: 1) in the 12th century, a Russian city founded by Suzdal princes existed at the mouth of the Oka ("the Old Gorodok"); 2) in 1221 Nizhny Novgorod came into being, receiving its name in relation to the already-existing "Old Gorodok" situated four versts upstream along the Oka; 3) the founder of Nizhny Novgorod was not Yuri Vsevolodovich, Grand Prince of Vladimir, but his nephew, the Rostov prince Vasilko Konstantinovich. Presented as an axiom, without any supporting evidence, this concept was first set out by N. F. Filatov in a methodological handbook in 1988. A number of logical inferences, with mention of P. I. Melnikov's report (1877), appear in a popular-science handbook addressed "to history teachers, senior schoolchildren, applicants to humanities universities, and all those interested in the history of their native land." N. F. Filatov provides no list of sources and no footnotes, but the author's arguments (a quotation from the "Nizhny Novgorod Chronicle," the Laurentian Chronicle's account of the campaign of 1171) indicate that the range of sources here is narrower than in P. I. Melnikov's work. A more detailed version of the theory of a Suzdal predecessor town to Nizhny Novgorod was presented by N. F. Filatov in a dedicated article, but even there not a single source is cited that was previously unknown to P. I. Melnikov. Characteristically, those sources had been analyzed in V. A. Kuchkin's article "On the Lower Novgorods — 'old' and 'lesser'"; however, N. F. Filatov, unable to counter his opponent's arguments, simply passed over the existence of that article in silence. N. F. Filatov's arguments are equally traditional: 1) since the gorodok situated near the Annunciation Settlement and built by Suzdal princes during campaigns against the Mordva is called "old" in the 17th-century text of the "Nizhny Novgorod Chronicle," it must have been founded in the 12th century; 2) since the retinue of Mstislav Andreyevich spent two weeks at the mouth of the Oka during the winter campaign of 1171/72, the warriors must throughout that time have been quartered in a fortified gorodok; 3) since the Bulgars pursuing Mstislav's retinue on its return from the invasion of Volga Bulgaria halted before reaching the mouth of the Oka, there must already have been a Russian fortress-city there at that time. The insufficiency of evidence from historical sources is amply compensated by artistic imagery. And the article by N. F. Filatov concludes with a menacing remark in the style not of academic scholarship but of the ideologized quasi-scientific journalism of former years: "…The attempt by certain historians of our city to overlook or ignore these facts testifies only to unprofessionalism or plain ignorance (and unwillingness to know) of the centuries-old history of ancient — even more ancient than previously believed — Nizhny Novgorod."
It comes as no surprise that the article "The Old Town at the Mouth of the Oka," published "for discussion purposes," immediately drew objections from specialists. Just a year later, in the next issue of the same publication, an article by A.A. Kuznetsov appeared in which he analyzed the arguments of the proponents of the "Old Town" theory (including N.F. Filatov). Having examined the evidence of the sources and the manner in which it was interpreted in the works of the "Old Town" supporters, A.A. Kuznetsov reached an unflattering conclusion: "The indirect nature of the chronicle entries for 1172, 1369–1370, and 1445, the documents of the 15th–17th centuries, and the legends recorded in the 19th century compels supporters of the idea that a town existed at the mouth of the Oka before 1221 to construct a chain of mutually contingent assumptions in order to prove a connection between the Old Town and Nizhny Novgorod. This makes the foundation of the scholarly argument extremely shaky." The author refutes N.F. Filatov's unsubstantiated claim that Gorodets and the "Old Town" were built during the reign of Yuri Dolgoruky, and regards the "Old Town" itself from the "Nizhny Novgorod Chronicle" as "a fiction that arose to explain the remains of ancient Finno-Ugric settlements." A.A. Kuznetsov also addresses the problem of the so-called "open trading-and-craft settlements" of the 8th–12th centuries on the territory of "future Nizhny Novgorod lands" (A.A. Kuznetsov's phrase), but this problem falls outside the scope of our study. A.A. Kuznetsov's general conclusions support the traditional account of the emergence of a Russian city at the mouth of the Oka: 1) "One cannot speak of any real predecessors of Nizhny Novgorod"; 2) "Nizhny Novgorod as a Russian city appeared in 1221, following the campaign against the Bulgars in 1220." N.F. Filatov did not accept these conclusions and took his case to the local media, after which the discussion lost its scholarly character.
