3rd ed. Almaty: Daik-Press, 2000, 604 p.

(c) 2004

The name of the researcher of nomadic societies A. M. Khazanov is well known to Russian scientists - his works on the Sarmatians and Scythians are rightfully included in the golden fund of Russian historical science. However, the peer-reviewed monograph is not well known in the Russian-speaking scientific space. The book was first published in English in 1984 by Cambridge University Press with a foreword by the outstanding British anthropologist E. Gellner (unfortunately, it was not included in the peer-reviewed edition). Although the monograph found its way into the leading libraries of the Soviet Union, it nevertheless proved difficult for the Russian reader to access. The fact that after the author's departure abroad (almost simultaneously with the publication of the book), references to his publications began to disappear from scientific works also played a role.

In the West, the book was received very favorably: about 20 positive reviews were devoted to it, and only it was negative. This work was undoubtedly an important theoretical contribution to world nomad studies. In addition, thanks to A. M. Khazanov, who knew our science very well from the inside, Western colleagues, who were poorly informed about the work of Soviet scientists, had the opportunity to get acquainted with the ideas and developments of domestic researchers who had great achievements in the field of nomadism.

In 1994, the second edition of A. M. Khazanov's book was published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Press. The author wrote a detailed preface specifically for the book, in which he outlined the history of the book's creation, and also gave a thorough review of the most important publications in the field of nomad studies that have appeared since the completion of his work on the manuscript (in fact, for 15 years). And here we have a Russian-language edition with a specially written preface by the author. This fact can be considered as historical justice: the book written in Russian has finally reached our readers. I would like to thank the Kazakh publishers for this. Russian is the language of interethnic communication on the territory of the CIS, which will certainly make it possible for a larger number of readers to read the book by A. M. Khazanov.

In the first chapter, the author considers nomadism as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Since in Western science nomads are often called hunter-gatherers, A. M. Khazanov specifically focuses on the terminology. He suggests calling mobile hunter-gatherers "wandering", and leaving the term "nomadism" only for nomadic pastoralists in the sense in which it was understood by the ancient Greeks. Among the most important features of nomadism, the author considers: cattle breeding as the predominant type of activity; mobility of the majority of the population due to the periodic change of pastures; extensive and natural nature of the economy (pp. 84-85). Considering the problem of the typology of nomadic farming, the species composition and number of livestock in different ecological conditions of Eurasia and Africa, the nature of migrations, AM Khazanov identifies the main types of pastoral nomadic societies: 1) reindeer herders of Northern Eurasia; 2) nomads of the Eurasian steppes, for whom sheep breeding is predominant; 3) the Middle Eastern type, divided into Arabian, North African, Saharan, and North-East African, respectively; 4) the Middle Eastern type,as an intermediate between the two previous types; 5) high - mountain, mountain-type, the internal Asian type (which, however, can be expanded to include high-altitude livestock breeders in South America). At the end of the chapter, the balance between resources, the number of animals and the number of pastoralists is considered. As a result, the author comes to the key conclusion for his concept that " the adaptation of nomadic cattle breeding to the natural and geographical environment of yav-

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it is incomplete. The flip side of it is the need for active adaptation of nomadism to the outside world" (p. 173).

The second chapter is devoted to the problem of the origin of nomadism. As you know, there are two main theories of the emergence of nomadism. According to the first one, weaker groups of the population were pushed out of agricultural areas into steppes and semi-deserts, where they were forced to adapt to new economic conditions. According to the second theory, nomadism emerged from hunting through the domestication of wild animals. According to A. M. Khazanov, the domestication of animals could be carried out only in conditions of a relatively sedentary lifestyle and the presence of certain surpluses of plant food. Polemicizing with O. Lattimore, he believes that nomadism arose as a result of adaptation to the ecological environment, and not to the social environment. This variant was typical for Middle Eastern and Eurasian steppe nomads and for reindeer herders. Nomadism may also have spread through diffusion, as was the case with the high-altitude pastoralists of Asia and the Middle East.

