A history of Russia

by Riazanovsky

  In explaining the controversy between the possessors and the non-possessors, many scholars, including Soviet historians as a group, have emphasized that the possessors championed the rise of the authority of the Muscovite rulers and the interests of those elements in Russian society which favored this rise. The non-possessors, on the other hand, with their high social connections, reflected the aristocratic opposition to centralization. In a different context, that of the history of the Orthodox Church, the non-possessors may be considered to have derived from the mystical and contemplative tradition of Eastern monasticism, especially as practiced on Mount Athos. However, in a still broader sense, the possessors and the non-possessors expressed two recurrent attitudes that devoted Christians have taken toward things of this world, burdened as they have been by an incompatibility between the temporal and the eternal standards and goals of behavior. The non-possessors, thus, resemble the Franciscans in the West as well as other religious groups that have tried hard to be in, and yet not of, this world. And even after all the sixteenth-century councils they remained an important part of the Russian Church as an attitude and a point of view.

  Such essentially secular intellectual issues of the period as that of the position and power of the ruler often acquired a religious coloring. The problem of authority, its character and its limitations, became paramount as Moscow rose to "gather Russia" and as its princes turned into autocratic tsars. As already mentioned, a number of legends and doctrines appeared to justify and buttress these new developments. For example, one tale about the princes of Vladimir, which originated, apparently, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, related how Vladimir Monomakh of Kiev, the celebrated ancestor of the Muscovite princes, received from his maternal grandfather, the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomakh, certain regalia of his high office: a headdress which came to be known as "the hat of Monomakh" and some other items of formal attire. Still more grandly, the princes of Moscow came to be connected to the Roman emperors. According to the new genealogy, Augustus, a sovereign of Rome and the world,

  in his old age divided his possessions among his relatives, placing his brother Prus as ruler on the banks of the Vistula. Riurik was a fourteenth-generation descendant of this Prus, St. Vladimir a fourth-generation descendant of Riurik, and Vladimir Monomakh a fourth-generation descendant of St. Vladimir. Concurrently with this revision of the genealogy of the princes of Moscpw, Christianity in Russia was antedated and St. Andrew, the apostle, was proclaimed its true originator.

  But the most interesting doctrine - and one that has received divergent interpretations from scholars - was that of Moscow as the Third Rome. Its originator, an abbot from Pskov named Philotheus or Filofei, wrote a letter to Basil III in 1510 which described three Romes: the Church of Old Rome, which fell because of a heresy, the Church of Constantinople brought down by the infidels, and finally the Church in Basil Ill's own tsardom which, like the sun, was to illumine the entire world - furthermore, after two Romes had fallen, Moscow the Third Rome would stand permanently, for there was to be no fourth. Some scholars have stressed the political aspects of this doctrine, and recently it has even been repeatedly cited as evidence of a secular Russian imperialism and aggression. It is, therefore, necessary to emphasize that Philotheus thought, in the first place, of Churches, not States, and that he was concerned with the preservation of the true faith, not political expansion. And, in any case, the Muscovite rulers in their foreign policy never endorsed the view of Moscow as the Third Rome, remaining, as already mentioned, quite uninterested in the possibility of a Byzantine inheritance, while at the same time determined to recover the inheritance of the princes of Kiev.

  Literature and the Arts

  The literature of the appanage period has generally been rated rather low. This judgment applies with full force only to the extant written works, although the oral, folkloristic tradition too, while it continued to be rich and varied, failed to produce tales equal in artistry to the Kievan byliny. As a qualification it might be added that, in the opinion of certain scholars, surviving material is insufficient to enable us to form a definitive view of the scope and quality of appanage literature.