Among the publications by supporters of the theory of a predecessor city to Nizhny Novgorod, the articles of Yu.V. Sochnev are of some scholarly interest. Unlike N.F. Filatov, Yu.V. Sochnev attempted to find new sources to confirm the existence of a Russian settlement of the 12th century at the mouth of the Oka, analyzed previously known chronicle entries, sketched the history of the question in general terms, and also brought into his study a previously published source — a charter of 1593. However, the author's system of proof consists of a chain of interconnected concessions and assumptions, with each subsequent assumption frequently resting on an equally conjectural previous one. Here is an example of such an unstable construction: 1) V.N. Tatishchev reports the existence of a Bulgar-Russian trade agreement concerning the Oka and the Volga; 2) to ensure the security of merchant caravans, the Bulgars establish a network of outposts; 3) "one of these outposts was probably [our emphasis — B.P.] a small town in the subordinate Mordva lands at the mouth of the Oka." It is enough to remove the first or second link in this chain of reasoning — neither of which is confirmed by Old Russian chronicle compilations — and the entire construction collapses. But this does not trouble Yu.V. Sochnev, and he continues to string onto his chain not further assumptions but outright assertions: 4) "the small town upstream from the mouth of the Oka was under Bulgar control until the mid-12th century" [the author does not even notice that the very existence of the small town remained unproven! — B.P.]; 5) "after the campaigns of Andrei Bogolyubsky, who waged a particularly active struggle against the Bulgars, this territory came under Russian control…" [Completely unsubstantiated! On the contrary, the series of "eastern" campaigns launched from Gorodets during the last third of the 12th and first third of the 13th centuries indicates that the Russians did not control this territory but were merely striving to establish control. — B.P.]; 6) "…having founded their own settlement there" [no comment — B.P.]. The author proposes "to verify or refute this theory, and also to determine the conditions and feasibility of the existence of a Russian city at the mouth of the Oka before 1221" by examining chronicle testimony. But since the "answer to the problem" has long been known to Yu.V. Sochnev, he attempts — even before examining the evidence — to demonstrate the unreliability of this category of sources, citing "editorial revisions" in response to the political interests of patrons. Here is a clear logical dead end: having begun with the premise "let us suppose that…," the author continues with "and if that is so, let us suppose further that…" and ponders not the question "but what if it is not so?" but rather why his own assumptions left no trace in the chronicles. The overall result strongly resembles a schoolboy who, having solved a mathematics problem, finds that his answer does not match the one given at the back of the textbook and suspects a misprint.