In the third chapter, the structure of nomadic society is considered. A. M. Khazanov describes in detail the various levels of social organization: 1) family-related groups, 2) communities of different levels, 3) segmental, tribal and supra-tribal formations. The author pays special attention to the problem of chiefdom among nomads. He believes that this concept is quite applicable to nomad societies. Typical chiefdoms, in his opinion, can be considered the early medieval Mongol khanates, the khanates of many nomads of Afrasia in modern times. In addition, the chapter shows variations in the social structure in nomad societies. A. M. Khazanov concludes that land, with the exception of rare forbidden places, was in collective ownership (despite the fact that nomads clearly distinguished their own and other people's territories). The basis of differentiation in society was the ownership of livestock, which could lead to the formation of client relations. However, such a source of income was not stable due to the preservation of kinship and segmental relations, the ecological instability of cattle breeding, the possibility of migration, and the lack of legal control mechanisms on the part of the patron. Only external sources of surplus product can contribute to the development of social stratification in nomad societies (pp. 277-278).

In the same chapter, A. M. Khazanov touches upon the problem of the nomadic method of production, which is developed in a number of works by French researchers. He quite rightly points out that nomadism is an economic and cultural type and, therefore, should be placed in the same typological row with hunting, gathering, and agriculture, but not with known methods of production. A. M. Khazanov himself believes that the nomads did not create either a special formation or a special method of production. Unfortunately, he does not offer his own solution to the problem, emphasizing only that the peculiarities of social development of nomads are mediated by the nature of their relations with the outside world.

The relations of nomads with the settled world are discussed in the next chapter. Among the most important ways of nomad adaptation, the author includes sedentarization, trade with farmers and trade intermediation, various forms of exploitation of the settled world (raids and looting, wars, tributary and imposed vassalage, conquest of settled societies, taxation, etc.), entry into agricultural states as a subordinate part of society. the first and last trends were undesirable for nomads. However, the predominance of one or another method of adaptation was always determined by many factors - from the economic and socio-cultural characteristics of the contacting societies to the specific historical situation in each particular case. At the same time, the subjugation and conquest of farmers by nomads accelerated the development of their political organization and led to the emergence of statehood.

This issue is considered in the final chapter of the monograph. The author has a negative attitude to the concept of "nomadic feudalism" and notes that the superficial similarity should not obscure the qualitative differences between nomadic and Western European medieval society. 374, 376, 382, 453 - 455). He himself calls these societies "early class societies", using the term popular in Russian science in the 1970s and 1980s. In Western science, even in those years, it was customary to call such societies "early states", now this term has taken root in our country.

A. M. Khazanov calls an early class society: "a) in the evolutionary series, it occupies a place between the pre-class (primitive) and developed class society; b) in which there is no private ownership of basic resources or in which this circumstance does not occur.

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It is the main criterion of social differentiation; c) in which the different attitudes of the main strata, estates and classes to production and distribution are not directly related to relations about ownership of basic resources; d) in which the main social differences are related to political dominance and dependence, in most cases determined by different social attitudes to ruling and managerial institutions e) in which there is regular taxation and/or in which dependent strata and classes fulfill other obligations to the state and the ruling strata and classes" (pp. 455-456). It is easy to see that all these features (excluding taxation, which is absent in most nomadic empires) are also characteristic of the chiefdom. For this reason, the main thesis of the chapter that nomads create their own statehood in the process of subjugation and conquest of settled peoples remains unproven in theoretical terms. There is a fairly extensive historiography that denies the possibility of nomads overcoming the barrier of the state, and the arguments of its supporters should be considered in more detail.

The book offers a detailed typology of nomadic states. For the first type, A. M. Khazanov notes the existence of tributary and similar relations between nomads and farmers (Early Scythia, the Hunnic state, the Turkic Khaganate, the state of the Karakidani, the empire of Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde). For the second type - the conquest of agricultural society and political "synthesis" (Late Scythia, the Kushan Kingdom, Northern Wei, the Liao and Yuan Empires). The third type of state is characterized by the division of labor between warlike pastoralists and subordinate farmers (Mezhozerye).

This classification seems to me not entirely accurate. The Xiongnu Empire and the Golden Horde are completely different types of society: the former is based on remote exploitation, the latter on collecting tribute from conquered settled-urban societies. The second and third types of state could be combined, since in both cases we are talking about a close symbiosis of nomads and farmers, the division of labor and tax exploitation. ¹ In my opinion, it would be more correct to distinguish three types of nomad empires and similar quasi-imperial formations of a somewhat smaller format: 1) farmers and nomads are located at a distance, and the existence of the steppe empire is supported by remote exploitation (raids, extortion of "gifts", i.e., in a sense, racketeering), etc.; 2) farmers are subordinate to the nomadic empire, which exists by collecting tribute; 3) nomads conquer agricultural society and move to the territory of the steppe. In addition to this, regular taxation of farmers and townspeople is gradually replacing looting and tribute payments (see Kradin, 1992; Kradin, 2001 for more details).

The third edition of A. M. Khazanov's book also includes an afterword that examines the role of nomads in the historical process. This section logically completes the main content of the monograph. The author calls for a more restrained assessment of the significance of nomads for the history of certain regions and not to exaggerate the degree of their impact on certain civilizations.

As has been repeatedly emphasized by various authors in foreign literature [Barfield, 1989, p. 7; Humphrey and Sneath, 1999, p. 1], the main significance of the reviewed book is that it shows that the peculiarities of nomadic pastoral societies cannot be explained only by the logic of internal development of nomads. Of course, A. M. Khazanov was not the first to come to this conclusion. These ideas go back to O. Lattimore's famous book "China's Borders in Inner Asia", which showed that the specifics of nomad societies cannot be properly understood without referring to the cultural ecology and relations of nomadic pastoralists with settled agricultural neighbors. Lattimore-Khazanov's ideas were later developed by T. Barfield, who rejected diffusionist interpretations of the nomads ' borrowing of states from farmers. He showed that the degree of centralization of steppe society was directly related to the level of political integration of a settled agricultural society. Subsequently, the idea that steppe politogenesis is mediated by connections with the agricultural world was developed on the basis of the medieval nomads of the Eastern European steppes by P. Golden (Latimore, 1940; Khazanov,1975; Barfield, 1975). 1981; Barfield, 1989; Golden, 1992; Golden, 2003].

For Marxist science, such ideas seemed unacceptable, since, according to the theory of formations, the state could only arise as a result of internal causes - the growth of productive forces and class struggle. From this point of view, even the early ideas of A. M. Khazanov, expressed in his book on the evolution of Scythian society, looked quite revisionist. The tradition of deducing the features of nomadic societies based only (or mainly) on the mechanisms of internal development of steppe peoples remains in the Russian Federation.

¹ In earlier publications, A. M. Khazanov identified only two types of state.

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Nevertheless, there are also supporters of Lattiimor-Khazanov-Barfield in Russian science [Fursov, 1988; Kradin, 1992; Kradin, 2002; Skrynnikova, 1997; Vasyutin, 1998; Alternative ways..., 2000; Nomadic alternative..., 2002]. I think I will not be mistaken if I say that the number of them is increasing. Therefore, the importance of a peer-reviewed book written two decades ago is still great - its ideas remain not only scientifically relevant, but also in demand by the scientific community.

list of literature

Alternative Paths to Civilization, Moscow, 2000.

Vasyutin S. A. Social organization of nomads of Eurasia in Russian archeology. Abstract of the candidate's thesis. Barnaul, 1998.

Kalinovskaya K. P. O kochevnichestvo v svyazi s knigoy V. V. Matveeva "Srednevekovaya Severnaya Afrika" [About nomadism in connection with V. V. Matveev's book "Medieval North Africa"]. 1996. N 4.

Nomadic Alternative to Social Evolution, Moscow, 2002.

Kradin N. N. Nomadic societies. Vladivostok, 1992;

Kradin N. N. Kochevye imperii: genezis, rastsvet, upadok [Nomadic Empires: genesis, flourishing, Decline]. 2001. N 5.

Kradin N. N. The Xiongnu Empire. 2nd ed. Moscow, 2002.

Kychanov E. I. Nomadic states from Huns to Manchus. Moscow, 1997.

Markov G. E. Iz istorii izucheniya nomadizma v otechestvennoi literaturei; voprosy teorii [From the history of studying nomadism in Russian literature]. 1998. N 6.

Skrynnikova T. D. Charisma and Power in the era of Genghis Khan, Moscow, 1997.

Fursov A. I. Invasion of the nomads and the problem of backlog of the East // Interaction and interaction of civilizations in the East. Vol. 1. M., 1988.

Khazanov A.M. Sotsial'naya istoriya scifov [Social History of the Scythians]. Moscow, 1975.

Barfield Т. The Hsiung-nu Imperial 1981. N 1.

Barfield T. The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757. Cambridge, 1989.

Golden P.B. An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East. Wiesbaden, 1992.

Golden P.B. Nomads and their Neighbours in the Russian Steppe. Burlington etc., 2003.

Humphrey C., Sneath D. The End of Nomadism? Durham, 1999.

Khazanov A.M. The Early State among the Eurasian Nomads // The Study of the State. The Hague, 1981.

Latimore O. Inner Asian Frontiers of China. N. Y. -L., 1940.

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