The Spirit of Russia/Volume 1/Chapter 1

by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

PART ONE

 

THE PROBLEMS OF RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY OF
HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

CHAPTER ONE

 

"HOLY RUSSIA." MOSCOW AS THIRD ROME

 

§ 1.

 

RUSSIAN historians have as yet thrown little light upon the origin and development of the Russian state. In the first place, a number of extremely important facts have not been established with incontestable certainty, while secondly the attempts that have been made to explain the historical evolution of Russia are far from satisfactory.

We need for our purposes a sketch of Russian history, on the one hand because we have to make acquaintance with the problems with which the philosophers of history deal, while on the other hand this historical sketch will form the background for the studies here offered.

Our most direct interest is with recent Russian history, that of the nineteenth century; but to understand this we have to discuss the history of an earlier epoch, from the days of Peter the Great onwards. In especial, we shall give a detailed account of Peter's reforms, since this will furnish the reader with an impression of the characteristics of the pre-reform period, above all in Moscow. The early history of Moscow, and that of the earlier epochs of the petty principalities and Kiev, will be dealt with very briefly.

i. The Russian state took its rise in the wide area between the site of the modern Novgorod (on Lake Ilmen) and Kiev, between the two seas, the Baltic in the north and the Black Sea in the south. This region, traversed by the rivers Vistula, Dnieper, Don, and Volga, was considerably larger than the middle Europe of the ninth century inhabited by the Germans and the Latins.

The political organisation of the Russians spread from two centres, a northern on the Baltic and a southern on the Black Sea. In the north, along their native shores, the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes had attained a notable degree of political development and a high level of civilisation. On the Black Sea lay the outposts of the Byzantine empire; all the great rivers of Russia led southward, and across the Black Sea was the route to Constantinople.

The political organisation of Novgorod dates from the ninth century, but at the close of this century Kiev became the capital of the Russian realm. The subsequent development of Novgorod was comparatively independent, and it later became a powerful northern republic, whose territories in the twelfth century, when Kiev grew weak, extended to the White Sea and across the Urals.

From Kiev the Russians were in touch with the Greeks, while across the Caspian they came in contact with the advancing Arabs. Further, and in especial, they had to contend with nomadic tribes, the Khazars, the Pechenegs, and the Polovzians. Kiev was able to defend itself against these peoples, but it succumbed to the Tatars, in whose onslaught against the Russians the nomad tribes were broken up.

In addition to these Asiatics, the Russians of Novgorod and Kiev had the Finns as neighbours. Before long, too, they had to maintain themselves against the Lithuanians, and, ultimately against the Slavonian Poles.

The first princes of Novgorod and Kiev whose names appear in the ninth-century chronicles are stated by the "Normanists" (basing their views upon Nestor's chronicle and other data) to have been Norsemen—Varangians. The "Slavists," on the other hand, contend that these princes were Slavs. It is certain that the state of Novgorod existed before the arrival of the three Variag brothers Rjurik, Sineus, and Truvor; but it is uncertain how this state originated, whether these princes were the first, whether they had a numerous following and how soon they became Russified.

Other Russian towns besides Novgorod appear to have been occupied by Swedish Varangians. Among these was Kiev, which was occupied twice at least, for Oleg, a successor of Rjurik, seized Kiev from the Norse princes Askold and Dir. Subsequently we are told that princes who were established in Kiev summoned Norse followers. In this connection, too, the question arises when and how the dominion of Kiev was founded in the south, whether there was a Russian realm in the south before Oleg's occupation of Kiev, and if so, where that realm was and how long it endured.

There is no apriori improbability in the contention that during the ninth century Russian regions peopled by Slavs and Finns were ravaged by Swedish vikings. During this same period, the Norsemen conquered Paris (for the first time in 845), invaded England (836), and occupied numerous places on the coasts of the North Sea and the Mediterranean, establishing their dominions in Frisia, Italy, and Spain. Novgorod and Kiev were equally accessible.

It is possible, however, that the first Norsemen to enter Kiev came, not from the north, but from the south. In the fifth and sixth centuries, the Herulians, a Teuton tribe, were settled on the sea of Azov, and may have made their way thence to Kiev. Further, it may be that these southland Teutons bore the name of Rōs, and that "Russia" originated on the sea of Azov. All these things, and many others, are possible. But hitherto neither the interpretation of the scanty historical records nor the etymological study of such descriptions as have come down to us can warrant any definite conclusions.^[1] The Varangian problem would have been ignored here were it not that it bulks so largely in the historical disputes between the slavophils and their opponents. The mingling of nations and races has important bearings upon the origins of Kiev and Novgorod. It is unquestionable that Finnish and other European and Asiatic racial elements enter into the composition of the Russian people, but it is today impossible to ascertain with anything approaching precision, when, whence, and how these interminglings and Russifications occurred. In the present state of research it is extremely hazardous to make extensive use of theories of race and nationality to explain the characteristics of Kievic Old Russia.

As far as the epoch we have been considering is concerned, no clear light has hitherto been thrown upon the distinction between Great and Little Russia. The term "Little Russia" makes its first appearance in fourteenth-century documents. It is uncertain when and how the linguistic separation of the Little Russians occurred; and we are quite unable to determine when, how, and to what extent the Little Russians underwent anthropological and ethnological differentiation from the Great Russians. It is possible that the Lithuanians, the Poles, and some of the Czechs (Aryan and direct Slavic stocks), have had a racial influence upon the Little Russians—but these are mere speculations. The differences in character between the Great Russians and the Little Russians are an actual fact, like the analogous differences between northerners and southerners in many nations occupying extensive tracts of territory; but it remains uncertain whether climatic influences, the character of the soil, and the methods of agriculture, have had more to do or less to do with the differentiation of the two stocks than a hypothetical racial divergence.

It is certainly possible that the distinction between Kiev and Novgorod in these earliest days was in some way related to the distinction between Little Russians and Great Russians. Gruševskii, the historian of Little Russia, regards the Antes as the ancestors of the Little Russians.

This indefiniteness is manifest in another direction. In speaking of the earliest epochs, the terms Slav and Russian are apt to be used as if they were interchangeable. It is generally assumed, in the case of the Russians as in the case of the other Slav nations of to-day, that in this remote period no notable differentiation had taken place among the Slavs. For the nonce the assertion is unproved. It may be true that in prehistoric times the Slavs, like the Teutons, etc., were a unitary race with an integral type of civilisation; but we do not know how long ago this may have been, or when and how the differentiation between the various Slavic stocks began. This much seems clear, that in the ninth century differentiation was already far advanced.

In this connection it is unfortunately essential to touch upon the question of the so-called primitive home and primitive condition of the Slavs, it being premised that by the term "primitive home" we are to understand the last region in which the Slavs existed as a unified stock. The latest researches suggest that this region lay northward of the Carpathians, between Warsaw and Cracow on the one hand and Chernigov and Kiev on the other. From this region, migrations may be supposed to have started in the second century of the Christian era.

If this view be correct, if the alternative view that the unified Slavs had their home on the lower Danube or elsewhere be dismissed, it is clear that the Kievic realm may have contained the primitive Slav population; but it is also possible that the Slavs, starting their migrations from Kiev or its neighbourhood, may have returned to occupy or to reoccupy Kiev after numerous wanderings and when many centuries had elapsed.

Nothing can be said here regarding the civilisation of the primitive Slavs, or regarding the influence exercised on them by the Celts, the Baltic peoples, etc., for these are matters concerning which hypotheses are only now being formulated.

ii. Many Slav and Russian historians have described the Russians and Slavs of earlier days (contrasting them with the Teutons and the Latins) as unwarlike, as people of pacific and dovelike nature, and as democratic lovers of freedom. It is true that early German and Byzantine writers who made acquaintance with the Slavs and the Russians bear witness to their love of liberty and to the gentleness of their disposition. It is necessary to discriminate. Unwarlike, liberty loving, pacific, and democratic, are not interchangeable terms. As far as concerns the idea democratic, we must remember that when used by a Byzantine writer of the sixth century (Procopius) or even of the tenth century (Constantine Porphyrogenitus) the word has an anarchistic flavour—and we actually find that a tendency to anarchism has been ascribed alike to the ancient and to the modern Slavs.

For the remote epoch we are discussing I shall make use of the term "negative democracy." By this I understand the condition associated with the absence of a well-contrived political regulation of social life (this is not to say that ideas as to such regulation had never been considered); those associated with the impossibility of efficient centralisation, if only because the ruler has not sufficient servants, a modern might say not sufficient policemen, at his disposal; the conditions associated with the absence of suitable and firmly established traditions. The resulting freedom was that of the so-called state of nature, and it was characterised by the absence of the evil institutions, but likewise by the absence of the good institutions, of a more finished type of political governance.

On the whole, however, the development of the Old Russians and that of the Old Slavs in general may have been more closely akin to the development of the Teutons than many Slav authors are willing to admit.

In Kiev and in the oldest Russian cities we find, in addition to a free population, a servile and a semi-free population, both the last-named elements being likewise Slavic. In Kiev the peasantry was free.^[2]

The existence of Old Slav and Old Russian democracy is by some deduced as an outcome of agrarian communism, being considered a corollary of the Russian institution known as the mir, the village community, and of the occasional existence of the family community (known among the Serbs as zadruga). This theory has been advanced by the slavophils and the narodniki.

The earliest historical data regarding Old Russia may be interpreted by the analogy of the primitive institutions obtaining among other Slav and Aryan nations, and by the analogy of the primitive conditions contemporarily existing in certain regions of Russia (Siberia, for instance) and among the so-called primitive peoples inhabiting various regions and belonging to divers races. By these considerations we are led to suppose that agrarian communism prevailed in Kievic Russia.

This communism was of a negative character. It must not be regarded as representing the communism demanded by modern socialists to contrast with and to supersede private ownership and capitalism. It is not a higher and better stage of economic and social development, but the primitive stage (I by no means suggest the first of all stages) of fallowing, the primitive stage of landholding in accordance with which land having little or no value could be occupied and held at will as res nullius.

Like the soil, the dwellings in Old Russia were of little value, consisting merely of wooden shanties and wattle-and-dab huts, such as were practicable in the forest-clad plains. The extensive Russian lowlands were therefore defenceless against hostile inroads, all the permanent possessions being easily destroyed by fire. It is true that the attacking parties, and especially the inhabitants of the steppes, were likewise poorly equipped. The European who to-day sees the Kremlin for the first time is impressed by the positively childish mode of fortification against the Tatar hordes of cavalry.

Owing to sparseness of population and continuous danger of hostile attack from robber horsemen, it was absolutely indispensable that the various members of the family and of the tribe should co-operate for labour and for defence. The family grew to become a tribe, the members of the latter remaining for a time aware of mutual dependence. Moreover, the family was often large, for the pagan Russians, the well-to-do at least, practised polygamy.

The soil and the house had little value; but for strategic reasons the family had to hold rigidly together; and the primitive Russian, work-shy like the members of all other races at this stage, had to be constrained to labour. Consequently the so-called patriarchalism was anything but a moral and democratic institution. On the contrary, it was a means of coercion, consecrated mainly by religious ties—by ancestor-worship which was already firmly established among the Slavs of that day.

Thus originated agrarian communism. Such objects as had value (weapons, for example) and pretia affectionis were private property; so were the dwellings; so was everything except the soil.

This communism, therefore, had no dominant or notable significance for the society of that day. To the Old Russians, the prince, the boyar, and the monastery, with the private possessions of these, seemed far more important than their own inconspicuous doings. To the tiller of the soil, the prince, the boyar, and the monastery were an example and an ideal. In Kievic Russia, therefore, as in the west, the palace of the prince (above all, of the grand prince) and the city were of preponderant importance, strategically and politically, administratively and economically, in respect alike of craftsmanship, industry, and commerce. It is therefore erroneous to ascribe to agrarian communism, and to ancient social institutions in general, a notable moral significance, as if family ties and other bonds of kinship had predominantly, or even exclusively, determined the organisation of society.

The development of Russian law, of civil law above all, affords unambiguous proof of what has just been said. During the Kievic epoch, commercial interests became so outstanding as to secure legal formulation to a far greater extent than did agricultural interests. It was not until towards the close of the Kievic regime, and subsequently in Moscow, that legal specifications in the interests of agriculture came to occupy the premier place.^[3]

iii. Economic relationships are, of course, largely dependent upon the qualities of the soil and upon climatic conditions. Primitive agriculture and primitive forestry seem prescribed by nature upon the boundless, thinly inhabited, beforested plains, whilst fishery is similarly prescribed by the existence of numerous large rivers and lakes. Trustworthy descriptions of Old Russian agriculture and stock-farming are, however, not forthcoming.

The direct and indirect influence, the economic and strategic influence, of soil and climate upon the character of the inhabitants was considerable, and remains considerable to-day. Much of interest from this outlook can be gleaned from descriptions in Russian literature and from the accounts of Russia given by such nonrussian writers as Leroy-Beaulieu.^[4]

iv. As early as the ninth century, commerce was active with the Teutonic north, with Byzantium, and with certain other neighbour nations. Kiev and Novgorod, situate between the developed commercial peoples on the Baltic and the Black Sea, likewise became important centres of transit trade.

In Kiev, therefore, there was a conspicuous growth of a monetary economy, though subsequently in Moscow this economy was greatly restricted.

Oldtime commerce, that of Russia at any rate, must not be thought of as sharply contrasted with militarism. Trade, or to be concrete, the traders, proceeding by land in caravans and by water in fleets of river-going or seaworthy vessels, travelled on a warlike footing, and were organised for war. The trader was also a conqueror, and on occasions a robber or a pirate. Kiev was certainly occupied by such warlike "traders" from Novgorod, and thus became the capital of the realm.

The first development of the state and of civilisation in general took place in fortified towns.^[5]

v. We may say, in conclusion, that political, social, and economic conditions in Kiev were somewhat unstable, and that correspondingly the evolution of Russian law, both of public law and of civil law, displayed a certain indefiniteness. The importance attached in earlier times, and even to-day, to custom, affords additional proof of this. In the west, conditions were different. Russia had no legal evolution corresponding to that of Rome and of the western states which carried on the development of the Roman realm and adopted the idea of the Roman imperium. Kiev was not so directly connected with Byzantium and the Byzantine empire as France and Germany were connected with Rome. Russia was not conquered by Byzantium, nor was Russia colonised by Byzantium. In the west, as early as the close of the eighth century, with the aid of the pope and the hierarchy, Charlemagne established the Roman theocracy; but the adoption of Christianity by Russia did not occur until a century later. At the end of the tenth century there was a school of law at Bologna where year after year during the middle ages jurists were trained to the number of many thousand; but in the Russia of that day there were only the Greek hierarchs and monks to exercise a trifling and indirect influence upon the development of legal institutions. There was in Europe a legal continuity which was lacking in Russia.

Owing to the comparative indefiniteness of their juristic concepts, the Russians have often been undeservedly reproached with anarchism and with incapacity for the founding and maintaining of states.

vi. The prince with his retainers constituted the political centre, and administration was predominantly militarist at the outset. This was brought about by the foreign origin of the rulers, by the warlike character of the neighbouring peoples, and by the hostile inroads of the barbarians.

The prince was not a solitary personality; he had brothers, a numerous family, and in accordance with ancient Russian custom all male children ranked equally as heirs. In conformity with this custom, we find, in the sphere of political power, either a temporary regime of all the brothers and of the more closely related agnates and cognates, or else a partition of the realm into minor princedoms. In either case there resulted an evolution of the idea and the institution of supreme sovereignty—grand princedom. Despite the equality of prestige which is characteristic of equality ol inheritance, here, as universally, age and experience claimed their rights. To put the matter in legal terminology, seniority developed, not at this stage precisely distinguished as majorat and primogeniture.

The grand prince of Kiev was an absolute monarch. His throne was supported by the boyars, the—aristocratic caste, from among whom he formed a council, the duma of boyars.^[6] After their conversion to Christianity, the princes took the hierarchy into their counsel as well. In the towns, which in Old Russia as in the west were the strategic centres, there existed in addition a popular assembly, the věče (folkmote). In Novgorod alone did this body flourish; elsewhere the institution proved incapable of development and ceased to exercise any influence.

vii. Moscow replaced Kiev. From the twelfth century onwards the Kievic realm was threatened more and more seriously by external enemies. lnadequately consolidated, it was attacked from the south and the east by Mongol and Turanian nomadic tribes; Poles, Lithuanians, and Germans pressed in upon the west and the north; the Finns constituted a hostile element against the Russians. Kiev ceased to be the capital of the grand princedom (1169). After the middle of the twelfth century the realm broke up into a number of principalities, whose mutual struggles for supremacy so greatly lessened the resisting power of the loose Russian federation that it proved unable to withstand the Tatar onslaught. In 1223 Russia passed under Tatar suzerainty, which endured for two and a half centuries, till 1480. In 1240 Kiev was destroyed by the Tatars.

From the north and the north-west, Russia was hard pressed by the Swedes, and also by the Livonian order of the Brethren of the Sword (founded 1202); and soon afterwards by the Teutonic Knights, who in 1225, proceeding from Transylvania, had settled on the Vistula and in 1237 absorbed the Livonian order. Lithuania likewise underwent centralisation towards the middle of the thirteenth century, threatened Russia, and conquered certain Russian territories. In 1386 Lithuania was united with Poland; South Russia and West Russia were annexed by Lithuania.

At the end of the thirteenth century the principality of Moscow was founded by Daniel Aleksandrovič. (ob. 1303). His son Jurii, who was married to the khan's sister, became grand prince. Jurii's successors outsoared the other princes, and Moscow was able to centralise the Russian petty realms. Ivan Kalita (1328–1341) "gathered together the Russian territories," and Moscow became the metropolitanate; Dmitrii Donskoi (1363–1389) established primogeniture, and his son Vasilii (1389–1425) reigned as first hereditary prince. After the death of Vasilii there occurred the final struggle between the advocates of primogeniture and those of seniority, and from 1450 the rule was established that the succession should be willed to the eldest son. Moscow became a hereditary monarchy, absorbed the princedoms, threw off the Tatar yoke in 1480 and at length, in 1523, united Russian territories into a powerful realm. Muscovy was better able to resist the newly established Mongolian khanates of Kazan and Crimea than she had been able in earlier days to withstand the great Golden Horde.

At the opening of the fifteenth century the primitively patriarchal regime, which as the dynasties had grown had taken the form of petty principalities, finally gave place to a centralised state consciously based upon public law. This development secured political expression in the legal fiction that Grand Prince Ivan III, on his marriage in 1472 with the daughter of the last Palæologus, had received from Constantinople the headship of the Byzantine empire. Muscovy now adopted the two-headed Byzantine eagle as its escutcheon, but not until the following century, in the year 1547, did John IV, the Terrible, assuming the title of tsar, have himself crowned as successor of the Cæsars.

In such brief outline may be recorded the historic fact that in three centuries the realm of Kiev had been replaced by the realm of Muscovy. Russian historians and historical philosophers have propounded the most manifold theories to explain the centralisation of Russia by Moscow.

The centralisation of Muscovy is made more comprehensible by reference to the parallel development of all European states. What has to be explained is how, and by the application of what energies, Moscow was able to carry out the work of centralisation.

In the first place it remains problematical how the mutual relationships of the petty principalities and how the relationships of these to the grand prince could be formulated from the outlook of constitutional law. Had the minor princes a sense of association; did this sentiment arise out of racial or out of family considerations; what were the motives of union? It is asserted that the territories became united upon a federative basis. As far, however, as I am able to judge, no constitutionally organised federation ever existed. The sense of racial kinship was not strong enough. The princes regarded themselves as independent, but the general danger and the common need led from time to time to a loose unification based upon treaties.

Nor can it be said that the relationship of the grand prince to the minor princes was analogous to European feudalism; even the relationship of the princes to the boyars was not feudal.

The Tatar yoke (the phrase has become current) is still frequently invoked as an explanation, and was unquestionably a co-operative factor, although to a less notable extent than many historians assume. It is asserted that in face of the khans the minor princes were all reduced to an equally low level, and that this contributed to unification. We are told that the military importance of the princes was increased by the struggle with the Tatars, the boyars and the věče (folkmote) being correspondingly weakened, and the way being thus paved for a centralising absolutism. The khan is supposed to have allotted the title of grand prince to whomsoever he pleased (in actual fact this title was assumed by many of the minor princes), until it ultimately remained with the Moscow ruler. It is further contended that the Russians learned much from the Tatars in respect alike of military and administrative matters, and that the "soft" Russian character was "hardened" by Tatar influence—an explanation that overlooks the question why centralisation was effected by Moscow in especial.

Indubitably the Tatar supremacy exerted a notable influence, but this influence was not decisive in the spheres of politics, administration, or civilisation. There is no direction in which Tatar rule can be said to have initiated a new epoch. It was impossible that the influence of the Tatars could be profound, for the Russian states or peoples were at this time widely separated, and the northern territories, that of Novgorod for instance, were almost untouched by the Tatars. In respect of culture and economic development the Tatars were by no means in advance of the Russians. It was therefore impossible for them to exercise a strong positive influence upon the Russians, and it may rather be considered probable that Russia exercised a civilising influence upon the Tatars. We must not forget that the Tatars, at the time when they first came into conflict with the Russians, were not as yet Mohammedans, but were pagans who showed no disinclination to accept Christianity. Their Mohammedanisation came later. It is probable that the racial and national influence of the Russians upon the Tatars was considerable, and among the Tatars there were more Tatarised Slavs than there were Tatars living among the Russians of that day.

None the less, Tatar influence is undeniable. We trace it in court ceremonial, as in prostration before the tsars; in administrative life, for in territories taken from the Tatars slaves were not freed; in the conduct of warfare; in many barbarous manners and customs (Tatar punishments, such as the branding of criminals); and in the adoption of Tatar words into the Russian language. The general effect of Tatar rule was to arrest or to retard Russian development. In my opinion, Polish and Lithuanian influence and Swedish and German influence were of greater importance than Tatar. The pressure upon Russia from the north and the north-west was no less severe than the pressure from the east and the south-east. Apart from the strategic reasons rendering unification against these enemies advisable, civilising influences came into play. In respect of military and administrative concerns there was far more to learn from the Teutonic Knights, from the Swedes, and from the Poles, than from the Tatars.

When this pressure from the north was superadded to the pressure from the south and the south-east, the political attention of the Russians was directed towards the north, towards the sea. Colonisation moved northwards from Kieir, and to-day Russian colonisation continues to move towards the north and the north-east (Siberia). Frequently conquest and colonisation have moved from north to south, the north-lander being attracted towards the wealthier and warmer southern territories. In Russia, too, this rule was exemplified but with modifications. Norsemen founded Kiev, or at least participated in its foundation; but Kiev was subsequently threatened from the south and south-east (by the Pechenegs, etc.), and thus the outflow of Russian energies was directed towards the north. Northward and north-eastward lay unoccupied land, and this therefore was the direction of voluntary and involuntary colonisation. It was not merely the pressure of the Pechenegs and later of the Tatars, but perhaps even more the oppression of the petty princely tyrants, which induced the Russian population to seek refuge in the north and the north-east and to found colonies in these regions.

Just as sovereignty passed from Kiev to the more northerly situated Moscow, so at a later date did sovereignty pass yet further northward to St. Petersburg, thence to centralise the southern regions and the entire land.

We have to remember that at this epoch the land to the south and east of Kiev was not Slav or Russian, so that here Tatar rule could more readily be established.

Some historians draw attention to the distinction between Little Russia and Great Russia, suggesting that the Great Russians of Moscow were more energetic, more warlike, and ruder in character, when compared with the inhabitants of Little Russia, who were of gentler disposition. But national characteristics have not as yet been defined with sufficient precision. Nor must we forget that such qualities change, and that they themselves stand in need of explanation. It is questionable whether the Kievic Russians already exhibited the characteristics of the Little Russians of to-day, and whether the Muscovites proper then possessed the qualities they now exhibit. It is obvious, moreover, that energy, courage in war, and roughness of disposition, do not suffice per se to lead to the centralisation of a great realm, and that a certain amount of administrative capacity is requisite in addition. We have to remember that the main topic of consideration at the moment is not the Russian people but the Russian state.

This much is certain, that attempts at centralisation were made by the princes of Kiev. Vladimir Monomachus (1113–1125) united a considerable portion of the minor principalities, whilst in Andrei Bogoljubskii (ob. 1174) we have an absolutist tsar before the Moscow tsars.

Commerce likewise contributed greatly towards the unification of Russia. For Kiev, trade with economically more developed foreign regions was already of great moment. In Muscovy the importance of trade increased in proportion as forests were cleared, and in proportion as all departments of agriculture experienced a comparatively equable development. The existence of the minor principalities was favourable to the general spread of agriculture, for in their individual territories the princes zealously promoted the cultivation of the soil and the settlement of peasants. The import of manufactured articles became more and more essential, and alike for the importing country and for the exporting countries trade was more lucrative in a large area with a centralised and unified administration, freed from tariff hindrances imposed by petty states. Just as in Germany the customs union was established before the political unification of the country, so also under primitive conditions in Russia was a "customs union" aimed at and secured. Trade strengthened centralisation and centralisation fostered trade. The capital and the other fortified towns promoted commerce, while commerce in its turn required security and unity in matters of administration and legislation. In particular, military and strategical needs were satisfied by trade, and the development of manufacture began. Commerce had likewise to satisfy the numerous courts, with their demand for luxuries.

A notable contributory economic cause and a prerequisite to centralisation was the diffusion and perfectionment of agriculture, which in Russia more than in other countries signified settlement. Herberstein, writing as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, observed that in the realm of Muscovy cereals were less grown than elsewhere in Europe.^[7]

It would be an error to assume at the outset that the growth of the realm of Muscovy was promoted by the co-operation of all the factors that have been named. To prove such a contention it would be necessary to undertake a more comprehensive analysis of individual factors, to study the varieties of agriculture, and to take into account the nature of the soil, its fertility, its water supply, etc.

In my view, the decisive centralising force of Moscow was to be found in the dependence of the grand princes upon the church. Grand princely absolutism received a religious sanction from the church, and from the patriarch, the head of the church.

It was the opposition of creed against the Asiatic east, and still more the opposition of creed against the west and the north-west, Catholic at first and subsequently Protestant, which developed so effectively the religious and ecclesiastical strength of Moscow, and concurrently its political strength. Ecclesiastical centralisation began with the establishment of the Kievic metropolitanate, and the centralising process was continued by Moscow when the metropolitanate was removed to that city.

viii. Centralisation against the foreign world signified at the same time a rigid centralisation at home. The grand princes became absolute monarchs, tsars. John the Terrible's new title denoted from the outlook of constitutional law that the state had been modified. This is shown by the fact that on the extinction of the Vladimir dynasty (1598) the new tsar was not chosen from the distinguished house of Rjurik, but was none the less readily able to acquire absolute power.

The minor princes had already weakened the strength of their boyars. In the petty state the ruler was able to take more energetic action, could have recourse to more directly forcible means, than could the grand prince, typical in this respect being the weakening of the boyars in Halicz. Moscow carried this process to its term. But even during the reign of John the Terrible the struggle between the two powers had not yet come to a close, as is indicated by the division of the state into boyarsland and tsarsland (zemščina and opriščina). | Kurbskii's revolt against John shows how the descendants of the princely families were inclined to regard themselves as the equals of the tsar. The final victory of the tsar over the boyars was due to the evolution of the great state and of its administrative needs. As long as the boyars still retained their old military importance, the prince, the grand prince, even the tsar, was no more than par inter pares. Owing to centralisation, the princely families in Moscow, as members of the dynasty, secured a position superior to that of the boyars. More stress was laid upon the boyars' obligation to service; and since it was no longer possible, as in the days of the petty princes, for a boyar to transfer his allegiance from one sovereign to another, service became less free. Primitively, the boyars not in service enjoyed higher prestige than those in service (bojarin signifying free landowner); but as time passed the power of the serving boyars increased, and therewith their prestige. In the sixteenth century the boyar had already become a greater man than the prince. It was in the tsar's interest to restrict the princes to a purely honorary position, whereas those who directly served the court secured henceforward higher respect, so that the Russian term for nobleman was dvorjanin, "courtier."

It was impossible that the centralised great state should be administered by the monarch alone, and the sovereign therefore sought councillors and assistants in the duma of boyars. The ancient council of boyars, the composition of which had been subject to frequent changes, became transformed in Moscow into a species of permanent council of state.^[8]

Owing to the increase in business it became necessary to appoint governmental departments; while scriveners, ready writers and experts in customary law, were also essential, and bore the title of dumnyi djak, secretary to the council. The secretaries, whose numbers varied from four to fourteen, occupied subordinate positions at first; but since they had continuously to work as delegates to the duma, they became ministers, as it were, holding important posts. Simultaneously the membership of the duma increased, and a differentiation of official duties occurred. Under John there were at the outset twenty-one members, whilst under Theodore Aleksěevič there were one hundred and sixty-seven. During the seventeenth century the department of justice, in especial, underwent separate development, and a foreign office was also established, these changes affording satisfactory proof of the manner in which the position of the tsars had become constitutionally established. The prestige and importance of the Moscow duma is indicated by the fact that the aforesaid Theodore in the year 1681, abolished the old system in accordance with which the leading posts in the public service had been filled by boyars an princes in conformity with the dictates of genealogical trees—to the great detriment of the administration in general and of military affairs in particular. Thus did the first Romanovs found the bureaucracy.

In Moscow the legislative authority was entirely in the hands of the absolute tsar, but the work of the executive (when the tsar was absent, and so on) necessitated the taking of many decisions by the duma independently of the tsar, the boyars being commissioned for such purposes either in perpetuity or for long periods.

In the year 1700 Peter dissolved the duma of boyars, but the institution persisted in fact, for Peter had to make use of a council. It consisted at first of members directly appointed by himself, but owing to his frequent absences the bureaucracy was strengthened, the duma and its departments living on in the senate and in the governmental colleges.

