The Transport Route Dnieper – Oka («Passage along the Ugra») at the End of the 9th – Beginning of the 11th Centuries

The subject of this article is the route of the Oka trade route of the 9th-10th centuries AD. The path along the Oka River was an organic continuation of the wellknown Volga and Don trade routes. In most of the works of researchers, for a number of reasons, it was not considered as a route that directly went to the upper reaches of the Dnieper River, capable of acting as a direct transport route between the south and southeast of the Russian Plain on the one hand and the archaeological complex of Gnezdovo and the outskirts of Smolensk - from another. The analysis carried out by the authors of the article offered to the attention of readers shows that by now researchers have data at their disposal that allow us to talk about finding weighty arguments in favor of the previously unpopular hypothesis. These data are obtained by archeology and numismatics. The presence and functioning of the route described above in the last centuries of the first millennium does not at all negate the significance of the well-known trade routes – the Volga-Baltic, as well as «from the Varangians to the Greeks» – but was, apparently, their logical and effective addition.