,0 o. <',. .-^'■■ .0 o >0 o. <^^ --^^ ^■^> ,^Y 8 1 ^ '■ \'' '>■ V -l\^ V / exile of destroyed Troy, for they knew that even the most fantastic legend conforms with Nature's laws. The Varegues were no new-comers in the country. When the successors of Rurik, abandoning Novgorod, moved down to Kiev, they found many of their own people settled there, for since many years the great river Dnieper had become a commercial passage from Norway down to the Black Sea and to the splendid and opulent chief town of the Byzantine Empire ; this was such a powerful point of attraction that this early period of our history is full of raids on Byzantium. But this half-commercial, half-military intercourse with the east- ern Roman Empire was destined to have a greater im- portance. Pascal says that rivers are walking roads — by that walking road, the Dnieper, Christianity entered Russia. It did not enter at once. From the beginning of the tenth century it infiltrates by individual cases ; in the middle of the century there was already a church in Kiev (consecrated to St. Elijah). In 957 Princess Olga, mother of the ruling Prince Sviatoslav (Rurik's 38 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY grandson), goes to Byzantium to be baptized in the Christian faith ; the Emperor himself is her god- father.i Her son did not consent to give up the paganism of his forefathers, but her grandson, Prince Vladimir, sent ambassadors to investigate the religions of foreign countries. When they came back, they said to their prince : " No man would like to eat bitter after having tasted honey, so we cannot think of returning to our gods after having witnessed the divine service of the Greek." The service which made such a profound impression on Vladimir's ambassadors was the solemn liturgy celebrated by the Patriarch of Constantinople in the presence of the two brother-emperors Constan- tine and Basil, under the dome of St. Sophia. Vladi- mir decided to embrace the Christian religion and to request the Byzantine emperors that they would pro- vide for the baptism of his people. But he did not care to take up the part of a simple solicitor ; so he marched with his soldiers against Chersonesos, a Greek colony, on the coast of the present Crimea, intending in the case of success to make of the new religion a sort of military contribution. The plan was carried out, Chersonesos was taken, and ambassadors were sent to Constantinople to ask the Emperor's sister Anna in marriage for Prince Vladimir. The change of religion was required as the condition from the Emperor's side, and when Vladimir assented, a Greek bishop came over ^ In the following poetical terms does the old chronicler picture the signif- icance of Princess Olga's baptism. " She was the forerunner of Christianity in Russia, as the morning star is the precursor of the sun, and the dawn the precursor of the day. As the moon shines at midnight she shone in the midst of a pagan people. She was like a pearl amid dirt, for the people were in the mire of their sins and not purified by baptism. She purified herself in a holy bath and removed the garb of sin of the old man Adam." AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 39 to Chersonesos. A fine church at a short distance from Sebastopol contains in our days the marble basin wherein the baptizer of Russia was baptized in the Christian faith. When Vladimir returned to Kiev the whole population was gathered into the Dnieper, parted in different groups, every group received a new name, and all were baptized in the Christian faith. This was in 987. When in the next century the dissensions between Constantinople and Rome brought about the great scission of the Christian Church, Russia, as the god-daughter of Byzantium, followed her example and ever since has refused acknowledgment of the Pope's supremacy. Vladimir becomes a zealous Christian ; thanks to him, churches, cathedrals, monasteries spring up on the picturesque bank of the Dnieper, and Kiev becomes and remains till this hour a point of pilgrimage for the whole country. After his death the Grand Duke Vladi- mir, canonized by the Church, becomes one of the most revered saints, but he becomes also the centre of national epic poetry. Let us take this double character of Vladimir's memory as a guidepost for our further investigations ; let us examine first the activity stirred up by the newly imported religion, and let us then pass over to the native elements which find ex- pression for themselves in national poetry. The first agents of the preaching of Christianity were the Greek clergy ; the channel by which it entered people's consciences was the Slavonic translation of the Bible effected by the two Greek brothers Cyril and Methodius, a century before, for the use of the Mora- vians ; ^ the hearths whence Christianity irradiated to 1 See Louis Leger, " Cyrile et Methode." Paris, 1868. 40 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY spread over the country were monasteries. We hardly can realize the importance of monasteries at that time, in a country where there were no schools, no trace of learning, a country whose national self-consciousness was only just beginning to awake, and had no moral centre to converge to, a country whose greatest part was plunged in deepest night of paganism, and whose population was in full activity of poetical creation, composing those songs which were to become the lay collaborators of the clergy in educating future genera- tions. The monastery is the summit of everything at that time : it accumulates all virtue, all learning, and, we might as well say, all power, for except in warfare the advice of those learned men who lived in prayer and fasting was often asked arid followed by the princes. The princes themselves gravitate to the monastery ; the two powers respectively attract each other ; the princes, having been the first to enjoy the benefits of learning, become by right of intellectual aristocracy the immediate accessories of the monks outside the monastery's gates ; they often themselves resemble mo- nastic warriors or martial monks. Such are the con- ditions of individual life in the early age of nations : a man cannot provide for his physical necessities unless he fights : he cannot read a book unless he becomes a monk ; the gradual attenuation of these two extremes is what we call civilization, and its degree can be measured by the fa- cility with which both physical and intellectual necessities can be satisfied without encroaching upon each other. The literature which originated and grew in the monasteries consisted either of translations from the Greek, or of original writings ; the first became the pat- AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 41 terns imitated by the latter. It was of sacred character ; lives of saints, sermons, descriptions of pilgrimages, etc. All these writings in the impressions they produce present a strange combination of a sort of affected didacticism (inevitable in any literature of imitative character), and of a genuine artlessness and freshness which find way through the exigences of a severe form imported by foreign teachers.-^ Amidst the rude specimens of ecclesiastical eloquence of that time the sermon of Bishop Ilarion (105 1), "On the law and the grace," stands apart from all else, and forms in its way a literary phenomenon. " If you trans- late it into modern Russian," says a critic, "you may take it for a discourse of Karamsin's, — so beautifully eloquent it is and so masterly composed."^ A great charm emanates from the description of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem by the Prior Daniel.^ The humble monk writes down all he has seen in order to give a spiritual satisfaction to those who would like, "though with their bodies remaining at home," to make a mental pilgrimage to Jerusalem, " for many people," he says, "attain the Holy Land not by travel- ling, but simply by their good deeds." Interesting are the historical particulars of his sojourn in Palestine : the kindness of King Baldwin of Jerusalem, who invited the Russian pilgrim to accompany him in his expedi- ^ See Schaffarik (Safarik) " Uebersicht der altesten kirchslavonischen Literatur." Leipzig, 1848. 2 Goloubinsky, " History of the Russian Church." 2 vols. Moscow, 1880 (Russian). ^ French translation by A. Norov, " Igoumene russe, Pelerinage en Terre Sainte au commencement du xii siecle (11 13-1115)," St. Petersburg, 1864. German transl. by A. Leskien in "Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palas- tinavereins," B. vii. Leipzig, 18S4. 42 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY tion to Damascus ; touching is his constant preoccupa- tion with his own people left at home ; the recital of how he went to the market, how he bought a big crystal hanging lamp, how he filled it with oil — " pure oil, without water" — how he placed it at the foot of our Lord's Sepulchre, — " and there it was lighted," he adds," in the name of all the Russian princes, of all the Russian land, and all the Christians of the Russian land." 1 Parallel with this strictly religious literature, in the ec- clesiastic sense of the word, a collateral popular religious literature developed. From the very first the inquiring mind of the early Christians had been interested in those facts of the holy history which are only men- tioned but not described in the Scriptures ; and in Russia, as in Western Europe, a great many writings appear as a sort of supplement to the Bible. Among these apocryphas we must mention the very popular "Wandering of God's Mother through the Tortures" (twelfth century). The Virgin Mary one day after her assumption, attended by the Archangel Michael, under- takes to visit all who are suffering in the different circles of hell. When she returns from her doleful peregrination and stands in the presence of Jesus Christ, she intercedes for the unfortunate sinners. The Son of God, " for the sake of His Father's mercy, for the sake of His Mother's prayer, for the sake of Michael, the Archangel, and for the sake of all the Saints," releases the sinners from pains for fifty-two days, — from Good Thursday to Pentecost. ^ It is worthy of note that with his epic style the author of the " Pil- grimage " combines such topographical precision that even to-day the French Dominicans in their archEeological researches rely upon it. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 43 This apocryphical literature had a great influence on the imaginative spirit of the people, and brought about a kind of poetry which we might call " ecclesiastic folk- lore" ; and which we shall examine later. The most precious relics, transmitted to us by the diligence of the monks, are the annals of our history. Observed by ocular witnesses or gathered from others' recitals, the turbulent events of those ages are intro- duced under the silent vaults of the cell, and, by the trembling light of the oil-lamp, fixed by a pious hand on the yellow parchment. The oldest annals are those by Nestor, a monk of the eleventh century, who is revered as the " father of Russian history," and the oldest tran- script of his annals is a manuscript of 1377, consequently almost three hundred years later than the original.^ Its title in an approximate translation would read as follows : " Narration of Times of Yore : about how Russia came to life, about who was the first to rule in Kiev, and how the Russian country began to be."^ Like all chroniclers of all countries, Nestor begins his narration from the Biblical times, viz., with Noah, and in following up the different descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth in their wanderings he gets to the Slavonians and finally to the Russians. Two hundred and sixty years of our history are de- scribed by him, — from 850 to mo; of the last forty years he speaks as an ocular witness.^ 1 Russia's oldest written document is the so-called " Gospel of Ostro- mir " — the text of the gospel transcribed by a deacon called Gregory, for Ostromir, provost of Novgorod, in 1056-1057. It is preserved in the Im- perial Public Library at St. Petersburg. 2 French translation by Louis Leger. Paris, Leroux, 1884. ^ Russian chronicles precede by one century the first French chronicle by Villehardouin (d. 1213) and the first Italian annals by Matteo Spi- ^ 44 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY Many followed Nestor's example ; others transcribed or compiled in chronological order disjointed fragments of older annals, wishing as one of them says " to gather all these flowers into one verbal basket." Thus, an uninterrupted thread of chronicles runs through the whole history, dying away towards the last years of the seventeenth century. With the continuous process of copying, a sort of superposition could not help forming over the original text ; later investigations and discoveries have undermined the reliability of some of the narra- tions regarding the earliest times, still they remain unaltered at the bottom of our national creed : science may show us as clearly as two and two are four, that we were oysters before we evolved into human shape, — we shall never cease admiring Raphael's frescos representing the six days of the creation.^ It is hard for one not familiar with the text to form an idea of the impression produced by these annals ; the simplicity and majesty of the language,^ joined to a complete absence of literary effort and any personal element,^ are of such power that a few quotations in a page of modern Russian text communicate a peculiar nella (i 247-1 268). One of the earliest German chronicles dates from the fourteenth century (JohannRiedesel, of Hess, d. 1341). Chronicles con- temporary with that of Nestor were transcribed only in two languages: Greek in Byzantium, Latin in the rest of Europe. ^ One of the best researches on Russian chronicles is the work of Schloezer : " Nestor. Rugsische Annalen in ihrer Slavischen Grund- sprache verglichen, iibersetzt und erklart." 5 B. Gottingen, 1805- 1809. 2 Fr. Miklosich, "Ueber die Sprache der altesten russischen Chronis- ten, vorzuglich Nestor's." Vienna, 1855. 3 Impersonality is the characteristic feature by which Russian annals differ from the western as those by Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Giovanni Villani, and others. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 45 dignity to the style of the simplest manual of Russian history. 1 Such were the chief elements of the intellectual life * which developed on the basis of the newly imported Byzantine Christianity. Let us now follow them up outside the threshold of the convent, and let us see what resulted from their encounter with the genuine currents of poetical creation working in the people. We said awhile ago that Christianity found this people in the full activity of its imaginative powers ; this produced a very strange conflict, or rather fusion, at the cost of reciprocal concessions or compromises between the new religion and the preceding divinizing of Nature's powers. The life of the people was full of ceremonies and rites, by which it used to celebrate all the events of existence from birth to death ; all this could not be up- rooted at once, and, incapable of giving up their habits, the people incorporated them into the new religion. Many customs, such as dancing, singing certain songs, jumping over burning piles, collecting certain plants, were transported to Christian holidays, — the mere agreement in the phonetic consonants of the name of a Christian saint and that of a former God being often a sufficient reason for such a transplantation ; all festivi- ties in honour of the summer were grouped round St. v/ John's day (24th of June); the prophet Elijah took the place of the former god of thunder, and even to-day popular superstition identifies thunder with the rolling of Elijah's fire-wheeled chariot. By and by the old sig- nificance faded away from the people's memory : that 1 According to a critic the style of Nestor's annals could have arisen only under the influence of a close acquaintance with the Bible. Shevy- rioff, " History of Russian Literature." 4 vols. Moscow, i860 (Russian). 46 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY which was a rite centuries ago survives as an ordinary amusement, with no inner meaning, and simply connected with a certain date or a certain time of the year.^ But the clergy had to fight for a long time against what re- ceived the alarming and suggestive name of "duple- creed." Strange to say, in spite of this vitality of the ritual side of paganism, the people's spiritual interest was radically turned towards Christian subjects ; we might say that elements of the old creed kept hold of the people's memory, whereas Christianity took hold of its imagination. This is a side of the question that has not i-been appreciated by those of our critics who deplore the insufficiency of the Christian culture at that time and accuse our early clergy of inactivity. A whole world of poetical creation, something like a "religious folk- lore," stands there to indicate that, whatever the poverty of missionary means was, however vague the first delinea- tion of the Christian code of morality, Christianity in the person of its founders and in the events of its history had become a constant companion of national thought ; how- ever fantastic sometimes the subjects of these songs, how- ever skin-deep the comprehension of the real Christian spirit, they spread the names and facts, they made them familiar to the people, they prepared for the acceptance of the law's spirit; it was like a self-education of a big child : popular imagination became the missionary of popular belief. Let us mention a few of these "reli- gious poems," and first of all that touching song called 1 On Slavonic mythology : Dr. Gr. Krek, " Einleitung in die Slavische Literaturgeschichte." Gratz, 1887. Louis Leger, "Esquisse sommaire de la mythologie Slave," in "Nouvelles etudes slaves." 2d serie. Paris, 1886. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 47 "Adam's Lament," v/hich begins with the desperate call of a man who feels the irreparability of his loss : — Paradise, my paradise, Beautiful my paradise ! For my sake, Paradise, thou wert created. By Eve's fault, Paradise, thou hast been closed! Joseph is a popular personage, Solomon is a favourite ; the chief events of the New Testament, the Annuncia- tion, St. John the Precursor, the Baptism of our Lord, Christmas, are all treated as subjects for poetry. The " Song of the Dove-Book " unrolls a curious scheme of cosmogony. A book falls down from heaven, and fantas- tic kings from David to Vladimir gather round it and by reading it learn all that is going on everywhere " even in the depths " ; a queer geography appears in this anachro- nistic story, where Jerusalem is taken as the " umbilicus of the earth," and where the river Jordan flows out of the lake Ilmen, — the one near which Rurik settled down.^ Parallel with this poetry, which is an evident result of imported literary influence, we see the vigorous up- springing of genuine epic poetry. The chief motive of the so-called " Kievcycle " is the fighting with the Mon- golian tribes of the east or, according to the expres- sion of one of our critics, the fight with tiie desert.^ We touch here one of the manifestations of the sec- ular struggle between Europe and Asia, which began ^ On Russia's apocryphal literature : M. Gastner, " Ilchester lectures on Greco-Slavonic literature and its relation to the folk-lore of Europe dur- ing the Middle Ages." London, 1887. 2 A quite different character is presented by the " Novgorod Cycle " ; this commercial republic, which belonged to the Hanseatic League, and 48 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY under the walls of Troy and remains undecided until to-day. Ilia Mouromets is the most typical and popular figure of the Kiev epopee : a peasant-hero, not a warrior, with a sense of justice and a natural aversion to all iniquity ; simple-hearted, good-natured, never making a fuss about his exploits, he rides along on his steed, and with that supernatural strength with which two unknown beggar- travellers one day endowed him by means of a beverage, he fights against evil, and protects misery and weakness ; cheerful and jolly, of pleasant company, he becomes a favourite at Prince Vladimir's table, commanding respect from everyone and keeping a sort of rank of his own among the noble members of the Prince's household. If Ilia is the soul of the epopee, Vladimir is its centre. The hospitable court of the Grand Duke of Kiev, where once a week a table is dressed for the " boyars " and the doors of the kitchen always stand open for the poor, is the con- verging point where all heroes gather ; it is to their Prince's service they bring their physical strength, it is for his glory they fight, for "Vladimir, our beautiful sun," is the hope and joy of everybody, he is the light of the country, the smile of the people ; other princes scarcely exist, he counts for all Russia, and centuries after he has died he is still the Grand Duke of Kiev. Thus anticipating history, popular fiction accomplished in the Kiev-period that union of the country which actually was secured only in the middle of the Mosco- vite period. The characteristic of the Russian epopee consists in flourished till the end of the fifteenth century, brought to life a sort of poetry we might call " commercial epopee " as a contrast to the " heroic epopee " of Kiev. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 49 the fact that, while in Western Europe the epic songs had become the prey of individual poets and thus were transmitted to print, not as popular productions, but as literary compositions, our epopees preserved their virgin freshness till the very moment they were fixed by print. The writing down of our epic songs began in the last century, though at first with no great result ; towards the middle of the present century, how- ever, a few zealous seekers, exploring the northern prov- inces of Russia, succeeded in discovering positively inexhaustible treasures of epic poetry, which were brought to light hardly more than twenty years ago. In the course of forty-eight days, one Hilferding, to whom we owe the most valuable discoveries in this line, came across seventy peasant singers, and wrote down more than three hundred songs. This was in the prov- ince of Olonets, far to the north of Russia, while in the province of Kiev, in the land of their birth, not one has been gathered. Why this migration of national poetry, why this flight of the popular songs into the inacces- sible forests ? Perhaps the clergy looked with an unfavourable eye on what they considered a profane amusement ; perhaps, when those political struggles began which tormented Kiev and Moscow, they were passed over and entrusted to those quiet regions of the north; perhaps they themselves had the presentiment that it would be better to fly and to hide in the deep forests, before they should be pursued and dispersed by the piercing whistle of civilization at whose approach so many songs have died away, so many dreams have vanished.^ ^ On the Russian folk-lore : W. R, S. Ralston, " Russian folk-tales." London, 1873. "Songs of the Russian People." London, 1872. Miss E 50 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY Such was the field on which popular creative forces exercised themselves, and such were the plants this field produced. Of course we can only touch on this subject in such a concise and rapid sketch. We must now say a word on the only specimen of individual poetical creation we possess of the ante-Mon- golian period, not because it is the only remaining one, but because it is unique in every way and because so powerful is its poetical force as to make it to-day and forever one of the finest jewels of our literature. "The Word about Igor's Fights," ^ relates the story of an unsuccessful expedition of Prince Igor's, in 1185, against the Polovtsy, one of the nomadic tribes, his march, his defeat, the lament of his wife Yaroslavna, who waits for him on the city walls of Poutivl, his flight, and his return. The wonderful impression produced by this simple story lies in a poetical breath of an almost savage impetuosity, unbridled, irresistible, which imbues with the animating force of its mythological imagination anything it touches : the hours of the day, the twilight, the wind, the desert, the river, the grass, — all is animated and vibrates and lives up to a harmony of sympathy with man. New romanticism with its Isabel F. Hapgood, " The Epic Songs of Russia." New York, 1886. Ram- baud, " La Russie Epique." Paris, 1876. Tiander, " Russische Volks- Epopeen." St. Petersburg, 1894. Bodenstedt, " Die poetische Ukraine." 1845. W. WoUner, " Untersuchungen iiber die Volksepic der Grossrus- sen." Leipzig, 1879. Valuable information on Slavonic philology, poetry, history, etc., in Prof. Jagic's periodical, " Archiv fiir slavische Philologie." Vienna. 1 Miss Hapgood in her introduction to the "Epic Songs of Russia,"' translates : " Word of Igor's Troop." The author commits the very com- mon, error of taking the word " polk " in its present significance, " regi- ment," whereas it formerly meant "expedition." We thought this latter a rather modern expression and substituted for it " fights." AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 51 attempts at animating Nature by awakening the shallow phantoms of ancient legends has never succeeded in imposing upon us as powerfully the illusion of Nature's participation in human life, as this poem, where flowers in the field fade for sorrow. I pick out at random these few lines describing the beginning of a battle : — Lo! Stribog's ^ children take their flight : Blowing winds, — they carry arrows, Send them straight on Igor's army. . . . Muddy yellow grow the rivers, Moans the field and dust arises. And already through the dust You may see the flapping banners ! Wonderful are the descriptions of the prairies,^ the nomadic camp, the noise of the grass when the tents are moved, the creaking of the wheels like the noise of swans' wings : nothing is left unobserved, and every- thing is vivified by the poet's imagination. This poem was discovered in 1795; the original, a manuscript of the fourteenth century, perished in the great fire of Moscow at the time of Napoleon's invasion in 1812;^ the author is unknown, but undoubtedly contemporary with the events described. Unfortunately it stands alone ; all critics agree that it must be considered as a fragment of a whole cycle of military epopees which must have flourished in the immediate surrounding of the Prince.^ We have finished with the poetical pro- 1 A mythological divinity, father of the winds (the Greek ^olus). ^ " Seven and a half centuries before Gogol had dashed off his pictures of South Russian steppes, the author of the ' Word about Igor's Fights ' already made us feel their beauty." S. Shevyrioff, op. cit. ^ A transcript was found among the papers of Catherine the Great. * French translations (more or less complete and satisfactory): Eich- 52 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY ductions of the time ; the last poem brings us back to history. The poHtical power in those days was represented by two elements : the so-called " veche," the people's as- sembly, and the prince. Their respective situation was not firmly established and much depended upon the personal character of the prince : if the latter was strong, he commanded the veche ; if he was weak, he was controlled and often deprived of power and expelled. The assembly had no regular organization ; people were called together by the ringing of the church bell ; they gathered on the public place, they decided upon ques- tions of war and peace ; no regular proceedings were held, and discussion often ended with fisticuffs. Yet in some towns, namely in Novgorod and Pskoff, the veche had grown to a quite independent political power. Under the influence of the Tartar yoke it gradually lost its significance and died away with the increasing absorption of the minor princedoms by Moscow. The Russian prince of the ante-Mongolian period is a type which does not repeat itself in posterior history. Whether Normans or not, they preserve till the thirteenth century that same spirit of romantic adventurousness which animates the companions of William the Con- queror or Robert Guiscard, that same thirst for military glory which induces those children of the north to insert among the pages of history that fairy tale which is the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. The condition of the horf, " Histoire de la langue et de la litterature des slaves." Paris, 1839. Mickievicz, " Les Slaves." Paris, 1S49. Rambaud, "La Russie Epique." Paris, 1876. Barghon, Fort Rion. Paris, 1876. German translation with Slavonic text, glossary, and commentaries, by Dr. August Boltz. Berlin, 1854. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 53 country, alas, favoured their belligerency only too much. Towards the middle of the eleventh century the de- scendants of Rurik grew to a numerous family ; each member of this family had his own apanaged principal- ity, but they were seldom satisfied and it was a hard task for the Grand Duke of Kiev to hold them in good order. The situation became complicated chiefly in consequence of the strange order of succession to the grand-ducal throne of Kiev. It did not pass to the eldest son, but to the eldest member of the whole family — generally to the late Grand Duke's brother, and only after all the brothers had ruled came the turn of the eldest son. This order of succession, by which uncles had precedence over nephews and which became a source of continuous discord, is the inner spring which imparts to this so-called "period of apanages " its turbu- lent activity.^ The only good side of this state of things from the political point of view was that this centripetal tendency of the princes towards Kiev, entering the people's con- sciousness, became one of the agents of the idea of national unity. In those days only few gtand dukes succeeded, by imposing their authority upon the mem- bers of their family, in securing for the country periods of relative tranquillity. Among these were Yaroslav the Wise, and Vladimir Monomah. With the name of Yaroslav stands connected the name of the " Russian law," the first attempt of Rus- sian juridical codification. In its general spirit and very 1 The numerous hypotheses by which the " system of apanages " has been explained are 'summed up by W. R. S. Ralston: "Early Russian History." On the same epoch: Evers, " Studien zur griindlichen Kennt- niss der Vorzeit Russland's." Dorpat, 1830. 54 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY often in its details the " Russian law " presents a re- markable accord with the early legislation of other European countries, especially with the Frank and Anglo-Saxon laws. It would take us too long to enter into all the particulars of this interesting document, yet we must underline on our way its chief features. " Capital seems to be the most privileged person in this legislation." So says one of our historians,^ and indeed its commercial, matter-of-fact character is what strikes us most. Pecuniary fine is the punishment even in cases of murder (it is called "vira," — the "Wehrgeld" of the Germans), and pecuniary or ma- terial loss is what measures the degree of guilt. Civil law and criminal law are scarcely differentiated, yet a faint indication of the difference can be traced in those few cases where the crime is punished with a double fine, — one part going to the sufferer in compensation for his loss, the other to the prince as satisfaction for the offence against abstract morality. The so-called "blood vengeance" in virtue of which the assassin may be killed by the relations of his victim is legalized by the code, just as in the ancient Swedish law. It was, however, abolished under Yaroslav's children. Capital punishment as an impersonal agent of justice does not exist. Three social classes distinctly appear from this legislation. Those who are in the immediate sur- rounding of the prince and compose the " droujina," — his soldiers' company of Varegue extraction. Then comes the class of ordinary free men, mainly hereditary farmers, on the prince's land, which returns to the prince if male heirs should be wanting ; their life is ^ Kluchevsky. Course of lectures on Russian History, delivered at the Moscow University in 1 882-1883. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 55 estimated at half as much as the Hfe of the farmer. Lastly the serfs form a class which has neither property nor rights ; ^ the murder of a serf and the theft of a beaver are pvmished with an equal fine. Woman is always taxed half as much as man, but a woman's fin- ger or nose is taxed the same as a man's. The Russian law in this case does not enter into such minute details as the German, which has a different tariff for every finger in proportion to its importance. Property seems to have had a stronger guarantee than life : rules of pecuniary transactions, commercial fellowships, rights and order of succession, are firmly established.^ The theft of a horse is punished Avith the loss of all rights, property, and liberty (consider that ancient Saxon legislation inflicted capital punishment for the same crime). An interesting feature is the respect for foreigners : whereas two witnesses are sufficient to establish the guiltiness of a native, no less than seven are required when it is a foreigner or a Varegue. The privileged position accorded to the Varegue reminds one of the Salic law where the life of the Frank was taxed the double of the Gallo-Roman's life.^ From this short glimpse you may see that the moral educatory power of the code is not of great importance ; it certainly had its practical influence on the people's customs, but it did not aim at the very root of criminal tendencies ; it did not 1 These slaves, who were supplied by prisoners of war or insolvent debt- ors, and were comparatively few in number, must not be confounded with the later serfs, — peasants who were bound to the soil at the end of the sixteenth century and emancipated in 1861. (See Lecture VIII.) ^ J. Hube, " Geschichtliche Darstellung der Erbfolgerechte der Slaven." Posen, 1836. ^ The comparisons with the Germanic and other laws are based on the " Appendix " to Vol. I of Karamsin's " History of the Russian State." ij 56 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY say : " Don't do so and so, because it is wrong," but, as the above-quoted writer remarks, " It seemed to say : ' Do whatever you Hke, but here is the tariff.' "^ Yaroslav's grandson, Vladimir Monomah, is the other prince of this epoch to whom we owe special attention. He is the typical prince, the favourite, the beloved one, but, better than from anything we might say, his figure will appear from that famous document known as " Monomah's will." In a short instruction the vener- able father gives to his children precepts of morality and piety, illustrating them with autobiographical exam- ples. So dignified is the style, so sincere the profound conviction in the beneficence of his advice, so humble the whole spirit, that these autobiographical strokes do not produce the slightest impression of boastfulness; whatever exploit he may relate, whether his eighty campaigns against the Polovtsy, whether the great dangers he had run while hunting, he always remains the same noble character, recommending to his children never to forget to say their prayers; "even when you ride and are not speaking to anybody, instead of think- ing rubbish, at least repeat these simple words : ' God be merciful unto me,' — this is the best of all prayers." "Don't think, my children," says he, "or anyone else, who may read these lines, that I make a show of my own fearlessness, I simply praise the merciful Lord for having preserved me during so many years. . . . The only thing I wish is that, after having read this epistle, you should perform all manner of good deeds, praising God and his Saints." Poor people, widows, children, are objects of his solici- 1 On Russian ancient domestic life: Ewers, "Das alteste Recht der Russen." Dorpat, 1826. ' AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 57 tude. Hospitality and sociability are recommended as virtues : " Never let anyone pass, without giving him a greeting, but have a good word for every man. . . . Honour the aged as a father, honour the young as a brother." He never travelled without a copy of David's Psalms, his favourite reading ; he was one of the most learned men of his time, though second to his father Vsevolod, of whom he says, that without having been abroad he spoke five languages. " Let the sun- rise never find you in bed," he says to his children, and he himself sets the example. All his time, all his thought were given to his country, and the chronicles keep a warm remembrance of him who "expended so much sweat for the sake of the Russian land." Vladimir Monomah was the last on the throne of Kiev who exercised a sufficient authority to command respect in the minor princes. After his death in 1125, intestine quarrels break out and the material unity of the country which was only just realizing the idea of its moral unity is so weakened, that when in 1224 the Tartar appears on the horizon, the princes have no energy for community of action ; they are defeated one by one, and in the first part of the thirteenth century the great Mongolian invasion plunges the country into the deep night of a barbaric tyranny. Such was the inner development of the country during the so-called ante-Mongolian period. From what has been said we may form an idea of its situation with regard to other European countries. Though quite a young state, Russia enters into commercial and diplomatic intercourse with her neighbours, and intermarriages with other reigning houses are main- tained throughout the whole period. In 911 a treaty 58 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY is concluded with Byzantium, sanctioned by Prince Oleg^ and the Emperor Alexander. You remember Princess Olga's baptism at Constantinople; Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetus in his book on the cere- monies of the Byzantine court gives interesting ac- counts of the festivities in her honour.^ A few years later she sends envoys to the German King (later Emperor) Otto the Great. Vladimir marries the Greek princess Anna and through her sister Theophano becomes the brother-in-law of Otto II. Yaroslav's eldest daughter Elisabeth marries the Norwegian King Harold, her sister Anna becomes Queen of France by marrying Henry I,^ Anastasia the youngest sister marries Andrew I of Hungaria. Vladimir Monomah's mother was the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Con- stantine Monomachus, and Vladimir himself was mar- ried to the daughter of the unfortunate King Harold, who perished at Hastings.^ All this shows how, in spite of the continuous incursions of nomadic tribes of Asia, the country kept up an uninterrupted inter- course with Western Europe. If we may say so, the doors of the country stood open during all that time. 1 Oleg, uncle of Igor Rurik's son, ruled during his minority. ^ " De ceremoniis aul^e Byzantinae." Lib. ii, cap. 15, ed. Bonn. Among these ceremonies, strange to say, the Emperor does not mention the ceremony of Olga's baptism. We have to infer therefore either that she was twice to Constantinople or that she was baptized in some other place (Goloubinsky, op. cit.). 3 A fac-simile of her signature in Slavonic character under a certificate of the abbey of Saint-Crepin de Soisson, dated 1063, is reproduced in "La Russie." Paris, 1891, p. 474. * On the connections of Russian legends, folk-lore, and early history with Norway, Denmark, and other northern countries : " Antiquites Russes, ed. par la Societe Royale des antiquites du nord." 2 vols. Copenhagen, 1850-1852. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 59 But there comes the great incursion from the desert, the whole country is turned on her axis and all at once she faces Asia instead of Europe. She remains so for over two hundred years, and when she recovers and looks round her, a wall has arisen between her and Europe. It required another two hundred years for this wall to be shattered and thrown down. We have finished with the Kiev period of the Russian history. Out of the barbaric gloom " golden-headed Moscow " dawns. LECTURE III (1224-1613) The Tartar yoke. Europe and Asia — - secular struggle. The rise and growth of Moscow. The policy of the first Moscovian princes and the "collecting of the Russian land." Inner cur- rents of social classes. John III — first sovereign of unified Russia. Diplomatic and commercial intercourse with Europe. John IV the Terrible — first Tsar of Russia. A character- istic. Art in history and history in art. Intellectual culture of the time. A parallel. LECTURE III (1224-1613) Moskva ! How much hi that one sound Is rooted for a Russian heart I How many echoes it contains ! . . — POUSHKIN. A BREATH of terror seems to run through those pages of our chronicles which relate the events from 1224 to 1240. In the solitude of his cell the old monk, who has retired from the world, feels only too intensely the synthetic significance of those single facts which he fixes on the venerable parch- ments. The atrocities of the invasion, the massacres, the fires which strike others in their individual feelings of family and home, wound the lonely and homeless her- mit in his love for his fatherland ; and the tears of the whole country call upon God from those pages where the disasters of the barbaric invasion appear in the ter- rific simplicity of the artless narration. After a series of incursions in the southeastern part of the country the Tartar hordes at last reach the lower bank of the Dnieper and pitch their camp oppo- site Kiev. " The creaking of the cars, the bellowing of the oxen, and the roaring of the camels was such," says the chronicler, "that the citizens could not hear each other's voices." A desperate resistance and never- ceasing prayer in all churches and convents did not 63 64 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY save the town : when the Tartar retired and the last clouds of dust had vanished, swallowed up by the desert horizon, Kiev lay in ashes. " The sun perished all over the country," exclaims the chronicler, " the living were envying the dead." ^ But the chronicler did not know that the invasion whose furious waves, rolling over the country, were shattering against the walls of his cell, was itself the last wave of that moving ocean known as the great migration of nations ; and another thing the chronicler could not know is that this inva- sion, which was to open a period of two centuries of oppression for his fatherland, was only one of the acts in the secular struggle of two continents. In mythological times the Greeks go to Troy, Europe marches against Asia to vindicate the honour of a European woman, which, by the way, according to Herodotus,^ the Persians thought a very foolish idea. In antiquity the Persians invade Greece ; but Europe takes a glorious revenge when Alexander the Great, traversing Asia Minor and Persia, penetrates as far as the sacred banks of the rivers of India. In the times of the Christian era, from the depths of her deserts Asia pours out the hordes of her nomadic tribes. The Huns are thrown back by the Franks, the Avars by the Germans ; but from the other end, through Africa, Asia infiltrates again, and the Moors settle in the Pyrenean peninsula. The crusades are a new challenge of Eu- rope's, and while the nations of the west in useless efforts shed their blood on the soil of Palestine, the eastern plains become the prey of Asiatic incursions. A young 1 On the Tartar : D'Ohsson, " Histoire des Mongols." 4 vols. Am- sterdam, 1 834-1 835. Von Hammer, " Geschichte der goldenen Horde." Pesth, 1840. 2 i^ 4, / AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 65 nation whose life had just begun, resists as long as it can, but when from the very centre of Asia, — from the sandy deserts of Mongolia, beyond which the great Celestial Empire lies in its millennial lethargy, — the nomadic empire of Chingis-Khan rises and moves to conquest, young Russia is dismembered and succumbs. Thus Europe is held by Asia on both extremities. Rely- ing upon these two flanks the adverse continent directs the attack towards the centre ; through Asia Minor the Ottoman Empire advances against Constantinople. Ma- homet II crosses the Bosphorus, effeminate and rotten Byzantium falls, Islam invades the sanctuary of Greek Christianity, and on the cupola of St. Sophia the cross is supplanted by the crescent. But as if the effort of the centre had exhausted the body, the two extremities simultaneously tremble and yield; the Moors are expelled from Spain by Ferdinand the Catholic, and Russia is delivered from the Tartar by John III of Moscow. Once more, according to the fine expression of our great historian Solovieff, " Asiatic quantity was overcome by European quality." The insignificant town of Moscow is mentioned for the first time in the annals under the date of 1147. Its rapid growth has always been a riddle to people. "Who ever would have thought or surmised," says an old popular song, "that Moscow was to become a kingdom, who ever would have guessed that Moscow would have to count for a state ? " It was the apanage of one of the younger princely branches, but the Moscovite princes managed so well that they soon became the eldest among the elder ones. The immediate result of the destruction of Kiev in 1240 was the gradual removal of national life from the desolate southwest to the woody and in those 66 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY times less accessible northeast. The grand-ducal throne was transferred to Souzdal, then to Vladimir, and instead of the western Dnieper the eastern Volga becomes the main artery of the country. Thanks to this removal Moscow became the ethnographical centre of the coun- try, — • it wanted but the effort of a few intelligent rulers to become the political centre. At the beginning of the Mongolian yoke the depend- ence of the princes on the Tartar khans was onerous and humiliating. No one could take possession of the grand- ducal throne unless he was authorized by a khan's char- ter; they were forced at certain intervals to make their appearance in the Tartars' headquarters beyond the Volga (the so-called "Golden Horde ")to pay their respects and taxes; often they were subjected to certain ceremonies of oriental etiquette from which their pride revolted, but they had to put up with everything, for the slightest disobedience was punished by an incursion on their domains. With austere resignation they endured all ; and only when Prince Michael of Chernigov was summoned to abjure the Christian faith, compulsion proved power- less and he died the death of a martyr. But, by and by, revolt on one side and despotism on the other relaxed, and the forced terms between the princes and the .khans gradually improved. In the annals of the fourteenth century we already read : prince so-and-so was received by the khan "with honour," re- turned home "with honour." This "honour," which generally vi/^as obtained at the cost of precious gifts to the khan, his wives, and the whole Tartar court, becomes the privilege of the Moscovite princes ; care and circum- spection, great economy, soon make them the most powerful among the princes ; their pecuniary resources AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 67 secure them the preponderance at the Tartar court, a wise and conciliating- policy renders them somewhat like con- fidants of the khans — favourites from among enemies • even marriages are concluded with Tartar princesses, who of course embrace the Christian faith. As a result, in 1328 Prince John (called Kalita or "the purse"), though having no genealogical right of precedence, is recog- nized by the khan as Grand Duke of Russia. He feels so sure of himself that he does not even move to the chief town, Vladimir ; the Metropolitan Peter at his invitation settles in Moscow, and hence as the residence of the grand-ducal and the metropolitan thrones, this town becomes the political and ecclesiastical centre of the country. From this time the authority of the Prince of Mos- cow grows at the expense of the independence of the other princes. The son of John I, Simeon, is surnamed " the Proud," but this surname pictures far more the feel- ings of the minor princes than the character of him who was but sober and severe in his justice. " The virtues of the first Grand Dukes of Moscow," says one of our histo- rians,! " were less valorous than lucrative." And yet these virtues which were a family feature became the basis of a political system, and while in other princedoms repeated discords mark every change of reign, in Moscow a moral transmission from father to son makes of every successor a sort of testamentary executor of a well-premeditated plan. The plan consisted (i) in a territorial extension at the cost of the other princes, with an enforced spirit of centralization infused into the newly incorporated do- mains, and (2) an underhand preparation of military forces in view of the great blow to be struck against the 1 Kluchevsky, " Course of Russian History." 68 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY Tartar when the hour should come. And they all worked in the expectation of this hour, no one working for himself, but each for the sake of that unknown successor under whose reign it would please Providence that the hour should come. And the hour came: in 1380, the name of the Grand Duke of Moscow was Dimitry, the name of the Tartar khan, Mamay ; Koulikovo was the name of the field where they met on the 8th of September. A beam of sunshine seems to pierce the heavy clouds which were overhanging the country. Few moments in history can be compared to the solemnity of the departure of the Grand Duke of Moscow at the head of the first great Russian army, marching against the one great enemy of the country. The old chronicler, the faith- ful recorder of national distress and national joy, pictures with radiant colours of hopeful anticipation the exodus of this army. St. Serge, the revered prior of the Trinity Convent near Moscow, blesses the soldiers on their way and appoints two monks, Oslab and Peresvet, to accom- pany the Grand Duke to the battle. Two scenes emerge from the past, when the name of Koulikovo is recalled to our memory. We see, in the misty freshness of a Sep- tember morning, amidst his soldiers, who have just been ranged for the battle. Prince Dimitry kneeling on the |/ ground and praying under his grand-ducal banner, the black banner with the golden picture of the Saviour ; and we see, in the golden sunset of a September evening, Prince Dimitry lying under a tree, recovering from a blow received in the battle and asking who were the winners. Already the trumpets had proclaimed the Russian victory. With Dimitry the preparatory period of Russia's lib- eration is finished; his successors inaugurate a policy AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 69 of frank hostility against Mamay's successors. A series of intelligent rulers, working always on the ground en- riched already by the successful work of their predeces- sors, consolidate the power of Moscow and relax the bonds of the Mongolian dependence. In 1480 John III effects the complete emancipation. The Tartar King- dom is dismembered ; its scattered members live on for a time; the kingdoms of Kasan and Astrakhan are conquered by John the Terrible eighty years later, the Tartars of the Crimea preserve their independence till as late as the reign of Catherine the Great. At the accession of John III in 1462 the political pre-eminence of Moscow stands established. This sovereign closes the old period of the Moscovian Grand Duchy and opens the new period of the Mosco- vian Kingdom. The principle of federative equality in the relations between Moscow and the other prince- doms, which had been dying away during the preceding century, is definitively supplanted by the monarchical principle. Let us examine the inner currents by which this change has been brought about. It will at the same time throw a retrospective light on the preceding period and mark the conditions which determine the direction of further historical development. The extension of the Princedom of Moscow was a fact of incalculable historical importance not because of the centrifugal tendency it imparted to the territorial expansion, but because of the centripetal direction it gave to the consciousness of all social classes, beginning with the princes themselves at whose cost the Moscovian territory grew. At first the incorporation of one apa- nage after another by the Grand Duke of Moscow had a character of violence, but soon it assumed a more or 70 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY less normal character. Many princes of themselves abdicated their rights and passed their domains over to their elder comrade ; others, who had no children, made wills in favour of Moscow ; later this was erected into a rule, and even when there was no will, the apa- nage of a childless prince was annexed, and similarly the apanage which remained after the death of a dowager princess ; marriages were another means of extension. With what rapidity the Princedom grew may be seen from the fact that at John Ill's accession the territory of Moscow was fifteen thousand square miles, while under this prince and his son Basil, i.e. in the course of sixty years, it annexed forty thousand square miles of terri- tory. The consequences of this growth of what the chronicles call "the collecting of the Russian land" were of greater importance than we might expect from a simple territorial extension. The first consequence was of a social character. We have just said that the centripetal tendency invaded all classes. The minor princes, deprived of their domains, all come to Moscow and settle round the Kremlin ; they become the stock of the higher aristocracy and by a sort of compen- sation for their fresh wounds they are invested with the pre-eminent official functions. They command the army, they rule the different provinces. But having abdicated their territorial rights, they do not forget their dynastic proximity to the ruling grand duke : it is not easy to keep all these cousins and uncles at respect- ful distance ; relations get more and more strained, and we shall see to what stress they come under the reign of John the Terrible. The next class, the members of the princely droujina, began a long time ago to prefer the rich and powerful Moscovian grand dukes to their AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 71 different minor princes ; as their service had no com- pulsory character and they were bound by no obH- gation, they were perfectly free to pass from one chief to another ; by their going over to Moscow they at the same time effected the reinforcement of the grand duke and the weakening of the lesser princes. Lastly the peasants, the agricultural class, who at this time were not yet bound to the territory but free to pass from one landowner to another, naturally preferred to settle round the rich and populous chief town. Such were the currents of social classes which were set in movement by the rising authority of the grand dukes, and which by that same movement furthered a still greater growth of this authority. By a mutual influence of cause and consequence those same ele- ments which had undergone the attraction towards the centre contributed to its further exaltation. Dimitry, the vanquisher of Mamay, is the first grand duke who by will disposes of the grand-ducal throne, and leaves it to his eldest son : that which till then had been an abstract principle, sanctioned by the Tartar khan, thus becomes an act of individual decision. From this time the succession of the elder son is always established by the will of the father ; some- times, to prevent misunderstandings, the son is crowned during his father's life and appointed co-regent; the wills of the grand dukes make more and more differ- ence between the eldest and the other sons ; and John the Terrible in his will leaves the whole country to his eldest son and only one province to the second, and this one province is no longer an independent domain but an inseparable part of the kingdom : the Tsar's brother 72 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY becomes a landowner, but no other ruler is left in the country except the Tsar. These were the consequences, from the point of view of inner politics of Moscow's growth ; it had still another result, if not of deeper, at any rate of wider, importance. Till the middle of the fourteenth century Moscow was a Central Russian princedom, surrounded by Russian neighbours ; consequently it never knew what exterior politics meant ; all relations outside its own frontier were more or less friendly, but always of a domestic character. Diplomacy did not exist. John III is the first prince who, ascending the throne of the Princedom of Moscow, realizes that he stands on the throne of all the Russias. The inner barriers built up by family discords and personal ambition fall down and are levelled by the great mass of homogeneous population, speaking one language, converging to one centre. And when the first " Lord and Grand Duke of all the Russias," etc., standing on his throne directs his look beyond the frontiers of his country, he sees that the Russian land has foreign neighbours : on the northwest, the Swedes, on the west, the Order of the Teutonic Knights, — Lithuania and Poland ; and on the southwest, the Turkish Empire ; and all along that western frontier, from the north down to Kiev, he sees ancient Russian provinces, the first ones, Russia's cradle, torn away and incorporated by Poland. This is what John III beheld, and what others before him had had no time to realize, occupied as they were with the Tartar and the " collecting of the Russian land." And as John III was the first who saw his foreign neigh- bours, he was also the first who made himself seen. The reappearance of the Russian prince on the AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 73 European scene after an absence of over two hundred years is interesting, and takes place under rather pict- uresque circumstances. Byzantium had just fallen. The family of the last Emperor, Constantine Palasologus, had fled to Rome and were living under the protection of the Pope. In 1469 an ambassador from Rome comes to Moscow, and in the name of Pope Paul II offers the Grand Duke the hand of Princess Sophia Palaeologus, daughter of the last Emperor's brother and the Duchess of Ferrara. The Grand Duke declines to give his consent before sending an embassy of his own to Rome. Meanwhile Pope Paul II dies, and the news reaches Moscow that Calixtus has been elected. In January the embassy leaves Moscow, having at its head an Italian who has been living there for some time past. On their way they learn that it is not Calixtus but Sixtus who has been elected ; they scratch out the wrong name from the Grand Duke's letter, substitute the right one, and in May they get to Rome. On the 25th, Sixtus IV receives the Moscovite ambassadors, who hand to him the Grand Duke's letter and sixty sable skins. On the first of June, in St. Peter's Church, Sophia Palaeologus is betrothed by proxy to John III. On the 24th of June she leaves Rome and — -via Lubeck, the Baltic Sea, Reval, Pskoff — arrives in Moscow on the 12th of November, escorted by the Pope's legate and the ambassadors sent by her two brothers.^ The pomp, the political importance of this marriage, just suited ^ One of her brothers later came twice to Moscow and married his daughter to one of the Russian princes. This prince does not seem to have been on good terms either with his brother-in-law or his father-in- law, and by will passed over his rights to the Byzantine throne to Ferdi- nand and Isabella of Spain. 74 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY the ambitions of John III ; it made him the immediate successor of the Byzantine emperors ; thus it was accepted by his contemporaries, thus he meant it him- self, when he adopted the Byzantine double-headed eagle as the coat of arms of Russia. For the first time etiquette is introduced at court, copied chiefly from the Byzantine ceremonial. Such was the gate through which this sovereign entered history, passing over the threshold of a new period. His contemporaries seem to have realized the new importance which the figure of the monarch had assumed. In his allocution to the Grand Duke, on the day of his crowning, the Metropolitan called him, " Glo- rious Tsar and Autocrat.'' We hardly can in our days measure the sense the word "autocrat" must have had at that moment, pronounced for the first time, by the head of the Church, and resounding after two hundred years of a humiliating yoke. It was the solemn recog- nition of the only force which proved to have the power of reconstituting the national unity. It was the his- torical homage of gratitude to the only principle which proved to be firm amidst the instability of the other elements of national life. John III, indeed, opened the chief questions which have determined the subsequent historical development of the country. By overthrowing the Tartar yoke he in- augurates the aggressive policy against Asia. Not only will Russia not suffer from new incursions, but she will prevent the very possibility of their, reiteration by rendering herself master of those regions whence the invasions had spread.^ As the end of this policy, which 1 "It wanted all the western ignorance of Russian affairs," says A. Le- roy-Beaulieu, " to speak of ' sending Russians back to their steppes, whence AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 75 led to the annexation of Siberia by John the Terrible in 1582/ we have ourselves seen the first rails of the great trans-Siberian line laid by the Emperor Nicholas II, at the time heir to the throne, when he landed on the Pacific coast in May, 1891.^ The question on the western frontier of the reincorporation of the old Rus- sian provinces was handed over, by John III to his pos- terity as one of the most burning questions of national history. Its definite solution, postponed from time to time by a continuous widening of interests, led to the Swedish wars of Peter the Great ; the conquest of the Baltic shores, the foundation of St. Petersburg, and the formation of the Russian fleet. Under John III the first relations with Western Eu- rope begin. An embassy is exchanged with the Ger- man Emperor Frederick IV, who asks for the hand of one of John's daughters for his son Maximilian ; ^ it, however, had no result. Of greater consequence were the embassies ex- changed with Italy, especially with Venice.* The Rus- they ought never to have moved.' Far from coming from the steppes, the Russians entered them at a comparatively recent epoch." (" L'Empire des Tsars." Paris, 1 883-1889. T. i, 1. i, chap. iii. English translation, Putnam & Co., New York.) ^ On Russia's colonizing movement : A. Brueckner, " Europaisirung Russland's." Gotha, 1888, chap. iv. ^Prince Ookhtomsky, "Journey of the Tsarevich." 2 vols. Edin- burgh. Constable, 1895. O^ "Siberia and the Great Siberian Railway." Vol. V of " The Industries of Russia. Composed by order of the Ministry of Finance for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago." 5 vols. St. Petersburg, 1893. ^ What would have become of European history had Maximilian I mar- ried a Russian princess and not Mary of Burgundy ? * On Russian early embassies abroad : A. Brueckner, " Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte." 76 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY / sian Grand Duke, wishing to adorn his capital with stone buildings, sent to Venice for an architect. Fioravanti, called Aristoteles, was delegated by Doge Marcello, and from this time dates that queer architecture which is like the petrification of the old Russian wooden style. The chief cathedrals, the beautiful white wall, and all the splendour of the "golden-headed" Kremlin date from this reign.^ An interesting episode of Moscow's relations with Italy is the participation of the Metropolitan Isidor at the ecclesiastical council, convoked by Pope Eugene IV in 1438 at Florence, while the grand-ducal throne in Mos- cow was occupied by John Ill's father, Basil the Gloomy. The Byzantine Emperor, John Palaeologus,^ had hoped a reconciliation of the Greek and Roman churches would help to strengthen him against the advancing march of the Ottoman forces ; he went to Italy and became the zealous promoter of the council. The sessions began in the autumn, first at St. George's Church in Ferrara ; in January they were transferred to the church of Santa Maria Novella at Florence. On the 6th of July the close of the council was celebrated with a pontifical mass. Yet it had no practical result : the eastern churches did not adopt the decision of their repre- sentatives, who accepted the recognition of the Pope's supremacy. The Metropolitan Isidor, returning to Moscow, was declared apostate and had to flee ; he 1 On Russian architecture: Viollet-le-Duc, " L'art Russe." Paris, 1877. On the Kremlin : Weltmann, " Souvenirs historiques du Kremlin de Mos- cow." Moscow, 1843. Fabricius, " Le Kremlin de Moscow." Moscow, 1883. On Russian antiquities: "Antiquites de I'Empire de Russie." 6 vols, in folio. Moscow, 1849-1853. Solutsev, "Antiquities of the Rus- sian State." 6 vols, plates and 6 vols, text (Russian). Moscow, 1849. 2 He was married to Basil's daughter, Anna. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 77 died in Rome, a cardinal. In the Laurentian Library ^ of the St. Lawrence Church at Florence you may see an ornamented document, hanging in a frame which is chained to the wall — it is the act of the Florentine council : among the Latin and Greek signa- tures which follow those of the Pope and the Emperor you may see in red Slavonic characters the signature of the "humble minister of God, Isidor, Metropolitan of Russia."^ Under John Ill's son, Basil, the Austrian baron, Herberstein, twice came to Moscow, once in 15 16, sent by the Emperor Maximilian I ; the next time, on Charles V's part in 1526. More valuable for us than the orders he brought with him are the impressions he received and took home. His " Rerum Moscovi- tarum Commentarii " are one of the most precious documents in the bibliography of foreign writings con- cerning ancient Russia.^ y Under the reign of Basil's son, John IV the Terrible, the first commercial relations with England were estab- lished. The English merchants envying the Spanish and Portuguese for the successes of their commerce brought about by their geographical discoveries, decided to find some new resources for themselves. A society was founded "ior the discovery of unknown lands," and in May, 1553, several vessels left the Thames provided with a letter of Edward VI, " to the sovereigns of eastern 1 On later relations of Moscow with the Vatican : Le P. PierHng, S. J., "Rome at Moscow (1547-1579)." Paris, 1883. " Gregoire XIII et Ivan le Terrible." (" Revue des questions historiques." Avril, 1883.) 2 The first Latin edition in Vienna, 1549. Translated into several lan- guages. The English translation, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1851-1852 : " Notes upon Russia." 2 vols. 78 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY and northern countries." The next year Captain Chan- cellor, commander of one of these ships, enters the mouth of the Northern Dwina ; he gets ashore and goes to Mos- cow. He is kindly received by the Tsar and dismissed with a letter for King Edward. In 1555, the same Chan- cellor reappears in Moscow as an official envoy of King Philip and Queen Mary. At the end of the negotiations the English merchants are given the privilege of free trade in all parts of the country. When in 1557 the am- bassador of John IV came to London, Russian mer- chants were granted the same privilege in England.^ Thus it is by way of the Arctic Ocean that Russia feels the first contact of the world's commercial move- ment. She might have felt it from another side, — from her territorial frontier, and she even hoped to do so : sev- eral times artisans and artists had been asked for and 1 All documents concerning these negotiations in : " The First Forty Years of Intercourse between England and Russia." Documents collected, copied, and edited by George Tolstoi, St. Petersburg, 1875; ^'^° ^^ ^°^- xxviii, of the Russian Imperial Historical Society. An interesting contemporary book : Giles Fletcher, " Of the Russe Common Wealth or Manner of Governement by the Russe Emperor com- monly called the Emperour of Moscovia with the manners and fashions of the people of the country. At London. Printed by T. D. for Thomas Chare, 1591." (A bibliographical rarity, reprinted in Ed. A. Bond's " Rus- sia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century." London, 1856.) G. Fletcher (1565-1610), student of Eton and Cambridge, was sent to Moscow in 1588; he speiit two years in Russia, and returning to London published his book in 1591. His work contains many valuable details though very insufficient in its appreciations and deductions. The careless- ness with which he treated his subject appears clearly enough from his state- ment that Russia has neither written history npr written law, whereas at that time Russia possessed the "Annals," the "Russian Law," the "Code of John III " (1497) and the "Code of John IV" (1550). Too much credit is paid to accounts of Fletcher, Horsay, and other " contemporaries " by W. R. MorfiU, in his " Story of Russia " (in the series " The Story of Nations," New York, 1891), for the rest a very conscientious and valuable work. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 79 sent, but our nearest neighbours never allowed them to ^ pass the Russian frontier. In 1547 Charles V, who then was at the Diet of Augsburg, gave to the Tsar's envoy a permit conferring upon him the right of recruiting, in the confines of the Empire, learned and skilled men to be taken over to Russia. A hundred and twenty-three arti- sans were ready to sail from Liibeck, but they were arrested in consequence of Livonian intrigue ; one of them attempting to escape to Moscow was executed by the German Knights of the Teutonic Order. The mag- istrates of Riga even extorted from Charles V a written promise that no more artisans should be sent to Russia. No, the western frontier was no junction; it was care- fully watched and made into a barrier. Listen to what King Sigismund Augustus of Poland writes to Queen Elizabeth of England : — "As we have written afore, so now we write againe to your Ma*?" that we know and feele of a surety the Mos- covite dayly to grow mightier by the increse of such things as be brought to the Narue,-^ while not onely wares but also weapons heretofore vnknowen to him, and artificers and arts be brought vnto him : by meane whereof he maketh himselfe strong to vanquish all others. Which things, as long as this voyage to Narue is vsed, can not be stopped. And we perfectly know your Ma'-^ can not be ignorant of what force he is. We seemed hitherto to vanquish him onely in this, that he was rude of arts, and ignorant of policies. If so be that this navigation to the Narue continue, what shall be vnknowen to him .? " ^ ^ Now Narva, a town connected with the Baltic by the river Narova. ^ G. Tolstoi, op. cit. The original contains a few remarks on John's personal character; we leave them out as having no importance in this case : in a political system psychological considerations are a pretext, not an argument. 8o PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY The precautions of the King of Poland were useless ; the difficulties and risks of those frozen regions which Chancellor had to traverse did not prevent Russia from being "discovered" independently of Narva. The uni- fying spirit which works in the world had overcome the greatest obstacles of Nature : what were the partial efforts of national division ? ^ The intercourse with foreigners has made us deviate for a while from our main subject — the inner growth of the political elements ; let us take up the interrupted thread. As you saw, the sovereign of Moscow grew, surrounded by the newly rising class of the titled nobility, descendants of the deposed minor princes. The authority of the Grand Duke grew, as a result of the dynastic decay of the aristocracy ; the importance of the aristocracy grew in consequence of its proximity to the rising throne. Thanks to such a simultaneous growth of these two elements, towards the beginning of the fifteenth century Moscow presents an absolute mon- archy with an aristocratic government; the "Douma," composed of the chief representatives of the aristoc- racy, becomes somewhat like a plural counsellor. But in spite of this well-established political form the two elements did not assimilate ; the inner harmony was troubled by passions and was too much dependent upon individual character. This fully appeared when the absolute power passed into the hands of such a character as John the Terrible. In 1547 the grandson of John III crowns himself first Tsar of Russia. The title, a Russified abbrevia- 1 On foreign travellers in Russia : Adelung, " Kritisch-literarische Uebersicht der Reisenden in Russland bis 1700, deren Berichte bekannt sind." St. Petersburg, 1864. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE tion of the Latin "Caesar," appears before; John III and Basil were often called "Tsar," yet never in offi- cial acts. The beginnings of John IV prognosticate a brilliant reign. Intelligent and well-intentioned coun- sellors surround the young sovereign ; a beautiful woman of high moral qualities is chosen by the Tsar to be his wife ; Anastasia Romanov becomes his guardian angel, quickens the good aspirations of his character, and dulls the instincts of him who will be called "the Ter- rible," or more correctly, "the thunder-stormy." Ka- zan and Astrakhan, the two Tartar kingdoms which still survive on the Volga, are overthrown and annexed ; a work of legislation is begun ; the war with Sweden, Livonia, and Poland begins the interminable struggle which is destined to clear the way from Moscow to Europe. But the brilliant period does not last. Anas- tasia Romanov dies, and with her death the handle of John's moral tiller breaks. One day during a very bad illness he was lying in bed, and by chance overheard a violent dispute in the next room : the boyars were discussing the succession to the throne, and from his bed the Tsar could hear that they nearly all were refusing to execute his Will — to take the oath in favour of his son. They did not care to have Anastasia's family secure political preponderance at their cost : the Romanovs were a younger family than they were and did not descend from Rurik, — so strong as yet was the feeling of their dynastic relationship to the ruling house.^ The dying 1 And yet, such were the trials of the following period which ended with the "times of confusion," so entirely was that dynastic pride suppressed by the levelling force of a common national danger, that sixty years later a youth of this same family was elected to the throne just because he was not one of themselves. G 82 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY Tsar listened to the criticism of his Will ; and all the intrigue which had surrounded his fatherless child- hood at once came back to his memory. He is filled with disgust, mistrust glides into his heart and awakens suspicion in his mind. He does not die ; he recovers, but he arises from the couch another man. One day the population of Moscow learned with amazement that the Tsar had unexpectedly left the town with his whole court and made off for one of his sub- urban residences. A month later two briefs came to Moscow : in the one the Tsar declared himself the friend and protector of the people ; in the other he covered with reproach the nobility and the clergy ; finally he declared that he would nevermore return to his capital. Never before had history seen a sovereign who was pouting at his country, and this is what it was, and so it remained until the end. Unfortunately this pout- ing was not inactive ; he virtually put himself out of his own country. The kingdom was divided into two parts : the whole land on one side, and the sovereign and his immediate surrounding on the other. This immediate surrounding, forming the Tsar's personal guard of about a thousand men, became the terror of the country. They were called " oprichniky," from the word " oprich," " out- side," meaning that they were put "outside" the law and had to fear nothing in accomplishing their duty of hunting down the Tsar's enemies. Their ensign — a dog's head and a broom hanging on each side of their saddle ; — was the emblems of the qualities required for "sweeping away treason." A terrible epoch began, — terrible for everybody, — although the Tsar had declared himself the friend of the people. By hundreds, by thousands, were counted the victims whose names were AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 85 inscribed by order of the Tsar in the diptychs of differ- ent convents in order that prayers should be offered for the salvation of their souls. All that slumbered in that dark and enigmatic char- acter by and by came to the surface ; his instincts sud- denly overcame his talents, and the latter reappear thereafter only when he sees that anybody holds them in doubt : then suddenly he rises in all the brightness of his versatility. In his correspondence with Prince Kourbsky, one of his worst enemies, who had fled to the Polish king, he shows himself one of the most learned men of his time ; his letters swarm with quotations from Scripture, from Greek and Latin authors ; in his diplo- matic intercourse he is a proud and self-conscious head of that same country which at home he treats as an enemy ; in his writings of a semi-lyrical, semi-religious character he is humble, subdued, crushed under the weight of his crimes, annihilated by repentance. But let a foreign sovereign refuse him one of his titles, his susceptibility is on fire ; in his care for his dynastic dignity he is sometimes almost childish. " We are descended from Caesar Augustus ; it is known to every- body," he says to the envoy of the King of Poland.^ But to whatever passion he may give way, it is always with theatrical effect. He likes the pomp of executions, the picturesqueness of tortures, the magnifi- cence of massacres : he loves the sumptuousness of religious ceremonies, but he prefers the rigidity of the humble cell where he retires from the wickedness of 1 This genealogy by and by received official sanction : in the charter on the election of Michael Romanov (1613) Rurik is represented as direct descendant of Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. (" Collection of State Charters and Treaties," No. 203, vol. i. St. Petersburg, 1813.) 