NOTE
For the sake of readability, I have deferred all but the most essential Russian terms to the reference section at the end of the book, and have introduced a few modifications in the usual method of transliterating Russian (principally the use of an initial Ya and Yu and a terminal oy in names, a uniform rendering of all singular adjectives ending in ? or yi as y, and the elimination of terminal soft signs in names like Suzdal and Pestel). I have generally tried to follow familiar usage in determining whether to use the English or transliterated Russian form of a name, but have tended to favor the English version of first names and the transliterated Russian version of last names. Internal soft signs will generally be maintained. Exceptions to general practice in transliteration will be made to conform with accepted English usage in place names (Kharkov, Dnieper), frequently used Russian words (boyar, sobors, Bolshoi Theater), and Russian names rendered differently in English by authors writing themselves in English (Vinogradoff, Gorodetzky).
I.Backgroundi
Kiev3
The Forest16 Axe and Icon 26 Bell and Cannon ?1
II.The Confrontation45
The Muscovite Ideology47
The Coming of the West78 Novgorod 79 "The Latins" 84 "The Germans" 97 The Religious Wars 102
115 121 127
III.The Century of Schism
1.The Split Within
The Theocratic Answer
The Fundamentalist
Answer 135
The Great Change 144
2.The Westward Turn163
New Religious Answers 163
The Sectarian Tra
dition 174
The New World of
St. Petersburg 180
The Defense of Mus
covy 192
IV.The Century of
Aristocratic Culture 207
1. The Troubled Enlight
enment213
The Dilemma of the
Reforming Despot 217
The Fruits of the En lightenment
The Alienation of the Intellectuals
Novikov and Masonry
The Frustration of Po litical Reform
2.The Anti-Enlighten
ment
Catholics Pietists Orthodox The Legacy
3.The "Cursed Ques
tions"
The Flight to Philoso phy
The Meaning of His tory
The Prophetic Role of Art
The Missing Madonna
The "Hamlet Question"
V. On to New Shores
The Turn to Social Thought
The Agony of Populist Art
New Perspectives of the Waning Century Constitutional Liberal ism
Dialectical Material ism Mystical Idealism
VI. The Uncertain Colossus
1.Crescendo
Prometheanism
Sensualism
A pocalypticism
2.The Soviet Era
The Leninist Legacy The Revenge of Muscovy
?1?
475 478 492 504 519 524
532
3.Fresh Ferment
The Reprise of Pasternak New Voices
4.The Irony of Russian
History
Bibliography
References
Index follows page
550
554 564
590 599 627 786
ILLUSTRATIONS
Map : Modern European Russia
Forms of the Virgin
Following page 105 I "Vladimir Mother of God," early twelfth century, Constantinople Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
II "Virgin and Child Rejoicing," mid-sixteenth-century painting from the upper Volga region, probably Kostroma Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
IIIVirgin and Christ from
the central triptych
(deesis) of a sixteenth-
century icon screen
Personal Collection
of P. D. Korin, Moscow
IV"Petersburg, 1918" (pop
ularly known as "Our
Lady of Petersburg") by
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin,
1920
Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
Theme and Variations in Iconography
Following page 199
V"Old Testament Trinity"
by Andrew Rublev,
painted for the Monastery
of St. Sergius and the
Holy Trinity, 1420's
Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
VI A Trinity of the Pskov School, mid-fifteenth century Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
VII The Trinity by Simon Ushakov, 1670 Russian Museum, Leningrad
The New Portraiture
Following page l$g VIII Painting of F. Demidov by D. Levitsky, completed in 1773 Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
The Evolution of Old Russian Architecture
Following page 261 IX Cathedral of St. Dmitry
in Vladimir, 1197 X Church of the Annunciation over the entrance to the women's monastery of the Protection of the Virgin in Suzdal, early sixteenth century
XI Church of the Epiphany at Chelmuzhi, Karelia, 1605
XII Church of the Transfiguration at Kizhi, Karelia, 1714
Repin and Russian Nationalism
Following page 291
Ivan the Terrible with his murdered son by Ilya Repin, 1885 Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
Musorgsky by Repin, 1881
Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
XV "Haulers on the Volga" by Repin, 1870-3 Russian Museum, Leningrad
Christ Dethroned
Following page 481 XVI "Appearance of Christ to the People" by Alexander Ivanov, 1833-57 Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
XVII The Crucifixion by Nicholas Ge, 1891 Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
Vrubel and the Devil
Following page 481 XVIII "The Demon Seated" by Michael Vrubel, 1890 Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow XIX "The Demon Prostrate" by Vrubel, 1902 Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
A Satirical View of Russian Liberalism
Following page 511 XX Masthead introduced in January 1861 in the satirical journal Iskra
Malevich's Art of Outer Space
Following page 511 XXI "Dynamic Suprematism" by Malevich
Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow XXII "Woman with a Rake" by Malevich Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
? l*:
BACKGROUND
¦
Background
i. Kiev
The cosmopolitan, Christian culture of Kiev, "the mother of Russian
cities," from the conversion of Prince Vladimir in 988 to the Mongol sack of
Kiev in 1240. The uncritical adoption by Kievan Rus' of the artistic forms
and sense of special destiny of the Byzantine "second golden age." The love
of beauty and preoccupation with history; the building of the new city under
Yaroslav the Wise (grand-prince of Kiev, 1019-54); the movement north
under Andrew Bogoliubsky (grand-prince of Vladimir-Suzdal, 1157-74).