The absence in the chronicle sources of direct evidence for the existence of a Russian city at the mouth of the Oka before 1221 prompted Yu.V. Sochnev to "rely mainly on indirect facts." Here the initial link in the chain of reasoning becomes the cult of the icon of the Vladimir Mother of God established by Andrei Bogolyubsky, through whose intercession the chroniclers explained the safe return of Mstislav's retinue from the campaign of 1171/72. The chronicle states that among the princely donations to the Vladimir Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God were "towns" (gorody), of which only Gorokhovets is known with certainty. The researcher then makes his first concession: 1) "It is probable [hereafter emphasis is ours — B.P.] that the 'towns' were given after the victory over Volga Bulgaria in 1164," and adds in an affirmative form: "when the expansion of the territory of the Vladimir Principality onto the lower lands along the Oka and the Volga took place" [But the chronicle sources speak not of "expansion of territory" but merely of a successful campaign and a safe return. — B.P.]. This is immediately followed by a second concession: 2) since "the forces moved from the city of Vladimir along the Klyazma River and then down the Oka to the Volga," and "Gorokhovets is located in the lower reaches of the Klyazma," it follows that "it is logical to suppose that at the mouth of the Oka there was a 'town,' like Gorokhovets, granted to the Vladimir Cathedral" [Why a "town" would be strictly necessary for a river-borne army to pass from the Oka into the Volga, and what the logic is here, remains unclear. — B.P.]. We may continue counting the concessions together: 3) the "towns of the Holy Mother of God" "may have been fortified monastery-fortresses" [But was Gorokhovets — the "town of the Holy Mother of God" attested by the sources — such a place? — B.P.]; 4) "it is possible that originally this monastery [the Nizhny Novgorod Annunciation Monastery — B.P.] and the settlements around it were the 'town of the Mother of God'…" [Yet the existence of the monastery, let alone a settlement, before 1221 remains unproven! — B.P.]; 5) if by no later than the 15th century the Annunciation Monastery had become a metropolitan household monastery, then "in all likelihood, a similar status existed there in the 13th century as well" [By no means necessarily so! — B.P.]. At this point, incidentally, Yu.V. Sochnev committed a factual error by asserting: "…It is hardly possible to speak of the monastery receiving lands from the Nizhny Novgorod princes. Nor do the sources contain any indication of this." Yet a reliable documentary source is in fact known — a charter of grant from the Grand Prince of Nizhny Novgorod, Daniil Borisovich, to the Annunciation Monastery. One can therefore only guess what the researcher had in mind: grants in general, or only those made at the time of the monastery's refoundation. Apparently it is the refoundation that Yu.V. Sochnev has in mind when he writes: "…The only possible source of land acquisition at the founding [? — B.P.] of the Annunciation Monastery could have been the metropolitan fund." But the very account of the monastery's refoundation by Metropolitan Alexis requires careful scrutiny, since the "Life of Metropolitan Alexis" — like any hagiographic work — contains a great many legends, and the passage from the Nikon Chronicle for the year 6886 (1378) cited by Yu.V. Sochnev ultimately derives from the text of the "Life." The article concludes with the following finding: "Thus, in the 14th–15th centuries the metropolitans held lands and waters along the Oka and Klyazma rivers, and this supports our assumption that in the 12th century the Vladimir Cathedral of the Dormition, as a cathedral episcopal church, held lands at the mouth of the Oka." Metropolitan landownership, however, proves nothing of the sort, for in the 14th–15th centuries — and later as well — metropolitans held lands, waters, and monasteries in regions that in the 12th century had not yet been settled by Russians. The thesis concerning the settlement of the mouth of the Oka and the emergence there of a Russian city before 1221 remained unproven…
We have deliberately conducted such a detailed examination of Yu.V. Sochnev's arguments and reasoning because this author — unlike other supporters of the "Old Town" theory — conscientiously endeavored to present and systematically analyze all the evidence of the historical sources, however indirect. The negligible results of this laborious work give cause to doubt not the scholarly talent or research skills of any particular author, but the very fruitfulness of the theory itself. Acknowledging the hypothetical nature of his own constructions, Yu.V. Sochnev concluded his article with the words: "…To test this hypothesis [concerning a Russian city at the mouth of the Oka before 1221 — B.P.], additional research is needed, and above all the weighty word of the Nizhny Novgorod archaeologists." That weighty word was delivered in a paper by T.V. Guseva, who is rightly regarded as the most authoritative archaeologist in Nizhny Novgorod. The conclusions reached by T.V. Guseva are as follows: 1) the earliest complexes of Nizhny Novgorod date to the 13th century; 2) no traces of settlements older than the 13th century have been found either on Chasovaya Hill (the Kremlin Hill) or in the environs of Nizhny Novgorod; 3) the city fortifications of the 13th century were built on virgin ground, and no cultural layer from preceding centuries is present. Moreover, "the pushing back of the founding date of Nizhny Novgorod contradicts the established existence of Gorodets and disrupts the sequence of historical events recorded in the chronicles."
