Images of Muscovy

James H. Billington

doi:10.2307/3000541

Images of Muscovy

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017

James H. Billington

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Type: Discussion
Information: Slavic Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 1962 , pp. 24 - 34

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3000541 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1962

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1 To this list one could add many Western admirers whose image of Old Russia has often been largely a function of their discontent with new Europe. See, for example, Alfred Rambaud's revealing exclamation in the introduction to La Russie Epique (Paris, 1876): “Nous sommes devenus d'abord tellement Gallo-Romains, puis tellement Français, que nous avons cessé d'être des Gaulois. Ah! si nous possédions sur nos origines celtiques tout ce que possédent les Russes sur leur origines slaves!“

2 The Soviet glorification of Kievan culture has led to a diminution of serious scholarly work on the later period. Though there has been more done recently, there is still no popular volume for the Muscovite period comparable to Grekov's often republished The Culture of Kievan Rus (Moscow, 1947); no broad study of secular town culture of the fourteenth-seventeenth century period comparable to Tikhomirov's The Towns of Ancient Russia (Moscow, 1959) for the earlier period; no continuation beyond the Kievan period of the projected history of Russian culture by (2 vols.; Moscow-Leningrad, 1948-51). There is probably as much written on the Lay of the Host of Igor as on the entire literature of any subsequent century of Old Russia. Western scholars have only partially redressed the predictable Soviet neglect of the religious factor, and the best Western scholars often concentrate on the Kievan period. Fedotov's, G. The Russian Religious Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946)Google Scholar deals only with this period; his useful, but less scholarly, Treasury of Russian Spirituality (New York, 1948) extends, however, almost to the present. F. Dvornik's exaggerated characterization of Russia, Kievan as “a center of culture far ahead of anything similar in the latin West” (The Making of Central and Eastern Europe [London, 1949], p. 240)Google Scholar leads him to exaggerate the “darkness” and “obscurity” of the Muscovite period, ibid., pp. 260-61.

3 Among the many works pointing from different perspectives to the existence of an original Muscovite culture linked with the North and distinct from Byzantine and even Kievan civilization are , No. 2, 1940.

4 (St. Petersburg, 1871), p. 240. Tikhomirov (Towns … , pp. 432-34)undermines the theories based on overenthusiastic readings of recent Soviet archaeological findings that Moscow was in fact much older than its first mention of 1147 in the Chronicles.

5 Estimate of (Moscow, 1956), p. 531. B. H. Sumner, , Survey of Russian History (2nd ed.; London, 1947), p. 182 Google Scholar, estimates that 150 cloisters were founded in Russia as a whole between 1340 and 1440; de Journel, M.-J. Rouët, Monachisme et Monastères Russes (Paris, 1952), pp. 39 Google Scholar, 43, estimates 180 from the early fourteenth century to the beginning of the fifteenth and 300 for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a whole; Igor Smolitsch, Russisches Mönchtum (Würzburg, 1953), pp. 81-82, n. 2, follows Kliuchevsky in citing figures that suggest slightly smaller over-all totals. The old but still valuable history of monasticism by (Moscow, 1855), pp. 9–10, makes it clear that the period prior to the foundation of the Monastery of St. Sergius is only a kind of prehistory of Russian monasticism, and that subsequent monasticism was a distinct and more important development. For this development, see materials listed in Smolitsch, op. cit., pp. 14-27; and (Kiev, 1902).

6 The extent of basic pre-Petrine literacy and education is underestimated even in such balanced discussions of Russian culture as that of (St. Petersburg 1892) and (Moscow, 1913), especially pp. 5-6, n. 1, is more skeptical. Some measure of the extent of the loosely organized but effective primary education in high Muscovy is shown by the fact that more than 300, 000 alphabet primers were printed in the Moscow printing office during the second half of the seventeenth century (figure cited from an unpublished dissertation in ..., pp. 558-59)— compared with 33, 237 in Lvov (one of the most active of the West Russian printing centers) for the entire period 1582-1722. See . (Moscow, 1954), p. 52. In addition to this type of primer (bukvar“), the dictionary of foreign terms (azbukovnik) became a virtual encyclopedia, and .an important media of popular education, beginning in the mid-sixteenth century. See (Kazan, 1877), especially pp. 23 ff. and bibliography, p. 3, n. 1. This popular literacy, however, contributed little to, and gained little from, the written literary culture of the monasteries. See A. Poppé, “Dans la Russie médiévale, Xe-XIIIe siécles: Écriture et culture, ” Annales Economies Sociétés Civilizations, January-February, 1961, pp. 12-35. The separation of monastic from popular culture became more acute in many respects after the fourteenth century, following the introduction of complex cursive writing (skoropis’) and South Slavic stylistic embellishments and archaisms. Popular secular literature—epics, tales, etc.—thus tended to be transmitted in oral rather than written form. Even in the monasteries much of the instruction was oral—a novice being 1.nown by the term “obedient listener” (poslushnik).

7 See the account of building such a church in Vologda at the time of the plague of 1653-54 in , I I I (1893), especially pp. 13-16.

8 In addition to basic Russian and Western works on these churches cited in George Hamilton, , The Art and Architecture of Russia (London, 1954), p. 278 Google Scholar, see materials in (Moscow, 1959), IV, 650-58.

9 For a brief but perceptive and up-to-date effort to characterize the distinctive culture of Novgorod, see , No. 1, 1960, pp. 42-52. Regional peculiarities and loyalties are, of course, generally played down (if not suppressed altogether from the record) by Soviet scholars.

10 Citations from Avvakum and the influential late sixteenth-century Ukrainian elder from Mount Athos, Ivan Vyshensky, referenced and shown to be typical by Florovsky, A. (brother of Professor Florovsky), Le conflit de deux generations—la latine et la byzantine— dans la vie intellectuelle de I'Europe orientate aux XVI-XVII siecles (Prague, 1937), pp. 8–10, 16.Google Scholar

11 Particularly as cited by Grekov at the conclusion of his Culture …, p. 144. For Tatar influence—most marked in administrative, military, and ceremonial matters— (St. Petersburg, 1911) supplements the discussion and material in Vernadsky, George, The Mongols and Russia (New Haven, 1953), pp. 333–90Google Scholar, and Cherniavsky, M., “Khan or Basileus, ” Journal of the History of Ideas, Oct.-Dec, 1959, pp. 459–76CrossRef Google Scholar.

12 On the lack of any distinct legal vocabulary in Muscovy, see articles by Boris Unbegaun in Revue des études slaves, XXXIV (1957), 129-35; and XXXVI (1959), 47-58.. Although hierarchical authority and precedence had been established earlier and canoa law extensively used in both the ecclesiastical and civil spheres, there was considerable confusion and local variation prior to the establishment of a central bureaucracy under Patriarch Filaret (1619-33) and the first publication of the basic “Pilot Book” in 1650' and 1653. See (Petrograd, 1917)—doctoral thesis of the recently deceased Metropolitan of Moscow—and other material referenced in , XVI, No. 31 (St. Petersburg, 1895), 292-94.

13 For the South Slav influence on Old Russia see two basic surveys of the entire subject with documentation of the Russian and South Slav materials respectively: (Moscow, 1947), pp. 125-201; and V. Mo§in, “O periodizaciji rusko-juzneslavenskih knjizevnih veza, ” Slovo (No. 11?, 1961?—copy consulted in manuscript by courtesy of the editor, Professor Hamm of Vienna). For the “first wave, ” see also (Moscow, 1959), pp. 59-62; and titles listed in Sumner, Survey … , p. 471, n. 179, second paragraph.

14 On the Hesychast tradition and its transmission to Russia, see I. Smolitsch, , Leben und Lehre der Starzen (Cologne, 1952), pp. 23–63 Google Scholar, with valuable references pp. 234-39, and in his Mönchtum, pp. 107-8. See, in addition, Jean Meyendorff, , St. Grégoire Palamas et la mystique orthodoxe (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar.