The rise to dominance of the "forest land," the Volga-Oka heartland of
Great Russia, particularly during the Mongol overlordship, 1240-1480.
The strengthening of communal ties during a period of weakened central
authority. The fears and fascinations of the forest: bears, insects, and, above
all, fire. The enduring importance for the Russian imagination of the key
artifacts of this primitive frontier region: the icon and the axe within the
peasant hut. The cannon and the bell within populated centers: symbols of
metallic might in a wooden world.
A culture of concrete sights and sounds rather than abstract words and ideas. The images of sainthood on wooden icons; the image of divine order and hierarchy on the icon screen. The Vladimir Mother of God as the supreme mother figure of Great Russia; Andrew Rublev (1370-1430) as its supreme artist. Bells as "angelic trumpets" and hypnotic cacophony.
rVEDUCED ?? its simplest outli
ne, Russian culture is a tale of three cities: Kiev, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. None of them is really old by the standards of world history. The first was probably founded sometime in the eighth century, the second in the twelfth, the last at the beginning of the eighteenth. Each served as the capital of a sprawling Slavic empire on the eastern periphery of Europe; each left a permanent impact on the culture .of modern Russia.
The emergence of Moscow and then that of St. Petersburg are decisive events of modern Russian history, and the profound if subtle rivalry between the two cities is one of the recurring themes of its mature cultural development. Yet the cultural context for this drama was provided by Kiev: the first of the three great cities to rise and to fall. However weakened and transformed in later years, however subject to the separate claims of Polish and Ukrainian historians, Kiev remained the "mother of Russian cities" and "joy of the world" to the chroniclers.1 Memories of its accomplishment lingered on in oral folklore to give the Orthodox Eastern Slavs an enduring sense of the unity and splendor that had been theirs. In the words of the popular proverb, Moscow was the heart of Russia; St. Petersburg, its head; but Kiev, its mother.2
The origins of Kiev are still obscure, but its traceable history begins with the establishment by northern warrior-traders of a series of fortified cities along the rivers that led through the rich eastern plains of Europe into the Black and Mediterranean seas.3 The main artery of this new trade route down from the Baltic region was the Dnieper; and many historic cities of early Russia, such as Chernigov and Smolensk, were founded on strategic spots along its upper tributaries. Kiev, the most exposed and southerly of the fortified cities on this river, became the major point of contact with,the Byzantine Empire to the southeast, and the center for the gradual conversion to Orthodox Christianity in the ninth and tenth centuries of both the Scandinavian princes and the Slavic population of this region. By virtue of its
protected location on the raised west bank of the Dnieper, Kiev soon became a major bastion of Christendom against the warlike pagan nomads of the southern steppe. Economically, it, was an active trading center and probably the largest city in Eastern Europe. Politically, it became the center of a Slavic civilization that was less a distinct territorial state in the modern sense than a string of fortified cities bound by loose religious, economic, and dynastic ties.
Kievan Russia was closely linked with Western Europe;-through trade and intermarriages with every important royal family of Western Christendom.4 Russia is mentioned in such early epics as the Chanson de Roland and the Nibelungenlied.5 Indeed, the cultural accomplishments of the high medieval West which these works represent might not have been possible without the existence of a militant Christian civilization in Eastern Europe to absorb much of the shock of invasions by less civilized steppe peoples.
These promising early links with the West were, fatefully, never made secure. Increasingly, inexorably, Kievan Russia was drawn eastward into a debilitating struggle for control of the Eurasian steppe.
The political history of this the greatest undivided land mass in the world has been only very partially recorded. Like the Scyths, Sarmatians, and Huns before them (and their Mongol contemporaries and adversaries), the Russians were to acquire a reputation ?.more stable societies for both ruggedness and cruelty. But unlike all the others who dominated the steppe, the Russians succeeded-not just in conquering but in civilizing the entire region, from the Pripet Marshes and the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas in the east.
The inspiration for this accomplishment came from neither Europe nor Asia, but from a Byzantine Empire that lay between the two, Greek in speech but Oriental in magnificence. The Byzantine capital of Constantinople lay on the strait of water separating Europe from Asia and connecting the Mediterranean with the Black Sea and the rivers leading into the heartland of Central and Eastern Europe: the Danube, the Dnieper, and the Don. Known as the "new" or "second" Rome, this city of Constantine continued to rule the Eastern half of the old Roman Empire for almost a thousand years after the Western Roman Empire had crumbled.
Of all the cultural accomplishments of Byzantium, none was more important than the bringing of Christianity to the Slavs. When the Holy Land, North Africa, and Asia Minor fell to Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, Byzantium was forced to turn north and east to recoup its fortunes. By the ninth century, Constantinople had regained the self-confidence needed for fresh expansion. The long-debated questions of Christian doctrine had been resolved by the seven councils of the Church; Islamic invaders
had been repelled from without and puritanical iconoclasts rejected within the capital. Emperors and Patriarchs had both begun to challenge the authority of a West not yet clearly emerging from the Dark Ages.
Thej-apidjixtostor^ of: Byzantine political and cultural influence into the Balkans during the ninth century dramatized the exuberance of this "second golden age" of Byzantine history. The key moment in this penetration was the mission to the Slavs of two Greek brothers from the borderlands of the Slavic world in Macedonia: Cyril, a widely traveled and rcndwnedsctfolaf, and Methodius', ah administrator with experience in Slavic-speaking areas of the Byzantine Empire. In distant Moravia and later in Bulgaria, they helped turn vernacular Slavic into a written language suitable for translating the basic'books of Orthodox Christendom. They apparently did their first work with the exotic and specially invented Glagolitic alphabet; but their followers soon concentrated on the Cyrillic alphabet, which had many relatively familiar Greek letters. A rich store of Christian literature was transcribed in both alphabets within a half century of thejnissionaries' death.* Slavonic became the language of worship of all Orthodox Slavs; and Cyrillic,"which ???? the name of the more scholarly brother, became the alphabet of the Bulgarians and South Slavs.
When the followers of Cyril and Methodius extended these liturgical and literary activities to Kievan Russia in the tenth and the early eleventh century, the Eastern Slavs acquired a language that had become (together with Latin and Greek) one of the three languages of writing and worship in medieval Christendom. Though subjected to many changes and variations, Church Slavonic remained the basic literary language of Russia until late in the seventeenth century.
Among the many Slavic principalities to accept the forms and faith of Byzantium, Kievan Russia--or Rus', as it was then called-occupied a unique place even from the beginning. Unlike the Balkan Slavic kingdoms, the Kievan domain lay entirely beyond the confines of the old Roman em-pireTlt was one of the last distinct national civilizations to accept Byzantine Christianity; the only one never clearly to accept political subordination to Constantinople; and by far the largest-stretching north to the Baltic and almost to the Arctic Ocean.
Culturally, however, Kiev was in many ways even more deeply dependent on Constantinople than many regions within the empire. For the Russian leaders of the late tenth and the early eleventh century accepted Orthodoxy with the uncritical enthusiasm of the new convert, and sought to transfer the splendors of Constantinople to Kiev in the wholesale manner of the nouveau riche. Prince Vladimir brought the majestic rituals and services of Byzantium to Kiev shortly after his conversion in 988; and, particularly under his
illustrious son Yaroslav the Wise, learned churchmen streamed in from Byzantium bringing with them models for early Russian laws, chronicles, and sermons. Great churches like Santa Sophia and St. George were named for their counterparts in Constantinople, as were the "golden gates" of the city.7
Suffused with a "Christian optimism, a joy that Rus' had become worthy of joining Christianity at the 'eleventh hour' just before the end of the world,"8 Kiev accepted more unreservedly than Byzantium itself the claim that Orthodox Christianity had solved all the basic problems of belief and worship. All that was needed was "right praising" (the literal translation of pravoslavie, the Russian version of the Greek orthodoxos) through the forms of worship handed down by the Apostolic Church and defined for all time by its seven ecumenical
councils. Changes in dogma or even sacred phraseology could not be tolerated, for there was but one answer to any controversy. The Eastern Church first broke with Rome in the late ninth century, when the latter added the phrase "and from the Son" to the assertion in the Nicene Creed "that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from God the Father."
The Icon and the Axe Page 2