  The Mongol conquest of Russia gave rise to a number of factual narratives as well as semi-legendary and legendary stories. These dwelt on the bitter fighting, the horror, and the devastation of the invasion and interpreted the events as divine punishment for the Russians' sins. The best artistic accounts of the catastrophe can be read in the series dealing with the Mongol ravage of Riazan and in the Lay of the Destruction of the Russian Land, written early in the appanage period about the middle of the thirteenth century, of which only the beginning has survived. The victory of Kulikovo

  in turn found reflection in literature. Thus the Story of the Massacre of Marnai, written with considerable artistry some twenty years after the event, tells about the departure of Prince Dmitrii from Moscow, the grief of his wife, the visit of the prince to the blessed Sergius of Radonezh, the eve of the battle, and the battle itself. Another well-known account of Kulikovo, the Zadonshchina composed at the end of the fifteenth century, has little literary merit and is a clumsy imitation of the Lay of the Host of Igor. The expansion of Moscow, as seen from the other side, inspired the Tale about the Capture of Pskov, written by a sorrowing patriot of that city. Chronicles in Novgorod and elsewhere continued to give detailed and consecutive information about developments in their localities.

  Accounts of the outside world can be found in the sizeable travel literature of the period. Foremost in this category stands Athanasius Nikitin's celebrated Wanderings beyond the Three Seas, a narrative of this Tver merchant's journey to Persia, Turkey, and India from 1466 to 1472. Particular value attaches to the excellent description of India, which Nikitin saw some twenty-five years before Vasco da Gama. Other interesting records of travel during the period include those of a Novgorodian named Stephen to the Holy Land in 1350, of Metropolitan Pimen to Constantinople in 1389, and of a monk Zosima to Constantinople, Mount Athos, and Jerusalem in 1420 and also two accounts of journeys to the Council of Florence.

  Church literature, including sermons, continued to be produced on what must have been a considerable scale. Hagiography deserves special notice. Lives of saints composed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, for example, of Abraham of Smolensk, Alexander Nevskii, Michael of Chernigov, and Metropolitan Peter, are characterized by simplicity and biographical detail. Unfortunately for the historian, a new style, artificial, pompous, and opposed to realistic description, came to the fore with the fifteenth century. This style came from the southern Slavs and was introduced by such writers as Cyprian in his life of St. Peter the Metropolitan, and Epiphanius the Wise, who dealt with St. Sergius of Radonezh and St. Stephen of Perm. The southern Slavs, it should be added, exercised a strong influence on appanage literature and thought, as for example in the formulation of the doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome.

  In contrast to literature, architecture has frequently been considered one of the glories of the appanage period in spite of the fact that the age witnessed relatively little building in stone. Russian wooden architecture, to say the least, represents a remarkable achievement. Although it dates, without doubt, from the Kievan and the pre-Kievan eras, no buildings survive from those early times. It is only with the appanage and the Muscovite periods that we can trace the consecutive development of this architecture and study its monuments.

  A klet or srub, a rectangular structure of stacked beams, each some

  Scythian embossed goldwork of the sixth century b.c.

  Ancient monuments on the graves of the Polovtsy.

  St. George and the Dragon. Novgorod School. Early 15th century.

  The Old Testament Trinity. A. Rublev, early fifteenth century.

  Icon from the Deesis Festival tier: Entrance into Jerusalem. Novgorod School, about 1475.

  St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, Moscow School. 14th century.

  Our Lady of Vladimir. Mosc
ow School. End of 15th century.

  Cathedral and cemetery at Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma.

  Fourteenth-century wooden church displayed at Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma.

  Preobrazhenskii Cathedral on Volga river at Uglich.

  twenty or twenty-five feet long, constituted the basis of ancient Russian wooden architecture. The walls were usually eight or nine feet high. A steep, two-slope roof offered protection and prevented an accumulation of snow, while moss and later hemp helped to plug cracks and holes. At first the floors were earthen, later wooden floors were constructed. A klet represented the living quarters of a family. Another, usually smaller, klet housed livestock and supplies. Generally the two were linked by a third small structure, a passageway, which also contained the door to the outside. A peasant household thus consisted of three separate, although connected, units. As the owner became more prosperous, or as his sons started families of their own, additional kleti were built and linked to the old ones, the ensemble growing, somewhat haphazardly, as a conglomeration of distinct, yet joined, structures.