In recent years, opposition to attempts to revive the theory of a predecessor city to Nizhny Novgorod has also come from V.A. Kuchkin, a recognized authority in the field of Old Russian written sources. In his article "The Founding of Nizhny Novgorod," the scholar examined in detail the traditional arguments of the supporters of the existence of a 12th-century "Old Town," focusing his primary attention on I.A. Kiryanov's early work and the articles of Yu.V. Sochnev. This approach seems justified, since only these authors attempted to present their views in a reasoned manner, supporting them with evidence from historical sources. Yet it was precisely a deep analysis of the sources — first and foremost the chronicles — that allowed V.A. Kuchkin to demonstrate the untenable nature of the "Old Town" proponents' claims. For instance, common to the publications of the "Old Town" supporters was their attention to the events of Prince Mstislav Andreyevich's winter campaign of 1171/72. The two-week encampment of Russian forces at the mouth of the Oka led a number of authors to conclude that a Russian city, or at the very least a fortified settlement or garrison fortress, must have existed there: surely, they argued, warriors could not have remained so long out in the open.
Yet the chronicle entries cited by V.A. Kuchkin attest to the accumulated experience, by the 12th century, of winter campaigns involving portable tents and the construction of temporary shelters. With equal force of argument, V.A. Kuchkin refutes the contention of Yu.V. Sochnev, who supposed that the Bulgars pursuing Mstislav's forces had stopped short of the mouth of the Oka precisely because of the existence there of a Russian "town." To this V.A. Kuchkin aptly observes: "It is entirely obvious that Yu.V. Sochnev's explanations of the Bulgars' conduct in the winter of 1171/72 — supposedly unwilling to besiege Mstislav in some fortress at the mouth of the Oka — are fantastical. (…) The chronicle does not report the size of the Russian forces. Yet Yu.V. Sochnev knows with certainty that a six-thousand-strong detachment of the Bulgar army considerably outnumbered the Russian regiments. But what if it did not? What if the Bulgars, in the course of pursuit, discovered that the overwhelming advantage lay with the Russian forces, and for that reason broke off the chase? Or perhaps the Bulgar army's horses were exhausted, since the detachment had mustered far from where the Russian forces were operating? Or perhaps the pursuit was impeded by weather conditions — a prolonged blizzard, for instance, or a severe frost? (…) The chronicler attributes this to chance, while Yu.V. Sochnev attributes it to a pattern of his own invention — the existence of a Russian fortress at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga. But had this fortress been real, the Bulgars would, after Mstislav and his allies had departed, have immediately besieged and taken or burned it, as they did with other Russian cities; and Mstislav would not have been encamped 'at the mouth' — he would have had, in the expression of the time, 'shut himself up in the town.' But the chronicler uses no such words. There is no proof whatsoever in Yu.V. Sochnev's arguments about a predecessor city of Nizhny Novgorod. (…) A postulated hypothesis cannot and must not substitute for actual research." Thorough scrutiny was also applied to the attempt to identify the Bulgar city of Bryakhimov with "Abramov Gorodok." The sources adduced by V.A. Kuchkin reliably locate Bryakhimov on the Kama River, so that the similarity between the roots "Bryakhim-" / "Ibragim" ("Abram") can in no way serve as evidence for the existence of a city at the mouth of the Oka in the 12th century.
