For the second half of his reign, Muscovy was indeed a realm of fear, terrorized by the oprichnina, the hooded order of vigilantes which was then often designated by the Tatar-derived word for military district, t'ma, which was also the Russian word for darkness. The coming of this "darkness" to Russia and the flight of Kurbsky coincided with the fateful turn of Ivan's military interests from east to west. The unsuccessful twenty-five-year Li-vonian War that Ivan launched in 1558 was probably more responsible than any sudden madness or change of character in Ivan for the crisis of his last years. By moving for the Baltic, Ivan involved the pretentious Muscovite civilization in military and ideological conflict with the West, and in costly campaigns which shattered economic and political stability, and ultimately
led to the building of a new, Western type of capital on the shores of the Baltic The dramatic confrontation of the closely knit rehglous civilization of Muslovy with the diffuse and worldly West produced chaos and conflict that laLd from Ivan to Peter the Great and subsequently left its im-print on Russian culture.
2. The Coming of the West
Pew problems have disturbed Russians more than the nature of their relationship to the West. Concern abouMhisjguestion did not bej^jither_ in the salons of the imperial periodor in the mists of Slavic antiquity, but inMuscgvylrom thejfifteenthto theearlylSventeenth?????. This account win attempt to suggest both that there was an over-all psychological significance "forlvluscovy in the rediscoveryjjf thejfest during this eariy_mocie_rn period, and that there were a number of different "Wests" with which im-^ portant, contact was successively established. A consideration of how the West came to Russia may throw some light not only on Russian but on general European history.
The general psychological problem posed by confrontation with the West was in many ways more important than any particular political or economic problem. It was rather like the trauma of adolescence. Muscovy had become a kind of raw jouth: too big to remain in childhooTTlsur-roundings yet unable to adjust to the complex world outsideT Propelled by the very momentum of growth, Muscovy suddenly found itself thrust into a world it was hot equipped to understand. WesterrEui"ope~ifrthe fifteenth century was far more aggressive and articulate than it had been in Kievan times, and Russia far more self-conscious and provincial. The Muscovite reaction of irritability and self-assertion was in many ways that of a typical adolescent; the Western attitude of patronizing contempt, that of the unsympathetic adult. Unable to gain understanding either from others or from its own resources, Muscovy prolonged its sullen adolescence for more than a century. The conflicts that convulsed~Russia throughout the seventeenth century^ wjrejpart of~an awkward, compulsive search for identity in an essentially European world. The Russian response to the inescapable challenge of Western Europe was split-almost schizophrenic-and this division has to some extent lasted down to the present.
Novgorod
Much of the complex modern Russian feeling about the West begins with the conquest and humiliation of Novgorod by Moscow in the late fifteenth century. The destruction of the city's traditions and repopulation of most of its people shattered the most important natural link with the We^UoJ^e survivedJni theRussian north jsince ?????? times. At the same time, the absorption of Novgorod brought into Muscovy new ecclesiastical apologists for autocracy who had come to rely partly on Western Catholic ideas and techniques in an effort to combat the growth of Western secularism in that city. Here we see the faint beginnings of the psychologically disturbing pattern whereby even the xenophobic party is forced to rely on one 'IWest" in order to combat another. The ever more shrill and apocalyptical Muscovite insistence on the uniqueness and destiny of Russia thus flows to some extent from the psychological need to disguise from oneself the increasingly derivative and dependent nature of Russian culture.
Other contacts with the West besides those in Novgorod had, of course, survived the fall of Kiev, and might have helped make the rediscovery of the West less upsetting. Travelers to the Orient during the Mongol period like Marco Polo and the Franciscan missionaries to China passed through southern Russia; western Russian cities, such as Smolensk and Chernigov, remained channels of cultural and economic contact; and even in Great Russia, Western influence can be detected in the ecclesiastical art of Vladimir and Suzdal.1 The division between East and West was, moreover, far from precise. Techniques and ideas filtering in from Paleologian Byzantium and from the more advanced Southern and Western Slavs were often similar to those of the early Italian Renaissance with which these "Eastern" regions were in such intimate contact.2
Nevej^ielejs1jthergjEas_a decisive cultural_and political break between Latin^Europe_and the Orthodox Eastern Slavs in the thirteenth and fpur-teenth_c_ejitori£s._Catholic^Europe concentrated jts interest on the Western SlavSj^and^splayed more interest in the Mongol and Chinese empires to the ejis^jthjinjn^Great Russia. Muscovy, in turn, became preoccupied with the geopolitics of the Eurasian steppe, and lost sight of the Latin West except as a harassing force that had occupied Constantinople and encouraged Teutonic forays against Russia.
Great Novgorod," as it was called, was the "father," just as Kiev was the "mother," of Russian cities.3 The peaceful coexistence of Eastern and Western culture within this proud and wealthy metropolis is dramatized by one of its most famous and imposing landmarks: the twelfth-century bronze doors of the Santa Sophia cathedral. One door came from Byzantium, the other from Magdeburg; one from the seat of Eastern empire, the other from the North German city that had received the model charter of urban self-government from the Western Empire.4 Novgorod had older traditions of independence and more extensive economic holdings than Magdeburg or any other Baltic German city. But Novgorod faced in the rising grand dukes of Muscovy a far more ambitious central power than the Holy Roman Emperors had become by the fifteenth century.
The cultural split betweenjvloscow andJ4oygorod was far more formidable than the geographical divide which the wooded Valdai Hills defined between the upper tributaries of the Volga and the river-lake approaches to the Baltic. Novgorod Had completely escaped the Muscovite subjection to the Mongols, and had developed extensive independent links with the Hanseatic League. Novgorodian chronicles reflected the commercial preoccupations of the city by including far more precise factual information on municipal building and socioeconomic activity than those of any other region.5 WhejLMoscow launched its military assault against Novgorod in the 1470's, it was still paying tribute to the Tatafs^andTising Mongol terms in finance and administration, whereas Novgorod was trading oh favorable terms with a hostof Western powers and using a German monetary system.6 Literacy was, moreover, almost certainly decreasing" m"T3bicowT)ecause of the increasingly, ornate language and script of its^redomiriately ^monastic culture;whereasliteracy had risen steadily in Novgorod to perhaps 8 Q per centJ3f^elandhoMmgIcksses..thrcjigh the increasing use of birch-bark cornpesciaLreeords.7
– "" The^lusc^te^as^ult on-Jfevgorod -«(as, thus, in many_ ways, Jhe first internal conflict between Eastward- and. Westward-looking Russia- foresbadOTvmgJhat_wffich was later to develop between Moscow and St. Pe1,ej5burg. In subjugating~Novgorod; the Moscow of Ivan III was aided not just by superiority of numbers but also by a split between East and West within Novgorod itself. This split became a built-in feature of Westward-looking Russian gateways to the Baltic. Sometimes the split was clear-cut, as between the purely Swedish town of Narva and the Russian fortress of Ivangorod, built by Ivan III across the river on the Baltic coast. The split ran directly through the great port of Riga, when Russia took it over and surrounded a picturesque Hanseatic port with a Russian provincial city. One Riga centered on a towering late Gothic cathedral containing the
largest organ in the world; the other Riga was dominated by a xenophobic Old Believer community that forbade any use of musical instruments. The. split became more subtle and psychological in St. Petersburg, where completely Western externals conflicted with the apocalyptical feare of a superstitious populace.
The~spl
it in Novgorod was all of these things. There was, to begin with, a 'cleafdivisionInarked by the Volkhov River between the merchant quarteTon the right and the ecclesiastical-administrative section on the left. There~was an architectural contrast between the utilitarian, wooden structures of the formerAndjfc-mareperrnanent and stately Byzantine structures of the latter. Most important and subtle, however, was the ideological split between jrepublican^ and autocratic, cosmopolitan and xenophobic tendencies. By the fourteenth~century, Novgorod had both the purest republican government and the wealthiest ecclesiastical establishment in Eastern Slavdom.8 The latter acted, for the most part, as a kind of ideological fifth column for Moscow: exalting the messianic-imperial claims of its grand prince in order to check the Westward drift of the city.
As early as 1348 the Novgorod hierarchy haughtily referred the king of Sweden to the Byzantine emperor when the Western monarch proposed discussion of a religious rapprochement.9 Conscious of its unique role of independence from the Tatars and unbroken continuity with Kievan times, articulate and imaginative Novgorodian writers cultivated a sense of special destiny. They argued that Novgorod received Christianity not from Byzantium, but directly from the apostle Andrew; that Japheth, the third son of Noah, had founded their city; and that holy objects-the white monastic hood allegedly given by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Silvester and the Xikhvin^ icon of the Virgin-had been miraculously brought by God from sinful Byzantium to Novgorod for the uncorrupted people of "shining Russia."10
As political and economic pressures on Novgorod increased in the fifteenth century, the Novgorodian church frequently interpreted negotiations with the West as signs that the end of the church calendar in 1492 would bring an end to history.11 Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod and Pskov took the initiative shortly after his installation in 1485 in imploring a still-reluctant Moscowrto prepare for this moment of destiny by cleansing its^realm of heretics just as hehad in the see of Novgorod.12 Subsequently, of course, the leaders oFtwo key monasteries within the see of Novgorod, Joseph of Volokolamsk and Philotheus of Pskov, became the architects of the Muscovite ideology. Some of its nervous, apocalyptical quality almost certainly came from the fear that secularization of both intellectual life and church property was imminent in this westerly region, and that the Tsar
himself might emulate the new state builders of the West (or indeed the iconoclastic emperors of Byzantium) by presiding over such a revolution. The holy fools, who did so much to charge the atmosphere of Muscovy with prophetic expectation, trace their Russian beginnings to the confrontation of Byzantine Christianity and Western commercialism in Novgorod. Procopius, the thirteenth-century itinerant holy man who was the first of this genre to be canonized in Russia (and whose widely read sixteenth-century biography made him the model for many others), was in fact a German who had been converted after years of residence in Novgorod.13
Both economic and ideological factors tended to check any far-reaching Westernization of NovgorodrUnlike Tver, thT^tFeininTportant westerly rival of Moscow subdued by Ivan III, Novgorod was firmly anchored against political drift toward Poland-Lithuania.14 Novgorod had its most important Western economic links with German cities far to the west of Poland, and was linked with the northern and eastern frontiers of Great Russia through a vast, independent economic empire. Psychologically, too, the "father" of Russian cities felt a special obligation to defend the memory and honor of Rus' after the Kievan "mother" had been defiled by the Mongols. Riurik was, after all, said to have established the ruling dynasty in Novgorod even before his heirs moved to Kiev; and the fact that Novgorod was spared the Mongol "scourge of God" was seen by many as a sign that Novgorod enjoyed special favor and merited special authority within Orthodox Slavdom.
The political subordination of Novgorod to Moscow intensified Muscovite fanaticism while crushing ouTtrTree distinctive traditions which Nov-^i|Srod^arid Pskov Sad shared with the advanced cities of the high medieval' West:_comrn£5ciai cosmopolitanism, representative government, and philo-soj^iic_rationglism.
C°£nioj5o]u^ariism^^^and Vasily IIFs destruc-
tion ofjhe enclave_of the Hanseatic League in Novgorod, and by subsequent restrictions on the independent trade andTreaty-"relations that Novgorod arfrTPskov had enjoyed with the West sincTeven before associa-tionjyitbTjheTIarrs^r^epigsentative government was-desfroyed by ripping out the bells which had summoned the popular assembly(veche) in Nov-goro^Pskov^lnJjhe; Novgorodian dependency of Viatica to elect mag-istratesjmd concur on major policy questions. Though neither a democratic forum nor a fully representative legislature, the veche assembly did give propertied interests an effective means of checking princely authority. The Novgorod veche had gradually introduced property qualifications for participation, and had also spawned smaller, more workable models of the central assembly in its largely autonomous municipal subsections. Like the
druzhina (or consultative war band of the prince), the veche represented a survival from Kievan times that was alien to the tradition of Byzantine autocracy. The veche was a far more serious obstacle to the Josephite program for establishing pure autocracy, for it had established solid roots in the political traditions of a particular region and in the economic self-interest of a vigorous merchant class.
The activity of the critical secular intellectuals was even more feared by the monastic establishment than that of republican political leaders. For the monks were more interested in lending mythologized sanctity to a Christian emperor than in defining concrete forms of rule. Their fascination with Byzantine models'led them to conclude that ideological schisms and heresies had done far more to tear apart the empire than differences in political and administrative traditions. Accompanying the extraordinary reverence for whatgver^irwritten" within the monastic tradition was an inordinate fear of anything written outside. In the early modern period, the phrase "he hj›s gone into books" was used to mean "he has gone out of his mind"; and "opinion is the mother to all suffering, opinion is the second fall" became a popular proverb.15 As Gennadius of Novgorod wrote during the ideological ferment prior to the church council of 1490:
Our people are simple, they are unable to talk in the manner of books. Thus, it is better not to engage in debates about the faith. A council is needed not for debates on the faith, but in order that heretics be judged, hanged and burned.16
The ecclesiastical hierarchy sought-and gradually obtained-the help of princes in stamping out the rationalistic tendencies of the "Judaizers" through" procedures strangely reminiscent of the show trials of a later era. Though little can beTcnown for certain about the "heretics," their ideas clearly came in through the trade routes into Novgorod as had those of the anti-eccTesiastrcaP'shofn heads" of the previous century. The "Judaizers" were anti-trinitarian, iconoclastic, and apparently opposed to both monas-ticism and fasting. Linked in some ways with the European-wide phenomenon of late medieval heresy, they nevertheless differed from the Lollards and Hussites of the West by appealing not to popular sentiments with emotional revivalism, but rather to the intellectual elite with radical rationalism. Revulsion at the anti-rational histencal theology of the xenophobic masses thus led cosmopolitan intellectuals into the diametrically opposite thought worTd of TaTionaT~alrfirhistorical philosophy. Whether or not the Judaizers were as interested-in "the cursed logic" of Jewish and Moslem thinkers as their persecutors insisted,17 that very accusation served to suggest that the logical alternative to Muscovite Orthodoxy was Western rationalism. This
became the alternative when St. Petersburg succeeded Novgorod as the cosmopolitan adversary of Moscow, and gradually gave birth to a revolution in the name of universal rationalism.
The initial crippling of Novgorod under Ivan III was accompanied by sorqejrf'TEe same~^MeTslveTeaForthe^West that was to recur under Ivan IV and Stalin. The ideological purge of cosmopolitan intellectuals was ^accompanied by massive deportations east-the first of the periodic depopulations of the more advanced Baltic provinces by the vindictive force of Muscovy.18 The p
retext for this first fateful move on Novgorod was that Novgorod had gone over to the "Latins." Although probably untrue in any formal political or ecclesiastical sense, the accusation does highlight the unsettling effect produced by the first of the "Wests" to confront Muscovy in the early modern period: the Latin West of the high Renaissance.
"The Latins"
Italian influences in Russia may have been far more substantial han is gener3TjT realized even in the early period of the Renaissance, ian products and ideas came to Russia indirectly through Baltic ports and direjitlythrough the Genoese trading communities in the Crimea in the late^ thirteenth and the fourteenth century. By the mid-fourteenth century there was a permanent colony of Italian tradesmen in Moscow, and Italian paper had come into widespread usage in Russia.19 The only example of Russian church architecture from the mid-fourteenth century to survive down to modern times contains frescoes that were closer to the style of the early Renaissance than to that of traditional Byzantine iconography- including animation and realism that would have been advanced even in Italy and purely Western compositions, such as a pieta.20 How far this Italian influence might have persisted in the decor of churches is*one of the many no doubt" insoluble mysteries of early Russian history. Subsequent Russian iconography does not appear to have been affected by these frescoes, however; and the next clear point of Italian cultural impact occurred nearly a century Tater, at the Council of Florence.
The Icon and the Axe Page 13