  After the Russians accepted Christianity, they adapted their wooden architecture to the Byzantine canons of church building. The three required parts of a church were erected as follows: the sanctuary, always on the eastern side, consisted of a small klet; the main section of the church, where the congregation stood, was built as a large double klet, one on top of the other; finally, another small klet on the western side constituted the pritvor, or separate entrance hall, where originally catechumens waited for the moment to enter the church proper. The high two-slope roof of the large klet was crowned with a small cupola topped by a cross. Churches of this simple ancient type can be seen on old icons, and a few of them in northern Russia - built, however, in the seventeenth century - have come down to our times.

  Various developments in church architecture followed. Frequently a special basement klet was constructed under each of the three kleti constituting the church proper, which was thus raised to a second-floor level while its main part acquired a three-story elevation. The basement could be used for storage; a high outside staircase and porch were built to secure entrance to the church. The sanctuary sometimes assumed the form not of a quadrangle, but of a polygon, for instance, an octagon. The roofs of the churches became steeper and steeper, until many of them resembled wedges. In contrast to the Byzantine tradition of building churches with one or five cupolas, the Russians, whether they worked in stone or in wood, early demonstrated a liking for more cupolas. It might be noted that St. Sophia in Kiev had thirteen cupolas, and another Kievan church, that of the Tithe, had twenty-five. Numerous wooden churches also possessed many cupolas, including a remarkable one with seventeen and another with twenty-one.

  The Russians not only translated Byzantine stone church architecture into another medium, wood, but they also developed it further in a creative and varied manner. Especially original and striking were the so-called

  tent, or pyramidal, churches, of which some from the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries have escaped destruction. In the tent churches the main part of the church was a high octagon - although occasionally it had six or twelve sides - which provided the foundation for a very high pyramidal, sometimes conical, roof, capped by a small cupola and a cross. The elevation of these roofs ranged from 125 to well over 200 feet. The roofs of the altar and the pritvor were, by contrast, usually low. To quote Grabar, perhaps the most distinguished historian of Russian architecture and art, concerning tent churches:

  Marvelously strict, almost severe, in their majestic simplicity are these giants, grown into the earth, as if one with it… The idea of the eternity and immensity of the church of Christ is expressed here with unbelievable power and utmost simplicity. The simplicity of outline has attained in them the highest artistic beauty, and every line speaks for itself, because it is not forced, not contrived, but absolutely necessary and logically inevitable.

  Weidle wrote of undeveloped Gothic in Russia, an approach not unrelated to the general concept of undeveloped Russian feudalism.

  By contrast, architecture in stone, as already indicated, experienced a decline in the appanage period, although stone churches continued to be built in Novgorod and in lesser numbers in some other centers. To illustrate regression, historians have often cited the inability of Russian architects in the 1470's to erect a new Cathedral of the Assumption, the patron church of Moscow, using the Cathedral of the Assumption in Vladimir as their model. Yet this incident also marked the turning point, for Ivan III invited foreign specialists to Moscow and initiated stone building on a large scale. The most important result of the revival of stone architecture was the construction of the heart of the Kremlin in Moscow, a fitting symbol of the new authority, power, and wealth of the Muscovite rulers.