The centralisation and bureaucratisation of the Muscovite state led to the development of a species of feudalism. Owing to the prevalence of a natural economy the Moscow sovereign could more frequently bestow land as a reward than had been possible to the petty princes and the Kievic grand prince. Centralisation was perfected by confiscating the estates of refractory and obnoxious princes and their boyars, the serving boyars and princes being rewarded with gifts of land. Thus side by side with the inherited family estates (votčina), analogous to the western allodia, there grew up the benefices granted in fief by the monarch.^[9]

In Russia, enfeoffment had a different signification from what it had in Europe, for the simple reason that the land was here less cultivated than in Germany for instance. In the west the Teutons found cultivated lands, already prepared by tillers of the soil, but the Russians had to undertake the first tasks of cultivation, those which the Romans, the Celts, and the western Slavs had effected before the Franks appeared upon the scene. In Russia the soil was therefore of far less value, and was indeed practically worthless. Subsequently, too, enfeoffment in Russia remained different from the similar institution in the west. The position was comparatively independent of scutage. The prince's retainer was freer and could transfer his services from one prince to another, for this necessarily followed from the subdivision of sovereignty and of territory, the petty princes occupying mutual relationships very different from those which obtained between the European vassals and their feudal lords.

The development of the executive in the Muscovite great state led to the abolition of that general assembly of the people which in earlier days had been necessary not in Moscow alone but in other towns as well. In Moscow the function of the věče lapsed in the fourteenth century, and in the other towns the věče was abolished by the grand princes of Moscow, notably in Novgorod in the year 1478, and in Pskov in the year 1510—the work of centralisation being thus carried through deliberately and with foresight.

Nevertheless the people of the capital possessed here, as everywhere, certain prerogatives, especially in troublous times. For example, as late as the year 1682 Peter and his brother John were elected by the (unorganised!) "people" under the leadership of the patriarch.

The new and difficult administrative tasks of the centralised great state called into existence, side by side with the duma, the peculiar institution of the territorial assembly or provincial council (zemskii sobor). The first zemskii sobor was summoned by John the Terrible in 1566; the earlier assemblies established by this ruler having, it may be presumed, been purely deliberative. The institution persisted only until 1653.

This territorial assembly had no political significance. It met purely for administrative deliberations on the part of the government and of the monarch. It had no legislative powers, and was not popularly representative. The members of the assembly came together as private persons, so that the sobor was not a continuation of the věče. The outcome of the consultation was definitely and legally formulated by the duma and the monarch, the sovereign deciding for himself whether and to what extent he would be guided by the decisions of the provincial council. Even the enlarged duma, being a central organism, proved inadequate for the needs of the great state. Moscow had to deal with matters of local administration, and this was the origin of the sobor. The councillors, on their return home, became as it were inspectors of local administration or local instruments of the executive. In many cases the territorial assembly had to support the duma, or even to supersede the duma when that body was out of its depth, the functions varying according to circumstances. Ključevskii maintains that the sobor consisted of the duma, the hierarchy, and the higher executive officials of Moscow, together with the serving nobles and the mercantile class. On one occasion only, in 1613, did peasants become members of the sobor.^[10]

We cannot here discuss the development of the zemskii sobor, but light is thrown on its significance by the circumstance that its prestige declined with the increasing bureaucratisation and Europeanisation of the executive. Under Tsar Alexis Mihailovič, who favoured Europeanisation, the importance of the sobor sank to zero, and by this ruler the assembly was summoned for the last time in order to confirm the annexation of Little Russia.^[11]

It remains uncertain whether the members of the sobor were nominated by the monarch or whether they were elected. It is probable that they were nominated or invited to attend, and that when elections took place it was not for the choice of representatives but in occasional response to some local need. Attendance at the sobor was not an honour but a duty, and was felt to be a disagreeable one, seeing that the members had to maintain themselves at their own expense with no more than occasional assistance from the government.

If some of the successive sobors had exceptional political significance, this arose from the circumstances of the time when they were summoned, and was frequently dependent upon a state of indecision and perplexity. For example, the sobor of 1584 elected Theodore Ivanovič to the throne, and the first Romanov was elected by the sobor of 1613.

Apart from the consideration that the sobor did not meet regularly year by year, but was summoned merely on exceptional occasions, it had just as little in common with constitutionalist assemblies as had the European estates, and each individual sobor varied in its organisation in accordance with the tasks with which it had to deal and the circumstances under which it was convened. Thus, though the sobor of 1648 was organised bicamerally, the resemblance to the constitutionalist bicameral system was purely superficial.

ix. Concurrently with the increase in power of the grand princes of Moscow and with the centralisation of the great state, there occurred a change in the position, not of the aristocracy alone, but also of the rest of the population, and in especial of the peasants.

At first, in Moscow as in Kiev, the peasant was for the most part free; but in comparison with the aristocrat he was the disregarded "little man," or "manling," this being the literal signification of the word mužik. "Black people" is the other characteristic term used already in early days at Moscow to denote the peasantry or special classes of that order. The official designation for the peasant is krest'janin, meaning literally the anointed or christened person.

In Moscow, too, as in Kiev, in addition to free peasants, there existed serfs and semi-free peasants; but with the centralisation of the princedoms the social status of the serfs underwent a change. Capture in war no longer provided so many bondsmen as in the days when the principalities were perpetually at feud. Economic need now became the most potent and decisive cause of serfdom, the indebted peasant, voluntarily in many cases, accepting a state of bondage vis-à-vis the wealthy lord. From the end of the fifteenth century onwards there came into existence in Muscovy what was known as kabal-serfdom (kabalnoje holopstvo), kabala being the Tatar word for indebtedness. The debtor worked in order to pay the interest, but, the capital charge remaining unreduced, the debtor was bond for life, and so were his children. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, when repeated scarcity of food had much degraded the peasants of Muscovy, it frequently happened that impoverished and hungry peasants voluntarily renounced the status of freedom.

Centralised administration completed what economic conditions had begun, the influences of national economics being superadded to those of domestic economics. The new state needed money, the thinly peopled land required labour, the army demanded soldiers, and thus it was that the peasant who had hitherto been privileged to change his lord, became "bound" to the soil. Prikrěplenie, the state of being bound, is the Russian term for villeinage and bondage to the soil, but also for serfdom, the fuller development of villeinage.

In 1597, Boris Godunov finally established villeinage as a legal institution. As regent, the clever boyar was keenly alive to the economic interests of his order and of the church (the monasteries). The peasant must be more efficiently exploited by his lord and by the state, and he was therefore deprived of the right to transfer his services.

The question how and when serfdom, strictly speaking, was introduced has not been fully answered by Russian historians and jurists. I do not believe that the institution originated through direct legislative procedure, and in consequence of state intervention. It was a gradual development. Codification served merely to give a legal warrant to what already existed, though doubtless thenceforward evolution, having become deliberate, advanced with more rapid strides. Among numerous explanations, I would lay especial stress upon the political and administrative centralisation of the new state, and would point to the parallel evolution of the nobility and the peasantry. In Kiev the nobleman was a free servant of the prince, just as the peasant was a freeman; both had the right of free movement; the nobleman could leave his prince to take service with another; the peasant could transfer himself at will to work for another lord, or to become a colonist. In Muscovy free service came to an end; the nobleman was gradually "bound" to service, until at length he became transformed into the bureaucrat. Simultaneously the free peasant was tied to the soil. The prince and his descendants became bureaucrats, the peasant and his children became villeins. This peculiar political process did not come to an end with the year 1597. Under the second Romanov, contracts between peasants and their lords received national recognition in that the duties of the peasant were inscribed on the public rolls and were officially regulated.

The consequences of the new situation soon became clear to the peasantry. Under the leadership of the bold Sten'ka Razin, a Cossack and proletarian revolution was organised in 1670. Peter and his descendants increased the bondage of the peasants to actual serfdom, the peasant becoming personally dependent upon his lord. It is true that simultaneously Peter bureaucratised the nobility more thoroughly than before, making service obligatory upon the nobles.

Serfdom and the disappearance of free service give expression to the fact that the Russians in Muscovy had become a settled population, this being itself connected with their absolute and relative increase in numbers. The peasant's lack of freedom was not everywhere the same either in fact or legally. The state of Moscow owned enormous areas of land, both tilled and untilled. The peasants upon the state or crown lands and upon the private property of the tsars had a position which naturally differed in some respects from that of the peasants upon the boyar's estates, for the relationship of the tsar to the boyars was reflected in the relationship between the boyars and the peasants. Legislation was more directly concerned with the peasants on the crown lands. As time passed, the distinction between the two categories was legally formulated, the main difference being that the peasants on the crown lands were comparatively well to do. Similarly, the peasants upon large estates were better off economically speaking than those on small estates, for the small landlord tended to satisfy his aristocratic needs by means of the more vigorous oppression of a restricted number of peasants.

The differences found expression also in the nature of the burdens imposed. The corvée (barščina, from bojarščina, boyar service), perhaps chronologically the primitive form of service, was harsher than the natural or monetary burden (obrok, rent), which was general upon the crown lands. The latter form permitted a certain freedom of movement. The serf could go to the town to seek work there, and could engage in various occupations, becoming a craftsman, a trader, etc. Not infrequently such a serf was better off than his lord.

In addition to the serfs there were semi-free and free peasants. The peasants on the crown lands, as already explained, were freer than the others. Peasants who had done well in service or who had acquired means were free in actual fact, and in many cases in point of law also. From the sixteenth century onwards, that is from the time when serfdom was definitively established, there existed a special category of frontier peasants in the southern and eastern parts of the realm. These were enfeoffed with land in order that they might guard the frontier, their feoffs being given as a reward for zealous service, and their holdings of land becoming in course of time hereditary private property, increasing in extent. These free peasants, constituting a species of lesser gentry (they were entitled to keep serfs), were known as odnodvorcy, one-farm-men, that is individual farm men, those who owned their farm buildings and land individually and not communally. When the realm extended its frontiers, the military duties of the odnodvorcy lapsed. In Ukraine the Cossacks had similar functions.^[12]

Russian serfdom differed from European serfdom in that the earlier mir constitution was retained, but under serfdom the mir and its agrarian communism acquired a different legal and economic significance. Owing to the increasing power of the grand princes and the tsars, the idea became current that the land in its entirety was the property of the sovereign, the usufruct merely being ceded to the landowners and through these to the peasants. In actual fact, however. the landowner possessed the soil jointly with the grand prince, the landowner being the real possessor, not merely of his family estate, but also of the farms of his peasants. Thus the landlord could withdraw a peasant from the community or introduce a peasant into the community at his own will and pleasure.