Finally, a separate subject of examination was the determination of the location of the "Old Town" mentioned in the account of the Nizhny Novgorod Chronicle and in the charter of 1593. V.A. Kuchkin identifies the "Old Town," referred to in the charter also as the "old fortified site" (staroye gorodishche), as the remains of fortifications constructed on the approaches to Nizhny Novgorod in the early 1440s in response to the military threat from Kazan. As V.A. Kuchkin rightly observes, the adjective "old" cannot under any circumstances be taken as evidence that the settlement existed in the 12th century. Indeed, the settlement could have come to be regarded as "old" in relation to the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin of the early 16th century (since the sources mentioning the settlement date no earlier than the late 16th century), or even in relation to the earlier Kremlin structures of the 15th century — but the dating of "12th century" in no way follows from the word "old." This naturally leads to a consideration of the etymology of the name "Nizhny Novgorod": here V.A. Kuchkin proposed his own, sufficiently convincing explanation, based on a comparison of chronicle and documentary sources: "The fortress founded in 1221 received the name Novgorod. This name does not stand in opposition to some other names, as is sometimes assumed in scholarly literature, but signifies the building of a city in a new, as yet uninhabited place. The epithet 'Nizhny' ('Lower') was given to the city not at its founding but considerably later. (…) It appears that Novgorod on the Oka began to be called Nizhny ('Lower') — since it was situated in the Niz, the 'Low Land,' but not because it was founded further downstream along the Oka or the Volga than certain other medieval Russian cities — Novgorod from the 1340s–1350s onward…." The conclusion to which V.A. Kuchkin arrived on the basis of a thorough source-critical analysis and well-grounded reasoning is expressed with considerable clarity: "Nizhny Novgorod was founded in 1221. This is confirmed to a degree by the archaeological material… It is also confirmed by the study of the political situation in the Middle Volga region…."
In concluding this survey of the historiography of the question of a predecessor city to Nizhny Novgorod, it is worth drawing attention to one circumstance that is sure to interest historians of scholarship. Among the supporters of the theory of a 12th-century "Old Town" (in one form or another), local historians and local-history enthusiasts who lack the basic historical-philological training required for working with Old Russian sources are markedly predominant. Their opponents, by contrast — the supporters of the traditional account of Nizhny Novgorod's founding in 1221 — are professionally trained graduates of history and philology faculties, specialists in Old Russia. Biographical data make clear that the polemic between the supporters and opponents of "pushing back" the history of the city at the mouth of the Oka cannot be viewed as a dispute between Nizhny Novgorod researchers ("who love their city") and those from the capital ("indifferent to someone else's history"). This is, of course, absurd, since not only Moscow-based but also many Nizhny Novgorod researchers reject the "Old Town" theory. Nor can this polemic be presented as the perennial "fathers and sons" problem — a dispute between "progressive young people and hidebound old reactionaries," or, conversely, between "young dilettantes and experienced specialists." The basis of debates that have been ongoing for over a hundred years lies not in the background or the age of the participants but, as N.F. Filatov correctly noted, in professionalism or the lack thereof. For it is indicative only of "unprofessionalism or basic ignorance" when attempts are made to "push back" — in defiance of the entire body of available sources — the age of Nizhny Novgorod, while at the same time citing unreliable evidence, ignoring the logic of urban development processes in Vladimir-Suzdal Rus, and at times simply passing over the arguments of one's opponents in silence. It is noteworthy that in recent years, apparently having despaired of winning support from scholars, the adherents of the "Old Town" theory have increasingly begun to appeal to the general public, including teachers, students, and amateur local historians. Without specialist training it is extremely difficult to follow a sequence of logical inferences, verify the reliability of the sources invoked, and draw correct conclusions from them. Even the accuracy of quotations cannot always be checked without experience in working with Old Russian texts. As a result, a public perception gradually takes shape: if scholars are arguing, there must be a problem — there must be grounds for hypotheses.
Of course, a scholar has the right to a hypothesis — but only if it rests on the full body of identified sources and helps to explain them without contradiction. If, however, a scholar's theory is based on a chain of arbitrary assumptions and is not supported by the sources — and frequently contradicts them — then it is no longer a hypothesis: it is fabrication. And fabrications and conjectures (on the principle of "why not?") are something a scholar has no right to — both by the requirements of professionalism and out of respect for his readers.
But let us leave to future historians of scholarship the study of the patterns governing the development of scholarly thought on the early period of the history of the Nizhny Novgorod land. The necessity of a rigorous scholarly examination of the first years of Nizhny Novgorod's history — from the founding of the city to the Mongol-Tatar invasion — calls for a renewed analysis of the sources pertaining to the events of that period, with an attempt where possible to broaden the range of those sources and assess the degree of their reliability.