15 In addition to Schaeder and other discussions of the “Third Rome” theory referenced in R Wolff, , “The Three Romes,” Daedalus, Spring, 1959, p. 309, nn. 1, 2Google Scholar, see (Moscow, 1891), I, especially pp. 166 ff.

16 (Moscow, 1957), I, 83-91; Uspensky, L. and Lossky, V., The Meaning of Icons (Boston, 1952), especially pp. 59, 68 Google Scholar; Hamilton, op. cit., pp. 66-69.

17 Uspensky and Lossky, op. cit., p. 59. Old Russian civilization, in the words of Zenkovsky, V., viewed itself as “moving toward the transformation of earthly dominion into ecclesiastical dominion.” A History of Russian Philosophy (New York, 1953), I, 37 Google Scholar.

18 Uspensky and Lossky, op. cit., p. 39. The defeat of the iconoclasts just before Russia's conversion was a kind of pictorial vindication of the Christology of the creed, “a second victory for the human image of Christ exalted over the image of salvation through the transformation of humanity into something wholly different, implied in most of the older oriental heresies.” George Every, , The Byzantine Patriarchate 451-1204 (London, 1947), p. 111 Google Scholar. Uspensky and Lossky justly remark (op. cit., p. 46) that “if Byzantium was preeminent in giving the world theology expressed in words, theology expressed in images was given preeminently by Russia.” Josef Myslivec, , Ikona (Prague, 1947), p. 47 Google Scholar, refers to the icon as the “everlasting memorial of the victory of Orthodoxy and of Platonic idealism” in the East; Eugene Trubetskoi refers to the icon in the title of his book as an (Moscow, 1916). For a basic history, see N. Kondakov, , The Russian Icon (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar; for an analysis and glossary of terms, see Reau, L., L'Art Russe des origines a Pierre le Grand (Paris, 1921)Google Scholar; for critical discussion of other monographs and reproductions, see Hamilton, op. cit., pp. 272-76.

19 Mark 9: 2-8; or, more vividly, Matthew 17: 1-9; and Acts 2: 1-4. These scenes are, of course, favorite subjects of icons.

20 Matthew 11: 28.

21 Fedotov, , Russian Religious Mind, p. 208 Google Scholar.

22 For Ivan IV's fascination with the concept of chin and its application to musical ceremony, see , No. 5, 1947, especially pp. 37-38; for Alexis Mikhailovich's later fixation on the idea see the article by , XXIV (1887), pp. 267-69, and also Alexis' famous chin for his falcons reprinted in (Moscow, 1856), pp. 87-146. See also ibid., pp. 125-26, n. 16, for the significance of chin and other etymologically related terms; V. Du Feu, “Some Features of the Vocabulary of Russian Royal Letters (1613-38), ” Oxford Slavonic Papers, III (1958), 160-61, for the uses of uchiniti; and (3rd ed.; Petrograd, 1918), for the actual status and history of chiny within the society.

23 This idea is present not only in Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West (New York, 1928), II, p. 435, and in apocalyptically inclined Russian historians and novelists of the late imperial period, but even at the beginning of the semi-official novelistic portrayal of the Bolshevik take-over: Tolstoy's, Alexis Road to Calvary (New York, 1946), pp. 1–3 Google Scholar.

24 From the “Sermon on Law and Grace, ” by Ilarion of Kiev, the first native Metropolitan of Kiev, in (Moscow, 1938), p. 60. The idea of a “new Jerusalem“—at Constantinople, Kiev, Moscow, or at Patriarch Nikon's monastic retreat of that name—was at times even more important than that of a “new Rome” in the Christian East. See D Stremooukhoff, , “Moscow the Third Rome: Sources of the Doctrine,” Speculum, Jan., 1953, pp. 84–86 CrossRef Google Scholar; R Stupperich, , “Kiev—das zweite Jerusalem,” Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, XII (1935), pp. 332–54Google Scholar; and op. cit., pp. 173-75, 187-88, 214-15. On the popular Kitezh legend, whereby God allegedly preserved this faithful city from Batu Khan, placing it in a lake beyond the Volga (or, in some versions, on a mountain), see (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936).