The centralised state turned the mir to account in fiscal matters by raising taxes from the village community as a whole and not from the individual peasant. Through this joint responsibility the mir became more firmly established and was endowed with a certain power over the individual; but it is an error to hold that the mir really originated out of such joint responsibility. Changes in agriculture likewise promoted an increase in the power and prestige of the mir. With the steady growth of a settled population there resulted an increase in the value of land, although there was not as yet any scarcity of land. In the sixteenth century, fallowing was replaced by the more lucrative triennial rotation of crops, whereby the economic value of the soil was enhanced.

Settlement on the land naturally involved numerous disputes, and these had to be settled by the village community. The tsar was remote, and his servants-were by no means close at hand. Disputes concerning the soil could be most conveniently arranged by redistribution, for in the case of illiterates left to their own devices there were no court rolls or cadasters.

Centralised administration brought order and stability into all relationships. The earlier freedom was at an end. From the fourteenth century onward the volost', the amalgamation of several village communities, replaced the individual community as the administrative unit, for Moscow had not servants enough or means enough to deal directly with each village. The volosts in their turn were united in a larger unit called the circle, which was placed under the supervision, and properly speaking under the rule of the voevoda or waywode (literally "army leader"), who for practical purposes concentrated in his person the entire administration. In essence the administration was fiscal, but order had also to be maintained by force of arms.

It need hardly be said that the towns and their inhabitants remained exempt from serfdom, except that the sort might seek work in the town; but the town could be more readily supervised by the treasury and the executive in general, for it was often the seat of the circle authority. The definite segregation of the peasants as serfs involved as a corollary the segregation of the other estates. The realm of Muscovy was organised in separate estates with distinct rights and privileges. There were four principal estates, the nobility, the church, the burghers, and the peasants. Each of these became subdivided in course of time into classes or sub-estates. In especial did this subdivision take place in the case of the burghership, the mercantile class coming here to play a dominant role, above all in the capital. Owing to administrative centralisation, Moscow became the principal focus of commerce and industry, the latter being still extremely primitive; but there were certain lesser commercial centres, such as Jaroslav, Tula, Smolensk, etc.

In proportion as commerce prospered at home and abroad, and in proportion as the agricultural development of the country matured, the natural economy was replaced by a monetary economy, and the ancient feudalist state became transformed, the numerous lesser landowners and the mercantile class gaining power and prestige alongside the bureaucracy, the military offiicers, and the hierarchy. The old feudal subdivisions were transformed into a new gradation of classes.

This process of internal development coincides with the period of persistent confusions and revolutions which ensued upon the dying out of the successors of Vladimir, disorders lasting more than a decade, and terminating mainly in the victory of the minor aristocracy and the wealthier bourgeoisie. In 1613, Michael Theodorovič Romanov, chosen from the aristocracy, was elected by the people, that is to say by the aristocratic sobor, with some assistance from the discontented Cossacks. His father Filaret, the patriarch, ruled for fourteen years (1619–33) jointly with his son as co-tsar, and the position of the new dynasty was thus consolidated by the full authority of the church.

 

§ 2.

 

THE Russian church was organised from Byzantium and it was from Byzantium that the preponderant majority of the Russian people received Christianity. Socially and politically and in respect of general civilisation the Greek priesthood and hierarchy were considerably in advance of the Russians, and in Old Russia therefore the social institutions and civilisation which the Greeks introduced exercised a notable influence. The church assumed the spiritual leadership of the nation and became the educator of the people. The prince remained in supreme command, but the pupils he was to command were prepared by religious education.

From the ninth century onwards, Byzantium was threatened, at first by the Slav peoples, but before long also by Arabs and Turks, and the danger was a spur to a Christianising policy, though not always to Christianisation. In Russia. the Byzantine hierarchy, which led the Russian mission, was concerned from the very outset, not with religion alone, but with ecclesiasticism as well. The Byzantine church was a mighty social organisation, and consequently acquired in Russia, too, great political and social influence. Sociological explanations of Old Russia are apt to pay far too little attention to the direct and indirect influence exercised upon society by the church. This influence is far from inconsiderable if we contemplate merely the suggestive existence of the firmly established hierarchy with its churches and monasteries. In addition, however, it was not long before the church in Russia, like the Roman church among western nations, came to exercise a conscious and carefully planned political and social influence, for it was introduced into Russia as a state church and operated throughout in this capacity. After their conversion the Russians were educated by Greeks who had deliberately severed themselves from Rome. Byzantium had been ravaged on several occasions by the pagan Russians, and for this reason the Christianisation of these Slav enemies was politically important, all the more because the Arabs and the Turks had begun to encroach upon the Byzantine dominions. The positively draconian subjugation of the Bulgars gave a striking demonstration of Byzantium's attitude towards the Slavs. We must not forget that Byzantium never ceased to aim at the expansion of its power. It is sometimes ignored that at the time of the Russian conversion the eastern Roman empire embraced, not merely Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, but in addition considerable domains in Italy and even in Africa. Down to the day of destruction, this imperialist policy was never abandoned by Byzantium, and it was a policy in which the patriarchate of Constantinople collaborated.

In Kiev the Byzantine princes of the church constituted a state within the state. The metropolitan of Kiev was appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople, whereas in Byzantium the bishops were elected by their own colleagues. Kiev was no more than a dependency of Byzantium, and among the Greek bishops the Kievic metropolitan occupied the, seventy-first place. The Russian hierarchy always remained Greek. Among the three-and-twenty metropolitans of Kiev in the days before the Tatar dominion; three only were Russians, and three southern Slavs, the remaining seventeen being Byzantines. Many of the priests and monks were likewise Greeks.

Nor must we underestimate the influence of the chroniclers and of all those who were able to write, most of whom, having had a Greek education, diffused and confirmed the ideas and ideals of Byzantium.

Guided by cultured hierarchs, the church and its organisation soon became a model which princely administration strove to imitate. The Byzantines brought to Russia the idea and the practice of law and the legal code; they introduced a regular system of legal procedure; and, above all, ecclesiastical centralisation set an example to princely policy. From early days the church was the ally of the grand prince. In many cases the grand prince was a tool of the metropolitans who, for all their cunning, found the princes too stiff-necked to drive. The metropolitans were themselves pliable enough provided only they could send plenty of money to Byzantium, for in Russia, as in the west, the church was also a financial institution, and this redounded in turn to its political power. Such was the case although the Russians had no particular affection for the Greek priests and hierarchs, so that as early as the twelfth century, in the Russian tongue the word Greek (Grek) became synonymous with rapscallion.

It is necessary to conceive and appraise the medieval churches of Rome and Byzantium as constituting social and political organisms side by side with the imperial power. Medievalism is characterised by the development of theocracy, the Roman in the west and the Byzantine in the east. Emperor and pope, emperor and patriarch, church and state, are the organs of political organisation. Theology is the basis and the associative link of social order. The throne rests upon the altar, and the altar supports the throne; state and church are one. Down to the present day, almost all states are theocratic. Theology, the doctrine of the church, is the official and political outlook on the world; ecclesiastical morality is official and political morality. In so far as society is organised upon a basis of ideas, the middle ages brought theocracy to maturity, and this theocratic social order has maintained itself in manifold forms and degrees down to the present day.

In the east, the emperor maintained the primacy in theocracy. Constantius II was able to say, "My will is law for the church." This is the practical significance of the theological doctrine of the "symphony" of soul and body, of patriarch and emperor. This symphony materialises in perfected cæsaropapism. Russian theocracy developed in a similar direction. In the east, therefore, the power of the church vis-à-vis, the state was for the most part inferior to that possessed by the western church, of which the pope maintained the primacy. The power and the influence of the church depended upon the faith and the credulity of all, emperor, pope, and patriarch.

When the subdivision of the realm among the petty princes began, the metropolitan was able to wield great political power, doing this precisely in virtue of his office, for the local churches were subject to him, and the church was so far independent of the princes inasmuch as it was subject to the patriarch and therefore to the emperor of Constantinople, as supreme head of the Orthodox church. The centralisation of Russian territory began ecclesiastically. In individual princedoms the princes had gained control over the church. In Novgorod the folkmote elected the archbishop.

A perspicacious prince, one with far-reaching political ideals, seizes every opportunity of extending his power, of promoting centralisation, by availing himself of any extraneous help that may offer. The grand princes were not slow to turn the church to political account in this manner.

If we are to think, not merely of ecclesiastical development in Russia, but of the actual Christianisation of the country, it must be pointed out at once that the latter process was by no means intensive, if only for the reason that the church was a Greek church, that its chiefs were foreigners. Slav polytheism continued to live side by side with and beneath official Christianity, which about the year 988 was by St. Vladimir made the religion of the state. Russia long remained, and perhaps is still today, the country and the nation of the "twin-faith" (dvoevěrie).

The Christianisation of Russia was effected a hundred years later than that of the southern Slavs, and much later than the Christianisation of the west.

It was impossible that the Russians should have a spiritual conception of Christianity, for they lacked the requisite culture. In Byzantium and in Rome it was a cultured and philosophically trained people that was converted to Christianity, and the western nations that were Christianised at a later date had shared in Roman culture But the Russians were entirely unprepared, and what could the learned divinity of Byzantium signify to them, what could they be expected to make of its theological philosophy of religion? The Russians, therefore, absorbed from Byzantium chiefly the ritual and the discipline of the church. The morality of these Christians was mainly limited to externals, and was diffused and strengthened by outward constraint. The punishments which, with its independent judicature, the church was able to inflict were more influential than the "word." Most potent of all was the working of monkish morality, of asceticism, and of monastic life. The monk was the living example, the example which as time passed proved most efficacious. The Byzantines did not import any excess of humaneness with the gospel of love. The newly introduced punishments displayed their Byzantine origin—blinding, chopping off of hands, and similar brutalities—punishments whose atrocity was subsequently reinforced by Tatar influence.

It was natural to the Byzantines to cultivate theology and theological literature. Such literature remained Byzantine when couched in the Slavic ecclesiastical tongue. The Greeks learned Russian, indeed, but their views and their habits remained Byzantine. At the court of the metropolitan and in many of the monasteries there were Byzantine colonies, continually replenished from Byzantium.

Byzantium, less powerful than Rome, was unable to impose its speech upon the daughter churches. The Russians, like the southern Slavs, preserved the Old Slavic ecclesiastical tongue. For this reason the southern Slavs, and especially the Bulgars, who were more directly influenced by Byzantium, took an active part in the Christianisation and civilisation of the Russians.

It will readily be understood that Russian opposition to Byzantine influence in the church sprang to life. This opposition seems to have been active as early as the eleventh century, and was certainly active in the twelfth century, focusing in Kiev, the capital, and above all in the Pečerskii Monastyr (Monastery of the Caves). The grand princes endeavoured to compromise between the metropolitans and the Monastery of the Caves, but favoured the latter.

Novgorod exercised an influence as well as Byzantium, and in Kiev western civilising forces were also at work. St. Vladimir entered into relationships with Germany, Rome, Poland, and Bohemia. It is by no means improbable that the first Christianity in Russia, in Novgorod and Kiev, was Roman, and that the Norsemen who founded the Kievic state were Roman Christians. But history has as yet no definite information how and to what extent western Europe influenced Old Russia.

Russian civilisation, Russian views of the world and of life, were lower than Byzantine. Russia was at a lower level of civilisation. The Russians were not simply uncultured, not merely, as we should say to-day, illiterate; but their morality was crude; they were polygamists; but they were natural, simple, and frank, and despite their roughness they were more humane than most of the Byzantines. This Old Russian roughness was no worse than the roughness of the Old Teutons. In ancient monuments and other memorials of antique civilisation, the attentive observer can discern Teutonic and Russian elements side by side with Latin and Greek, and can trace how foreign influence was accepted and elaborated, but was also on occasions repelled.

The literary memorials of the Kievic epoch display to us Russian Old Russia in a more favourable light than Byzantine Old Russia. We see this, for example, in Vladimir's Instruction, compiled for the use of his sons. It is true that Monomachus's writing (Vladimir Monomachus, 1113-1125) betrays Byzantine influence, but his Christianity is comparatively humane, his morality is comparatively unascetic and natural, and the princely author recommends love and sympathy towards fellow men, especially towards the poor and lowly. The writer's own actions did not, indeed, always square with his words, but this is by no means an infrequent experience, whether we have to do with crowned or uncrowned heads.

Nestor the chronicler, who flourished in the beginning of the twelfth century, gives the same impression of naturalness and freshness. As author he was the first Russian realist. He had a thorough knowledge of peoples and places, and his outlook on life and on historical events was anything but monastic. If he was indeed a monk, as some maintain, this gives us additional proof that even in monasteries at that date Christianity existed solely in externals. To the same period and to the same category belong the epic The Lay of Igor's Raid, the vestiges of numerous sagas (byliny, etc.), and folk poetry in general collected during the nineteenth century. All these memorials serve to show that the education and transformation of ancient Russia by Byzantine influence was effected very gradually and encountered considerable opposition. The Muscovite realm was the first to become definitely Byzantine, and this only under Tatar auspices.

Kievic territory, however, was detached from Muscovite Great Russia, and was not reunited until the seventeenth century. Thenceforward the south again made its influence felt, politically, socially, and nationally.

 

§ 3.

 

"TWO Romes have fallen and have passed away, the western and the eastern: destiny has prescribed for Moscow the position of the third Rome; there will never be a fourth." Such were the words wherein, after the fall of Constantinople, the Russian monk glorified and characterised the historical position of Moscow, which had now replaced Kiev as mistress of Russia.

In proportion as Constantinople lost prestige, power, and influence through the continual onslaughts of the Turks, did there ensue an increase in the prestige and power of Moscow, all the more since the enemy who conquered Constantinople was himself conquered by Moscow. The ultimate victory of Moscow over the Tatar Mohammedans seemed especially impressive to the Christian east inasmuch as it was effected soon after the fall of Byzantium.

The political centralisation of Russian territory and the power of the grand princes of Moscow were furthered by ecclesiastical centralisation. The crowning of the grand prince as tsar (Cæsar) followed the establishment of the Moscow patriarchate (1589).

The continuous struggle of Moscow against the east and the west, against the pagan and Mohammedan Tatars, and against the Catholic and Protestant nations, greatly enhanced the ecclesiastical and religious consciousness of the Russians. It is possible that the victory of the Byzantine church over the western Christianity of the Varangians was here a contributory cause. The third Rome took over from Constantinople the idea of the Roman imperium, which Byzantium first of all and subsequently Rome had carried out in theocratic guise. The cæsaropapism of Byzantium was revived by Moscow, and the third Rome became a perfected theocracy.

In Moscow as in the west the outlook on life and the universe upon which Russian cæsaropapism was founded was rigidly orthodox and theological; but in the east, and above all in Moscow, the dominance of ecclesiastical doctrine was more exclusive. In Moscow there was no classical tradition, no rivalry between different nations. Learned men were few in number, and were characteristically styled men learned in writing, book-learned. The sum total of knowledge was theology and theosophy. This ecclesiastical culture attained its climax at the close of the fourteenth century and the opening of the fifteenth, at the time when in Europe the splendid religious revolution of Bohemia was inaugurating the new age, and when Rome was beginning to give way upon all fronts.

The Byzantine church became petrified, although it was the Greeks who had elaborated its doctrines and its morality. The Byzantines contented themselves with an almost mechanical tradition, their religion consisting mainly of ritual observances. The Russians took over dogmas, ritual, morality, and ecclesiastical organisation ready made from Byzantium. Since they did nothing further for the development of ecclesiastical and religious life, in Russia petrifaction was if possible more marked.

This applies to the clergy, for the laity was content with the passive acceptance of eccclesiastical discipline, and with a blind belief in miracles such as is characteristic of the earlier stages of the mythical outlook on the world.

The Byzantines were scholastically trained, the philosophical tradition of the Greeks being preserved in a sort of theosophical gnosis. The Russians endeavoured to follow their teachers in this respect also, but found fuller satisfaction for their religious needs in ritual. In Moscow, mysticism was not so much theosophical contemplation as practical mystagogy.

This religiosity must be sharply distinguished from morality. Morality is a subordinate element of religion. The ideas of holiness and righteousness are by no means coincident. Ritual, and individual ritual practices, rather than the moral relationships between man and man, are the primary constituents of religion. John the Terrible, an assassin already in his thirteenth year, was a religious man.

Owing to a lack of critical faculty and a deficiency of culture, among the Russians as among most primitive peoples, it was possible for pathological states of nerve and mind to be regarded as manifestations of a religious inner life, to be accepted as divine revelations, and this not solely by isolated sects condemned by the church, but generally. Even to-day in Russia, and not by peasants alone, jurodivye (psychopaths—idiots and imbeciles) are regarded as God-inspired individuals.

The history of many of the Russian sects manifests to us this low level of religious sensibility, and displays at the same time the defects of the official church. Europeans were apt to regard the Muscovites as polytheists rather than as Christians, whereas the Russians themselves extolled their land as "Holy Russia."

The church established monastic ethics, monastic asceticism. The most harmless pleasures, even laughter, were penalised by the zealots, and non-theological poetry was banned. The nature of the prevalent morality can be estimated from the views that were current regarding woman and the family. We need only compare the teachings of the Domostroi (the book on household management by Silvester, who was banished to a monastery in 1560) or of the Stoglav (the code of ecclesiastical law containing one hundred chapters, issued in 1551) with Monomachus' Instruction, to learn how unnatural Moscow had become under the rigid discipline of the church. In Tatar fashion women are to be relegated to the harem (terem, the Tatar word for palace and in especial for the women's quarters). The family is subordinated to the father, the "patriarch," just as peasants are subordinated to their lords and as lords are subordinated to the tsar. Social and political slavery found its strongest prop in the moral slavery of family life. Intellectually Russia was ruled by the monastery. The hierarchy was chosen from among the monastic clergy, and the secular or "white" clergy was completely subject to the monastic or "black" clergy, the result being that the ethics of the monkish celibates triumphed over the ethics of the married secular priests.

The monastery, shunning the world but dominating men, was wealthy in spite or perhaps because of its asceticism; and through its extensive ownership of land it was able to wield great political and social power. The monks not infrequently gave a conspicuous example of a mode of life that was far from ascetic.

Those whose views on the world and life were of this character had thoroughly anthropomorphic and sociomorphic conceptions of God and the divine. To the uncultured people and to the uncultured priests it was inevitable that the power of the tsar who had conquered the enemies of the church and had overthrown the domestic opponents of his autocracy, should seem to typify the power of God.

In the fifteenth century, Iosif, the rough and harsh renovator of the monkish ideal, formulated this widely held view of the tsar's theocratic position by saying that while by nature the tsar resembled all other men, in power he resembled the supra-mundane God.

The opponents of Iosif and his party, led by Nil Sorskii, regarded the priestly dignity as higher than the imperial dignity, and denied the emperor's right to interfere in spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs, but this view did not prevail. To protect the church and to maintain the purity of religious dogma were regarded as the principal duties of the grand princes and the tsars. Protection was to be afforded, not merely against foreign enemies holding other creeds, but also against heretics and scctaries at home. Gennadii, archbishop of Novgorod (1485–1504), another harsh ecclesiastic, fulminating against the rationalistic sect of the Judaisers whose doctrines may be regarded as a protest against monkish rule, quoted with approval the example of the king of Spain, and demanded a radical purification of Orthodox Russia. To his opponent Kurbskii, John the Terrible enunciated the doctrine that the tsar's chief duty was to educate his subjects to be religious, so that they might acknowledge the one true triune God, and the tsars given them by God. In the Stoglav, the protocol of the Old Russian council of 1551 (wherein the adherents of Iosif maintained a majority), the theocratic position of the tsar and the theological foundation of the Russian theocracy were definitively codified. An outward manifestation of its true nature has furnished by the theocracy in the nomination of the patriarch Filaret to be co-emperor with his son Michael, the first of the Romanovs.

 

§ 4.

 

THE weakening and the ultimate fall of the Byzantine empire exercised important effects upon the spiritual life of the third Rome, for the civilising influence of Byzantium was thereby reduced, and Moscow was left to her own resources. The Old Russia of Novgorod and Kiev had been in relationship with Europe as well as with Byzantium. By Byzantine influences Moscow was estranged from Europe, but after the fall of Constantinople became necessarily all the more dependent upon Europe.

Muscovy's need of Europe's spiritual help was shown by the participation of the Russians in the attempts at the union of the eastern and western churches made at Florence in the year 1439. The first complete Russian Bible (the work of the aforesaid Gennadii) was in part translated from the Vulgate. When Kiev and south-western Russia were annexed by Lithuania nd Poland, the Polonisation of Russian territory led to a partial, and to a considerable extent forcible, union of the churches, the union of Brest (Brest-Litovsk), effected in the year 1596. The Jesuits summoned to Poland and Lithuania to counteract Protestantism, had likewise a certain influence upon Moscow. Polish Catholic scholasticism exercised a civilising pressure upon the Russians under the rule of Lithuania and Poland. They experienced a spiritual awakening, and their Orthodox brotherhoods founded a number of comparatively flourishing schools in Ostrog and elsewhere. In Kiev, also under Polish auspices, there was founded in the year 1615 the religious academy which was to serve Russian Orthodoxy with the aid of Catholic and Jesuit scholasticism. In 1685 pupils and teachers from the Kievic academy established in Moscow a daughter institution, the Slav-Greek-Latin academy, which at first bore the tautological name of Hellenic-Greek academy because the instruction given there was Greek, not Latin merely. According to the plans of the tsar Theodore Aleksěevič, the school was to strengthen and diffuse Orthodoxy, and it did to some extent succeed in these aims, but with the help of the Latin tongue and of Roman scholasticism.

With the utmost of her energies and with all possible severity, though not always with success, Moscow endeavoured to resist the Roman Catholic tendencies of the Kievic scholastics, among whom Medvěděv was the most notable. Turning away from Catholicism, Moscow tended towards Protestantism.

The Czech reformation, Hussitism, and still more the Moravian Brotherhood, secured adherents in Poland and Lithuania. In addition, the German reformation began to make headway in Lithuania as early as the year 1538. From Lithuania and Poland Protestantism and the Germans penetrated the very heart of Russia. Yet stronger and more persistent was the influence exercised by Protestantism from Sweden and the Baltic provinces.

Under Michael Theodorovič (1613–1645) numerous foreigners resided in all the larger Russian towns. In Moscow towards close of the seventeenth century, there came into existence a populous and practically independent German suburb (sloboda). The influence of these foreigners, most of whom were Protestants, was considerable. In the main it was civilising and social, but Protestant ideas and Protestant piety aroused imitation and thought throughout wide circles. Before long, Protestant influence was displayed in ecclesiastical and religious fields, Russian theologians undertaking the study of Protestant theology. This trend, which soon made itself felt in the domains of literature and art as well (a German pastor founded the first European theatre in Moscow), was all the more decisive inasmuch as Protestants were considered less dangerous than Catholics. In 1631, when teachers were summoned from Europe for the reorganisation of the army, the tsar expressly commanded that no Frenchmen, and above all no Catholics, were to be engaged; but Swedes, Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Danes were employed.

The European influence of the great movement of the reformation and the renaissance naturally made itself felt first of all in the ecclesiastical domain. Maxim the Greek, who had listened in Italy to the sermons of Savonarola and was in touch with the humanists Lascaris and Manutius, was sent from Athos to Moscow in the year 1515, at the desire of the grand prince, to supervise translations. In Moscow Maxim worked; not merely as translator and reviser of liturgical books, but also as reformer. His religious ideals and his life were a reproach to the ecclesiastical and social life of the Russians. Consequently the metropolitans and grand princes of Moscow sacrificed him to his enemies, and he, an opponent of monasticism, was relegated to various monasteries successively. For thirty-one years, from 1525 to 1556, this man trained in all the learning of Europe could make no use of his powers, for the council that sentenced him forbade him to write.

The criticism of the Russian liturgical books initiated by Maxim was rigorously pursued in the following century by the patriarch Nikon. In view of the great importance of liturgy in the Russian church, it will readily be understood that as time passed the more cultured clerics and laymen found it impossible to tolerate the errors with which the text had been so freely interspersed by inefficient translators and mechanical copyists. Besides Maxim there were still a number of Greeks in the church, men who could not fail to note these errors, and in the seventeenth century the matter of revising the texts became an important ecclesiastical question. In the year 1654, during the patriarchate of Nikon, a council determined that the revision should be undertaken.

Nikon, supported by the power of the tsar, set about the task, introducing simultaneously additional liturgical innovations and improvements in hymnology, etc. His reforms, however, encountered opposition from the clergy and the laity, leading in the end to a schism, that of the raskol'niki (dissenters). Nikon introduced a number of reforms from the Greek church, thus increasing the hostility of the Old Russians, who distrusted the orthodoxy of the Greeks; whilst, since a number of Kiev scholars participated in the work of correction, the reforms came to be regarded as Roman Catholic in tendency. Nikon, in contrast with his predecessor Maxim, was church politician rather than reformer. A man of autocratic temperament, he made many enemies, so that he ultimately lost the favour of the tsar, who had hitherto followed him blindly. Nikon endeavoured to transform the patriarchate into a kind of "national papacy"—the phrase is used by Samarin. In the year 1660 occurred the patriarch's first condemnation by a council, whilst in 1666 came a second and severer sentence. He died in 1681. Ultimately, therefore, the papistical tenets which, in accordance with Nikon's theory, would deduce priesthood directly from God, and tsardom from priesthood, thus making tsardom subordinate to the patriarchate, were confined to an inconsiderable minority.

In these circumstances conservative "old belief," which was properly speaking "old custom" or "old ritual," became ecclesiastical and political schisms (raskol).^[13] In contradistinction to what happened in the reformation of the west, in Moscow it was the dominant church which carried out reforms, whilst the minority clung to tradition. Only in the subsequent course of development did the schismatic minority come to adopt heretical views, which did not always take the direction of reform.

It is characteristic of the moral and social condition of Moscow that at the opening of the seventeenth century millenarian utopianism was widely diffused. In the Book of Faith (Kniga o Věrě), published in 1648, the year of the peace of Westphalia, the end of the world is announced and the coming of antichrist is anticipated. An apocalyptic interpretation is given to the spread of Jesuit Catholicism (the union). The pope is represented as the precursor of antichrist, and it is indicated that antichrist himself will appear in the person of a pope. Nikon's reforms led to a revolution in this apocalyptic philosophy of history. Hitherto the coming of antichrist had been looked for in the west, but the expectation was now transferred to Holy Russia, conservatives regarding Nikon as the impersonation of antichrist. Should Russia, should the Russian church, become a stage for the activities of antichrist, there would no longer exist an Orthodox church, there would be no hierarchy and no priests—this apocalyptic logic corresponds to the fact that by the dying out of its priests the schism was compelled to dispense with priests. We have here a striking contrast with the Protestant reformation. In the west priesthood was overthrown, but in Russia the institution died out physically, certain sections of the raskolniki becoming a sect of the priestless (bezpopovcy). Simultaneously the priestless raskolniki were forced into opposition with the authority of the state. The tsar was described as tool and servant of the antichrist; the raskolnik was forbidden participation in the life of the state, laws and lawcourts being banned as the work of the devil. These anti-political tendencies of the schismatics became accentuated in the reign of Peter, who was denounced as antichrist in person, and the raskolniki took an active part in Pugačev's revolt.

The anti-state tendency of the raskol found its most radical expression in the protopope Avakkum (Habakkuk), Nikon's personal opponent. In fearless and vigorous terms he apostrophised Nikon's patron Alexis, declaring that the tsar, like Nebuchadnezzar, regarded himself as God. In the year of Nikon's death the religious father of the raskol had to pay for his boldness at the stake.

Such uncompromising dissent was soon restricted to a small and dwindling minority of raskolniki. Raskol philosophy was not properly speaking radical. If we are living in the closing days of the world, let us give to the emperor, let us give to every one, that which he demands—such was the conclusion actually drawn by the teachers of the raskolniki. The force of the conclusion was not weakened by the need for postponing the end of the world, for recalculating the tale of the apocalyptic years. Moreover, the schismatics found it difficult to dispense with priests, and the more moderate among them urged compromise with the state church. After the defeat of Pugačev, no further active revolt was initiated by the raskolniki, the utmost they attempted being passive resistance. In the year 1788 ecclesiastical dioceses were established by the popovcy (the raskol communities with priests), and these were sanctioned by the state church, whose supremacy was recognised by the schismatics. In the year 1800 edinověrie (literally, "unity of faith," the name given in Russia to the religious sect originating in a compromise between the state church and the old believers) was regulated by law, but the schism in the church persists in fact to the present day.^[14]

 

§ 5.

 

WHILST the religious and ecclesiastical interests of Holy Russia necessitated the borrowing of civilisation from Europe, the practical needs of the state and of its foreign and domestic policy likewise impelled recourse to Europe. The development and equipment of the army upon the European model was essential if Russia were to meet her European opponents victoriously. New barracks and fortresses were requisite for the military arm, and Russia must also have a fleet. These ends could not be secured without more extensive knowledge. Even had it been possible for the Russians to obtain everything ready made from the Europeans, the simple upkeep of these material elements of civilisation would have been impossible without the aid of skilled workmen from Europe and without the assistance of European architects, engineers, and the like. Trained Europeans had to be transplanted to Russia.

The Russians had to keep in view the gradual acquirement of competence to maintain those necessary reforms for themselves, and they therefore visited Europe to study, whilst at home they established schools and translated books. Cannon, ships, bastions, etc., cannot be made without knowledge of mathematics, mechanics, physics, and chemistry, or in default of technical as well as scientific knowledge. As early, therefore, as the sixteenth century positive science was studied in Moscow with the encouragement of the state, the movement becoming still more vigorous in the seventeenth century.

But for all these material and intellectual reforms money was requisite. It was necessary that the primitive industries should be perfected, an essential prerequisite being a radical reform of the administration. Agriculture and the domestic handicrafts had to be remodelled and furnished with better implements, and in addition new channels for trade and new commercial associations must be secured. John the Terrible opened commercial relationships with the English. It was John who pushed out into the Baltic; the northern seas were under Russian control, but it was a long voyage to Europe from Archangel round North Cape, whilst to communicate with Europe by land the Russians had to cross the hostile territories of their westem neighbours.

Finally, the court and the nobility required articles of luxury, and a taste for art was arising. In all domains of practical and theoretical activity the third Rome had to learn from European civilisation.

Thus, long before the days of Peter, the German Sloboda of Moscow came into existence. Nevertheless, the entry of foreigners into Muscovite Russia seems to have been comparatively difficult when we remember that there had been almost no obstacle to their influx into the petty principalities of earlier days.

During the sixteenth century, thoughtful Russians gave frank expression to the need for far-reaching reforms. Prince Kurbskii, with good reason denominated the first "westerner," was one of the earliest to give a clear demonstration of Moscow's poverty in point of morals and civilisation. Kurbskii was a pupil of Maxim, and his correspondence with John IV (see the first letter of 1563) gives eloquent testimony to the pitiful condition of Moscow, but manifests in addition how outstanding was Russian intellectual capacity.

We have similar documents from the seventeenth century. In order to stress the need for reform, Kotošihin gives an admirable description of the Muscovite realm. In personal character this writer was thoroughly a child of his age. In 1667 he was beheaded in Stockholm for a murder committed when in a state of intoxication.

The testimony of Križanič, the Croat, may also be cited. A Catholic priest educated in Italy, he had had personal experience of contemporary Europe, in Constantinople, Rome, Vienna, and elsewhere. He was the first of the panslavists. Through contact with the Russian embassy in Florence he was in 1657 inspired with the idea of emigrating to Moscow. On the way thither he made intimate acquaintance with Poland and Little Russia. His frank writings concerning Little Russia smoothed his path to—Siberia! In the year 1661, almost immediately after his arrival in Moscow, he was sent to Tobolsk, but there he appears to have been permitted freedom of movement. In Tobolsk he wrote a number of works, including his Politics, in which he subjected Muscovite civilisation to severe criticism and advocated European reforms. Križanič was permitted to return to Moscow in 1676; it seems probable that he died in Europe.^[15]

Notwithstanding its religious and ecclesiastical isolation, there was in Moscow (and it is important to bear the fact in mind) a spontaneous impulse towards reform and towards Europeanisation. By the term Europeanisation we have to understand something more than the mere imitation of Europe or borrowing from Europe. From the first, the Russian state evolved in accordance with its own principles, but this evolution ran on parallel lines with that of Europe, being not merely similar but in many respects positively identical. The Russians were Indo-Europeans just as were the Teutons and the Latins; they learned from the Byzantines as the Teutons and the Latins learned from the Romans; finally, it must be remembered that, despite all mutual segregation, a certain interchange of civilising forces never ceased.

Thus by domestic and by foreign influences alike was the way opened for the reforms of Peter: Alexis, Peter's father, had already engaged in general reforming activities; Michael Theodorovič, his grandfather, had imported foreign craftsmen and manufacturers to Moscow; yet earlier rulers had endeavoured to establish cultural and commercial relationships with Europe.

 

1. Vikings = warriors, de facto pirates. The Russian varjagi is derived from the western Norse vaeringi in the plural vaeringjar, and is supposed to denote a stranger or foreigner who puts himself under the king's protection and petitions for a pledge of safety (wāra); the vaeringjar enjoyed a privileged position on account of this pledge of protection. By the "Normanists," Rus', the Russian name for the country is derived from Ruotsi, a name which the Finns applied to the Swedes; this word is itself Norse and signifies "rowers," but the Finns imagined it to be a national name. This name was also given to the Swedish Norsemen, the Varangians, and had remained as the name of the Russians after the amalgamation of these Norsemen with the Russian Slavs (and Finns). According to this view the denomination Rus' was originally applied to the Norse Varangians; was subsequently used to denote the higher aristocratic stratum of Kiev (the prince and his immediate following), of Norse descent; and was ultimately transferred to the territory of Kiev and to the expanding realm. I do not know how or whether the word Rōs used by the Byzantines has any connection with this word Rus'. I have no expert judgment to offer upon these etymolog cal problems, but the contention of the "Slavists" that the name Rus' is of Slav origin appears to me ill supported. Readers desiring further information regarding the uncertain ethnological and linguistic conditions of the Kievic epoch, and wishing to make acquaintance with the history of this period and the difficulties of the etymological problems, should consult the instructive work of Marquart, the orientalist, "Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge. Ethnologische und historisch topographische Studien zur Geschichte den ix and x Jahrhunderts" (circa 840–940), 1903, pp. 346, 353, and 382.
2. The semi-freeman (zakup), the man who offered himself for purchase or hire) was one who worked tor a peculium or for some service extended to him; the bondsman (holop) worked for his lord as a servile dependent. In the remoter ages of history the state of bondage originated mainly through capture in war, but the commission of certain crimes on the part of a freeman might lead to his becoming a bondsman; later, indebtedness became a cause. It need hardly be said that the condition was hereditary.
3. The latest researches into primitive times have shown that the mir and the zadruga existed and still exist in the most varied forms and among the most divers people—among the Germans, the English, and the French, but also in India and Africa. There is nothing specifically Slavic about the mir. The only points remaining for enquiry in this connection are wherein the Russian mir and the zadruga may have differed from similar institutions elsewhere. Moreover if our ideas concerning the origin of the state and other institutions were to become more precise, we should less readily content ourselves with such schematic and unduly generalised concepts as "patriarchalism" etc. and we should undertake a more accurate analysis of the individual social and historical forces that were operative. The inaccuracy of the Slavic theory is further shown by a closer analysis ot the mir. We cannot point out too often that the mir is not identical throughout Russia. It exhibits manifold modifications, which present its economic, administrative, and legal functions in a light very diflerent from that favoured by the slavophils and by Haxthausen. In North Russia, for example, and in Siberia we see the mir in its older and more primitive form.
4. A closer criticism of the various theories is requisite: of the opinion, for example, that the qualities of the soil (as in the marshy flats of the primitive home) or the peculiarities of occupation (agriculture) rendered the Old Russians unwarlike, etc., whereas the Teutons and the Turco-Tatars, the latter as horse-riding nomads of the deserts and the steppes, and the former as cattle breeders and consequently milk consumers, were in respect of social and political development superior to the Slav vegetarians. Not the explanation merely, but the alleged fact, appear to lack adequate proof. It is possible, for example, in relation to Old Roman economic history, to point to the significance of the chase in the forest rich in wild animal life, and of fishery in waters well stocked with fish. It is beyond question that a notable proportion of Old Russians lived by the chase, and that this occupation must have had an influence upon character. For a considerable period the trapping of beavers was widely practised. Many men, again. procured honey and wax from the nests of wild bees. Doubtless these occupations influenced the character of those engaged in them—but how, and to what extent?
5. Gorod (town) primarily signified a fenced or fortified place, fortifications in Old Russia being constructed principally of wood.
6. Bojarin originally signified "warrior," the boyars being military retainers of the prince. At a later date the word came to denote the landowning subjects of the prince, the members of the aristocracy, who monopolised the highest offices of state. The derivation of the word from boljarin, itself a derivative of bol', meaning "more" or "better," boljarin thus signifying "optimate," is in my opinion the fruit of an over-ingenious attempt to assimilate the boyars to the European aristocracy. The Russian term for "prince" is knjaz', that for "grand prince" is velikii knjaz’. In certain Slav tongues knjaz’ signifies "priest."
7. For a long period the south remained uncultivated or almost uncultivated steppe. As late as 1690 the Don Cossacks determined to slay those who desired to cultivate the soil.
8. It has not yet been ascertained whether and to what extent members of the duma were regularly summoned from other towns, and from ex-principalities. We must on no account in this connection think of a system of popular representation, nor had the duma any resemblance to a general assembly of the people
9. Poměstie signifies land, estate, domain, with a connotation of high social position; from this is derived the contemporary term poměščik, landed proprietor which lacks the connotation the word had in Moscow.
10. Certain historians contend, erroneously, that at all the assemblies the peasants were represented by the urban members.
11. Theodore Aleksěevič, Peter's brother, summoned a kind of sobor on two occasions, but these assemblies were no more than deliberative committees for the discussion of special questions. Their members were drawn from those classes only which could supply persons with expert knowledge, so that, for example, peasants were among those summoned to del berate concerning the reform of taxation. In the year 1698 Peter the Great, desiring the condemnation of his sister Sophia, but wishing to evade personal responsibility, convoked an assembly whose members were drawn from all classes. This sobor was the last of its kind.
12. The odnodvorcy villages have here and there in course at time undergone partial or complete conversion into village communities. In the Kursk administrative district the odnodvorcy have continued, for the most part, to exist as such to the present day. During the sixteenth century this district, in conjunction with those of Voronezh Tambov, Orlov, etc. constituted the frontier region.
13. The raskolniki are not identical with the "old believers" known as staroobrjadcy (literally, "old ritualiats"), for not all the old believers are definitely opposed to the state church. The old believers clung to the liturgy and prayer-books of the days before Nikon, and diverged in respect of certain ceremonial practices, making the sign of the cross with two fingers, whereas the Orthodox use three, singing two hallelujahs in place of the three sung by the Orthodox, and so on.
14. The Russian raskol has from 1850 onwards been the subject of earnest and diversified studies, initiated by Ščapov the historian. Ščapov contended that the raskol had not simply a religious and ceremonial significance, but that, in its later developments at least (from 1666 onwards, the date of Nikon's condemnation and banishment to a monastery), it had in addition extensive social and political bearings, and that these elements had been especially conspicuous since the days of Peter's reforms. According to this view the raskol was an uprising of the lesser clergy against the hierarchy and the Europeanising state, a popular movement of a nationalist and democratic character, aiming at ocal self-government, and adverse to the centralisation of the state authority. Ščapov and his school took an erroneous view of the political significance of the raskol. They forgot that the Russian state and the Russian church constituted a theocracy, and that opposition to the church necessarily became political because church and state persecuted the old believers. The raskolniki were always religious, but their religion had its associated ethics which led logically to action in the political field. The opposition of the raskolniki to the state church was conservative and reactionary, but qua opposition the raskol was often a school for individual firmness of character. Representatives of the modern revolutionary parties go too far however, when they discover their prototypes in the raskolniki.
15. Concerning Muscavite Russia consult also the works of Herbenstein, Fletcher, and Horsey, to which reference is made in the sequel.