  Beginning in 1474, Ivan III sent a special agent to Venice and repeatedly invited Italian architects and other masters to come to work for him in Moscow. The volunteers included a famous architect, mathematician, and engineer, Aristotle Fieravanti, together with such prominent builders as Marco Ruffo, Pietro Solario, and Alevisio. Fieravanti, who lived in Russia from 1475 to 1479, erected the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin on the Vladimir model, but with some differences. In 1490 architects from Pskov constructed in the same courtyard the Cathedral of the Annunciation, a square building with four inside pillars, three altar apses, five cupolas, and interesting decorations. It reflected the dominant influence of Vladimir architecture, but also borrowed elements from the tradition of Novgorod and Pskov and from wooden architecture. Next, still working on the Kremlin courtyard, Ivan III ordered the construction of a new Cathedral of the Archangel in place of the old one, just as he had done earlier with the

  Cathedral of the Assumption. Alevisio accomplished this task between 1505 and 1509, following the plan of the Cathedral of the Assumption, but adding such distinct traits as Italian decoration of the facade. The three cathedrals of the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Archangel Michael became, so to speak, the sacred heart of the Kremlin and served, among other functions, respectively, as the place for the wedding, the coronation, and the burial of the rulers of Russia.

  Stone palaces also began to appear. As with the cathedrals, probably the greatest interest attaches to the palace in the Kremlin in Moscow. It was constructed by Ruffo, Solario, Alevisio, and other Italian architects, but following the canons of Russian wooden architecture: the palace was a conglomerate of separate parts, not a single building. Indeed stone structures often replaced the earlier wooden ones piecemeal. Italian architects also rebuilt walls and erected towers in the Kremlin, while Alevisio surrounded it with a moat by joining the waters of the rivers Moscow and Neglinnaia. Soviet specialists insisted that the Muscovite Kremlin became the greatest citadel of its kind in Europe. They also stressed the point that its architecture made use of the existing terrain, by contrast with the Italian tradition, which required leveling and preparation of a site for building. But we shall return to the Kremlin when we deal with Muscovite Russia.

  More than architecture, icon painting has frequently been considered the medieval Russian art par excellence, the greatest and most authentic expression of the spirituality and the creative genius of the Russians of the appanage period. As we have seen, icon painting came to Russia with Christianity from Byzantium. However, apparently quite early the Russians proceeded to modify their Byzantine heritage and to develop the rudiments of an original style. In the centuries which followed the collapse of the Kievan state several magnificent Russian schools of icon painting came into their own. To understand their role in the life and culture of the Russians, one should appreciate the importance of icons to a believer who finds in them a direct link with the other world and, in effect, a materialization of that other world. If, on one hand, icons might suggest superstition and even idolatry, they represent, on the other, one of the most radical and powerful attempts to grapple with such fundamental Christian doctrines as the incarnat
ion and the transfiguration of the universe. And, in the appanage period, pictorial representation provided otherwise unobtainable information and education for the illiterate masses.

  The first original Russian school of icon painting appeared in Suzdal at the end of the thirteenth century, flourished in the fourteenth, and merged early in the fifteenth with the Muscovite school. Like the architecture of Suzdal, the icons are characterized by elegance, grace, and fine taste, and can also be distinguished, according to Grabar, by "a general tone, which is always cool, silvery, in contrast to Novgorodian painting which inevitably

  tends towards the warm, the yellowish, the golden." The famous icon of Saints Boris and Gleb and that of Archangel Michael on a silver background provide excellent examples of the icon painting of Suzdal.

  "The warm, the yellowish, the golden" Novgorodian school deserves further notice because of its monumentality and generally bright colors. The icons are often in the grand style, large in size, massive in composition, and full of figures and action. "The Praying Novgorodians" and "The Miracle of Our Lady," also known as "The Battle between the Men of Suzdal and the Novgorodians," illustrate the above-mentioned points. The Novgorodian school reached its highest development around the middle of the fifteenth century, and its influence continued after the fall of the city.

  In the second half of the fourteenth century a distinct school formed in and around Moscow. Soon it came to be led by the most celebrated icon painter of all times, Andrew Rublev, who lived approximately from 1370 to 1430. The few extant works known to be Rublev's, especially his masterpiece, a representation of the so-called Old Testament Holy Trinity, demonstrate exquisite drawing, composition, rhythm, harmony, and lyricism. Muratov, stressing the influence of St. Sergius on the artist, describes Rublev's chef d'oeuvre as follows: