Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  CONTROVERSIES

  The Russian Romantic movement consolidated. In the late 1810s, the Classic-Romantic controversy broke out, continuing throughout the 1820s and 1830s. Russian literary journals took sides. Academic circles, too, were engaged in the controversy: Nikolai Nadezhdin’s Latin dissertation on Romantic poetry is a case in point. The Classicists claimed that Romanticism sought anarchy in literature and in the fine arts, whereas “Art, generally, is obedience to rules.” Indeed, the Romantics, especially in their poetic declarations, blissfully proclaimed the lawlessness of artistic creation. In theoretical discussions, however, they did not simply reject the classical rigidities, but undertook to formulate alternative laws, loosely, those of nature, beauty, and truth. A more specific agreement was difficult to reach, not just on specific issues such as the principles of Romantic drama, but also on the very meaning of Romanticism. Vladimir Nabokov has identified at least eleven various interpretations of “Romantic” current in Pushkin’s time. As might be expected, the internal controversy emerged in the Romantic camp. The polemics, piercing other than purely theoretical issues, often involved angry exchanges. Literary alliances were vulnerable, as in the case of Pushkin and Nikolai Polevoy. Yet, the early nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable tendency, on the part of the authors, artists, and

  1302

  ROSTISLAV

  musicians, to form circles, attend salons, and group around enlightened patrons.

  CROSSING BORDERS

  In this kind of atmosphere, crossing of borders between different arts was common. Vasily Zhukov-sky produced brilliant drawings; Lermontov nearly abandoned writing for the sake of painting; Vladimir Odoyevsky was a musicologist as well as a poet and novelist; the playwright Alexander Griboye-dov, a talented composer. As art historian Valery Turchin points out, it was the musician rather than the poet who was eventually promoted, in the view of the Romantics, to the role of the supreme type of artistic genius. This precisely reflected the Romantics’ quest for the spiritual, for music, of all the arts, was considered the least bound by materiality. Arguably, Romanticism was a later phenomenon in Russian music than in literature and art. Anyway, a contemporary of Pushkin, the composer Mikhail Glinka, renowned for his use of Russian folk tradition, was a major contributor to the Romantic movement. The painter Orestes Kipren-sky commenced his series of Romantic portraits during the very dawn of literary Romanticism. Somewhat later emerged the Romantic schools of landscape and historical painting. Even in architecture, the art most strongly bound by matter, new trends showed up against the neoclassical background: neogothicism, exotic orientalism, and, finally, the national current exemplified in Konstantin Ton’s churches. During the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855) Romanticism began to be diffused in the more general quest for history and nationality.

  SLAVOPHILISM

  The important offshoot of this development was Slavophilism. Nicholas I typified the new epoch in the same way as Alexander I had typified the previous age. In his youth, Nicholas had received a largely Romantic education. He was an admirer of Walter Scott and was inclined to imitate the kings of Scott’s novels. Characteristically, Pushkin, during the reign of Nicholas, persistently returns to the twin themes of nobility and ancestry, lamenting (in a manner closely resembling Edmund Burke) the passing of the age of chivalry. The dominant mood of the period, however, was nationalistic and messianic, and here again the Romantics largely shared the inclinations of the tsar. Notably, it was Peter Vyazemsky who coined the word narodnost (the Russian equivalent of “nationality”), which became part of the official ideological formula (“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality”). Odoevsky argued that because of their “poetic organization,” the Russian people would attain superiority over the West even in scientific matters. Pushkin welcomed the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1831, interpreting it in Panslavic terms. Nonetheless, there was an unbridgeable psychological rift between the tsar and the Romantic camp, which had its origin in the catastrophe of December 1825. Several of the Decembrists (most importantly, Kon-draty Ryleyev, one of the five executed) were men of letters and members of the Romantic movement. Throughout the reign, a creative personality faced fierce censorship and remained under the threat of persecution. Many could say with Polevoy (whose ambitious Romantic enterprise embraced, beside literature, history and even economics, but whose Moscow Telegraph, Russia’s most successful literary journal, was closed by the government): “My dreams remained unfulfilled, my ideals, unexpressed.” The split between ideal and reality was the central problem for Romanticism universally, but in Russia this problem acquired a specifically bleak character. See also: GOLDEN AGE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE; LERMON-TOV, MIKHAIL YURIEVICH; ODOYEVSKY, VLADIMIR FY-ODOROVICH; PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH; SLAVOPHILES; ZHUKOVSKY; VASILY ANDREYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  McLaughlin, Sigrid (1972). “Russia: Romaniceskij-Romanticeskij-Romantizm.” In “Romantic” and Its Cognates: The European History of a Word, ed. Hans Eichner. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Peer, Larry H. (1998). “Pushkin and Romantizm,” In Comparative Romanticisms: Power, Gender, Subjectivity, ed. Larry H. Peer and Diane Long Hoeveler. Columbia, SC: Camden House. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (1992). The Emergence of Romanticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Rydel, Christine, ed. (1984). The Ardis Anthology of Russian Romanticism. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.

  YURI TULUPENKO

  ROSTISLAV

  (d. 1167), grand prince of Kiev and the progenitor of the Rostislavichi, the dynasty of Smolensk.

  After Rostislav’s father Mstislav Vladimirovich gave him Smolensk around 1125, he freed it from

  1303

  ROSTOVTSEV, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH

  its subordination to southern Pereyaslavl, fortified it with new defensive walls, founded churches, and patronized culture. Around 1150, despite opposition from Metropolitan Kliment (Klim) Smolyatich and the bishop of Pereyaslavl, he also freed the Church of Smolensk from its dependence on Pereyaslavl by making it an autonomous eparchy. Manuel, a Greek, was its first bishop, and the Church of the Assumption, built by Rostislav’s grandfather Vladimir Vsevolodovich “Mono-makh,” became his cathedral. Rostislav also issued a charter (gramota) enumerating the privileges of the bishop and the church in Smolensk. The document is valuable as a source of ecclesiastical, social, commercial, and geographic information.

  Rostislav had political dealings with neighbouring Polotsk and Novgorod, but his most important involvement was in Kiev. After 1146 he helped his elder brother Izyaslav win control of the capital of Rus. Following the latter’s death in 1154, the citizens invited Rostislav to rule Kiev with his uncle Vyacheslav Vladimirovich, but his uncle Yury Vladimirovich “Dolgoruky” replaced him in the same year. Although Rostislav regained Kiev in 1159, his rule was not secured until 1161, when his rival Izyaslav Davidovich of Chernigov died. As prince of Kiev, he asserted his authority over the so-called kernel of Rus and placated many of the princes. He failed, however, to stop the incursions of the Polovtsy. He died on March 14, 1167, and was buried in Kiev. rising to become a professor in 1912. His career before the revolution shows the international nature of academic life: He published widely in English, French, and German as well as Russian.

  Rostovtsev refused to serve either in the Provisional Government or in the Communist government, and in emigration published extensive polemics against the Communists. In 1918 Rostovstev fled Russia, first to Oxford (1918-1920), and then to the United States where he was professor first at the University of Wisconsin (1920-1925) and then Yale University (1925-1944).

  Rostovtsev’s academic interests were extensive. Trained as a philologist, he wrote monographs on Roman tax farming and land tenure. As an art historian he also published important works on the art and history of south Russia that traced cultural influences in Scythian art from Greece to the borders of China. From 1928 to 1936 he lead Yale’s excavations at Dura-Europos in Syria.

  His greatest fame, however, rests on two large monographs: Economic and Social
History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1926) and The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 1941). In both these works he emphasizes the role of the urban bourgeoisie in the development of the two related cultures, and their decline due to state intervention and outside attacks. See also: EDUCATION; UNIVERSITIES

  See also: IZYASLAV MSTISLAVICH; KIEVAN RUS; VLADIMIR MONOMAKH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dimnik, Martin. (1983). “Rostislav Mstislavich.” In The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, ed. Joseph L. Wieczynski, 31:162-165. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Momigliano, Arnaldo. (1966). Studies in Historiography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Vernadsky, George. (1931). “M. I. Rostovtsev.” Seminar-ium Kondakovianum 4:239-252.

  A. DELANO DUGARM

  MARTIN DIMNIK

  ROSTOVTSEV, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH

  (1870-1952), Russian-American historian and arche-ologist of Greek and Roman antiquity.

  Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev was born in Kiev and educated at the Universities of Kiev and St. Petersburg. He taught at St. Petersburg University, and in the Higher Women’s Courses until 1918,

  ROTA SYSTEM

  Also known as the “ladder system,” the rota system describes a collateral pattern of succession, according to which princes of the Rurikid dynasty ascended the throne of Kiev, the main seat of Kievan Rus. The system prevailed from the mid-eleventh century until the disintegration of Kievan Rus in the thirteenth century. It also determined succession for the main seats in secondary principalities within Kievan Rus and survived in the northern Rus principalities into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

  1304

  ROUTE TO GREEKS

  The design for the rota system has been attributed to Prince Yaroslav the Wise (d. 1054), who in his “Testament” or will divided his realm among his sons. He left Kiev to his eldest son. He assigned secondary towns, which became centers of principalities that comprised Kievan Rus, to his younger sons and admonished them to obey their eldest brother as they had their father. Although the Testament did not provide a detailed order for succession, the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians Sergei Soloviev and Vasily Klyuchevsky concluded that it set up an arrangement for the entire Rurikid dynasty to possess and rule the realm of Kievan Rus. It created a hierarchy among the princely brothers and, in later generations, cousins that was paralleled by a hierarchy among their territorial domains. It anticipated that when the prince of Kiev died, he would be succeeded by the most senior surviving member of his generation, who would move from his seat to Kiev. The next prince in the generational hierarchy would replace him, with each younger prince moving up a step on the ladder of succession. When all members of the eldest generation of the dynasty had died, succession would pass to their sons. For a prince to become eligible for the Kievan throne, however, his father must have held that position.

  The rota system was revised by a princely agreement concluded at Lyubech in 1097. The agreement ended the practice of rotation of the princes through the secondary seats in conjunction with succession to Kiev. Instead, a designated branch of the dynasty would permanently rule each principality within Kievan Rus. The princes of each dynastic branch continued to use the rota system to determine succession to their primary seat. The exceptions were Kiev itself, where rotation among the eligible members of the entire dynasty resumed after 1113, and Novgorod, which selected its own prince after 1136.

  Succession to the Kievan throne was, nevertheless, frequently contested. Scholars have interpreted the repeated internecine conflicts and their meaning for the existence and functionality of the rota system in a variety of ways. Some regard the rota system to have been intended to apply only to Yaroslav’s three eldest sons and the three central principalities assigned to them. Others have argued that the system was not fully formulated by Yaroslav, but evolved as the dynasty grew, took possession of a greater expanse of territory, and had to confront, by diplomacy and by war, unforeseen complications in determining “seniority.” Others contend that the Rurikid princes had no succession system, but threatened or used force to determine which prince would sit on the Kievan throne.

  Despite the conflicts over succession, which have been cited as an indicator of a weak political system and a lack of unity within the ruling dynasty, the rota system has also been interpreted as a constructive means of accommodating competing interests and tensions among members of a large dynasty. It enabled the dynasty to provide a successor to the Kievan throne in an age when high mortality rates tended to reduce the number of eligible princes. It also emphasized the symbolic cen-trality of Kiev even as the increasing political and economic strength of component principalities of Kievan Rus undermined the unity of the dynastic realm.