84 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY the world, where he contemplates the ulcers of his soul ; he delights to confess his sins, he is touched by the sight of his own repentance.^ Strange to say, this mighty despot was a feeble character ; he could not stand out against contradiction ; he was clever, bright, eloquent only on paper or when he knew that^ he would not be interrupted; but he could not discuss : the moment he was contradicted he became furious and nothing else. Under such conditions this theatric disposition became a means of isolating himself, of cutting short all attempts at contradiction ; any man can be tempted to enter into a discussion, but who ever will dare to interrupt the course of a theatrical performance ! Thus he built up something like a fortress behind which he felt unassail- able and safe. Such was the man who till 1584 occu- pied the throne of Moscow. The character of John the Terrible is a point on which the greatest divergency of opinion is shown by our historians. Some make of him the central figure of the whole ante-petrine epoch. Overlooking the defects of his character and the d^ark sides of his reign, they put in evidence his talents, which came to the front under propitious circumstances, when suspicion was dulled and cruelty not provoked ; they make him the pivot of the Moscovite period, — a sort of Peter the Great to whom history refused opportunities. Others see nothing except a crazy despot who, for a while at the beginning of his reign, had experienced the beneficent influence of a few good counsellors and an intelligent and loving wife, but afterwards showed nothing but cruelty, animalism, and hypocrisy. These 1 C. Aksakov, one of the leaders of the Slavophile party, was the first to put into light this side of John's character. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 85 make him a sort of Russian Nero ; worse than the Roman — for he was a Christian, at least lived in Chris- tian times and professed Christianity. A man who can be estimated so differently would furnish an inter- esting subject for psychological studies even if he had been a private individual ; but in this case the quali- ties which determine such contradictory judgments hap- pen to be those of a sovereign, — a sovereign whose ancestors present a gradual rising of monarchical self- consciousness, whose grandfather had been called " au- tocrat" by the head of the Church, and who himself, considering himself the culminating point of this his- torical ascension, takes the title of Tsar of Russia." His .was one of those richly endowed personalities which contain the germs of every kind of development ; Nature seems to have equally equipped them for vice or virtue and to have insisted upon no prefer- ences : the realization of their character is made an act of their individual choice, whether they give the pre-eminence to talents or to instincts.^ In this case psychology may plead extenuating circumstances, — history takes count of facts and registers the implaca- ble verdict of the national memory. It is to be de- plored that the normal growth of the political body which was only just ready to be settled and consolidated was suddenly interrupted by the intervention of a man abnormal in every way, a sovereign of great political wisdom, yet only in theory. By reducing interests of internal policy to questions of personal security, he sus- ^ ". . . and the greater the soul of a man, the more it is capable of undergoing the influence of good, — the deeper does it fall in the abyss of crime, the more does it harden in evil. Such was John." (Belinsky, Works, vol. ii. In Russian.) 86 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY pended the historical development of his country ; by killing his eldest son in a fit of rage, he occasioned the extinction of the dynasty ; by leaving the throne to his second son, the feeble-minded and childless Theodor,^ he opened the way for the trials by which the country had to expiate his crimes. Few epochs in history offer an accumulation of such disasters as those which befell Russia after his reign : three impostors assuming the name of Dimitry, an infant son of John the Terrible, who had perished under the knife of a murderer ; ^ the invasion of the Polish army, the occupation of Moscow ; gangs of robbers, and an ever-increasing anarchy fill those terrible years known as "times of confusion."^ Fifteen years of chaotic fermentation separate the death of the last royal descendant of Rurik in 1598, from the election of the first Romanov in 161 3. The 1 A touching character, this last offspring of the dynasty; but times were too hard, and historical circumstances required another sovereign than he who, according to the chronicles, had " all his life avoided vanities of the world and thought of nothing but heavenly things." The description of Theodor's coronation by J. Horsey : Appendix No. I to Bond's " Rus- sia at the Close of the Sixteenth Century." A tragedy by Count Alexis Tolstoi : " Feodor Ivanovich." German translation by Mr. C. Pavloff. Dresden, 1869. 2 On these times : Prosper Merimee, " Les faux Demetrius." Paris, 1853. Le P. Pierling, S. J., " Rome et Demetrius." Paris, 1878. The first False Dimitry has often been treated by dramatists (with more or less historical truth) : Poushkin, " Boris Godounoff." French translation by Tourgenieff and Viardot. English translation and abridgment, by Nathan Haskell Dole, Poet Lo7'e, 1890. Soumarokof, " Dimitry the Impostor." Eng- lish translation. London, 1806. Schiller, " Demetrius." General Alexan- der, "Dramatic Sketch from Russian History." London, 1876. ^ An interesting contemporary work by a Dutch traveller : " Histoire des guerres de la Moscovie (1601-1610) par Isaac Massa de Haarlem, publiee pour la premiere fois d'apres le Ms. hollanHais original de 1610 avec d'autres opuscules sur la Russie et des annotations par le Pr. Michel Obolensky et M. le Dr. A. Van der Linde." 2 vols. Brussels, 1866. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE "Thunder-stormy " Tsar disappeared, but he left a pro- found furrow ; it took the country a long time to recover from the persecutions of his reign. And yet so strong is the prestige of character that / John the Terrible had his admirers. While science dis- cusses his greater or less value from the point of view of historic morality, art, greedy of pure picturesqueness, takes possession of this fantastic despot whose palace presents an intermingling of orgies in the glittering frame of Byzantine luxury, with litanies and processions mov- ing in the religious twilight of monastic rigidity. His ungainly figure in the monk's floating cassock, his aqui- line nose, his small and piercing eyes, the velvet skull- cap, the bony fist clenching the famous iron staff which broke the skull of his son, the big cross on his breast, and the open Bible on his knees, have been perpetuated and handed over to future generations by painting, sculpture, poetry, drama.^ Thus he who, during his life, had been hated and feared, through the removing distance of centuries and the refracting prism of art becomes an object of admiration. There is a sort of compensation in the fact that he who had so often made a stage play of his own life, should become such a fruitful artistic subject after his death. As light trans- pierces the dull piece of coal and transfigures it into a diamond, so art, getting hold sometimes of the saddest facts of life, penetrates into them and raises them, ac- 1 "The death of John the Terrible," tragedy in five acts, by Count Alexis Tolstoi. German translation by Mr. C. Pavloff. Dresden, 1868. English translation by T. H. Harrison. London, 1869. A fine character of John the Terrible in a novel by the same: "Prince Serebriany." English translation by Captain Filmore; also by Jeremiah Curtin (Boston, 1892). Italian translation by Patuzzi in " Perseveranza." 1872. On Count Alexis Tolstoi: A. De Gubernatis, "II Conte AUessio Tolstoi." Firenze, 1874. 88 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY cording to Gogol's expression, into "a jewel of crea- tion." Strange is the aspect historical events assume when looked at under the optic angle of art; they seem to lose the vital value of plants rooted in the soil ; art removes them out of life, makes them somewhat innox- ious ; the most terrible acts flatter our senses and do not hurt our feelings ; by a sort of distillation their venom- ousness is evaporated, and instead of alarming us by revolting our sense of morality, as they do in life, they rejoice us by exciting our aesthetic enthusiasm. Here r lies the danger of an artistic temperament for an histori- cal writer. Picturesqueness and morality do not always go hand in hand, and an historian with an excessive aesthetic sensibility must feel inclined to extenuate the moral reprehensiveness of a picturesque character or fact. We touch here the interesting and as yet scarcely elu- cidated point of the moral value of aesthetical emotions. What art does with historical events it does with facts of daily life ; it picks out human passions and human sufferings, it transplants them from life into a world of fiction. We go to the theatre, and we sympathize with what we see, and we suffer and weep, and we are thor- oughly persuaded that we are looking at real human pain and weep real human tears, whereas we are looking at the representation of human pain and weep not vital but 'C aesthetical tears. Does the difference not appear clearly enough ? The sight of real human pain hurts or dis- . gusts; the representation of human pain procures de- light : real vital tears burn ; aesthetical tears — in the theatre for instance — are a test of good acting, the proof of our enjoyment, for had we no enjoyment of it we should never go to the theatre. Evidently those human AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 89 sufferings which unroll themselves on the stage are transfigured sufferings, and the process of transfigura- tion consists in rendering them harmless, incapable of wounding. Imagine we might approach, as it were a gigantic aquarium, the under-water world on the bottom of the ocean, and through the transparency of the crystal wall contemplate without any danger for our- selves the monsters moving behind it. Just so we con- template the picture of human sufferings in the theatre ; their sting is blunted, their venomousness is neutralized, they touch our excitability, but they spare our vulnera- bility. Accordingly, if the instrument of art is de- prived of poison and edge,- the feelings it produces must be deprived of painfulness ; and, indeed, instead of hurting, as they would under similar circumstances in life, they fascinate, they are delightful, and we indulge in them. It is easy to conceive how wrong it would be to adopt that artistic way of looking at human sufferings, and to practise it outside the domain of art; what great faults a historian might commit by applying the aestheti- cal standard to historical events : the integrity of his judgment can be corrupted at its root by aesthetical considerations. I fear we have lost sight of our subject, but we will not apologize : a critic said that digressions were old- fashioned, but that still more old-fashioned were apolo- gies for digressions ; so we shall not apologize. Let us throw a rapid glance on the intellectual culture of this long period from the Tartar invasion in 1224 to the "times of confusion" which preceded the election of the first Romanov in 161 3. The unfortunate country which at the beginning of 90 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY its history had been thrown against Asia, seemed to con- centrate all its forces into this struggle, and when the '^hour of liberation came, the intellectual culture stood on the same point, and perhaps lower, than at the hour of subjugation. The monasteries continued their work of copying and translating, but it was always in the narrow circle of Christian Byzantinism. There were learned men among the clergy and at the court, yet their learning had a hopeless character of sterility ; it w^as reduced to the knowledge of a certain number of books, intellectual culture consisted not in a widening of the brain but in its being stuffed with quotations. Such appears to us the learning of John the Terrible, and he was one of the most learned of his time. The word " science " was not even known in those days ; the nar- row and limited " skill " or " craft " was used in its place. Attempts at bringing over trained artificers from West- ern Europe had been made — we have seen their sad results. At the end of the sixteenth century several Russian youths were sent abroad for the purpose of studying — they never returned. In 1563 John the Terrible founded the first Russian printing-press, assisted by the advice of the Metropoli- tan Makarius and the learned Greek Maximus, a friend of Aldus Manucius of Venice.^ An eminent man of that time was the above-mentioned Prince Kourbsky, the correspondent of John the Terrible. Besides his let- ters, where he shows far more real and well-assimi- lated learning than his most august correspondent, he left a " Story of the Grand Duke of Moscow, and the deeds which we have learned from reliable men, or 1 " The Acts of the Apostles " was the first book printed in Russia (1564). AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 91 which we saw with our own eyes": it is the first attempt at a genuine Russian history.^ Another contemporary of John IV, the priest Sylvester, has left an interesting document, a code of domestic morality, called "the House-builder " — humble in its didactic theorizings, des- potic in its practical prescriptions. The Metropolitan Makarius composed his great work, "The Lives of the Saints," a book of a peculiar poetical charm, which even to-day remains a favourite of the people. An epic song was inspired by the battle of Koulikovo (" Zadon- schina"), the first victory gained over the Tartar, but in spite of an evident imitation of " The Word about Igor's Fights " it is of little literary value. So scarce are the products of the intellectual culture of that time ; but we must keep in mind that the period we speak of begins with the Tartar subjugation. Many historians say : " Russia did not lose much by the Tar- tar yoke ; if there had been any culture before, it would have survived ; if we do not see any at the end of the period, it is the best proof that there had been none before ; after all, Russia was not turned back from civil- ization, she only stopped, she remained at the same point." They do not realize how deeply they sin against history in saying so. There are, there can be, no standstills in history : by the fact that a nation does not advance, she retrogrades; for the rest of the world goes on and does not wait for her. Only think with what gigantic paces human genius was advancing on its way, and you will realize how far behind our poor country was left. ^ It begins with John the Terrible's childhood, and goes as far as 1578. Its main idea is that the terrible Tsar was good as long as he was well sur- rounded. 92 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY We have reached the year 1613 in our narration. What was this time in the rest of the world ? What were the names that shone on the other side of the frontier ? In England, Shakespeare and Bacon ; ^ in France, Rabelais and Montaigne ; Descartes was already born ; in Spain, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca ; in Italy, Galileo and that innu- merable Pleiad of Italian painters, writers, sculptors, and scientists of every kind, each of whom makes the glory of their own country and the pride of the whole world. It was the time when ever young antiquity, in the immaculate beauty of her Grecian serenity, had lately arisen from the Italian soil, and, with a new unknown f expression in her eyes, crowned with mystic flowers of Christian poetry, had dispersed the gloom of the Middle Ages and lit the sun of the " Renaissance." It was the time when the intrepid prows of European vessels, cleav- ing the waves of distant oceans, plunged into new hori- zons and landed at the shores of virgin continents. Russia remained in the background during all that movement. Everybody is not called at the same time to co-operate in the great work of universal advance- ment. But if everybody has not helped to dig the well, to everybody is given the right of drinking the water. Russia had to conquer even that right. We are now about to examine the conditions which made of that conquest the most arduous of all her conquests. LECTURE IV (1613-1725) The first Romanovs. Characteristic of the period. The Patriarch Nikon and the "revision of the texts." Awaken- ing of critical spirit. Foreign infiltration and inner reaction. The Court. The precursors. Peter the Great, His historical figure. Peter's campaigns. The reform, its methods, its spirit. Posterity and contempora- ries. Tsarevich Alexis. Peter's death. Division of national opinion. Intestine polemics on foreign soil. LECTURE IV (1613-1725) As to Peter, — know ye all, that life to him is of no value so long as Russia lives in glory and prosperity. — From the order of THE DAY GIVEN TO THE ARMY BEFORE THE BATTLE OF POLTAVA. THERE are in history individualities whose names shine with such splendour that they not only throw their light on subsequent periods, but seem to lighten the previous epochs ; events imme- diately preceding their appearance lose that independent value which all historical events have when considered as results of the past, and acquire in the eyes of posterity the secondary value of auxiliary facts, as if history were endowed with prescience : events seem not so much to undergo the impulsion of the past as to obey the attrac- tion of the future. One of these individualities is Peter the Great. We will therefore consider the times of the first sovereigns of the newly elected dynasty inasmuch as they constitute a preparatory epoch. On the 2 1 St of February, 161 3, the interregnum is put an end to by the election of Michael Romanov.^ The country got out of the " times of confusion," but the effort it required to deliver itself from the invasion of for- eigners and from the gangs of robbers had exhausted 1 On this event : Ervin Bauer, " Die Wahl Michael Feodorovich Romanov's zum Tsaren von Russland," in " Historische Zeitschrift." Neue Folge, Band XX. 95 96 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY all its forces ; towns were destroyed, villages burnt, fields devastated ; in many places houses were encum- bered with corpses. The people worn out, exasperated, were driven to the pitch of desperation. The reigns of Michael and his son Alexis were troubled with continuous riots, and it required a good deal of wisdom and care on the part of the two first rulers of the new dynasty to heal the nation's wounds under such conditions. Exterior affairs no more than interior allowed the country to take rest. The former Princedom of Moscow now extended to the east as far as the Chinese frontier, while on the west the three capital questions of its political life — the conquest of the Baltic shores, the incorporation of the old Russian Provinces annexed by Poland (the so-called Little Russian question), and the expulsion of the Tartar from the Crimea — involved her in a series of campaigns against Sweden, Poland, and Turkey.^ In putting to- gether the duration of these campaigns led by Michael and Alexis, we have in the seventy years of their reigns thirty years of war. And with all that, so conscientious was the work of these first Romanovs, so sincere their efforts to appease the country, and so charming their personal character, that the reigns of Michael, Alexis, 1 In these times we must look for the beginning of the " Eastern Question." The first who formulated the opinion according to which Russia's historical mission was to deliver the southwestern Slavonians from the Turkish dominion, was a certain Krijanich, a Servian who had settled in Moscow under Tsar Alexis. (See : Louis Leger, " Nouvelles Etudes Slaves." lereserie. Paris, 1880. On the Eastern Question : A. Le- roy-Beaulieu, " Politique russe et panslavisme," in " Revue des Deux Mondes," 13th December, 1876.) The last important event in connection with the Eastern Question is the Turkish-Russian War of 1877-1878, for the emancipation of Bulgaria. (F. V. Greene, " Russian Army and its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-1878." New York, 1S79.) AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 97 and his eldest son Theodor leave in history the impression of what they wished them to be, — an impression of peace, of rest, of benevolence. Foreign contemporaries of Alexis could not conceive how a sovereign invested with absolute power could never have attacked any man's life or property or honour. Though somewhat too optimistic, this statement of the German ambassa- dor ^ renders well the historical colouring of that period of calm contained between the turbulent vicissitudes of the interregnum, and the fermentation brought about by the violence of Peter's reform. In such an atmosphere arose those intellectual currents which were the precursors of the great reformatory wave ; from this time dates the awakening of the critical spirit which made it possible for the innovations to take root in people's minds. Let us examine the soil on which this spirit of criticism broke out, and the points at which it was directed. As we have already seen, the clergy and the monaster- ies were the depositories of that narrow Byzantine cult- ure which, still narrowed by difficulties of translating, was the only intellectual food of the whole precedent period. It is from the same ecclesiastical soil the critical move- ment started; though it assumed much greater propor- tions than its initiators intended to give it, though the promoters themselves were afraid of the infinity of the widening direction the critical spirit seemed to inaugurate, it is nevertheless in the Church and the passionate ec- clesiastical debates of this time, that we must look for the first germs of the intellectual and social reform. The 1 Mayerberg, " Iter in Moscoviam." French translation, " Relation d'un voyage en Moscovie," Leyden, 1688, also in the " Bibliographic Russe et Polonaise." I and II. H 98 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY authoritative and ambitious figure of Patriarch Nikon becomes the central point of this movement, and the revision of the ecclesiastical books, the question which starts the fermentation. One day in the Cathedral of the Assumption, — the largest and finest among the numerous churches of the Kremlin, the one where, since John IV, all tsars and later all emperors of Russia were crowned, — Tsar Alexis, surrounded by his court and an innumerable crowd of people, threw himself at the feet of the Metropoli- tan Nikon, imploring him not to refuse the acceptance of the patriarchal throne to which he had been elected by the council.^ This was in 1642. Six years later, in the Cathedral of the Assumption, the Patriarch Nikon, after having celebrated mass, at which mass the Tsar did not assist, unburdening himself of the ensigns of his rank, declared to the assisting people that he was no longer their patriarch, and amidst the tears and lamentations of the crowd walked out of the cathedral and left for a suburban convent. What had occurred in that six years' interval .'' The civil and the ecclesias- tic powers had come to a conflict ; the Tsar grew tired of the increasing pretensions of the patriarch who, availing himself of many years of friendship and intel- lectual communion, by and by assumed the rank of a second tsar, and called himself " Lord Great Sover- eign." We will not follow the events of this dramatic episode of our ecclesiastical history ; Nikon, summoned 1 The metropolitan of Moscow was enthroned patriarch by Jeremiah, patriarch of Constantinople under Theodor, John the Terrible's son, in 1589. (See Adelung, "Der griechische Patriarch Jeremias in Moskwa, 1589." St. Petersburg, 1840.) The patriarchate of Russia was suppressed and the synod substituted, by Peter the Great, in 1721. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 99 before an ecclesiastical council composed of representa- tives of the Russian clergy, presided over by the patri- archs of Alexandria and Antioch,^ was declared wrong in his behaviour, and forced to resign for good ; he spent the rest of his days in a distant convent.^ The fact interesting to us is that among those measures taken by him, which, in spite of his condemnation, were ac- cepted and approved of by the council, was the revi- sion he had made of the ecclesiastical books. Thanks to the continuous process of copying, mis- takes and incorrectnesses could not help stealing into the texts. So long as they were only manuscripts, the re- sponsibility could always be charged to the copyist, but when they began to be printed by the ecclesiastical press, the errors acquired a sort of consecration. For a long time past learned monks from Greece and from Kiev, where traditions were observed, had been pointing out the errors to the Moscovite clergy. Nikon was one of the first to take real notice of the fact, and put hand to a thorough revision of the books according to the Greek texts. The necessity was urgent, yet in some way it was already too late. A great part of the people would not accept the rectifications ; rejecting the Nikon texts, they clung to the ancient ones and produced that which is known as the " Great Schism" of the Russian Church. We must keep in mind the almost dogmatic signifi- cance given to the letter in those times to understand the meaning of Nikon's reform and of its official acknow- 1 The patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem had been asked by the Tsar, but were detained by their diocesan affairs. 2 On Nikon : W. Palmer, " The Patriarch and the Tsar." 6 vols. 1871-1876. Interesting details of every-day life: A. Brueckner, "Des Patriarchen Nikon Ausgabebuch " in " Baltische Monatsschrift," iv, 3, 4. loo PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY ledgment : it was the admission of criticism in the domain of those questions which till then were re- garded as inaccessible to reason. And in fact reason awakens, and the critical spirit breaks out. Several schools are founded in different convents where Greek ^ Byzantinism enters into competition with Latin scholasti- cism. A plan of an academy is approved by Alexis' son, Theodor, and carried out (1633) under the regency of his sister Sophia, who ruled during the minority of Peter the Great. The necessity of learning imposes itself with more and more urgency on the minds of men. That self-belief which characterizes all nations who have lived for a long time without intercourse with others is shaken, and self- criticism raises its voice. When the Church herself gives the example of self-revision, how can other sides of life remain in a continuous " status quo " .-* " What is impossible in Russia ! " exclaims a contemporary ; " any- thing can be obtained in a monarchy. Is the merchant illiterate .'' Close his shop and keep it so until he learns reading and writing." The increasing foreign infiltra- tion becomes an important factor in this movement. The famous " German Suburb " in Moscow, which soon is going to become the favourite resort of Tsar Alexis' son, the young Prince Peter, rapidly grows and be- comes a sort of living cyclopaedia of foreign "craft" and "skill" which dazzles and enchants.^ Foreign people, foreign habits, foreign books, become points of comparison, and, for many, examples for imitation. Slight facts open new horizons of foreign superiority and dis- 1 On the German Suburb and in general on foreigners in Russia : A. Brueckner, "Die Europaisirung Russland's." Gotha, 1888, and "Cultur- historische Studien," ii, Riga, 1878. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE cjose the abysses of our ignorance. A dignitary of the Church, who carries on a Latin correspondence with a foreign merchant staying at Archangel, writes to thanlc him for some Latin books : ^ he considers them " Opera preciosissima ... in quibus quot paginas revolvo, tot fructus colHgo " ; and then in a touching access of very excusable envy he adds : " Laudabiles sunt hae regio- nes, quae tales libros vel potius talium librorum aucto- res doctissimos et eruditissimos producunt."^ But all the clergy were not like him, and a violent reaction breaks out in the sermons of the time against the dan- gers of a blind imitation. Nikon himself, at the begin- ning of this movement, felt alarmed at the rapidity with which innovations invaded domestic life. With Savonarolian fanaticism he burns pictures, destroys an organ, cuts to pieces the liveries one of the boyars has made for his servants. If such were Nikon's feel- ings, you may imagine what were the opinions of those who clung to the ancient texts because they considered Nikon too advanced. In a collection of spiritual pre- cepts of the time, we read the following terrifying sen- tences : " Abominable before God is he who likes geometry . . . prefer simplicity to wisdom ; that which is higher than you never seek to explore, that which is deeper than you never seek to fathom, but that learn- ing which comes from God and is given to you ready made, that keep for yourself." 1 Dimitry, metropolitan of Rostoff (d. 1709) to Isaac Van der Burg. He was one of the most learned men among the Russians of the time, and author of many valuable works. In his library, it is said, for the first time the works of Bacon appeared in Russia. 2 " Most precious works ... in which on every page I turn I find some new fruit. . . . Laudable those countries which produce such books or rather the most able and most learned authors of such books." I02 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY You see the violence of opinions on either side.^ Ttie struggle began ; Russia's future depended upon the issue of the conflict. Which would be the stronger of the two ; which ideas would attain pre-eminence ; which would triumph, enlightenment or obscurantism ? The latter held possession of the majority of the country, the former of a slight minority composed of the upper class of Moscow. But the court was with the minority, Tsar Alexis furthered the new movement, enlightenment was officially favoured, and Russia's future was secured. The court of Moscow presented an interesting sight at this time. The Kremlin attained the full development of its architectural beauty ; the typical harmony of its configuration was not yet destroyed by those modern superstructures which spoil it in our days ; and with the gable roofs of its palaces painted in checlcs, with the towers of its white wall overlooking the river, with the golden cupolas of its churches and the medley of its belfries rising in the air and glittering in the sunshine, it presented already in those times that same enchanting spectacle which a hundred and fifty years later would stop Napoleon in his march, and inter- rupt the sombre current of his thought with a moment of aesthetical delight. Inside this Kremlin, in this cita- del of palaces and churches, where the hours of the day were marked by ecclesiastical services, where the sacer- dotal vestments and the royal mantles intermingled in ^ A vigorous protest against Moscovian ignorance is presented by the work of G. Kotoshikin, " On Russia under Alexis Mikailovich." Em- ployed in the " Polish Department " of foreign affairs he was versed in all details of contemporary administration. In the sixties he emigrated to Sweden, and there he wrote his work (1666- 1667). It was known by a Swedish translation (1682) until 1838, when Professor Solovieff discov- ered the original manuscript at the University of Upsala. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 103 the gorgeousness of alternating ritual and ceremonial, strange things were taking place in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The Tsar, his family, his court, seemed given over to a new kind of amusement : ' in the private apartments of the palace, in presence of his Majesty, a German theatrical company gave per- r- formances under the direction of Godfried Gregory, the Lutheran clergyman of the German Suburb. In 1672, three days after the birth of his son Peter, Tsar Alexis ordered Gregory to exhibit a comedy. The first piece given was about Esther and Ahasuerus ; then came "Judith," "Joseph," "Adam and Eve," etc.; at first in German, but then Russian boys were intrusted to Pastor Gregory to be taught the art of acting ; translations were made into • Russian, and finally the first original comedy was written by Simeon of Po-^ lotsk. This learned monk was teacher of the Tsar's children, and, at the same time, something like the poet laureate of the court. His comedy, entitled " The Prodigal Son," has been preserved in a very inter- esting illustrated edition of the time. The author of " The Prodigal Son " took an important part in this literary passion which invaded the court; his lessons were so interesting, so clever, — sometimes in verse to make it easier for the memory, — that the Tsar's daughter for the first time in history since the Tartar yoke, leaves her maiden apartments. Princess Sophia shares the benefits of Simeon's lessons with her eldest brother, Theodor. Later she becomes herself a writer : she composes a tragedy on Esther ; she is said to have made attempts at translating Moliere, — at any rate Moliere's "Physician in spite of himself" was repre- sented in her private apartments. I04 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY A man who became a prominent figure during Princess Sophia's regency took part in this performance ; this was Prince Galitzin, of whom the PoHsh envoy, De la Neuville,^ says that he cherished vast plans of reform ; he was of a refined intelligence ; and in his mind the necessity of emancipating the peasants, who had been bound to the soil in the last years of the preceding cen- tury, already presented itself as an inevitable condition of national prosperity. He can be taken as the pre- cursory specimen of that Russian aristocracy which a century later would swarm round the throne of Cath- erine the Great — refined, intellectual, but idealistic and with no deep roots in practical life. Another interesting personality is Ordyn Naschokin, a man widely different from Prince Galitzin, and though of great universality in his interests, very practical in action ; he was the first Russian diplomatist. Involved in the hardest difficulties of the Little Russian and the Baltic questions, he gained the esteem of the Swedish and Polish diplomatists with whom he had to deal. A passionate champion of foreign ideas, he was a harsh critic of Moscovite customs, and made numerous enemies in society by his habit of sacrificing personal considera- tions to affairs. He was an ardent advocate of a Russian sea and a Russian fleet.^ After his type will be shaped the helpers of Peter the Great. We must mention also Tsar Alexis' intimate friend, Artamon Matveyev. His 1 "Relation curieuse et nouvelle de la Moscovie." A la Haye, 1699. (English translation. London, 1699.) 2 How intensely the necessity of a fleet was felt in those days we may see from the fact that Tsar Alexis asked the Due of Courland whether he would allow him to keep a few vessels in the port of Riga. The Due answered most sarcastically that the port of Archangel on the Polar Sea would better suit his purposes as being a Russian port. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 105 house was the gathering-place of the intellectual elements of the time ; the " German Suburb " enjoyed his warmest sympathies, so that his enemies called him " Father of the Germans"; he had been the first promoter of that theatrical movement of which we spoke.^ In his house one day, Tsar Alexis met a handsome girl, who impressed him with her soft manners and beautiful black eyes ; this was the host's pupil, Nathaly Narishkin. The Tsar was a widower at that time ; she became his wife, and on the 30th of May, 1672, brought into the world a son who was called Peter. Such was the atmosphere in which grew and lived the children of Tsar Alexis. Mild and noble Theodor, who ruled during six years after his father ; the ener- getic and ambitious Sophia, who succeeded, after Theo- dor's death in 1682, in being proclaimed regent in the name of her two brothers ; the delicate and feeble-minded John, and Theodor's god-child little Peter with his black curly hair.^ I have tried to picture, as briefly as possible, this curious epoch of gradual intellectual emancipation, — emancipation from religious fanaticism, from national exclusiveness, from a servile obedience to the customs of the forefathers ; an interesting epoch which would 1 His son Andrew was sent by Peter the Great as ambassador extraor- dinary to Queen Anne of England, in 1706. On the night of the 21st of July, 1708, he was assaulted in the streets of London. He com- plained to the British government; the affair got before Parliament, which on this occasion passed the " Act for preserving the privileges of ambassa- dors and other public ministers of Foreign Princes and States," sanctioned by the Queen on the 21st of April, 1709. The act passed by the United States Congress on the 30th of April, 1790, is but a repetition of the one called forth by Matveyev's " troublesome affair." 2 Peter the Great was Alexis' fourteenth child; only the above men- tioned played a part in history. io6 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY have counted in history as marking a step of national evolution had it not been put into the shade by the im- petuous revolution of the subsequent period. It is the fashion now among those who pretend to depreciate Peter the Great, to insist upon this preparatory period ; as they cannot contest the importance of his activity, they attack him from the rear, and declare that the whole reform was ready marked out under his predecessors, thus granting him the merit of a conscientious exec- utor, but refusing all glory of creation. We have seen enough of the preparatory period to form an idea of what it was, and of what Peter had to do : it gave exam- ples of intellectual awakening, scattered in different domains of science, craft, and trade, unconscious of their reciprocal dependence, and incapable of practical transfusion from individual into national life. Peter had to fan these individual sparks into a universal flame ; to invigorate the scattered instances with the conscious- ness of collectivity; to vivify them by practically apply- ing them to the necessities of national life, and to multi- ply them by the irradiating power of his own example. If anyone should ask us " How did he do it ? " — extrav- agant as it may seem — we should answer with one word, " He lived." Peter the Great lived, and that was enough ; his life was the people's life ; his learning and labour were his nation's improvement ; his advance was the advance of the country ; his success was Russia's suc- cess.^ 1 " Peter is the last and the greatest /lero. Only Christianity and prox- imity to our times have saved us (and this only to a certain extent) from a religious vv^orshipping of this demigod, and from mythological recitals about the exploits of this Hercules." (S. Solovieff, " History of Russia," vol. xiv.) " He is a hero in the antique sense : he is in modern times the only specimen of those gigantic natures of which we see so many in AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 107 The lad, who became the friend and comrade of the artisans of the "German Suburb," soon left childhood behind him ; the military tournaments with the children of domestics and boyars are soon transformed ; that which was a plaything becomes a well-disciplined regi- ment ; the coachman's son Alexashka^ is the future serene highness. Prince Menshikov, minister of war, and the future field-marshal, Prince Galitzin, is in the ranks of that child-army. The little boats on the pond of the royal garden are too insignificant ; arsenals are ran- sacked ; an old boat is found among pieces of armour and household lumber, it is restored and launched on the water ; the pond is too small ; Peter leaves for the Pereiaslav lake and forgets everything on the waves of his favourite element ; now and then he sends a few hasty lines to his mother. " Your son Peter, abiding in labour, asks for your blessing and wishes to know of your health. As to us, thanks to your prayers, things are all right. The lake is free of ice, and all the vessels, except the big ship, are finished." ^ " Abiding in labour," — from seventeen till the day of his death, that self- applied epithet will never leave him. The 12th of September, 1689, all plays are put an end to ; the parti- sans of Princess Sophia and those of Peter's mother had come to a bloody "conflict; the Princess Regent, who cherished the hope of being crowned, is deposed and relegated to a convent; Peter and John remain the the misty distance of ages at the foundation and formation of human socie- ties." op. cit. vol. xviii. 1 Diminutive of Alexander. 2 " Letters and Papers of the Emperor Peter the Great." Edited by A. Bychkoff, director of the Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg. Vol. i, No. 6. io8 PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY masters of the place. But the invalid John does not count ; the reign of Peter the Great begins..^ It is impossible, in the limited time given to us, to represent the proportions and to follow up the. entire course of his reform ; in this case I must ask for your collaboration. We are now at the middle of our task ; if by what I have heretofore said I have succeeded in giving you some idea of what the country was, I will ask you not to lose memory of the picture : the differ- ence, I hope, will appear of itself, and the contrast will proclaim the importance of him who marks the division of the two epochs. Besides, even had I not succeeded in my efforts, the mere value of those things I shall have to speak of will be eloquent enough of itself. I have had little to say of literature, of science, of art, of social life, of ramification of intellectual currents, of frac- tions of national self-consciousness ; henceforth I shall have to speak of all these, and were I endowed with encyclopaedic universality, I should have to speak of mining, engineering, trade, manufactures, etc. I will not undertake the hard task of examining all the springs and levers of the reforms, nevertheless a few remarks on its material side are necessary. 1 On Peter the Great : A. Brueckner, " Peter der Grosse." Berlin, 1883. Schuyler, " Peter the Great." 2 vols. London, 1884. C. Sadler, " Peter der Grosse als Mensch und Regent." St. Petersburg, 1872. On the epoch : A. Brueckner, " Iwan Possoschkow. Ideen und Zustande in Russland zur Zeit Peter's des Grossen." Leipzig, 1878. Bantysh-Ka- mensky, "Age of Peter the Great." London, 1851. The first really scientific work in Russian on Peter the Great is Oustrialov's monumental "History of Peter the Great's Reign." 5 vols. St.. Petersburg, 1858- 1S63. Valuable documents in: "Monuments historiques relatifs au regne d'Alexis Michaelovitch, Feodor III et Pierre le Grand, Czars de Russie, extraits des archives du Vatican et de Naples." Par A. Theiner. Rome, Imprimerie du Vatican, 1859. AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE 109 That which makes Peter's reform so difficult to grasp, is just that simultaneousness of which we spoke awhile ago ; it seems to lack system and plan ; everything is put in movement at the same time. One main idea can indeed be traced in every single act of his ; it is the increase of the country's wealth ; all which does not directly aim at that is either a means or a necessary consequence. One of these means was war ; it was an expensive one, but the compensations expected were greater than the sacrifices. The campaigns of Peter the Great have a character of their own. It is never for a diplomatic reason or by voracity for adjacent territory that they are undertaken, — you always feel the practical aim at the end. They are not vast, the territories for which he fights, but they are the port of Azov, as en- trance to the Black Sea,i Derbent on the Caspian, and the shores of the Baltic. And the process of war itself, how different it appears ! It quite loses the character of national calamity, of disaster. Those healthy, vigorous regiments in newly adopted foreign uniforms, taught by foreign under-officers, but led by Russian generals, seem to start for a match ; a defeat is never a non-success, — it is another lesson learnt, and the profit of the lesson never fails to materialize. The first campaign against Azov was gained by the Turks. With the energy of a man knowing where his fault lies and how to repair it, Peter rushes into the for- ests of Varonesh ; twenty-six thousand carpenters are set on foot ; the Tsar presides over the work ; a fleet is being built. " According to God's commandment given to our forefather Adam," he writes, "in the sweat of our brow, 1 He had to cede it back to Turkey after an unsuccessful campaign in 1711. no PICTURES OF RUSSIAN HISTORY we eat our bread." Between November and the next spring the fleet is constructed ; the vessels sent down the Don appear before Azov, the port is taken — the lesson had been of profit. The first conflict with Charles XII of Sweden, which opens the famous " Northern War," brings the dreadful defeat of Narva with the loss of the whole artillery — another lesson. Everything is set on foot this time : men, women, monks, priests, work by order of the Tsar for the equipment and arming of the soldiers ; new foun- dries work day and night, church-bells are melted down ; in sixteen months' time three hundred guns are ready. The future field-marshal Sheremetiev takes the com- mand and marches from success to success ; Swedish banners sent to Moscow wave in the Kremlin. Peter leaves for the North; with his new artillery, he takes a fortress on the Neva, which, with that rage for German names which at that time invades the national vocabu- lary, he calls Schlusselburg ; with sixty cutters he rows down the Neva to explore the mouth of the river. Sud- denly three Swedish men-of-war appear ; there is a fight, the three vessels are captured, the first naval battle is gained, the dream of the forefathers is fulfilled ; that country, which, during centuries, had been longing for water, at last quenches her continental thirst. On the 1 6th of May Peter goes ashore ; a few wooden houses are rapidly put together, he orders it to be a town, a seaport ; he calls it St. Petersburg and leaves for the South ; the Turkish frontier required his presence. But the great struggle with Sweden is not finished ; another terrible but inevitable conflict had to come ; it came on the 27th of June, 1709, near Poltava; the "Northern War" had its culminating point in the southwest. The AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE armies met at four in the morning ; at eleven the Swedes were crushed and put to flight; Charles XII, the Swed- ish hero, wounded and carried on a litter, just escaped captivity. When, a hundred years later, Napoleon I, with his arrogant belief in his star, shall ask the envoy of Alexander I, " What is the shortest way to get to Moscow ? " — Balashov will answer with courtesy, ' "' s'- , \ V v-^^^ .0 o. aXV ^>:^" :^<^. C/- v" .^^^ %^ ,0 o. '/K^.>^-- '^ ^^' ":p. '%.. S LIBRARY OF CONGRESS III 030 014 501 2