  After the Mongol invasions of 1237 through 1240 and the disintegration of Kievan Rus, the rota system continued to prevail in the northeastern Rus principalities until Yuri (ruled 1317-1322) and Ivan I Kalita (ruled 1328-1341) of Moscow, whose father had not held the position, became grand princes of Vladimir. Their descendants monopolized the position and replaced the rota system with a vertical succession system, according to which the eldest surviving son of a reigning prince was heir to the throne. See also: KIEVAN RUS; YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Dimnik, Martin. (1987). “The ‘Testament’ of Iaroslav ‘The Wise’: A Re-examination.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 29(4):369-386. Kollmann, Nancy Shields. (1990). “Collateral Succession in Kievan Rus’.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14(3/4): 377-387. Stokes, A. D. (1970). “The System of Succession to the Thrones of Russia, 1054-1113.” In Gorski Vijenac: A Garland of Essays offered to Professor Elizabeth Mary Hill, ed. R. Auty, L. R. Lewitter, A. P. Vlasto. Cambridge, UK: The Modern Humanities Research Association.

  JANET MARTIN

  ROUTE TO GREEKS

  The key commercial and communication route between Kievan Rus and Byzantium, and called “The Way From the Varangians [Vikings] to the Greeks”

  1305

  RSFSR

  in the Russian Primary Chronicle, this riverine route began in the southeastern Baltic at the mouth of the Western Dvina, connecting to the upper Dnieper at portage areas near Smolensk, and continued through Kiev to the lower Dnieper, where it entered the Black Sea, finally terminating in Constantinople. An alternative route in the north passed from Smolensk portages to the Lovat, which led to Lake Ilmen and, via the Volkhov and Novgorod, on to Lake Ladoga and thence, by way of the Neva, to the Gulf of Finland and the eastern Baltic. While segments of this route were used from the Stone Age onward, it did not achieve its fullest extent until the late ninth and early tenth centuries when Rus princes unified the waterways and adjoining lands under the Rus state.

  In the mid-tenth century, the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus described (De administrando imperio) the southern part of the route, noting the existence of seven cataracts in the lower Dnieper, passable only by portage, and the attendant dangers of Pecheneg attacks. According to Constantine, the Slavs-from as far north as Novgorod-cut monoxyla (dugouts) during the winter and floated them downstream to Kiev in spring. There, these boats were rebuilt and equipped with oars, rowlocks, and “other tackle.” In early summer, the Rus filled these boats with goods to sell in Constantinople and rowed downstream to the island of St. Aitherios (Berezan) in the mouth of the Dnieper, where they again re-equipped their boats with “tackle as is needed, sails and masts and rudders which they bring with them.” Thereafter, they sailed out into the Black Sea, following its western coast to Constantinople. With the Rus-Byzantine commercial treaties of 907, 911, 944, and 971, Rus traders were common visitors in Constantinople, where they stayed for as long as six months annually, from spring through the summer months, at the quarters of St. Mamas.

  The Rus traded furs, wax, and honey for Byzantine wine, olive oil, silks, glass jewelry and dishware, church paraphernalia, and other luxuries. During the tenth century a
nd perhaps a bit later, the Rus also sold slaves to the Byzantines. Rus and Scandinavian pilgrims and mercenaries also traveled to the eastern Mediterranean via this route. On several occasions in the tenth century and in 1043, the Rus used this route to invade Byzantium.

  During inter-princely Rus disputes, the route was sometimes closed, as at the turn of the twelfth century when Kiev blockaded trade with Novgorod. On occasion, nomadic peoples south of Kiev also blocked the route or impeded trade, and Rus princes responded with military expeditions. With the occupation of Constantinople by Latin Crusaders in 1204, Rus merchants shifted their trade to the Crimean port of Sudak. The route was abandoned following the Mongol conquest of Rus in about 1240. However, up to that time, Kiev’s trade via the route flourished, particularly from the eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries. See also: BYZANTIUM, INFLUENCE OF; FOREIGN TRADE; KIEVAN RUS; NORMANIST CONTROVERSY; PRIMARY CHRONICLE; VIKINGS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY