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Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou
 978-0893574680

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xvii
Prolegomena
John L. Scherer†
In Praise of Ignorance ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3
Carol Urness
The Travels of Brand and Isband ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 23
Timothy J. Johnson
Theofanis G. Stavrou: Bookman ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 35
Catherine Guisan
Bridge-Building as Humanism and Scholarly Adventure ������������������������������� 45
Karl F. Morrison
Surviving Exile: Augustine of Hippo’s Version of Psalm 136
(Vulg., KJV 137) ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 51
Eastern Orthodoxy
David Goldfrank
The Evergetian Motif in Russian Monastic Reform ����������������������������������������� 71

James Cracraft
The Petrine Church Reform Revisited �������������������������������������������������������������� 91
Theophilus C. Prousis
A Russian Pilgrim in Ottoman Jerusalem ������������������������������������������������������ 101
Josef L. Altholz†
Alexander Lycurgus, An Ecumenical Pioneer ������������������������������������������������ 127
Stephen K. Batalden
The Septuagint Challenge to Russian Old Testament Translation:
Fault Lines in Fin-de-Siècle Russian Religious Culture ��������������������������������� 137
Heather Bailey
Russian Interpretations of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus ��������������������������������� 147
Aaron N. Michaelson
Between the Cross and the Eagle:
The Russian Orthodox Missionary Society and the
Politics of Religion in Late Imperial Russia ��������������������������������������������������� 157
Kristi A. Groberg
Recreation of Seventeenth-Century Tile Forms on
St. Petersburg’s Temple-Memorial “Savior on the Blood” ����������������������������� 169
Matthew Lee Miller
Looking East: The American YMCA’s Interaction with
Russian Orthodox Christians, 1900–40 ���������������������������������������������������������� 181
Keith P. Dyrud
“Bolshevik Bishops” and the Russian Orthodox Mission in
America: A Question of Church, Politics, and the Law, 1917–52 ������������������� 211
G. William Carlson†
Understanding Evangelical/Fundamentalist Approaches to
“Anti-Communism,” 1953–91: A Critique of Billy Graham’s
Participation in the World Peace Conference, 1982 ��������������������������������������� 223
Achilles Avraamides
Alexander the Great’s Invincibility: Fact and Myth ��������������������������������������� 253
J. Kim Munholland
Psichari Father and Son: A Generation at Odds ��������������������������������������������� 265
Peter Mackridge
George Seferis and the Prophetic Voice ���������������������������������������������������������� 281
Donald E. Martin
Translation of George Philippou Pierides, “The Thoughts and
Uncertainties of Good Citizen Anestis Volemenos” �������������������������������������� 293
Van Coufoudakis
The Cyprus Question: International Politics and the Survival
of the Republic of Cyprus ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 307
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou
Economic Reform and the Rise of Political Forces in Early
Post–Civil War Greece: The Case of Karamanlis’s ERE ������������������������������� 329
Kostas Kazazis†
Using Humor to Cross the Greek Tu/Vous Line:
A Personal Account ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 349
David Connolly
Poetry Translation Reviews Reviewed:
Possible Criteria for Reviewing Poetry Translations �������������������������������������� 355
Russia and Eastern Europe
Thomas S. Noonan†
Khazaria, Kiev, and Constantinople in the
First Half of the Tenth Century ���������������������������������������������������������������������� 369
Preparations for Travel to St. Petersburg in
the Eighteenth Century ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 383
Gregory Bruess
Battling Bishops in Catherine II’s Russia ������������������������������������������������������� 393
Lucien J. Frary
Europe’s Bellicose Periphery: Russia and the
Cretan Insurrection of 1841 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 403
John A. Mazis
The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (1871–1917):
A Minority Civic Organization in Late Imperial Russia ��������������������������������� 417
Thomas A. Emmert
Sir Arthur Evans in the Balkans: A Romantic Crusade ��������������������������������� 431
Peter Weisensel
Identifying “the Asian” in Russian Colonial Writing:
Evgenii Markov’s Russia in Central Asia (1901) ������������������������������������������� 443
Marjorie W. Bingham
“A Link with Time”: Anna Akhmatova’s Poetry for
History Courses ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 463
Bryn Geffert
Rethinking Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevsky’s
Notes from the Underground �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 473
Elizabeth A. Harry
From Scylla to Charybdis: Discontent with Employment
and Education in the Early Soviet State ��������������������������������������������������������� 489
Daniel A. Panshin†
The Russian Student Fund and Its Role in the Diaspora �������������������������������� 527
Susannah Lockwood Smith
Folk in Soviet Music in the 1930s ������������������������������������������������������������������� 537
Norma Noonan
“The Soviet Experiment” and Women:
Brief Historical Reflections ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 555
Zdeněk V. David
Back to the Future: A Modern Revival of Sixteenth-Century
Czech Cultural and Political Values ���������������������������������������������������������������� 561
Kåre Hauge
The Barents Region: History Resurrected in Post-Soviet Europe ����������������� 599
Nick Hayes
BG: Conversations with Boris Grebenshchikov ��������������������������������������������� 611
John R. Lampe
Rethinking American Perspectives on Southeastern Europe ������������������������� 615
Epilegomena
Stanford Lehmberg†
Writings of the Eighteenth-Century Archbishops of Canterbury ������������������ 627
Stanley G. Payne
Carlism and Nationalism ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 641
Tom Clayton
Islands as a State of Mind: Circuitous Reconnaissance ���������������������������������� 657
Theophilus C. Prousis
Pilgrimage, Connection, Community ������������������������������������������������������������� 675
Notes on Contributors ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 681

Citation preview

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth

Theofanis G. Stavrou

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou

Edited by Lucien J. Frary

Bloomington, Indiana, 2017

Each contribution © 2017 by its author. All rights reserved. Cover design by Christina Walther and Tracey Theriault.

ISBN: 978-089357-468-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stavrou, Theofanis G., 1934- honouree. | Frary, Lucien J. editor. Title: Thresholds into the Orthodox commonwealth : essays in honor of Theophanis G. Stavrou / edited by Lucien Frary. Description: Bloomington, IN : Slavica, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016057000 | ISBN 9780893574680 Subjects: LCSH: Europe, Eastern--Civilization. | Humanities. Classification: LCC DJK24 .T49 2017 | DDC 947--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016057000

Slavica Publishers Indiana University 1430 N. Willis Drive Bloomington, IN 47404-2146 USA

[Tel.] 1-812-856-4186 [Toll-free] 1-877-SLAVICA [Fax] 1-812-856-4187 [Email] [email protected] [www] http://www.slavica.com/

Contents

Acknowledgments ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xvii

Prolegomena John L. Scherer† In Praise of Ignorance ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3 Carol Urness The Travels of Brand and Isband ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 23 Timothy J. Johnson Theofanis G. Stavrou: Bookman ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 35 Catherine Guisan Bridge-Building as Humanism and Scholarly Adventure ������������������������������� 45 Karl F. Morrison Surviving Exile: Augustine of Hippo’s Version of Psalm 136 (Vulg., KJV 137) ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 51

Eastern Orthodoxy David Goldfrank The Evergetian Motif in Russian Monastic Reform ����������������������������������������� 71

vi

Contents

James Cracraft The Petrine Church Reform Revisited �������������������������������������������������������������� 91 Theophilus C. Prousis A Russian Pilgrim in Ottoman Jerusalem ������������������������������������������������������ 101 Josef L. Altholz† Alexander Lycurgus, An Ecumenical Pioneer ������������������������������������������������ 127 Stephen K. Batalden The Septuagint Challenge to Russian Old Testament Translation: Fault Lines in Fin-de-Siècle Russian Religious Culture ��������������������������������� 137 Heather Bailey Russian Interpretations of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus ��������������������������������� 147 Aaron N. Michaelson Between the Cross and the Eagle: The Russian Orthodox Missionary Society and the Politics of Religion in Late Imperial Russia ��������������������������������������������������� 157 Kristi A. Groberg Recreation of Seventeenth-Century Tile Forms on St. Petersburg’s Temple-Memorial “Savior on the Blood” ����������������������������� 169 Matthew Lee Miller Looking East: The American YMCA’s Interaction with Russian Orthodox Christians, 1900–40 ���������������������������������������������������������� 181 Keith P. Dyrud “Bolshevik Bishops” and the Russian Orthodox Mission in America: A Question of Church, Politics, and the Law, 1917–52 ������������������� 211 G. William Carlson† Understanding Evangelical/Fundamentalist Approaches to “Anti-Communism,” 1953–91: A Critique of Billy Graham’s Participation in the World Peace Conference, 1982 ��������������������������������������� 223



Contents

vii

Greece and Cyprus Achilles Avraamides Alexander the Great’s Invincibility: Fact and Myth ��������������������������������������� 253 J. Kim Munholland Psichari Father and Son: A Generation at Odds ��������������������������������������������� 265 Peter Mackridge George Seferis and the Prophetic Voice ���������������������������������������������������������� 281 Donald E. Martin Translation of George Philippou Pierides, “The Thoughts and Uncertainties of Good Citizen Anestis Volemenos” �������������������������������������� 293 Van Coufoudakis The Cyprus Question: International Politics and the Survival of the Republic of Cyprus ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 307 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou Economic Reform and the Rise of Political Forces in Early Post–Civil War Greece: The Case of Karamanlis’s ERE ������������������������������� 329 Kostas Kazazis† Using Humor to Cross the Greek Tu/Vous Line: A Personal Account ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 349 David Connolly Poetry Translation Reviews Reviewed: Possible Criteria for Reviewing Poetry Translations �������������������������������������� 355 Russia and Eastern Europe Thomas S. Noonan† Khazaria, Kiev, and Constantinople in the First Half of the Tenth Century ���������������������������������������������������������������������� 369

viii

Contents

Michael Bitter Preparations for Travel to St. Petersburg in the Eighteenth Century ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 383 Gregory Bruess Battling Bishops in Catherine II’s Russia ������������������������������������������������������� 393 Lucien J. Frary Europe’s Bellicose Periphery: Russia and the Cretan Insurrection of 1841 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 403 John A. Mazis The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (1871–1917): A Minority Civic Organization in Late Imperial Russia��������������������������������� 417 Thomas A. Emmert Sir Arthur Evans in the Balkans: A Romantic Crusade ��������������������������������� 431 Peter Weisensel Identifying “the Asian” in Russian Colonial Writing: Evgenii Markov’s Russia in Central Asia (1901) ������������������������������������������� 443 Marjorie W. Bingham “A Link with Time”: Anna Akhmatova’s Poetry for History Courses ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 463 Bryn Geffert Rethinking Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 473 Elizabeth A. Harry From Scylla to Charybdis: Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State ��������������������������������������������������������� 489 Daniel A. Panshin† The Russian Student Fund and Its Role in the Diaspora �������������������������������� 527 Susannah Lockwood Smith Folk in Soviet Music in the 1930s ������������������������������������������������������������������� 537



Contents

ix

Norma Noonan “The Soviet Experiment” and Women: Brief Historical Reflections ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 555 Zdeněk V. David Back to the Future: A Modern Revival of Sixteenth-Century Czech Cultural and Political Values ���������������������������������������������������������������� 561 Kåre Hauge The Barents Region: History Resurrected in Post-Soviet Europe ����������������� 599 Nick Hayes BG: Conversations with Boris Grebenshchikov ��������������������������������������������� 611 John R. Lampe Rethinking American Perspectives on Southeastern Europe ������������������������� 615 Epilegomena Stanford Lehmberg† Writings of the Eighteenth-Century Archbishops of Canterbury ������������������ 627 Stanley G. Payne Carlism and Nationalism ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 641 Tom Clayton Islands as a State of Mind: Circuitous Reconnaissance ���������������������������������� 657 Theophilus C. Prousis Pilgrimage, Connection, Community ������������������������������������������������������������� 675 Notes on Contributors ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 681

Acknowledgments

The publication of this volume is the result of collaborative commitment, effort, and care. Warmest thanks go to Slavica Publishers, especially to the managing editor, Vicki Polansky, for her constant encouragement and painstaking attention to the manuscript. From its inception, Mr. Soterios Stavrou, instructor of Modern Greek at the University of Minnesota and the associate editor of the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook: A Publication of Mediterranean, Slavic, and Eastern Orthodox Studies, has been the firm, while benevolent, guiding spirit of our shared Odyssey. All who have worked with Mr. Stavrou have reason to appreciate his scholarly discernment, editorial acumen, and unfailing courtesy. He has been the good helmsman with unwearying hand for the Modern Greek Studies Program at the University of Minnesota and the many projects that have emanated from its office. In addition, Russell Martin deserves special recognition for reviewing the project in its early stage. And heartfelt appreciation is owed the authors for their contributions and for their patience during the lengthy adventures that eventually brought Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth safely home and into harbor.

Prolegomena

In Praise of Ignorance John L. Scherer†

Theo’s office had no window. He had blocked the window with bookshelves, turning the office into a cave of sorts. The dancing shadows on the walls were his books, which we, his students, took for reality. The office was filled with posters and photographs. He reserved a corner of his desk for porcelain, paste, and metal mermaids, which were part of a larger collection he had accumulated during his travels, or which had been given him by students and friends. The mermaids linked Theo to the sea, to Cyprus, and to Greek mythology. Russian Spirits Historians and anthropologists assume that people in primitive cultures and societies simply believed in mermaids, mythical heroes, and legends. One anthropologist has written that folk tales “are to the natives a statement of a primeval, greater, and more relevant reality, by which the present life, fates and activities of mankind are determined.”1 Nineteenth-century Russians had said much the same. The literary critic Vissarion Belinskii noted that “[b]y the word ‘reality’ is meant all that is—the visible world and the spiritual world, the world of facts and the world of ideas. Reason in consciousness and reason in external appearance—in a word, spirit revealing itself to itself is reality; whereas everything that is particular, everything accidental, everything unreasonable is illusion, the opposite and negation of reality, appearance and 1

  Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948), 79, 86; and Linda J. Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989), 69. Anthropologists have conceded that primitive societies at least had an internal logic. I am suggesting that all societies behave ritually and irrationally. On folk tales, see James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, trans., An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998); Sabine Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, ed. Edward Hardy (New York: Crescent Books, 1987); Joseph Campbell and Charles Muses, eds., In All Her Names: Explorations of the Feminine in Divinity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991); Katherine M. Briggs, ed., A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, 4 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970–71); and S. V. Maksimov, Literaturnye puteshestviia (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1986), with an index of personal and mythological names, 391–414. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 3–22.

4

John L. Scherer

not real being.”2 And in the same vein, Nikolai Stankevich, the founder of a literary and philosophical circle in Moscow during the 1830s, wrote that “reality in the sense of immediacy, of external being, is accident. Reality in its truth is reason, spirit.”3 Actually, certain societies, such as prerevolutionary Russia, handled myth and legend with considerably more practicality and sophistication. Russia has few tales about mermaids because, for much of its early history, it was landlocked. It has many legends about female water spirits called rusalki. Rusalki emerged from rivers and lakes seven weeks after Easter, and lived on land until late autumn. The water dripping from their hair moistened the earth for spring planting.4 Bereginy, other water sprites, may have been named after bereg (shore), or the verb berech´ (to protect). Their images were carved on houses and ships in the Volga region. Rusalka is a word of unknown origin, but tribes that settled along northern rivers, streams, and lakes near the playgrounds of the rusalki adopted the name. The term may also have been the origin of Rus´ or “Russia,” although scholars have suggested many other sources for these words.5 Mermaids or rusalki also influenced architecture in Russia. Majolica mermaids decorated the Z. O. Pertsov House (1905–07), designed by S. A. Maliutin at Kursovoi pereulok, 1/1, in Moscow.6 The art moderne sculpture by Anna Semenovna Golubkina above the entrance to the Moscow Arts Theater (MKhAT) at Prospekt khudozhestvennogo teatra, 3, has been titled Plovets (The diver), V volnakh (In the waves), and More zhiteiskoe (The inhabited sea, or the merman).7 Of the 412 old Russian lubki (woodcuts) known to exist, none depicts a 2   V. G. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, ed. N. F. Bel´chikov, 13 vols. (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1953), 3: 436. 3

  N. V. Stankevich, Perepiska Nikolaia Vladimirovicha Stankevicha, 1830–1840, ed. Aleksei Stankevich (Moscow: A. I. Mamontov, 1914), 486; John L. Scherer, “Belinskij and the Hegelian Dialectic,” Slavic and East European Journal 21, 1 (1977): 30–45. Paul Veyne has argued that Greeks handled myths with cognitive dissonance, both believing in them and not believing, depending on the occasion. This bit of cleverness seems, however, to avoid answering the question posed by his monograph: Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 56–57, 86.

4

  For more on this, see James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, trans., An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998); and S. V. Maksimov, Literaturnye puteshestviia (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1986), with an index of personal and mythological names (391–414). 5

  V. Ia. Propp, Russian Folk Lyrics, trans. and ed. Roberta Reeder (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 6–7, 63. On the derivation of rusalka, refer to D. K. Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy: Ocherki russkoi mifologii. Umershie neestestvennoiu smert´iu i rusalki (Moscow: Indrik, 1995), 142–43; and Maks Fasmer [Max Vasmer], Etimologicheskii slovar´ russkogo iazyka, 4 vols. (Moscow: Progress, 1971), 4: 520. 6

 See Moscow News, 11–17 August 1999, 6; and A. V. Ikonnikov, Tysiacha let russkoi arkhitektury: Razvitie traditsii (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990), 341.

7

  See M. V. Posokhin et al., eds., Pamiatniki arkhitektury Moskvy: Belyi gorod (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1989), 164–65; a carved mermaid appears on 110–11.



In Praise of Ignorance

5

mermaid or water spirit. But they do show flocks of devils, monsters, and birds of paradise.8 Carved mermaids from the Volga region also appear on the facade of a house and on a valëk (a battledore or loom).9 M. D. Karnovskii and I. F. Zubov depicted mermaids in engravings dedicated to the Russian victory in the Northern War (1707–09), and Aleksei Zubov and Piter Pikart also depicted them in “To the Most Sublime Tsar Union [Which Has Been] Blessed by God” (1715), an engraving of Tsar Peter I and his wife Ekaterina.10 Charles Cameron included sculptures of mythological subjects linked to water in a 1780 design for the Cold Baths at Tsarskoe Selo.11 Rusalki also appeared in Russian music, including Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Liudmila (1842) and Aleksandr Sergeevich Dargomyzhskii’s Rusalka (1856).12 Yevgenii Lancéray (Lanceré, 1875–1946) drew the two-tailed mermaid featured on the cover of Zolotoe Runo (The Golden Fleece) in 1906. Ivan Kramskoi painted Rusalki in 1871, a picture of pale, subdued sprites dressed in white.13 Velimir Khlebnikov, the self-proclaimed Futurist “President of the Universe” and the “King of Time,” wrote a “trans-rational” poem in which he used the words “rusalka” and “rusalki.”14 Rusalki and other spirits served specific functions in Russian culture. Benevolent spirits included the rozhanitsa, protector of the household and family; senmurvy, dogs living 8

  See especially E. I. Itkina, Russkii risovannyi lubok kontsa XVIII–nachala XX veka (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1992).

9

  Shown in Christianity and the Arts in Russia, ed. William C. Brumfield and Milos M. Velimirovich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), plate 40 and 41.

10

  M. Alekseeva, Graviura petrovskogo vremeni (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1990), 68, 139.

11

  Brian Allen and Larissa Dukelskaya, eds., British Art Treasures from Russian Imperial Collections in the Hermitage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 210. 12

  See Malcolm Hamrick Brown, “Native Song and National Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music,” in Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 57–83, especially 64. 13

  T. I. Kurochkina, Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi (Moscow: Izobrazitel´noe iskusstvo, 1980), 54–55; and John E. Bowlt, The Silver Age: Russian Art of the Early Twentieth Century and the “World of Art” Group (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1979), 21, 64.

14

  Von der Fläche zum Raum: Russland, 1916–24 (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1974), 63. Some readers of Vladimir Nabokov have imagined Lolita as a butterfly. Nabokov was an avid lepidopterist, and in his novel he described many places he had seen in the United States while on cross-country moth chases. Nabokov envisaged Lolita as a mermaid. Humbert Humbert recalled, “She adored brilliant water and was a remarkably smart diver.” Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1955), 163. When Humbert first saw the nymphet, “a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart” (41). She reminded him of another love at a “princedom by the sea” (11, 42). Lolita’s mother, Charlotte Haze, had “wide-set sea-green eyes” (39). At the beach, Charlotte swam “with dutiful awkwardness (she was a very mediocre mermaid), but not without a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?)…” (88). On Vladimir Nabokov the lepidopterist, see John L. Scherer, The Popular Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union, 9 diskettes (Minneapolis: J. L. Scherer, 1999–2000), 440–41; and Der Spiegel, 9 June 1997, 197.

6

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in trees which caused the spring to come by flapping their wings; and the simartjl, a hybrid bird and dog that lived in an oak tree at the edge of the world and spread its wings to create the wind and to distribute seeds.15 Warnings Spirits, particularly evil spirits, alerted Russian peasants to danger. The vodianoi, or water sprite, one of two types of rusalki, drowned people. Vodianye resembled humans, except for their fish tails. Some had claws, a horn on their heads, and, occasionally, even goose legs. Most Russians could not swim, so these spirits made them cautious around water. Bards and balladists in Kaluga and Smolensk provinces recounted that a vodianoi tsar lived in a submerged crystal palace, where he danced to tunes played by musicians. The rooms of the palace were filled with gold from sunken ships. In Orel province, peasants believed that the vodianoi tsar lived in an undersea palace made from glass, gold, silver, and precious stones. The kingdom was illuminated by precious stones brighter than the sun. When the tsar danced, the seas turned stormy.16 A poludnitsa, which roamed Ukraine, was frequently, but not always, a tall, beautiful woman clad in white who walked around fields at noon. She would twist the head of anyone she found working at the hottest time of the day. Sometimes the poludnitsa lured unsuspecting children into the rye and ate them. The lesson for field hands was to stay out of the noonday sun, and, for children, not to play in the fields and orchards.17

15   Alison Hilton, “Piety and Pragmatism: Orthodox Saints and Slavic Nature Spirits in Russian Peasant Art,” in Brumfield and Velimirovich, Christianity and the Arts in Russia, 55–71. Konstantin Makovskii’s painting Rusalki appears in Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 261. Dijkstra also commented on rusalki, mermaids, and ondines (94–100, 258–71). Contrary to Dijkstra’s characterization of West European dryads, Russian rusalki were not passive. 16

 E. V. Pomerantseva, Mifologicheskie personazhi v russkom fol´klore (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 55–56, 61–62. It was said that this sea-tsar never died, but simply changed with the phases of the moon. See S. V. Maksimov, Kul´ khleba: Nechistaia, nevedomaia i krestnaia sila (St. Petersburg, 1903; repr., Smolensk: Rusich, 1995), 321. Some Slavs apparently believed that water was not just dangerous but had purifying and healing effects. L. I. Min´ko, “Magical Curing (Its Sources and Character and the Causes of Its Prevalence) [Part I],” Soviet Anthropology and Archeology 12, 3 (1973): 3–33, especially 26–29.

17

  Felix J. Oinas, Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1985), 105; and Entsiklopedicheskii slovar´ (St. Petersburg: F. A. Brokgauz and I. A. Yefron, 1890), 53: 295.



In Praise of Ignorance

7

Politics Evil beings have always been politically useful. During a succession crisis in the late fifteenth century, rumors circulated that Ivan III’s second wife, Grand Princess Sof´ia Paleologos, practiced sorcery. After Vasilii III had banished his first wife, Solomoniia Saburova, to a convent, gossips claimed she had used magic to keep her husband’s love. Princess Anna Glinskaia, the grandmother of Ivan the Terrible, was said to have ripped out human hearts and sprinkled Moscow with the water in which she had soaked them. The Glinskiis were accused of invoking witchcraft to start the immense fire in Moscow in 1547. During the Time of Troubles (1598–1613), Tsar Boris Godunov had the rival Romanov family exiled for having seized the throne by sorcery, and Marina Mniszech, the Polish wife of Godunov’s successor Grishka Otrep´ev (the False Dmitrii), was popularly known as “the witch Marinka.”18 Although witch-hunts in Russia did not equal the scope or intensity of those in Western Europe, 1,452 people testified or confessed during a trial at Belgorod in 1664. The affair had political overtones, since many of the accused were Circassians and Zaporozhian Cossacks.19 As early as the twelfth century, the Russian Orthodox Church, intent on converting the heathen, forbade the telling of fables. It urged peasants to consult divine Scriptures on all things.20 Peasants ignored the prohibition, and continued to recount the stories in order to resist church and state control.21 They continued to tell folk tales about rusalki who conducted mock funerals that parodied Orthodox Church rites. Peter was the crocodile, and Baba-Yaga was a fearsome witch in Russian folk tales. One famous anti-government Old Believer lubok, “How the Mice Buried the Cat,” showed mice (Russians) reveling in their release from the oppression of the cat (Peter the Great). Another satirical lubok entitled “The Witch Baba-Yaga Going Off to Fight the Crocodile” depicted Peter’s wife Ekaterina in Livonian costume riding a

18

 Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief, 87–88; Russell Zguta, “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia,” American Historical Review 82, 5 (1977): 1187–1207, especially 1193; and Zguta, “The Ordeal by Water (Swimming of Witches) in the East Slavic World,” Slavic Review 36, 2 (1977): 220–30; Zguta, “Witchcraft and Medicine in Pre-Petrine Russia,” Russian Review 37, 4 (1978): 438–48; and Valerie A. Kivelson, “Witchcraft in Russia,” Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, ed. George N. Rhyne (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1997), 55: 1–4. At one time, it was believed that sorcerers skied through fields by attaching icons to their feet. See Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief, 109. Ivan the Terrible could not sleep without hearing fables and stories each night. Three blind men recounted tales at the tsar’s bedside until sleep overtook him. See Y. M. Sokolov, Russian Folklore, trans. Catherine Ruth Smith (New York: Macmillan Company, 1950), 457. 19   Russell Zguta, “Was There a Witch Craze in Muscovite Russia?” Southern Folklore Quarterly 40, 1 (1977): 119–27, especially 121–22. 20

 Sokolov, Russian Folklore, 381.

21

 Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 288.

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pig. Peter had found his wife in a tavern in Livonia.22 Ekaterina made him play the pipes and dance in “The Witch Baba-Yaga and the Bald Man.” Peter was portrayed mischievously as “The Cat of Kazan’” in another lubok.23 Resistance to authority may have been a major reason for the survival of dvoeverie (double-faith) in Russia, that is, the retention of pagan beliefs by Orthodox Christians. Instruction Spirits, legends, and fairy tales taught civic and moral lessons. They explained the benefits of loyalty, correct behavior, and persistence in the face of obstacles. They instilled the values of cooperation, and persuaded children that even the smallest or the meekest could succeed in this world. Folk tales explained how to deal with death, misfortune, and such complex emotions as jealousy, anger, disappointment, and love. Folk tales and myths brought clarity to life, and taught courage and self-control. They did not shield children from reality, but instructed them, in an indirect but concrete way, how to approach life with purpose and confidence.24 In a moral tale about greed, three brothers fought over a hat, the only thing they had inherited from their father. The Lapp hero asked them why they were arguing over something so paltry, and they told him that the hat was magic. Anyone who wore it would become invisible. The Lapp hero put the hat on, became invisible to the brothers, and walked away with it. The brothers agreed to cease quarreling, for they no longer had anything to envy, and lived in harmony as before.25 In other tales, a husband told his Yakut bride to turn left at the fork in the road. She turned right, of course, and suffered for her defiance. An Armenian girl was instructed to keep a secret or calamity would follow. She revealed the secret, and the dire prophecy was fulfilled.26 While women were portrayed negatively in these particular stories, as disobedient and foolish, children learned to obey. Spirits of the forests and fields taught people not to destroy the earth. In the short story “Strashnaia mest´” (A Terrible Vengeance), Nikolai Gogol´ described the Ukrainian countryside as a living being: “This forest which stands on the hills is not a forest: these [trees] are the hairs growing on the shaggy head of the old man of the 22

  Ian Grey, The Horizon Book of the Arts of Russia (New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1970), 165, 168–69.

23

  Thomas Froncek, ed., The Horizon Book of the Arts of Russia (New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1970), 124–25.

24

  Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 5, 7, 9–11. Refer to Jack Zipes, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry (New York: Routledge, 1997), on similar themes.

25

  C. Fillingham Coxwell, Siberian and Other Folk-Tales (1925; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1983), 626–30. This story is a variation on the Cap of Hades, which, according to Greek mythology, conferred invisibility on the wearer.

26

  Ibid., 44–45.



In Praise of Ignorance

9

forest.”27 In Smolensk guberniia (province), the leshii, another type of rusalka and the lord of the forest, concluded agreements with local hunters to protect the birds and animals.28 Folk wisdom warned that killing a swan doomed a person to an early death.29 Anyone shooting a swallow, the bird that, according to legend, had removed the nails from the Cross of Christ, would bring a curse upon his cattle.30 As a result of a traditional reverence for birches in Russia, felling large trees was forbidden except for certain spring rites.31 Since the birch was one of the first trees to bloom in the Russian spring, peasants believed it possessed the elemental forces of nature. They sometimes decorated a birch tree, cut it, and threw the branches into a rye field to transfer the tree’s strength to the crop. Girls occasionally bent and staked the top of a birch tree to the ground, so its power would be transmitted to the earth.32 In any case, peasants saw themselves as a part of nature, not apart from it, and so protected it.33 The East Slavs did not have a pantheon of gods, but rather venerated nature itself.34 27   N. V. Gogol´, “Strashnaia mest´,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii N. V. Gogolia v desiati tomakh, 10 vols. (Petrograd: Slovo, 1921), 1: 231. 28

 Pomerantseva, Mifologicheskie personazhi, 29.

29

  L. M. Kuznetsova and N. F. Lein, eds., Russkie (Moscow: Nauka, 1997), 745. Of course, Russian peasants still ruined land with the slash-and-burn technique of farming, and scientific farming certainly has increased yields. The point is that one can employ scientific techniques and still respect the earth.

30

  W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 126. On reading this encyclopedic study, one wonders why rituals, beliefs, and legends proliferated. Although Ryan does not discuss this question, number and variety may have resulted because the folk beliefs and rituals did not work, or because peasants constantly demanded new stories to entertain themselves. 31

 Ikonnikov, Tysiacha let, 21.

32  Propp, Russian Folk Lyrics, 63. Robert Graves devoted chapters to the ancient Irish BethLuis-Nion tree alphabet (taking its name from the letters meaning Birch-Rowan-Ash), a relic of Druidism, in The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (New York: Creative Age Press, 1948), 23, 137–70, especially 154. He noted that the British once believed that a child laid in an elderwood cradle would pine away or be pinched black and blue by fairies. The traditional wood of cradles was birch, which drove off evil spirits (154). In England a witch could be rendered harmless by snatching away her besom, or broom, and tossing it into running water, a river or stream. The brooms were made from birch twigs, which ensnared evil spirits (143). 33

  Mircea Eliade spoke about living in a “sacralized cosmos” in The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 17, 162–79.

34

  See George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, 1: Kievan Christianity: The Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 3–20, 344–62. The author and actor Frank McCourt has recalled that as a boy he accompanied his family to a cemetery in Ireland to bury his two-year-old brother Oliver, who had died suddenly from pneumonia. Jackdaws were perched on trees and tombstones. McCourt could not bear to think

10

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Perpetuating these ideas benefited Russia and Ukraine, but did not require actual belief in spirits, only knowledge of and respect for these legends. Control The Koriaks and Chukchis sacrificed their elderly and their dogs to propitiate evil spirits. Other peoples merely left food in certain places.35 This difference represented an understanding of sacrifice as an abstract concept, and the lessening of belief. Such rituals taught abstention, gratitude, and humility. Kazakhs prayed to specific deities during particular calamities. They made sacrifices to jher-ana, an earth spirit, during ice storms, to su-ana, a water god, during drought, and to various animal spirits when the herds became ill or their numbers dwindled. Kazakhs believed, or pretended to believe, that animals possessed supernatural powers, and that sacrificing them could reverse misfortune and postpone death.36 When misfortune persisted, they must have doubted the powers of their idols. Kazakhs, at least, understood that they did not control their own destinies, and this acknowledgement represented heightened awareness and sophistication. Superstitious Russians and other nationalities avoided calling things by their correct names. The Cheremis referred to bees as the “little tiny bird.” Estonians called the bee “a honey bird.” In Siberia, a bear was known as “a bull”; a she-bear, “a cow.” Siberians spoke of a cow as “the bellower,” and Russians substituted “the spired one” for a church. Belorussians spoke metaphorically about “the gay one,” “the handrail,” and “the yoke” when they meant a rainbow.37 A superstitious person does not completely trust reason, or at least someone else’s reasoning, but this does not mean that he or she is stupid. Among pagan Slavs, obscenities also had a ritual function connected to agricultural, marital, and fertility rites.38 Foul language, like prayer, was invoked to escape a wood demon or house spirit, or the Devil himself. On certain occasions, when prayer of leaving Oliver with the jackdaws, so he began to pitch rocks at them. His father told him to stop; they might be someone’s soul. This caution had the opposite effect on young Frank: “I’d be a man some day, and I’d come back with a bag of rocks, and I’d leave the graveyard littered with dead jackdaws.” See Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes, audiocassette (New York: Recorded Books, Inc., 1997), pt. 3. 35

 Coxwell, Siberian and Other Folk-Tales, 28.

36

  Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), 20; and S. E. Tolybekov, Kochevoe obshchestvo Kazakhov v XVII–nachale XX veka: Politiko-ekonomicheskii analiz (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1971), 197. 37

  V. P. Anikin, “On the Origin of Riddles,” in The Study of Russian Folklore, ed. Felix J. Oinas and Stephen Soudakoff (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 25–37.

38

 On fertility, see S. A. Tokarev, Religioznye verovaniia vostochnoslavianskikh narodov XIX–nachala XX v. (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1957), 94; and V. K. Sokolova, Vesenne-letnie kalendarnye obriady russkikh, ukraintsev, belorussov (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 220.



In Praise of Ignorance

11

would not work, only cursing proved effectual. Both prayers and curses were used to find buried treasure. The procedure to free a village from an epidemic required shouting, banging things, and cursing. Pagan Serbs threw a hammer at the heavens to avert hail, swearing the whole time.39 While these customs continued, the treasure was never found; the epidemic ran its course; and hail ruined the crops. Obscenities became part of the language to express fear or frustration rather than to bring about some miraculous event. Entertainment Tales and legends offered entertainment and enchantment. Aleksandr Pushkin described a nereid in 1820: Below the dawn-flushed sky, where the green billow lies Caressing Tauris’ flank, I saw a Nereid rise. Breathless for joy I lay, hid in the olive trees, And watched the demi-goddess riding the rosy seas. The waters lapped about her swan-white breast and young, As from her long soft hair the wreaths of foam she wrung.40 Other Romantic writers of the early nineteenth century, such as Vasilii Zhukovskii, Taras Shevchenko, and Mikhail Lermontov, all reworked ancient tales about rusalki.41 Most of the time, women fared poorly in these tales. Lermontov included an undina (undine)—a mermaid or water nymph—in his short story “Taman´.” At least the protagonist took her for one: “Her fingers crunched, but she did not cry out; her serpent nature withstood this torture.”42 Nikolai Gogol´ described rusalki as pale, translucent, as if illuminated by the moon. They appeared at twilight, just before the stars winked on, to laugh and dance, their eyes shining and their green or red hair 39   B. A. Uspenskij, “On the Origin of Russian Obscenities,” in The Semiotics of Russian Culture, by Ju. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskij, ed. Ann Shukman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1984), 295–300. 40

  The Poems, Prose and Plays of Alexander Pushkin, ed. Avrahm Yarmolinsky (New York: Modern Library, 1964), 53. The translation is by Babette Deutsch. Pushkin’s rusalka combed her wet hair, waved, nodded, laughed, and cried like a child. See A. S. Pushkin, Pushkin: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh, ed. M. A. Tsiavlovskii (Moscow: Academia, 1936), 1: 252, on a domovoi, 260–61, on a rusalka, and 279, on the nereida.

41

 Entsiklopedicheskii slovar´ (1890), 53: 295. Shevchenko wrote “Utoplenie” (Drowned). Zhukovskii’s “Lesnoi Tsar´” (Forest Tsar [i.e., leshii], 1818) was borrowed from a ballad of the same name by Goethe. See V. Zhukovskii, Stikhotvoreniia (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1974), 167–68, 291.

42

  Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, trans. Vladimir Nabokov (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), 65–80, especially 77.

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overflowing their shoulders. They burned for love, and tickled their victims to death. Ivan Turgenev wrote: “Before him [the carpenter Gavrila] sat a rusalka on a tree branch, swinging and calling him, dying from laughter.” The carpenter’s encounter with the rusalka changed his life forever—he was never happy again. Rusalki and mermaids were beautiful and tempting, but they were also dangerous: fish tails sink sails. Mermen bore no such stigma.43 In Ukraine, rusalki would normally confront a young woman on her way to draw water from a river and shout, “Wormwood or parsley?” “Wormwood”—chernobyl´ or polyn´—was a magical word. If the woman foolishly answered “parsley,” she would be tickled to death.44 The Russian and Belorussian kikimora, often considered the wife of the domovoi (a house spirit), smothered its victims with kisses. In one village in the Vologda region, a kikimora roamed a house all night, stamping its feet, rattling the dishes, clanking cups, and breaking crockery. Only a dancing bear managed to rid the house of this apparition.45 Sprites described in Russian literature differed from spirits said to haunt Russian villages by their extreme beauty or ugliness, and by the depth of their cunning. Writers, more than local bards, embellished their tales. In his short story “Vii,” Gogol´ exaggerated the beauty of the woman—a stunning young witch with eyelashes as long as arrows—and the horror of the monster—a bandylegged creature with an iron face, whose eyelids hung to the ground, and required a whole crowd of devils to raise.46 43

  Klaus J. Heinisch, Der Wassermensch: Entwicklungsgeschichte eines Sagenmotivs (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981). Some fairy tales have become outdated and harmful. Bruno Bettelheim has pointed out that Snow White, betrayed by her wicked stepmother, is saved by males—first by the seven dwarfs, then by a prince. Bettelheim did not reject reason, but felt that fairy tales helped children deal with a reality without moral ambiguities until they learned to think abstractly. The fairy tales provided security until a child was ready “to engage in rational investigations as he grows up.” See Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 9, 16, 19, 52. 44

  Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, 310.

45

  Olga Raevsky-Hughes, “Remizov’s Autobiographical Prose,” in Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, ed. Jane Gary Harris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 61; Maksimov, Kul´ khleba, 292–97; and Kuznetsova and Lein, eds., Russkie, 756–57.

46

  Nikolai Gogol, Mirgorod, trans. David Magarshack (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962), 187, 198, 217–18; and Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, “Cossacks and Women: Creation without Reproduction in Gogol’s Cossack Myth,” in Russian Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age, ed. Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 173–89, especially 182–83, 185. Even though Jakob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859) Grimm wrote their fairy tales for adults, some readers have considered the stories too violent. In the original version of the first tale in their collection, “The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich,” the petulant princess did not turn the frog into a prince with a kiss, but hurled it against a wall with all her might. It awoke, groggily, as a prince. See The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 2–5.



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Folk Heroes Heroes in Russian folklore were often lazy and good-for-nothing. One of the most popular, Ivanushka the Fool, slept on a warm peasant stove, avoided work, and moved only to eat, play jacks with the cat, or to blow his nose: “For twelve years he lay in the ashes; then he got up, and when he shook himself, over two hundred pounds of ashes fell from his body.”47 Like Russians themselves, who often exhibit bursts of energy, Ivanushka emerged from his slumber to perform some heroic feat, whereupon he returned to the warm stove. The story meant that Russians may appear languorous, but they are still capable of great deeds. In the Russian version of Grimm’s “The Frog King,” three brothers throw arrows into the air and follow them to find wives. Two of the brothers marry well, but foolish Ivan cannot locate his arrow and gets lost in a swamp. Ivan finds and kisses a frog, which turns into a woman who organizes his life forever after.48 Tsar Nikolai I was often compared to a bogatyr´ or folk warrior in Russian lubki (popular prints). Various Russian military heroes, such as Aleksandr Suvorov and Grigorii Potemkin, were depicted with superhuman strength and size, as men capable of dashing exploits, all taken directly from legends. The tsar appeared in these woodblock prints with his right arm extended stiffly, sometimes holding a sword, sometimes merely gesturing toward the distance. Soviet sculptors adopted this pose in their depiction of Lenin pointing to the glorious future.49 The ethnographer and literary historian P. N. Rybnikov was a civil servant interested in Russian byliny, which, in the nineteenth century, were thought to be on the verge of extinction. A bylina was an epic folk song connected to a historical event that its singers embellished. The songs are believed to have originated around Kiev, but even before the emergence of the Kievan state in the tenth century. The term was first used by I. P. Sakharov in the 1830s. Rybnikov recalled that one day in 1860, when a storm had overtaken him on Lake Onega, he sought refuge on an island. He heard music coming from a barn, and found peasants singing “Sadko,” a forgotten bylina. Rybnikov published 224 of these verse tales in four volumes during 1861–67, and is credited with having rediscovered this art form.50 Here legends were employed to transfer mythical strength and heroism to contemporary leaders. 47

  E. M. Meletinskij, “The ‘Low’ Hero of the Fairy Tale,” in Oinas and Soudakoff, The Study of Russian Folklore, 235–57, especially 237; and Coxwell, Siberian and Other Folk-Tales, 30. 48

  Communication from Elena Korshuk, Belarusian State University, Minsk.

49

  Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 1: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 313.

50

  See Oinas, Essays on Russian Folklore and Mythology, 9–11; V. Ia. Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, trans. Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin, ed. Anatoly Liberman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 53; and Frank J. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), with synopses of pseudo-folklore (noviny) on 111–51.

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The Origins of Folk Tales Storytellers varied the formulaic folk tales by adapting them to specific localities, increasing their complexity, and making the tales ever more fantastic. Belorussians in Chernigov province imagined rusalki were the souls of dead, unbaptized infants who gamboled in the forests, swung on tree limbs, wove wreaths, and seduced the unwary.51 In Voronezh province, they were female children who had not been baptized, or girls who had drowned.52 Mermaids in Orenburg province were mute.53 In Belorussia, grass did not grow where the rusalki had danced, whereas in Russia, the grass was always greener on this spot.54 The vodianoi resembled an old man in Vladimir province, but a young, naked woman continually combing her hair in Novgorod province. In Vologda province, a vodianoi looked like a big pike.55 Peasants in the Khar´kov region of Ukraine believed that rusalki swam in kvas—a beer made from fermented rye or other breads. Devils swam in both kvas and milk but could not stay afloat in holy water.56 In Kaluga province, the Devil gave the rusalki their beauty and eternal youth by boiling them in cauldrons.57 In Riazan´ province, the vodianye were said to have been the soldiers of the pharaoh who had drowned in pursuit of the Jews crossing the Black Sea (not the Red Sea).58 In Chuvashiia, people said the souls of dead children were transformed into birds, most often into cuckoos.59 The domovoi in Smolensk province was usually a bare-headed, gray-bearded old man in a long white shirt. In Vladimir province, he always dressed in yellow and never removed his big battered hat. His hair and beard trailed to the ground. He was forever awkward, and as small as a stump or a block of wood in Penza province. The domovoi could only be seen on a dark night before the second crowing of the cock, 51

 Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 310; and Maksimov, Kul´ khleba, 329.

52

 Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 149.

53

  Sergei Aksakov, Notes on Fishing and Selected Fishing Prose and Poetry, trans. Thomas P. Hodge (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 176; and Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief, 75–82, 185–89, on Russian mermaids or rusalki. 54

 Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 205; Margaret Bridget Betz, “Malevich’s Nymphs: Erotica or Emblem?” Soviet Union 5, 2 (1978): 204–24, especially 213; and Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 191. 55

  Maksimov, Kul´ khleba, 319.

56

 Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 311.

57

  Ibid., 158. This legend, too, draws on Greek mythology. Medea, for example, cooked Jason’s aged father Aison in a cauldron to make him young. See H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1959), 204, 300. The Greeks, of course, had their own panoply of mermaids, nereids, and dryads. 58

 Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 301. The peasants of Orël also believed that the vodianye, whom they called faraony, had drowned in the Black Sea. See Maksimov, Kul´ khleba, 321. 59

 Zelenin, Izbrannye trudy, 303.



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and then in the form of a black cat or a sack of grain.60 All of these regions were within a few hundred kilometers of one another. These variations in folk tales suggest people found them more entertaining than convincing. If they were meant to describe reality, the stories would have been more uniform and consistent, and less numerous. Not just the details, but also the forms of folklore differed from province to province. In Kareliia, southerners created moral tales that realistically described village life. North Karelian tales were more sarcastic and ironic.61 Conditions were tougher in the north: hard earth and hard work hardened their hearts. Peasants always battled poverty in tales from Smolensk. A typical farmer clearing his land for wheat “grubs out the trees, scratches the surface a little, and begins to sow.” Siberian folk tales were filled with wanderers and wayfarers migrating across this wide expanse.62 Myths Life should be lived in a mythopoeic sense, incorporating poetic imagination and mythic structures into one’s own reality. Myths elevate the personal to the universal, and human experience should, on occasion, be transfigured, that is, lived on a different plane, as happens with love, or when people live their daily lives heroically, as do those who sacrifice for some cause, or for others. Men and women should use myth and imagination to understand that they are part of history and nature, which go on and on, and not mere mortals in a diminished world. At his home near South Hadley, Massachusetts, Joseph Brodsky observed two pitch-black, brazen crows that alighted in his backyard, or on his porch, or, from time to time, in his pine grove. The first arrived just after Brodsky’s mother had died, and the second, a year later, shortly after his father had passed away. “Now they always show up or flap away together,” he recalled, “and they are too silent for crows.” Brodsky tried to avoid looking at them, but they reminded him of his parents: “One is shorter than the other, the way my mother was up to my father’s shoulder.… Although I can’t make out their age, they seem to be an old couple. On an outing. I don’t have it in me to shoo them away, nor can I communicate with them in any fashion. I also seem to remember that crows do not migrate. If the origins of mythology are fear and isolation, I am isolated all right. And I wonder how many things will remind me of my parents from now on. That is to say, with this sort of visitor, who needs a good memory?”63

60

  Maksimov, Kul´ khleba, 271–72.

61

  U. S. Konkka, comp., Karel´skie narodnye skazki (Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1963), 47–51.

62

 Sokolov, Russian Folklore, 461–62, 465. See pages 459–65 on local variations in these tales. 63

  Joseph Brodsky, “In a Room and a Half,” in Less Than One: Selected Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986), 468–69, 494–95.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Spirits, like angels, were good and bad. The domovoi and related sprites had been cast out of Heaven. Those who fell to earth into homes were benevolent, guardian spirits—the dvorovoi (who lived in a courtyard), the vannik (who guarded baths), the ovinnik (who protected barns), and the chlevnik (who watched over cows). Those who fell outside the home, in wild places, including the polevik (who protected fields), the leshii, the vodianoi, the rusalka, and the chertovka (a demon who lived in stills or stagnant pools of water), were unfriendly toward humans.64 The domovoi, a faithful Russian spirit that slept on, in, or behind the stove, protected one’s home, and all who lived in it. The name domovoi derived from the Russian word dom (house). Although this spirit took many forms, it was usually an old man whose wife, the domikha or doman´ia, lived under the floorboards. These spirits were guardians of the hearth, and they had their own favorites in every family that prospered. When a family moved, it always took an ember from the old stove to the new one in order to retain the protection of the domovoi. Family members never referred to this spirit directly, but always as “chelovek” (man), “Ded,” or “Dedushka” (grandfather). Leftovers were set out for the spirits at night. The movement of a domovoi caused creaks and groans in the house. If someone were brushed by one, a cold, clammy feeling meant bad luck, whereas a warm, furry feeling resulted in good fortune. Domovye experienced the human emotions of happiness and sadness. They did not communicate with adults, only with children and animals.65 If a Russian loses an object at home, he or she must put candy in a corner of the apartment for the domovoi. After the object is found, the candy must be thrown away.66 Most spirits, such as the rusalki, were evil and erotic. The lives of peasants were often difficult and filled with misfortune, so evil spirits predominated. Rusalki were erotic because they were evil and female. Eroticism represented temptation and was to be resisted.

64

  Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Gnomes, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia of the Little People (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1996), 68, 90, 250–51. 65

  Iurii Miroliubov, Slaviano-russkii fol´klor (Munich: Otto Sagner, 1984), 68–87, especially 73. On domovye, vodianye, and rusalki, see Maksimov, Kul´ khleba, 267–334. Boris Kustodiev painted The Merchant’s Wife and Brownie (brownie being a domovoi) in 1921–22, and gave the picture to his friend and fellow artist Konstantin Somov. See Mark Etkind, ed., Boris Kustodiev: Paintings, Graphic Works, Book Illustrations, Theatrical Designs (New York: Abrams, 1983), 274 n. 92. 66

  Françoise Dehove in Agence France Presse, 18 February 2000.



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Social Status Myths developed a sense of community, through shared rituals, and provided social status. Legends were society’s glue, reinforcing the social structure.67 It has been pointed out that the execution of a witch demonstrated group or communal solidarity. The practice excluded the deviant from society, and redefined, or narrowed, the boundaries of behavior in a virtuous community.68 It has been suggested that myths are like shoes: “You step into them if they fit. Old shoes, like traditions that are (or seem) ancient, are usually the ones you feel most comfortable with.”69 And it has been speculated that any society which did not define and structure itself through rituals would “collapse into chaos.”70 Persons called witches in Europe—frequently poor, older women—were often victims of petty feuds and political vendettas, but they were not only victims. Their supernatural powers afforded these women prominence. They were village physicians and midwives, probably the two most important jobs in rural European society. They were called upon in times of drought and plague to restore balance in nature, and during political upheavals to cast spells on the enemies of local rulers. Not all witches were women, for that matter, but female witches invariably taught males.71 In ancient Greece, women were responsible for the continuity of a community. They had special duties relating to death and community losses, such as preparing the body, mourning, and making offerings. They secured the future of the community by bearing children, an event considered a public rather than a private matter.72 In Russia, too, women performed the funeral, wedding, and conscription laments.73 Russian women traditionally acted as the guardians of the community by obtaining food, fuel, and shelter for their families.74 In 1931 Tuva had 725 shamans, 314 of them women. 67

  A. N. Wilson has spoken of “religion’s glue” in A. N. Wilson, God’s Funeral (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 277.

68

  Christina Larner, Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief, ed. Alan Macfarlane (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 45. 69

  Richard Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 196.

70

  Charles Freeman, The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World (New York: Viking, 1999), 131. 71

 Barbara G. Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 1076–91.

72

 Buxton, Imaginary Greece, 114–17.

73

  Roberta Reeder in Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 242–43. 74

  Barbara Alpern Engel, “Transformation versus Tradition,” in Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transf  ormation, ed. Barbara Evans Clements, Engel, and Christine D. Worobec (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 135–47, especially 145.

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The region had been controlled by China until 1944, when it became part of the Soviet Union.75 It has been pointed out that the ratio of male to female witches in seventeenth-century Muscovy was nearly seven to three, and suggested that enserfment in Russia restricted social movement and the asocial behavior that was associated with witches in Western Europe.76 Additionally, people who claimed they had seen sprites enhanced their social standing. They never saw anything resembling a spirit, of course, but an encounter implied they were in some way favored, and had acquired secret or divine wisdom. Mirth Myths shared mirth. The explorer Henry Hudson claimed to have sighted mermaids near Novaia Zemlia, an island washed by both the Barents and Kara Seas, northeast of Murmansk. He mentioned spotting a mermaid “as big as one of us, her skin very white and long hair hanging down behind, of color black. In her going down we saw her tail which was like the tail of a porpoise, speckled like a mackerel … [but] from the navel upwards, her back and breasts were like a woman’s.” Georg Steller, who lent his name to the Steller sea eagle, greenling, jay, sea-lion, eider, and sea-monkey, also left accounts of mermaids during an expedition to the Bering Straits in 1741.77 Within thirty years of Steller’s voyage, hunters had killed all of the mermaids or manatees that he had seen. Steller was the first white man to set foot on Alaska.78 Steller’s eagles on the Kamchatka Peninsula have “brutal yellow beaks,” nine-foot wing spans, and weigh up to twenty pounds. The gigantic birds sometimes eat so much salmon they cannot fly.79 The lonely sailors on this voyage surely saw sea cows, walruses, or whales. For them, mermaids represented an initiation rite. The older seamen, who 75

  Colin Thubron, In Siberia (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999), 243–78. Also consult Robert Muchembled, “Satanic Myths and Cultural Reality,” in Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 139–60; and Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (London: Routledge, 1996).

76

  See Valerie A. Kivelson, “Through the Prism of Witchcraft: Gender and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy,” in Clements, Engel, and Worobec, Russia’s Women, 74–94, especially 75, 83–84, 93. Also consult Rose L. Glickman, “The Peasant Woman as Healer,” in ibid., 148–62, especially 162. 77   John May, Curious Facts (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), 163; Bol´shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, 1974), 16: 586; and Karl Gröning and Martin Saller, Elephants: A Cultural and Natural History (Cologne: Könemann, 1998), 18. 78

 Thubron, In Siberia, 19–21.

79

  See Klaus Nigge, “The Russian Realm of Steller’s Sea-Eagles,” National Geographic 195 (March 1999): 60–71; and Peter Matthiessen, Tigers in the Snow (New York: North Point Press, 2000), 156.



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may once have been taken in themselves, perpetuated the myth to prove they were not the only fools, and to share the laughter. Some leshie had hairy legs and hooves. Others lived in big huts in the forest. They married, walked their dogs, and had children. In one tale from the Novgorod region, a leshii and his elderly mother even ate kasha (cream-of-wheat) together.80 During the early industrialization of Russia, a vodianoi was described as having a cast-iron (chugunnyi) nose. A peasant in the story “The Little Old Woman with Five Cows” had an iron tongue fifty feet long.81 In Siberia, the inhabitants of the nether regions, such as the black Chebeldei, were made of iron. These unfriendly creatures had noses eighteen meters long. The son of the chief of the Yakut abaasy was a Cyclops with a single eye “like a frozen lake” and seven big iron teeth.82 Few believed such things, but it was all very funny. Everyone knew you could save yourself from a leshii by making it laugh. A fisherman who saw one cried out: “Na eti by nishsha da krasnyë shtanishsha” (This behind should be dressed in red pants). This is amusing because of the rhyme nishsha with shtanishsha. Krasnyi means either “clean” (the leshii was always dirty) or “red” (a festive color).83 Even peasants understood these complicated puns. The leshii, in this instance anyway, obviously thought it hilarious, because the fisherman lived to tell the tale. Prohibitions Folklore was full of prohibitions, but this was, in general, not a bad thing. True believers in folklore had a comparatively easy life in prerevolutionary Russia. Finns living in the Russian Empire thought Friday was the unluckiest day, probably because the Crucifixion had occurred on a Friday, and Finnish and Russian women refused to spin, wash clothes, or remove ashes from stoves. Men would not plough. It was unlucky to use a scissors on Sunday, but a good day to begin a voyage or journey. Business undertaken on Thursday, Friday, or Sunday invited bad luck.84 Russia had far more religious holidays than any other country in Western Europe. In 1900 the number of work days in a Russian factory averaged 264. Factories stood idle for a full quarter of the year.85 Such beliefs inhibited productivity and wealth, but in the 80

 Pomerantseva, Mifologicheskie personazhi, 41.

81

  Ibid., 62; and Coxwell, Siberian and Other Folk-Tales, 40.

82

  Larousse World Mythology, 438.

83

  Communication from Michael Jakobson, University of Toledo; see also Pomerantseva, Mifologicheskie personazhi, 36. 84

  Cora Linn Daniels and C. M. Stevans, eds., Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World (1971; reprint, Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co., 1982), 3: 1583–91; and Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, 381–83. 85

 Gary Thurston, The Popular Theatre Movement in Russia, 1862–1919 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 137; and Theodore H. von Laue, “Russian Labor be-

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Russian economy, peasants usually did not benefit from hard work. These sayings complicated life, and dealing with complexity, even in the case of peasants, required a certain sophistication. The sayings also made people careful and cautious rather than reckless. Women Folklore was invoked to control women in society, and often to justify the status quo. Those women who did not fit male stereotypes were, on occasion, portrayed as temptresses and witches. In the twelfth century, authorities in one district of Russia dealt with fears of witchcraft by arresting the whole female population.86 And it has been argued that male physicians used the witchhunt to exclude women from medicine, a field they had dominated in the preindustrial period.87 Before the October 1917 revolution, the folk art of the lubki frequently presented women as schemers and liars linked to the Devil. Things improved in this respect, if in few other ways, after the Bolsheviks had consolidated their power. Aleksandr Apsit’s poster Internatsional (International, 1918) featured a horrifying female figure on a pedestal marked “Capital.” She had immense breasts, fangs, wings, a tsarist crown, and a serpent’s tail. Men with hammers were attacking the monument. It was the only Bolshevik poster ever to represent capitalism as a woman, and perhaps the single depiction of a woman as a monster on Soviet posters.88 Few women appeared in early Soviet posters; the male figure personified the Bolshevik regime. Males monopolized the revolutionary virtues of militancy and political consciousness, whereas women were still seen as backward. When women were depicted on Soviet posters, they were usually in their twenties and linked to children and nature.89 Enlightenment Myths should instill a sense of limitation in modern man. Reason and science have often led in the opposite direction—to arrogance and devastation—and one should, whenever possible, simplify life and destroy less. The Enlightenment taught that misery, folly, and crime resulted from ignorance or laziness. The world could be understood by anyone who made the effort. Once a tween Field and Factory, 1892–1903,” California Slavic Studies 3 (1964): 33–65, especially 53–54. 86   Zguta, “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia,” 1189; and Larner, Witchcraft and Religion, 50, 61–62, 84–85. 87

 Larner, Witchcraft and Religion, 149–50.

88

  Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 72, illustration 2.7. 89

  Elizabeth Waters, “The Female Form in Soviet Political Iconography, 1917–32,” in Engel, Clements, and Worobec, Russia’s Women, 225–42, especially 227–28, 232, 234, 237.



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person had comprehended the laws that governed nature and society, he or she could not help pursuing the correct course toward happiness and universal harmony.90 Reason and science would ultimately triumph through education. In the late nineteenth century, two strangers began a conversation in a railway carriage halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. They discovered they were traveling on the same train, though one was bound for St. Petersburg and the other for Moscow. The pair could only marvel at the wonders of science, and continue on their way.91 Reason There is an African parable which says that without heavenly rain, the water on earth will dry up. Without heavenly revelation, human reason will dry up.92 Whether or not a person is religious, one should realize that reason and faith, or science and belief, are not so very different. Reasoning is, in theory at least, an unbiased method of arriving at truth, but one reasons from assumptions, and assumptions are almost always unexamined clichés. To be truly useful, reason must consistently predict (prophesy) the consequences of taking certain actions, but it does not. One usually guesses when making decisions, that is, accepts assumptions on faith. When people do not make the same assumptions, reasoning divides rather than unites them, and some people will never be persuaded of a thing. The old Russian folk hero Durak Duralei refused to believe in fire. Despite all evidence to the contrary, try as one might, he would not be convinced. As he was being burned at the stake, Duralei cried out, “It’s so cold!” Reason as logic, reason as motive, reason as excuse are all inadequate. Reason as logic insists that if x is y, then z: “If the weather is warm, the crops will prosper.” Unfortunately, one cannot assume something else will not spoil the crops. The syllogism “A=B, B=C, then A=C” is true only if the major and minor premises are true.93 This method may prove that Socrates is mortal, but reason does not help at all in 90

  Isaiah Berlin, “Georges Sorel,” in Essays in Honor of E. H. Carr, ed. C. Abramsky (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1974), 3–35, especially 7; and Stephen Lessing Baehr, The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Utopian Patterns in Early Secular Russian Literature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 92. Paul Veyne has written: “Science finds no truths … it discovers unknown facts that can be interpreted in a thousand ways” (Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? 115).

91

  E. B. Lanin, Russian Characteristics (London: Chapman and Hall, 1892), 94.

92

  Ernest Hemingway, True at First Light, audiotapes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), pt. 3.

93

  Some academics have pointed out that myth is regarded as sacred, whereas science is essentially skeptical. In science, if new evidence does not fit a theory, another theory develops. Of course, this description idealizes science, a field in which skepticism is reserved for making minor revisions of old theories. Skepticism rarely challenges fundamental scientific theory. Both science and myth are characterized by “massive dogmatism.” See Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: Verso, 1978), 296–98.

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making ordinary choices. One can always find reasons to do something, but there is no assurance that they are the right reasons, or that a person has enough information to make the correct choice. Reasoning gives people confidence that they understand and can control events, but they do not. Life is essentially, unavoidably, a leap of faith, whether one approaches it by way of reason or belief. Primitive societies did not merely accept folklore, legends, and mythology, but used them to advantage. People found myth, which is dramatic and emotional, more persuasive than reason. They might just as well today. Everything a person believes may be myth anyway, for reason and delusion are identical twins. Those who trust reason err. It will take a long time to undo this.

One could always argue that reason and faith are two aspects of one being, but this seems only a clever way to avoid dealing with their differences. On reason and faith and the failure of reason, see, for example, Karl R. Popper, Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979); Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932); Lev Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem, trans. Bernard Martin (New York: Clarion, 1966); Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty and Peace (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946); and A. S. Yesenin-Volpin, A Leaf of Spring, trans. George Reavey (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961).

The Travels of Brand and Isband Carol Urness

This little story is in honor of Professor Theofanis G. Stavrou, a teacher, an advisor, and a mentor. As a teacher, he encourages students to look beyond historical facts in order to understand the culture and soul of Russia; as an advisor, he works relentlessly to help his students reach their goals; and as a researcher and traveler, he shows a keen sense of what areas needed attention, gives them prominence through his own work, and inspires students to emulate him. So it was in a way that I became fascinated with travel accounts and got the bug to travel. Indeed, travelers have been and continue to be a principal source in my research, too. And travel accounts to and within Russia are an important segment of the collection of rare books, maps, and manuscripts in the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota, where I served as curator (1991–2001). Like Professor Stavrou, I have been most fortunate in my travels—to libraries and archives in Belfast, Cambridge, London, Oxford, and Paris for study; to places like Anchorage, Copenhagen, Esjberg, Halle, Kamchatka, Jamaica, Newfoundland, and Sitka to attend various meetings and conferences; to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov, Tbilisi, and Alma-Ata for the fun of it. The little story is about Brand and Isbrand, two travelers who journeyed from Russia to China in the late seventeenth century. In history, hardly anything is simple. For example, Isbrand Ides is also Everrard Isbrand, Evert Isbrand, Everhard Isbrand Ides, Eberhard Isbrand-Ides, and several other variations of the name. In the catalog of the University of Minnesota Libraries, his works are entered under the form “Ides, Evert Ysbrandsoon.” In the first edition of the account of his journey, published in Dutch in 1704, he signs the dedication, “E. Isbrants Ides.” One of my favorite modern writers, Erich Donnert, gives his full name as Eberhard Isbrand-Ides, shortened to Isbrand in other parts of his text.1 This can be confusing, since Isbrand’s companions on the journey from Russia to China included one Adam Brand, who wrote the first book about their experiences. Thus, the two major characters of our story are Brand and Isbrand. Catalogers for the books by the latter must have had a good reason for using the entry “Ides.” On the other hand, the man is cited on the title page as “Ambassadeur Isbrand,” and his full name is written as “Herr Eberhard Isbrand” in the first edition of the book that Brand wrote concerning their journey. Dutch and English 1

  Erich Donnert, Russia in the Age of Enlightenment, trans. Alison and Alistair Wightman (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1986), 95.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 23–34.

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translations appeared the following year, with “Heer Isbrand” the name on the title page of the former, “Everard Isbrand” on the latter. So these are good reasons to adopt the usage Isbrand here. Brand was the secretary to the embassy from Russia in the late seventeenth century to the emperor of China; Isbrand was the ambassador. The first edition of Brand’s book was in German, published in Hamburg in 1698. It has three copperplate illustrations, two of them depicting an Ostiack and a Tungus. The third illustration is a most unflattering portrait of Peter (not yet the Great) in a copperplate engraving by “I. W. Michael.” It makes him look like a pouting woman. (See figure 1, opposite.) The English translation of the same year includes the Ostiack and Tungus illustrations and a new, re-engraved portrait that is much improved. (See figure 2, p. 26). Perhaps Peter’s visit to Britain at this time led to this revision. The Dutch translation of the following year has no illustrations at all, though the text is the same. A French translation was printed in Amsterdam in 1699 as well. It has one map, which does not include all of Siberia. The northeastern portion of it is not depicted. The appearance of these three translations so soon after the publication of the original book indicates the interest that their readers had in the subject of travels in Siberia and China and, especially, in the potential for trade with China. According to Brand’s book, Isbrand was a German, “born in the City of Gluckstad, in the Dukedom of Holstein.”2 In spite of this statement, and in spite of the fact that the German first edition cited above describes Brand as a member of the “Teutscher Nation,” writers on Isbrand continue to confuse his nationality. For example, Marshall Poe, in his superb Foreign Descriptions of Muscovy: An Analytic Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources, lists his name as “Yssbrant Ides” and notes “Dutch in Russian service.”3 Other authors do the same. Brand writes that the Russians, “after mature deliberation resolved to send a most splendid Embassy to the Great Amologdachan (or Emperor of China)” in order to impress him and no doubt to encourage trade with China. Isbrand was named to lead this embassy (Brand, 2). Who was taking part in this “mature” deliberating is difficult to know, as Peter (later the Great) Alekseevich Romanov was twenty years old and more interested in having a good time than in thinking about politics; his half-brother and co-tsar Ivan Alekseevich was “weak-minded,” and his sister, the former regent and tsarevna Sophia Alekseevna, had been sent to a convent. Peter’s mother Natasha and her advisers governed Russia at the time. On 3 March 1692, the embassy visited Ivan Alekseevich, and the ambassador kissed his hand. On 12 March Isbrand met with Peter Alekseevich, and performed the same ceremony. Brand writes that “It is very well worth taking notice here, That the present Czar Peter is a Prince of an excellent good Humour, and a great Favourer of 2

  Adam Brand [d. 1713], A journal of an embassy from Their Majesties John and Peter Alexowits, emperors of Muscovy, & c. into China; through the provinces of Ustiugha, Siberia, Dauri, and the great Tartary, to Peking, the capital city of the Chinese empire (London: D. Brown, 1698), 2. Further references to this work will be given parenthetically in the text citing author’s name and page number. 3

  Marshall Poe, Foreign Descriptions of Muscovy: An Analytic Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1995), 186.

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25

Figure 1. Frontispiece portrait of Peter the Great in Adam Brand, Beschreibung der chinesischen Reise, welche vermittelst einer Zaaris, Besandschaft durch dero Ambassadeur, Hernn Isbrand anno 1693, 94, und 95, von Moscau uber Gross-Ustiga, Siberien, dauren und durch die Mongalische Tartarey verrichtet worden, und was sich dabey begeben, aus selbst erfahrner Nachricht mitgetheilet (Hamburg: Benjamin Schillern, 1698).

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Figure 2. Frontispiece portrait of Peter the Great in Adam Brand, A journal of an embassy from Their Majesties John and Peter Alexowits, emperors of Muscovy, &c. into China, through the provinces of Ustiugha, Siberia, Dauri, and the great Tartary, to Peking, the capital city of the Chinese empire: performed by Everard Isbrand, their ambassador in the years 1693, 1694, and 1695 (London: D. Brown, 1698).

The Travels of Brand and Isband

27

the Lutherans, whom he presented with all the Stone Materials which were made use of in building their new Church, and gave them permission, without the approbation of the Patriarch, to adorn their Church with a Steeple” (Brand, 6). After this, carrying rich gifts for the Chinese, the embassy began their long journey toward China on 13 March. The embassy consisted of twenty-one men, of whom twelve were Germans and nine were Muscovites. With them they had “a good Chest of Physick, a Physician, and a good number of Baggage-Waggons to carry our Provisions, Wines, and all other Necessaries for so great a Journey” (Brand, 3). They traveled on horseback from Moscow through country that was “extreamly populous” on their route to Vologda, which was reached on 20 March, and where they waited for the arrival of their baggage. On 21 March a hard frost, “to our great Satisfaction,” made it possible for them to continue their way on sleds. Without the frost they probably would have been delayed for several months (Brand, 10). Brand noted the custom of presenting eggs and kisses liberally for fourteen days after Easter. Of the kissing he writes, “This Custom is so general, that if during this time you are invited at a Russian’s House to partake of their Merriments, and you should not offer to kiss the Ladies there present, (where it is to be observed that you must take care not to touch them with your hands) you would be look’d upon as an ill-bred Clown; whereas if you acquit your self handsomely in this Point, you are sure to receive a Cup of Aquavitae in return for your Civility” (Brand, 13). The account continues, with interesting comments, including a report of a salt works where twenty thousand men were employed in making salt (Brand, 18). The comments on religion, money, the Siberian peoples and their manner of living, and travel itself are useful and compelling. On 1 July they reached Tobolsk, which Brand judged to be some three thousand miles from Moscow. About the city he writes, “Tobolsko is not only the Capital, but also the chief Place of Trade of all Siberia. Their Traffick consists most in Furrs, such as Sables, Ermins, Fox Skins, and such-like” (Brand, 31). The embassy remained in Tobolsk until 22 July, gathering supplies and making preparations for the next part of the journey, which, according to Brand, was six thousand miles “for the most part through a desolate Country, where there is but little Forage and Provision to be met with” (Brand, 33). Brand writes of using traps, “not unlike our Rat and Mice-Traps,” for catching sables, and also reports that the people hunt them with the use of sleds pulled by dogs, which can run more quickly over the snow than horses. They continued their journey on 22 July, accompanied by twenty “musqueteers to conduct us to Surgutt” (Brand, 33). They arrived at Surgut on 6 August. Here hunting is different: sables are shot with arrows, or the hunters start fires under trees where they hide, “who being suffocated by the Smoak, fall from the Trees, and are soon catch’d. The Ermins they catch in Traps, and the Foxes they hunt with Dogs” (Brand, 35). And the quotes could go on and on, for the embassy is still far from its destination, and there are tales of hunting and fishing, and nearly starving to death during some parts of the journey, where provisions are scarce. The stories of the Tunguses, their shamans, and their customs are well worth reading. The embassy remained an entire month at Irkutsk, having such a good time there that when they left, “being conducted out of the Town by the Governor and the chief

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Inhabitants to the next Village, we spent the whole night there in making good Cheer” (Brand, 53). About Lake Baikal the author writes, “The Inhabitants have this superstitious opinion concerning it, that whoever calls it Oser or a Lake, will scarce pass it without danger; but those who give it the Title of Mor or Sea, need not fear any thing” (Brand, 54). To travel through the great desert of the Mongols, “we pack’d our Baggage upon Camels and Horses, the first carrying about 600 weight, the last about 250” (Brand, 55). They began this part of the journey on 6 April 1693, with a caravan that is soon swelled to 250 men with hundreds of camels and horses. Anyone who has ever seen a Western movie will savor the additional comment about the four hundred wagons “which in the night-time being drawn up in a Circle, enclosed the rest, and at some distance from thence we placed our Centries, to advertise us of the approach of our Enemies, if any should appear” (Brand, 56). On the route from Lake Baikal to Nerchinsk, the embassy visited the small town of Jerewena, where especially fine black sables were to be found. Hunters sometimes spent three or four months at a time hunting them. In traveling they made use of “Scates [like short skis], by the help of which they pass over the Snow with great Agility” (Brand, 57). On 20 May they arrived at Nerchinsk, “the last Place of Note (unless it be Argun, a small Town eight days Journey from thence) under the Jurisdiction of the Czar of Muscovy” (Brand, 59). Some six thousand Tunguses lived here, subject to the tsar. Brand reports that “The Cossacks hereabouts are very Rich, by reason of their Traffick with China, where they are exempted from paying any Custom” (Brand, 59). And then Brand goes on to China, which is beyond the scope of our story. In 1695 he returned to Moscow, on a journey that had taken just six weeks short of three years. His book about this embassy is in the James Ford Bell Library in the German and English editions of 1698 and the Dutch and French editions of 1699, as well as some later editions. In the French translation published in Amsterdam in 1699, Brand refers to Isbrand as “Monsieur Evert Isbrand.” This translation has only two illustrations, the first of which is a frontispiece showing the Russian embassy members bowing before the Chinese emperor. The second is a fold-out map based on the map of Nicolaas Witsen (1641–1717), burgomaster of Amsterdam. This map is a much-reduced version of Witsen’s large map titled Nieuwe lantkaarte van het noorder en ooster deel van Asia en Europa strekkende van Nova Zemla tot China, published in 1687. Witsen’s research on Siberia continued. After he had finished and published his map, he wrote the extensive folio book titled Noord en oost Tartarye, ofte bondigh ontwerp van eenige dier landen, en volken, zo als voormaels bekent zyn geweest … in de noorder en oosterlykste gedeelten van Asia en Europa, published in Amsterdam in 1692. Witsen visited Russia once, in 1666, as a member of a delegation from the Netherlands to promote trade with Russia. At that time the Witsen family had been trading with Russia for more than fifty years. Witsen collected all the information he could find about Siberia at the time he was in Russia and later through correspondence. When Peter the Great developed an interest in ships and the sea, Nicolaas Witsen encouraged that interest. Because Peter wanted a Dutch frigate for use in the White Sea, Witsen prepared a specially furnished ship, the Holy Prophecy, that was sailed from Amsterdam to the White Sea for him in 1694. At the time of Peter’s visit to Amsterdam in 1697, they greeted each other as friends, though

The Travels of Brand and Isband

29

meeting for the first time. During his four-month visit, Peter studied shipbuilding, a subject about which Witsen had written a book in 1671. Clearly the two had much in common, though very disparate in age, as Witsen shared many of Peter’s interests. But what happened to Isbrand’s account of the embassy to China? A book based on Isbrand’s records of it was published in Amsterdam in 1704, edited by Nicolaas Witsen. About this text Witsen stated in a letter of 1709 that “[t]he description of Isbrandts is composed by me, as it was published from papers that were very confusedly written in Hamburgish or Lower Saxon. He was my friend and is now deceased.”4 Without the date of Isbrand’s death it is difficult to know whether the two men consulted about the text, or if Witsen simply wrote the book based on Isbrand’s papers. The latter sounds more reasonable. Some internal evidence suggests this, for instance the content of the “Epistle Dedicatory” signed by Isbrand but bearing the stamp of Witsen’s interests in Siberia and laudatory opinion of Peter. The writer of it (whoever he was) notes the “Terrestrial Paradise” that awaits Peter’s attention: “What Treasures and Minerals, such as Gold, Silver, Copper, Iron, Salt-peter, Sulphur, Salt; what rich plenty of these and the like do’s [sic] the Earth harbour in her bosom.”5 The Black Sea is subject to Peter; the Caspian “waits only for the honour of being covered and adorned with your Majesty’s Naval Force.” Siberian rivers lead to the White Sea and to the Amoershian or Eastern Sea and are ready for the “Sons of Neptune” to be sent by Peter (Isbrand, A3r). Isbrand states, “I must say by way of conclusion, that your Czarish Majesty’s Country is a Land flowing with Milk and Honey; and surpasses most Countries in the World, in its Riches, in its healthful Air, and in the fertility of its Soil” (Isbrand, A3v). Peter, in the view of Isbrand, is “a Wonder of the World, [who] has through his penetrating and accomplish’d Genius, brought up as a new Light the Invention and Establishment of so many useful Sciences, Arts, and Handycraft-Trades; by which the Eyes of his Subjects are opened” (Isbrand, A3v). After the “Epistle Dedicatory” the book comments on the route from Moscow northeastward by land to Vologda, by river to Totma and Velikii Ustyug, by land to Kaigorodok, by river to Solikamsk, then by land and river to Tobolsk, the gateway to Siberia. A fine and noteworthy feature of Isbrand’s account of the journey is the information given on the people living there and their way of life. Some special features of areas are noted. For example, grey squirrels that do not change their color winter or summer live near the city of Tuween. They are not found anywhere else in the Muscovite empire. These special squirrels are reserved for the tsar, and anyone selling such squirrels to merchants is subject to “a great Fine” (Isbrand, 10). The first leg of the journey was rapid; the embassy arrived at Tobolsk on 1 July 1692. Isbrand gives a rather extensive description of Tobolsk, more detailed than the commentary in Brand’s book. Isbrand describes the city as being well-fortified, with 4

  Johannes Keuning, “Nicolaas Witsen as a Cartographer,” Imago Mundi 11 (1954): 95–110.

5

  Evert Ysbrandsoon Ides, The Three Years Land Travels of His Excellency E. Ysbrant Ides from Mosco to China to which is added a new description of that vast empire written by a native (London: W. Freeman, J. Walthoe, T. Newborough, J. Nicholson, and R. Parker, 1705), A3r. Further references to this work will be given parenthetically in the text as “Isbrand” plus page number.

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stone walls and watchtowers. Below the fortified section are houses on the banks of the Irtysh River near its junction with the Tobol River. Isbrand notes that Tobolsk was the chief city of Siberia. Food is cheap here, he reports. In addition to numerous fish from the Irtysh River that are available at very low rates, there is all sorts of wild game, including elk, deer, rabbits, pheasants, partridges, swans, ducks, geese, and storks, “all of which are cheaper than Beef” (Isbrand, 11). Besides the soldiers stationed here, a force of nine thousand soldiers can be gathered, plus several thousand Tartar horsemen, when the tsar needs troops. A brief history of Tobolsk features Yermak, “a certain robber” that the tsar pardoned for his actions through the influence of the Stroganov family. The pardon did not make any difference, however, as Yermak perished “endeavouring to step from one Bark into another, leaped short, and by reason of his heavy Armour, irrecoverably sunk to the bottom; his Body was carried away by the force of the Stream and never found” (Isbrand, 12). Isbrand was able to attend a worship service in a mosque. He begins: “The Floor was covered with Tapistry, besides which there was no other Ornament.” The short account is interesting, concluding: “the Priest uttered some words, and afterwards cried out, Alla, Alla Mahomet, which the whole Assembly roared out after him, three times successively, prostrating themselves to the Ground: This done, the Priest looked into both his Hands as tho’ [sic] he designed to read something there, and repeated Alla, Alla Mahomet: Then he looked first over his Right Shoulder, then over his Left, which all the People did after him, and so the short Devotion was ended” (Isbrand, 13). Following the service Isbrand was invited to tea with the mufti. The city of Tobolsk is depicted in a fine engraving. (See figure 3, opposite.) Isbrand’s journey next took him on the Irtysh, Ob, and Ket Rivers to Surgut, Narym, and Eniseisk. The comments on the people, the land, and the animals are fascinating. Isbrand includes an illustration of the light dogsleds used in Siberia. After more land and river travel via Irlimsk, the embassy finally arrived in Irkutsk. After crossing a portion of the Caspian Sea they continued their journey by land and river to Nerchinsk, at the Chinese border. This place is noted in history as the scene of a border agreement made between China and Russia in 1689, the earliest treaty between the two and the finale of Russian southward expansion in eastern Siberia. Isbrand reports that Nerchinsk is “indifferent strong, provided with several Brass Guns, and a great Garrison of Daurian Cozacks both Horse and Foot. It is situated between high Mountains, notwithstanding which it has Champion Ground enough for the Inhabitants to Graze their Camels, Horses and Cows” (Isbrand, 43). In Nerchinsk, writes Isbrand, the rhubarb, used by the Chinese as medicine, was “of an extraordinary thickness and length.” It was spring. Isbrand reports that the red and snow-white peonies “emit an extraordinary fragrant scent” (Isbrand, 43). The illustration that he provides of the city is reproduced here. (See figure 4, p. 32.) The embassy remained some weeks in Nerchinsk, preparing to travel the final portion of the journey, east of the Amur River, where “the great uninhabited Tartarian Wilderness hath its beginning” (Isbrand, 46–47). And once again, we leave the embassy when the Chinese part of the story begins. The book by Isbrand is unusual for still another reason. The twenty-nine copperplate engraved illustrations in the 1704 Dutch edition of the book are repeated

Figure 3. View of Tobolsk in Evert Ysbrants Ides, Driejaarige reize naar China, te lande gedaan door den Moskovischen afgezant (Amsterdam: François Halma, 1704).

The Travels of Brand and Isband 31

Figure 4. View of Nerchinsk in Evert Ysbrants Ides, Driejaarige reize naar China, te lande gedaan door den Moskovischen afgezant (Amsterdam: François Halma, 1704).

32 Carol Urness

The Travels of Brand and Isband

33

in the 1705 English edition. Not only are they repeated, but they are the same copperplate engravings, with the Dutch text rubbed out from the copperplate and English titles engraved in their place. Thus, for example, in the plate titled “De groote Schamagsche water val” that is shown in chapter 7 of the book, the English edition has “The Schamagschian water-fall.” However, the Dutch edition is more elegant, in many cases with the illustrations printed within the text. This is more difficult for the printer, as the book has to go through two different printing processes, one for the text and the other for the illustrations. In the English edition the copperplate illustrations were all done separately, not in the text. These books could easily make a nice project for someone interested in Dutch/English printing, simply in comparing the plates in the English and Dutch editions. Copperplate engravings were expensive to produce, so purchasing them from the Dutch publisher and making the necessary alterations to fit the English edition made good economic sense. The large map is especially noteworthy in both editions. It measures about twenty inches high by nearly twenty-seven inches wide. In both editions this map is identical. The Latin text in the map cartouches is identical. In fact, it might even be assumed that the map could have been printed in Amsterdam, except that the paper used for the English edition is lighter than that found in the Dutch original. The map is especially important to me, because it portrays the northeastern part of Siberia, as shown in the reproduction of it (figure 5, p. 34). The Kamchatka peninsula is lacking from the map. On the other hand, unlike some other maps dating from this time, no land blocks a possible voyage from the Ob River around “Swetoi nos sive Heylige Kaap” in the northeast corner of Siberia. As part of the record of contemporary beliefs about the possibility of a Northeast Passage from Europe to the East, this map is exciting. It is documentary evidence of Witsen’s opinion on this subject in 1704. His name is on the map, and the text of the cartouche indicates that the map had been amended according to Witsen. Isbrand had not traveled in this northeastern part of Siberia, though it is possible that he may have gotten some information about the area from the Jesuits who were at the Chinese court. In addition to the map, some text about a potential Northeast Passage is included in the book. The relevant text in the Isbrand book is as follows: “from Weygats [Novaya Zemlya] to the Icy or Holy Cape, the Sea is utterly unnavigable with Ships, and should a second Christopher Columbus appear, and point out the course of the Heavens, he could not yet drive away these Mountains of Ice: For God and Nature have so invincibly fenced the Sea side of Siberia with Ice, that no Ship can come to the River Jenisea, much less can they come farther Northwards into the Sea” (Isbrand, 93). The obstacle was not land, as shown on other maps of the time, but ice in the seas of the north. The text continues with an account of how Russians with kotski (small boats) sail from Novaya Zemlya to the Ob River, along the coasts. When the weather turns bad the men take their boats to shore, where they remain until the weather changes. Brand and Isbrand are not sources usually studied with regard to the geography of Siberia, since the focus of the books is the embassy to China. The books give interesting commentary on travel through Siberia, about towns and cities, about the people who live there and the way they live. The illustrations of Tobolsk and Nerchinsk

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Figure 5. Northeastern portion of the large map in Evert Ysbrants Ides, Driejaarige reize naar China, te lande gedaan door den Moskovischen afgezant. Amsterdam: François Halma Halma, 1704, edited by Nicolaas Witsen, showing that the Russians knew that no land connection existed between Russia and America.

are outstanding. The illustrations of Siberian peoples and places are fascinating. In their books, Brand and Isbrand give us not only an excellent account of China, but also a fine record of their experiences in Siberia. I believe the geographical descriptions and the map in the Isbrand book come from Nicolaas Witsen, who studied Siberia for many years and wrote a massive book about it. The Isbrand book provides important information on the question of the Northeast Passage, a question that has engaged Europeans for centuries.

Theofanis G. Stavrou: Bookman Timothy J. Johnson

During the last days of April 1999, the Library of Congress hosted a two-day conference entitled “Strengthening Modern Greek Collections: Building U.S.–Greek Library Partnerships.” The conference, sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the Library of Congress, with additional support by the publisher Chadwyck-Healey and the Embassy of Greece, brought together twenty-three participants and seven observers from Greece and the United States to discuss the status of modern Greek collections and to take the first steps towards improving access to modern Greek resources.1 The goal of the conference, according to John Van Oudenaren, chief of the European Division of the Library of Congress, was “to identify partners who are willing to work together on projects relating to the pres1

 The participants included Evridiki Abadjis-Skassis, Library of the Hellenic Parliament; Beau David Case, head, Western European and Linguistics Collections, Ohio State University Library; Alexis Dimaras, Greek conference coordinator, The Moraitis School, Athens; Joanna Demopoulos, deputy director, National Library of Greece; Ifigenia Dionissiadu, chief documentation research, Benaki Museum; Evangelie Flessas, Harvard University Library; Dimitris Gondicas, executive director, Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University; Joan Grant, director of collection services, New York University Library; Denise Hibay, assistant chief librarian for collection development, General Research Division, New York Public Library; Harold Leich, area specialist, European Division, Library of Congress; Artemis Leontis, executive board secretary, Modern Greek Studies Association, Ohio State University; Deanna Marcum, president, CLIR; Eutychia Moschouti-Lowenkopf, independent scholar; Nikos Pantelakis, archivist, chief of the historical archives, National Bank of Greece; His Excellency Alexandros Philon, ambassador of Greece; Kathlin Smith, CLIR; Theofanis G. Stavrou, Department of History, University of Minnesota; Karin Trainer, director, Princeton University Library; Agamemnon Tselikas, director, Center for History and Paleography, National Bank, Cultural Foundation of Greece; Michael Tzekakis, librarian, University of Crete; John Van Oudenaren, chief, European Division, Library of Congress; Jean Wellington, head, Classics Library, University of Cincinnati Library; and Mirsini Zorba, director, National Book Center of Greece. The observers were Julia Clones, independent consultant; Janet Crayne, associate librarian, University of Michigan Library; June Pachuta Farris, bibliographer for Slavic and European Studies, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago; Eileen Lawrence, Council of Library Resources; Anthony Oddo, team leader, Catalog Department, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University; Theresa Papademetriou, Law Library, Library of Congress; and John Topping, Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, Library of Congress. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 35–44.

36 Timothy J. Johnson

ervation, cataloging and dissemination of post-1400 collections in Greek libraries and to identify ways in which these projects can be used to expand the Greek collections of American research libraries through microfilm copies or digital access to collections in Greece.” One of the participants in this conference—reporting on the Basil Laourdas Modern Greek Collection at the University of Minnesota—was Theofanis G. Stavrou. His willing and active partnership with other Modern Greek scholars and librarians at this conference was one of the latest testimonials to an ongoing dedication in building an active and world-renowned research collection of modern Greek materials. This brief essay attempts to outline some of the partnerships enjoyed by Professor Stavrou in the building of the Laourdas Collection and to provide a further testimonial to this extraordinary and beloved scholar and bookman. The conference at the Library of Congress came about in large part because of the earlier success of a gathering of the Western European Specialists Section (WESS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries at the 1997 annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA). Earlier that year, at the ALA Midwinter meeting, the section had established a “Special Topic Discussion Group.” This group was charged with providing a forum for thematic and geographical Western European topics not covered by other WESS discussion groups. At the 1997 ALA annual conference held in San Francisco, the inaugural meeting featured the topic “Greece and the Greek-Speaking World” and included three speakers: Dr. Peter Haikalis, development officer and selector of Greek, San Francisco State University Library, who spoke about his experiences as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Crete Library and as an instructor at a library school in Greece; Dr. Roland Moore, research anthropologist, Prevention Research Center, Berkeley, who spoke about Greek internet resources; and Beau David Case, assistant professor and librarian, Ohio State University, who spoke about Greek reference and selection tools, and other resources for librarians with an interest in Greek, in vernacular and in English translation. Besides these presentations the agenda also called for a brainstorming session for topics at the following annual conference in Washington, D.C. Interestingly, twenty-three persons attended—the same number of participants as at the LC conference two years later—but this roster was limited to North American librarians.2 The University of 2

  Those in attendance at the WESS Special Topics Discussion Group included Beau David Case, Ohio State University Library; Peter Haikalis, San Francisco State University Library; Roland S. Moore, Prevention Research Center, Berkeley, California; Michael Elmore, Barnard College Library; Mary Cay Reynolds, Arizona State University Library; Mike Kelley, University of Missouri Library; Nancy Boerner, Indiana University Library; Stephen Lehman, University of Pennsylvania Library; Mike Olson, Harvard University Library; Darla Rushing, Loyola University Library; Diana Chlebek, University of Akron Library; Marty Joachim, Indiana University Library; Frank Immler, Princeton University Library; Janet Coles, Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism; Mariann Tiblin, University of Minnesota Library; David Lindstrom, Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism; Nicholas Spillos, Edmonton Public Library; Dionysia Sokoloski, University of Maryland; William S. Moore, Brown University Library; Sharon Bonk, Queens College Library; and Steve Ferguson, Princeton University Library.

Theofanis G. Stavrou: Bookman

37

Minnesota was represented by Mariann Tiblin, bibliographer in the Libraries’ Collection Development and Management team. Beau David Case, in a handout of the tools and resources mentioned in his presentation, lists fourteen libraries “with active Greek-language collections.”3 Those libraries are: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Cleveland Public Library Harvard University Hilandar Research Library, Ohio State University Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University King’s College London New York Public Library Ohio State University Princeton University San Francisco State University Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism University of Cincinnati University of Michigan University of Minnesota

One question immediately springs to mind: how were these collections developed and did any of these libraries enjoy the kind of partnership so evident at the University of Minnesota between the Libraries and the Modern Greek Studies Program? Or, to put an even finer point on the question, did any of these libraries benefit from the amazing kind of collecting energy and enthusiasm so evident in the work of Theofanis G. Stavrou? Now, it may not be completely fair to make these kinds of institutional comparisons, yet I think it is both informative and instructive to look at how other collections have come into being and search for those “movers and shakers” who made such collections possible. In the process we may find kindred spirits and continue to build on the connective bonds begun in San Francisco and strengthened in Washington. These preliminary researches have now provided us with a core list: the names of librarians and the institutions with active collections. What is missing is the third leg of this bibliographic stool: the names of energetic collectors, bibliophiles, and donors. Donor or collector information is difficult to track down, or, as is the case with the massive collections found at Harvard, there are any number of donors, collectors, or curators who have played a role in the shaping of collections over the years. The narrative history on the European Collection found at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University offers a connection or two with the Minnesota/Stavrou

3

  See Beau David Case and Artemis Leontis, “Report on the Conference at the Library of Congress, April 29–30, 1999,” accessed 15 September 2016, https://www.loc.gov/rr/european/ GrkColl/caseleon.html.

38 Timothy J. Johnson

experience.4 According to information available on the internet, the collection “was formed in 1995 by the merger of the East/Central European Collection and the West European Collection. It consists of materials that constitute a large part of the institution’s overall holdings, and, historically, are integral to the institutional mission of promoting basic research on political and social issues of the twentieth century.” The history of the Western European Collection enlightens us further. At the end of the First World War, Herbert Hoover assigned Ralph H. Lutz, a young Stanford historian, the task of collecting primary and secondary source material to document the important political, social and economic changes taking place in Europe. The emphasis was placed on acquiring government documents, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, posters, photographs, ephemera and monographs in the various European languages in the fields of history, politics and government, economics, and international relations. Book dealers and purchasing agents were recruited in the various countries to search for and acquire this specialized material. The publications of the League of Nations, for example, were received on deposit and formed the basis for an important international documents collection. The steady growth of the l920s and 30s was interrupted with the outbreak of World War II, but the established contacts with the library’s old bookdealers in Austria, France, Italy and Germany were resumed immediately after the war. A concentrated collecting effort at that time, in cooperation with the Library of Congress, resulted in an avalanche of documentation from war torn countries of Europe, foremost a substantial set of records of the International Military Tribunal. The collapse of the totalitarian governments in Italy and Germany offered an especially fertile opportunity for gathering books, periodicals, and archives documenting their history. Increasing post-World War II interest in the non-Western world led to the division of the collection, which until then was still undifferentiated by areas, into various geographic collections. The Central and Western European Collection became a separate but major unit in the new organizational structure. Collecting efforts continue in response to political and social changes, as well as technological developments. Videos, microform, oral histories, and CD-ROMs have now been added to the traditionally collected materials. To reflect the changed political order in Europe, the collection was organizationally merged in 1995 with the East/Central European Collection, but remains a separate collecting unit within the newly named European Collection. Agnes F. Peterson was Curator of the West European Collection from 1954 until 1993, when she retired with emerita status. Maciej Siekierski is cur-

4

  Hoover Institution, “History of the Collection: East Europe and West Europe,” accessed 15 September 2016, http://www.hoover.org/history-collection-east-europe.

Theofanis G. Stavrou: Bookman

rently Curator of the combined European Collection, with Helen Solanum as Senior Specialist for Western Europe.5 The East/Central European Collection has an equally interesting history. The collecting from the area between Germany and Russia began immediately after World War I. Professor E. D. Adams from the Stanford University History Department, on Herbert Hoover’s initiative, went to Paris with a team of specialists to gather documentation on the War and the subsequent Peace Conference. All conference delegations from East/Central Europe were contacted, including those representing existing states and those with claims for statehood. Most delegates were cooperative, providing large amounts of material that formed the basis of the Hoover War Library, as it was then called. Particularly detailed documentation was obtained from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Furthermore, a member of the Adams team, Professor Ralph H. Lutz, visited Warsaw in September 1919 at the invitation of the Polish delegation, initiating what was to become a great tradition of Hoover on-site collecting of library and archival materials in East/Central Europe. Building on this solid foundation in the years that followed, contacts were established and strengthened throughout East and Central Europe, often by persons connected with the American Relief Administration, which Herbert Hoover directed. As with Western Europe, collecting activity in East/Central Europe was interrupted by events surrounding World War II. Earlier collecting investments and contacts paid off after the war, however, as a massive amount of wartime materials was delivered to the Hoover Institution. Many of these were unique clandestine publications and items issued by the German occupiers. In other cases, political and military authorities, in an effort to protect archives from dispersion, transferred collections under their control to a safe location in the United States: the Hoover Institution. More recent collecting efforts have concentrated on current political ephemera, such as posters, leaflets, newspapers and pamphlets, often published secretly; published books and periodicals; and the archival documentation of the Communist regime and its adversaries, the democratic opposition. Of particular note was the Hoover Institution’s decision to have its Curator for Eastern Europe reside in Warsaw during 1991–1993. This greatly enhanced collecting in the area as he oversaw the acquisition and shipment of several tons of materials on Poland and Eastern Europe.6

5

 Ibid.

6

 Ibid.

39

40 Timothy J. Johnson

Several tons of materials ended up at many of the other libraries identified above. So, armed with this list, the author contacted each library to find out if additional information was available on donors, collectors, or bookdealers that might have played a role in the development of these collections. Predrag Matejic, curator of the Hilandar Research Library at the Ohio State University, provided some insights into the nature of their collections. Although beyond the scope of modern Greek literature, his comments are nonetheless illuminating as to what has been done to preserve and make available some of the important medieval materials that are the precursors of a modern literature. The Hilandar Research Library is a special collection for the preservation and access of medieval Slavic (primarily Cyrillic) manuscripts, through microform. It has collections or portions of collections from 83 repositories in 20 countries. Whenever we have an opportunity to do (ourselves or support) preservation microfilming, we attempt to microfilm all manuscript codices in a collection, regardless of alphabet, language or provenance. Therefore, we do have over 300 manuscripts on microfilm that are Greek, primarily from Hilandar Monastery on Mt. Athos. It is still a major regret of mine that we ran out of film in 1975 and were not able to complete the microfilming of the Greek manuscripts, nor to receive permission to return at a later time to attempt to do this. Thus, we do have a collection, which also includes an actual Greek manuscript from the late 17th century that was donated to us. But, this is not an acquisition area to which we focus any special attention.… It may be, however, that other Greek materials in the OSU Libraries are at least in part the result of special benefactors, collectors or donors, for which Beau Case would have, hopefully, the necessary information.7 Mr. Case, thankfully, did have additional information and provided a link to the University of Michigan. His response also points to a common note found in many of these messages, i.e., that attention was given to fiction, poetry, and literary studies and that most of this material was not considered rare at the time of its acquisition. It is also important to note that continuing interaction with the Greek-American community is essential to the development and acquisition of additional materials. Likewise, while state monies are available, they supply just a portion of the needed budget. Additional attention must be given to the creation of endowment funds that will allow for a more robust acquisitions program. To answer your main question, I can only say that our second hire in Modern Greek Studies ca. 1985–2000, Vassilis Lambropoulos, who is now at Michigan, donated during his tenure several thousand volumes, mostly fiction and poetry, and literary studies. None of these materials were rare or bibliophile editions—simply editions for the circulating stacks. 7

  Predrag Matejic, e-mail correspondence with author, 3 January 2001.

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41

Today we have no such special friend, but we do have a new North American donation plan. A new assistant professor, Georgios Anagnostu, has advertised in the Greek-American press our project to collect Greek Orthodox church publications. Most parishes in North America publish anniversary albums or books on history of the parish church or the local Greek community, some even have produced videos and CD-ROMs. OSU Library is in the process of getting the parishes to donate copies of these publications to us; what we cannot get on donation, we will buy. These materials will become a kind of special collection for the study of the Greek diaspora. As yet we have not chosen a home for the materials (such as Rare Books). Most likely we will house the materials in our Depository Library, with a Rare Books status, so anyone wanting to use the materials must request through Rare Books and then use the materials in-house. Finally, the bulk of our collections today are acquired with state money— the typical annual allocation from the Head of Collections. This allocation started very small, but today is probably third largest in North America, behind Princeton and Cincinnati (I think UC has a much larger budget because of endowments).8 Jean Susorney Wellington of the University of Cincinnati noted the important financial support of William and Louise Taft Semple and offered additional comment on this collection. The collection was the dream of Professor Carl Blegen, the imminent [sic] pre-classical archaeologist who passed away in 1971. His love of ancient Greece extended to an equal love of his adopted home. (After his retirement he lived much of his life in Greece. Both he and his wife are even buried there.) He convinced Professor William Semple and his wife Louise Taft Semple to extend their generous financial support for the Dept. of Classics, its excavations and book collection to include building up a modern Greek collection. Carl Blegen personally was responsible for selecting books in Greece and Turkey and having them sent to the U.S. It is because of his devotion that the collection has so many jewels—rare 19th and early 20th century serial sets and monographs. After his death, Professor Peter Topping with the help of the Modern Greek Curator Eugenia Foster were the selectors. After Mr. Topping went on to Dumbarton Oaks Eugenia developed the collection; she was the first professional librarian who worked with that collection. She was especially interested in Modern Greek literature and she strengthened that part of collection in particular. Professor Blegen was especially partial to minor (and apparently ephemeral) contemporary Greek poetry. Unfortunately after her retirement in 1991 the position of Modern Greek Curator was lost to a university wide staff cut. The primary selector for that collection is now my 8

  Beau David Case, e-mail correspondence with author, 29 December 2000.

42 Timothy J. Johnson

assistant Michael Braunlin, a truly remarkable bibliographer with a gift for foreign languages and bibliography.9 Here, also, we see the importance of the personal touch of the collector and the necessity of visits to Greece in the selection process. Both the collector’s touch and the familiarity with the book trade in Greece are echoed in the work of Theofanis G. Stavrou. One wonders, in the recounting of Blegen’s own work, whether or not the paths of Stavrou and Blegen crossed during their expeditions to the homeland. In Wellington’s account we are also reminded of the importance of continuity in the course of developing a collection. In Cincinnati’s case, the torch was passed from Blegen to Topping and Foster. We may find ourselves forced to ask: “who will take the place of Stavrou?” And who will defend the collection if, and when, the library is forced to make unpopular staff decisions? Thankfully, the staffing configuration at Minnesota is different enough so that such a cut is improbable. On the positive side, such a situation points to the dream of having an endowed curator’s position—as may be the case with Minnesota’s Givens and Holmes Collections—to nurture and care for the Laourdas Collection. Wellington ends her accounting by noting the fate of Blegen’s dream for a Modern Greek Studies program, the changing focus of the collection, the importance of resource sharing and relationships with other institutions, and other related collections. Each of these points is worth considering in light of the success of Minnesota’s program and its relationship with other departments within the university and other institutions beyond its borders. The Modern Greek Collection is a bit of an anomaly here at Cincinnati. Unfortunately Carl Blegen’s dream to build up a Modern Greek Studies program at the University never was accomplished, so we have a major collection to support a nonexistent program. To a certain extent, however, the materials in that collection also support the research of the Dept. of Classics and we have continued to buy publications at the same rate as did Eugenia Foster. We have changed our focus and no longer buy in Modern Greek literature, except in English translation. That is the very area that Ohio State emphasizes in purchasing since it does have a major Modern Greek Studies program, which emphasizes literature. Since they are only 100 miles away and their collection is easily available via the OhioLINK project that brings books from other member libraries to UC within 3 days of users requesting them themselves right from our online catalog, it was not so drastic, as this may sound. Instead we have used the freed up funds to buy more in depth in the areas that are used on this campus—history and other social sciences. We did have several other major gifts in connection with that collection. In the late 1960s we received a collection of books and pamphlets from Herbert P. Lansdale, who has [sic] been the Director of Field Operations for AMAG (the American Mission for Aid to Greece) after World War II. The collection 9

  Jean Susorney Wellington, e-mail correspondence with author, 18 January 2001.

Theofanis G. Stavrou: Bookman

43

was rich especially in US government publications and internal publications of that office. It also includes a few issues of some World War II and postwar era Greek newspapers.10 Alison Trott, information specialist in the Humanities at King’s College London, provided an interesting snapshot into the development of that collection and pointed to the College Archives as a source for additional information. As in earlier accounts, we see the importance of the professor/collector and endowment of an academic chair. The connection with the Anglo-Hellenic League reminds us of the continued importance of relationships beyond the library’s walls. Professor Ronald Montagu Burrows (1867–1920), Principal at King’s College London 1913–1920, played a large part in establishing the Modern Greek Library. It was called the Burrows Library and had a Burrows Librarian. Burrows was responsible for establishing the Chair of Modern Greek at King’s. There is a book about Burrows, Ronald Burrows: A Memoir, by George Glasgow and also some information about him in a book by Richard Clogg, Politics and the Academy: Arnold Toynbee and the Koraes Chair. Burrows was also involved in the Anglo-Hellenic League, which explains why so many Modern Greek books in the Library bear the League’s bookplate.11 Finally, Peter Haikalis at San Francisco State University responded with a brief observation on the nature of their collections. His note reflects the long-time care and attention, much more than luck, needed for such an endeavor. I have been the one over the last 20 years responsible for acquiring library materials on Greece and Greek Americans for the SFSU Library. I don’t consider myself a collector, bibliophile, etc., and we only purchase items that are currently published and primarily in English. Although the collection is not extensive and rather general, visiting faculty, etc., have complemented us on its currency and comprehensiveness at least for English language materials. So I guess we have been lucky.12 These institutional sketches, graciously supplied by those who care for these materials, help us in answering the question of how these collections were developed and what kind of partnerships helped make it so. They also provide an external mirror with which to view the bibliographic work of Theofanis G. Stavrou. It is an instructive view and in it we find kindred spirits and connective bonds. Cincinnati, in the case of Carl Blegen, benefited from his collecting energy and enthusiasm. Stanford was the beneficiary of the young historian Lutz and the established historian E. D. 10

 Ibid.

11

  Alison Trott, e-mail correspondence with author, 9 January 2001.

12

  Peter Haikalis, e-mail correspondence with author, 24 January 2001.

44 Timothy J. Johnson

Adams, both working on-site in Europe—an established Hoover Institution tradition—to collect their valuable treasures. Their tireless and longstanding work with book dealers and purchasing agents, as well as Stanford’s cooperative arrangement with the Library of Congress, paid extra dividends. Curators and librarians such as Agnes Peterson, Eugenia Foster, Peter Haikalis, and Beau Case have cared for, described, and promoted these collections once they have reached the safe harbor of the library. Their long-term devotion cannot be ignored. The Greek-American press, the Greek Orthodox Church, and organizations such as the Anglo-Hellenic League are indicative of the need for strong community bonds. Interested and able donors such as the Semples of Cincinnati or Burrows of London point to the need for strong and growing endowments. The example of resource sharing between Cincinnati and Ohio State is a call towards strengthening relationships among like-minded institutions. All of these facets in the bibliographic mirror—energy, enthusiasm, dedication, care, patience, friendship, and more—can be found in the face, and life, of Theofanis G. Stavrou. It may be appropriate to end this essay with two excerpts from the correspondence files found in the Department of Special Collections and Rare Books. The first is dated 15 August 1977 and was sent from Thessaloniki by Stavrou to Austin McLean, curator. This is just a brief note to greet you from Thessaloniki and to assure you that even though I did not manage to see you before I left, Louisa [Laourdas] and I have been working tirelessly since my arrival in Greece to prepare more books for shipment. More importantly, we have embarked upon several projects which will contribute toward the collection’s growth. I feel confident that with care and persistence we can develop a very special and working collection. And I am very grateful that the collection is under your supervision. I was, of course, pleased that the first shipment arrived in good condition. The second letter is dated 17 July 1978 on letterhead from the Institute for Balkan Studies in Thessaloniki. It was written by Louisa Laourdas to Austin McLean, in the midst of earthquakes that had rocked the area since May, and refers to the dedication of the Laourdas Collection at the University of Minnesota. The delay in writing, under such circumstances, is understandable. Many, many apologies for delaying to write to you earlier as I meant to. My thoughts turn ever so often to all of you in Minneapolis. I was very touched by your efforts and the vivid interest you take of this special collection. The display of the books was excellent, very artistic, with a lovely touch of intimacy.… I feel very grateful to you for organizing that dedication ceremony. I was amazed you had so many people involved in it, also how well it was attended. I know too well what a lot of work that meant. Thank you is very little to say. We might add, with Louisa Laourdas, that same note of gratitude for all that has been done by Theofanis G. Stavrou, bookman (and more). Thank you is very little to say.

Bridge-Building as Humanism and Scholarly Adventure Catherine Guisan

The scholar has many ways to exert an influence: a life well lived may not be the least of them. Given that my research and teaching interests belong to another discipline, I confess to having read only a few of the numerous publications that Professor Theofanis G. Stavrou has authored, coauthored, or edited. But I have observed Theo Stavrou, the friend and the teacher, build many bridges: between experienced researchers and academic novices; between religious faith and rational enquiry; between contemporary Greece and the United States; between Orthodoxy and other religious worldviews; among descendants of the former Ottoman Empire; and between the private world of family and the professional world of academia. In the age of globalization when we are told that the “interconnectedness of people is more extensive and intensive than it has ever been,”1 the art of bridge-building might seem obsolete. But globalization is shadowed by another process, contradictory and just as powerful: the turn to fundamental beliefs and organizations of life in order to make sense of one’s place in a world which dwarfs individuals and their communities alike. I would not impute to Theofanis Stavrou, with his well-honed sense of proportion and his ability to laugh at all hubris, the desire to role model some middle ground between globalization and parochial rootedness. But I have enjoyed watching him engage in the complicated dance that well-educated, first-generation immigrants to the United States are fated to perform to do justice to the varied (at times discordant!) intellectual and emotional forces that shape them; and I have marveled at the richness of such a life. –

—

I first became a student of Theofanis Stavrou and his brother Soterios Stavrou when I audited their extension course in Modern Greek language. What stands out in my memory is the seamless cooperation between the two brothers, Soterios stressing grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, Theo teaching us about Greece as a civilization and way of life through novels and poetry. The final oral exam consisted in reciting George Seferis, the Nobel Prize-winning Greek poet’s poem “Άρνηση” (Denial). I still remember the beautifully elusive last stanza: 1

  Daniele Archibugi, David Held, and Martin Köhler, Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 13.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 45–49.

46

Catherine Guisan

With what heart, with what breath, What desire and what passion We took our life. A mistake! And we changed life.2 I never attended the Saturday gatherings which Theofanis and his life companion Freda Stavrou generously hosted to prepare the University of Minnesota undergraduates embarking on their discovery of modern Greece under the auspices of the SPAN Program (Student Project for Amity among Nations); but Freda’s magnificent Greek buffet and the two grandsons dressed as evzones contributed to making the scholarly Annual Celebration of Modern Greek Letters a celebration of family as well as of letters. My acquaintance with Theo Stavrou predates my entrance into a graduate program at the University of Minnesota and undoubtedly shapes my view of him as a bridge-builder. I was then working for an international NGO devoted to peace-making and social justice issues and planning an audiovisual program featuring a Greek Cypriot customs officer, Spyros Stephou, who had worked for better relationships between Greek and Turkish workers in the port of Famagusta. A friend recommended that Professor Stavrou be invited as a discussant; this was the beginning of our friendship. Theo and I share Greek roots, deeply set in Ottoman soil. My mother was born in Istanbul’s prosperous Greek merchant community in 1916, and her father had been educated at the elite bilingual (Turkish-French) Galatasaray High School, a subject of great family pride; they left for Switzerland in the early 1920s, and I was raised on a steady diet of nostalgic memories, where recollection of the leisurely family holiday spent on the Isle of Halki (Heybeli Ada in Turkish) and of my grandfather’s friendly business relations with Greeks and Turks alike somehow clashed with the contemptuous remarks dropped by my grandmother about the Turks as uneducated and backward (“they used our hospitals, the best in the city”). Favorite dishes carried strange names sounding rather more Turkish than Greek: imam baildi (stuffed eggplants so delicious that the priest—the imam—fainted out of delight), dolmades, keftedes, tzatziki; and the coffee served out of a well-worn ibrik (a small coffee pot) to Swiss and Greek guests alike was baptized “Turkish coffee.” Although my grandfather was a great admirer of Eleftherios Venizelos, the modernizing Greek leader who pioneered a rapprochement with Turkey in 1930, my family’s relationship with Turkey remained ambiguous, a love-hate relationship of sorts. Later, when I took Theofanis Stavrou’s graduate seminar in Modern Greek Studies I began, for the first time, to reflect systematically on the place of Greece in the Ottoman Empire, and on the empire itself. Theofanis insisted on conducting his graduate seminar in a minuscule office lined with books, probably considering this cramped space more conducive to lively intellectual exchanges. Under his at once relaxed and erudite guidance graduate students played a rather complicated puzzle game, assembling some of the pieces, which make up the history of modern Greece 2

  George Seferis, Collected Poems, trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 235.



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and its large diaspora. As we discussed the books that each of us had been asked to review, we became acquainted with the influential Greek intellectuals of Renaissance Italy, with the Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and with the impact of Ottoman rule on Greek Orthodox leadership and on the masses of the faithful.3 With his customary generosity Professor Stavrou asked me to revise my review of a French-language book, Christina Koulouri’s Dimensions de l’historicité en Grèce (1834–1914) for inclusion in the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook.4 This led to a brief (but rather exciting for the inexperienced reviewer!) exchange of correspondence with Ms. Koulouri. For a graduate student used to the hierarchical Swiss academic world, it was astonishing to hear her professor extol with pride the works of his best undergraduate students, works which, according to him, even colleagues could read with profit. The Swiss schools that educated me made little mention of the Byzantine Empire and even less of the Ottoman Empire, this “sick man of the East.” Thanks to the Modern Greek Studies seminar, I encountered the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire in all its might and glory, a sophisticated multilingual, multifaith, and decentralized system of governance which had, under the millet system, made the patriarch of Constantinople the ethnarch with both religious and administrative authority over the Orthodox populations. For the first time I learned to see the Greeks not only as victims of oppression, but sometimes as powerful and oppressive rulers themselves. Such were the Mavrogordato princes, who administered Romania on behalf of the Ottoman Empire for almost two centuries. The Neo-Hellenist humanist and patriot Koraes, whom one of my ancestors had befriended, became a familiar name. Thus, I also discovered that the Greek diaspora had long had its intelligentsia. The Modern Greek Studies Yearbook itself was another cause for surprise. How could one edit year after year a journal about a country long oppressed, poor and sparsely populated, which many Greeks evicted from Turkey preferred not to settle in when they could afford to go to Western Europe? But the editor had a very different vision: all regions and periods of history impacted by Neo-Hellenism and Orthodoxy belonged to the sub-field of Modern Greek studies. Theofanis wrote in his preface to the first Yearbook: “To the extent that it is possible and supportable, the emphasis will be on connections, that is to say on interrelationships, thematic as well as geographic and chronological, highlighting the cultural pluralism of the regions where the modern Greeks moved and had their being, an emphasis to which a variety of disciplines

3

  Dean John Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); Raphael Demos, “The Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment (1750–1821),” Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958): 523–41; Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).

4

  Catherine Guisan-Dickinson, review of Christina Koulouri, Dimensions idéologiques de l’historicité en Grèce (1834–1914) (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992), Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 9 (1993): 508–11.

48

Catherine Guisan

and methods may be called upon to contribute.”5 One could not be more inclusive. I wondered whether the Yearbook was not a recklessly ambitious enterprise of intellectual Greek take-over (“recuperation,” as the French would say); but I learned how comparative historical scholarship can renew the understanding of links among peoples long accustomed to treat such links as reasons for hostility rather than for reflection; the history of the Balkans, a topic of scholarly research rather than an amalgam of memories ceaselessly rehashed and transmitted from one generation to the next as so many weapons for future wars, struck me as very exciting, even hopeful. In 1996, the editor added a subtitle to the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, which identifies it most appropriately as a Publication of Mediterranean, Slavic, and Eastern Orthodox Studies. For a person of Greek ancestry, the most unbridgeable gap may be with the Turks. I am the daughter of a woman who never gave up on the dream of a genuine and lasting rapprochement between the Greek and Turkish people and has maintained life-long friendships in Istanbul. I share the dream. At their best, all descendants of the former Ottoman Empire know how to turn an unabashed tragedy into new beginnings. In the late 1960s, Theofanis and Soterios Stavrou drew plans, to create on a piece of family property in Dhiorios, the village where they had grown up, a library “which was to serve also as a retreat center to energize Greek- and Turkish Cypriot students and mid-career professionals.”6 The 1974 Turkish invasion of the northern part of Cyprus put Dhiorios and its books out of reach. As a result, Theofanis started to spend more time in Greece with his friend and mentor Basil Laourdas, a Byzantinist who had founded the Thessaloniki Institute for Balkan Studies, where Stavrou’s first book was published.7 After Laourdas’ death, his widow Louise Laourdas offered his library to Professor Stavrou. Rather than accepting the generous gift, Theofanis suggested that the Laourdas library be given to the University of Minnesota. This was the beginning of the Modern Greek Collection, whose more than twenty-thousand items the Andersen Library now houses. In the 1990s, Professor Stavrou directed his energy toward yet another task, the founding of the University of Cyprus, which would “help the political maturation of the island because scholars and their students will be able to discuss issues not only in terms of personalities, but objectively.”8 He wished for courses to be taught in Greek, English, and Turkish. This has yet to happen, but in Theo’s mind the University of Cyprus can pursue the intellectual and unifying mission once carried by the American University of Beirut, where the sons

5

  Theofanis G. Stavrou, “Editor’s Note,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 1 (1985): x.

6

  Conversation of the author with Theofanis Stavrou, April 2001, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 7

  Theofanis G. Stavrou, Russian Interests in Palestine 1882–1914: A Study of a Religious and Educational Enterprise (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963). 8

  Theofanis Stavrou, Modern Greek Studies Seminar, 2 February 1993.



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and daughters of the Middle Eastern intelligentsia and business elite mingled and learned.9 As I wrestle with my own call, I take several leaves from Theo’s book of life: a sense of great expectation for my students; a willingness to cross disciplinary and cultural boundaries; a commitment to cultivate faith, friendships, and family ties in spite of the pressures of academic life; and the readiness to rethink the original worldviews that I brought with me to the United States. I am also made aware that outsiders bring much to the table, which can enrich the American understanding of other parts of the world. For all this and more, thank you, Theo!

9

  Conversation of the author with Theofanis Stavrou, Spring 2000, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Surviving Exile: Augustine of Hippo’s Version of Psalm 136 (Vulg., KJV 137) Karl F. Morrison

Introduction: Exile, Political and Virtual To speak of exiles is to speak of survivors.1 Exiles have survived a disaster, perhaps only in the short run. Time will tell whether their strategies and tactics of survival will carry them through years, or decades, as aliens among peoples whose ways are not their ways. Community is a basic human need. Aristotle said that anyone who could live without society must be either a god or a beast—superhuman or subhuman.2 He stressed the importance of conscious belonging—the “herd instinct”—as essential to survival. We do not need Aristotle to know that human beings achieve fulfillment in community. From everyday experience, we know how thoroughly disruptions of belonging—for example, by moving house and losing companions— change the conditions and possibilities of fulfillment, in part because they disturb the basic relationships on which survival depends. The loss of a spouse or a child, the souring of a friendship, is enough to thwart a person’s creative imagination, by disrupting all familiar strategies and tactics of survival. Exile, and even the thought of exile, moves the catastrophe of uprooted relationships, and the difficulty of imagining how to survive, to a higher power. In this essay, my subject is how surviving exile worked on the conscious imagination of Augustine of Hippo (354–430). My theme is that, as a master rhetorician, the African church father intended to teach his hearers, using his homiletic commen-

1

  An early version of this paper was delivered at a conference on the subject, “Exile, Past and Present: Medieval Topic and Modern Reality” (Claremont Graduate University, 11–13 November 1999). I am grateful to the other participants in the conference, above all to Professor Nancy van Deusen, who also organized it, and to Mr. and Mrs. Rafael Chodos for their encouragement and suggestions for further thought. This paper is part of a wider survey on the Christian project of self-knowing provisionally entitled Witness: Crises in the Evolution of Christian Identity: Beyond Seeing, Beyond Art, Beyond Knowing. 2

 Aristotle, Politics, 1.2.1253a.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 51–68.

52 K arl F. Morrison

taries on the psalms, as performances of monologue theater.3 In preaching on Psalm 136 (137), he took the task of persuading them that common-sense techniques of social survival, such as conformity and assimilation, were deadly. By his performance, he intended to conjure up in the theaters of his hearers’ imaginations scenes from the drama of salvation. He brought his considerable skill to bear to project them into the parts they were to play—and in fact were playing—in that cosmic drama. Against the gospel of conformity, he preached the need to induce deliberately the social death of exile as a stage in spiritual rebirth. By that means, he urged, Christians could collaborate with God in shaping the regeneration of the human race. The paradox that social death was the gate to collective life was plain. Terminal agonies of social outcasts—by exile and by martyrdom—were as vividly present in his hearers’ minds as they were in Augustine’s. I am bound to say, at the outset, that the whole venture of medieval history as I learned it was the creation of exilic survivors—men and women who immigrated mainly from Germany. My fascination, which marks this paper, with the interlocking of theology, literature, social order, and the visual arts comes from them. Though I did not know him well, I will invoke the name of Gerhart B. Ladner, whose studies have been a continuing inspiration, and whose work on the literary motive of human life as alienated wayfaring (homo viator) is somewhere in the intellectual pedigree of many historians.4 While this was not true of Ladner, it is worth remembering that, in maturity and later life, many of his fellow exiles refused to speak their native languages, never wished to return to their original homelands, and, indeed, never told even their children and grandchildren what they had experienced there. Forgetting relationships can be an exile’s survival tactic as well as remembering them. –

—

Beginning in the age of the church fathers, Christian thinking about exile was shaped largely by two antecedents: experiences related in Scripture, and Neoplatonic cosmology. Remarkably, early Christian writers did not assimilate to their own circumstances a third exilic model, given in Virgil’s Aeneid, which much later entered Dante’s thinking with profound effect. 3

  On the importance of rhetorical declamation both as performance and as an instigation to enactment, see Erik Gunderson, Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), on the dramatic progression of crisis, discovery, and enactment of becoming another, including possibly “the one whom [the speaker] must not be” (129). See as well the effects of bad performance, “chronic restagings of the fallible nature of the performance [which] also signify an insuperable difficulty in segregating the orator from the possibility of a failure of being” (115), a symbolic effect in the nature of performance particularly relevant to human intervention in the process of changing spiritual identities. 4

  Gerhart Burian Ladner, “Homo viator: Medieval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” Speculum 42 (1967): 233–59.

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The Hebrew Bible yielded a rich variety of exiles and quasi-exiles: the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, the Exodus, and the Babylonian Exile, to mention three primary examples. The little text of Psalm 136 and Augustine’s more massive commentary illustrate how varieties of Christian consciousness recognized such events as these as antecedents, and assimilated them to their own highly idiosyncratic circumstances.5 To clarify the magnitude of distance between them, I shall begin with a few remarks about Psalm 136, and then indicate how Augustine assimilated it into a general ethos of exile and survival. Psalm 136: Exile by Defeat; Return by Victory With its nine verses, Psalm 136 is not much longer or shorter than many other psalms. The compilers of the Book of Psalms were content to leave it unattributed in the great mass of anonymous hymns. It was written in the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest and eventual sack of Jerusalem (BCE 597, 586). The author identified his individual experience with the catastrophe of his people. Behind these few verses, there is a large, collective history, which includes the whole sequence of events through which the Jews were first set apart as God’s holy people, a royal priesthood, then united by David into one kingdom with Zion (=Jerusalem) as its capital, and, finally, drawn to the Temple, the Lord’s footstool and resting place (1 Chron. 28: 2; 2 Chron. 6: 41). The Temple stood as a visible manifestation of God’s name, which is to say, of his presence and overpowering holiness. Tradition, however, recorded a terrible warning. At the Temple’s dedication, according to chroniclers, God warned that if the Jews abandoned their covenant and worshiped other gods, he would reject the Temple consecrated in his name and make their land and the Temple’s wreckage bywords of scorn for the Gentiles (2 Chron. 7: 19–22). The writer of Psalm 136 had seen the desolation of Jerusalem and Temple come to pass. And yet, he gave no indication of thinking that it was an angry God’s punishment of Jewish infidelity. (His failure to connect desolation with infidelity stands in sharp contrast to the burden of Psalm 106: 34–48.) The author of Psalm 136 placed responsibility for the disaster squarely on the Babylonians, the tormenters who asked exiles to mock their own sorrow by singing songs of joy, the Lord’s songs, to amuse the destroyers of Jerusalem. In his mind, the Edomites shared the blame; they had betrayed their brothers, the Jews, and joined in laying Jerusalem waste. What are the captives to do? The author counsels repression, fueled by an ardent craving for revenge. Of all 150 psalms, this is the only cursing hymn. The captives cannot sing the Lord’s songs in a foreign land for the amusement of their enemies. Under cover of this silent repression, the author imposes one curse against himself, a curse of physical disabilities more terrible than death, if he forgets Jerusalem or allows his desire for any joy to supersede his longing for Jerusalem. He imposes a sec5

 On the general intellectual structure of connections in which the framing of Christian identity converged with methods of scriptural interpretation (particularly with reference to Origen), see John David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 27–37, 149–57, 162–63.

54 K arl F. Morrison

ond curse against the destroyers of Jerusalem, the Babylonians and their henchmen, the Edomites, who had already plundered and destroyed the holy City once before. The avenger will be blessed, the psalmist sang, who dashes the infants of Babylon against a rock. This text stands on its own. It makes perfect sense without looking for metaphors or symbolic meaning. The author did not use his harp to expound a riddle.6 Without riddling symbolism, he presents a single event from a single perspective; he said what he meant. Some metaphoric value could be read into the word “rock,” in view of the persistent identification through the psalms of God as “the rock,” or “our rock and salvation.”7 Still, there is no need to think that the author of the psalm intended any such metaphorical reading. Infanticide is certainly within the range of possible acts of revenge called for by Jeremiah when he invoked “vengeance for the Lord; vengeance for his Temple”8 and indeed the revenge Ezekiel specifically predicted for the Edomites.9 The lust for revenge in Psalm 136 is as implacable as that of Oedipus who, to gain a terrible, annihilating vengeance against his own people, refused to return to Thebes even in death. Short as it is, Psalm 136 provides traces of how the author’s consciousness, and thus his creative imagination, took shape by turning inward. The author imagined himself speaking as a member of an entire class, defined ethnically and religiously, the people of the Covenant. He spoke from, to, and for the collective experience of that people, without any appeal to the goodwill or understanding or pity of outsiders. His message was esoteric. Thus, the context of his sufferings was also the long, continuing narrative of his people’s dealings with God. It was the context of worship, or cult. The formation of consciousness moved, perhaps as linearly as does the psalm itself, within the confines of one people: from the brutal event of exile, to the degradation the Jerusalemites felt as defeated aliens among their conquerors, to their emotions, and finally, to curses, intended to guarantee vindication of the Jerusalemites. Traditional segregation from the Gentiles is evident in every line, segregation so sharp as to forbid taking wives from among the uncircumcised or giving daughters or sisters in marriage to the uncircumcised, even in the most fortunate of times. Through the words of Psalm 136, we see a profoundly introverted imagination. We are concerned, not only with how the conscious imagination made sense of exile, but also with how survivors translated their uprootedness into art. The psalm also offers a hint or two in this regard. By adding to the literature of worship, the author used art to affirm uprooted relationships and keep them alive. Like the shaping of the imagination, the creative act of writing a song was molded in an introspective ethnic identity and experience, particularly in the religious cult of a lost homeland. Although the chant, the musical setting which completed the composition, is lost, the 6

  Cf. Psalm 49: 4.

7

  E.g., Psalm 18: 31; 28: 1; 31: 3; 62: 2, 6, 7; 71: 3; 78: 35; 92: 15; 94: 22; 95: 1.

8

  Jeremiah 50: 28; 51: 11.

9

  Ezekiel 25: 12–17.

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language and genre of the psalm have an apparent simplicity and directness. In fact, as the author must have known, these come from the stylized refinement of rules of composition governed and sifted by some collective, critical organ, if only popular taste, through at least three centuries’ development in Zion. There is also some implicit evidence of how not only the literature of worship, but also visual arts, were used to preserve uprooted relationships, though this evidence is admittedly circumstantial. After all, the Law written by God’s own hand and delivered to Moses forbade making representational art and, particularly, its use in worship. Eventually, not long before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, some Jews found it possible at least to think of artists painting the history of their religion on walls. But, much earlier, when Psalm 136 was written, pious Jews still associated figural art with Gentile idolatry and defilement.10 The cult still required artists to adorn worship, not to illustrate Scripture. Still, the psalm gives an indirect allusion to the translation of exile into visual art. The allusion occurs in the exile’s passionate commitment to remembering Jerusalem, for cherishing Jerusalem above all else. To remember Jerusalem was to recall the ensemble of arts which had adorned the vast structure of Solomon’s Temple—immense, sometimes highly ornamented, architectural elements in bronze; cedar and cypress paneling clad in gold and carved with botanical figures and cherubim; lavish decoration in precious and semi-precious stones; masterpieces of engraving and weaving; ceremonial dishes, utensils, and other liturgical furniture in gold and silver. The author of Psalm 136 and his fellow exiles would have fed their bitter hearts remembering these glories and the music in the Lord’s house, all vanished. The oracles of the prophet Zechariah witness how, when Cyrus released the Jews from their Babylonian captivity (BCE 536), the exiles’ passionately loving memories of disrupted relationships engendered Zerubbabel’s reconstruction of the Second Temple. Psalm 136 resonates with the cry of a people. This is not a song of isolated individuals, but of one society against another. The cry of a people comes through the language, both vernacular and learned; through the form, established by tradition; through the context, a prayer book for congregations, indeed, for the Great Assembly. The esoteric cry of a people came through critical thinking, as invisible as the poet himself—the critical judgment of the editors who included it as canonical and those serving their community as fiduciary trustees of faith and order who retained it. The author’s own creative imagination is irretrievably submerged in that of his people, a society conterminous with its religion and having, in Jerusalem, a fixed center of its cult, and, in the male lineage of the Twelve Tribes, its continuity. The burden of grief and yearning for revenge in the psalm was to be relived over and over again as canonical, not embalmed and imitated stylistically as classical. How did this esoteric cry of survivors sound to one class of outsiders, namely, to Christians? I turn now to an early and enduringly influential commentary on Psalm 136, that by Augustine of Hippo. As an exercise in imagination, Augustine’s experience of exile resembles a psychosomatic disorder called Munchausen syndrome. 10

  See 4 Maccabees 17: 7; Ezekiel 16: 17, 23: 15–17.

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Augustine’s Commentary: Exile by Assimilation; Return by Banishment By every indication, Psalm 136 was meant to be taken literally. Augustine assimilated the esoteric letter of the psalm to the quite alien spirit of Christian doctrine by interpreting the words symbolically. It is a sign of how stubbornly Augustine went about reconciling the incommensurables of what the psalm said and what he wanted it to say that, even though the psalm consists of nine verses, Augustine’s commentary runs to fourteen densely packed pages. It is a sign of how thoroughly his meaning turned the text upside down that he was able to celebrate exile as “noble” (generosa peregrinatio), by one of the oddest possible role reversals, he was able to take upon himself, a Gentile, the mantle of the Jewish exile in the psalm and to cast Jews as among the enemies, the Edomites, cursed by the psalmist as persecutors and destroyers of Jerusalem.11 What idea of relationship allowed him to depart so far from his text as to rejoice in exile and identify the Jews as the mortal enemies—indeed classify them with their own mortal enemies, the villains, rather than the victims of the psalm? Augustine’s conception of scriptural understanding as a spiritual communion prepared him for insights quite different from those guiding the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures, he thought, even the prophets of Christ. Divinely inspired as they were, the authors of Hebrew Scripture saw in truth but from afar what Christ made present. Moreover, as diversity of understanding abundantly demonstrated, even the revelations in the Gospels and books of the Apostles were not enough to open the mysteries of salvation to one and all. For, no less than the initial writing of Scripture, its correct apprehension was a gift of God and came by inspiration. A sacred symphonism united authentic human authors and interpreters, for all understood and wrote in the one spirit of God, like all charisms given to each by measure. Following the apostle Paul’s teaching, Augustine believed that Christ and the Spirit co-inhered in the soul. Christ, the Word, Augustine wrote, is also the Living Bread from Heaven that feeds the minds of believers. When we come together to eat and hear a book of Scripture, we are going to see the Word, hear the Word, and drink him as surely as an angel in Heaven does. Thus, in their very bodies and minds, believers had the mind of Christ, the “Living Word” in the inert written words of Scripture, the Living Word connecting the triune image of God in their souls with the dynamic of will, mind, and love that was the Trinity.12 Augustine’s charismatic beliefs about understanding Scripture carried him beyond comprehending words on a page and beyond praying for understanding to the co-inherence of Christ and Spirit in the believer’s heart. The search for God, too 11

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chaps. 12, 18, Corpus Christianorum, series latina: 40 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1956), 1971, 1975–76.

12   See, for example, Augustine, Sermo 56.4.12–14, 19; Sermo 57.7.7; Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, series latina, vol. 38 (Paris: J. P. Migne, 1846), cols. 383–86, 389–90; De trinitate, 9.7.12; 9.8.13; 15.14.23–15.16.26; 15.17.28–15.18.32, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 50A (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1968), 303–05, 496–508.

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high for human understanding, led him to seek God indirectly, through the image of God in himself; for God made humanity in his image and likeness. In the same way, his search for the mind still active in Scripture made Augustine’s commentary as much a study in introversion as Psalm 136 itself was. But the very fact that the psalm belonged to the ethnic legacy of a people not his own put strains on Augustine’s interpretive project. In his belief that all the Psalms witnessed to Christ and his zeal to assimilate the letter of the psalm to the spirit of Christian revelation, Augustine refused to acknowledge that the esoteric people’s cry in the psalm was not meant for him. His critical techniques did not require him to give much weight to the fact that he was not a Jew, much less that he was not meditating on the psalm in Hebrew, the original language of the cry, but rather in a Greek translation, one step removed from the original, or even in a Latin version of the Greek translation. As bishop and custodian of a religious cult, his object was to extract and mediate spiritual riches hidden in the psalm. But his inward, charismatic critical method did not require him to notice that the social function of cult in the theocratic homogeneity of ancient Israel was very different from that in the open market of religions in the late Roman Empire, and even among the loose communion of Christians, conterminous neither with society nor with any community which had one cult center. He bypassed without noticing the glaring difference that Christians had no cult center such as the pre-Diaspora Jews had had in Jerusalem, but that, by contrast, Christians and their churches made up a shifting constellation of centers in a hostile social environment. Above all, in his commentary, Augustine did not pause to reflect on the incalculable difference in spiritual interpretation made by Christian belief in immortality. The Psalms give no hope for life after death. Several psalmists appeal to God to save their lives out of his own self-interest, since they cannot praise him from the grave. Unless he intervenes, they will die and be no more. They will be as the beasts that perish. Indeed, God himself no longer remembers the dead.13 Elsewhere, Augustine commented on those verses as evidence of how bereft the Jews were of the Spirit of God and its gifts, how bound they remained to the letter of the Law, which killed, and alien to the Spirit, which gave life. The idea that Jews were carnal-minded literalists did enter his commentary on Psalm 136, but this brief reference gives no measure of the distance between the psalmist’s acceptance of mortality and hope that people of flesh and blood would return to a city of brick and stone and mortar, and Augustine’s belief that what was mortal would be changed into immortality and rejoice forever in a heavenly, spiritual city. By comparison with the Living Word in them and in his heart, the words of the psalm were a side issue for him. In interpreting it, he considered what he read less important than how he read it. The exile of Psalm 136 calls for the restoration of the old. The exile in Augustine’s commentary calls for the conversion of the old into the new, uprooting what had been planted, tearing down what had been built, remaking all things new. The author of Psalm 136 called for restoration; Augustine, for conversion, which required alienation from all possible earthly communities, including most 13

  See Psalm 6: 5; 30: 3, 9; 39: 13; 49: 12; 88: 5, 10–12.

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gloriously martyrdom, the seal that earthly communities unknowingly set upon the martyrs’ triumph through apparent rejection and defeat.14 Augustine and Christians generally revered the psalms. They considered the psalms special revelations about Christ, written or edited by David, the prophet-king, Jesus’ forebear and prefiguration. Thus, though the psalms were considered the legacy of an old, superseded covenant with God, they formed an essential bond between the Old Covenant, ratified by God with Abraham, and the New Covenant mediated by Jesus. Christians regarded the revelations in the psalms as a vindication of Christians as joint-heirs of God’s grace with the Jews. From the days of apostolic, or Jewish, Christianity onward, Christian liturgy extensively employed the psalms as symbolic proof that Christ fulfilled what David foretold. For some, the psalms were the mind of Christ speaking through the mouth of David. As a commentator, Augustine’s task was to adapt Psalm 136 to the alien wisdom of Christian doctrine, including the promise of immortality. His first step was the most decisive one: the assumption that the text of Scripture had to be interpreted symbolically, that the meaning of the psalm subverted its text. The text of Psalm 136 is remarkably clear. But the assumption that it encased a hidden treasure, the Living Word in the written words, enabled Augustine to introduce obscurity as a virtue, and, indeed, to multiply obscurities. His imagination accepted the obscurity of multiple perspectives and proportions. Obscurity was a sign that the psalms were “oracles of God.” In other works, notably in the Confessions, Augustine distinguished male from female roles. Yet, his conception of Christian life required him to hold firmly to the doctrines that gender was a matter of status, not one of kind. As the apostle Paul wrote: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female: for all of you are one in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3: 22). Indeed, he developed pervasive gender ambiguities in reflecting on the soul’s marriage to Christ and the manliness of virtue, and, with his delight in paradox, he deployed them as he explored the impenetrable mysteries of salvation through the feminization of holiness in men’s souls and the virilization in women’s.15 14   See Augustine’s idealization, as bishop, of Cyprian, as discussed by Jonathan Yates, “Augustine’s Appropriation of Cyprian the Martyr-Bishop against the Pelagians,” in More than a Memory: The Discourse of Martyrdom and the Construction of Christian Identity in the History of Christianity, ed. Johan Leemans (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), especially 128–32. See also the perceptive comments by Matthew Keufler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 123–24. 15

  Augustine’s contrasts between himself and his mother, Monica, are a particularly striking example of the distinction he drew between dominant male and subordinate female status. See Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 17–19, 111–13; and James J. O’Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 55–57. See also Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Lectures on the History of Religion, new ser., no. 13 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), especially 389–90 (on the predominance of

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Symbolism invited multiple images and perspectives by collapsing linear sequences, including that of time. Augustine regarded the psalm as a whole made up of mutually reflective parts. Therefore, even though his overall strategy took him through it verse by verse, it also allowed (or required) him to break out of linear sequence, combining verses at will to expand interpretive arguments. In fact, his recombinant method of interpretation enabled him to weave together passages from Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, illustrations from his own day, and apocalyptic expectations of the age to come. Babylon’s sack of Jerusalem was of one piece with revelations in the New Testament and, even more remotely, with events in Augustine’s place and time. This free, antihistorical reconfiguration of the text is not surprising. It corresponds exactly with what Augustine said about how his mind worked when he recited a psalm. The psalm he was reciting was a whole action that passed, piece by piece, from forethought into memory. The action of the psalm-in-process-of-reading was itself part of some greater action, presumably the entire revelation of divine providence in Scripture as God unfolded it like some great celestial tent or scroll. Similarly, Augustine said, a person’s life was so scattered through various episodes, or times, that even that person might not be able to see the order in it. And yet, all actions in that life did make up a whole, and all lives were parts of the whole history of the human race.16 Augustine’s multiple perspectives enabled him to combine linear perspective, moving in sequence from beginning to end, with a circular one, encompassing all texts, actions, and ages in one epiphanic present. Augustine was not an exile in any literal sense of the word; generally speaking, he lived in settled circumstances. And yet, he chose to banish himself mentally from the world around him. Symbolism was the door through which he entered an exile of heart and mind. If we look to the intellectual underpinnings of his symbolic argument, we shall see that he imagined himself into exile in two distinct narratives, both completely unknown to the author of Psalm 136. In both narratives, the relations disrupted by exile were impersonal. The first was the narrative of transcendence that Augustine learned from Neoplatonic philosophy. Augustine’s whole philosophical stance was shaped by a doctrine of exile and return, which he learned from Neoplatonism. In a natural, and completely impersonal, process, everything came from and returned to the divine, the One. The whole cosmos consisted of a great chain of perfection, an interrelated whole. It descended in ordered degrees from the One, each link away from the One being less perfect than the link before, participating more remotely and thus less fully in the perfection of the One, just as rays of light become fainter and more mixed with darkness as they move from their source. What held the chain together was a two-sided dynamic drive. Each male companions in the narrative of the Confessions), and 359, 394–95, 405–08 (on sexuality in general). Keufler provides a very rich discussion of how Augustine developed “the paradox of Christian masculinity.” See The Manly Eunuch, especially 139–42, 231–36. 16

  Confessions, 11.28.38–11.29.39, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 27 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1981), 214–15.

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link, being good, yearned to communicate itself, to procreate likenesses of itself. This led, as copying copies generally will, to progressively less perfect copies down the chain. Each link, being imperfect, desired the perfection it lacked and saw above it, and each yearned to be what it saw in the higher orders. Each link below the One therefore procreated downward and yearned upward. This interrelationship is how they all made up a hierarchic chain of perfection, moved by a constant dynamic of exile and return. In the dynamic, impersonal interrelationship of this hierarchy, Augustine found the basic philosophical framework on which he suspended his theology—his propositions that all degrees of being and knowing, of beauty, goodness, and truth, came by participation in God’s perfectly simple, all-encompassing, and self-communicating perfection. The life in all that live, the reason of all who know, the beauty of all beautiful things mirrors and derives from God. Knowing himself as an exile in the Neoplatonic sense gave him a place to belong in the living and inexhaustibly creative hierarchy of perfection, created and creating. Augustine also recognized himself as an exile in a second way, grounded in the Christian theology of grace. As a theologian, he projected himself into a narrative quite different from the regular, natural rhythm of egress and return in Neoplatonic cosmology. Here, too, the relations disrupted by exile were impersonal, but the restoration of relations was miraculous and deeply personal. From Scripture, Augustine extracted a drama of crime, punishment, and redemption, in which the whole human race had been cast out of Paradise and part of it, after a time in the exile of this world, allowed to return to its celestial homeland. Augustine bent Psalm 136 to purposes it was not intended to serve when he projected what the psalmist considered a historical event, the Babylonian Exile, into the cosmic dimension, God’s plan for the redemption of the world and God’s direct and personal acts of grace in predestination and deliverance. His conception of exile as noble was possible because he understood exile as a state of spiritual, rather than material, existence, and the whole dynamic of conflict in the psalm as moral (subjective) rather than formal (objective). Like the psalmist’s community of captives, Augustine’s community of the predestined was esoteric and segregated. Augustine saw outward enemies on every hand, Jews among them. As Augustine considered the place of Christians in the hostile environment of the late Roman Empire, he identified many other open and concealed subverters of the soul—pagans, scoffers and skeptics, persecutors raging to kill Christians, kindly indulgent seducers who won believers over to worldly pleasures by winsomeness, praise, gentle rebuke, and friendship, and, to be sure, believers who had already assented to their own ruin, “alien children,” who had defected to Babylon. Such people could not understand Christian doctrine. They laughed at Christians obedient to the gospel, who voluntarily made themselves paupers. Surveying the rampant licentiousness of sexual and pornographic delights in Roman society, they could see no good that Jesus had done in the world. They regarded as highly suspect ascetic calls to empty themselves of worldly desires—desires for such natural goods as wealth, power, family order and harmony, and loyal friends—and they kept such

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calls at a distance by ridicule and indifference. Such people were sterile, Augustine wrote, as the willows of Babylon, beyond the limits of Jerusalemite fertility. However, for Augustine, exile was not primarily a matter of such objective social relations as these, but of the soul’s own affections. His point of view would have astonished the psalmist. Correspondingly, the introversion of consciousness in Augustine’s commentary had to do with subjective danger, danger to the soul. The Christians’ struggle, he wrote, was not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of this world’s darkness. The captors in Psalm 136, he wrote, were the Devil and his angels. The redeemer was Christ.17 Choice between captors and redeemer belonged to the individual. The Devil and his minions entered hearts because believers made room for them, departing from love of God and subjecting themselves to lusts of the flesh.18 The confrontation of Christians with Jews in the context of salvation history was a visible macrocosm of this ensuing subjective antagonism of the soul against itself. The psalmist cursed Edomites, the false brethren of the Jews, for the blazing passion with which they rushed with Babylon to destroy Jerusalem. The Jews themselves satisfied Augustine’s need for a symbolic equivalent to the Edomites; for, he said, by rejecting Christ, Jews continued to live according to the flesh, at enmity with those who lived by the Spirit. They were elder brothers in the Covenant, envying and persecuting the younger brothers, Christians, as Esau (the forefather of the Edomites) had persecuted Jacob (Israel). But his main point was not that Christians should be wary of Jews. His main point was that each and every predestined soul should be wary of itself; for all of them were divided this way. The predestined, too, are first carnal and later spiritual.19 Because this division was a condition of life for the predestined, the individual soul was its own worst enemy. According to Augustine, the predestined are amphibians. They live Jekyll and Hyde existences, part Jerusalemite and part Babylonian, polar twins like Jacob and Esau. Only the individual soul could open or close its heart to the Babylonian captors, the Devil and his angels. We have not left Babylon, Augustine wrote; we are only on the way out.20 Augustine put the same idea a different way in the Confessions. He remembered how in his early life he was roiling with his friends through the streets of Babylon, wallowing in its dung, and Monica had left the center of Babylon, but still tarried in its outskirts. Then, when the mind gave an order to the body, the body instantly obeyed; but, when the mind gave an order to itself,

17

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chap. 15, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1973– 74. 18

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chap. 9, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1969.

19

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chaps. 18–21, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1975–77. 20

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chaps. 8, 15–16, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1969, 1973–74.

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it could resist, or refuse, to obey. The mind was torn between conflicting desires, he wrote, divided against itself.21 Ruthlessly, in the monologue performance of his meditations on Psalm 136, Augustine’s call for vengeance wove through the drama of the heart divided against itself. We ourselves, he wrote—or at least our bad desires—are the infants of Babylon to be dashed against the rock. Even if we are born predestined to be citizens of Jerusalem, Babylon holds us captive for a while. We learn what our parents teach us—avarice, robberies, daily lies, worship of idols and demons, witchcraft. With their tender souls, what are infants to do except follow in their parents’ footsteps? Conversion is a turning away from Babylonian captivity, a killing of the soul formed in infancy and rebirth in newness of life.22 Those who forget Jerusalem are cursed; escape from that curse comes when the saving Avenger dashes Babylonian children against the rock. With these savage words, Augustine gives an insight into how he regarded his own conversion and why he filled book 9 in the Confessions, the book portraying the months after his conversion, with the deaths of those nearest to him in his old life and, in fact, made it a monument to the death of the person he had been. But, as he makes clear in the Confessions and in the commentary on Psalm 136, he expected that only death would release him from the anguish of his Jekyll-Hyde ambivalences. He had no idea of integrated personality in this life. As he characterized the individual soul, Augustine’s imagination moved in the space of a few lines from deadly rivalry between brothers to violent rejection of parental ways by children and finally to a form of infanticide equivalent with suicide. Restoring essential relations in the narratives of transcendence and salvation required a purging and redirection of basic human affections. There is a level at which the deeply personal is subsumed into the communal, at which individuals are seen as members of one body, articulated for the well being of the whole. At this level, there can seem to be a radical impersonality—if possible, a passionate impersonality—in Augustine’s religious affections. According to Augustine, the psalmist sang about crime, punishment, and rehabilitation, the human race’s falling away from God through sin and its return to God through redemption by grace. “Exile” was the movement of the predestined, the people of God, the Body of Christ, through the unredeemed and lost world toward the moment when their redemption would be consummated, beyond this world, in eternal life. By sin, the entire human race had been cast out of paradise. In his commentary on Psalm 136, Augustine applied the term “noble exile” only to the part of the human race predestined by God for salvation, redeemed by Christ’s blood, and passing now as aliens through the Babylon of this perishing world to the Jerusalem of everlasting peace and glory. Augustine called this exile “noble” for the same reason he called the crime of sin “happy” ( felix culpa). Both, he believed, were esoteric epiphanies and communications of God’s own being. 21

  Confessions, 8.9.21–10.24, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 27: 126–29.

22

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chaps. 21–22, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1977–78.

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Augustine insisted that Psalm 136 was a song of the whole church, that, as the body of Christ, Jerusalem in captivity was one compound soul made up of many individuals. The safety of each lay in the solidarity of this fellowship and society, where none could be reached by any tempter or any delight except the good.23 Ethnic identity made it possible for the voice in the psalm, as written, to belong to any Jew. Augustine’s interpretation placed conditions on who could claim the voice. We can be the man who sings this psalm, he wrote, but, to claim the psalmist’s voice, we must suffer as he suffered, badgered and cajoled to sing the Lord’s song by mockers, people full of falsehood, extorters of truth—captors who had no idea of what they were asking the exile, and no capacity for understanding what he said. To claim the psalmist’s voice, readers must bind themselves with the curse he put upon himself if he forgot the heavenly Jerusalem, if he became complicit with his captors in his own spiritual subversion.24 And yet, what advanced this collective security by stages toward its final consummation was exactly an inherent individual instability, a division in the soul between love of happiness in this world, which led to the pains of hell, and love of life that is truly life in the age to come. The movement of the “noble exile” out of Babylon and toward Jerusalem was propelled by the Jekyll-Hyde conflict of worldly and heavenly desires in countless individual souls, conversions without number, by which the body of Christ was built up through time, joined and knit together, and advanced toward its predestined form. Augustine: Self-Knowing, Impersonal Exile, and Community Arts The commentary also provides clues as to how Augustine translated exile into art, and how he thought arts could be used with other survival skills to preserve essential relationships in his Munchausen-syndrome exile. So far as we can tell, the psalmist put art in the exiles’ survival kit because it preserved forms of expression from the vanished homeland—forms of poetry, possibly also visual designs transportable in handicrafts, “folk art.” According to Augustine, the arts served survival, not because of their forms, but because of how the mind received them: that is, because of how the mind works. The psalmist presented a single image from a single perspective. He sang about actual exiles from Jerusalem in Babylon. By imposing a symbolic interpretation, Augustine rendered both image and perspective multiple. According to his interpretation, what the psalm said about exile referred both to the Jews held captive in Babylon and to individual Christians and the entire body of Christ in transit through this hostile world. What the psalmist called “the songs of Zion” were the language of the redeemed, a close-knit brotherhood and “civil society.” The song of this world’s love was an alien, barbarous tongue. Whoever forgot Jerusalem and was restricted to that 23

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chaps. 15, 17, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1973, 1975. 24

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chap. 12, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1971.

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alien language was mute before God, an enemy of Jerusalem.25 Some such distinction between “barbarous” and “civic” lay behind Augustine’s preference for unadorned, rhythmic intonation of the psalms, rather than the beautiful melodic settings to which they were commonly sung, melodies which, as he knew from his own delight in them, enticed the ears away from sacred words to sensual pleasures.26 At this point, Augustine turned the imagination against itself. Lacking any hope of personal integration in this life, Augustine could only consider art a monument and tool of inward division. Like the author of Psalm 136, Augustine conceived of religious art as a social artifact, belonging to worship. Its cult uses removed it from the unbeliever. The psalmist could not sing the Lord’s song to amuse his alien tormentors. Augustine would not expose the mysteries of redemption to those who asked about them intending only to deform what he said into sinister meanings, to castigate or mock believers, or to lure them into spiritual ruin. As a social artifact, religious art existed not to display the ingenuity of the artist, but to enable worship. And yet, its sensuous delights could defeat their proper object by making art a bridge by which the soul passed over to ruin from the civic society of Jerusalem into Babylon, instead of fleeing to safety the other way, from Babylon to the eternal city. The individual soul was divided between love of Jerusalem and a subversive love of worldly delights. As a collective work, religious art too was divided between its incentives to devotion and its subversive pleasures. Augustine found a mysterious kinship between sensuality and piety, seductive and dangerous to those who loved the world, traps for the unwary, and for those rescued by God incentives to sigh after God himself, the beauty of all beautiful things.27 This tug-of-war between sensual and pious desires, the polar twins of Jekyll and Hyde (or Jacob and Esau) which provoked Augustine’s fascinated dread of beautiful chant, was exactly what made Augustine a puzzle to himself, sick and in need of healing. Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 136 gives some idea of how, in his conscious imagination, he came to know himself as an exile. Throughout, Augustine characterized the psalm, and his commentary on it, not as personal works of isolated individuals, but as artifacts of community. He addressed his audience, his “brothers,” as co-readers of the psalm with him. He urged them to enact the psalm together along the lines of moral reform his interpretation followed, to move beyond captivity to happiness and at the end to triumph with their King.28 In this life, even souls predestined for redemption were still susceptible to the ruinous allurements of the world. The soul’s creative imagination was torn between the enticements of Babylon and the treasures of heaven. Thus, it was self-subversive, constantly on guard against itself. But the delights of religious art—the beauties of music or painting—could kindle piety as well as undercut it. Knowing this ambivalence 25

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chap. 17, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1974– 75. 26 27

  Confessions, 10.33.50, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 27: 181–82.

  Confessions, 10.33.49–34.53, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 27: 181–84.

28

  Enarratio in Psalmum CXXXVI, chap. 22, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 40: 1978.

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as a condition of exile, the soul imposed upon itself and its imaginative creations a terrible curse, an annihilating revenge, if it forgot Jerusalem. Among the predestined, an impersonal, ruthless self-subversion was the method of human creativity and the essence of regeneration. Summary: Inverse Models of Self-Knowing The author of Psalm 136 and Augustine had the same question in mind: “Who am I?” Psalm 136 and Augustine’s commentary were unintentional answers to the Delphic command: “Know thyself.” Both conspicuously avoided the open, all-embracing answer in Terence’s sentence: “I am a human being, and I think nothing human alien to me” (Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto). Who they were depended on who God was and on the relation between human society and God through cult. Cult was exclusive. For both, therefore, the greater part of the world was alien, and the line between those bound to them by religious devotion and the immense hostility encircling them was decisive. They saw plainly that exile was a study in uprooted relationships. For them both, the primary relationship was to their homeland, the patria. Augustine aimed at conversion, the remaking of all things new, instead of at recovery of the old. Unlike the author of the psalm, Augustine did not think of the patria as a place. Still, both of them realized that belonging to the homeland was their primary relationship, and that other relationships depended on it. Love for it surpassed all other loves, and love for the homeland, surviving in exile for the sake of the homeland, was the scale by which any other relationship was permitted or forbidden. The psalmist’s verse against the Edomites, those brothers who proved to be false in their violation of Jerusalem, and Augustine’s censures against a variety of insiders who betrayed Jerusalem and caused others to be unfaithful point toward the fact that they knew themselves as members of a society defined by a common devotion. The revenge motif emphasizes the central importance of social solidarity. Assimilationists in the exile community—presumably including some who married outside the community—had crossed the border into the alien world, and fell under the exiles’ license to hate outsiders. The greatest fear of each writer is that he too will grow weak in his primary commitment. The author of the psalm cursed himself with afflictions worse than death if that should happen. Augustine’s savage portrayal of conversion as the soul’s vengeance against its own illicit delights and desires is laden with suspicion, self-judgment, and hatred. There were no isolated individuals. Identity for both exiles was social identity. Individual survival and group survival were two sides of the same coin. The general category, which Terence called “human being,” was exactly what the author of the psalm and Augustine most wished to be alien to themselves if it weakened their corporate survival. It was a noble and glorious act to cultivate a maladaptive social spirituality, indeed, to flee from the world and embrace the world’s worst sentences against its outcasts: exile and death. For death in such a cause brought the crown of martyrdom,

66 K arl F. Morrison

and self-inflicted death in inner struggles of the self against itself was essential to the process of spiritual regeneration. Coda A distinguished artist participating in the conference at which I first presented these ideas gave an extraordinary witness to the contrast between the isolation of the individual in Western European culture and social solidarity. Born and raised in Japan, she transplanted herself to the United States. Art and the affirmation of her individuality came together in the experience of assimilation. She wrote, I was a child in Japan during World War II, and my early memories are of … the grandiosity of rampant tribalism and totalitarianism. After the War, even though Japan proclaimed itself a democracy, I remained keenly aware of its innate, deep-seated hostility towards individuality. To this day … individuality in Japan is still considered dangerous and a blasphemy of one’s tribe.… All the works I have created here [in the United States] over the last thirty years are documents of victorious battles in my struggle to become myself.29 In Augustine’s elaborate commentary on the psalmist’s lament over exile, we find some anticipations, at least, of the human alienation from humanity, from self, and from other human beings which Ladner found, full-blown, in the late Middle Ages, and experienced himself remotely applied in the twentieth century.30 Augustine’s general ideas about art as preserving essential relations in the Babylonian Exile of this world did not last forever. They rested on an ensemble of assumptions about religion and art which eventually split apart. Ultimately, they centered around what was a great void for human understanding, the void of divine being from which all things came, the emptiness of mystery in which Augustine found the prototype of the image of God with which humanity was stamped at the Creation.31 We know what happened to these assumptions. 1. Because of his Neoplatonist philosophy, Augustine assumed the interconnectedness of everything that was. The entire cosmos was a gradual self-communication of God. Scientific advances, especially in astronomy and physics, and finally in Darwinian biology—removed this metaphysical foundation. Even before Darwin, Laplace was able to refer to God as a hypothesis for which he had no need. 29

  Junko Chodos, Junko Chodos: Centripetal Artist (N.p.: Junko Chodos, 1998), 4. See also Rafael Chodos, Why On Earth Does God Have To Paint? Centripetal Art (Malibu, CA: Giottomultimedia, 2009), 88. 30 31

  Ladner, “Homo viator: Medieval Ideas on Alienation and Order,” 256.

  See Paul van Geest, The Incomprehensibility of God: Augustine as a Negative Theologian (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), especially 21–41, 62–65.

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2. Augustine’s theology and his symbolic method of interpretation depended on his assumption that Scripture revealed God’s truth, albeit in a hidden, encoded way. Advances in philology, especially in historical criticism of the Bible, allowed Scripture no presumptions of truth beyond those of any other text. Were the gospels, four anonymous tracts which do not hang together, frauds perpetrated by unscrupulous, sectarian dissidents? Were their stories about Jesus tissues of popular superstition? There was no need to multiply obscurities to save the phenomenon of revelation. By removing the presumption of unitary truth in Scripture, philologists disallowed symbolic analysis of Scripture as any way to truth, and hardly more than a vain and arbitrary diversion. 3. Augustine’s Neoplatonism and theology made him an idealist, a believer in eternal absolutes. Augustine assumed that salvation came by transcending finitude, and indeed the human condition itself, and participating in the infinity of God, the absolute of absolutes. The growth of historical criticism dispensed with universal absolutes and raised up the isolated particularity of the individual. Individual events and lives were equally unique, unrepeatable, and incommunicable. Historical criticism abandoned idealism in favor of nominalism, and thereby set aside any hope of transcendence such as Augustine thought he experienced. 4. Augustine’s assumptions about art also fell out of currency. He assumed that religious art (including scriptural interpretation) expressed a social consciousness. And yet, from the Renaissance onward, what is called “the history of art in fact deals with the history of artists.”32 Nominalism has moved the impulse of expression from a collective consciousness to the psychology, unconscious or subconscious, of the individual artist. The singularity of the autonomous self stands against the mere utility of social relations. The artist defines what art is. 5. Finally, Augustine also assumed that religious art moved the deeply paradoxical ambiguity of human desires, either enticing the soul by sensual delights to plunge into the swirling, devouring waters of Babylon, or drawing it by spiritual harmonies more fully into fellowship with the heavenly City. His concern was with the paradoxes of introspection, with how the soul observes and weighs the feelings in its own heart. With classicism, the focus changed from the observer to the observed, from paradoxes of introspection to ironies of illusionist representation. With classicism, the focus fell on style, on the work of art as a material object. The purpose of stylistic analysis was to establish models and degrees of technical proficiency, rather than to go beyond material things to the Wisdom by which all things that we can know are made.33 32

  Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), xxi.

33

 Cf. Confessions, 9.10.24, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 27: 147–48.

68 K arl F. Morrison

A little while ago, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I visited Eisenstadt, near Vienna. A great palace of the Esterhazy family is in Eisenstadt, and I went there to hear some music by one of the servants of the Esterhazy princes, Franz Josef Hayden. I heard wonderful music in the Esterhazy palace, including The Creation. Until the Revolution of 1848 relieved them of the duty, the Esterhazy princes were protectors of the Jews in their lands. The ghetto in Eisenstadt was about one hundred yards up the hill from the Esterhazy palace. It stood there, relatively hidden, an example of exile—in the form of the Diaspora—as a way of life crossing many generations and enveloping whole communities. Even under Esterhazy protection, the Jews of Eisenstadt were in exile, century after century. The liberal reforms of the nineteenth century gave them the same civil rights as any other subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Some died defending the empire in World War I. But, in 1938, the Jews of Eisenstadt found that they were exiles in their own country again. They were all deported by October 1938. Their synagogue survived, undamaged. The Burgomeister of Eisenstadt was able to give it protection that he could not give its congregation. It is still there, in the Austrian Jewish Museum, a witness to one point at which exile intersects with creativity. Of course, it stands in sharp contrast with the opulent creativities that found a home in the palace, beyond the iron chain that marked the border of the ghetto. Exile, or at least the legacy of exile, was in the art of the palace too, in fact in Hayden’s Creation. The Creation ends on a happy note, before sin and expulsion. And yet, everyone knew the story. The Archangel Uriel strikes a tone ominous for what is to follow when he celebrates Adam and Eve with conditions: “O happy pair, happy evermore, / if mad illusions do not seduce you / into wanting more than you have / and knowing more than you should.” Even as Hayden was conducting the first performance of The Creation, the Christian connection between art and exile was beginning to take on new, and greatly altered, forms of life in the minds of two men. The first was Goethe, who made exile the price of creativity in his recasting of the Faust legend. The second was Hegel, whose new mythology of human inventiveness transformed exile as a condition of creativity into something recognizably similar: the work of art as self-alienation of the artist. But, for Hegel, art itself had slipped away by becoming a thing of the past.34

34

  G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. Bernard Bosanquet (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1993), 13.

Eastern Orthodoxy

The Evergetian Motif in Russian Monastic Reform David Goldfrank

For most of us, Basil of Caesarea and Theodore the Studite are the church fathers who come to mind, when we think of Greek coenobitic rules and reform. And rightly so, as they are doubly celebrated due to their theological writings and public roles in defense of Orthodoxy, the one during the first century of christological controversy, the other during the epoch of Iconoclasm. Who ever heard of Timothy of Evergetis? Very few nonspecialists in the Byzantine Church—that is, until recent scholarship, capped by a special conference in Queens College, Belfast, and by the Dumbarton Oaks typikon translation project, placed him at the center of monastic reform in the eleventh century and revealed his lasting influence. The paragraphs which follow examine first Byzantine and Balkan Evergetism and then the Russian side to this story. The context of the specific Evergetian movement is difficult to ascertain, but seems to have lain in part in the maturing of Studite-inspired monastic reform, which was still very much alive in the eleventh century.1 The legacy of Theodore the Studite (d. 829) within coenobiticism included his emphasis upon the liturgy (he introduced to Byzantium the liturgical typikon ascribed to Sabas of Jerusalem), the sacralization of the communal meal, and organized, supervised, productive labor.2 This legacy heavily influenced the monastic legislation attributed to Athanasius of Mt. Athos (produced between 963 and 1020)3 and inspired Symeon the New Theologian (949–1032), 1

  See Dirk Krasmüller, “The Monastic Communities of Stoudios and St. Mamas in the Second Half of the Tenth Century,” in The Theotokos Evergetis and Eleventh-Century Byzantine Monasticism, ed. Margaret Mullett and Anthony Kirby, Byzantine Texts and Translations 6.1 (Belfast: Queens University of Belfast, 1994), 67–68. 2

  Timothy Miller, trans. and ed., Theodore Studites: Testament of Theodore the Studite for the Monastery of St. John Stoudios in Constantinople, and Stoudios: Rule of the Monastery of St. John Stoudios in Constantinople, in Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments [hereafter BMFD], ed. John Thomas and Angela Constantinides Hero, with the assistance of Giles Constable, 5 vols. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2000), at http://www.doaks.org/resources/publications/ doaks-online-publications/byzantine-monastic-foundation-documents, 1.2–3: 67–83 and 84–119 respectively. See also Krasmüller, “Monastic Communities,” 71–72. 3

  George Dennis, trans. and ed., Ath. Rule: Rule of Athanasios the Athonite for the Lavra Monastery (963/1020), Ath. Typikon, Typikon of Athanasios the Athonite for the Lavra Monastery Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 71–89.

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who started as a Studite monk and in his own writings combined strict coenobiticism and mystical contemplation.4 In 1034 Patriarch Alexios Studites (1025–43) founded a Dormition monastery in Constantinople, which he structured with a modified version of at least the liturgical parts of Studite Rule.5 It is this “Studite Rule” which Feodosii Pecherskii apparently introduced in Kiev in the 1060s. It partially survives only in Slavonic translation in a Novgorodian manuscript from 1136.6 As for the Evergetian reform, we are not certain precisely where outside the walls of Constantinople the Theotokos Evergetis (Benefactress) Cloister was located, but we do know its key works.7 The wealthy founder Paul Evergetinos (d. 1054), who started the monastery in 1048 or 1049 as a small collective of cells, compiled a “massive ascetic florilegium, the Evergetinon, which enjoyed a wide circulation in the Byzantine world, surviving in no less than forty manuscripts today.”8 He also “assembled a collection of monastic catacheses, that is, discursive sermons, utilizing the works of Maximos the Confessor, Pseudo-Makarios, Evagrios Pontikos, Mark the Hermit, and the Great Catecheses of Theodore Studite.”9 With these two compendia, which might have been the result of collective authorship, Paul put his disciples and colleagues at large on notice that the ascetic, coenobitic, and mystical traditions of monasticism were compatible and should be combined and followed.10 It was left to Paul’s successor Timothy (d. after 1067) to refound the monastery as a bona fide cloister and to codify Evergetine practices.11 Emphasizing liturgical aspects of mo(973–75), and Ath. Testament: Testament of Athanasios the Athonite for the Lavra Monastery (after 993), in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 1.11: 205–31, 13: 245–70, and 14: 271–80 respectively. 4

  Symeon the New Theologian (Neotheologus, Novus Theologus, Junior), The Discourses, preface by Basil Krivochéine, introduction by George Maloney, trans. C. J. di Catanzaro (New York: Paulist, 1980). See also Krasmüller, “Monastic Communities,” 68, 73–74.

5

  Miller, Stoudios: Rule, 88.

6

  Paul Hollingsworth, trans. and ed., The Hagiography of Kievan Rus´ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University, 1992), 2: 53–54, 139; and David M. Petras, The Typikon of Patriarch Alexis the Studite: Novgorod-St. Sophia 1136 (Cleveland, OH: Star Printing, 1991).

7

  Lyn Rodley, “The Monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis, Constantinople: Where It Was and What It Looked Like,” in Mullett and Kirby, The Theotokos Evergetis, 17–29. 8

  Robert Jordan, trans. and ed., Evergetis: Typikon for the Monastery of the Mother of God Evergetis, in Thomas and Hero, Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, 454–506, here 454. The Evergetinon has been published seven times in Greek between 1783 and 1983. 9

  Ibid. An English translation of both of these works is expected in the near future from the Belfast (Queens College) Evergetis project. 10

  Jordan also notes that Paul’s florilegium was followed and may have been inspired by those of the monastic reformers Nikon of the Black Mountain and John of Antioch. It should be added here that Nikon’s were very influential in Russia. 11

 Jordan, Evergetis, 455.

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nasticism more than labor in his coenobitic typikon, Timothy introduced some novel provisions: equality of food and clothing, co-governance of at least a few elite brothers with the superior, prohibition of personal servants, and regular confession to the superior.12 Later provisions in this rule also called for periodic reading of the rule to the brotherhood13 and restricted entrance donations, and at the same time stipulated institutional charity14 and commemorations.15 In keeping with the its typikon, Evergetis was neither a center of organized crafts, as Stoudios once was, nor a locus of contemplation, as Symeon the New Theologian might desire, but rather a liturgically oriented community, whose monks were as likely to be administering property as creating wealth through labor other than the performance of rites. In the absence of evidence or arguments to the contrary, I would hypothesize that Timothy’s novel stipulations were designed to boost individual and community morale at the same time, while also assuring that the individual monks kept to their vows and the cloister’s standards. Lacking memoir literature of participants or sophisticated observers, we are at risk when we try to weigh the various aspects of the Evergetian monk’s life, but I would also venture that in most aspects of his existence, he could operate – inside the bounds of his vows, regulations, and drive for salvation—with more confidence and (in normal, secular terms) self-respect than monks subject to blatant material inequalities and powerlessness relative to tyrannical leadership.16 A simple comparison of texts shows that the Evergetian reform impulse, which we have no reason to assume originated in just this one monastery, caught on quickly.17

12

  Cf. ibid., 459–61. The Diatyposis attributed to Athanasios of Mt. Athos noted the “ancient tradition and precept of the holy fathers that the brothers ought to lay before the superior their thoughts and hidden deeds.” See Dennis, Ath. Rule, 33: 228. 13   Article 43: this provision seems to have originated with the Diatyposis attributed to Athanasios of Mt. Athos, which also ended with “regular reading of the rule.” See Dennis, Ath. Rule 37: 228. 14

  Article 37–38. Limits to entry gifts were not new, and other contemporary monasteries also legislated charity. See Jordan, Evergetis, 505. 15

  Article 35–36. Ludwig Steindorff credited the Evergetis rule for its key role in the rise of Byzantine monastic commemorations. See Steindorff, Memoria in Altrussland: Untersuchungen zu den formen christlicher Totensorge, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der östlichen Europa 38 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1994), 122–23. 16

  A. P. Kazhdan emphasized the control aspects of the Evergetian reform, while John Thomas has indicated both the urge for common property and equality and the hindrances at the time. See Alexander P. Kazhdan, “Vizantiiskii monastyr´ XI–XII vv. kak sotsial´naia gruppa,” Vizantiiskii vremennik 31 (1971): 54–48; and John Philip Thomas, “The Documentary Evidence from the Byzantine Monastic Typika from the History of the Evergetine Monastic Reform,” in Mullett and Kirby, The Theotokos Evergetis, 247–54. 17

  Thomas, “Documentary Evidence,” 247–54.

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Composed in stages from 1059–67 to 1098–1118,18 the Evergetis typikon, in precise wording as well as spirit, influenced those of Theotokos Kecharitomene (1110–16)—a convent founded by Empress Irena Komnena;19 St. John Phoberos (1113–44)—an independent cloister near Constantinople founded by a certain John;20 Theotokos Kosomosteira (1152)—a Thracian foundation of Irena’s son, the sebastokrator Isaac;21 St. Mamas (1158)—an ancient Constantinopolitan cloister with a new typikon by the imperial monastic steward Athanasios Philanthropenos;22 Theotokos ton Heliou Bomon (Altar of the Sun) or ton Elegon (1162)—an old monastery near Bursa, revived under the imperial courtier Nikiphoros Mystikos;23 and Theotokos in Machairas in Cyprus (1210)—an old abbey revived by Neilos, who later was its protector-bishop of Tamasia,24 as well as Christ Philanthropos (ca. 1307)—a convent founded by the despoina Irina Choumnaia Palaiologa in Constantinople,25 and John Prodromos of Mt. Menoikeion in northeastern Greece (1332)—written by Bishop Joachim of Zichna, the patron-owner of this family foundation.26 Internal evidence indicates that other such typika, now lost, also existed.27 Evergetian principles, moreover, did not require 18

 Jordan, Evergetis, 465–67.

19

  Robert Jordan, trans. and ed., Kecharitomene: Typikon of Empress Irina Doukaina Komnene (Comnena) for the Convent of the Mother of God Kecharitomene in Constantinople, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 2.27: 649–719. 20

  Robert Jordan, trans. and ed., Phoberos: Rule of John for the Monastery of John the Forerunner in Phoberos, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 2:30: 872–949.

21

 Nancy Patterson-Ševčenko, trans. and ed., Kosomoteira: Typikom of the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos for the Monastery of the Mother of God Kosmosoteira near Bera, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 2.29: 782–858.

22

  Anastasius Bandy, trans. and ed., Mamas: Typikon of Athanasios Philanthropenos for the Monastery of St. Mamas in Constantinople, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 3.32: 973–1042.

23

  Anastasius Bandy, trans. and ed., Helious Bomon: Typikon of Nikephoros Mystikos for the Monastery of the Mother of God ton Heliou Bomon or Elegmon, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 3.33: 1042–91.

24

  Anastasius Bandy, trans. and ed., Machairas: Rule of Neilos, bishop of Tamasia for the Monastery of the Mother of God in Machairas in Cyprus, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 3.34: 1107–22. 25

  Alice-Mary Talbot, trans. and ed., Philanthropos: Typikon of Irina Choumnaina Palaiologina for the Convent of Christ Philanthropos in Constantinople, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 4.47: 1383–88. 26   Timothy Miller, trans. and ed., Menoikeion: Typikon of Joachim, metropolitan of Zichna for the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner on Mount Menoikeion, in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 4.58: 1579–1612. Thomas also showed how Evergetine reform principles evolved and were somewhat compromised by social differentiation, patronage, and landholding (“Documentary Evidence,” 257–73). 27

  See the charts in BMFD, 990, 1121, 1717–23.

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an Evergetian text to prevail. For example, the typikon of Michael VIII’s widow Theodora Palaiologina for the Convent of Lips in Constantinople around 1294–1301 limited the superior’s personal discretion, enjoined “equality of privileges” for the nuns regardless of entrance gifts, and stipulated regular public reading of the rule.28 The project of a general coenobitic rule by Patriarch Athanasios I (r. 1289–93, 1303–09) included equality of food and the regular reading of the rule.29 Evergetian influence was not restricted to Greece, but operated in the Balkans, notably among the Serbs. St. Sava Nemanja (1175–1225), the Serbian prince-renovator of Hilandar Monastery on Mt. Athos and founding archbishop of his native land’s autocephalous church, had especially close ties to Theotokos Evergetis in Constantinople.30 To regulate Hilandar, he gave a rule, which is closer to the original than any other surviving typikon of the Evergetian tradition.31 Comparison between the two is instructive:32 Everg 1: Introduction to Rule Savva 1: Biography of Savva up to Hilandar Everg 2: Brief Biography of Founder Paul Savva 2: How Simeon with Savva’s Help Renovated Hilandar Everg 3: Timothy’s Succession Savva 3: Savva’s Succession Everg / Savva 4–13: Same or Close 4–8: Offices, Communion, Confession, Fast Services, Vigils 9–11: Refectory, Fast Diets, Feasts 12: Free and Self-governing Status 13: Selection of Superior and Oikonomos (Steward) Everg 14–16/Savva 14, 16: Removal of Bad Steward, Confession, Obedience to Superior Savva 15: Selection of Ecclesiarch Everg 17–25/Savva 17–27: Same or Close 28

  Alice-Mary Talbot, trans. and ed., Lips: Typikon of Theodora Palaiologina for the Convent of Lips in Constantinople (1294–1301), in Thomas and Hero, BMFD, 3.39: 1267–70. 29

  Timothy Miller, trans. and ed., Athanasios I: Rule of Patriarch Athanasios I (1303–05), arts. 4, 6, in Thomas and Hero, Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, 1501–02. 30

 Jordan, Evergetis, 457.

31

  Sava, archbishop of Serbia, “Tipik hilandarski,” Spomenik, ed. Bishop Dimitrij (Srpska Kra∫evska Akademija) 31, 29 (1898): 37–69; and L. Mirkovich, trans. (to modern Serbo-Croatian) and ed., Hilandarski tipik Svetoga Save (Belgrade: Drž. Štamp. Kralj Jugoslavije, 1935). Jules Pargoire, “Constantinople: Le monastère de l’Evergetis,” Echos d’Orient 10 (1907): 262– 63, viewed the Hilandar typikon as a modified translation of Evergetis.

32   Timothy Miller provides a breakdown, article by article, of the influence of the Evergetian Rule on its eight “children and grandchildren” noted above, corresponding here to notes 19–26, and also its possible antecedents. See Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, 501–06.

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17–18/17–20: on the Superior 19/21: Inalienability of Sacred Objects 20/22: Bookkeeping Requirements 21/23: Discipline of Idle Talkers 22/24: No Secret Eating, Possessions, Communications with the Outside; Expulsion for Theft 23/25: No Fixed Number of Monks 24/26: No Personal Servants 25/27: Communal Wardrobe Everg 26: Equality of Food and Drink Everg 27: Superior Visits Cells Every Month Everg 28: On Baths Everg 29: On Installation of Officials Savva 28: On Disciplining the Lax in Church; Ecclesiarch’s Authority; Readings in the Refectory Savva 29: No Individual Cooking in Cells Everg, Savva 30–38: Same or Close 30: The Treasurers 31: Refectarian, Disciplinarian 32: Tenure of Office of Officials 33: Exhortation to All Officials 34: Qualifications of Property Administrators 35–36: Commemorations—Founder, Brothers, Benefactors 37: Tonsuring, Novitiate, Entrance Gifts 38: Daily Charity, the Hospice Everg, end 38–39: Exclusion of Women; Creation of Other Usual Offices Everg 40–42, Savva 39–41: Same or Close 40/39: Exhortation to Preserve the Typikon (Rule) 41/40: Care of Sick Monks 42/41: Additional Exhortation Savva 42: Savva’s Special kellion at Karyes Everg, Savva 43: Regular Public Reading of the Rule Some of the differences between the two typika are trivial. The offices of the two establishments were slightly different, and they had somewhat different provisions for supervision and discipline. The exclusion of women from all of Mt. Athos rendered such a provision for Hilandar superfluous, while satellite kellia (hermitages) were a common Athonite feature. Permitting bathing, apparently, was, at least for a typikon, an Evergetian innovation, and all but one of its eight Byzantine progeny also allowed it, but Hilandar did not.33 Hilandar’s additional stricture against cooking in cells may have reflected fear of kellion practices spreading to the coenobium. The

33

  BMFD, 504.

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most important Hilandar omission is the absence of the provision for equality in food and clothing, but it would be rash to draw any conclusion concerning why.34 Hilandar was one of the two great centers of the transmission of the Second Byzantino-South Slavic influence to Russia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the other being Constantinople itself. The question arises, therefore, whether the Evergetian tradition, along with liturgical, theological, contemplative, and specifically neo-hesychastic works, reached Russia with this new wave of translations.35 To my knowledge, the major proponent of neo-hesychastic prayer, Gregory of Sinai (ca. 1265–1346), who after coming to Athos left and established his own multinational community in Thrace near Bulgaria, did not write anything approaching a rule.36 Rather, what is considered the hesychastic or neo-hesychastic movement or phenomenon in late Byzantium touched many aspects of religion and culture, and any specific connection to coenobiticism is difficult to ascertain. On the other hand, the introduction or reintroduction of coenobitic monasticism to Russia (the Rus´ North), maybe

34

  Three hypothetical possibilities are: that individuality was simply too strongly established at Athos at this time; and/or that the clan-based Serbian society of ca. 1200, with its relatively low level of education, was not ready to approach any abstract notion of material equality; or, to the contrary, that rough equality in material goods in a well-ordered coenobium, as in the early sixteenth century, was simply assumed. See N. B. Sinitsyna, “Poslanie Maksima Greka Vasiliiu III ob ustroistve afonskikh monastyrei (1518–1519 gg.),” Vizantiiskii vremennik 26 (1965): 132. 35

  See Fairy von Lilienfeld, Nil Sorskij und Seine Schriften: Die Krise der Tradition im Russland Ivans III (Berlin: Evangelische Verlaganstalt, 1963), 77 n. 127, concerning the direct ties with Constantinople and the acquisition of Slavonic translations of the liturgical typicon, some sermons of John Chrysostom, and hesychastic-oriented works of Maxim the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, and Isaac the Syrian. A slew of Slavic translations were made at Athos, including the all-important Pseudo-Dionisii Aereopagite (1371), and service books (1392). V. Ikonnikov, Opyt issledovaniia o kul´turnom znachenii Vizantii v russkoi istorii (Kiev: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1869; repr., The Hague: Mouton, 1970), 60; and A. S. Arkhangel´skii, Nil Sorskii i Vassian Patrikeev, chap. 1, “Prepodbnyi Nil Sorskii,” Pamiatniki drevnei pismennosti 25 (St. Petersburg: I. Voshchinskii, 1982; repr., Russian Reprint Series, no. 20, The Hague: European Printing, 1966), 20–21. See also G. A. Il´inskii, “Znachenie Afona v istorii slavianskoi pis´mennosti,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, no. 11 (1908): 1–41; I. Diuchev, “Tsentry vizantiisko-slavianskogo obshcheniia i sotrudnichestva,” Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury [hereafter TODRL] 19 (1963): 107–29; and John Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantine-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 119–44.

36

 Gregory’s Praecepta ad hesychastas PG 150:1335–46. Surviving Hilandar manuscripts with works by Gregory include two from the 1390s, one on interior prayer, the other some of his liturgical canons, and one from the 1430s on the monk’s “struggle,” and another from the 1400s on silence. Predrag Matejic and Hannah Thomas, Catalog, Manuscripts on Microform of the Hilandar Research Library (The Ohio State Library), 2 vols. (Columbus, OH: The Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, 1992), 1: 415, 476, 547, 555 (HM.SMS.227, 342, 456, 464).

78 David Goldfrank

in the 1360s,37 was part and parcel of the Second Byzantino-South Slavic influence and came just before the start of intensive Russian interest in hesychastic literature.38 In what I see as the first phase, from the 1350s or 1360s into the 1420s, the Evergetian influence is murky. As for its origins with Sergii of Radonezh (ca. 1314/1319/1322–92), we learn from his vita that he was enjoined with financial aid (pominky) to convert his small monastery into a coenobium by Ecumenical Patriarch Philotheos (r. 1354–55, 1364–76), supported by Metropolitan Aleksii of Moscow (r. 1354–78). The vita tells us that this entailed establishing full, communal property and the naming of several officials: the cellarer (in Russia, the functional equivalent of the Byzantine oikonomos), the baker, and the ward of the sick.39 The attentiveness to monastic charity at this early stage is characteristically Evergetian.40 As for the date that Sergii introduced the common, we only have evidence that he helped Aleksii establish Moscow’s Chudov Monastery in 1365 as a coenobium.41 At any rate, Sergii’s disciples and several generations of their acolytes proceeded to found most of central

37

  On the pre-Sergii northern monasteries, from Pskov to Riazan´, Vladimir to Velikii Ustiug, see I. Iu. Budovnits, Monastyri na Rusi i bor´ba s nimi krestian (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 46–76. Of Novgorod’s old monasteries, only Iur´ev, founded in the eleventh century, was originally a coenobium. The sources indicate no Byzantine coenobitic influence on Sava Nemanja’s Novgorodian contemporary, Dobrynia/Andrei Iadreikovich, who visited Constantinople in 1200, described Theotokos Evergetis in his travelogue, and became a monk in the local Khutynskii Transfiguration Monastery (founded 1192) and then archbishop of Novgorod. Tver´’s leading Otroch Monastery (founded 1265) had clergy and treasurer-stewards (kliuchniki), but no clear markings of a coenobium. See Akty sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi imperii Arkheograficheskoi ekspeditsiei Akademii nauk [hereafter AAE], 4 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tip. 2. Otd. Sobstvennoi E.I.B. kantseliarii, 1836), 1.5: 2–3. The unreliable Tatishchev claims that “Archimandrite” Ioann of Moscow’s (recently founded) Petrovksii (or Vysokopetrovskii) Monastery, who accompanied Metropolitan Aleksii’s would-be successor Mitaj to Constantinople in 1378, was “Moscow’s first coenobiarch.” See V. N. Tatishchev, Istoriia rossiiskaia v semi tomakh (Istoriia rossiiiskaia s samykh drevneishikh vremen), ed. S. N. Valk and M. N. Tikhomirov (Moscow: Nauka, 1962–68), 5: 134. 38

  Gelian M. Prokhorov, “Keleinaia isikhastskaia literatura (Ioann Lestvichnik, Avva Dorofei, Isaak Sirin, Simeon Novyi Bogoslov, Grigorii Sinait) v biblioteke Troitse-Sergievoi lavry s XIV po XVII v.,” TODRL 28 (1974): 317–24. 39

  Ludolf Müller, Die Legenden des Heiligen Sergij von Radonež, reprint of N. S. Tikhonravov, Drevniaia zhitiia prepodobnogo Sergiia Radonezhskogo, 2 pts. (Moscow: n.p., 1892), with separate introduction and bibliography, Slavische Propylaien, no. 17 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1967), 43–46.

40

  Jordan notes that the Evergetian interest in philanthropy was not novel but was not general either. See Evergetis, BMFD, 465. 41

  Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei [hereafter, PSRL] (St. Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, Nauka, Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1843–), 8: 28; and Goldfrank, The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotskiy, rev. ed., trans., ed., and intro. David M. Goldfrank, Cistercian Studies 36 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2000), 236–37.

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and northern Russia’s major coenobia,42 and his Trinity Lavra became and still is Russia’s most prestigious monastic establishment. The role of the ecumenical patriarch, this time Neilos (1380–88), was crucial for Russia’s first surviving coenobitic rule. The author, Bishop Dionisii of Suzdal´ (r. 1374–85), writing in 1382 in the form of a statutory missive with patriarchal authority to Pskov’s eminent Snetogorsk Monastery, demanded the restoration of the (thirteenth-century) founder’s alleged order. Dionisii’s regulations required communal eating without individual demands on the cellarer, and the exclusive use of the monastery’s storeroom for obtaining clothing and rejection of fine European materials, but not the specific Evergetian stricture on equality.43 Thirteen years later (1395), Dionisii’s former rival, the Bulgarian-born, ex-Athonite Metropolitan Kiprian (r. in Moscow, 1389–1408),44 rescinded Dionisii’s rule as out of his jurisdiction. This ruling was confirmed again in 1418, by the Greek-born Metropolitan Fotii (r. 1410–31), who nevertheless insisted that the traditional patristic coenobitic principles held for the monastery.45 Snetogorsk in Pskov was not part of Sergii’s network. Kirillov in Beloozero, founded in 1397, was. We know of the purported rule of the founder Kirill (d. 1427) from his vita, composed by the Serbian immigrant and ex-Athonite, Pakhomii Logofet. The fragmentary regulations therein, somewhat in keeping with the ustav po

42

  Seen from the economic standpoint, Budovnits, Monastyri na Rusi, 112–258; from the traditional standpoint, inter alia, George Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946–66), 2: 246–64; and Fennell, A History of the Russian Church to 1448 (London: Longman, 1995), 205–07. More detailed recent analyses include Pierre Gonneau, La maison de Sainte Trinité: Un grand monastère russe du Moyen-Age tardif (1345–1533) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992); Gonneau, “The Trinity-Sergius Brotherhood in State and Society,” in Moskovskaia Rus´ (1359–1584): Kul´tura i istoricheskoe samosoznanie = Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359–1584, ed. G. D. Lenhoff and A. M. Kleimola (Moscow: ITZ-Garant, 1997), 116–45; Gonneau, “Los troublions au monastère (bezchinniki monastyrskie): Indiscipline et partage du pouvoir à la Trinité Sainte-Serge au XVe siècle,” Revue des études slaves 63 (1991): 195–206; and David B. Miller, “Donors to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery as a Community of Venerators: Origins, 1360s–1462,” in Lenhoff and Kleimola, Moskovskaia Rus´, 450–74. 43

  Akty istoricheskie sobrannye i izdannye Arkheograficheskoi komissiei, 5 vols. [hereafter, AI] (St. Petersburg: Tip. 2. Otd. Sobstvennoi E.I.B. kantseliarii, 1841–42), 1.5: 7–9; Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka, 39 vols. (St. Petersburg: V. I. Golovina, 1872–1927), 6: 205–10; German translation in Lilienfeld, Nil Sorskij, 277–90.

44

  Dimitri Obolensky, “A Philhormaios Anthropos: Metropolitan Cyprian of Kiev and All Russia (1375–1406),” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 32 (1978): 81–82. We are certain only that Kiprian visited Athos. 45   AI 1.10: 19; 26: 52–55. David B. Miller, “The Velikie Minei Cheti and the Stepennaia Kniga of Metropolitan Makarii and the Origins of Russian National Consciousness,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 26 (1979): 290; and Lilienfeld, Nil Sorskij, 290–95. Fotii further noted that the founder had not written a rule.

80 David Goldfrank

starchestvu (cell rule typikon),46 outline behavior in the church refectory and cells; the table regulation and strict adherence to common meals and common property, with treasury issue of simple clothing and receipt of profits of handicrafts; serious attentiveness to community labor; abbatial control over correspondence and individual ascetic regimens; and a real innovation—the prohibition of intoxicating beverages.47 The few hortatory clips indicate that sermonizing accompanied these regulations.48 The Kirillov fragments have a hesychastic moment in the insistence that there be no disturbance of the time dedicated to prayer (molitvovati) after the main meal, but nothing particularly Evergetian, unless the use of dokhia or ksenodakhia for the depository was an allusion to a functioning hospice.49 On the other hand, Kirillov ended up with the reputation in the 1470s as the only Russian monastery which maintained the common life,50 and around 1550 one of the two which observed equality among the monks.51 Kirill may never have composed a formal rule at all—what we have being instead the invention of Pakhomii around 1460, which is the start of what I see as the second phase of Russian coenobitic reform. This period, stretching from the 1460s into the early 1500s, was the most dynamic and creative time of Muscovite monastic legislation, when not only two outstanding coenobiarchs, Evfrosin of Pskov (d. 1479) and Iosif Volotskii (1439/40–1515), articulated the communal life in fresh ways, but also Russia’s “great elder” Nil Sorskii (1433–1508) taught hesychasm by means of his example and his original, spiritual Typikon (ustav). Nil’s brief Tradition (predanie) or rule, composed for his kelliotic hermitage, which was a filial of Kirillov, hearkens back in part to the coenobite Nikon of the Black Mountain (1025–1100s), one of Timo46

  A sixteenth-century Kirillov starchestvo (gerontikon) contains, besides the Kirillov cell rule (also those of the Nil Sorskii Hermitage and Iosifov), regulations for the communal aspects of the monastery, including several of the stipulations noted by Pakhomii: Kniga glagolaema Starchestvo. See M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library, St. Petersburg, Kirillov-Belozerskii Collection, Codex No. 721/1198, 5–7.

47

  V. Iablonskii, Pakhomii Serb i ego agiograficheskie pisaniia: Biograficheskii i bibliograficheski-literaturnyi ocherk (St. Petersburg, 1908; reprint of the appendix, Munich: Eidos, 1963), prilozhenie, 22–24.

48

  See below, n. 100.

49

  Perhaps the early fourteenth-century (extra-Evergetian) Byzantine prohibition of drinking parties, itself prefigured in Evergetis and his family of typika, can be seen as a foreshadowing of the stricter Russian provision. See Evergetis 9: 480; Athanasios I 4: 1501 (no sworn associations or drinking parties); Kellibara II: Typikon of Andronikos I Palaiologos for the Monastery of St. Demetrios-Killibara in Constantinople (1315?–28) 3 (no drinking bouts), trans. and ed. George Dennis, BMFD, 1508. 50

  Savva Chernyi, “Zhitie i prebyvanie v krattse prepodobnogo ottsa nashego igumena Iosifa, grada Volokolamskogo,” Velikie Minei chetii, sobrannye vserossiiskim Mitropolitom Makariem (St. Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia kommissiia, 1868–1917), 462–65. 51

  G. Z. Kuntsevich, Chelobitnia inokov Tsariu Ivanu Vasil´evichu (Petrograd: Tip. M. A. Aleksandrova, 1916).

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thy of Evergetis’s younger contemporaries. Nil’s Tradition junctures with Evergetis in requiring that the hungry be fed, but more with the Athonite than the Evergetian legacy in demanding confession to one’s superior.52 Otherwise, neither Nil’s Tradition nor the derivative, brief Testament (zavet) of his disciple, the coenobiarch Innokentii Okhlebinin (d. 1491), lies within the Evergetian tradition.53 Like Kirill, however, Innokentii forbade intoxicating beverages. A sense that the Evergetian reform tradition was having some impact on Russia by 1461 is evident in the thirty-chapter typikon Rule which Evfrosin of Pskov composed for his rural Elizarov Monastery around that year.54 Somewhat derivative of Bishop Dionisii’s statutory missive, Evfrosin’s rule is the strictest of the entire period. It has numerous junctures with Timothy’s rule, such as the brief story of the founding of the cloister in the beginning, demands that it be independent, discussion of the qualities required of the abbot and of the oikonomos, a provision allowing the sick to bathe,55 protection of the monastery’s property, institutional charity, and no requirement of an entry offering or grant of privileges to those who make one freely. It would also seem as if Evfrosin implicitly intends some of the other, even more specifically Evergetian stipulations – at least material equality in light of the common table and wardrobe, as well as shared governance and prohibition of personal servants. If so, then Evfrosin can be considered the closest Russian embodiment of Evergetian traditions. His Eliazarov Monastery, it should be noted, was the home of the elder Filofei, who around 1523–24, according to the best recent scholarship, articulated the famous, and often misinterpreted “Third Rome” doctrine.56

52   Nil’s hermitage rule (Tradition) and spiritual Typikon are found in Nila Sorskogo Predanie i Ustav, ed. M. C. Borovkova-Maikova, Pamiatniki drevnei pis´mennosti i iskusstva 179 (St. Petersburg: Tip. M. A. Aleksandrova, 1912); German trans. in Lilienfeld, Nil Sorskij und Seine Schriften, 193–255; French trans. in Saint Nil Sorsky (1433–1508): La Vie, les écrits, le skite d’un starets de Trans-Volga, trans. and ed. Sr. Sophia M. Jacamon, OSB, Spiritualité et vie monastique 32 (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1980). For the dependence of Nil’s Predanie upon Nikon, see the foreword to Taktikon … Nikon Chernogortsa (Pochaev, 1795), 7–11; Borovkova-Maikova, Nila Sorskogo Predanie i Ustav, 1–5. Since Nil and the hermitage superior in general were not priests, this kind of confession was of a different sort from what Timothy demanded. 53

  For Innokentii’s testament, see Arkhangel´skii, Nil Sorskii i Vassian Patrikeev I, prilozhenie, 14–16.

54   M. Serebrianskii, Ocherki po istorii monastyrskoi zhizni v Pskovskoi zemle (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Imperatorskogo Obshchestva istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete, 1908), 508–26; German trans. in Lilienfeld, Nil Sorskij, 295–313. 55

  Evergetis and most of its progeny also allowed the healthy to bathe a few times a year, while Evfrosin would not. 56

  A. L. Gol´dberg, “Tri ‘poslaniia’ Filofeia: Opyt tekstologicheskogo analiza,” TODRL 37 (1976): 139–49; N. V. Sinitsyna, Tretii Rim: Istoki i evoliutsiia russkoi srednevekovoi kontseptsii (Moscow: Indrik, 1998); and Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross Cul-

82 David Goldfrank

With Iosif Volotskii, the Evergetian reform tradition finally found a nearly full Russian expression. Iosif, as has been understood for over a century, was masterful at incorporating in his own way the works of his authorities, and we find that his fullblown testamentary rule is dependent upon writings by, attributed to, about, or in the Desert Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, John Climacus, the liturgical Sabaite or Jerusalem Typikon, Theodore Studite, Athanasius of Athos, Symeon the New Theologian, and Nikon of the Black Mountain.57 A source for many of Iosif’s other sources, Nikon of the Black Mountain is especially important for our analysis, because his works combined the florilegia model of Paul Evergetinos and the stricter typikon tradition, which Timothy adopted.58 Hence one could argue that from the literary or rhetorical standpoint, Evergetis, or at least the movement it represented, influenced Iosif via the mediation of Nikon. Iosif’s Extended Rule has numerous junctures with Timothy’s, especially regarding the refectory, but also includes all of the specifically Evergetian principles— material equality, regular confession, public reading of the rule (in an accessible, abbreviated form),59 prohibition of personal servants, and cogovernance—as well as such characteristic ones as concern for the quality of officials, protection of the monastery’s property, memorial services, and institutional charity.60 In fact, the only Evergetian principles not covered by Iosif at all are the specifics of enrollment and

tural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304–1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 219–43. 57

˜David Goldfrank, ed. and trans., The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky, rev. ed., Cistercian Studies, no. 36 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2000), 61–70. The revised edition differs significantly in commentary, notes, bibliography, and in having the full text of Iosif’s Brief Rule. One could add as well the example and traditions of the Kirillov Monastery as Iosif experienced them.

58  Nikon’s Pandekty is an extensive sixty-three-chapter florilegium and compilation of canon law and moralia; his forty-chapter Taktikon is a combination of typika, missives, and florilegium-sermons; Nikon of the Black Mountain (Nikon ho Mauroeites; Nicon Monachus, of Raithos Monastery on the Black Mountain near Antioch), Pandekty … Nikona Chernogortsa (Church Slavic trans., Spaso-Prilutskii pod Vologdoi, 1670; repr., Pochaev, 1795), Table of Contents in PG 106: 1359–82; Taktikon … Nikona Chernogortsa (Church Slavic trans., Pochaev, 1795); original Greek, to Discourse 4: Taktikon Nikona Chernogortsa, ed. V. N. Beneshevich (Petrograd: Tip. V. Kirshbauma, 1917); trans. of Discourses 1–2, Robert Allison, BMFD, 377–439. 59

  Slovo XII more or less repeats the stipulations of the first nine discourses, without the sermons, condensed to fifty-three regulations. Iosif also created a model individualized mini-rule in the form of a missive to an incoming monk. See Ia. S. Lur´e and A. A. Zimin, Poslaniia Iosifa Volotskogo (Moscow: Nauka, 1959), 286–88.

60

  See Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, II.6–7, 10–12; I.II.15, 18; IV.2; IX.8–9; XII.9, 12; XIII.i.22; XIII.ii.5, 9; XIII.ix.2, 6; XIV.14. These and such subsequent notations refer to the division of chapters or discourses into sections by the editor.

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the novitiate, bathing, inspection of cells, property management, and investiture of officials, and these are virtually implied.61 Iosif’s Rule also has several interesting post-Evergetis features, representing logical developments of Timothy’s principles. One of them, found in the typikon of an original first-generation Evergetian, the Rule of John of Phoberos, allows for the superior to sanction deviations from the sumptuary regimen in the direction of stricter asceticism62 —something inherent, I would argue, in the foregrounding of the example of the extreme ascetics in the florilegia. Iosif regularized such regimens with three ustroeniia (orders). This measure, curiously, was similar, but the reverse of what Timothy’s contemporary, the more lenient soldier-coenobiarch, Gregory Pakourianos (d. 1086), whose typikon (1083) also enjoined equality of foods, but established three orders, with the more prestigious monks obtaining the higher clothing allowances.63 In the middle of the twelfth century, another Evergetian typikon, that of Athanasios Philanthropenos for St. Mamas, added “especially after compline” to the original’s strictures against monks’ gathering for idle talk.64 Iosif’s rule, unlike any this historian has seen, devoted an entire if brief chapter to silence after compline,65 but his theme is foreshadowed by the early fourteenth-century Evergetian testament-rule of Joachim of Zichna for Prodromos-Menoikeion.66 Early in the thirteenth century, Bishop Neilos of Tamasia adapted the monastic penitential attributed to Basil of Caesarea for a dozen or so transgressions,67 as did his textually non-Evergetian Cypriot

61

  Iosif discusses how in the first, building stage of his monastery, he and his companions would accept almost anyone (XIII.52). His checking on monks who miss liturgies (XIII.i.10–11) and the formula, “if they seize drinks in somebody’s cell” (XIV.26, also XIII.v.10) assumes some inspections. His injunctions to officials not to speculate (III.22), and his mention of the stewards, bailiffs, and supervisors of stables, mills, tailors, brewery, and villages (IX.12, XIII.v.13, XIII.ix.3, 9–13), as well as his concern for the synodikon and memorial services (XIII.i.22), assumes property management. On the other hand, his supervised trips outside the cloister for refreshing or to the nearby pond for drawing water and washing clothing (XIII.v.3, 11) may imply a general prohibition of bathing. 62

  Phoberos 5, BMFD, 889; and Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, II.28.

63

  Pakourianos: Typikon of Gregory Pakourianos for the Monastery of the Mother of God Petritzonitissa Baãkovo, BMFD, 507–08, 9: 535. Founded as a Georgian-Armenian monastery south of Philippopolis (Plovdiv), this cloister was solidly Bulgarian and culturally active by the mid-fourteenth century and could have influenced Russia via Metropolitan Kiprian (r. 1375–89 in Lithuanian Rus´; 1382, 1389–1408 in all Rus´). The surviving sixteenth-century copy of the typikon is in both Georgian and Greek. 64

  Mamas 35: 1018; it was repeated in 1332 the Evergetian Menoikeion 17: 1602.

65

 Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, VIB/IV.

66

  Menoikeion 22: 1606–07.

67

  Machairas 121–34: 1157–58.

84 David Goldfrank

contemporary, Neophytos.68 Iosif’s rule ends with a much more extensive and systematic list of penances, which was derived from both Basil and Theodore Studite.69 One of the most important post-Evergetian elaborations that Iosif applied concerned commemorations. Irina Doukaina Komnena’s first-generation Evergetian typikon contains a mini-commemorative synodikon for nuns and benefactors.70 Athanasios Philanthopenos adapted his own more modest memorial provision from Irina’s.71 Neilos of Tamasia repeated the original Evergetis stipulations, preceded by a place for the list of property donors to be commemorated.72 Iosif, like Neilos, stipulates the commemorations only briefly, but referred to his separate Synodikon.73 This was no happenstance, since Iosif’s monastery was a pioneering institution in rationalizing Russian commemoration practices in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.74 Given the central role of memorial services in the spiritual, material, and charitable life of monasteries, it should come as no surprise that Byzantine rules outside of the Evergetian tradition also had such provisions. Two examples are the Testament of Neilos to the small John Prodromos Monastery on Mt. Athos75 or the Testament of Patriarch Matthew I (r. 1397-1410) for John Charsianeites Monastery of Theotokos Nea Peribleptos in Constantinople (1407).76 But the most extensive of all the published Byzantine treatments of commemorations was that of the imperial niece, Theodora Synadene for the Convent of Theotokos Bebaia Elpis (1327–35), with appended

68

  Neophytos, Testamentary Rule of Neophytos of Cyprus for the Hermitage of the Holy Cross near Ktima in Cyprus [1214], trans. and ed. Catia Galatariotou, BMFD, 1367–68. On the basis of content, however, John Thomas considers Neophytos Evergetian (“Documentary Evidence,” 273). 69

 Goldfrank, Iosif … Rule, Slovo XIV, in nine sections, which correspond almost exactly to his Slovo XII—his “Rule in Brief,” a modified epitome of the provisions of his first nine discourses. 70 71

  Kecharitome 70–71: 699–702; also see Steindorff, Memoria, 125–26.

  Mamas 39–40: 1020–22.

72

  Machairas 155–57: 1163; also see, 22–25: 1131. The list on the manuscript, which is the hegemon’s autograph, is empty. 73

 Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, XIII.i.22, 277.

74

 Steindorff, Memoria, 164–236; also “Commemorations and Administrative Techniques in Muscovite Monasteries,” Russian History/Histoire russe 22, 4 (1995): 433–54.

75

  Prodromos: Testament of Neilo, for the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner (Prodromos) on Mount Athos (1330–31) 9, trans. and ed. Stephen Reinert, BMFD, 1392–93.

76

  Charsianeites: Testament of Patriarch Matthew I for the Monastery of Charsianeites Dedicated to the Mother of God Nea Peribleptos (1407) C 13, 15, trans. and ed. Alice-Mary Talbot, BMFD, 1659–60.

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details of major donations and earmarked services.77 This might be an example of a hypothetical Byzantine prototype for Russian commemoration books, while a more direct ancestor could be the Serbian pomenici.78 Russia’s connections to Athos and specifically to Hilandar may have been important in this regard. Some coenobitic principles not specific to Evergetis, but found in Iosif’s rule, evolved in late Byzantium outside of the Evergetian family of typika. Makarios Chumnos of Thessalonike urged moderation and gradualism in training novices (before 1374).79 The model typikon of Emperor Manuel II (r. 1391–1425) to the Athonite monasteries allowed for personal possessions with the permission of the superior, a practical deviation from the strictest coenobitic traditions,80 but one which Iosifov monks early on considered a customary right regarding books and icons.81 The greatest of such developments is found in Theodora of Synadene’s typikon, where she insisted that nothing be overlooked in safeguarding the service order and elaborated extensively on confession and the superior’s responsibilities.82 An additional post-Evergetian development in non-Evergetian rules was the monastic council, which institutionalized cogovernance. Manuel II’s model typikon for Athos stipulated that fifteen bouleutai (councilors), along with preeminent attached monks residing outside the cloister, select the superior.83 This was surely representa77

  Bebaia Elpis: Typikon of Theodora/Theodule Synadene for the Convent of the Mother of God Bebaia Elpis in Constantinople [1327–35] XXII, appendix, trans. and ed. Alice-Mary Talbot, BMFD, 1555–68; cf. Steindorff, Memoria, 128. 78  Steindorff, Memoria, 132–35; see also Stojan Novakoviç, “Srpski pomenici XV–XVIII veka,” Glasnik srpskog učenog društva 42 (1875): 1–152; “Pshinski pomenik,” Spomenik 29 (1895): 1–20. 79

  Chumnos, Rule and Testament of Makarios Chumnos for the Nea Mone of the Mother of God in Thessalonike (shortly before 1314) 9, trans. and ed. Alice-Mary Talbot, BMFD, 1448; see also, Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, XIII.52. 80

  Manuel II: Typikon of Manuel II Palaiologos for the Monasteries of Mount Athos [1406] 2, trans. and ed. George Dennis, BMFD, 1618–19; cf. Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, III.21, but also V B, which earlier rejected any ownership whatsoever in a classical fashion. 81

  V. O. Zhmakin, Mitropolit Daniil i ego sochineniia (Moscow: Obshchestvo istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, 1881); repr., Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1846–81), 1881, 1.2, prilozheniia, 19: 55–57. 82

  Bebaia Elpis IV, VI, VIII–IX, XX: 1531–33, 1537–41, 1553–54; cf. Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, I: 19, IV, XI. As Iosif did later, she also made unattributed use of John Chrysostom in her sermonizing on the community church services.

83

  Manuel II: Typikon of Manuel II Palaiologos for the Monasteries of Mount Athos 3, trans. and ed. George Dennis, BMFD, 1619. See also Sinitsyna, “Poslanie Maksima Greka,” 132. How the Athonite monastic council arose, and whether it may have been connected to the separate status of elite choir monks lies outside the purview of this study. Of the known choir nuns, those of Bebaia Elpis (VIII) seem only to have chanted, while twelve of those of the imperial Lips Convent in the capital would accompany the new superior to the emperor for her ordination. See Lips: Typikon of Theodora Palaiologina for the Convent of Lips in Constanti-

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tive of the model for the fifteen major Kirillov brothers, whose temporary departure from the monastery in 1483–84 forced a change of leadership,84 and for the (twelve) sobornye startsy (council brothers),85 who figured so heavily in Iosif’s rule.86 Even here, such an arrangement, “as a seal to the testament,” and its justification is found in the Evergetian Joachim of Zichna’s appointment of four model brothers to be advisors and co-judges with the superior of the monastery’s officials.87 It could hardly have been an accident that Iosifov, the Russian monastery which had by far the most extensive rule and innovative administrative thinking in the early sixteenth century, was also the most successful culturally, ideologically, and politically towards the end of the founder’s life and for the next half century. Iosifov trainees dominated the episcopacy, curbed rival reformers and dissenters, helped forge imperial ritual, ideology, and expansion policies, and even created the dominant grand narrative of Russian history.88 As for the developed Evergetian aspects of the Iosifov rule, sumptuary egalitarianism must have been good for morale as well as reputation, the reading of the abbreviated rule and regular confession useful for character development as well as control, focus on the administrative elite excellent for training bishops, and systematized commemorations a boon for finances. If the second phase of Muscovite coenobitic reform saw Evfrosin expand on the legacy of Bishop Dionisii, and Iosif on that of Kirill of Beloozero, the third phase, from roughly 1515–60, carried on from the second. Soon after the learned Maksim Grek arrived from Athos (Vatopedi) in 1517, he composed a missive to Grand Prince Vasilii III outlining Athonite coenobitic practices and emphasized three characteristically Evergetine traits, which combine what a fusion of Evfrosin’s and Iosif’s rules would yield: material equality, cogovernance, and avoidance of required entry nople (1294–1301) 7, trans. and ed. Alice-Mary Talbot, BMFD, 1267. Fifteen of the thirty-six brothers of the Kellibara Monastery were choir monks. See Kellibara I: Typikon of Michael VIII Palaiologos for the Monastery of St. Demetrios of Palaiologoi-Kellibara in Constantinople (1282) 17–18, trans. and ed. George Dennis, BMFD, 1250–52. 84

  Ia. S. Lur´e, Ideologicheskaia bor´ba v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XV–nachala XVI veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1960), 57.

85

  Sobor means both a major church (katholikon) and a council/synod/assembly.

86

  XIII–XIV (including the “Traditions”) over a third of Iosif’s Extended Rule is directed specifically to the “council elders and monastery officials.” Inspired by the exile of the Kirillov elders, but modeling on the Apostles and information from the vitae of Theodore Studite and Athanasios of Athos, Iosif fetishized the number twelve for his council (X.16, XIII.42–47). 87

  Menoikeion 22.1607–08; cf. Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, XIII.12–14, 44, 46; 256 n. 19 missed the analogy to Joachim. 88

  A. A. Zimin, I. S. Peresvetov i ego sovremenniki (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958), 71–108; Krupnaia feodal´naia votchina i sotsial´no-politicheskaia bor´ba v Rossii (konets XV–XVI v.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 233–80; B. M. Kloss, Nikonovskii svod i russkie letopisi XVI–XVII vekov (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 55–133; and D. S. Likhachev et al., Knizhnye tsentry drevnei Rusi: Iosifo-Volokolamskii monastyr´ (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991), 3–15.

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gifts.89 Indeed, Evfrosin’s and Iosif’s rules were recognized officially as models, by the enterprising Makarii (b. 1481/1482), who was trained in the same monastery as Iosif had been. As archbishop of Novgorod (1526–42) and metropolitan of Moscow (1543–63), Makarii organized the compilation and promulgation of the Great Menologium, which added some native works to the vast translated corpus and included both Evfrosin’s and Iosif’s rules.90 Iosif’s rule also inspired some of the fresh coenobitic legislation of this period, but it is here that the analogy with Evergetis ends. For if Timothy’s typikon was the start of a Byzantine tradition that was later expanded, Iosif’s was the Russian summit: no subsequent rule was nearly so extensive or elaborate. To my knowledge, five or six rules or their equivalents survive from this period, two created by founders, the other four by prelates. One of the latter, a metropolitan’s formula, may stem from about 1500.91 Two others are Makarii’s rule for Novgorod’s small Dukhov (Holy Spirit) Monastery, issued during 1526–30, in the early years of his archepiscopacy,92 and the missive-rule to St. Nicholas in Volosovo near Vladimir by Metropolitan Daniil (r. 1521–39).93 The two founders’ testamentary rules came from outlying provinces: Kornilii Komel´skii’s more extensive one of 1535 from the dense Vologda forests,94 and Gerasim Boldinskii’s of 1543 from near Dorogobuzh along the watershed route between Smolensk and central Russia.95 Finally, the Stoglav or Hundred Chapters Synod of 1551 in Moscow under Makarii, now the metropolitan, issued some coenobitic ordinances.96 All four of these figures were linked to Iosif in some way or other. Makarii (1481/82–1563) came from Pafnutiev Monastery, where Iosif had been trained; so did the mentor of Gerasim (1489–1554), Daniil of Pereiaslavl (ca. 1460–1540).97 Metropolitan Daniil (d. 1547) had been Iosif’s successor abbot and active in the Iosifov scriptorium. Kornilii (1455–1535) commenced his career in Kirillov (which Iosif had personally visited before he founded his monastery), served 89

  Sinitsyna, “Poslanie Maksima Greka,” 232–35. Maksim also emphasized the Sabaite-Jerusalem liturgical typikon, labor, and the officials, which hearken back to the pre-Evergetian Studite-Athonite traditions. 90 91

  Miller, “Velikie Minei Cheti,” 268–313, especially 289.

  AAE I, no. 381, 482–84.

92

  AI 1, 531–34 (no. 292). In 1528, Makarii forced a coenobitic reform on a slew of Novgorodian cloisters. See PSRL 6: 284–85.

93

 Zhmakin, Daniil, supplement XII, 39–44.

94

  “Kornilii Komel´skii, II. Ustav ili pravila,” ed. Amvrosii, bishop of Saratov and Penza, in Istoriia Rossiiskoi ierarkhii, 5 vols. (Moscow: Sinod, 1807–22), 4 (1812): 661–704. 95

  E. V. Krushel´nitskaia, “Zaveshchanie-ustav Gerasima Boldinskogo,” TODRL 48 (1983): 264–70.

96

  E. B. Emchenko, ed, Stoglav: Issledovanie i tekst (Moscow: Indrik, 2000), 49–50: 328–38, 52: 339–43. 97

 Budovnits, Monastyri, 336–37, 342, 347.

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as an assistant to Iosif’s political and ideological ally with the church, Archbishop Gennadii of Novgorod (r. 1484–1504), and spent time near another of Iosif’s favorite model cloisters, the Tver´-Savvateev Hermitage.98 Kornilii’s rule and the Stoglav stipulations are somewhat textually dependent upon Iosif’s, Kornilii’s also upon Nil Sorskii’s regulatory Tradition.99 The common, developed Evergetian feature of all of these regulatory pieces is the cogoverning council or its equivalent,100 along with the general coenobitic insistence on communal property and the common table. None of them have regular confession to the superior (or his designee)101 or public reading of the rule, the latter, evidently, not catching on in Russia. Gerasim’s and Kornilii’s rules and Stoglav, on the other hand, stipulate equality, which indicates that this Kirillov-Evergetian measure not only attracted reforming founders, but also by midcentury had captured the attention of the official church. Gerasim, Kornilii, and Stoglav also prohibited strong drinks, as did several other coenobiarchs,102 pursuing a peculiar, national mode of reform, based on the practical reasoning, right or wrong, that Russians could not drink in moderation.103 98

  Ibid., 280–82; and Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, X.27–28.

99

  Taktikon … Nikona Chernogortsa, foreword, 7–11; Nila Sorskogo Predanie i Ustav, 1–4; Kornilii Komel´skii II, 662–65; see above n. 52. Kamilii, however, made an interesting change from Nikon’s text, which Nil had reproduced. Where Nikon and Nil claim that “not wishing to be superior, I sent away many who came to me,” Kornilii wrote, “not wishing to be superior, I accepted all who came to me.”

100

  Kornilii has “model” (voobrazhennye) brothers, and his vita relates that during an extended absence he entrusted his cloister to twelve monks. Gerasim has Iosif’s twelve council elders. Dukhov only had twelve monks, of whom two or three were supposed to be council brothers.

101

  However, Daniil or his scribe-collaborator Foma Shmoilov did insist on regular confession in a sermon in an unofficial fourteen-slovo treatise on monastic life, Volokolamsk Sbornik (no. 526) (structurally, a companion to Iosif’s Extended Rule, with an elaboration on the inner aspects of the monk’s life and discussion of several issues, such as the novitiate, not discussed by Iosif). For a description, see Zhmakin, Daniil, 750–51; and Ieromonakh Iosif, Opis´ rukopisei perenesennykh iz biblioteki Iosifova monastyria v biblioteku Moskovskoi dukhovnoi Akademii (Moscow: Obshchestvo istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, 1882; also in Chteniia, no. 3 [1883]), 177–78; for Foma Shmuilov, see Kloss, Nikonovskii svod, 81–82. The absence of such a basic Orthodox Christian obligation as confession may be explained as its having been understood. 102

  Makarii’s coenobitic reform affected the foundation of Aleksandr Svirskii (1448–1533), near Lake Onega, whose brief testament, textually based on Kirill’s, prohibited strong drinks. The vita of his junior contemporary from the north, Antonii Siiskii (d. 1556), repeats the fragments of Kirill’s rule, from Pakhomii. See AI 1.135: 195–96; Budovnits, Monastyri, 322–29, 270–77. 103

  Pakhomii’s rendition of Kirill’s stipulation indicates part of the basic text that Iosif used: “He banned from the monastery mead, all other intoxicating beverages, and thus with this typikon cut off the serpent’s head of drunkenness.” Iosif’s sermon, possibly taken from John

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Gerasim himself founded four coenobia, and five of Kornilii’s disciples established their own communal abbeys.104 The Stoglav synod, however, represented the last textual chapter of this coenobitic reform movement, whose base had chiefly been monasteries with wider cultural, theological, and political significance, from the time of the learned Cappodocian father Basil of Caesarea, through the anti-Iconoclastic Theodore Studite, the florilegia-compiling Theotokos Evergetis, multinational and autonomous Athos, its Russian quasi-imitator Kirillov, and militantly super-Orthodox Iosifov. The exceptions in Stoglav, allowing European wines and other comforts to visitors to shrines and elite retirees using cloisters as retirement homes,105 are indicative of the practical considerations that compromise ideal strict standards anywhere at any time. Like Gerasim, Stoglav allowed the well-off certain liberties, while it protected equality for everyone else. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the center of Russian culture shifted dynamically to the court and the capital, and in the seventeenth century Western-influenced learning became decisive.106 In the fight of a few of the cloisters for traditions and the autonomy to preserve them, ritual was the chief religious issue. The last Evergetian principle to make a stand in Russia was thus monastic independence under the cogovernance of the superior and council brothers, and with the support of not only monks, but also affiliated laity. When, in 1676, after eight years of lackadaisical siege and futile negotiations, the Solovki rebellion was crushed by the modest government military force, snuck through a secret entrance in the fortress-cloister walls by a turncoat, the Evergetian motif in Russian coenobitic reform had, to all intents and purposes, played itself out. The older, liturgically oriented impulse of the Sabaite-Studite reform still remained potent in Russian, not only within the monasteries, but also among the laity, and more so schismatics. Such an orientation, despite all kinds of specific changes in verbal and musical modality, remained a hallmark of the Russian Church and is again today having a revival. That, however, is an altogether different story.

Chrysostom, and repeated in Stoglav, includes: “let him who would be free … abhor drunkenness and thus cut off the serpent’s head and crush his entire body.” See Pakhomii Serb, prilozhenie 24; Goldfrank, Rule … Iosif, IX B.5/VII.5; Stoglav, 52: 174–77. 104 105

 Budovnits, Monastyri, 293–306, 345–46.

  Stoglav, 52: 178.

106

  See Paul Bushkovitch’s interesting comments on the waning of monastic prestige and the eventual rise of the sermon in elite Russian life after the middle of the sixteenth century in Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

The Petrine Church Reform Revisited James Cracraft

In the fall of 1996 Theofanis Stavrou, our most worthy honorand, arranged for me to speak in two quite different forums at the University of Minnesota. The first was a gathering of the History Department to hear a talk about research in progress, the second, an audience assembled to hear the second annual James W. Cunningham Memorial Lecture on Eastern Orthodoxy and Culture. For both occasions Professor Stavrou suggested that I somehow address this question about Peter the Great’s church reform in Russia, on which I had published a book some twenty-five years before:1 did the reform look any different now, with the passage of time and in the light of my continuing research, than it did back then, when the book was published? It was somewhat troubling to discover that I did have something to say, or admit, on the subject, and I remain grateful to Theo for irresistibly (as usual!) urging me on. In the world of the 1960s, when that book was researched and written, the churches were manifestly in decline and religion was on the wane, nowhere more so, as it also seemed at the time, than in Russia, where the brutal imposition of Communist rule had only sharpened and hastened the process. That process, which in 1971 I dubbed “secularization” and viewed as a universal movement in modern history, was in Russia irresistibly set in motion, I further posited, by the church reform of Peter the Great. Indeed, of all the achievements of Peter’s reign his church reform constituted the most decisive break with the past. The abolition of the patriarchate, an institution of great prestige and economic, social, and political importance—an institution that potentially was, therefore, a focus of opposition to the ever more exigent, impersonal, secularized, absolute state—destroyed the age-old autonomy of the Russian Church and left the emperor with no possible rival for his subjects’ loyalty. It left them with no independent court of appeal, no alternative source of justice, no hope of escape from the tsar’s power. The simultaneous creation of the Holy Synod, a governing committee of the tsar’s appointees, provided the means whereby the administrative apparatus of the church was incorporated in, indeed swallowed up by, the much larger bureaucracy of the 1

  James Cracraft, The Church Reform of Peter the Great (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971).

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 91–100.

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state, a virtual absorption of the church by the state which for all intents and purposes was completed by the time of Peter’s death. And this state-church regime imposed by Peter, which prevailed in Russia until 1918, worked to the severe detriment, I said or implied in my book, of both church and people.2 That was then. In the world of the mid-1990s, as I struggled to respond to Professor Stavrou’s question, Communist rule in Russia had collapsed, an event that was accompanied and even in part precipitated by a revival of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in 1988 had rather grandly celebrated its one-thousandth anniversary and was again claiming a special place in society.3 Elsewhere in the once-Communist lands, most notably in Poland and East Germany, the churches had obviously played a major part in ending Communist rule. Was history reversing itself? Or was my earlier assertion of inevitable secularization in the modern world, an assertion that was amply supported by Marxist and other modernization theories,4 somewhat overdrawn? And if Peter’s church reform did not in fact inaugurate the long-term secularization of Russian society, what was its larger historical significance? In my informal remarks to the group of historians and more, in my published Cunningham lecture,5 I suggested that if my account of the Petrine church reform was still factually sound (and confirmed as such by the leading Russian historian of the period, E. V. Anisimov), there certainly was room for debate about the reform’s longer-term consequences. Here I would like to expand on those remarks, and in this way offer some small tribute to a scholar who has done so much over the last four decades to promote Greek, Russian, and Orthodox studies in this country and abroad. I might begin by emphasizing the distinction that needs to be drawn between the larger psycho-cultural phenomenon of religion and the specifically institutional reality of the church. Ninian Smart, a leading historian of religion in the modern world, decisively refutes the “thesis of increasing secularization” and proposes that we approach the subject by looking at religion’s seven different “aspects or dimensions”: the practical and ritual; the experiential and emotional; the narrative or mythic; the doctrinal and philosophical; the ethical and legal; the social and institutional; and

2

  Ibid., vii–viii, 306–07.

3

  See also Michael Bourdeaux, Gorbachev, Glasnost and the Gospel (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990); Nicolai N. Petro, ed., Christianity and Russian Culture in Soviet Society (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990); Niels C. Nielsen, ed., Christianity after Communism: Social, Political, and Cultural Struggle in Russia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: Triumphalism and Defensiveness (London: Macmillan, 1996); and K. Kääriäinen, Religion in Russia after the Collapse of Communism (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998). 4

  E.g., David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).

5

  James Cracraft, “Church and Revolution in Russia,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 12/13 (1996–97): 21–34.

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the material (buildings, works of visual art, holy books, etc.).6 We notice at once the relatively low level, or confined space, that the “social and institutional” dimensions of religion along with the “material” occupy in this deliberately capacious scheme; for often it is not, as Professor Smart has found, the organized church–“the formal officials of a religion”–who “turn out to be the most important persons in a tradition” but instead “charismatic or sacred personages … saintly people, gurus, mystics and prophets,” or “revolutionaries [who] set religion on new courses.”7 In the case before us, it was the institutional church of Russia that Peter I “reformed” by replacing the office of patriarch with a clerical board or “Holy Governing Synod,” not Russian Orthodoxy as such; and he did so, I would now also emphasize, at least partly for religious reasons. This much is attested by a close reading of the working draft of the Ecclesiastical Regulation (Dukhovnyi reglament) of 1721, the principal legislative act embodying Peter’s church reform.8 The draft was written at his behest by Bishop Feofan Prokopovich, the learned Ukrainian divine whose formative years in Kiev and abroad, in Poland, Rome, and various of the German lands, I have discussed elsewhere, also at Professor Stavrou’s urging.9 Peter went over Prokopovich’s draft on 11 February 1720, annotating or amending it at various points, whereupon a final draft was prepared for the formal approval later that month of a group of senators and senior clergy called to St. Petersburg for this purpose. There can be no doubt that the immediate aim of the Ecclesiastical Regulation and related documents, as duly promulgated in January 1721, was to extend the collegial principle of administration, which Peter was busily applying to the whole of his central government, to the administration of the church, and thereby to complete his bureaucratization of the Russian state along contemporary European (Swedish, German, cameralist) lines. Nor can there be any doubt that in so doing Peter was deliberately asserting a new notion—new in Russia—of monarchical absolutism, one that was also contemporary European in inspiration (Sweden again, Prussia, France) and one that Prokopovich had helped him define in these very same documents as well as in other published texts. But the explicit goal of this 6

 See Ninian Smart, The World’s Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 12–21; and further, Smart, Dimensions of the Sacred: The Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 267–73, for his critique of secularization theory.

7

 Smart, The World’s Religions, 19.

8

  P. V. Verkhovskoi, Uchrezhdenie Dukhovnoi Kollegii i Dukhovnyi reglament, 2 vols. (Rostov-on-Don: Tip. V. F. Kirshbauma, 1916). See vol. 2, Materialy, pt. 1, nos. 1–4 (3–105), for Verkhovskoi’s critical edition of the Dukhovnyi reglament and closely related documents based on the original manuscripts.

9

  James Cracraft, “Feofan Prokopovich and the Kiev Academy,” in Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime, ed. Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis G. Stavrou (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), 44–64. See also, for Prokopovich’s entire career, Cracraft, “Feofan Prokopovich,” in The Eighteenth Century in Russia, ed. J. G. Garrard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 75–105.

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bureaucratic revolution was to make the state a more efficient instrument of the monarch’s will as he worked to promote the “common good,” another imported notion that was largely secular in content, to be sure, yet bore moral and religious overtones that we should not arbitrarily ignore. It also deserves noting, with respect to the church itself, that most of Peter’s thirty-five or so marks on the draft of the Ecclesiastical Regulation or emendations to its text affirmed with all his imperious force the importance of proper religious and especially moral instruction for both clergy and people as well as the necessity of maintaining tight clerical discipline, the latter to include the prompt removal from office of incompetent bishops. The picture thus painted by Peter and his chief clerical collaborator is of a church and especially a clergy badly in need not of a doctrinal or liturgical reformation, but of a moral and spiritual rebirth. And who now can say for sure which of these two readily identifiable motives here, the political or the religious (or moral), was more important—more basic—in Peter’s decision to “reform” (ispravit´: improve, correct) the Russian church—an institution, as he explained in his Manifesto announcing the reform, for whose welfare he felt personally responsible before God. I fear that practically all historians who have studied the matter, myself and Anisimov included,10 have emphasized the political motive to the virtual exclusion of the religious, apparently on the assumption that religion was not really important to Peter. But is the assumption warranted? This is not the place for a detailed description and analysis of Peter the Great’s religious beliefs. Suffice it to say that my own earlier effort in this regard, encapsulated in the attribution to him of a “simple soldier’s faith,”11 I now think quite inadequate to the task: only a part of the story, at best. Nor do most other such attempts by historians seem any more successful. For instance, A. V. Kartashev, the last procurator of the Holy Synod (1917) who later became a professor of church history at the Russian Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, characterized the “personal religiousness” (religioznost´) of the synod’s founder as traditional in style, the “style [stil´] of traditional church piety.” In his view, Peter’s sensible positive mind did not lead him into a deadly deism; [he] preserved in his heart an image of the living biblical God.… Peter sincerely expressed in words his vivid sense of Providence and the will of God permeating human affairs.… A utilitarian, practical attitude to the role of religion in matters of state was natural to him, unquestionably; but this did not exclude in him a deep and lively understanding of religion.… Though intolerant of ignorant cultish superstition, Peter himself loved the beauty of the services, often read the Scriptures with enthusiasm, and took an interest in the details of church

10

  Reference is to my Church Reform, passim, and to E. V. Anisimov, Vremia petrovskikh reform (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1989), 7–14, 330–51. Anisimov’s book has been published in an abridged English translation by John T. Alexander, The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress through Coercion in Russia (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993).

11

 Cracraft, Church Reform, 22.

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ritual. He was too intelligent and talented for the fashionable rationalism he found congenial to distort his completely Orthodox religiousness.12 But this view of Peter’s religious beliefs, somewhat revisionist at the time and founded, it seems, mainly on the testimony of Petrine loyalists, has not been widely shared by historians. Thus, in his lengthy introduction to a large collection of contemporary observations, reminiscences, and anecdotes about Peter, to cite another approach, E. V. Anisimov asks whether the great tsar-reformer was religious at all, noting that “most investigators have not come to a definitive answer to this question—so contradictory is the surviving evidence.” On the one hand, as Anisimov rightly says, a whole series of Petrine initiatives, “above all the reform of the church, leading to its complete subordination to state power,” gave rise to Peter’s “undying reputation among the popular masses as the ‘tobacco atheist,’ the ‘antichrist.’” Yet on reading Peter’s “thousands of surviving letters,” on the other hand, Anisimov is struck, as anyone must be, by their “testimony to an indubitable religious sentiment.” So I think [Anisimov rather abruptly concludes] that on the whole the tsar was not overly involved with God. He drew on a series of principles which reconciled his faith with reason. He thought that it made no sense to starve soldiers on campaign by not giving them meat on fastdays—they needed their strength for a victory for Russia, which also meant for Orthodoxy. It’s well known how suspiciously Peter looked on all miracles, relics, and such like.13 We notice, in moving on, the sharp contrast, if not contradiction, between these two interpretations of the evidence regarding Peter’s religious beliefs, a disparity which reflects, perhaps, their authors’ own divergent views of religion more than it does Peter’s. Still another answer to the question before us has been offered by a leading British student of the Petrine period, L. R. Lewitter, whose tack is evident in the title of his relevant essay, “Peter the Great’s Attitude towards Religion: From Traditional Piety to Rational Theology.”14 Professor Lewitter finds that in maturity Peter was “an objective sympathizer with the spirit of Protestantism” rather than a “crypto-Protestant” (as has often been alleged by Orthodox critics).15 This was the “spirit” an12

  A. V. Kartashev, Ocherki po istorii russkoi tserkvi (Paris: YMCA Press, 1959; repr., Moscow: Terra, 1992–93), 2: 320–32.

13   E. V. Anisimov, “Tsar´-reformator,” in Petr Velikii: Vospominaniia, dnevnikovye zapisi, anekdoty, ed. B. V. Anan´ich et al. (Moscow: Vneshsigma, 1993), 21–22. 14   In Roger P. Bartlett et al., eds., Russia and the World of the Eighteenth Century (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1986), 62–77. 15

  Most famously, by Father Georges Florovsky, in his Ways of Russian Theology, trans. Robert L. Nichols, 2 vols. (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979, 1987), vol. 1, chap. 4 (esp. 114–30); originally published as G. Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1937; repr., Paris: YMCA-Press, 1981).

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imating society in the countries which “furnished him with models for his work of modernization and reform—Holland, Sweden and Denmark”: England and Prussia should be added. But more than this “Protestant component,” Lewitter proposes, “Peter’s private creed included another essential or possibly overriding factor,” namely, his belief, as recorded by Peter himself in one of his notebooks, that (Lewitter’s translation) “reasoned judgement [rassuzhdenie] is above all virtues, for any virtue without reason is hollow.”16 This “maxim” of Peter’s later years, Lewitter continues, is a “fitting motto to a whole chain of acts, decisions and intentions,” including the church reform. Peter’s mature “conception of salvation was an individual one,” and rested in “the belief in justification by faith alone,” wherefore he “died, as he may for many years have lived, a justified sinner.” It was also “consistent with this inwardness that, as far as he himself was concerned, he should have regarded the Church of which he was the de facto head not as a vehicle for salvation but as a convenient instrument of control, through catechization, of the private and public conduct of is subjects.” Lewitter’s formulations are considerably more attentive to the documents than any other known to me,17 and are particularly sensitive to what Peter himself actually wrote about religion in connection with his church reform, or otherwise. His approach needs to be further explored and documented. This has been one direction, in fact, of my own continuing research. A Pietist-like view of sin and salvation, one which sought to supplement or even replace the emphasis on institutions, rites, and dogma in orthodox Christianity (to include Russian Orthodoxy) by concentrating on the “practice of piety,” the latter as rooted in inner spiritual experience, had by his later years come to form the core of Peter’s religious beliefs and hence, in his eyes, to justify if not to necessitate his church reform—a reform which, as indicated above, went well beyond the institution of new administrative arrangements. This austere, moralistic, Providential, scrupulously scriptural, internalized kind of Christianity, at once mystical and “enlightened,” or rational, had flowered in Peter’s time especially in northern Europe, the Europe in which he had traveled extensively in 1697–98 and again in 1716–17 (a total of nearly three years), on both tours invariably stopping to visit local churches and talk with local divines. It was the Europe, too, from which many of his senior officers and assistants had come, including Vice Admiral Cornelius Cruys, General James Bruce, Doctors Nicholas Bidloo, Robert Erskine, and Laurens Blumentrost, and Herr Heinrich Fick, who jointly and severally helped him to found the Russian navy, a modern army and 16

  Lewitter, “Peter’s Attitude towards Religion,” 72; Lewitter does not cite his source here, but obviously is quoting from a note by Peter: “Vyshe vsekh dobrodetelei razsuzhdenie, ibo vsiakaia dobradetel bez razuma—pusta,” as printed in Zakonodatel´nye akty Petra I [hereafter ZAP], ed. N. A. Voskresenskii (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1945), no. 211 (p. 151), from the original in Peter’s own hand. 17

  This includes the complex, cultural-historical interpretation, emphasizing Baroque affinities, offered by Reinhard Wittram, “Peters des Grossen Verhältnis zur Religion und den Kirchen: Glaube, Vernunft, Leidenschaft,” Historische Zeitschrift 173 (1952): 261–96; also Wittram, Peter I, Czar und Kaiser: Zur Geschichte Peters des Grossen in seiner Zeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), 2: 170–81.

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medical service, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and the collegial system of central government of which the Holy Synod (originally called the Ecclesiastical College) formed an integral part. Two additional traits distinguished this spreading Pietism from other mystical and reformist trends in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe, to quote the late Leonard Krieger, namely, “individualism and activism: pietists were individualistic in that they regarded the religious experience as essentially personal, and they were activist in their encouragement of good social works as the only authentic expressions of piety.”18 By the time he returned from his second major tour of Europe, I would now argue, Peter had been thoroughly influenced by a generic form of Pietism, one marked by a strongly Providential outlook and set of public moral values that nowise required him to renounce the institutional church of his fathers—no more than it had required its adherents elsewhere in Christendom to renounce the Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, or Roman Catholic Churches in which they had been reared. This was the Peter who vigorously affirmed the ambitious educational provisions of the Ecclesiastical Regulation of 1721, which envisioned the foundation of a school for sons of clergy in every diocese and an advanced ecclesiastical academy in St. Petersburg. This was the Peter who pushed for an up-to-date translation of the Bible, which had only once before been printed in Russia, back in 1663, a Moscow edition of the Ruthenian (Ostrikh) Bible of 1581; in February 1724 he ordered the Synod to proceed with the printing of this “newly corrected Bible” [novoispravlennaia bibliia], though for one reason or another that was not done until 1751, in the reign of his daughter, Empress Elizabeth.19 And this was the Peter who in a letter to the synod of 19 April 1724, the last year of his life, wrote: Most Holy Synod. I have long urged in conversation, and now [do so] in writing, that brief precepts be composed for people (since we have very few educated preachers); also a book wherein would be explained what is unchanging divine law, what are counsels, what patristic traditions, and what intermediate things, and what is done only for rite and ritual, and what is unchanged and what has changed according to time and chance, so that they can know what sort of importance each has. On the first [the precepts], it seems to me that … in them should be explained what is the straight path of salvation, and especially Faith, Hope, and Charity (for about the first and the last they know very little, and that incorrectly [ne priamo], while about the middle one they have 18

  L. Krieger, Kings and Philosophers, 1689–1789 (New York: Norton, 1970), 149; and see now, for the religious background, James D. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 1450–1650 (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). On Pietism, the subject of a large literature, see the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1286, with full bibliography; and for its role in contemporary Prussian state-building, for example, Richard L. Gawthrop, Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

19

  ZAP, no. 193 (pp. 142–43); and further, M. I. Rizhskii, Istoriia perevodov Biblii v Rossii (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1978), 116–20.

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not heard, since they put all their hope in church singing, fasts, prostrations, and such like, and in building churches, candles, and incense); and about the suffering of Christ they believe that it was only for a single original sin, and that they will be saved by their own works, such as those just mentioned.20 By the end of his life, arguably, Peter himself had come to believe in the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, as Professor Lewitter suggested. It was an individualistic creed by any reckoning and one that discounted “church singing, fasts, prostrations, and such like,” precisely the traditional forms of Russian Orthodox piety, in favor of the leading of an upright moral life. Such a life meant, for the mass of his subjects, essentially one of duty and obedience to higher authority, ultimately the tsar’s; for the tsar himself, as a “Christian monarch,” a phrase he repeatedly used, it meant total submission to the will of God, which was to be discerned in the course of events, along with acceptance of the responsibility actively to guide his subjects on the “straight path of salvation,” another favorite phrase. Indeed, this was the message conveyed unmistakably in the catechism that was composed at Peter’s urging by Feofan Prokopovich and first printed at St. Petersburg in 1720, after which it was so frequently reprinted as to become, very possibly, the most widely distributed book in eighteenth-century Russia.21 It was a Pietist kind of Orthodoxy that in significant measure motivated Peter’s church reform, in sum; and some of the longer-term outcomes of that reform, particularly of its educational provisions, were surely as beneficial for both church and society in Russia as others—those usually highlighted by us secular historians—were detrimental.22 At the very least, this possibility might serve as a hypothesis guiding future research in the still under-studied field of Russian Orthodoxy in the imperial or synodal period. Equally important, we might more profitably approach the subject by looking at all seven of Orthodoxy’s aspects following the scheme outlined earlier in this essay by Ninian Smart, not just at the institutional or social dimensions on which historians, even church historians, have so far tended to concentrate.23 And when this much has been done, we can reasonably predict, the legacy of the Petrine church reform in Russia will be seen in positive as well as negative terms—as a crucial step, for one thing, in the europeanization (or modernization) of Russian religious culture. The Petrine reform, in still other words, infused Russian Orthodoxy—and by extension, Russian society, especially educated society—with a moral seriousness, an attention to duty and a social conscience, that was not there before. 20

  ZAP, no. 195 (pp. 143–44); original in Peter’s hand.

21

 Cracraft, Church Reform, 276–87; and further, Cracraft, “Feofan Prokopovich: A Bibliography of His Works,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, n.s. 8 (1975), 26–27 (no. 123). 22

  For a conspicuous example of the detrimental view, see the well-known work by Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Scribner, 1974), chap. 9: “The Church as Servant of the State,” which draws on my Church Reform. 23

  E.g., Gregory L. Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).

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The other main point of this essay, which can be stated briefly, concerns the new or better perspective on Peter’s church reform and the ensuing synodal regime in Russia that has been afforded us by the further passage of time. For the collapse of Communist rule in Russia has entailed an intensified scrutiny by scholars of various aspects of the history of that rule, a scrutiny that has of course been facilitated by the relatively freer access to state and party archives that has ensued. This newly invigorated research, in combination perhaps with the declining force of secularization theory, has focused increasing attention on the fate of religion and the church in Soviet Russia, among other previously neglected topics. I cite some of the published results of this research in my Cunningham Memorial Lecture, the better to understand the Russian (rather than “Marxist”) roots of the devastation that befell the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917 and the virulence of the successive anti-church campaigns.24 But a larger concern of the lecture was to highlight the contrasts (rather than alleged continuities) between the anti-church regime established in Russia under Lenin and Stalin and the state-church regime established by Peter. The contrasts—in declared intention, methods of implementation, concrete results—are indeed stark, and alone negate the contention, I suggested in my lecture and would repeat here, that the Petrine reform was somehow ultimately responsible for what happened to the church in Russia, and to countless religious believers, after 1917.25 Peter, clearly, sought by his reform to strengthen the Russian Church as a moral and educational institution, and this mainly by curbing the clergy’s involvement in financial, political, and other “unseemly” affairs and by drastically improving their training. The Communists, by contrast, sought to destroy the church by any and all means, this as a prerequisite for the eradication of religion in Russia and the establishment of a socialist utopia. The tragic folly of their program becomes clearer the more its history is dispassionately uncovered and exposed to the light of a new day. It was certainly plausible for church reformers in Russia in 1917 to indict the synodal administration for its excessive dependence on the reactionary and thoroughly discredited government of Nicholas II, which had made it an obstacle to, rather than

24

  In addition to works cited in Cracraft, “Church and Revolution,” 34 nn. 20, 23, see Gedr Shtrikker, ed., Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov´ v sovetskoe vremia (1917–1991): Materialy i dokumenty po istorii otnoshenii mezhdu gosudarstvom i tserkov´iu, 2 vols. (Moscow: PROPILEI, 1995); M. V. Shkarovskii, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov´ i sovetskoe gosudarstvo v 1943–1964 godakh: Ot “peremiriia” k novoi voine (St. Petersburg: DEAN+ADIA-M, 1995); Shkarovskii, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov´ pri Staline i Khrushcheve (Moscow: Graal´, 1999); Glennys Young, Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997); and N. N. Pokrovskii and S. G. Petrov, eds., Arkhivy Kremlia: Politbiuro i tserkov´, 1922–1925, 2 vols. (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997–98). 25

  The contention is conspicuously advanced, as noted in my Cunningham lecture, by the historians P. N. Miliukov and E. V. Anisimov, the latter in the work cited above (n. 10).

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an instrument of, ecclesiastical and religious renewal.26 But that is a far cry from similarly condemning the synodal regime of the entire imperial period, from its foundation in 1721 to its demise in 1917–18. And the mistake of so doing, I would urge in conclusion, will be obvious when its full record is compared with that of the anti-church regime of the whole Soviet period, now being documented by the new research. Indeed, it will be seen as a mistake comparable to, and perhaps derived from, that of confusing early modern political absolutism with twentieth-century totalitarianism, which surely are as different, on close comparison, as water and wine.27 My sincere thanks again to Professor Stavrou for urging me to pursue these questions, though I cannot assume, fine scholar that he is, and judicious colleague, that he will approve of how I have done so: Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas!

26

  See also Catherine Evtuhov, “The Church in the Russian Revolution: Arguments for and against Restoring the Patriarchate at the Church Council of 1917–1918,” Slavic Review 50, 3 (1991): 497–511. 27

  A point vigorously argued by G. Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, trans. David McLintock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), chap. 15.

A Russian Pilgrim in Ottoman Jerusalem Theophilus C. Prousis

Introduction The prospects of travel, trade, and religious pilgrimage in the Levant fascinated generations of Russia’s men and women from the twelfth to the early twentieth century. In particular, the storied sacred sites of Jerusalem attracted the curiosity of myriad Russian travelers: monks and priests, merchants and diplomats, writers and artists, scholars and tourists.1 Dmitrii V. Dashkov (1784–1839) etched his name in the annals of these visitors with a brief sojourn in Ottoman Palestine in 1820, and his travelogue, rendered here in English, merits attention as a document that offers eyewitness testimony, firsthand observation, and telling detail. These qualities make the narrative a likely choice to be included in a projected collection of resources on tsarist Russia’s relations with the Ottoman Near East, a compendium that assembles select archival, manuscript, and published sources and presents them in an accessible format for students and scholars alike.2 1   For the extensive travel literature on Palestine, see Theofanis G. Stavrou and Peter R. Weisensel, Russian Travelers to the Christian East from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Centuries (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1986). For the larger story of Imperial Russia’s activities in Palestine, see Theofanis G. Stavrou, Russian Interests in Palestine: A Study of Religious and Educational Enterprise (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963); Derek Hopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine, 1843–1914: Church and Politics in the Near East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); and Stephen K. Batalden and Michael D. Palma, “Orthodox Pilgrimage and Russian Landholding in Jerusalem: The British Colonial Record,” in Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia, ed. Batalden (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 251–63. See also the publication by Nikolai N. Lisovoi, Russkoe dukhovnoe i politicheskoe prisutstvie v Sviatoi Zemle i na Blizhnem Vostoke v XIX–nachale XX v. (Moscow: Indrik, 2006). 2

  A resource aide, drawing upon Russian records and reports, would sharpen our view of various aspects of imperial Russia’s involvement in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions and in the wider Eastern Question. Worthy models to emulate are the useful compendia of sources on Ottoman Greece by neohellenist Richard Clogg, ed., The Movement for Greek Independence, 1770–1821: A Collection of Documents (London: Macmillan, 1976); and on Ottoman Turkey by Middle East scholar Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Turkey, 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). See also the two-volume collection Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 101–25.

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An enlightened state official with a literary flair, Dashkov served a six-year term as diplomatic adviser and secretary at the Russian Embassy in Istanbul from 1817 to 1822. Envoy Grigorii A. Stroganov (1770–1857) assigned Dashkov to inspect consulates in the Levant as part of the embassy’s effort to upgrade the conduct and competence of Russian consular staff.3 The expedition entailed a stop in Palestine, where, as part of his itinerary, the inspector had to gather concrete information on the seemingly endless “monks’ quarrel,” the dispute between Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and other Christian sects over the right to control various holy places in Jerusalem, most notably the legendary tomb of Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Dashkov’s unpublished correspondence with Stroganov and the consuls deals with the investigation of consular offices; but his published descriptions of the excursion, appearing in the almanac Northern Flowers edited by poet and critic Anton A. Del´vig (1798–1831), relate impressions and observations of Mount Athos, the Topkapi Library, and Jerusalem.4 For three weeks, in August and September 1820, Dashkov toured fabled sites in and around the Holy City: Mount Zion, Bethlehem, Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea. With keen perception, lyricism, and erudition, his chronicle evokes some of the sights, sounds, and struggles of arguably the world’s most contested “battlegrounds of memory.”5 Dashkov combines vignettes of resources edited by Nikolai N. Lisovoi, Rossiia v Sviatoi Zemle: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2000). 3

  On Dashkov’s inspection of consulates, as well as his sundry writings and memoranda on Near Eastern affairs, see my book, Russian-Ottoman Relations in the Levant: The Dashkov Archive, Minnesota Mediterranean and East European Monographs, no. 10 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2002), largely based on Dashkov’s personal fond in the Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg. This publication includes my translations of selected passages from Dashkov’s Palestine report (106–12). Excerpts can also be found in my “The Holy Places: A Russian Travel Perspective,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, 3 (2005): 271–96; “Landscape of the Levant: A Russian View,” Chronos 10 (2004): 49–67; and “Romanticism and Russian Travel Literature: Dashkov’s Tour of Ottoman Palestine,” Canadian American Slavic Studies 38, 4 (2004): 431–42. 4

  Dashkov published the following pieces in Northern Flowers (Severnye tsvety): “Afonskaia gora: Otryvok iz puteshestviia po Gretsii v 1820 godu” (1825): 119–61, with descriptions of the monasteries on Mount Athos, the fount of Orthodox spirituality; “Izvestiia o grecheskikh i latinskikh rukopisiakh v seral´skoi biblioteke” (1825): 162–65, and “Eshche neskol´ko slov o seral´skoi biblioteke” (1826): 283–96, on Latin and Greek manuscripts in the Topkapi Library, Istanbul; and “Russkie poklonniki v Ierusalime: Otryvok iz puteshestviia po Gretsii i Palestine v 1820 godu” (1826): 214–83, reprinted as a supplement to Russkii arkhiv (1881): 203–69. On Del´vig’s literary journal, see John Mersereau, Jr., Baron Delvig’s “Northern Flowers,” 1825–1832: Literary Almanac of the Pushkin Pleiad (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967).

5

  Amos Elon, Jerusalem: Battlegrounds of Memory (New York: Kodansha America, 1995); and Thomas A. Idinopulos, Jerusalem: A History of the Holiest City as Seen Through the Struggles of Jews, Christians, and Muslims (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994). Also useful is the

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of the natural landscape with geographic, topographical, and historical particulars on the prominent landmarks. Citing Old and New Testaments, Virgil and Petrarch, Tasso and Milton, Gibbon and Chateaubriand, as well as previous Russian pilgrims, the work displays a sharp eye for detail, an aesthetic sensibility, and vivid descriptive power. His passages resonate with some of the defining qualities of Romanticism, such as fascination with the “exotic” and the “picturesque” and reverence for the power, mystery, and primitive beauty of nature. The account echoes conventional images and prevalent biases in European travel writing on the Ottoman Empire, as Dashkov paints an overly negative picture of the “oriental other.” He accents episodes of oppression, extortion, and related abuses of power by regional administrative officials, in this case Palestine’s chief authority, the pasha of Damascus and Acre.6 In sections on the holy places, the author voices harsh criticism of the internecine squabble between Christian communities over worship and custodial rights. Deep-seated resentment, malice, and bitterness, shared by all sides in this rivalry, offer little hope of forbearance or reconciliation between Latins, Greeks, and other feuding sects. Lastly, the inspector provides specific data on Russia’s pilgrims—their itinerary, expenses, accommodation, and worship at different sites. Excerpts from Dashkov’s report have been published in an anthology of Russian travel literature on the holy lands in the first half of the nineteenth century.7 I have worked from the Dashkov passages in this edition, endeavoring to render the narrative into clear idiomatic English without altering its meaning or essence. Though I have changed Dashkov’s sentence structure and syntax in some spots to make the composition more readable, I have generally remained faithful to the author’s writing style, including such particulars as his use of capital letters, colons, semicolons, and exclamation marks. Any material in parenthesis is part of Dashkov’s original text; I collection of travel excerpts in Francis E. Peters, Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). 6

  For a good introduction to the perceptions of European travelers on the Ottoman Empire in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Allan Cunningham, “The Sick Man and the British Physician,” in Eastern Questions in the Nineteenth Century: Collected Essays (London: Frank Cass, 1993), 72–107. Also useful on traditional European attitudes towards Muslims in general and Ottoman Turks in particular are Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); and Norman Daniel, Islam, Europe and Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966). Dashkov’s account of Palestine belongs to the larger story of Europe’s renewed fascination for Jerusalem and the holy places in the nineteenth century. See Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1979); and Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders: The Western Rediscovery of Palestine (London: William Collins Sons, 1987). 7

  K. Urguzova et al., Sviatye mesta v blizi i izdali: Putevye zametki russkikh pisatelei i poloviny XIX veka (Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura, RAN and Shkola-Press, 1995), 17-36, 289-300. This noteworthy anthology, with explanatory notes and a helpful introduction, contains passages from the Near Eastern travels of Osip I. Senkovskii, Andrei N. Murav´ev, Avraam S. Norov, and Petr A. Viazemskii.

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have added brackets for my own emendations, translations of foreign terms, and brief explications. The occasional ellipsis denotes a word or phrase I considered extraneous, Dashkov’s scholarly references which I have inserted in the notes, or an ellipsis in the excerpts published in the anthology. I have retained Dashkov’s notes, either summarizing or translating his comments, and have added some notes of my own for supplemental information or relevant sources on a particular topic. All dates are in the Old Style Julian calendar, which in the nineteenth century lagged twelve days behind the New Style Gregorian calendar. I have translated geographic place names in the form employed by Dashkov, for instance Smyrna instead of modern-day Izmir, and Constantinople instead of Istanbul. Clarification is needed on Dashkov’s usage of the term “Turks.” Frequently, he is referring to Ottoman Muslims, both Turks and Arabs; yet in some cases he differentiates between the two groups, as when he mentions Arab Muslims of Jerusalem or Bedouin Arab tribes of Palestine. More confusion reigns when he cites “Greeks,” “Greek religion,” or “Greek church.” The official Ottoman designation for Orthodox Christian subjects, Millet-i Rum, or Greek millet, encompassed all Orthodox believers in the sultan’s domain, including Serbs, Romanians, Bulgars, Vlachs, Albanians, and Arabs, as well as Greeks.8 Since Greeks or Hellenized Orthodox often controlled the patriarchates, coffers, and administrative offices of the church’s ecclesiastical hierarchy until the latter part of the nineteenth century, it was quite common for travelers and scholars to use “Greek faith” or “Greek church” to signify the Eastern Orthodox church in Ottoman-ruled lands. Thus, for Dashkov, “Greek religion” and “Greek church” are usually synonymous with the Eastern Orthodox faith and church in the Ottoman Empire, while “Greeks” often refers to Ottoman Orthodox Christians. To complicate matters, in addition to “Greeks,” Dashkov identifies various other Eastern Orthodox sects or churches—Syrians, Georgians, Abyssinians, Maronites, Armenians—with competing claims to the holy places. Dmitrii V. Dashkov: “Russkie poklonniki v Ierusalime: Otryvok iz puteshestviia po Gretsii i Palestine v 1820 godu” (“Russian Pilgrims in Jerusalem: An Excerpt from a Journey to Greece and Palestine in 1820”) Anyone who has never been at sea cannot readily fathom that a beautiful summer day can sometimes seem more unbearable than bad weather in winter. Yet we discovered this firsthand during the tedious crossing from Rhodes to Jaffa. A calm sea caught us unawares in view of the fortress of Castel-Rosso, on the coast of Karamania, and for five whole days we could not move from this spot.9 Our eyes wearied from the monotony in every aspect of nature: from morning till evening the sea gleamed like 8   Richard Clogg, “The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, 2 vols. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), 1: 185–202. 9

  Castel-Rosso, or Kastelorizon, is the Italian name for a small Greek island off the coast of Turkey. Karamania, the coastal area of south central Turkey, is named after the town of Karaman.

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a looking-glass, while the sky was cloudless. The intolerable heat and stuffiness in the cabin, the sweltering intense heat on the deck (where melting tar bubbled on the ropes and planks), [and] the mournful tap of sails on the masts aroused despondency in us and made us regret the storms we had contended with in these very same places en route from Egypt to the Morea.… Like those times when, after a storm of passions, in moral slumber and with disgust for whatever had previously captivated us, we regret the profound misfortunes that have shaken our existence but elevated the soul!… Eventually, a slight breeze helped us enter the pier at Castel-Rosso, where with difficulty we stocked up with fetid water. The fortress is built on a small precipitous island, looking as if it has been torn from the mainland, and the inhabitants must procure requisite foodstuffs from afar. We continued to idle for more than a day opposite the southern promontory of Cyprus (Cao Gatte), waiting for a fair wind.10 A powerful sea current pulled the ship westward and carried us away from [our] desired destination. The Syrian coast did not come into view until 20 August [1820]: first, the summit of Mount Carmel appeared to the left; then, directly in front of us, the whitish seacoast of Caesarea; and to the right the range of lofty mountains near Jerusalem. With intensity and avid curiosity we gazed upon this land, so consequential in the history of mankind, rich in wonders and in monumental events, cradle of the Christian faith; the land where the legends of the Old and New Testaments live, where every hill, every thicket, every ruin resonate with deeds of the Prophets and of celebrated heroes. The entire area, from Sur (ancient Tyre) to Gaza, is extremely dangerous for vessels during the stormy season; and Greek sailors, excluding daring islanders from Hydra, Psara, and Spetsae, were on the whole inexperienced seafarers outside the Archipelago at that time. Fortunately, our karavokyris (captain of the ship), a native of Skiathos, had already brought worshipers to Jaffa on several occasions and, with firm knowledge of these parts, pledged to steer the ship to the roadstead even at night. He kept his word and at daybreak dropped anchor one or two versts from town.11 We made it to shore with him in a small boat, maneuvering carefully between huge boulders against which the waves crashed with a roar, and went to rest at the Greek metochion [monastic living quarters or cloister], where the abbot received us with hospitality. With his help, we dispatched to the episcopal deputies in Jerusalem the certificate, from Most Blessed Patriarch Polykarp,12 informing them of our visit. Jaffa (ancient Joppa) was once a focal point of trade between Palestine, Egypt, and adjacent islands. Today, under the negligent and rapacious rule of the Turks, the 10

  Cao Gatte, or Cape of Cats, lies near the Monastery of St. Nicholas. According to medieval legend, monks relied on cats to attack the many snakes of the region. 11

 One verst is the equivalent of around 3,500 feet.

12

  This explanatory note by Dashkov gives the full title of the patriarch of Jerusalem: “Most Blessed and Most Holy Father and Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem and of all Palestine, Syria, Arabia beyond the Jordan River, Galilean Canaan, and Holy Zion.” When the patriarch of Jerusalem transferred his residence to Istanbul, church affairs in Jerusalem were handled by two episcopal deputies.

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wharf is covered with sand and comes to life only during the passage of pilgrims. The town is built with terraces, almost all hewn from stone, with a deep moat and a wall that abuts the sea on both sides; the streets are narrow, while the houses are unsightly and look as if they have been crushed by the flat roofs. Yet the outskirts, on the road to Jerusalem, are attractive: from the very [town] gates extend the large gardens and vineyards praised by all travelers. We found the inhabitants [of Jaffa] in a state of confusion and fear. Abdullah, the new pasha of Damascus and Acre (Jaffa is under his jurisdiction), having disregarded the important services rendered to him by a Jew named Chaim, ordered this unfortunate soul killed and his corpse thrown into the sea: all religious believers, Greeks as well as Muslims, regretted the undeserved execution of a person who had been a benefactor to them.13 At the same time, a detachment of troops suddenly encircled the town of Safed, populated by Jews, and forcibly collected from them a tribute payment equivalent to a ten-year tax levy. Turks and foreign merchants did not escape abuse; European consuls, persons of little significance and timid, did not dare resist, and all authorities trembled before the new ruler, whose unlawful absolute power and rage threatened Palestine with a second Ahmet Cezzar Pasha.14 But for us these circumstances were propitious. The mütesellim (deputy governor) of Jaffa, afraid to cause complaints, swiftly took measures to protect us from any sort of disturbance all the way to Jerusalem and sternly prohibited Arab sheiks from demanding the customary kafaro, or road dues, which Russian subjects have been released [from paying] by Article Eight of the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji.15 13

  Dashkov elaborates this incident in his footnote: “Chaim enjoyed the trust of the previous pashas, Cezzar and Suleiman; but having angered the former on one occasion, he lost his ears and nose. One of the European consuls advised [Chaim], in a friendly conversation, to leave for any Christian state, where his acquired wealth (the spoils of his murder!) would have provided him with the means to end his days in plenty and in peace.… Stinginess did not keep [Chaim] in a land where the property and life of each person are in constant danger, but force of habit, blind faith in destiny, and a certain innate indifference, [all of which] comprise a distinctive feature in the character of eastern [Near Eastern] peoples.” Shepherd (The Zealous Intruders, 20) mentions that Cezzar (Djezzar) Pasha disfigured and mutilated the face of the Jewish banker Chaim (Haim) Farhi. 14

  The arbitrariness and cruelty of Abdullah (Abdallah), pasha of Damascus and Acre from 1819 to 1831, reminded Dashkov of the former governor of Ottoman Syria, Ahmet Cezzar Pasha (d. 1804), who brutally suppressed local risings, extended his personal rule over much of Palestine, and defended Acre against Napoleonic forces in 1799. On Ahmet Cezzar (Djezzar) Pasha, the “butcher of Acre,” see Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 1: Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 253, 268–70; and Ben-Arieh, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land, 26–31. On the extensive powers of local warlords in Ottoman Syria, such as Abdullah Pasha, see Thomas Philipp, Acre: The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian City, 1730–1831 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). 15

  This landmark treaty (1774), following the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, granted Russia wide-ranging commercial, diplomatic, and religious rights in the Ottoman Empire, including freedom of passage for Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem. Article Eight stipulated that “no …

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Having procured, for a moderate price, the necessary horses and camels, we left Jaffa before evening on 22 August, accompanied by an official from the mütesellim and by monastic dragomans [interpreters], and rode past the lovely Sharon Valley to Ramleh (ancient Arimathea): we spent several hours there, waiting for the moon to appear above the horizon.16 From [Ramleh] the plain rises imperceptibly to the base of the Judean mountains, barren and inhabited by sparsely populated tribes of rapacious Arabs. Entering a gorge, we saw another aspect of nature: wild places, with almost no signs of human activity, where ruins traced with shrubbery appear here and there on the hills, like graves from ancient times. The road, rocky and difficult, now winds along steep grades, now descends to deep hollows on the bottom of parched streams. This look of a wilderness, quite vividly and accurately portrayed by Chateaubriand …, imbues the soul with melancholy: there, the whistling wind and the piercing bark of jackals muffle the clamor of escorts and the clatter of horses’ hoofs.17 Upon arrival in a poor Arab village, about fifteen versts from Jerusalem, we were stopped by order of Sheik Abu Ghush, the terror of pilgrims, with an urgent request to call on him for a rest.18 We found him in a small courtyard, sitting in the shade on contribution, duty, or other tax shall be exacted from those pilgrims and travelers by any one whomsoever, either at Jerusalem or elsewhere, or on the road.… During their sojourn in the Ottoman Empire, they shall not suffer the least wrong or injury; but, on the contrary, shall be under the strictest protection of the laws. Quoted in Jacob C. Hurewitz, ed., The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, 1: European Expansion, 1535–1914, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 95. 16

  The Sharon or Saron Valley, a plain along the coast of Palestine from Mount Carmel to Jaffa, is known for the “Rose of Sharon” and for its fertility in biblical times. Ramleh (Ramla today), supposedly the birthplace of Joseph of Arimathea, the disciple who provided the tomb for Christ’s body after the crucifixion, became a prominent Islamic center after the Muslim conquest and served as the Arab capital of Palestine before the First Crusade. 17   On numerous occasions in his narrative, Dashkov acknowledges the influence of the romanticized Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (1811) by François René Chateaubriand (1768–1848), citing passages from this hugely successful and widely read work, which appeared in twelve editions from 1811 to 1814. Ironically, Chateaubriand visited Jerusalem for only four days during his two-week tour of Palestine in 1806; yet his vivid but disparaging remarks on the region’s barren landscape, poverty, misery, and lawlessness, as well as his bias against Muslims, echoed in the travel writings of countless European tourists and pilgrims, including Dashkov. For more on Chateaubriand’s highly subjective account of the Holy City, see Said, Orientalism, 169–79; Peters, Jerusalem, 545–46, 560–64, 578–83; and Elon, Jerusalem, 131–34. 18

  With the breakdown of Ottoman ruling institutions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, administrative control over Palestine and Syria was endangered by unruly Bedouin tribes who disrupted trade and pilgrimage caravans in the region. To thwart these disorders, the Ottoman government selected various families and tribes to safeguard these routes. The tribe headed by Abu Ghush was assigned to police the pilgrimage road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, an appointment abused by the sheik to squeeze excessive tolls and dues from Christian worshipers. See Kamil J. Asali, “Jerusalem under the Ottomans, 1516–1831 AD,” in Jerusalem in History: 3000 BC to the Present Day, ed. Asali, rev. ed. (London: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 200–27, especially 208–09; and Peters, Jerusalem, 543–45.

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bast mats and surrounded by elders of his tribe. They all received us very warmly. Abu Ghush boasted of his acquaintance with the English queen, the spouse of George IV, and with the eminent Sidney Smith, displayed the gifts he had received from them with the obvious intention of arousing our own generosity and, treating us amicably, set out to accompany the caravan beyond the village.19 He sat on a splendid horse and rode it with remarkable agility; while descending the Terebinth Valley, he rushed at full tilt down the precipitous slope, not reeling in the saddle and ceaselessly urging on the horse with wide and sharp spurs.20 Bidding farewell, he promised to visit us in al-Quds, vowed never to harass Russian travelers, and asked us to put in a kind word for him with the dreaded pasha of Damascus and Acre.21 It is impossible to imagine anything more desolate than the environs of Jerusalem: mountains, precipices, ravines without greenery, nearly treeless, everywhere blanketed with round stones; it appeared as if a shower of stones had fallen from the sky upon this ungodly land. Around midday, exhausted by the intense heat, we ascended a height and saw before us a line of crenellated walls and towers, surrounded by neither settlements nor scattered huts and looking as if they were stirring slightly in the middle of the desert. Upon first glance at these ancient ramparts—the city of David, Herod, and Godfrey of Bouillon—thousands of recollections, one more vivid than another, one more holy than another, press against the heart.22 Let cold-hearted minds deride the raptures of worshipers! Here, at the foot of Zion, everyone is a Christian, everyone a believer, who has but retained an ardent heart and a love for the majestic! Notified in advance from Jaffa, Greek monks met us at the western gate (Bab alKhalil), welcoming us on behalf of the second episcopal deputy, Procopius (the chief deputy, the archbishop of Arabian Petra, was visiting his diocese at that time), and took us to the monastic house set aside for us near the patriarchate and the Church

19

  Sir Sidney Smith (1764–1840) was the English admiral who successfully defended the fortress of Acre from Napoleon’s army in 1799. Dashkov’s footnote mentions that Smith gave Sheik Abu Ghush an offprint inscribed with Arabic quotations from the Koran in praise of Christians and their zeal for prayer. 20

  The Terebinth is the valley where David gathered stones for his sling before the battle with Goliath. 21

  Dashkov’s explanatory note correctly states that Muslims considered Jerusalem a holy city, ranked with Mecca and Medina as the most important sacred centers of the Islamic faith. Muslims call Jerusalem al-Quds (The Holy One), Bait al-Maqdis (City of the Sanctuary), or Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary). 22

  David, the second king of Israel and Judah after Saul, captured the fortress of Zion and supposedly wrote the Psalms. Herod the Great was king of Judea (37–4 BC) during the time of Christ, while his son Herod Antipas ruled Galilee from 4 BC to 39 AD Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, conquered Jerusalem in 1099 and became the first Latin ruler of the Holy City and defender of the Lord’s Tomb.

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of the Resurrection [Church of the Holy Sepulcher].23 They provided us with the greatest possible aid and comfort in this hospitable refuge, and in absolute freedom we devoted ourselves to worshiping sacred places and to seeing every noteworthy site in and around the city. I will not begin to relate what has already been described countless times by erudite and perceptive travelers, about which so many have argued and continue to argue, expounding differently the tales of the ancients. Every pace in the new [city of] Jerusalem is measured; but the extent of the old city is still subject to question, and the whereabouts of some spots, mentioned in the Old Testament and the Gospels, have not been satisfactorily determined. We know that the new city encompasses only a portion of the former [city], destroyed by Titus in 71 AD [the destruction actually occurred in 70 AD]. Flavius Josephus … asserts that the circumference of the walls comprised thirty-three stadia [somewhat more than 6.5 miles]; today it contains, according to the testimony of Maundrell, only 4,630 standard paces, or around three versts.24 Some critics, trying to reconcile on-site observations with the text of the Jewish historian, reduce the dimensions of his stadia; others simply accuse him of inaccuracy and exaggeration—though experience has proven that one should never be so quick to criticize ancient writers and that the most recent exact surveys have often corroborated their information, which had seemed like fables to us. The inquisitive can get an idea of the debates, upon which are based the various opinions of scholars on the location of Mount Zion, Golgotha, and related sites, having read the essay by d’Anville … and the article by Ritter.25 … Chateaubriand accepts the authority of the

23

  Petra, an early center of Christianity today located in Jordan, is renowned for its picturesque ancient tombs carved in the pink rock. Known to Roman Catholics as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and to Eastern Orthodox as the Church of the Resurrection, this central shrine of Christianity comprises a cavernous complex of chapels, altars, and passageways commemorating the places of Christ’s crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. See Charles Coüasnon, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (London: Oxford University Press, 1974); and Peters, Jerusalem, 133–37, 203–06, 311–14, 437–42, 566–67, 572–79. Recent descriptions of this foremost Christian shrine include Martin Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 1999); and Martin Biddle et al., The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (New York: Rizzoli, 2000). 24

  Dashkov refers to two of the most reliable sources on the topography and circumference of Jerusalem: The Jewish War, by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37–100 AD), and A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, at Easter, A.D. 1697 (1703), by Henry Maundrell (1665–1701), chaplain of the Aleppo factory of the English Levant Company. For more on these works, see Peters, Jerusalem, 42–43, 67–72, 77–89, 516–24. A standard pace, covered by a step or a stride, is generally estimated at around three feet, in contrast to the Roman or geometric pace, which measures about five feet. 25

  Dashkov cites the scholarly writings of French geographer and cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697–1782) (Dissertation sur l’étendue de l’ancienne Jérusalem et de son temple, 1747) and of German geographer Karl Ritter (1779–1859) (Einleitung zur allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie, 1817–18).

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former in everything.26 Eschewing pointless repetitions, I shall offer Russian readers some personal observations on the current state of the major places of worship and on the life of our compatriots [Russian pilgrims] in Jerusalem. The foremost sacred place for Christians, the Lord’s Tomb, is located within the walls of the vast Church of the Resurrection, founded by St. Helen around 326. In vain were doubts raised about the authenticity of this monument: a great many compelling proofs attest that Christians, in the course of the first three centuries [of the faith], preserved accurate knowledge about the site of the Savior’s suffering and burial. [The early Christians], in the words of Gibbon, “marked the scene of every memorable event, in accordance with indisputable legend.”27 A fire in October 1807 [the fire actually occurred in September 1808] destroyed nearly half the church. The Tomb remained unharmed; but the cedar dome of the church, engulfed in flame, fell on the stone cast aside [by an angel] at the resurrection and smashed it to bits; the Greek Katholikon (chapel) and the adjoining side-altars burned down. Western Europe, which once shed rivers of blood for the possession of this sanctuary, indifferently looked upon its ruins. Some of the Greeks, in servitude and oppression, collected nearly seven million lev28 (more than 4.5 million rubles), purchased the Porte’s permission for the price of gold, and restored the entire edifice on its former foundations, under the supervision of a mere kalfa, or apprentice. Old men, children, and women toiled with zeal, and many to this day take comfort in the memory that they hauled earth during the construction of the church. These offerings, along with other favorable circumstances, gained for our coreligionists the right to celebrate the divine liturgy at the Holy Sepulcher: a right confirmed by the hatti-sherif [edict] of Sultan Mahmud II [r. 1808–39], but still disputed by the Catholics. 26

  Though he praises Chateaubriand’s depiction of Palestine, he rebukes the French writer’s highly personalized and melancholic portrait of Greece: “In general, the information of Chateaubriand on present-day Jerusalem is as exact and accurate as his notes on Greece are incorrect and superficial.” Said and Peters (see above, n. 17) have argued that the same criticism applies to Chateaubriand’s work on Jerusalem. 27

  Instead of identifying the source of this statement by acclaimed English historian Edward Gibbon (1737–94), Dashkov directs his readers to the writings of d’Anville and Chateaubriand for particulars on the holy places. 28

  Dashkov’s use of lev (lion) refers to an Ottoman coin in Palestine called esedi (with the lion) or esedi gurush. The Levant did not have a common or standardized currency for business transactions in the early nineteenth century; Ottoman gold and silver coins circulated along with money from Austria, Spain, Venice, France, Holland, and Britain. On the confusing array of Levantine currencies, see Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 326–29; and Şevket Pamuk, “Evolution of the Ottoman Monetary System, 1326–1914,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 947–80. After much diplomatic and financial negotiation, the Sublime Porte authorized Greek Christians to restore the church, supposedly after payment of a bribe of nearly 2.5 million rubles, almost twice the cost of the rebuilding itself. On the fire and the reconstruction of the church, see Elon, Jerusalem, 69–70; and Idinopulos, Jerusalem, 190.

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Upon entering the church, a worshiper with indignation sees a Turkish guard greedily sizing up the arrivals for collecting the fixed tax. His superior, as a sign of respect, often walks in front of them even to the altar, points out the holy sites with a chibouk [tobacco pipe with long stem], or disperses the throngs of people with a lash!… About forty steps from the doors, in the middle of the majestic rotunda, an edicule (kouvouklion) [baldachin or canopied altar] of yellowish marble is raised over the Tomb of Christ and faces eastward: inside [the edicule] one at first comes across the chapel of the Angel and then the narrow grotto where, according to ancient custom, the body [of Christ] was placed on a large stone, in the very mound that is illuminated and covered today by a marble slab. Thirty-six icon-lamps, from the cupola opening above, burn over it day and night. The offertory is performed on this imperishable sacrificial altar; and at the start of the liturgy, the vessels are brought to the chapel, where part of the stone cast aside by the Angel serves as a communion table. The walls of the edicule, outside and inside, are adorned with fabrics: the occasion for many quarrels between the various denominations! At every step in this church, a believer finds traces of the magnificent act of redemption. Here, Christ was shackled and bound to the pillar;29 here, he appeared after the resurrection to Mary Magdalene and (if one is to believe legend) to the grieving Holy Mother; here, his cross was discovered. There, the stone of unction, on which his body was anointed with fragrances and wrapped in a shroud; the chapels of the mocking (impropere), of the division of the raiment, of the good thief, of Centurion Longinus;30 [and] the tombs of Joseph [of Arimathea] and Nicodemus. Overhead, at Golgotha, two small communion tables signify where they nailed Christ to the tree [cross] and where it was raised. Below, the descent tothe cave, in which Empress Helen found the cross, excavating the blocked up foot of the hill.… In vain did Emperor Hadrian [r. 117–38 A.D.], during the time of persecution, try to appropriate these sites for idolatry, erecting a statue of Venus at Golgotha and [a statue] of Jupiter over the Lord’s Tomb. These idols did not consign the sacred objects of worship to oblivion, but all the more preserved their remembrance until the arrival in Jerusalem of the pious empress, who secured the mark of the Christian faith on the ruins of paganism. Compact houses and an edifice that belongs to the Greek monastery press upon the outer walls of the church. The church previously had two entrances; one, however, on the northern side, has been walled up: only the southern gates, known as the holy doors, remain. [Designated] Turks keep the keys and unlock the doors only in the presence of the mütevelli (overseer), appointed by the pasha of Damascus and Acre, 29

  Dashkov offers this information in his footnote: “A fragment of the pillar is kept in the Franciscan monks’ chapel, behind an iron grille, in such a way so that worshipers are not able to kiss it but can only touch it with the tip of a walking-stick. The Catholics, in explaining this much resented precaution, claim that the Greeks have repeatedly tried to steal this sacred object. The Greek clergy, for their part, accuse [the Catholics] of similar attempts, and even they shelter, behind a grille under an altar, part of the pillar which soldiers [used] to bind and to scourge the Savior.” 30

  These side-chapels commemorate subjects and events associated with the crucifixion.

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and of the dragomans for the Greek, Catholic, and Armenian religious communities. Inhabitants of the city and worshipers of all denominations then proceed to make the rounds of the various chapels without any restriction, but they are not allowed to conduct services in portions that belong to other faiths. Several [pilgrims], obtaining permission from the religious authorities, spend some time inside the church with monks and priests who take turns, and together with them receive victuals through small openings in the doors and in the vault over the main Greek altar. And we, too, spent several days, for me unforgettable, in this holy solitude. All of the surroundings awakened ineffable feelings in my soul. Often, in the dead of night, when monks accustomed to this spectacle slept peacefully in cells, I stood, leaning on a pillar, in the middle of the spacious church. Cupolas, galleries, and the entire Greek Katholikon, all the way to the altar, were shrouded in darkness; but the sacred monuments appeared as if enveloped by rows of inextinguishable icon-lamps and resembled shining oases in a dark thicket. The ancient past was resurrected in my imagination: the sufferings of the Righteous One; the source of life, emanating from here, when the inscribed tablets of Moses [Mosaic law] gave way to the New Testament; the triumph of the Crusaders, genuflecting before the magnificent tomb delivered by their swords; and the crowning of the hero-leader with a diadem of thorn. I looked at the grave of Godfrey, and Tasso’s inspired canto rang in my ear.31 Toward morning these reveries were cut short by the ringing of a church bell in the wooden belfry; priests and deacons flickered by like phantoms, with burning censers in their hands; chants from the gathered worshipers blended with the sound of organs; and praise to God rose up in different languages, with different rites, but in a single church.… All the places of worship are divided among the Greeks, the Catholics, and the [Monophysite] Armenians. The Copts have only one altar, affixed to the edicule over the Tomb; and the Syrians (Nestorians), the Georgians, the Abyssinians, and the Maronites … have been removed by force from the church, or have voluntarily conceded their rights to other [religious] communities.32 Each [denomination] adorns its property as it desires; but in those areas jointly controlled by two sects, the number of icons and icon-lamps has been set once and for all with the consent of the Turks. The sequence of services and rites has likewise been determined at great length by special regulations—and ever since then an immediate cause for discord among Jerusalem’s Christians has ceased. Mutual vexations still linger in hearts, and gold brought for the 31

  Dashkov alludes to Tasso’s sixteenth-century epic Jerusalem Delivered, which exalted the heroic feats of Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade. As for the controversy regarding the Greeks’ alleged destruction of Crusader crypts in the Church of the Resurrection during its reconstruction after the 1808 fire, Dashkov weighs in: “The Greeks are mistakenly accused of damaging the tombs over the graves of Godfrey and his brother [and heir] Baldwin, erected in the period of Latin rule. Fire destroyed these monuments; but their sites are marked by brick mounds, and the Catholics themselves have always had the authority to restore the old tombs and inscriptions.”

32

  For more on the varied Christian sects of Ottoman Jerusalem, as well as Ottoman rule in Palestine, see the essays in Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, vol. 2.

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decoration of the church is still squandered in Acre, Damascus, and Tsargrad [Constantinople] in order to harm rivals. At least the heads of the clergy, not passing up a chance to accuse each other of daily insults, try not to let monks take part in public and sordid quarrels, which formerly happened at the Holy Sepulcher, to the sorrow of coreligionists. The malice originates in the deep-rooted resentment of each denomination toward another and in the desire to exert exclusive control over the places where the blood of the Savior was shed for everyone. Ever since the division of the Roman church from the church in Constantinople, a spirit of meekness and love has rarely governed their relations. In the eyes of the Crusaders, the Greeks were almost worse than the worshipers of Mohammad; in the eyes of the Greeks, the Catholics did not have the right to be called Christian.33 The spite inherited by [Catholics and Greeks] has not subsided even today, particularly in numerous seaside towns and on islands, subject to the Porte, where some of the inhabitants have embraced Roman [Catholic] doctrines. A Catholic who converts to Orthodoxy is subjected to a second baptism by the Greeks. On the other hand, a Catholic who has married an Orthodox woman must be divorced from her: this is what European clergy, born in the land of enlightenment and tolerance, preached in Smyrna in 1817! “Of such wrath are the gods?”34 As for the Holy Sepulcher, both sides base their claims on official documents of various caliphs and sultans, from Umar [caliph, 634–44] to Mahmud II. The Greeks want equality, but the Catholics—dominance, contending that this sacred spot is their property and that its custody belongs solely to them. Until the renovation of the “great church” (i megali ekklisia, as the Greeks call the Church of the Resurrection), the Catholics did not permit the Orthodox to conduct services at the edicule and, even after the hatti-sherif issued in 1815, attempted to retrieve their lost advantages by utilizing the influence of their envoys at the Porte. A shortage of money and a dispute that broke out with the Armenians over the Church of the Nativity [in Bethlehem] compelled them to leave the Greeks in peace and to comply with the given situation. By virtue of this [arrangement], the Greeks and the Catholics take turns washing and sweeping the edicule and the stone of unction; they have an equal number of icons, icon-lamps, and candlesticks and an equal right to decorate the walls with coverings. 33

  Dashkov remarks in his note: “When present-day Greeks speak about Christians, they always mean themselves or Russians; Catholics are called Latins, Franks, or simply Westerners (οι Δυτικοί).” Dashkov gleaned additional material on sectarian disputes over the holy places from the travelogue by English chaplain Maundrell (see above, n. 24), who voiced amazement at the intensity of these squabbles. Peters, Jerusalem, 516–24, with excerpts from Maundrell, one of Dashkov’s sources on Jerusalem. For more information on this sectarian strife, see also Victoria Clark, Holy Fire: The Battle for Christ’s Tomb (London: Macmillan, 2005). 34

  Dashkov’s text cites the original Latin from Virgil’s Aeneid (1.11): “Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?” (Is there so much anger in the minds of the gods?). The line refers to battles among the gods and to the gods’ treatment of Aeneas during and after the Trojan War. Two recent studies of the Crimean War cover the sectarian quarrels over the holy sites: Trevor Royle, Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854–1856 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); and Orlando Figes, The Crimean War: A History (New York: Henry Holt, 2010).

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The Armenians are deprived of most of these privileges: they have only an icon above the doors and several icon-lamps. In all religious rites, they occupy third place. The four-cornered stone columns, encircling the edicule, and the upper and lower galleries are also apportioned among the denominations. The southern part of Golgotha belongs to the Catholics, while the Greeks have obtained from the Georgians the northern portion, where the cross was raised. As for the site of its discovery, the grotto itself, narrow and permeated with dampness, it is still in dispute among [the sects]. The former [the Catholics] do not allow other denominations to arrange iconlamps here, while the latter [the Greeks] complain about the deliberate damage to marble slabs placed there by the Orthodox.35 But, censuring justifiably these feuds, we maintain that the mode of eastern [Ottoman] judicial proceedings contributes a great deal to their continuation. The verdicts of kadis [Muslim judges] are based almost always on the testimonies of witnesses, especially of Muslims: and that is why each litigant tries to win over to his side the church guards and Jerusalem’s notables.36 To convince them that a law is beyond question, custom and long standing are essential; in the eyes of the Turks, both are more important than lifeless official documents. For example (according to their notions), the edicule is controlled by whichever [denomination] sweeps and decorates it: knowing this, each [sect] is afraid to yield to a rival and resists adamantly the smallest change. Moreover, the pashas, mütesellims [deputy governors], and kadis constantly nourish hostility among the Christians for their own interests. Today protecting certain [groups], tomorrow they promise others staunch intercession and rejoice in the rise of complaints and denunciations. In 1819, the pasha of Damascus, the chief authority over Jerusalem, allowed the Armenians, for sixty thousand lev, to cut a doorway near their altar in the Bethlehem church, to the great annoyance of the Catholics: and the latter were offered a chance, for a lower price, to rescind the granted permission. They did not pay [the pasha] the requested fee—and so the door remained open. During the next year, setting up camp outside the walls of the city with a caravan headed for Mecca, he exacted from the Armenians another thirty thousand lev and for a second time proposed to the Catholics the very same conditions.… If it is true that laws and governments shape the morality of people every35

  Dashkov chose to omit many details about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, asserting that these facts, while indispensable for anyone who wanted an exact picture of the shrine, “would be tedious and obscure” in his narrative. But he anticipated that readers’ curiosity “will soon be satisfied with the publication of the exquisite and complete plan of the great church, made on site by academician Vorob´ev.” The painter Maksim N. Vorob´ev (1787–1855), appointed professor at Russia’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1823, accompanied Dashkov on his trip to Jerusalem. Dashkov extolled the artistic talents of his travel companion, reporting that Vorob´ev’s drawings would include particulars on the main religious denominations in the church, their icons and icon-lamps, and related matters. 36

  “Notables” refers to the leading and most influential families in Jerusalem. On local elites, not just in Jerusalem but in other parts of the Ottoman Levant, see Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 46–50, 62–64, 101–07.

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where, then an impartial observer must look to the spirit of Turkish rule to find fault for the vices he condemns. It is hard to calculate the cost to Jerusalem’s Christians for the sham tolerance of the Porte and for the indulgence of local authorities. Based on information we gathered, the Greeks spent around fifty thousand lev on presents in the course of only a single month, August 1820. We should add to this [sum] basic expenses for church building, for the [Jerusalem] patriarchate, and for similar purposes—and we affirm that rumors of secret monastic riches, supposedly increasing every year through lavish offerings, are just as mythical as the tale of Abulkazem’s inexhaustible treasury in Arabian stories.37 On the contrary, at the time of our visit, monks of all denominations were reduced to extremity. The Catholics, seldom encountering Latin pilgrims and receiving very meager assistance from Rome, unexpectedly lost [income from] the large estates in Spain seized by the cortes [representative assemblies]. The Greeks were barely able to pay their debts and to support themselves with the revenues from lands and monasteries, outside Palestine, that belong to the Holy Sepulcher and with the offerings from Orthodox worshipers. Even the Armenians, the wealthiest of all Eastern Christians, were nearly ruined after the misfortune which befell their coreligionist sarafs (bankers) in Constantinople in 1819, some of whom were executed while others were sentenced to captivity by edict of the sultan. We shall return to our report. Several ruins to the southeast of the great church denote the road of suffering (via dolorosa)38 along which the Savior trod from the Pretorium to Golgotha: citing testimony of the holy fathers and other writers, one finds there the houses of Pilate and of the pious woman Veronica, the dwelling of the evil rich man, the place where the Holy Mother met her Son carrying the cross, [and] the gate of judgment which sentenced criminals to death outside the city walls. But ancient legends are incomplete regarding [the Way of the Cross]: they need to be augmented by tales from mirhadjis (guides) and by the imagination of worshipers. We thus mention the houses of high priests Annas and Caiaphas, of SS. Joachim and Anne, the prison of Apostle Peter, and so on. Time, the myriad captivities of Jerusalem, and the oppressive Muslim yoke have erased nearly all traces of these secondary monuments of Christianity. On the site where, according to general opinion, the Apostle James was sentenced to death, there stands a magnificent cloister, owned in turn by the Georgians, 37

  According to Dashkov, at least one recent travelogue on Greece repeated the unfounded and unconfirmed story that the Greek monastery near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher contained an undisclosed amount of wealth in a secret treasury, coveted by sultans, who had yet to discover its exact whereabouts. Based on his own investigations, Dashkov adamantly refutes these rumors, declaring that the monastery’s treasury consisted only of pilgrims’ offerings and other church revenues: “In the monastery’s sacristy, we saw silver chandeliers, crucifixes, Gospels, and gold-embroidered vestments, for the most part of Russian craftsmanship; but it is surpassed in wealth by many of the sacristies on Mount Athos.” 38

  The Way of the Cross traced the path or last steps of Christ across Jerusalem, from his trial by Pontius Pilate to his execution, burial, and resurrection. See Peters, Jerusalem, 155–56, 501–03.

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the Greeks, and the Armenians. The last [of these sects] (so they say) seized it by force during the patriarchate of Paisios. Today [this monastery] is under the authority of a separate Armenian patriarch, who is subject neither to the [catholicus-patriarch] of Echmiadzin nor to the [patriarch] of Constantinople.39 Only through offerings have the Greeks been able to retain possession of their major monastery, for them all the more important because of its proximity to the Church of the Resurrection. The episcopal deputies reside here, and pilgrims are welcomed during the initial days of [their] arrival: small churches and cells are scattered about, in no particular order, amid open vestibules and passageways; and nearby are granaries for feeding the many monks and Orthodox Arabs.40 The Catholic convent of the Franks is controlled by the Franciscan Order. Its abbot is officially recognized as the guardian of the Holy Sepulcher [on behalf of the Catholics] and usually replaced every three years.41 Of the ancient edifices within the walls [of Jerusalem], the curiosity of travelers is especially drawn to the fortified bastion, supposedly the home of David, and to the renowned mosque of Umar. The former, according to the opinion of d’Anville, is situated on the same spot where the Citadel of the king-psalmist [David], and subsequently the Psephinus Tower, once stood and where, at sunrise, one could see all the way to the borders of Arabia, to the sea, and to the furthest edge of the land of Judea.42 … The view from the present-day stronghold encompasses all of the environs: in between and beyond the tops of the nearby stony hills another mountain range rises up, just as barren, on which the remains of old towers and fallen minarets are visible. The mosque [Dome of the Rock] was built on Mount Moriah, separated from Zion by a deep hollow—on the very foundations of the Temple of Solomon, restored by Zerubbabel [in 520 BC] and ultimately destroyed by Titus. Ruins enveloped this site during the persecution of the Apostolic church, and also during its triumph. When [Caliph] Umar captured Jerusalem and sought a place to begin construction of his mosque, Greek patriarch Sophronios [634–38], fearing the loss of the Lord’s 39

  When Paisios, patriarch of Jerusalem from 1646 to 1660, visited Moscow in 1649, the Armenian clergy succeeded in obtaining the sultan’s permission to acquire the cloister. The “separate Armenian patriarch” refers to the bishop of the Armenian community in Jerusalem, whose title was raised to patriarch by the middle of the eighteenth century. The town of Echmiadzin, capital of the ancient Christian kingdom of Armenia, continued to serve as the center of the Armenian church and the place of residence of the catholicus-patriarch. 40

  Dashkov writes that in addition to the monastic house attached to the Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Greeks owned several other monasteries and nunneries in the Holy City. The most noteworthy, he recounts, were “John the Baptist, for the beauty of its church and entire structure; St. Nicholas, where there is a school for Arabs; [and] St. George, with a hospital and an alms-house for elderly men.” 41

  In 1342, Pope Clement VI named the Franciscan Order the official caretaker of the holy places for Roman Catholics. On the Franciscans in the Holy City, see Peters, Jerusalem, 369– 70, 498–501, 506–09, 556–61, 580–84; and Idinopulos, Jerusalem, 186–89. 42

  In addition to d’Anville, Dashkov cites The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus.

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Tomb, pointed the conqueror to Moriah. Caliph al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik [r. 705–15] completed the structure, a masterpiece of art, resembling (says Chateaubriand) a tent pitched in the middle of the desert. Christians are strictly forbidden to enter: any attempt would expose a European to great danger, and a Turkish subject—to certain execution, unless he converts. In the year before our arrival [1819], an unfortunate Greek [went] there, disguised as a prominent official of the pasha of Damascus; but later he paid for this with his life, since he did not want to save himself by apostatizing.43 The southern part of Mount Zion, formerly within the walls, today lies outside the city. The Last Supper took place there; the tombs of David and Solomon are also there, in a mosque, where the Turks do not allow believers of different faiths. On the same hill lies the cemetery for Jerusalem’s Christians of all denominations (pilgrims are buried in Potter’s Field), while at the foot of the slope, spouting from stone, is the pool of Siloam, evoked by the poet of Paradise Lost when summoning the celestial Muse: … if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d Fast by the oracle of God.44 The Valley of Jehoshaphat, covered in ruins, separates the Mount of Olives, shaded in places with olive trees, from Zion and Moriah. A turbid stream, supposedly the brook of Kedron, flows in the middle of the valley during rainy season; but it dries up altogether in summer and fall. The masterly pen of Chateaubriand vividly depicted this thicket where, according to the prophet Joel, at some point the entire human race will be assembled for judgment: The stones in the cemetery of the Jews are piled up, like a heap of fragments, at the base of the settlement of Siloam; it is difficult to distinguish the huts themselves from the graves that surround them. Three ancient monuments tower above this field of destruction, the tombs of Zechariah, Jehoshaphat, and Absalom. Before one’s eyes lies sad Jerusalem, over which the slightest smoke is not visible [and] from which not a sound is heard; gazing at the desolation of the mountains, where there is no living creature, and at all those 43

  One of the most sacred shrines in Islam, the Dome of the Rock or Qubbal al-Sakh, commemorating the prophet Muhammad’s ascent to heaven, was built during the caliphate of Abd al-Malik (685–704), the father and predecessor of al-Walid. Dashkov remarks that Catholic pilgrims, such as Archbishop William of Tyre (1099–1187), historian and chronicler of the Crusades, recorded their observations of this famed mosque. These impressions “have been corroborated for us by information provided by our janissary, purposely sent [to the mosque] at prayer time. He saw the stone (sacred for Muslims), from which Muhammad mounted [the winged steed] al-Buraq in preparation for his flight to heaven, and the two small pillars which allegedly crush sinners who walk through them.” See Elon, Jerusalem, 213–24; and Idinopulos, Jerusalem, 224–35, for a brief discussion of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. 44

  Dashkov’s text includes these English lines from John Milton.

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graves in disorder, broken, smashed to bits, ajar, one might think that the sound of a trumpet has already resounded, calling to judgment, and that the dead are ready to rise from the valley.45 The site of the Lord’s ascension is thought to be on the middle summit of the Mount of Olives. The remains of a splendid church, erected in the time of Constantine [d. 337], have been turned into a mosque. [This prompts] an observation that from time immemorial Muslims have appropriated for themselves all the heights around the city. They believe that during the final days of the world, the wild [warrior tribes] Gog and Magog will besiege the prophet Jesus Christ in Jerusalem and occupy the adjacent mountains: from [the summits] they will fling shafts that strike the heads of the impudent, staining them with blood. Returning from [the Mount of Olives] to the gates of Gethsemane and descending the valley all the way to the brook of Kedron, worshipers with zeal visit the Tomb of the Holy Mother, located in a grotto. The Orthodox and the Armenians celebrate the liturgy at this shrine; the Catholics do not have this right. When the enmity among Christians of the East ceases, the first pledge of mutual tolerance and peace will be their equal participation in a service at this sacred place, revered by all the sects.… A detailed account of Jerusalem’s famous sites can be found in every travelogue, from the fourth century … to the present.46 All the information is similar, and recent travelers repeat what was said before, most likely unintentionally. Relying on them, I shall add a few words about the location of the Savior’s birth, respected even by Muslims. The road to Bethlehem lies due south past Mount Zion and the Greek Monastery of Elijah the Prophet. In the valleys one comes across sown fields and vineyards; traces of age-old industriousness are visible on the stony hills, notched with terraces for the planting of vines and fig trees. The large [Church of the Nativity] in Bethlehem, built in a cruciform shape, was once quite splendid; four rows of marble pillars of rare beauty are still intact at the altar. [The church] belongs to the Greeks and the Armenians. Latin monks in vain request a portion of it for themselves, since it is impossible to consider an ordinary 45

  This is my translation of Dashkov’s Russian rendition of Chateaubriand’s evocative vignette. 46

  Dashkov’s narrative cites the earliest extant travelogue on the holy places, the account by the Pilgrim from Bordeaux who visited Palestine in the year 333, Itinerarium a Burdigala Hierusalem. Dashkov’s footnote makes reference to the Greek-language Proskynitarion, published in Vienna in 1787, on prayer rituals and places of worship in Jerusalem, and to several Russian accounts. “Of the works by Russian pilgrims, worthy of attention are the descriptions by Vasilii Barskii, who worshiped at the Holy Sepulcher in 1726 and 1729; by ieromonakh [monk] Meletii, 1793–94; and by the serf of Count Sheremetev, Kir Bronnikov, 1820–21, noteworthy because of his [social] rank and because of the dangers he was exposed to on the return voyage to the fatherland at the start of the Greek war.” For bibliographical material on the travelogues of Barskii, Meletii, and Bronnikov, see Stavrou and Weisensel, Russian Travelers to the Christian East, 70–73, 129–30, 171.

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shrine as a common place of worship, such as the Lord’s Tomb or Golgotha. Along the sides of the main altar, two staircases lead to the Holy Nativity; there, on the eastern wall, marked by a silver star, where the Christ Child was born, a communion table is set up for the Orthodox and the Armenians to celebrate the mass. The manger stood nearby, in a spacious hollow, where today there is a Catholic altar. The entire grotto is lined with precious marble and illuminated by icon-lamps, with each denomination having its own fixed number. Bethlehem’s Arabs have partially converted to the Christian faith; but this has not mollified their harsh customs. They make a good bit of money, fashioning from bone and mother-of-pearl the rosaries and crosses that are bought up by devout visitors. In general, the arrival of worshipers in Jerusalem coincides with the harvest season for local inhabitants. Only this animates a land, for a long time now not flowing with milk and honey, where agriculture is in decline and there is no industry, where the population has fallen victim to robbery and to all sorts of violence, where, eventually, according to the words of Chateaubriand, “each village dies off annually hut by hut and family by family, and soon only a cemetery marks the site of a previous settlement.” The Greeks and the Armenians visit the holy places more than [other denominations]. The zeal of the former is worthy of special amazement; the faith, having preserved their existence as a nation, has been a major consolation for them in servitude. They gathered from everywhere, without distinction of gender and age; fathers of families brought to Palestine the fruit of many years’ hard work, leaving children in need; old men, fortified by desire (like the aged worshiper in the beautiful sonnet by Petrarch: “An old man white as snow set out on the road”),47 dragged themselves along on crutches to the tomb of the being, whose presence they hoped to receive in heaven. Many, having kept their vow, devoted the remainder of life to religious worship in church. The number of Orthodox pilgrims, before 1821, sometimes reached about three thousand—among them were around two hundred Russians. Our embassy [in Istanbul] did its utmost to afford the greatest possible assistance and protection to our compatriots in Ottoman domains. [Russian pilgrims] usually embarked from Odessa in late August and upon arrival in Constantinople stayed [in a specially designated spot] out of doors, where they were not subjected to the plague or to insults from the Turkish mob; the poor received monetary help. The envoy notified the patriarch of the Holy City about [the pilgrims’] accommodation, free of charge, on a ship that departed every year in early September with worshipers; in addition to passports, [the envoy] issued to them firmans (edicts of the sultan) that exempted Russian subjects from any tax during the journey and at the Church [of the Resurrection], where other Christians are required to pay around twenty-four lev [apiece] for entry. In Jaffa, received as guests in the Greek metochion [monastic residence or cloister], they were pleased with everything, provided customarily at the monastery’s expense: for this [hospitality] they left the abbot a small donation. 47

  In his text, Dashkov quotes the Italian line from the Petrarch sonnet: “Movesi il vecchierel canuto e bianco.”

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Many trekked on foot from [Jaffa], while the wealthy and the infirm were able to rent saddle-horses for a low price.48 On reaching Jerusalem, they spent the first few days at the patriarchate and gave contributions to the church treasury, however much they wanted; but those who desired to enter the names of their relatives in a remembrance book for eternal prayer for the dead paid fifty lev or more for each [name], depending on their means. They then selected for themselves cells in various cloisters for the entire winter. Rent and food, the most moderate, cost from one hundred fifty to two hundred lev. In anticipation of Lent, pilgrims visited the closest places of worship, in Bethlehem, Bethany, Nazareth, and other towns. Some even traveled to Mount Sinai, via Gaza and Suez. The throng of people in Jerusalem grows with the approach of Easter. Armenians and Asiatic Greeks gather in droves from Karamania, Syria, and Egypt; Georgians are also with them. The entire city comes to life, especially on Holy Saturday, when the holy fire makes its appearance.49 After the holy days, the mütesellim and a detachment of troops accompany the worshipers to Jericho and the Jordan River; and shortly afterwards they return to their native land via the route they came. Passage from Jaffa to Constantinople, on a good ship and with necessary provisions, costs around a hundred lev. Adding to this estimate another one hundred eighty or two hundred lev for offerings to various monasteries and churches during the entire stay in Palestine, for the rental of horses, and for other small items, we deduce that the essential expenses for our pilgrims did not exceed five hundred rubles. But many of them arrived without any money whatsoever and had to attend to monks or seek alms near the gates of the patriarchate, where they are never denied food. For donations to these needy pilgrims, 48

  In his footnote, Dashkov specifies distances between key points along the pilgrimage trail: “From Jaffa to Jerusalem it is thought to be around sixty versts (twelve hours [by horse]). From Jerusalem to Jericho not more than twenty versts; and from [Jericho] to the Jordan River about fifteen versts.” 49

  In a lengthy footnote on the miraculous appearance of the holy fire over the Tomb of Christ, Dashkov refers readers to the works of Russian pilgrims and travelers who had witnessed this sacred event. Drawing on their experiences and observations, he then offers his own summary: “With the mütesellim [deputy governor] and the Armenian clergy in attendance, all the candles and icon-lamps in the church are extinguished—except for those in the Catholic section. The Greek hierarch enters the kouvouklion [edicule] alone and with a cotton wick gathers the light that, resembling beads of sweat, arises on the marble slab of the Holy Sepulcher. Others relate that it appears in the form of a bright nonflammable flame and that one can place it by hand in a vessel without getting burned. Ieromonakh Meletii writes that the light shines on the lid of the tomb like small scattered beads of color that turn red when they run together. The Catholics are not at all willing to believe this phenomenon. Be that as it may, the hierarch carries the burning tapers from the grotto to the chapel of the Angel and places them in two small openings: on one side for the Armenians, on the other for the Orthodox, from whom the fire overflows the church like a river (according to Meletii), to the accompaniment of loud exclamations: ‘There is no faith, but the Christian faith!’” For more on the holy fire, see Elon, Jerusalem, 70–71, 209–13; and Peters, Jerusalem, 261–67, 523–24, 571–78.

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and also for their supervision, a special official with the rank of vice-consul has been dispatched to Jaffa.… The events of 1821 have impeded the success of this endeavor [pilgrimage to Jerusalem] and made the voyage to the Holy Sepulcher difficult for Russians.50 Jews, no less than Christians, are eager to visit the land of their ancestors, though they know in advance what oppression awaits them there. They pay dearly for permission to enter Jerusalem and still more dearly for a plot of land in the Valley of Jehoshaphat for a future grave. Their sufferings and poverty do not arouse pity in anyone; they are held in equal disdain by Greeks, Arabs, and Turks. Among the ruins of their capital, amid recollections of ancient independence and glory, this unfortunate people with amazing submissiveness bears unending insults even from children. Our acquaintance, Sheik Abu Ghush, not understanding how Jews could be subjects of the Muscovite padishah [sultan], said, “I am glad to welcome in my land thousands of Russian worshipers, but my heart bursts with exasperation when a single chifut (zhid) [Jew] arrives duty-free.…” Held in such disparagement, [Jewish visitors] console themselves with the view of Zion and with the steadfast hope for a King-Savior! The permanent residents of Jerusalem are thought to be around thirteen thousand, of whom the large part are Arabs who believe in the Muslim faith;51 among them, however, are some Christians. These persons, on the whole, are quite poor and live on alms from Greek and Catholic monasteries. All of the town administration is in the hands of the Turks. We noted above that Jerusalem is under the jurisdiction of the pasha of Damascus [and Acre]; the duty from pilgrims for access to the Holy Sepulcher belongs to the pasha … [but] is collected by his mütevelli.52 This odd arrangement is highly detrimental to European monks, since it exposes them to a double oppression and undermines the entreaty of consuls who reside in Acre and Jaffa. The mütesellim is appointed from Damascus, and the mullah (supreme judge) directly from Constantinople: the latter enjoys great respect.

50

  The outbreak of the Greek War of Independence against the sultan strained Russo-Ottoman diplomatic relations, disrupted Russia’s trade in the Black Sea and Levant, and greatly reduced the numbers of Russian pilgrims making the journey to Palestine during the ensuing conflict in the 1820s. On the larger issue of Russia and the Greek rebellion, including the friction in Russo-Ottoman relations, see my Russian Society and the Greek Revolution (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994). 51

  Dashkov claims in his note that it was impossible to verify the accuracy of this estimate, because “in all of Turkey there are neither birth records nor a poll-tax census.” Asali (“Jerusalem under the Ottomans,” 220 n. 18) and Peters (Jerusalem, 564–65) cite a population figure of twelve thousand for Jerusalem in 1806; thus, Dashkov’s approximation of thirteen thousand in 1820 may very well be correct. 52   Dashkov clarifies this statement in his footnote: “We were told that the pasha [of Damascus] and Acre receives these revenues in his capacity as guardian of the central mosque in the town of Ramleh, which is under his direct authority, and that the land near the Church of the Resurrection belongs to [the mosque].”

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Before leaving this memorable land, we wanted to see the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. We knew that in summer predatory Arabs migrate with their flocks from the river to the mountaintops and that the road is less dangerous than in spring. We were also assured of this by the esteemed archbishop of Petra, who had recently returned from his diocese, but he advised that we request escorts from the Turkish authorities. Everything was arranged as we wished. On 7 September, we were met by several persons from the mütesellim’s guard, including his chief of police, all on magnificent horses. [Also accompanying us] were a monastic dragoman and two sheiks from the Arab tribes that had migrated beyond the Jordan River. Waiting until the intense midday heat had passed, we set out on the road near Gethsemane, on the right-hand side of the Mount of Olives; in the evening we stopped to rest at a well outside an abandoned caravanserai. Here, three or four months before our arrival, a young Englishman, who had no one with him except a manservant and a janissary, had been robbed. Defending himself stubbornly, he wounded one of the brigands with a saber and as punishment received the exact same wound from them: an example of justice, worthy of these primitive sons of nature [dikie syny prirody]! From there we traveled across slopes and ravines to a large plain surrounding Jericho, and by midnight we reached the pitiful remains of this once renowned town. The local aga [title for a minor military or administrative official] amicably ordered us to his residence—a tower, where peasants with their herds seek shelter from rapacious forays. [Our] supper and lodging were on the overhead landing under the open sky. At dawn everything around us came to life: the escorts hastened to saddle the horses, while we marveled at the lovely views from our lofty bedroom. Trees and shrubs turned green in the valley, [and] wild boars roamed cultivated fields all the way to huts. On the other side of the Jordan River, a large forest cast dark shadows; and directly in front of us, between two rows of mountains, the Dead Sea brilliantly reflected the rays of the rising sun. Legends of sacred antiquity framed a picture of rural life. A majestic Arab, a descendant of Ishmael, half-naked, with a long gun across the shoulders, drove goats and sheep to pasture near the stream made famous by the miracle of the prophet Elijah; others dug garden beds, perhaps at the spot where Rahab’s house stood and where the Levites carried the Ark of the Covenant during the destruction of Jericho.… While leaving the town, we came across women walking with earthenware pitchers on their heads to fetch water, [wearing] dark blue, loose-fitting garments, and with veils folded back; our approach did not alarm them. One word, hadji (pilgrim), satisfied the curiosity of everyone and put an end to any questions. The broad plain separating the Jericho oasis from the Jordan River resembles the bottom of a sea forsaken by the waves; tamarinds, which ordinarily grow along brooks, and prickly blackthorn can be seen here and there near sandy knolls. A great many monasteries and skity (eremitoria graciosa) [pious hermitages] were located in this wilderness during the days of Christian rule; traces of them are barely visible today. The site of the Savior’s baptism, according to the Greeks, is five or six versts

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from the ruins of the cloister of St. Gerasimos:53 upon reaching it, we descended a precipitous bank, with reeds and small shrubs scattered below, and waded to the opposite, more sloped shore. The upper reaches of the Jordan lie at the foot of the wooded Hermon and Anti-Lebanon mountains: from there the river courses southward in a straight line, passes through Lake Tiberias (Gennesaret), and, like a chain, connects it to the Dead Sea. In summer this celebrated river is no wider than ten sazhens [around 21 meters]54 and of medium depth, but it flows with remarkable swiftness along the stony bottom; when the snows of Lebanon begin to melt, it runs twice as fast. We bathed in [the river] and then, following custom, filled our chotry (flat traveling utensils) with some of its turbid but pleasant water.55 Worshipers who are not satisfied with this [ritual] also soak sheets here and are then supposed to use them as a burial shroud. The brooks flowing into the Jordan for the most part dry up in the hot weather; the surrounding sands are completely parched. [The river’s] estuary is marked on the surface of the Dead Sea by a long streak—as if the waters, sacred from earliest times, petrify when they join the accursed waves of the lake that inundated Sodom and Gomorrah. In the past people thought that [the river] continued its course underground and merged with the Nile in Egypt or the Pharro [Euphrates] in Syria.56 … But along with other proof refuting this opinion, we know from the evidence of eyewitnesses that the Dead Sea rises and falls depending on the rise and fall of the Jordan. The river bends to the left not far from the estuary, and only the tops of shrubs reveal its direction; we set out straight ahead, without any road, along shifting sand snow-white from its coat of salt. The heat was unbearable. The sun glowed in the impenetrable scorching sky as at sunset. On one side, the range of Arabian mountains—a steep wall without distinct peaks, without teeth and ridges—extends along the lake like an immeasurable border. On the other, by the magical play of nature, the chalky hills display pitched tents, small fortresses, and towers adorned with cornices. Everything here is unlike any other place on earth. Even in the plains of the Sahara, the proximity of water changes the aspect of nature: moisture penetrates the desiccated gravel and blankets it with green grass; the putrid air becomes pure; living creatures find refuge in palm groves; and the barren desert is transformed into a flowering oasis—the image of paradise. On the contrary, the environs of the Dead Sea are desolate and deprived of any vestiges of life: no coolness or freshness; no wild animals, birds, or plants; shriveled trees, uprooted along the bank, washed ashore by a wave 53

  St. Gerasimos, a fifth-century hermit, founded a monastery near the Jordan River; attacked on many occasions by Bedouin tribes, the cloister was finally abandoned in the sixteenth century. 54

 A sazhen is the equivalent of around 2.133 meters.

55

  According to Dashkov, “this water did not taste salty, as Chateaubriand reports, though we were at the Jordan River at roughly the same time of the year. Lying nearly still, the water becomes completely limpid and a darkish silt covers the bottom of [our] utensils.” 56

  Pharro is most likely a corruption of al-Furat, Arabic for Euphrates. Dashkov draws his information from the research of German geographer Ritter (see above, n. 25).

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from the eastern edge or perhaps by the Jordan during a flood. The water is clear, but saturated with bitter salts. It is difficult to believe what Pococke57 and Chateaubriand heard from a monk and from some Bethlehem Arabs, that fish abound in [the sea]: the guides told us that even those approaching by chance from the river die immediately. The Dead Sea (in Arabic Bahr al-Lut, or the Sea of Lot) extends nearly seventy-five versts in length and about twenty versts in width; Seetzen surmises that its circumference can be traversed in a five-day journey.58 This most recent traveler, and as far back as Abbot Daniil who visited the Monastery of St. Sabas,59 collected fairly elaborate information on [the sea’s] southern tip, partly confirmed for us by inhabitants of Jerusalem who had traveled to Petra. It indeed terminates in a narrow bay, which in summer can be crossed by wading up to the knee. The strange sight of salt clumps, discarded by the lake, of course gave cause for the oft-repeated story of worshipers having seen the pillar [that had once been] Lot’s wife. As for the famous fruit of Sodom, no one agrees with the opinion of Chateaubriand. The blackened, bitter seeds from the small lemons he found do not resemble ashes, and on the whole his account does not correspond with our notion of the deceptive apple, ripe on the outside, rotten inside—like the joys of the world, remarks one traveler. We spent the night again in Jericho and on the next day returned to Jerusalem along a new route, by way of the Monastery of St. Sabas. A deep ravine known as the Valley of Sorrow extends all the way from the stream of Kedron to the Dead Sea: along [the ravine’s] parched bottom we approached the cloister, built with terraces on a terrifying steep slope, and climbed upward, quaking involuntarily at each turn. The entire structure is enveloped by high walls and looks more like a fortified castle than a sanctuary for peaceful monks. Following the abbot along steps carved into the stone, we venerated the relics of the holy fathers, persecuted by infidels, and the tomb of St. Sabas; we saw the cave of this devout toiler and the date palm tree he himself had planted. At the highest point stand two four-cornered turrets used by the monks as watchtowers. The neighboring hills are hollowed out with a great many caves where nearly ten thousand anchorites once lived. [The monks] also showed us the opening, from which they distribute bread daily to Arabs who have migrated not far from here. A long time ago (so they maintain), 57

  English orientalist and traveler Richard Pococke (1704–65) visited the Near East in 1734– 40 and published Description of the East (1743–45). 58

  German traveler Ulrich Seetzen (1767–1811) toured Palestine in 1806, the same year as Chateaubriand. Excerpts from Seetzen are in Peters, Jerusalem, 544–45, 550–56, 564–72, 581–82. 59

  Abbot Daniil visited many of the holy sites in Palestine in the early twelfth century and authored the earliest extant Russian pilgrimage account of Jerusalem. Daniil spent over a year at the monastery founded by St. Sabas (439–532), a charismatic hermit and one of the most influential figures in the development of monasticism in Palestine. On Daniil and St. Sabas, see Stavrou and Weisensel, Russian Travelers to the Christian East, 1–5; Peters, Jerusalem, 162–63, 263–67, 313–14; and Joseph Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995).

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Greek emperors assigned this tribe to the monastery for service, which explains why they received food from it: nowadays, however, they demand it with threats, as though it were tribute that belongs to them; mothers bring newborn infants to the opening and take leftovers for them. In the event of a quarrel with the monks, these half-primitive Muslims [poludikie musul´mane] lay siege to [the monastery] and cut off communication with Jerusalem. While visiting the monasteries of Palestine, we did not forget to examine their libraries—although the lack of success of our investigations on Mount Athos gave us little hope for here. The patriarchate has some manuscripts: but all are prayer-books, Lives of the Fathers, and works of the church fathers. Official documents, relating to the customs of the Greeks, were sent to Constantinople a long time ago; other records we saw are interesting only because they supplement the sad picture of abuses endured by the Christians of Jerusalem. On 14 September, the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, we venerated for the last time the Lord’s Tomb and all the sacred objects in the great church. The archbishop of Gethsemane celebrated the liturgy at Golgotha; later a ceremonial procession began from the Greek Katholikon to the grotto of St. Helen. The hierarch held upright the silver Crucifix that contained part of the Life-giving tree [cross]; behind him the procession carried banners, crosses, icons; people covered the steps of the staircases with green branches and flowers. During the service the symbol of salvation was thrice raised at the very place of its discovery. On the same day, we bid farewell to the gracious episcopal deputies and, hiring escorts from the mütesellim for the journey to Acre, left the Holy City.…

Alexander Lycurgus: An Ecumenical Pioneer Josef L. Altholz†

In 1837 the Patriarch of Constantinople did not know what an archbishop of Canterbury was, and could not understand it even when he was told.1 This epitomizes the relationship of Anglicanism and Orthodoxy at that time: lack of contact,2 lack of knowledge, lack of understanding. This was about to change. The inspiration for the change came from within the Church of England, specifically the Tractarian movement and its High Church or Anglo-Catholic successors. Their ecclesiology, centered on the doctrine of the apostolic succession of bishops, gave rise to a “branch theory” of the Church Catholic, with three episcopally-governed branches, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox. Although the original Tractarians themselves showed little interest in the Orthodox churches,3 they would inspire a movement for intercommunion or reunion. Much of the story of this movement reads as a series of eager overtures from Anglicans meeting with cool responses from the Orthodox. It began with an extreme and eccentric Tractarian, William Palmer of Magdalen College, Oxford, who went to Russia in the early 1840s seeking to be admitted to Orthodox communion while remaining in the Anglican Church; the Holy Synod took this seriously enough to enter into lengthy discussions before denying his request.4 Palmer entered into an extensive 1

  Henry R. T. Brandreth, “The Church of England and the Orthodox Churches in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Anglican Initiatives in Christian Unity: Lectures Delivered in Lambeth Palace Library, 1966, ed. E. G. W. Bill (London: S.P.C.K., 1967), 19–39. 2

  In 1815 the points of contact were chaplaincies maintained by the British Embassy in St. Petersburg, the Russia Company in Kronstadt, and the Levant Company at Constantinople (Pera), Smyrna, and Aleppo. In that year the British Crown acquired the Ionian Islands, where there was a Greek Orthodox population. The independence of Greece brought a chaplain there. On the Orthodox side, the Russian embassy had a chaplain with the rank of archpriest, and there was a growing Greek colony in London with a church. 3

  John Henry Newman visited the Ionian Greek churches on his Mediterranean tour in 1832– 33, but was unimpressed. See The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 3: New Bearings, January 1832 to June 1833 (London: T. Nelson, 1979), 180–81. 4

  I am indebted to my student Anne Fredrickson, whose honors thesis was “The Anglican Crisis of Identity: The Case of William Palmer, 1811–1879” (University of Minnesota, 2000). Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 127–35.

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correspondence with the Pan-Slavist and lay theologian A. S. Khomiakov, evoking from him a profound statement of the fundamental position of Orthodoxy.5 A more serious student of Orthodoxy was John Mason Neale, who wrote voluminously on the history and liturgiology of the Eastern churches.6 In 1864 there was founded the Eastern Churches Association to enlighten Englishmen about the Orthodox and the Eastern churches about Anglicanism, and some of its members traveled to the Near East to make contact with Orthodox clergy.7 A committee of the Convocation of the Church of England met from 1863 to consider the question of intercommunion with the Orthodox; and there was an occasional stately correspondence between the archbishop of Canterbury and the patriarchs.8 Some of these efforts sought personal intercommunion, in practice the right of Anglicans traveling in Orthodox countries to receive Orthodox communion; others sought actual reunion between the two communions. They obtained neither, but in the process they discovered the difficulties in the way of a favorable result. Many of these were specific doctrines or practices on which the Orthodox insisted but which Anglicans could not accept. The invariable objection concerned the credal doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, whether from the Father alone, as in the words of the original Nicene Creed on which the Orthodox insisted, or from the Father “and the Son” (Filioque), which the Western Church (and consequently the Anglicans) had added. There were numerous other points, but these varied and might admit of allowability under the Orthodox concept of “economy”; the Filioque always remained an Orthodox objection.

Palmer pursued his quest for intercommunion with the Orthodox until 1855, when he converted to Rome. 5

  W. J. Birkbeck, Russia and the Eastern Church during the Last Fifty Years (London: Rivington, Percival, 1895; repr., 1969) contains the correspondence and Khomiakov’s Essay on the Unity of the Church, itself reprinted several times.

6

  The most relevant study is Leon Litvack, John Mason Neale and the Quest for Sobornost (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Neale was more than a pioneer of reunion: he was a student of church architecture and a liturgiologist and writer of hymns, including some translations of Greek hymns included in the Anglican hymn book Hymns Ancient and Modern. 7

  The E.C.A. published a useful series of Occasional Papers. There were two other societies with ecumenical interests: the Anglo-Continental Society, Low rather than High Church, interested primarily in foreign Protestants; and the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, extremely High Church, based on the branch theory but interested mainly in the Roman Catholics. 8

  In 1841 Archbishop Howley wrote to reassure the patriarchs that the new Anglo-Prussian bishopric in Jerusalem would not proselytize among the Orthodox. In 1867 Archbishop Logley sent the patriarchs the encyclical of the first Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. In 1869 Archbishop Tait communicated the desire of convocation for discussions on intercommunion. The patriarchs’ 1870 replies intertwine these earlier contacts with the visit of Alexander Lycurgus.

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But behind these formal points of difference lay a more fundamental (and less easily understood) problem, in the very concept of Orthodoxy. The Orthodox had maintained their faith unchanged from the first seven Ecumenical Councils notwithstanding the pressures of heretical emperors and Muslim conquerors; they were in fact orthodox and conscious of it. This was behind their objection to the Filioque: they literally would not add a word to the creed defined at the first council and confirmed by others. They knew that Orthodoxy was the true Church, and that there was only one true Church. This concept of the essential unity of the Church had been elaborated by Khomiakov under the Slavonic term sobornost. If the Church is one, there cannot be branches; this annihilated the branch theory, although High Anglicans could not accept this. Reunion required that Anglicans accept the principles of Orthodoxy; individual intercommunion might be negotiable, though unlikely. But Anglicans persisted in the quest for both. Statements of the Orthodox position were almost invariably responses to Anglican initiatives; the Orthodox almost never initiated feelers of their own. Some Orthodox students were sent to German universities, the most advanced of their time, where they learned about Lutheran or Reformed Protestantism; they had no means of learning the peculiar place of Anglicanism in the non-Roman Western spectrum. To this there was one exception, and not a helpful one. A Greek professor of theology, Nicholas Damalas, spent three years in London and published a book in 1867 on the relations of the Anglican Church to the Orthodox, advancing a theological red herring by claiming that a statement in the Thirty-nine Articles that the ancient patriarchates had erred was an insuperable objection to union.9 More helpful was the Russian chaplain in London, Archpriest Eugène Popoff, who assisted the Convocation committee on intercommunion.10 And an emissary of the Eastern Churches Association obtained a statement from a Greek bishop sympathetic to the project of reunion.11

9

  Nicholas Zernov, Orthodox Encounter: The Christian East and the Ecumenical Movement (London: J. Clarke, 1961), 144. The nineteenth article (Zernov says the twenty-first) has the incidental remark that “the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred.” The Thirty-nine Articles are the official confessional statement of Anglicanism, but binding only on the clergy. Damalas’s argument was not followed up until it resurfaced around the turn of the century, again to disappear. The Russians had presented to Palmer forty-four errors in the Thirty-nine Articles; he agreed that they were errors but denied that they were found in the Articles.

10

  Noted in The Report on the Resolutions of the Bonn Conference of 1875, by the Committee on Inter-communion with the Orthodox Eastern Churches (London: Oxford, 1876), 11. The spelling of Popoff’s name was his own.

11

  George Williams, ed., Occasional Paper of the Eastern Churches Association. No. IV. A Letter from the Most Reverend Gregory of Byzantium, Metropolitan of Chios, on the Project of Union between the Anglican and the Orthodox Church of the East (London: Batty Bros., 1867). Gregory found that Anglicans agreed with the Orthodox “much more than Romanism or Protestantism” (9). Williams also met with patriarchs who suggested the appointment of delegates to confer on intercommunion.

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So matters stood when Alexander Lycurgus appeared on the scene. Born in 1827, he was initially educated at Athens. Clearly destined for higher things in the church, he was sent to Germany, where he studied from 1851 to 1858 at several universities. He thus came to know continental Protestantism but not Anglicanism. He returned to become a professor of theology at Athens, being ordained priest in 1862. In 1866 he was chosen archbishop of Syros and Tenos in the Cyclades. In 1869 Lycurgus was selected by the synod of the autonomous Church of Greece to visit England. The occasion was the consecration of a new church in Liverpool, with visits to the existing congregations in London and Manchester. Lycurgus seems to have been chosen for his general knowledge of the West, based on his studies in Germany; the synod made no reference to contacts with the Church of England. It was his own idea to use the occasion to learn about the Anglican Church with a view to reunion.12 The Greek Synod must have informed the patriarch of Constantinople about the planned visit, because it became known to the English through the chaplain at Constantinople, C. G. Curtis, who was also a corresponding secretary of the Anglo-Continental Society. The society, which was chiefly interested in continental Protestantism, did contact Lycurgus during his visit and presented him with books about Anglicanism.13 But it was the High Church Eastern Churches Association which “made the most of the occasion.”14 It arranged for Archbishop A. C. Tait of Canterbury to designate one of its most active members, Rev. George Williams, as the official guide for Lycurgus in an extensive tour of the Church of England, with visits to many representative clergy and eminent laity. Lycurgus arrived in Liverpool on 22 December 1868; he duly consecrated the church and visited the Manchester and London Greek communities. But almost from the first his tour was taken over by Williams in a manner which both surprised and pleased the archbishop. He was put through a round of interviews, meetings, and dinners. He was especially impressed by being invited to dinner at the house of the prime minister, W. E. Gladstone, himself a High Church reunionist, with whom he later corresponded. He was presented to Queen Victoria. He received doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge. He toured Westminster Abbey with Dean Stanley as his guide. He met several bishops, most notably Christopher Wordsworth of Lincoln, who gave him an honored place at a service which he attended. He addressed both the Eastern Churches Association and the very High Church Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom. The theological high point of Lycurgus’s visit came on 4 February 1870, with a conference at Ely at the palace of the bishop, Harold Browne, an eminent theologian and a patron of the Anglo-Continental Society. Among the Anglicans were the secretary of the society, Frederick Meyrick, who took notes, Williams, who translated, 12

  Biographical details are from F[rances] M. F. Skene, The Life of Alexander Lycurgus, Archbishop of the Cyclades (London: Rivingtons, 1877). Skene’s informant was Lycurgus’s niece, with whom he corresponded extensively. 13

 Ibid.

14

  Brandreth, “The Church of England and the Orthodox Churches,” 33.

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and H. P. Liddon, who represented the leading figure of the High Church party, E. B. Pusey. There was a full and frank discussion of all points of difference. Lycurgus went further than any previous Orthodox discussant (and nearly any later one) in conceding that these differences—except for the Filioque—presented no necessary bar to unity. Even transubstantiation, which the Russians had told Palmer was as essential an issue as the Filioque, was to Lycurgus “not authoritatively settled.”15 The only point on which he insisted was rejection of the Filioque. “It is an essential point. … there cannot be unity without identity of creed.”16 The spirit in which Lycurgus dealt with these issues was shown in his interview with Archbishop Tait, which had been postponed due to Tait’s illness. Lycurgus “expressed himself so far satisfied with what he had heard from the other representatives of the Anglican Church,—especially the Bishops of Ely and Lincoln—on other points of controversy, that it was unnecessary to re-open those questions.” When Tait (who was not as enthusiastic for reunion as some others) asked him why the Orthodox insisted on rebaptizing (by trine immersion) those who had been baptized by the Anglican mode of “affusion” or sprinkling, Lycurgus “admitted its validity as conveying the Grace of Regeneration” but considered it so irregular as to justify repetition.17 Lycurgus’s visit to England was a breakthrough in Anglican-Orthodox relations. To the English, it revealed a church indubitably catholic which differed on a few essential points but which had the great merit of not being Roman Catholic (this was the year in which Papal Infallibility became dogma). Lycurgus was able to present Orthodoxy in a manner to which Anglicans could respond favorably. For his part, Lycurgus was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic welcome he had received. In a report which he prepared for the patriarch of Constantinople, whom he visited on his way home, he stated that the English people had manifested “towards our Eastern Orthodox Church extraordinary, and to me unexpected, feelings of honour and respect.” The Anglican Church had “developed a particular feeling of sympathy and love for our Orthodox Church.” He recognized the key role of the High Church in this development. What he had learned from visiting England was something he had not known in Germany: “in this, the Anglican Church, there existed an Ecclesiastical Order, totally different from the other Protestant Sects, and in conformity with the Primitive Church.” There was a strong desire at least for “a friendly approximation” (he cited Gladstone in favor of this), which would consist in “the recognition by each Church of the other as a Christian community … and in the exhibition, from time to time, of proofs of mutual love, by intercommunication between the Bishops of both Churches, and by the grant

15

  George Williams, ed., Occasional Paper of the Eastern Churches Association No. XIV. A Collection of Documents relating chiefly to the visit of Alexander Archbishop of Syros and Tenos to England in 1870 (London: Batty Bros., 1872), 20. The report of the conference was prepared by Meyrick, a moderate Evangelical and anti-Roman controversialist. 16

  Ibid., 16. But Pusey, to whom Liddon reported, was “crushed” by the rejection of the Filioque: “it would take from me my conception of God” (ibid., 24). 17

  Ibid., 4–5.

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of certain simple privileges to the members.”18 (The latter referred not to communion but to baptism and burial.) The patriarch of Constantinople was impressed by the warmth of the welcome which Lycurgus had received in England. Replying in the summer of 1870 to a letter which Tait had sent him in 1869, the patriarch thanked the archbishop for the kindness with which Lycurgus had been received. The letter also conceded to Tait a privilege which he had requested, that Anglicans dying while traveling in the East might receive an Orthodox Christian burial. This interburial turned out to be the nearest that the two churches ever came to intercommunion. It is tempting to attribute this to Lycurgus’s visit and report, but it was a matter which had to be negotiated among the several patriarchates and churches even while Lycurgus was in England. Nevertheless, Patriarch Gregory used language which William Palmer would have appreciated: “we are as branches growing together of the one tree planted of heaven.” Other patriarchs, and the Greek Synod, in writing to Tait about the privilege of burial, also thanked him for English kindness to Lycurgus.19 Lycurgus earned the personal approval of the patriarch of Constantinople, who was to involve him as a consultant in 1873 in the condemnation of the separatist Bulgarian Church.20 Lycurgus might never have participated in further efforts at reunion but for another event which was happening at the time of his visit to England: the first Vatican Council, which in 1870 defined the dogma of Papal Infallibility. Both the archbishop of Canterbury and the patriarchs protested against the council and its dogma, drawing attention to the similarities of their two communions. More immediately important was a reaction among German (and some other Continental) Roman Catholics, who refused to accept the new dogma, under the leadership of the church historian Ignaz von Döllinger, who was excommunicated in 1871. Many of the dissidents formed themselves into what they called the Old Catholic Church, obtaining a bishop in 1873.21 Though few in numbers, the Old Catholics found themselves in an excellent position to bridge the Anglican and Orthodox communions, sharing their common episcopacy, adherence to the early councils and rejection of Roman innovations. Döllinger, who independently of the issue of Infallibility had an interest in reunion, proceeded to take advantage of this bridge position to raise the issue of church 18

  This report was printed in Greek and English and republished in the Williams Collection of Documents. I quote from a copy in Lambeth Palace Library bound in Lambeth Conferences, vol. 170.

19

  This correspondence is in Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth Conferences, vol. 170. Tait had reluctantly included the request for burial when pressed by the committee of convocation on intercommunion. Greeks in England already had reciprocity, for any baptized Christian may be buried by the Anglican Church, a function of its being a national church. 20

 Skene, Life, 113–17.

21   Döllinger did not himself join the Old Catholic Church which he had helped to form, regarding himself as a Roman Catholic priest who had been unjustly excommunicated. But he had moral authority among the Old Catholics, and his prestige and individual status gave him freedom of action in the matter of reunion.

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reunion from a new perspective, much larger than the tentative Anglican-Orthodox discussions of intercommunion. He gave a series of lectures on reunion in 1872 which, when published in translation, gave international circulation to the cause of reunion. He then called an international conference on reunion to meet at Bonn in 1874 under his presidency. This may be regarded as the beginning of what would in the twentieth century be called the ecumenical movement, and it has been described as “the first type of Faith and Order Conference” in Christian history.22 The largest contingent was Anglican, both British and American Episcopalians; there were Old Catholics and other Germans and Europeans. The Orthodox were represented by an obscure Greek professor and four Russians, the most prominent of whom was Dr. Janyschev, head of the St. Petersburg theological seminary. The conference promptly agreed on the principle of accepting the councils of the undivided Church of the first six centuries. But that immediately raised the question of the Nicene Creed and the Filioque. On this the Russians were adamant, and they had to agree to disagree. But agreement, or at least acceptance that disagreements were no bar to intercommunion, was reached on an astonishing number of other points among the episcopalian churches, Anglican, Old Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox. The only other insoluble question at that time was the invocation of saints. Döllinger planned a second Bonn Conference for 12–14 August 1875. He issued an open invitation, but he wrote privately to the theologians at Constantinople well in advance. It was this that brought Alexander Lycurgus to the conference, no doubt at the suggestion of the patriarch or his advisors, though all participants stressed that they were there solely as private individuals. He was one of two bishops (the other was Rumanian) in a more diverse Orthodox contingent, though Janyschev (not a bishop) seems to have taken the lead among them.23 The Anglican delegates were more numerous but theologically weaker and mostly unable to participate in discussions conducted in German, which the Easterners understood. The result was that the discussions focused on the concerns of the Orthodox, chiefly the Filioque, on which Döllinger was willing to accommodate them in the interest of reunion. Döllinger and the Westerners conceded, as they had in 1874, that the Filioque had been “irregularly” introduced into the Nicene Creed and ought not to be there. However, he had to deal with the fact that the doctrine of the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit expressed by the words “and the Son” was established in the beliefs of the Western churches and would not go away; he would have to minimize the differences of East and West on the subject so that the Orthodox would be able to tolerate the Western faith. He found a brilliant solution in a theological tour de force. He was able to show that St. John of Damascus, the last of the Greek Fathers of the Church, had made statements which, while denying that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the 22

  Owen Chadwick, “Döllinger and Reunion,” in Christian Authority: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 316. The article provides the basis for this discussion of the 1874 conference.

23

  Chadwick does not note Lycurgus, mentioning only “Greeks from the Aegean” (ibid., 329). He notes the Romanian bishop only because of his long-windedness.

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Son, conceded to the Son a role in the manifestation of the Spirit.24 The Easterners, for whom St. John’s work was the principal textbook, could not resist this solution, which was embodied in the Resolutions passed by the conference:25 We accept the teaching of St. John Damascene on the Holy Ghost, as it is expressed in the following paragraphs, in the sense of the teaching of the ancient undivided Church. 1. The Holy Ghost issues out of the Father, as the Beginning, the Cause, the Source of the Godhead. 2. The Holy Ghost does not issue out of the Son, because there is in the Godhead but one Beginning, one Cause, through which all that is in the Godhead is produced. 3. The Holy Ghost issues out of the Father through the Son. 4. The Holy Ghost is the Image of the Son, who is the Image of the Father, issuing out of the Father and resting in the Son as His revealing power. 5. The Holy Ghost is the personal production out of the Father, belonging to the Son, but not out of the Son, because He is the spirit of the mouth of God declarative of the Word. 6. The Holy Ghost forms the link between the Father and the Son, and is linked to the Father by the Son. Agreement to this resolution was the closest anyone has ever come to resolving the question of the Filioque; it was a potentially decisive breakthrough. It could have paved the way to intercommunion, because the Orthodox dropped their other objections.26 Lycurgus agreed to the resolution and was cautiously optimistic.27 He began his return journey while drafting his report to the patriarch of Constantinople. And then—nothing. The Bonn Resolutions were never followed up. Indeed, direct discussions ceased for a decade between Anglicans and Orthodox, and the movement for intercommunion came to a standstill at least until the 1890s. We know why Döllinger, who had intended to call another Bonn Conference in 1876, did not do so. His personal position came under attack by J. J. Overbeck, a former Roman Catholic priest converted first to Anglicanism and then to Orthodoxy, 24

  St. John of Damascus (or Damascenus; ca. 675–749) is canonized by both East and West. Some consider his theology of the Holy Spirit to be weak. 25

  Report on the Resolutions of the Bonn Conference, 9–10.

26

  Invocation of saints was not discussed (perhaps because the issue had been raised by Anglicans only), and the question of apostolic succession of Anglican bishops had been laid to rest by Döllinger in 1874. 27

  Lycurgus denied “that the existence of the Spirit depends also on the Son,” as did all the Orthodox. But “finally Dr. Döllinger proposed as a compromise that the dogma of the Procession of the Holy Ghost was to be accepted in all essential points, as John of Damascus explained it. The proposal was accepted by everyone.… I hope the plan will not prove illusory” (Lycurgus to Gladstone, 3 September 1875, in Skene, Life, 152–53).

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who did not want Orthodox-Anglican intercommunion but sought to supplant the Anglican Church by a Western Orthodox Church.28 And the Old Catholic Church lost its initial momentum and became irrelevant when German Catholics rallied to their bishops who were being persecuted by Bismarck’s government in the Kulturkampf. We know why the Church of England did not follow through. The Bonn Resolutions were reviewed by Convocation’s Committee on Inter-Communion; St. John Damascene’s propositions were found to be acceptable or at least allowable; and a favorable report was submitted to Convocation in 1876, supported by speeches by bishops Browne and Wordsworth. But Convocation was engaged in discussions of revision of the Book of Common Prayer, a subject which Anglican clergy can debate interminably (and did until 1928). The report was never considered; it was quietly shelved when an explosion by Pusey in favor of the Filioque showed that the issue might be divisive.29 The Eastern Churches Association, which might have pushed the matter, had gone out of business under the mistaken impression that the American Episcopal Church would be more productive. We think we know why the Russians did not follow through. The Eastern Question erupted in 1876, shaking Russians out of their previous sympathy with the West. Meanwhile, Overbeck’s alternative of a Western Orthodox Church received some official favor.30 Nobody has even asked why the Greek Churches did not follow through with the Bonn Resolutions. The chief reason was a personal event little noticed at the time. While still on his return journey, Alexander Lycurgus, whose health had been precarious, died.31 There is no evidence that his report, which may not have been completed, was ever presented to the patriarch of Constantinople. With the death of Alexander Lycurgus, there was no longer a significant proponent of intercommunion among the Greek Orthodox. He had been an ecumenical pioneer, but without results. His two appearances on the scene, however promising at the time, proved to be isolated incidents.

28

  Chadwick, “Döllinger and Reunion,” 329, 331.

29   Pusey was indignant at the rejection of the Filioque, which he thought to have been the original Western form of the Nicene Creed and held even by some Eastern fathers. E. B. Pusey, On the Clause “And the Son,” in regard to the Eastern Church and the Bonn Conference (London: J. Parker, 1876). 30

  See Zernov, Orthodox Encounter, 145–46. The chaplain Popoff, who had cooperated with the committee on intercommunion, died in 1875, and was replaced by Eugene Smirnoff, who sympathized with Overbeck. Overbeck’s scheme was not dropped until 1884. 31

  For details, see Skene, Life, 127–38.

The Septuagint Challenge to Russian Old Testament Translation: Fault Lines in Fin-de-Siècle Russian Religious Culture Stephen K. Batalden

The earliest Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, is generally attributed to the Jewish community of third-century BCE Alexandria. That Alexandrian Jewish community, probably having lost their knowledge of Hebrew, arranged for translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek for use in the synagogues. The translation’s title derived from the great sanhedrin of seventy-two members; thus, the text of the seventy, or “Septuagint.” After being rendered into the Hellenistic Greek of the Alexandrian Attic dialect, the Septuagint was corrected by the Patristic writer Origen and became an authoritative version of the Old Testament in the early church, despite exclusion of certain noncanonical or deuterocanonical Septuagint books from the early biblical canon. The Septuagint became the basic authority behind the Old Testament of the Eastern Church, even though Western translations, including Jerome’s Vulgate and the early modern English editions, would draw directly upon the Hebrew Masoretic tradition. Until the post–World War II discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, extant Septuagint editions predated most existing Hebrew manuscripts, and thus the Septuagint also served to illumine Hebrew textology. Despite its occasional misreading of the Hebrew original, its frequently inserted glosses, and its paraphrastic character, the Septuagint has retained its value for modern biblical criticism, not least of all because most of the New Testament quotations from the Old Testament were drawn from a Septuagint base text.1 Because of its function as the base text for much, though not all, of the Slavonic Old Testament, the Septuagint has carried a special authority within the Russian Orthodox Church. Yet, despite this traditional authority of the Septuagint for Slavonic textology, modern Russian biblical translation in the nineteenth century came to accept the Hebrew Masoretic text as its base. That acceptance led to one of the most contentious issues involving the modern Russian Bible. By the end of the nineteenth century, following final publication of an authorized Russian synodal edition (sinodal´nyi perevod) of the Old Testament, the issue of the Septuagint and its subordination to the Hebrew Masoretic text in modern Russian Bible translation came to reflect a 1

  See Emanuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research (Jerusalem: Simor, 1981); and Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblica Hebraica, trans. Erroll F. Rhodes, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994).

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 137–46.

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much deeper division, or fault line, running through the center of official Russian religious culture. The decision to use the ancient Hebrew text in modern Russian biblical translation was affected by two critical developments in Russian biblical textology of the nineteenth century. First, Russian biblical textology was directly impacted by Western scholarship, which by the nineteenth century uniformly accepted the Hebrew text as the authentic original text of the Old Testament. On the eve of the Russian Bible Society era (1812–26) the Commission on Ecclesiastical Schools brought to St. Petersburg and its Theological Academy two leading European Hebraists, Ignatius Fessler and Jean de Horn. These two orientalists became popular lecturers; Fessler would later be discharged in connection with charges of freemasonry.2 Nevertheless, by 1816, when a leading Scottish Hebraist, Ebenezer Henderson (1784–1858), was sent to Petersburg by the British and Foreign Bible Society to assist with the work of the Russian Bible Society’s Translations Subcommittee, he found Russian churchmen already well grounded in the study of Hebrew.3 Conforming to the British and Foreign Bible Society’s commitment to use of the Hebrew original in Old Testament translation, the Russian Bible Society specifically acknowledged the authority of the Hebrew text in the preface to its first Russian Psalter.4 The Hebrew text was also employed in preparation of the Russian Octateuch (the first eight books of the Old Testament, printed and left unbound in sheets at the time of the 1826 closure of the Bible Society).

2

  On Fessler and freemasonry, see A. N. Pypin, Issledovaniia i stat´i po epokhe Aleksandra I, 3: Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii pri Aleksandre I (Petrograd: Izdatel´stvo “OGNI,” 1918), 318–25; and S. Tr., “Ignatii Avrelii Fessler,” Russkii biograficheskii slovar´ (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva, 1901), 59–60. On his career in Russia, see Jean de Horn, Mémoire sur ma carrière civile et militaire en Russie (London, 1843).

3

  On Henderson’s work in Russia, see his Biblical Researches and Travels in Russia; including a tour in the Crimea, and the passage of the Caucasus: With observations on the state of the Rabbinical and Karaite Jews, and the Mohammedan and pagan tribes, inhabiting the southern provinces of the Russian empire (London: J. Nisbet, 1826). For his evaluation of the young Russian Hebraist Gerasim Petrovich Pavskii as that “liberal and enlightened clergyman,” see Henderson to Bishop Frederick Münter, 20 September 1822, “Ny Kgl. Samling,” fol. 1698, Royal Library of Copenhagen.

4

  The first edition of the Russian Bible Society’s Psalter was published in 1822, Kniga Khvalenii ili Psaltir´ na rossiiskom iazyke (St. Petersburg: Nikolai Grech´). It contained a preface, “K khristoliubivomu chitateliu” (i–xi), signed by Metropolitan Serafim of Novgorod and St. Petersburg, Archbishop Filaret of Moscow, and Archbishop Simeon of Iaroslav. The preface noted the use of the Hebrew “original” alongside the Greek Septuagint, which it acknowledged as the textual base for the Slavonic Psalter. Examples are provided of cases in which the translation gave precedence to the Hebrew for purposes of clarity. Although not included in this first edition of the Russian Psalter, Psalm 151, which is found only in the Septuagint, is printed in all subsequent editions of the Bible Society’s Russian Psalter.

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The Western Hebraic scholarship of Fessler, von Horn, and Henderson would have been viewed simply as alien and external interventions had not Russia’s own Hebraists achieved international prominence in the decades following closure of the Russian Bible Society. The rise of Hebraic studies in Russia, which paralleled the development of oriental studies more broadly in the nineteenth century, served to reinforce the use of the Hebrew Masoretic text in modern Russian biblical translation. In the distinguished line of nineteenth-century Russian Hebraists, the names of four Petersburg scholars stand out: Gerasim Petrovich Pavskii, Vasilii Andreevich Levison, Daniil Avramovich Khvol´son, and Ivan Gavriilovich Troitskii, all of them instructors at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Gerasim Petrovich Pavskii completed the first full translation of the Russian Old Testament in an edition lithographed for use in his Hebrew courses at the St. Petersburg Academy in the 1830s. The underground circulation of that Russian Old Testament ultimately generated in the 1840s a broad-ranging investigation, the Pavskii Affair (delo Pavskogo), leading to the seizure and burning of 300 of the 490 lithographed copies of the Pavskii translation.5 Nevertheless, when Old Testament translation resumed in the 1850s, the Pavskii text (textus primus) of the Russian Old Testament, and the Hebrew textology it employed, served as an important point of departure for the work of Daniil Khvol´son, the distinguished orientalist and translator who, with Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) and Pavel Savvaitov, is most closely associated with the preparation of the final Synodal edition (sinodal´nyi perevod) of the Russian Old Testament (1861–75). In their appeal to Hebraic textological traditions of the West, Russian Old Testament translators were sheltered by Russia’s most prominent prelate of the nineteenth century, Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow. The attack against Russian Old Testament textology was enjoined at the time of the renewal of Russian biblical translation in the 1850s. At that time, the ecumenical question was raised over how such a translation would affect the relationship between the Russian Church and other Orthodox peoples of the Russian Empire and the wider Orthodox East. Initially, Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev posed the issue in such a way as to question the textological principles of Filaret Drozdov. The Kievan prelate, seeking to discredit earlier Russian Old Testament translations that had used a Hebrew Masoretic textual base, argued that Russian translation based upon the Hebrew Bible parted with the Orthodox textological tradition of the Slavonic Bible, grounded as it was upon the Greek Septuagint. But, that argument was quickly expanded to note that the ecumenical patriarch had earlier anathematized any comparable effort to render the Holy Scriptures into modern Greek. By engaging in modern Russian biblical translation, the Russian Church in the eyes of the Kievan prelate would be condoning the kind of activity that was elsewhere spurned within the Orthodox family. With respect to Orthodox Slavs, the argument was made that modern translation would effectively separate Russia from Slavic peo-

5

  On the Pavskii Affair, see S. K. Batalden, “Gerasim Pavskii’s Clandestine Old Testament: The Politics of Nineteenth-Century Russian Biblical Translation,” Church History 57 (1988): 486–98.

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ples (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Bulgarians, and others) who were joined to Russia through their common Slavonic and Greek biblical and Greek liturgical tradition.6 This opposition from Kiev met with a firm response from Metropolitan Filaret Drozdov of Moscow. On the matter of the Greek Septuagint, Metropolitan Filaret was as much opposed to the canonization of the Greek Septuagint as he was to the earlier attempt to canonize the Slavonic Bible. For the Moscow prelate, the Septuagint was an important textual base for the Old Testament, but it did not stand alone in that respect. Filaret Drozdov’s credibility on this issue of Old Testament textology was well known from his work, O dogmaticheskom dostoinstve i okhranitel´nom upotreblenii grecheskogo sedmidesiati tolkovnikov i slavenskogo perevodov sviashchennogo pisaniia (On the Dogmatic Merit and Preservative Utility of the Greek Septuagint and Slavonic Translation of Holy Scripture).7 Rather, Metropolitan Filaret argued that the Greek Septuagint did have a special place in the Eastern Church. But, since the Septuagint was itself a translation—the oldest extant translation from the Hebrew— the Hebrew textual tradition also needed to be embraced. For good or for ill, Filaret Drozdov’s effort to accommodate both textual traditions came to be reflected in the sinodal´nyi perevod by that characteristic use of variant Septuagint readings footnoted throughout the pages of the Russian Old Testament. In the years that followed publication of the Synodal Russian Old Testament in the 1870s, the continuing discussion of Hebrew and Septuagint textology constituted one small part of a sharply conflicted debate within late nineteenth-century Russian religious culture. By raising the wider issue of the Russian Church’s relation to the ecumenical patriarchate, the Kievan metropolitan also posed issues of a more transparently political character. What the archival record reveals is the straightforward clarity and candor of Filaret Drozdov’s responses. The distinguished Moscow metropolitan was known for his principled independence on matters involving Russian ties with the Orthodox East, often defending the Constantinople patriarchate’s position on such matters as Bulgarian Church autocephaly, despite strong pan-Slavic sentiment in Russia supporting the Bulgars. Yet, on the issue of modern Russian biblical translation, Filaret 6

  The position of the Kievan Metropolitan Filaret (Amfiteatrov) is identified in I. A. Chistovich, Istoriia perevoda Biblii na russkii iazyk, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1899), 270–71. The conflict between the two prelates, Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev and Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow, is amply documented in the secondary literature. In addition to the standard Chistovich history, see also Serdechnyi privet: Sbornik statei, izdannykh S.-Peterburgskoi dukhovnoi akademiei v pamiat´ piatidesiatiletiia sviatitel´skogo sluzheniia vysokopreosviashchenneishego Isidora Mitropolita Novgorodskogo, S.-Peterburgskogo i Finliandskogo (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia F. Eleonskogo, 1884). For the manuscript record of the exchange between the two prelates, see “Sbornik statei o raznykh predmetakh,” Rukopisnyi otdel, Rossiiskaia natsional´naia biblioteka (RORNB) f. S.-Peterburgskaia dukhovnaia akademiia, d. #A.I.80, 381 ll. 7   This treatise of Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov), originally prepared for the debate over canonization of the Slavonic Bible and Greek Septuagint in 1845, was subsequently published in Pribavleniia k tvoreniiam sviatykh ottsov v russkom perevode 32 (1858): 2nd pagination, 452–84.

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of Moscow saw no need to secure the approval of the ecumenical patriarchate, whose opposition to demotic translation was well known. The metropolitan noted that, even as the ecumenical patriarch was not consulted on Russian translations of the Greek church fathers, so also no prior consultation was called for in the case of biblical translation. Acutely aware of the degenerated condition of the ecumenical patriarchate, Filaret argued that the Greek hierarchy did not have the necessary information on which to base a judgment regarding Russian biblical translation. Concluding his response on the issue, Filaret argued that the Constantinople patriarchate was dependent upon an unbelieving government (the Ottoman Empire) that could depose it at will, and that therefore the Greek hierarchy lacked the full church freedom necessary to judge the issue of Russian biblical translation.8 Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow firmly believed that the issue of modern Russian biblical translation was not a matter for Constantinople to decide. The controversy over the Russian Old Testament and its employment of the Hebrew Masoretic text did not diminish following Metropolitan Filaret’s death and the ensuing publication of the full Synodal Russian Bible in 1875. Despite the authority of the Moscow metropolitan and the achievements of Russian Hebraists of the nineteenth century—a tradition of Hebraic studies that would continue in the work of Ivan Troitskii and Pavel Konstantinovich Kokovtsev (1861–1942) well into the twentieth century—the Russian Old Testament generated a decidedly mixed reaction. It is in this reaction to the Russian Old Testament and the defense of the Greek Septuagint that we find the real fault lines in official religious culture of fin-de-siècle Russia. Immediately following the 1875 publication of the Russian Old Testament, the issue was enjoined by one of the most ardent defenders of the Greek Septuagint, Bishop Feofan (Govorov) of Vladimir. Writing in the pages of Dushepoleznoe chtenie, Feofan maintained that the Septuagint was the only acceptable ancient Orthodox text, having been translated flawlessly from the original Hebrew Masoretic text.9 Responding to the problem of obscure passages in the Slavonic and Septuagint editions of the Old Testament, the bishop argued that the obscurities were present in the original text and merely confirmed that God’s divine intent is often beyond the understanding of mere mortals. What is notable also in Bishop Feofan’s writing is an explicitly anti-Semitic line of argumentation that would resurface in the critiques of many, though not all, defenders of Septuagint and Slavonic textology. His argument, which was highly dubious then, and altogether unsustainable in the post–Dead Sea Scrolls era, was that there had been intentional Jewish corruption of post-Septuagint redactions of the 8

  Moscow Metropolitan Filaret’s response on this issue of the Greek patriarchate is missing from the Chistovich history but can be found in “Konfidentsial´naia zametka o raznoglasii vzgliadov dvukh mitropolitov Filaretov … o perevode Sv. Pisaniia,” ROGPB f. S.-Peterburgskaia dukhovnaia akademiia, d. #A.I.80, ll. 111–111ob. 9

  Feofan (Govorov), “Po povodu izdaniia sviashchennykh knig vetkhogo zaveta v russkom perevode,” Dushepoleznoe chtenie, no. 11 (1875): 42–352. See also the discussion of Bishop Feofan’s position in Arthur Christian Repp, “In Search of an Orthodox Way: The Development of Biblical Studies in Late Imperial Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1999), 137–39.

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Hebrew Masoretic text in order thereby to expunge the more explicit references to Christ in the Old Testament prophetic books found in the Slavonic text. While the charges of Bishop Feofan were immediately and convincingly refuted by one of Gerasim Pavskii’s own former seminary students, Pavel Ivanovich Gorskii-Platonov, the issue of anti-Semitism had become a central weapon in the debate over the Russian Old Testament.10 This anti-Semitic theme in Russian biblical text criticism—a consistent agenda throughout the remainder of the imperial period and continuing through the twentieth century—increasingly blinded the more conservative nationalist side of official Russian religious culture, creating a fissure between official nationalist religious culture and those scholars, lay and clerical, who appealed to a more open Orthodox tradition. In this critical divide, the issue of the Septuagint became a crucial litmus test. To understand how it was that the Russian Old Testament came to divide Russian Orthodox religious culture in the last half of the nineteenth century, it is necessary to review the painful background to this division, set as that was in the highly controversial issue of blood libel, specifically the “Saratov Affair.”11 In the 1850s, concurrent with the reopening of modern Russian biblical translation, the three most prominent St. Petersburg Hebraists and Russian Old Testament translators—Pavskii, Levison, and Khvol´son—came to share joint membership on a special commission convened in 1855 to investigate the allegation in Saratov that Jews had sacrificed Christian blood for ritual religious purposes. In the lengthy investigation that ensued, the three Hebraists came to the defense of Russian Jewry, fearlessly challenging the prejudicial charges levied against the local Jews of Saratov. The charge was blood libel—namely, that Jewish residents of Saratov had murdered two Christian children in the winter of 1852–53 for the purposes of ritual use of Christian blood in Jewish observances. The Ministry of Internal Affairs’ mishandling of the Saratov investigation eventually led to wildly irrational charges of wholesale kidnapping of boys. In the end, the Saratov prisons and police department jails were unable to hold all those arrested in the affair, with the result that private premises were rented for the incarceration of local residents. Incapable of containing the investigation, the ministry closed its proceedings in November 1853. In 1854, a special judicial commission was established in St. Petersburg under the presidency of Aleksandr Karlovich Giers to investigate the guilt or innocence of those charged in Saratov. One part of that judicial investigation required investigation “whether there

10

  P. I. Gorskii-Platonov, “Neskol´ko slov o stat´e preosviashchennogo episkopa Feofana: Po povodu izdaniia sviashchennykh knig vetkhogo zaveta v russkom perevode,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie 3, 11 (1875): 506–07. 11

  S. K. Batalden, “Nineteenth-Century Russian Old Testament Translation and the Jewish Question,” in Kirchen im Kontext unterschiedlicher Kulturen: Auf dem Weg ins dritte Jahrtausend, ed. Kaarl Christian Felmy and Fairy von Lilienfeld et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 577–87.

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were any secret dogmas of Jews that might explain their use of Christian blood.”12 To investigate this matter of potential secret dogmas, Giers appointed a “special commission” composed of Khvol´son, Pavskii, Levison, and one of Pavskii’s former students, Fedor Sidonskii. In short, in 1855, on the eve of the reopening of modern Russian biblical translation, the major architects of the modern Russian Old Testament were chosen for their expertise in Hebraic studies in order to determine “whether in books or manuscripts anything could be found relating to the Jewish use of Christian blood for religious purposes.” The special commission determined, of course, that there was no documentary or other evidence whatsoever in the Hebrew tradition for the use of Christian blood in Jewish ritual. Although the Saratov affair ended disgracefully with Tsar Alexander II’s support of the 22–2 majority in the State Council to maintain two of the falsely charged Jews under arrest, one of the more positive outcomes of this special commission of Hebraists was Daniil Khvol´son’s landmark study O nekotorykh srednevekovykh obvineniiakh protiv evreev (Concerning some Medieval Accusations against Jews). Published in three subsequent Russian editions, as well as in German, the Khvol´son work became the most authoritative published challenge to blood libel of the nineteenth century.13 As Ronald Hsia has noted for Germany, so also in this instance modern Hebraic and Old Testament scholarship ultimately spearheaded the challenge to blood libel and anti-Semitism.14 In the years that followed, Khvol´son and the architects of modern Russian biblical translation would confront outspoken opposition from those whose defense of the Septuagint text frequently veiled deeper anti-Semitic sentiments. Among those, none was more ad hominem in his charges than the historian Nikolai Kostomarov (1817–85), who charged Khvol´son with “partiality toward Jews,” while renewing charges of Jewish use of Christian blood in ritual ceremonies. Khvol´son responded: Mr. Kostomarov alludes to my “patriotism” and speaks about my “partiality toward Jews.” Yes, I admit that I nourish an empathy for Jews … and I think that it is far more honest to defend those of my fellow race and my former religion from erroneous accusations than to slander them with various fabrications and with false representation of the most innocent facts. To be sure, 12

  For the specific charge given the judicial commission, see Iu. Gessen, “Saratovskoe delo,” Evreiskaia entsiklopediia (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo Obshchestva dlia nauchnykh evreiskikh izdanii i Izdatel´stvo Brokgauz-Efron, 1914), 14: 2–8; also Gessen’s work Istoriia evreev v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia L. Ia. Ganzburga, 1914); and P. Ia. Levenson, “Eshche o saratovskom dele,” Voskhod, no. 4 (1881): 163–78. 13

  D. A. Khvol´son, O nekotorykh srednevekovykh obvineniiakh protiv evreev: Istoricheskoe issledovanie po istochnikam (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1861). See also an expanded 1880 edition published in St. Petersburg (Tipografiia Tsederbauma i Gol´denbliuma). The German edition was published by J. Kauffmann Press in Frankfurt in 1901, Die Blutanklage und sonstige mittel-alterliche Beschuldigungen der Juden: Eine historische Untersuchung nach den Quellen. 14

  R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

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a defender of Jews cannot count upon the approbation of the majority who invariably throw in their lot with the slanderers of Judaism. But why does an honest man need such approbation? I hold true to my conscience in struggling for justice and for truth.15 The forceful message of Daniil Khvol´son and his fellow Old Testament translators effectively challenged prevailing nineteenth-century superstitions directed against Russian Jewry, and put racially motivated anti-Semitic superstitions on the defensive.16 In their reasoned appeal for understanding across racial, ethnic, and religious lines, these Orthodox scholars offered a profoundly ecumenical witness across the divide of fin-de-siècle Russian religious culture. In rare instances this divide within official Russian religious culture has yielded open-minded Russian biblical scholars whose critical textological insights were nevertheless combined with transparently exclusionary language with respect to Russian Jewry. This was the case of Nikolai Nikanorovich Glubokovskii, who published in 1911, the year of Khvol´son’s death, a Holy Synod tract opposing Jewish use of Christian names.17 While the Septuagint occasionally became a foil for anti-Semitic polemic in the contested debate over Russian Old Testament textology, there was another, quite different context in which Septuagint studies became a part of the development of independent historico-critical biblical textology in fin-de-siècle Russia. The foundation for this more serious scholarly study of the Septuagint was of course the discoveries of the German biblical critic and paleographer Konstantin von Tischendorf (1815–74) at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. First in 1844, and then returning to Mount Sinai at Russian governmental expense in 1859, von Tischendorf unearthed and provided for the Russians separate parts of what would ultimately become the famous Codex Sinaiticus, the fourth-century AD Greek text of the Bible, including the earliest extant text of the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament. The magnificent facsimile edition of the Codex Sinaiticus published in St. Petersburg in 1869 served to stimulate serious scholarly study of the Septuagint, not only in Russia but throughout the world. 15

  D. A. Khvol´son, “Prilozhenie III: Otvet na zamechanie N. I. Kostomarova,” in Upotrebliaiut-li evrei khristianskuiu krov´? 3rd ed. (Kiev: Tipografiia Gubernskogo pravleniia, 1912), 77.

16

  Although Khvol´son’s impact was felt on several different levels, perhaps the most sensational immediate impact of his position was the extraordinaary apology of Ippolit Liutostanskii, a converted Catholic priest and student at the Moscow Theological Academy. Persuaded of the error of his own position, Liutostanskii issued in 1882 a remarkable defense of the Jews, entitled Sovremennyi vzgliad na evreiskii vopros, wherein he recants his former writings on the subject. See “Liutostanskii, Ippolit,” in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar´, 18: 265. 17

  N. N. Glubokovskii, Po voprosu o prave evreev imenovat´sia khristianskimi imenami (St. Petersburg: Sinodal´naia tipografiia, 1911). I am indebted to the Repp dissertation for unearthing this Glubokovskii work (“In Search of an Orthodox Way,” 207).

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By the close of the nineteenth century, two Russian translation projects came to be tied to this study of the Septuagint. The first featured the Russian prelate and Near East traveler who figured prominently in Russia’s acquisition of the Codex Sinaiticus, Bishop Porfirii (Uspenskii, 1804–85). Although published posthumously by the Holy Synod only in 1893, Porfirii Uspenskii’s translation of the Psalter was the first Russian edition ever to be translated exclusively from the Septuagint.18 Its publication by the synod reflected the open-ended debate that continued over Old Testament translation following publication of the sinodal´nyi perevod of the 1870s. Even more influential in that regard was the translation and critical scholarship of Pavel Aleksandrovich Iungerov (1856–1921). Unlike other biblical textologists who tended to center around St. Petersburg, Iungerov was a product of the Kazan´ Theological Academy, where he taught from the end of the 1870s. His landmark two-volume study of the Old Testament followed the basic outlines suggested by Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow—namely, that the Septuagint could at times serve as a corrective, but that the appropriate source for Old Testament translation was that used in Russian biblical translation, the Hebrew Masoretic original.19 Iungerov was sensitive, however, to the dogmatic interpretive importance of the Septuagint, and focused his energies particularly on the importance of the aprocrypha or non-canonical books for which the Septuagint remained the only source. Subjected to criticism from his colleague at the Kazan´ Academy, M. I. Bogoslovskii, a strident advocate of the Septuagint, Iungerov launched in 1907 an ambitious project to translate the entire Septuagint into modern Russian.20 By the time of Bogoslovskii’s death, the two scholars had completed translation of the prophetic and non-canonical books, as well as Genesis and Proverbs.21 In short, even Septuagint studies, which had all too frequently been used as a weapon of Orthodox “tradition” to denigrate Hebrew textology generally, 18   Psaltir´ v russkom perevode s grecheskogo Ep. Porfiriia (St. Petersburg: Sinodal´naia Tipografiia, 1893), 242 pp. See the edition in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, RNB #18.267.5.40. 19

  P. A. Iungerov, Obshchee istoriko-kriticheskoe vvedenie v sviashchennye vetkhozavetnye knigi (Kazan´: Tsentral´naia tipografiia, 1902), and Chastnoe istoriko-kriticheskoe vvedenie v sviashchennye vetkhozavetnye knigi (Kazan´: Tsentral´naia tipografiia, 1907). 20

  For the critique by Mikhail Ivanovich Bogoslovskii, see “Otzyv prof. M. I. Bogoslovskogo o sochinenii ordinarn. Professora P. A. Iungerova, pod zaglaviem: ‘Obshchee istoriko-kriticheskoe vvedenie v sviashchennye vetkhozavetnye knigi,’ rekomendovannom na premiiu pokoinogo preosviashen. mitropolita Moskovskogo Makariia,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik 3, 9 (1907): 3–4. Iungerov credits Bogoslovskii with the inspiration for their joint project to translate the Septuagint. See P. Iungerov, “Professor Mikhail Ivanovich Bogoslovskii,” in Pamiati professora Mikhaila Ivanovicha Bogoslovskogo (Kazan´: Tsentral´naia tipografiia, 1916), 8–9. The Septuagint/Hebrew Masoretic debate between Bogoslovski and Iungerov is well treated in Repp, “In Search of an Orthodox Way,” 203–07. 21

  This is confirmed in Repp (“In Search of an Orthodox Way,” 207), who relies upon N. N. Glubokovskii’s Russkaia bogoslovskaia nauka v ee istoricheskom razvitii i noveishem sostoianii (Warsaw: Sinodal´naia tipografiia, 1928), 29.

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became elevated onto the plane of modern historical critical text studies in the years immediately prior to the Russian Revolution. What is remarkable in the history of the modern Russian Bible is how, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the fault line running through Russian Old Testament studies—a line dividing adherents of the Hebrew Masoretic text from strident defenders of the Greek Septuagint—had begun to be subsumed within a much larger debate over historical text criticism and the place of Orthodox tradition in that debate. Russian nationalists in their defense of the Septuagint clung to a patriotic textology (otechestvennaia tekstologiia). But, the advent of modern text criticism posed unique problems for modern Russian religious culture, and left a divided landscape on the eve of the Russian Revolution. Within the academies and the professoriate, the effort to defend the traditions of the Orthodox Church increasingly needed to be adjusted to take into account modern methods of biblical text studies. But there remained large segments in the Russian church where an exclusivist vision of Orthodox tradition, including at times explicitly anti-Semitic formulations, still held sway. For most of the seventy-five years of Soviet rule, that defining fault line within Russian religious culture was camouflaged by the crude manipulations of state authorities bent on destroying the religious culture itself. Today, even as debates swirl around ecumenism within Russian religious culture, the issue of authority in Russian religious culture continues to be arbitrated in part through the ongoing, and still largely unresolved, conflict over sacred texts and modern biblical criticism.22

22

  For one of the more interesting summary statements of this problem from an Orthodox perspective, see the essay published by the martyred Father Aleksandr Men´, “K istorii russkoi pravoslavnoi bibleistiki,” Bogoslovskie trudy 28 (1987): 272–89.

Russian Interpretations of Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus Heather Bailey

Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jésus (Life of Jesus, 1863), dealing with the historical Jesus, the “central theological problem of the nineteenth century,”1 caused a tremendous uproar throughout Europe. Yet the significance of the first popular biography of Jesus Christ has not been fully appreciated. Upon publication the book was almost immediately translated into over a dozen languages, including Russian, and the French edition ran into thirteen printings in the first two years along with fifteen printings of a popular version that appeared in 1864.2 Renan treated his subject as authentically historical, and portrayed the Jesus of history as merely human, though the perfect ideal. Jesus’s great contribution to humanity was his consciousness of God as father. For Renan, Jesus’s God-consciousness is the true essence of Christianity. When Renan’s book first appeared, summarizing “in a single book the result of the whole process of German

For a fuller treatment of this subject, see Heather Bailey, Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan’s “Life of Jesus” in Russia (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). This article is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, “Ernest Renan’s ‘Life of Jesus’ and the Orthodox Struggle against the De-Christianization of Christ in Russia” (University of Minnesota, 2001). Research for this study was supported in part by the Regional Scholar Exchange Program, which is funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Information Agency (USIA), under the authority of the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961 as amended, and administered by the American Council for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS. The opinions expressed herein are the author’s own and do not necessarily express the views of either USIA or the American Councils. Additional financial support was provided by a Doctoral Dissertation Special Grant from the University of Minnesota Graduate School, as well as by a grant from the McMillan Research Travel Fund. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 1

  Theodore Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 36. Thousands of lives of Jesus were published in Europe during the nineteenth century. See Peter Fuller, Images of God: The Consolations of Lost Illusions (London: Chatto and Windus, 1985), 299.

2

 Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, 37. The first Russian edition of Life of Jesus was translated by I. Monakov and published in Dresden in 1864. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 147–55.

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criticism”3 for middle-class readers, his treatment shocked the broad reading public. As Sergei Bulgakov, one of Russia’s Marxist-turned-Orthodox religious philosophers put it, with his “merry, rollicking skepticism” and “aesthetic-religious garnish,” Renan substituted a cheap novel for the Gospel.4 Life of Jesus made deep inroads in Russian society between 1863 and 1917. Prohibition of the work by the Ecclesiastic Censorship Committee contributed to the success and popularity of the book, as was pointed out by everyone from literary figures such as Evgeniia Tur and Dostoevsky to concerned representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. As Dostoevsky put it: Every banned idea immediately, as soon as it is banned, is placed on a pedestal by the very fact that it is forbidden. If Strauss and Renan had not been banned, for example, who would know about them in our country? Every banned idea is like that very petrol that they poured over the floors and the offices of the Tuillerie and set fire to before the conflagration.5 In many respects, Life of Jesus divided Russian public opinion between those who supported the traditional dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church and those who opposed the church, whether on religious, philosophical, or political grounds. Yet when it came to the question of the work’s significance, there was considerable agreement among Renan’s antagonists and defenders alike. They understood Renan primarily as a religious thinker whose central contribution was separating religious consciousness from dogmatic constraints and the established church. The arguments between Renan’s antagonists and defenders were primarily about the merits of his brand of spirituality. In Life of Jesus, Renan combines a positivist approach to history with philosophic idealism. He writes, for example: Tainted by a coarse materialism, and aspiring to the impossible, that is to say, to found universal happiness upon political and economic measures, the “socialist” attempts of our time will remain unfruitful until they take as their

3

  Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery, with an introduction by James M. Robinson (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 181.

4

  S. N. Bulgakov, Khristianskii sotsializm (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1991), 70. Bulgakov was one of several Russian radical intellectuals to abandon Marxism and materialism in favor of Orthodoxy and idealism in the first decade of the 1900s. He became a priest in 1918 and devoted himself to the study of theology. 5

  Fedor Dostoevskii, “Zapiski k Dnevniku pisatelia 1878 g. iz rabochikh tetradei 1875–1877,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh [henceforth PSS] (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972– 90), 24: 95. Dostoevsky goes on to lament the fact that people do not want to admit that banning an idea has an effect opposite of that intended.

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rule the true spirit of Jesus, I mean absolute idealism—the principle that, in order to possess the world, we must renounce it.6 This approach alienated Renan from strict materialists; little was written about Renan by the radical intelligentsia of the 1860s and 1870s, who took a rather dismissive attitude towards Renan’s idealism. Due to Renan’s synthesis of positivism and idealism, critics sometimes asserted that Renan failed to satisfy anyone. “It turned out that by his account about the earthly life of Jesus Renan did not satisfy anyone: neither believers nor unbelievers, Catholics nor Protestants, positivists nor atheists, freethinkers nor deists.”7 Renan’s synthesis of positivism and idealism, however, did satisfy many who wanted to hold onto both a sense of religious feeling and the basic scientific assumptions of modernity. It represented an alternative to traditional dogma and to mere materialism. As one writer put it in his introduction to the Life of Jesus: It is possible to be excommunicated from the church without being excommunicated from the deep necessity of faith and the desire to plant it in others. Renan belongs to those people, who, in the materialist currents of the last century raised the wave of the ideal and of interests of the spirit.8 As a synthesizer, Renan tried to avoid any one-sided, exclusive point of view. His relativism drew criticism from some quarters and praise from others. As one of those who regarded Renan’s fence-sitting as a deficiency, Nikolai Strakhov observes that Renan’s significant characteristic is not that he embraces any one philosophical or religious system, but that he embraces them all, denying objectivity in philosophy and religion. Renan does not deny either philosophy or religion, or the spiritual world; but he acknowledges them in such a way that nothing comes of this recognition—neither a definite religion, nor a definite philosophy, nor a definite conception about the spiritual world: everything definite is denied, as a particular, inadequate form, in which, under the influence of place and time, the general foundation is reflected. Beyond that, all religions, all philosophies, all historical forms of belief in the spiritual world are recognized as equals.… From such a state of thought it comes about that a man respects every belief, but he himself has none.9 6

  Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus, with an introduction by John Haynes Holmes (New York: Modern Library, 1955), 271–72. 7

  V. V. Chuiko, “Ernest Renan,” in Renan, ed. Chuiko, Evropeiskie pisateli i mysliteli (St. Petersburg: Izd. knigoprodavtsa V. Gubinskogo, 1886), 2.

8

  A. N. Veselovskii, “Predislovie,” in Zhizn´ Iisusa, by E. Renan, trans. A. S. Usova, ed. Veselovskii (St. Petersburg: Tip. t-va Narodnaia pol´za, 1906), xvi.

9

  Nikolai Strakhov, “Renan,” in Bor´ba s zapadom v nashei literature, ed. C. H. van Schooneveld, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 1: 242.

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In an 1885 article that first appeared in Rus´ called “Historians without Principles (Notes about Renan and Taine),” Strakhov suggests that Renan, who devoted so much of his career to writing about religion, understands the importance of religion, unlike the ordinary freethinker. Ultimately, however, Renan’s history of Christianity is unsuccessful because Renan was too self-confident and did not recognize the loftiness of his subject.10 Strakhov recognizes Renan as a person with remarkable insights into religious impulses of the human spirit, and calls Life of Jesus his most important work. “Undoubtedly in Renan was significant spirituality, and in that is contained the main secret of his importance and success.”11 While Strakhov recognized Renan as characterized by religious feeling, the French academic’s spirituality subordinated too much to aesthetic considerations and lacked the moral seriousness that Strakhov believed characteristic of both the Protestant and Slavic temperaments. Echoing Strakhov, Prince S. N. Trubetskoi thinks Renan fails to understand the very essence of religion. In fact, the significance of Renan is that he really abolished the religion in religion: “that abolition of religion in religion itself—in Christ, the prophets, apostles, and martyrs, which appears to us the most crude error of Renan, gave his works their totally special significance.”12 For Trubetskoi, Renanism is defined as the application of an aesthetic measure to philosophy, morality, history, religion, and the state.13 By subordinating his discussion of Christ and religion to aesthetic considerations, Renan failed to create an integral image either of Christ or religion. Pointing to Renan’s profound spirituality, another critic contested Trubetskoi’s claim that Renan subordinated everything to aesthetic interests. He replies “it seems here that the Russian philosopher was led into temptation by the peculiar, whimsical, and capricious voice of Renan.”14 Aesthetics for Renan was not just prettiness and pleasure, not the “voluptuous savoring” that Trubetskoi accuses him of, but something organic—vitality and truth itself. 10

  Nikolai Strakhov, “Istoriki bez printsipov (Zametki ob Renane i Tene),” in Bor´ba s zapadom, 1: 320–46. 11

  Nikolai Strakhov, “Neskol´ko slov ob Renane,” in Bor´ba s zapadom, 3: 41–42. Renan’s sense of religious feeling as a fundamental characteristic of his work was pointed out already in the 1870s in A. Kozlov’s review of Dialogues et fragments philosophiques that appeared in Universitetskie izvestiia (March 1877): 53–60. As so many other critics, Kozlov points out that however much one may disagree with Renan it is impossible not to give him credit for his inimitable ability to reproduce the religious moods that characterized the epoch of early Christianity. 12

  S. N. Trubetskoi, “Renan i ego filosofiia,” Russkaia mysl´, no. 3 (1898): 92.

13

  Ibid., 109.

14

  P. M. Bitsilli, “Predislovie k knige E. Renana Filosofskie dialogi,” Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 3/4 (1993): 87. Reprinted from Ernest Renan, Filosofskie dialogi (Odessa: B. K. Fuks, 1919).

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Everything that is living is a symbol of Truth—incomprehensible in itself— and furthermore, all symbols are equivalent. The great destroyer of “church” truth, Renan fights in the name of equality of symbols. On what basis does one of the symbols demand for itself exclusive right to represent Truth? How, with our mind—limited by the boundaries of the finite—can we attribute to our ideas the identity of the Ideal? So strong is the religious sense of life in this “denier,” that he refuses to bend his knee before any one altar, as for him every corner of the universe is an altar on which tireless and eternal service happens to the future deity.… the former theologian rejected all historical religions because he recognized the relative trueness of each. For Renan there is no difference between the “religious,” the “divine” and the “secular”—he perceives everything from the point of view of religion. The world is divine, because deification is found in the tireless process. The great task which was laid on the universe is to create God, and in this sense, and only in this sense, is it possible to say that there is a God.15 Similarly, in an article in the well-known Problemy idealizma (Problems of Idealism, 1902), Sergei Ol´denburg argues that Renan’s approach to Christianity reflects a healthy idealism and spirituality; he praises Renan for his application of science to the Christian religion, while not in the spirit of positivism.16 Ol´denburg heralded Renan as a champion of freedom of thought, cleansing and reviving religious feeling from theological dogmatism, thereby refining it, since “religion in our day cannot stand apart from sincere refinement and from intellectual progress.”17 He argues that Renan understood the true scientific spirit, which does not destroy or abolish Christianity, but places it in the boundaries of a definite time and culture. He then invokes Renan in support of his argument that “Indians, Jews, and Europeans are all spokesmen of that same eternal truth: ‘Believe according to what you know, and allow everyone to believe according to what he knows.’”18 Yet, it is notable that those critics who praised Renan’s relativism with respect towards religion nonetheless recognized that Renan’s spirituality did not only challenge traditional Christian dogma, but the new scientific dogmas of the second half of the nineteenth century. According to Owen Chadwick, the new dogma that was taking

15

  Ibid., 87–88.

16

  Sergei F. Ol´denburg, “Renan, kak pobornik svobody mysli,” in Problemy idealizma: Sbornik statei, ed. P. I. Novgorodtsev (Moscow: Moskovskoe Psikhologicheskoe Obshchestvo, 1902). Problemy idealizma is one of two well-known compilations of essays that expressed the religious awakening—characterized by the ideological transition from materialism to idealism—among Russian intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century. The other collection of essays is Vekhi (1909). As a group, those intellectuals who abandoned materialism in favor of religious worldviews came to be known as God-seekers (bogoiskateli). 17

  Ibid., 493.

18

  Ibid., 503.

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root in Europe in the 1860s was the view that “Science has disproved Religion.”19 Renan recognized the historical importance of religion during an era when it was believed that science had permanently displaced religion. Thus, some of Renan’s critics viewed Renan as a skeptic not in the realm of religion, but in the realm of science. As one author put it: “Everything that Renan wrote and everything that he said clearly proves that he was simultaneously in the realm of science a skeptic, in the realm of religion a believing deist, and in everything else a cheerful idealist.”20 He continues with the observation that it is possible to disagree with Renan’s denial of Catholic dogmas and to contest his combination of positivism and religious spirit without calling him an atheist and blasphemer. In a word, if in the last years an awakening of religious feelings began to be noticed in France, religious questions came into fashion, and the so-called neo-Christian school even arose, then the French owe all this to the one clerics cursed as the devil incarnate and Antichrist.21 Among ecclesiastic writers and religious philosophers, Renan’s Life of Jesus was sometimes regarded as a godless, atheistic book. Dostoevsky, for example, said the work was full of unbelief.22 Yet, several Orthodox writers also recognized Renan’s spirituality as an important characteristic of the work, only they critiqued his spirituality and the God-consciousness that he, like other Western biblical critics attributed to Jesus, as a substitute for the authentic Christianity of the Gospel and Orthodox Church. Some felt that Life of Jesus was actively contributing to a crisis of faith in prerevolutionary Russian society, while others thought the book was an excellent expression of the fact that European society had already lost faith in genuine Christianity and was seeking to fill the void. Whereas S. N. Trubetskoi defined Renanism as the subordination of philosophy, morality, history, and religion to aesthetic considerations, some representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church used the term to refer to Renan’s new substitute religion.23 As expressed in the first major Orthodox rebuttal of Renan written by a French convert to Orthodoxy: “Don’t call your religion Christianity, for it has nothing in common with Christ; call it Renanism—that’s its real name.”24 19

  Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century: The Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh for 1973–4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 180.

20

  V.T., “Zhizneradostnyi skeptik,” Istoricheskii vestnik 50 (November 1892): 501–16, here 506. 21

  Ibid., 507.

22

 Dostoevsky, Dnevnik pisatelia (1873), in PSS, 21: 10–11.

23

  Trubetskoi, “Renan i ego filosofiia,” 86–121.

24

  Vladimir Gete [Réné François Guettée], Oproverzhenie na vydumanuiu “Zhizn´ Iisusa” sochineniia Ernesta Renana,” s troistvennoi tochki zreniia bibleiskoi ekzegetiki, istoricheskii

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One reviewer notes that Renan offers his readers a thinned-out Christianity that amounts to an idolatrous worship of humanism, culture, progress, and civilization. Dogma is replaced with skepticism, while affirmation is replaced by denial. Skepticism is a state of indifference; there are merely possibilities, and each individual chooses which possibilities to believe in, according to his own tastes. Thus, it remained possible for Renan to see himself under the rubric of “Christian,” while rejecting the church.25 The view that Life of Jesus offered a cheap substitute in place of authentic Christianity, representing the unhealthy spiritual condition of Europe, was widely shared. As Father Tikhon Alekseevich Donetskii described it, the work was a reflection of the spiritual and moral condition of nineteenth-century Europe in general, and of France in particular: belief in progress instead of the living God, admiration of positive philosophy and self-sufficiency without consciousness of sin and without the thirst for redemption. Life of Jesus, he argues, was more about nineteenth-century France than about the history of Christ and the Jews, and could only satisfy those who had never read the Gospels, or who had never really thought about Christ. Renan’s Life of Jesus offered a substitute religion to those who, like Renan, lost the Christ of the Gospels but still yearned for His image and had not abandoned religious questions altogether. Donetskii pointed out that Christ’s teaching itself could not be divorced from His divinity, since His teaching was to believe in Him and love God. While acknowledging that the book could have a positive influence, possibly igniting the first spark of religious feeling in a person previously cold to religious questions, it was also destructive by substituting the light of God with a “god” fabricated by Renan through which, as for Smerdiakov, everything is permissible.26 As a pastoral figure, he does not advise people not to read Life of Jesus, but to read it only after familiarizing themselves with the Gospels and to consult the guidance of learned Orthodox clergy on the Gospels.

kritiki i filosofii, trans. K. Timkomskii (St. Petersburg: Tip. I. I. Glazunova, 1864–66), 376. The second French edition of Guettée’s work appeared in Russian translation under the title E. Renan pred sudom nauki, ili oproverzhenie izvestnogo sochinenia E. Renana “Zhizn´ Iisusa,” osnovannoe na vyvodakh iz Biblii i rassmatrivaemoe s tochek zreniia istoricheskoi kritiki i filosofii, trans. L. A. Feigin (Moscow: Izd. I. A. Morozova, 1889). It contains supplementary materials: Iu. Shikoppa, “Sed´maia beseda o litse Iisusa Khrista,” trans. I.Z.; and “Dostovernost´ evangel´skikh skazanii: Lektsiia chitannaia v kembridzhskom universitete doktorom bogosloviia V. Farrarom,” trans. Matveev. 25

 N.G., Mysli o prochtenii knigi Renana Ernesta “Zhizn´ Iisusa” (Pochaev: Tipografiia Pochaevo-Uspenskoi Lavry, 1906).

26

  “Everything is permissible” is an obvious reference to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov, a Western-style rationalist inclined towards atheism, nonetheless recognizes that if there is no God and no immortality, everything is permissible. Smerdiakov, possibly the illegitimate son of Fedor Karamazov, took Ivan’s ideas to heart and murdered Fedor, then later committed suicide.

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With the proper preparation, there will be no doubt in the reader’s mind which Christ is purer, higher, and holier: the Christ of the Gospels, or the Christ of Renan.27 In his study Jesus Christ in the Understanding of Renan and Harnack, V. P. Vinogradov calls the substitution of a false, fabricated image of Christ for the real image of the Savior of the world the most terrible and grievous danger that ever threatened Christianity—a matter of life or death for Christianity. In particular, the books of Renan and Harnack are singled out as a threat to authentic gospel Christianity in Russia. Vinogradov observes that every age has its struggle between light and darkness, good and evil, truth and falsehood, and that in the current age the struggle centers around the person and life of Jesus Christ.28 Renan’s spirituality was praised from one side for its rejection of any one-sided worldview, whether that of church dogma or blind faith in science and materialism. It was criticized by the defenders of dogma for substituting sentimentality and God-consciousness in place of humanity’s redemption from sin and genuine, intimate communion between humanity and God. Yet Renan’s antagonists and defenders alike recognized that Renan had reawakened interest in religious questions in a materialist era when science was regarded as supreme. This prerevolutionary critique of Renan holds true for the Soviet era as well. A century after Life of Jesus first appeared, Soviet society experienced an ideological reexamination and reaction against materialism. Interest in Renan, suppressed after the Bolsheviks secured power and adopted as the official party line the position that Jesus was not a historical person, began to surface once again. Renan’s treatment of Jesus as historical, and having a transcendence as the ideal man, became a novelty. One expression of the changing atmosphere was the publication of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita, written between 1928 and 1940; because the novel satirizes Soviet society and explores metaphysical themes, it was not published until 1966–67. Bulgakov weaves a life of Pontius Pilate into the novel, the main sources of which were Renan’s Life of Jesus and F. W. Farrar’s Life of Christ (1874). At the other end of the spectrum, two Orthodox priests, Dmitrii Dudko and Aleksandr Men´, in an effort to engage Russian society in exploration of religious questions, suggested that Renan’s Life of Jesus could be read in connection with the idea that Jesus Christ was a historical figure. They believed Renan’s biography could foster interest in Christ and religious questions, though they added the caveats that belief in the Godman required faith and that the true source for knowledge about Christ was 27   T. A. Donetskii, Publichnoe chtenie o renanovskoi “Zhizni Iisusa” (Novocherkassk: Chastnaia Donskaia Tipografiia, 1909). Donetskii recommends the apologetic works of Mikhail and B. I. Gladkov to the reader. See Arkhimandrit Mikhail [Matvei Ivanovich Luzhin], Evangelie meshchan: Renan i ego Iisus (St. Petersburg: Tipo-litografiia M. P. Frolovoi, 1906); Arkhimandrit Mikhail, “O evangeliiakh i evangel´skoi istorii: Po povodu knigi E. Renana Zhizn´ Iisusa,” Pribavleniia k izdaniiu tvorenii sviatykh ottsev v russkom perevode 23 (1864): 28–98, 109–205, 411–82, 503–634; and B. I. Gladkov, Tolkovanie Evangeliia, 3d ed. (St. Petersburg: Izdanie avtora, 1909). 28

  V. Vinogradov, Iisus Khristos v ponimanii Renana i Garnaka (Sergiev Posad: Tipografiia Sv.-Tr. Sergievoi Lavry, 1908).

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the Gospel.29 Tracing the debate about the historicity of Jesus Christ in Soviet society, Dudko observed that the official Soviet line of the 1920s and 1930s—that the person of Jesus was pure fabrication—had become unfashionable by the 1960s, when belief in the historical Jesus was considered “progressive.”30 Renewed interest in the person of Jesus Christ in general and Renan’s Life of Jesus in particular is verified by the reprinting of well over one million copies of Life of Jesus in 1990 and 1991 in Russia and the CIS.31 The Life of Jesus was voted one of the fifty best books of 1991 by readers of Knizhnoe obozrenie (The Book Review).32 The work’s popularity can be explained, in part, by the fact that it has provided many readers with their first exposure to Jesus as an actual historical person. In conclusion, among his prerevolutionary antagonists and defenders, there was a general consensus that Renan was not primarily a materialist, but a religious thinker. His overall significance lay in his spirituality, and in both prerevolutionary and Soviet Russia, Renan’s regard for religious feeling freed from dogmatic constraints represented an alternative to the established orthodoxies: Orthodox dogma on the one hand and the dogmas of empiricism and materialism on the other.

29

  See Alexander Men, Son of Man, trans. Samuel Brown (Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1998), first published as Syn chelovecheskii in Brussels in 1968 under Men´’s pseudonym, Andrei Bogoliubov; Men´, “Posleslovie,” in Zhizn´ Iisusa (Moscow: Slovo, 1990). This edition of Life of Jesus is a reprint of the translation by E. Sviatlovskii (St. Petersburg: Pirozhkov, 1906); and Father Dmitrii Dudko, Our Hope, trans. Paul D. Garrett, with a foreword by John Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977).

30

 Dudko, Our Hope, 37.

31

  This statistic is based on data published in Knizhnoe obozrenie for 1990–92 as well as on information from the card catalog and various editions at the Russian State Library in Moscow.

32

  Knizhnoe obozrenie, 21 August 1992, 8. On the popularity of Life of Jesus in the early 1990s, see also M. P. Odeskii and M. L. Spivak, “Zhizn´ Iisusa: Istoricheskie metamorfozy,” Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 3/4 (1993): 99. The Life of Jesus has been reprinted in Russia as recently as 2007.

Between the Cross and the Eagle: The Russian Orthodox Missionary Society and the Politics of Religion in Late Imperial Russia Aaron N. Michaelson

This essay is part of a larger project which seeks, through the prism of a little-known enterprise—the Russian Orthodox Missionary Society (1870–1917)—to reconsider two commonly held views or assumptions regarding an aspect of late imperial Russia. The first assumption is that the Russian Orthodox Church was not involved in aggressive or successful missionary institutions; the second is that such activities, if any, were both ineffectual and, given the nature of church-state relations, determined by crude calculations of state policy. In fact, the Russian Orthodox Missionary Society1 reflected the fluid confessional and national landscape of imperial Russia. Missionary guidelines, commentaries, correspondence, and debate reveal the society’s attitude toward the religious-national controversy in late imperial missions.2 In the far corners of the empire, Russian missionaries faced geographic, climatic, ethnographic, and linguistic difficulties. Many languages encountered had never been systematically studied, while some, spoken for centuries in an austere environment, lacked terms necessary to translate Orthodox material in a vivid and meaningful manner. Just as often, established religions were present. Missionary enterprise required more workers, churches, schools, and money.3 The Orthodox Missionary Society provided personnel and training, distributed funds, and facilitated translation 1

  The Missionary Society functioned, according to its ustav (charter), as the primary Russian Orthodox missionary service to non-Russians, including Muslims, Buddhists, and pagans, in the eastern part of the Russian Empire. On a few rare occasions it was involved in the conversion of Jews but was not active in the west among Catholics or Lutherans, nor among schismatics and sects. The society’s mission was defined by the terms inorodcheskaia (non-Russian), vneshniaia (external, outside the internal, vnutrenniaia, sphere associated with Orthodoxy which would have included schismatics), and inostrannaia (foreign).

2

  The most useful discussion of the term russification, its context, evolution, and meaning, is found in Edward C. Thaden, ed., Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 7–9.

3

  E. K. Smirnov, Ocherk istoricheskogo razvitiia i sovremennogo sostoianiia russkoi pravoslavnoi missii (St. Petersburg: Sinodal´naia tipografiia, 1904), 68. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 157–68.

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and publication of religious books. Over the long term, the society made a considerable impact. The liberalization measures enacted in 1904 and 1905 forced the society to redouble its proselytizing efforts.4 Progress was interrupted by revolution, but the endeavor continued with further Russian Orthodox missionary successes in the Far East. Bringing Orthodoxy to the far parts of the empire was no simple task. Nor was it without controversy. At times the Orthodox Missionary Society worked alongside ordinary clergy, performing special missionary functions, while in some places society missions were the sole representatives of Russian Orthodoxy. Consideration of the typical parish duties of Orthodox priests gives us a useful perspective on the society’s work.5 The clergy’s service in the Russian Orthodox Church could be divided into four categories, according to hieromonakh Dionisii, a scholar active in the study of Orthodox missions around the turn of the century. The categories were the rural parish (sel´skii prikhod), non-Orthodox or non-Russian service (inovercheskii or inorodcheskii deiatel´), urban (gorodskoi deiatel´) service, and teaching the faith in schools (zakonouchitel´stvo).6 The work of the Russian Orthodox Missionary Society concerned, in order of prominence, the second, first, and fourth categories, but missionerstvo in the broader sense, anti-Schismatic and anti-sectarian missions, as well as fundraising, concerned all four. The society faced considerable challenges in an empire shaken by secularization. As Dmitrii Govorov noted in his commentary, a lack of public interest in church affairs hurt missionary work.7 As the concept of religious freedom had gained credence in progressive circles late in the eighteenth century, methods of repression, coercion, or deception in missionary enterprise were condemned. As a result, Russian missionaries exercised considerable caution, and promoted conversion with painstaking care, 4

  The “laws of 1905” often discussed in sources on missions include the Law on Religious Toleration of 17 April 1905, freedoms granted in the Bulygin Manifesto publicized 6 August 1905, and the October Manifesto (17 October 1905). The Orthodox faith’s official status was weakened. The first law was officially publicized as “Ob ukreplenii nachal veroterpimosti”; it outlawed any sanction against apostatizers, and was mainly oriented toward sects and Old Belief. Although no firm rulings emerged on Islam or Lamaism, the Committee of Ministers would work out such questions and believers of those faiths would benefit from some liberalization and limited government support included in the 17 April act. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (St. Petersburg: V tipografii II otdeleniia sobstvennoi E.I.V. kantseliarii, 1882–1916), 25: 257–62. 5

  The work of Gregory Freeze has been the only English-language scholarly investigation of this phenomenon. Gregory L. Freeze, Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), and The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). 6

  Dionisii (ieromonakh), Idealy pravoslavno-russkogo inorodcheskogo missionerstva (Kazan´: Tipo-litografiia Imperatorskogo universiteta, 1901), 187. 7

  Dmitrii Govorov (protoierei), Zadachi missionerstva, vyzyvaemye potrebnostiami nashego vremeni (Kiev: Rukovodstvo dlia sel´skikh-pastyrei, 1909), 20.



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because such an approach was in tune with the Gospel, experience in the field, and progressive thought of the time.8 The Missionary Society was genuinely concerned with these issues. Secularization had gradually alienated the Russian intelligentsia from the Orthodox establishment as well. Nikolai Lipskii, a missioner-intelligent, wrote that he faced pressure from two sides. As the intelligentsia had largely turned away from the traditional faith, he no longer felt welcome in their circles. At the same time, in his work as a missionary, he faced pressure from the higher ecclesiastical administration, whose rigid rules discouraged flexibility and creativity.9 Such a conflict was a key to the distance between the missionary effort and a changing, secularizing society.10 In the end, the Missionary Society, an independent organization, could not close the yawing gap between the progressive intelligentsia and a deeply conservative administration. Key Missionary Society figures and their contributions elucidate the true content and thrust of late imperial Russian Orthodox missionary activity. Innokentii Veniaminov was a central figure not only in the Missionary Society’s Moscow operation but also in the development of the Orthodox evangelizing enterprise in Siberia and North America, where he had served. Veniaminov’s guidelines for missionaries would have a strong influence throughout the period of the society’s operation and served as a fundamental document in inorodcheskoe missionerstvo. The guidelines indicate the mixture of motives, national and spiritual, although nationalistic elements are far weaker than among conservative-nationalist publicists who would comment on missionary enterprise in the decades to come. Innokentii wrote in his nastavlenie or instruction to missionaries, that even as early as 1771, according to a synod ukaz, “a missionary should not consider his duty the rapid accomplishment of baptisms,” but should try to achieve his goals by patient Christian teaching, because baptism by any other means was “an abuse of one of the most central rites of the Christian faith.”11 By Innokentii’s method, the missionary must employ prayer, modesty, serenity, thoughtfulness, and, of course, love. The missionary should use sermons and preach wherever possible, to as many people as possible. If one does not know the language 8

  Govorov argues that such missionary methods developed in the century after the Enlightenment had taken hold in Russia (ibid., 1). 9

  N. I. Lipskii, Psikhologicheskie dannye v voprose o missionerskoi taktike (Khar´kov: Vera i Razum, 1910), 11–12. 10

  This conflict is perhaps an echo of the dilemma and controversy in which Vladimir Solov´ev was so deeply involved. Not only Lipskii, but also Archmonk Dionisii were left in the ideological gap between conservative-nationalist and liberal positions. See Greg Gaut, “Can a Christian Be a Nationalist? Vladimir Solov´ev’s Critique of Nationalism,” Slavic Review 57, 1 (1998): 79–80. 11   Innokentii (Veniaminov), Nastavlenie sviashchenniku naznachaemomu dlia obrashcheniia inovernykh i rukovodstvovaniia obrashchennykh v khristianskuiu veru, sostavlennoe vysoko-preosviashchennym Moskovskim mitropolitom Innokentiem pred vstupleniem ego na Kamchatskuiu kafedru (Irkutsk: Tipografiia N. N. Sinitsina, 1880), 1–3.

160 A aron N. Michaelson

of the audience, an interpreter must be chosen carefully. Innokentii recommended that the missionary preach to the heart, from the heart, in order to counteract the insatiable curiosity of the mind. The teaching should be directed at the appropriate level, which often meant an elementary one. The missionary should begin with Genesis and the story of creation, tell about the Commandments and their consequences; he should convince the listener of humanity’s sinful nature and then reveal Christ’s saving message, continuing with the Gospels and Apostles. Only after listeners have understood this material can the missionary ask if they would consider joining the “believers of Christ.” The missionary should always speak clearly and concisely. “The whole teaching of Jesus Christ is grounded in the pure, unselfish love, toward him and all people, which we believers possess.”12 The missionary must then explain the conditions of Baptism, its meaning, and how a Christian should live. These conditions include: renouncing any other faith, abandoning shamanism completely, committing no acts which would conflict with Christianity, confession of sins, and fulfilling that which the baptized’s new law and church require. Only with God’s help, through the Holy Spirit and prayer, can all this be achieved; not by human will alone.13 Innokentii advised the missionary to be sensitive about pagan marriages, even those to close relatives, which took place before Orthodox baptism. Such relationships represent no barrier to proselytizing work, and the missionary should not interfere in the family bonds created by them. The missionary should offer no gifts, only crosses. Gifts to prospective converts serve the wrong purpose, and the missionary must ensure that the desire to accept Orthodox baptism is genuine. The baptismal service should be performed in a building or tent, but can be done in the open air if necessary. The place of the baptism should be marked with crosses so that believers can make return visits. The fundamentals of the teaching must be covered slowly and carefully to prevent difficulties later. The missionary must not employ any false miracles or revelations; what smacked of trickery could be severely punished, Innokentii warned. “Unusual occurrences” in a missionary’s work must be investigated before being employed in preaching, and then only after consultation with the local ecclesiastical authorities. The missionary can never use coercion, threats, presents, promises, or flattery, and must act with apostolic sincerity.14 Practical allowances, though, were made for local conditions. Fasts could be observed as best as climate and available food allow; sometimes a change in the food or just the time of meals would have to suffice. One could avoid eating in the morning hours. Fasting should be quite strict especially when Easter approaches. Non-Russian converts should attend church frequently, but the missionary should not insist on the same regularity of attendance as in European Russia. A reminder to pray is a useful substitute. Orthodox marriages, however, must be performed as strictly as in Russia (this in regard to close relatives especially). 12

  Ibid., 3–8.

13

  Ibid., 8–10.

14

  Ibid., 13–14.



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In terms of native culture, the missionary should not deny non-Russians any of their old customs which do not conflict with Christianity, and should explain that such customs are still allowed. The missionary should let non-Russians listen to the whole liturgy if they so desire, even though the Liturgy of the Faithful (Liturgiia vernykh) may seem questionable. After all, the ambassadors of St. Vladimir were allowed to do so in Constantinople though they were pagans.15 But Russian missionaries represented more than just the Orthodox Church. Innokentii recommended that the missionary tell the audience of the supremacy and beneficial nature of the Russian government, without declaring oneself a government agent or even an authoritative figure. Instead, the missionary should appear as a simple, virtuous traveler. The missionary should never show distaste for non-Russian habits or lifestyle, and should always be ready to assist non-Russians with deed and advice. The missionary should answer questions gently and reasonably, employing each as an opportunity to teach as well as learn. He should treat the unbaptized just as well as the baptized; good will is evidence of good intentions. One should preach against polygamy gently and reasonably, and should demand no offerings, but should take them if given. The missionary should not force non-Russians to work for the mission after baptism, but if they wish to assist in some way, pay them justly. Again, the missionary should never accept gifts or be occupied with trade. Missionary visits to non-Russians should not interfere with vital activities such as fishing or hunting, nor should one burden private companies too heavily either with requests of transport facilities or other material goods.16 Innokentii insisted that the missionary learn the language of local non-Russian populations, at least in order to understand them, and should know their customs as well as their pagan faith. He reiterates that customs not harmful to the Christian faith mean a great deal to non-Russians, and respect for them contributes to missionary success. The missionary must avoid legal or property squabbles, and should defend himself physically only in extreme danger, keeping in mind that great blessing comes to those who suffer in the name of Jesus Christ.17 These instructions were reminiscent of the ustav of the Missionary Society, also formulated by Innokentii, which laid the foundation of the society’s central organization. In short, Innokentii’s ideas on the conduct of missionary work in the field served as a foundation of Orthodox missions. Like Veniaminov, Makarii Glukharev was predominantly concerned with the firmness of the converts’ faith. Founder of the Altai mission, Glukharev arrived in Biisk okrug in 1830, where he constructed three missionary stany (bases or stations), began studying the local languages, and eventually created vital missionary transla-

15

  Ibid., 11–13.

16

  Ibid., 14–16.

17

  Ibid., 18–19.

162 A aron N. Michaelson

tions. In keeping with the focus on soundness of faith, Glukharev converted a modest number (675 persons) during his career in Altai.18 How fully the average missionary in the field absorbed the ideals of the elite missionaries is difficult to surmise. Penza province (guberniia) missionary Vasilii Kamenskii provides several insights into the operation of local missions. His writings also reflect the degree to which the ideas of Innokentii Veniaminov and the Missionary Society were employed outside the academies and consistories. Kamenskii’s instructions and recommendations bear a strong similarity to those of Innokentii Veniaminov. Like Innokentii, Kamenskii recommended that the missionary not promise himself too much; the missionary should rely on God, seeking strength and peace in prayer. The missionary must learn the language needed for his appointed parish, in this case Tatar and Arabic. Kamenskii’s image of the missionary as apostle and strannik also corresponds directly to Innokentii’s writings.19 The Missionary Society employed not only administrative tools but linguistic and pedagogical ones in the effort to convert non-Russians to the Orthodox faith. Missions, as a central part of their work, produced religious translations and administered Orthodox schools. Orthodox translations and missionary schools were also key issues in the religious-national debate. After the passing in 1891 of N. I. Il´minskii, who was not only a member of the Translating Commission in Kazan´, but the most active organizer of missionary schools in the Russian Empire, countless primary schools and other ecclesiastical institutions perpetuated Il´minskii’s method of non-Russian parochial education.20 His systems of translation and primary education remained in use, and controversial, in the decades after his death. A. M. Pozdneev, in the journal of the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment, voiced criticisms of Il´minskii’s system of vernacular translation in 1895. Pozdneev, a scholar in Eastern languages, insisted that knowledge of literary non-Russian languages was vital for precise rendering of text. He felt that the vernacular lacked the flexibility and depth of the literary language, even though that literary lexicon may have been closely connected with a non-Christian faith. In fact, Pozdneev thought that the purely religious goals of Il´minskii’s time were no longer central issues. This debate indicates once again a rift in worldviews, as well as a divide between established academic procedure, characterized by a secular and literary approach, and the missionary focus on the language of everyday communication.21 18   Mikhail Iakovlevich Glukharev (1792–1847). Trained in the Smolensk seminary and St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy, he became a monk in 1819. See Entsiklopedicheskii slovar´ (St. Petersburg: F. A. Brokgauz i I. A. Efron, 1890–1904), 18: 35. 19

  Vasilii Kamenskii, Na sluzhbe missii: Deiatel´nost´ inorodcheskogo missionera sredi tatar (Penza: Gubernskaia tipografiia, 1913), 16–24. 20

  Otchet Pravoslavnogo Missionerskogo Obshchestva za 1891 g. (Moscow: Sinodal´naia tipografiia, 1892), 36–37.

21

  K. Kharlamovich, O missionerskikh perevodakh na inorodcheskie iazyki: Pis´mo arkhimandrita Vladimira, nachal´nika Altaiskoi missii, k Irkutskomu arkhiepiskopu Veniaminu (Kazan´: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo universiteta, 1904), 3–4.



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Pozdneev elicited a response from Archimandrite Vladimir22 of the Altai mission. Although Vladimir felt that translations were vital to missions, they need not be produced in great quantity or in every dialect. One translation reasonably accessible to several related ethnic groups was a feasible alternative. As for the alphabet, Vladimir supported use of a Cyrillic script but was not opposed to the use of Mongolian script where that would be more suitable to readers. Pozdneev had noted that Russian translations of Orthodox works done in prior decades in Mongolian script were still circulating in Mongolia. Vladimir nonetheless insisted on Cyrillic script, so useful for learning Russian later. Pozdneev’s recommended Mongolian script was unrealistic for Russian missionaries, Vladimir argued. Missionary training was already complex enough.23 Archbishop Veniamin of Irkutsk, it turns out, adopted the literary translation system used earlier in the Irkutsk mission by Nil´, that which Pozdneev had advocated. Veniamin adapted Nil´’s translations into local dialects after the synod had granted missions that right in 1883. Unfortunately, some of the finished product was unintelligible to local Buryats. Il´minskii felt that Veniamin was a great historian, but lacked linguistic skills. As Il´minskii put it, “he [Veniamin] always vacillated among various translations, academic and vernacular, literary and popular, and to this time, in Irkutsk missions, translation has not been given a solid, fundamental foundation, nor necessary development.”24 Il´minskii was certain of his views. Veniamin, and others, in light of local conditions, and under a variety of pressures, continued to experiment. The impact of translations, both as an orthodoxifying and russifying instrument, was blunted by controversy and disorganization. But schools clearly influenced hundreds of thousands if not millions of non-Russians. For example, the society’s local committee in Ufa supported forty-five schools in 1904. Its non-Russian schools were said to have outpaced their Russian counterparts in singing. Some classes learned the entire liturgy in their native languages.25 In many cases, the devotion of recent non-Russian converts was reported to be exemplary. To the dismay of those who valued missions primarily as instruments of russification, after the Manifesto on Religious Tolerance (Manifest o veroterpimosti) of 17 April 1905, attendance at Orthodox services was no longer, even in the letter of 22

  Vladimir (Filaret Sin´kovskii), a leader in the Kirgiz and Altai missions, was named bishop of Biisk (1891), bishop of Vladikavkaz (1893), and bishop of Kishinev and Khotin (1904). He was also the author of many missionary translations. See Entsiklopedicheskii slovar´, 1 (dopolnitel´nyi): 439. 23

  Kharlamovich, O missionerskikh perevodakh, 5–7.

24

  Ibid., 10–11. Il´minskii’s comment appears in a letter to Konstantin Pobedonostsev. Pis´ma N. I. Il´minskogo k K. P. Pobedonostsevu (Kazan´: Tipografiia Imperatorskogo universiteta, 1895), 186.

25

  Eight others received support from the synod, a local brotherhood, and a monastery. All fifty-three schools had 1,838 pupils. “Otchet PMO za 1904 g.,” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik, no. 19 (1905): 80–83.

164 A aron N. Michaelson

the law, mandatory, and many perceived that this would weaken Orthodox missions, at least in the short term.26 Others saw it as an opportunity for Orthodoxy to adapt to fair competition with other Christian and non-Christian faiths. Nikolai Lipskii, among many, blamed the April 1905 manifesto for increased numbers turning away from Orthodoxy in subsequent years.27 Five years later, in the wake of the Kazan´ missionary congress, the religious-national debate continued. A Father Grigor´ev wrote that Russians must treat non-Russians in a loving, friendly manner, not haughtily, otherwise they could be driven to separatism. Too often, though, just the opposite was done. Even in the Baltics, where institutions prior to uniformization or institutional russification were superior to Russian ones, the plan to construct a Russian clone was fulfilled. One can say, in the end, that positions on the role of language in missions, schooling, or society in general were determined by priorities. If Russian nationalism came first, missions and their schools must work in Russian as soon and as much as possible. If Orthodoxy came first, the language used could be a non-Russian one, and the general approach was more gradual. Even after the Kazan´ and Irkutsk congresses, the following questions remained: What should missions’ prime objectives be? How should they be administered and funded? And, finally, how could they achieve greater success? The points raised in the debate often reflected broad political and intellectual divisions, within and outside the Missionary Society. Conservative-nationalist figures saw many possibilities, usually of a political or social nature, in the work of missions. Such an idea must have been with Russian missionaries well before the existence of the Missionary Society. One such thinker (initials V.A.I.) felt that missions, if they could resolve the age-old problems of inoverie (other faiths) and raskol (schism), would achieve a great triumph for the state.28 The state for its part should provide the missions with material support, while leaving their operation to the church.29 The author argued for the independence of missions because of his belief that Russian liberalism differed from classical English liberalism in its absence of religious feeling. Given its secular prejudices, the Russian liberal press gave little positive publicity to church or faith. It would be best, he asserted, to remove completely the struggle with inoverie and raskol from the state’s hands, where a preponderance of such liberal thinking weakened the effort.30 Conversion required considerable effort, more than liberal circles would allow for. Often pagans acknowledged the superiority of Christianity but continued to resist baptism. They often feared they would not be treated like Russians even after 26 27

 Govorov, Zadachi missionerstva, 11–13.

 Lipskii, Psikhologicheskie dannye, 5.

28  V.A.I., Obiazannost´ russkogo gosudarstva po obrashcheniiu raskol´nikov i inovertsev k pravoslavnoi russkoi tserkvi (Irkutsk: N. N. Sinitsyn, 1882), 5. 29

  Ibid., 9.

30

  Ibid., 1.



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conversion because they lacked Russian traits; lived in iurty (animal-hide huts) instead of izby (traditional Russian peasant dwelling; often of hewn-log construction); spoke Russian poorly; and were unable to plow the land. The author insisted that what inorodtsy awaited most fervently was the tsar’s order for them to convert.31 That was this conservative-nationalist’s most ardent wish, but was not necessarily what missionaries desired. Judging by the statements and activities of Russian missionaries, a more purely ecclesiastical formula was also widespread. Popular perception of “Russianness” caused some complications for missions as well. Referring to Russians, “V.A.I.” maintains that “no inorodets will respect a people that does not respect itself.” The Russian sense of nation was closely tied to Orthodoxy’s perceived prestige and attractiveness for inorodtsy.32 Special government benefits given to baptized inorodtsy should be ended, because their status often surpassed that of their Russian neighbors which made complete obrusenie (russification) a step down for them. Instead the author supports the sort of russification or uniformization which was underway in the Baltics.33 The author “V.A.I.” made no attempt to disguise his views; he attacked the whole idea of tolerance of faiths, such as reconversion to Judaism of Jews who had become Christians; he attacked the 1861 guidelines for converting non-Orthodox to Orthodoxy and the 1858 law protecting schismatics. The author awaited the reunification of Russian national feeling with national faith.34 Another conservative-nationalist commentator, V. Malakhov, expressed the belief in Russian nationality as portrayed in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Malakhov held the term narod-bogonosets35 especially dear, and tied Dostoevskii’s Diary of a Writer to the theory of a Third Rome, while believing that popular illusion could turn into fact.36 He asserted that Finnic peoples had disappeared into the Russian narod, and that greater missionary effort would resolve the Far Eastern question in Russia’s favor.37 Such is a sample of the hopes, or delusions, prevalent among conservative-nationalist figures in the debate on Orthodox missions. Ordinary citizens, too, participated in the debate over missions. One of several peasants to do so, Aktash Andronnik Stefanov of Menzelinskii district (uezd), sent his greetings and congratulations to the Orthodox Missionary Society on the society’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Stefanov wished the organization further success in its

31

  Ibid., 2–4.

32

  Ibid., 10.

33

  Ibid., 13.

34

  Ibid., 15.

35

  Literally, “people-bearer-of-God.”

36

  V. Malakhov, Russkaia pravoslavnaia missiia v ee proshlom i nastoiashchem (Pochaev: Tipografiia pochaevo-uspenskoi lavry, 1907), 1–2.

37

  Ibid., 3, 10–11.

166 A aron N. Michaelson

endeavor which was, as he wrote, so important for the “holy church and dear fatherland.”38 In his perception, faith and state were closely bound. In response to the conservative-nationalists, missionary archmonk Dionisii wrote that missionary work cannot be political in its essence. Foreign policy should be the job of diplomats, not churchmen; it was a sad reality that the situation was otherwise.39 Dionisii felt that missions must not focus too strongly on cultural russification either. A one-sided Russian cultural influence was harmful; instead, missions must be predominantly religious and moral.40 It was perhaps this perception, that politics and secular culture played too large a role in the external missions, which kept many clerics outside the Orthodox Missionary Society. Nationalism, by the same token, Dionisii argued, had no place in missionary work.41 Dionisii’s definition of the missionary’s task was the narrowest and most ecclesiastical and echoed best the sentiments of Veniaminov and Glukharev. The synod’s Missionary Convocation, meeting in April 1912, chimed in on the debate over the role of missions, reaffirming Il´minskii’s system of primary education for non-Russians. In a lengthy discussion, the convocation supported the gradual introduction of Russian, employment of non-Russian teachers, etc., concluding that Il´minskii’s system facilitates an internal, psychological convergence (sblizhenie) of non-Russians with Russians; “from the root, not the summit.”42 The synod would renew this support on several occasions. During World War I, the political significance of the missions grew. Evstafii Voronets, writing in Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik, emphasized the importance of missions in the russification of various nationalities, indicating that Nicholas I had refused to include laws recognizing Lamaism in his Svod zakonov.43 The wartime attitude seems an exception to the ecclesiastical formulation prevalent among missionaries since 1870. Like other vital institutional issues, the question of missionary goals remained unanswered as the revolution approached. Some observers claimed that Russian Orthodox missions were merely a cover for russification. Russian culture was enmeshed in Orthodox missions, but missionaries did not view russification of non-Russians as their chief task. Both Il´minskii and Veniaminov (as well as their missionary successors) were primarily concerned with faith and did not wish to tamper with non-Russian culture or language. What did not contradict Orthodox teaching did not merit interference or prohibition. Missionaries were far more concerned with the devoutness of their non-Russian flock. Teaching 38

  “Otchet PMO za 1895 g.,” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik, no. 13 (1896): 6.

39

 Dionisii, Idealy, 8.

40

  Ibid., 13, 15.

41

  Ibid., 28.

42 43

  RGIA f. 796, op. 445, 1808–1918, l. 120.

  “Prosveshchenie Sibiri khristianstvom i vliianie nemetskogo zasil´ia na blagovestnichestvo v Sibiri,” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik, no. 2 (1915): 72–105. The “German influence” in Siberia was negligible.



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in Il´minskii-type schools was conducted in non-Russian languages, namely so that pupils would more fully understand the principles of the Orthodox faith. The same was true of direct missionary work. Use of the native language, for example, ensured that non-Russians understood the step of baptism. In either case this was a lesson learned from long experience, some of it recent, as not all missionaries followed the guidelines given the difficult conditions under which they operated. If one examines the Missionary Society and Russian missionaries in the broad terms of Uvarov’s tripartite ideology (Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality), it is clear that appeals to the person and authority of the tsar were prominent, both in missionary approaches and non-Russian responses, while an appeal to Russian nationalism was at best weakly tied to missionary Orthodoxy.44 In one interesting episode, missionaries in Viatka eparchate employed three thousand copies of the tsar’s rescript of 1900 to convince pagans to accept Orthodox baptism. Nicholas’s words were: “May God fortify the faithful, embrace those who waver, reunite those torn away, and bless the Russian state so firmly rooted in the unshakable truth of Orthodoxy.”45 But the reality of the effort varied. For instance, many non-Russians became Orthodox, but never learned Russian; there was no such requirement. Others, such as the Mordvins, became linguistically russified, and merged into the Russian population. This is not unlike the case of Altai and Baikal pagans; some became Lamaists without learning Buryat, others did both. Lamaist Buryats and Orthodox Russians vied for the hearts and minds of the Baikal region’s indigenous people. In general, smaller ethnic groups like the Mordvins and Yasak Voguls converted to Orthodoxy and became linguistically russified, while larger ethnic groups, which were more self-contained communities, converted but retained their language. In overseas missions, like those in Korea and Japan, clearly the religious presence was one which pleased the Russian government, but Great Russian chauvinism would hardly attract converts there. Of Uvarov’s troika, Orthodoxy was far superior in the eyes of Russian missionaries and the Missionary Society, though fervent nationalists, hoped it could serve as a means to other ends. Instead of russification, the Missionary Society’s activity can be interpreted as a strategic countermove against the spread of secularization from the Slavic population of the empire to non-Russians. By planting the Orthodox seed among non-Russians, the society sought to deflect the momentum of social change. In general, the Missionary Society and its affiliated missions exhibited a dual image: a more staunchly nationalist one employed in appeals and publications directed toward the Russian audience of potential contributors; and a much more purely religious one presented to non-Russians in written materials or through personal work in the far-flung provinces of the empire. But the essence of its productive work was Orthodox. A missionary who followed guidelines would find that it was possible to do the work of the Ortho44

  See Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), especially pt. 3.

45

  “Da podkrepit Gospod´ veruiushchikh, da uderzhit kolebliushchikhsia, da vossoedinit ottorgnuvshikhsia i blagoslovit Rossiiskuiu derzhavu, prochno pokoiushchuiusia na nezyblemoi istine pravoslaviia,” “Otchet PMO za 1900 g.,” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik, no. 15 (1901): 59.

168 A aron N. Michaelson

dox mission and respect liberal norms. Those liberal norms, expressed in the legislation on religious tolerance enacted by 1905, were a part of the culture in which the society operated.

Recreation of Seventeenth-Century Tile Forms on St. Petersburg’s Temple-Memorial “Savior on the Blood” Kristi A. Groberg

The architect Al´fred Parland stated plainly that his plan for the Temple of the Resurrection of the Savior “on the Blood” (Spas na Krovi), a temple-memorial (khram-pamiat´) built on the site of Tsar Alexander II’s 1881 assassination, followed the form taken by seventeenth-century Russian ecclesiastical buildings.1 Construction took place between 1883 and 1907, creating a visual anachronism on the “necklace of the classical ensemble” of old central St. Petersburg along the Catherine Canal.2 Parland’s employers were Tsar Alexander III and a building commission under the direction of the tsar’s infamous brother Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich, and later Tsar Nicholas II. To carry out the project, Parland solicited Russian artists and master craftsmen, most of them connected to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts as educators, graduates, or students. He employed Russian firms, workshops, and manu­ factories, especially those with the designation “Purveyors to the Imperial Court.” Whenever possible he used materials native to Russia. Parland’s rationale for a seventeenth-century focus was the tsar’s insistence that the temple reflect the hyper-nationalism that marked his reign and that of his son. Results of the initial design competition failed to impress the tsar, who rejected all entries in March 1882. He claimed that none captured the spirit of Russian architecture and ordered a second competition, with the theme “Russian Renaissance,” to pro­ duce a tribute “in the seventeenth-century Russian manner,” with an emphasis on the churches of Iaroslavl´.3 He commanded that designs encompass variants of the pre-Petrine architecture of sixteenth-century imperial votive churches such as the Decapitation of St. John the Baptist at Diakovo and the Intercession of the Virgin I wish to thank William Brumfield, Michael Flier, Shirley Glade, Karen Kettering, and Ann Kleimola for reading this manuscript and for their thoughtful insights. 1

  Al´fred A. Parland, “Khram Voskreseniia Khristova,” Zodchii, no. 35 (1907): 375; and Parland, Otchet o sooruzhenii Khrama Voskreseniia Khristova (St. Petersburg: Komissiia po sooruzheniiu Khrama, 1907), 2. 2

  Boris M. Kirikov, “Pamiatniki ‘russkogo stilia,’” Leningradskaia panorama 10 (1983): 33.

3

  Memorandum of 19 March 1882, in Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA) f. 1282, op. 3, d. 585, l. 21, and f. 1293, op. 114, d. 35, l. 1. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 169–79.

170 Kristi A. Groberg

on the Moat (St. Basil), imperial churches in Moscow and Iaroslavl´, other elabo­ rate brick churches of the seventeenth century (e.g., those in Rostov the Great), and those of the mid–nineteenth-century Byzantine Revival brought about by the archi­ tect Konstantin Ton.4 Following much palace intrigue, the tsar selected an entry by Archimandrite Ignatii (Ivan Malyshev), who was not an architect and whose de­ sign likely was prepared by Parland.5 Parland submitted a separate design entitled “Antiquity” (“Starina”), based on the Church of the Decapitation of St. John the Baptist at Diakovo. In the end, he was named official architect to the project.6 Further, he was classified as the “author” (avtor)—an architect/artist competent enough to prepare the overall decorative program of a church as well as oversee its execution.7 He was a graduate of—and an academician and later professor of architecture at— the Academy, where he specialized in Greco-Roman architecture; a member of the Ministry of the Interior’s Technical Committee, which supervised the construction of ecclesiastical buildings throughout the empire; and he taught technical and aquarelle drawing at the Shtiglits Central College of Technical Drawing, where the plans for the temple and its exterior and interior appointments were drawn.8 Parland developed a cross-in-square, tri-apsidal, pentacupolar plan with an asymmetrical composition typical of seventeenth-century Iaroslavl´ churches.9 This plan was reworked until finalized by the tsar on 1 May 1887—a few years after construction began. The ele­ vations reveal a traditional eight-on-four (vos´merik na chetverike) composition, in which a central octahedron tent-tower (shater), flanked by four smaller towers on drums, rises above the central cube; still smaller towers surmount the central apse and each of the two side apses. Each of the nine towers is finished with an onion-dome

4

  Al´fred A. Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, sooruzhennyi na meste smertel´nogo poraneniia v Bozhe pochivshego Imperatora Aleksandra II na Ekaterininskom kanale v S.-Peterburge (St. Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo R. Golike i A. Vil´borg, 1907), 3. 5

  See Michael S. Flier, “At Daggers Drawn: The Competition for the Church of the Savior on the Blood,” in For SK: In Celebration of the Life and Career of Simon Karlinsky, ed. Flier and Robert P. Hughes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 95–115. 6

 Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 16–17. In his monograph, Parland does not mention Archimandrite Ignatii.

7

  This convention dates to 1669, when Tsar Alexei confirmed the Gramota of the Three Patriarchs, which so classified church architects and artists. See Viktor N. Lazarev, Russkaia srednevekovaia zhivopis´ (Moscow: Nauka, 1970), 7–12. On the use of avtor by Russian architects, a Roman imperial convention, see Kristi Groberg and Letta Christianson, “Keywords: Author,” SHERA Bulletin 6, 2 (2001).

8

  A biographical sketch of Parland’s work at the Academy is located in RGIA f. 789, op. 6, d. 109. See also Heinrich Heidebrecht, “Der Beitrag deutscher Architekten zur Bildung des ‘Russischen’ Stils im 19. Jahrhundert,” Architectura 30, 2 (2000): 189–201. 9

  Plan located in RGIA f. 513, op. 102, d. 9715a.

Recreation of Seventeenth-Century Tile Forms

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cupola (lukovitsa).10 The influence of St. Basil, with its red brick, white limestone, and multicolored ceramic tile ornamentation, as well as its original chapels “on the blood,” is evident, and was something that Parland had in mind,11 if for no other reason than, as William Brumfield has written, it represented the epitome of “the extravagance of Muscovite imagination” so dear to the tsar’s heart.12 Parland’s plan was calculated to meet criteria that included a modified martyrium, the tsar’s thematic ideal, the allotted budget, the limitations of the available property, and the staggering weight of the structure, which had to be built on watery ground. In addition, Parland had to adhere to an 1848 building code, legislated by Tsar Nicholas I via Konstantin Ton, which dictated acceptable styles of architecture in central St. Petersburg.13 Tremendous financial resources were amassed for the project; its estimated cost was 3.6 million silver rubles, but the actual cost was over a million rubles more.14 Monies were amassed from generous donations made by wealthy merchants, social and religious organizations, and the extended imperial family, as well as meager donations from the poverty-stricken general public. Most of the funds were spent to introduce and apply new technologies, manufacture high-quality materials, and purchase the finest decorative appointments.15 While details were negotiated, Parland studied ancient Russian monuments, assembled his cast of artists and artisan workers, acquired necessary supplies, and oversaw the initial construction. He had no choice but to draw from a remarkable and sometimes curious variety of sources to create a temple that would reflect, or at least echo, seventeenth-century churches. Parland applied a formula of reddish-brown brick building, white stone trim, and ceramic tile ornamentation, to which he added enough ceramic, glass, and stone tesserae to create a church which can claim an astonishing amount of mosaic work: 519 square meters on the exterior and 7,065 on the interior. Red brick trimmed in white stone was a convention of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Moscow Style church architecture, and that of Iaroslavl´, which added decorative tin-glazed majolica tiles in the traditional colors of blue, green, white, and yellow to the formula.16 Parland also tapped into a revival of the use of brick in Russian architecture that 10

  Elevations located in Tsentral´nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga f. 506, op. 1, d. 246, ll. 5–10. 11

 Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 3.

12

  William C. Brumfield, Landmarks of Russian Architecture (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1997), 95. 13

  James H. Bater, St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976), 24. 14

  Georgii P. Butikov, “Muzei-pamiatnik ‘Spas na krovi,’” in Muzei “Isaakievskii sobor” (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1991), 157, 169. 15

  Iurii V. Trubinov, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova (Spas na Krovi) (St. Petersburg: Beloe i chernoe, 1997), 34. 16

  William C. Brumfield, “Photographic Documentation of Seventeenth-Century Architectural Monuments in Yaroslavl,” Visual Resources 11, 2 (1995): 135–65.

172 Kristi A. Groberg

began in the 1860s. This was the so-called Brick Style (kirpichnyi stil´), an eclectic “style” popularized by the architects Viktor Gartman and Ivan Ropet in their quest to recover Old Russian decorative details.17 Known to its antagonists as Ropetovshchina, its main purpose was the creation of functional buildings whose surfaces were enlivened with colorful glazed bricks and/or ceramic tiles. Known in Europe as the Ziegelbau Movement, it utilized premanufactured glazed bricks for housing projects, public buildings, and large churches. A practical vogue, it provided for cheap, sturdy, and virtually maintenance-free buildings. In Russia, the addition of decorative tiles allowed for highly attractive color combinations that recalled earlier national forms. It had special resonance in St. Petersburg after 1870, when two of its proponents, the architects Viktor Shreter and Ieronim Kitner, demonstrated its effective use with especially decorative patterns and colors.18 And, it fit under the hard-to-define and highly eclectic rubric Russian Style (Russkii stil´ or Style Russe).19 Architects such as Parland, who took seriously the return to seventeenth-century decorative elements, turned for inspiration to art historian Vladimir Stasov’s 1872 album Samples of Russian Ornamentation. Stasov claimed contemporary Russian architecture and the decorative arts were well served by nationalistic designs which mimicked traditional embroidery patterns and motifs from ancient manuscripts.20 Nikolai Sultanov, the Holy Synod’s resident expert on church architecture, countered that the application of folk motifs to brickwork constituted indiscriminate transferences from one medium to another. He considered these “salient features” of the vogue for Russian kitsch in architecture and sarcastically referred to them as “marble hand-woven towels and brick embroideries.”21 Nonetheless, Sultanov gave a speech in 1882 in which he argued on behalf of the Russian Style’s practical use of brick as one means to convey “the national ethos.”22 Parland, however, had to please the tsar and not his critical colleagues. He adhered to efforts to restore cultural integrity by 17

  Evgeniia I. Kirichenko, Russkaia arkhitektura 1830–1910-x godov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1978), 159–69; and Kirichenko, “Arkhitekt I. P. Ropet,” Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo 20 (1972): 85–93. 18

  Ieronim S. Kitner, “Kirpichnaia arkhitektura,” Zodchii, no. 6 (1882): 84. Both Shreter and Kitner submitted designs to the competition for the temple.

19

  The difficulties of defining this style are made abundantly clear in Evgeniia I. Kirichenko, Russkii stil´: Poiski vyrazheniia natsional´noi samobytnosti. Narodnost´ i natsional´nost´. Traditsiii drevnerusskogo i narodnogo iskusstva i russkom iskusstve xviii–xx veka (Moscow: Izd-vo AST, 1997), especially 183–99; and Evgenia Kirichenko, “The Russian Style 1850– 1900,” in Russian Design and the Fine Arts, 1750–1917, comp. Mikhail Anikst (New York: Abrams, 1991), 91–133. 20

  Vladimir V. Stasov, Obraztsy russkogo ornamenta (Moscow: Obshchestvo pooshchreniia khudozhnikov, 1872), no pagination. 21

  Nikolai V. Sultanov, “Vozrozhdenie russkogo iskusstva,” Zodchii, no. 2 (1881): 11.

22

  Nikolai V. Sultanov, “Odna iz zadach stroitel´nogo uchilishcha,” Zodchii, no. 5 (1882): 71; also noted (with examples), in Sultanov, Opisanie novoi pridvornoi tserkvi (St. Petersburg: Oblik, 1905).

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reviving folk art forms and assimilating them into “high culture.” There was a political edge to this approach, in that it was most fully expressed in the architectural patronage of the imperial government.23 And Tsar Alexander III was nothing if not a patron of the Russian arts.24 In the spring of 1884, construction on the temple began. It took three years to drain a section of the Catherine Canal, create a coffer dam and caisson (in the manner of a deep lighthouse support system), and pour the foundation. Parland insisted the canal be filled with water when the project was complete, so the temple would be reflected in the water in the manner of many seventeenth-century churches.25 Property around the site was cleared to build workshops, workers’ barracks, and storage for construction supplies; a rail line was laid to a materials depot at the edge of the Field of Mars adjacent to the Neva River. Fantastic new equipment, such as steam-powered pile drivers, and experimental construction methods drew enormous crowds to the construction site. Atop the foundation, walls were constructed of high-quality horizontal redbrown and yellow brick commissioned and purchased from Pirogranit, the largest brick factory in Russia, and Nadezhda, a lesser-known manufactory. Hundreds of thousands of bricks were stored on site. As the brick was laid by stonemasons, decorative insets were added; these alone comprised ten metric tons of multicolored ceramic-glazed bricks imported from the Zigersdorff Factory in German Silesia. Bricks glazed in blue, green, and yellow were set in symmetrical patterns to add color, texture, and symbolic motifs to the walls; many were molded in unusual shapes. A total of 331,389 bricks were imported at a cost of 57,542 rubles and 38 kopeks.26 Once the structural shell of the temple was in place, the brick façade was reveted as well as further decorated with red granite quarried in Norway, grey granite from nearby quarries, and limestone27 provided by the Estonian stonecutters’ firm of Kos

23

  Vladimir G. Lisovskii, Natsional´nye traditsii v russkoi arkhitekture kontsa XIX–nachala XX veka (Leningrad: Obshchestvo Znanie, 1988), 118. 24

  See John O. Norman, “Alexander III as Patron of the Arts,” in New Perspectives on Russian and Soviet Artistic Culture, ed. Norman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 25–40.

25

 Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 14.

26

  V. V. Antonov and A. V. Kobak, Sviatyni Sankt-Peterburga: Istoriko-tserkovnaia entsiklopediia, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo Chernysheva, 1994–96), 1: 102; and L. V. Shmelling, “Neskol´ko tsifr iz otcheta po sooruzheniiu khrama vo imia Voskreseniia Khristova,” Zodchii, no. 49 (1907): 49. Shmelling’s original documentation on the cost of building the temple is in his unpublished manuscript, “Otchet po sooruzheniiu khrama vo imia Voskreseniia Khristova na meste smertel´nogo raneniia Imperatora Aleksandra II” (St. Petersburg, 1907), located in RGIA f. 1293, op. 103 (1907), d. 106.

27

  Known as Estonian Limestone or Estland Marble, it is a grey-white dolomite that is soft and easily carved, but hardens when exposed to the elements.

174 Kristi A. Groberg

& Diurr.28 In the seventeenth-century manner, the white stone was applied to the belts, cornices, decorative gables (kokoshniki), window frames (nalichniki), and door casings, to provide contrast to the red brick and accent the temple’s architectural components.29 Other decorative details in white stone were cut, worked, and applied by the Petersburg stonecutting workshop of A. E. Blagodarev.30 Total cost for the exterior included 945,536 rubles and 8 kopeks for the stone and the labor of the stonemasons, 75,215 rubles and 39 kopeks for the masonry on the brick walls and arches, 227,862 rubles and 14 kopeks for the cutting, finishing, and application of limestone, and 38,724 rubles and 69 kopeks for the remaining stonework.31 This, while it is not technically ceramic work, is a vital component of the seventeenth-century image that Parland strove to emulate. Many of the decorative elements created with ceramic were not integral to the actual structure of the temple. A striking wealth of ornament was attached for the sheer saturation characteristic of the seventeenth-century churches so admired by the tsar, who was involved in every phase of planning and construction. These included such pieces as the patterned majolica tile insets for the recessed squares (shirinki) which accentuate the verticality of the building. These large tiles were molded in high-relief floral patterns, glazed in light colors, and fired in Kholui at the ceramics firm owned by the icon painter N. N. Kharlamov. Delicate faceting as well as archivolts for the large drum under the central tent-tower were specially ordered from St. Petersburg’s Imperial Porcelain Factory—Purveyors to His Highness the Tsar of Glass, Porcelain, China, and Stoneware. Into the large south, east, and north façade pediments, the four porch pediments, the face of the bell-tower, and the tympanae of the exterior kokoshniki, highly symbolic icons and designs in mosaic were set. These included the patron saints of the imperial family and the coats of arms of the great cities and provinces of Russia. The mosaic work on the exterior of the temple was completed in 1907, just in time for consecration, at a cost of 809,952 rubles and 85 kopeks.32 The interior of the temple was, with the exception of fine stone and metalwork, completely covered in mosaic compositions created with ceramic and glass tesserae. Surfaces included the ceiling, vaults, cupola interiors, walls, pillars, and pilasters. This was a bold and exceptionally expensive undertaking. Parland made the decision to forego the more typical, traditional use of frescoes for interior decoration. Here 28

  Vladimir Rudnev, “I masterstvo, i vdokhnoven´e,” S.-Peterburgskaia panorama 5 (1993): 26; and Boris M. Kirikov, “Khram Voskreseniia Khristova (k istorii ‘russkogo stilia’ v Peterburge),” in Nevskii arkhiv: Istoriko-kraevedcheskii sbornik, ed. A. I. Dobkin and A. V. Kobak (Moscow: Atheneum-Feniks, 1993), 225. Precious and semiprecious stone for the interior appointments was cut and installed by the Imperial Lapidary Workshops at Petergof, Ekaterinburg, and Kolyvan.

29

 Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 6.

30 31

  Rudnev, “I masterstvo, i vdokhnoven´e,” 26.

  Shmelling, “Neskol´ko tsifr,” 49.

32

 Ibid.

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he deviated dramatically from the return to seventeenth-century forms and argued for the unusual use of mosaics by demonstrating their practicality and longevity, and he pointed to some very early prototypes to prove it. It was to surpass in size and grandiosity the mosaic surface areas of the imperially inspired mosaic work in the Byzantine churches of Hagia Sophia (532–37) in Constantinople, San Vitale (547) in Ravenna, St. Mikhail of the Golden Domes (1108) in Kiev, and San Marco (ca. 1200) in Venice—all referred to by Parland in his monograph.33 In each of these churches, the mosaics only covered sections of the walls and ceiling, while at the temple Parland called for 7,065 square meters of mosaic, interrupted only by stone iconostases, icon frames, steps, and a Roman-style floor.34 The iconographical program was prepared by Vasilii Uspenskii, a specialist in Byzantine iconography. Parland corresponded with dozens of famous painters of religious subjects in his efforts to add their talents to the project. He was extremely successful in that thirty-three artists, including Mikhail Nesterov and Viktor Vasnetsov, agreed to contribute designs for the mosaics. The resulting gallery of Old Testament prophets, church fathers, Orthodox saints and martyrs, seraphim, cherubim, archangels, angels, and animals consisted of 277 different named figures and 68 additional biblical and evangelical themes in 308 separate compositions.35 The Building Commission announced a contest in 1895 for the manufacture and application of mosaics to each individual artist’s specifications. Competitive orders were accepted from both Russian and foreign firms, including the Mosaic Department of the Academy, the Frolov Firm of Master Mosaicists in Petersburg, the Kharlamov Firm of Kholui, Antonio Salviati & Co. of Venice (makers of Murano glass tesserae with gold leaf inserts), and Fritz Puhl & August Wagner of Berlin (makers of glass tesserae with silver leaf inserts). The commission preferred the first order to come in, that of the Frolov firm, well known for its mosaic work on churches, public buildings, and funerary monuments. Frolov drew up the overall plan for applying mosaic to the interior walls, although Parland had the final say in the event questions arose. The actual tesserae were small ceramic cubes (.25 vershoks cubed) created, glazed, and fired by the Kharlamov firm of Kholui.36 Frolov defined them as “molecules” in the same way that today we might think of them as pixels on a grid. Samples of each color—developed by Sergei Petukhov, the chemist for the Mosaic Department of the Academy—were placed in the archives of the Academy.37 The Frolovs were in charge of creating the mosaics (some of which were assembled at their Petersburg studio and others in the temple) from the tesserae, installing them, and sealing the compo33

 Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 5; and Parland, “Khram Voskreseniia Khristova,” 377.

34

  Anonymous, “Khram Voskreseniia Khristova,” Niva 36 (1907): 596.

35

 Trubinov, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 37–38.

36

  Boris M. Kirikov and Vladimir A. Frolov, “Iz Istorii russkoi i sovetskoi mozaiki,” in Khudozhnik i gorod, ed. Marina L. Terekhovich (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1988), 299. 37

  Ibid., 294 n. 42.

176 Kristi A. Groberg

sitions with jewelers’ enamel.38 The exceptions were the mosaics for the iconostasis, completed in the Mosaic Department of the Academy, four icons for the side apses executed by Puhl & Wagner in Berlin, and a few pieces created by Antonio Salviati & Co. in Venice. The non-Russian firms likely were solicited because the younger Frolov brothers had gone to Venice to learn the reverse Venetian technique of mosaic composition and to Puhl & Wagner in Berlin to work with the masters there; both firms specialized in the creation of glass tesserae (smalti), inset with gold and silver leaf, and set at an angle in the Byzantine manner to reflect light. This technique was new to Russia and completely unlike that taught at and favored by the Academy and the Imperial Lapidary Workshops. The project continued from the execution of cartoons in 1896 until 1907 and caused years of delay in the completion of the temple. The total cost for the creation of the monumental cartoons and frames for the mosaics was 204,585 rubles, and the mosaics themselves totaled well over 100,000 rubles.39 The roofs of the porches, the main tent-tower, and apse roofs were covered in blue, green, yellow, and white ceramic tiles manufactured in seventy-four different shapes. The four tiled cupolas were executed in bright, clear colors and patterns inset with religious symbols. The multidimensional tiles on the large cupola were all polychrome majolica in separate, distinct colors. They were fired in various sizes and shapes—pyramids, squares, and braids—and created in molds curved to the exact shape of the cupolas. The work of molding, firing, and glazing these unusual tiles was done by the Moscow jewelers’ firm of A. M. Postnikov, selected because it had developed a permanent enamel glaze with which to seal the ceramic tiles against the elements. The involved process began with an iron framework that formed the basic cupola; the frame was covered with copper sheeting and a thin layer of encaustic, into which the ceramic tiles were set. To seal them, the lightweight, frost-resistant, water-repellent enamel sealant was applied over the tiles. The total area of roofing protected by ceramic tile was approximately one thousand square meters. So, now we face the question of the seventeenth-century precedent and whether or not Parland accomplished his goal. Architectural tiles (izrazets) were not new to Russia in the seventeenth century; in fact, the large-scale manufacture and distribution of glazed bricks and tiles was documented as early as the fifteenth century. Potteries were located near clay deposits, and whenever possible near the larger towns or monasteries which made use of the ceramic forms on their architecture.40 By this time, tile was an important alternative to expensive stone facing. Used in combination with brick, bands of unglazed terra cotta tiles were white-washed to mimic the carved white stone on earlier churches in Novgorod and Suzdal.41 The sixteenth century introduced green-glazed tiles, and other enamel colors were introduced in the sev38

  See the excerpts of Frolov’s memoirs published in ibid., 285–86.

39

  Boris M. Kirikov and Vladimir A. Frolov, “Nemerknushchie kraski mozaiki,” Stroitel´stvo i arkhitektura Leningrada 10 (1978): 40.

40

  Alison Hilton, “Materials and Forms,” in Russian Folk Art (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 115.

41

  I. I. Sergeenko, Russkii izrazets (Moscow: MGOMZ, 1982), 1–5.

Recreation of Seventeenth-Century Tile Forms

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enteenth century and prolifically applied to church architecture. New techniques to create tin-glazed majolica, faience, and porcelain were developed late in the century at a time when architectural tiles were produced by both simple and technologically complex procedures and reflected folk traditions as well as urban fashion. Multicolored tiles were favored, featuring large floral motifs, framing devices from early manuscripts, scenes from folk tales and peasant life, and even images adapted from Classical, European, and Oriental sources.42 Parland looked, under the watchful eye of Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicholas II, to Tsar Alexei, whose long and peaceful reign (1645–76) stimulated a proliferation of brick churches decorated in bright polychrome tiles. Despite their ornamental effusiveness, the designs achieved an unusual degree of stability in a plan known as the “ship”—a central cube, topped by five cupolas, and attached to a bell-tower surmounted by a tent-tower. This was the so-called Moscow Style of architecture to which Parland turned in part for inspiration in his design for the temple, which essentially was a pentacupolar church fused to a bell-tower like a ship church. An irregular plan with exceedingly intricate ornamentation appears in the Church of the Trinity in Nikitniki (1628–53), which was completed during Alexei’s reign. The national recovery called for by the nineteenth-century Russian Style looked to this church, which demonstrated the economic basis of ornamentalism: the rise of wealthy merchants.43 Constructed in an urban Moscow setting, it was created by the tsar’s artisans. Against the red brick façade with its carved white limestone trim were set the ornamental devices of seventeenth-century Moscow: deeply recessed square panels; multiple tiers of corbelled gables sculpted with perspective arches; cornices of colored tile; pendants (girki) in the entrance arches; attached columns, pilasters, and arcading on the cupola drums; and arches of every conceivable sort. Despite Patriarch Nikon’s insistence that after 1652 all church architecture return to the Byzantine form of a cube topped by three or five domes, the preoccupation with highly ornamented brick churches continued. In fact, Nikon’s plan to build his monastery of the New Jerusalem at Istra west of Moscow in 1654 stimulated the use of tile making for architectural purposes. He sent for the best tile makers from manufactories in Rostov, Moscow, and other cities to decorate the Church of the Resurrection.44 After exiling Nikon in 1658, Tsar Alexei called the masters of architectural tile making to the Kremlin Armory Chamber, and their work made Moscow the center of tile production. The technique of tile enameling (tsenina) became popular. Tiles molded in high relief decorated the façades of many brick churches and public buildings.

42

  Hilton, “Materials and Forms,” 116.

43

  Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 1: 383.

44

  I. Grabar´ and S. Toporov, “Arkhitekturnye sokrovishcha Novogo Ierusalima,” in Pamiatniki iskusstva razrushennye nemetskimi zakhavatchikami v SSSR, ed. Grabar´ (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1948), 175–76.

178 Kristi A. Groberg

From Moscow, the new fashion spread through the major cities, especially Rostov the Great and Iarolslavl´.45 The Church of the Trinity at Ostankino (1678–83) demonstrates the character of brick itself as a decorative surface. Bricks of various sizes, shapes, and colors were laid in a variety of patterns, some of them even molded for a particular course as tiles would be at Savior on the Blood. Carved limestone provided both structural detail and window treatments, and the addition of gilded and painted cupolas brought this polychromatic structure to such a degree of pictorial richness that Parland’s contemporary Andrei Aplaksin adjectivized any highly decorative Russian Style church— such as Parland’s temple—as Ostankovshchina.46 The same “attitude toward brick”47 —intensively worked to produce the utmost variety of color, shape, and play of light and shade over wall surfaces—was characteristic of the large group of seventeenth-century churches in Iaroslavl´ to which Parland referred as among his prototypes for the temple.48 These simple cubes of brick, built to the vocabulary of earlier Russian architecture, had as their most unique attribute an abundance of decorative brickwork and ceramic tile. Despite the variety of brick churches in Moscow in the final decades of the seventeenth-century, the apogee of traditional forms of church architecture occurred in Iaroslavl´, a burgeoning trade center on the Volga River. These richly decorated churches were built under the patronage of wealthy merchants, city districts, and trade associations—all of which tried to out-do one another until Iaroslavl´ began to decline with the rise of St. Petersburg. Large and ingeniously decorated, they returned to the earlier sixteenth-century tri-apsidal plan, flanked by chapels and a gallery with porches on three sides. Architects were obliged to accept Nikon’s injunction against the use of more than five domes, but in many cases they retained the pyramidal or octahedron tent-roof on their bell towers, which became a feature of Iaroslavl´ church architecture. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Rostov the Great, also on the Volga River—and another source of inspiration for Parland—became the site of the last and largest building projects of medieval Muscovy. Its patron was Metropolitan Iona, close to Tsar Alexei but the holder of an eparchate rich in funds, craftsmen, and laborers. Between 1670 and 1690, stonemasons erected several large urban churches in Rostov; components borrowed from them by Parland include saturated ceramic ornamentation on both building and cupolas. Entire church and monastery complexes were meant to be viewed from the water—another idea Parland insisted upon for Spas na Krovi. 45

  James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 71. 46

  Andrei P. Aplaksin, “Russkoe tserkovnoe iskusstvo i ego sovremennye zadachi,” Zodchii, no. 3 (1911): 24.

47

  George Heard Hamilton, The Art and Architecture of Russia (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 210. 48

 Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 3.

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By the end of the nineteenth century, these ideas had been fully co-opted to the degree that not only the Russian Style, but the use of Russian artists and materials, was considered a given—especially with regard to the construction of churches under the patronage of the imperial family. The idea of ornamental church art and architecture as representative of the national ethos was supported by the architect Vladimir Shervud in 1895, when he expressed a conviction that the “spiritual idea in architecture” best reflected Russianness.49 The few Russian Style churches built in St. Petersburg were often the most outrageously russianized as a counterattack on the Western values which had created the city; many were built on canal quays so that they would become prominent features of the skyline and disrupt the Classical architectural ensemble of the city.50 Parland wrote that he wanted the temple’s design to “have no Western influence.”51 And in keeping with his understanding of eclecticism, he backed his decision to incorporate a variety of prototypes, design styles, and personal artistic styles in order to present a “treasure house of national ornament.”52 This was completely in keeping with the Russian Style, which was marked by an increasing accentuation or exaggeration of the prototype, a kind of optical enlargement in which the divisions between parts of a church were blurred by excessive ornamentation. The end result is a hybrid church like Savior on the Blood.

49

  Vladimir O. Shervud, Opyt issledovaniia zakonov iskusstva: Zhivopis´, skul´ptura, arkhitektura i ornamentika (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1895), 128–29. 50

  Kirichenko and Anikst, Russian Design and the Fine Arts, 1759–1917, 72.

51

 Parland, Khram Voskreseniia Khristova, 5.

52

  Ibid., 6.

Looking East: The American YMCA’s Interaction with Russian Orthodox Christians, 1900–40 Matthew Lee Miller

The American branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (the YMCA, or the Y) entered Russia in 1900 and developed a variety of educational, religious, and athletic programs—the primary goal was to support the intellectual, spiritual, and physical development of young men. YMCA leaders began their work by establishing a public gymnasium, organizing Bible study groups, and providing direction to a Christian student movement. During World War I, many Y workers organized assistance for soldiers and prisoners of war. After the emigration of a number of Russians to western Europe, they assisted the new Russian Student Christian Movement, the YMCA Press, and the St. Sergius Theological Academy in Paris. During these years, Y leaders, such as Paul B. Anderson and Donald Lowrie, developed partnerships with a number of outstanding Orthodox leaders, including Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdiaev, and Georges Florovsky. In this way, the YMCA contributed to the preservation, enrichment, and expansion of Eastern Orthodox faith and culture. Especially through its support of the émigré student movement, publishing house, and theological academy, the YMCA played a major role in preserving an important part of prerevolutionary Russian culture in western Europe during the Soviet period. The American Protestant YMCA contributed to the enrichment of Russian Orthodox Christianity by making significant financial contributions, advising administrative development, encouraging flexibility on theological and ministry issues, setting an example of practical service to people, and developing a strong network of global relationships. These contributions combined to form a catalyst for the expansion of Eastern Orthodoxy and its influence throughout Europe, the United States, and beyond. The relationship of the YMCA with Orthodox leaders provides a rare example of fruitful interconfessional cooperation between Protestant and Orthodox Christians and an extraordinary period of interaction between American and Russian cultures. This essay focuses on the shifting outlook of the YMCA on Orthodoxy—the Y did not begin its work as a champion of Eastern churches. More specifically, over the years, the association’s approach shifted from resigned toleration to pragmatic support to limited support to enthusiastic support.1 1

  For discussion of the social, political, and religious context of the YMCA, see two works by the author: The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The Preservation and Expansion of Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 181–209.

182 Matthew Lee Miller

Contact between evangelical Protestants and Eastern Orthodox gradually increased during the nineteenth century through the westward emigration of Orthodox believers from eastern Europe and the European outreach of American and British missionaries. This essay examines scholarly views on Orthodoxy and Orthodox-Protestant relations, discusses the varying perceptions of English-speaking evangelicals toward the Eastern churches during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and provides a survey of secondary and primary sources which shed light on the issue. In addition, the essay illustrates the connection between these perceptions and the descriptions of Eastern Orthodoxy contained in the historical, political, travel, and theological literature of this period. This background provides context for the focus of this essay, the shifting outlook of the YMCA on Orthodoxy. Scholarly Perspectives on Orthodoxy A brief reflection on the academic study of Russian Orthodoxy highlights the significance of the YMCA’s approach to the Eastern churches. Thirty years ago, few historians paid any attention to the dominant faith of the Russian people. In 1985, Gregory Freeze, a leading American scholar on the history of Russian Orthodoxy, commented: “The history of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially in the modern imperial period (1700–1917), has been a woefully neglected field of scholarly research.” Fortunately, during the last twenty-five years, the situation has been improving, with regular publication of research on many aspects of Orthodoxy.2 In 2003, Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene wrote that after “seventy years of neglect, the study of Russian religious life has entered an exciting period of growth in the decade since the fall of the Soviet Union.” They explain: Orthodox Christianity, 1900–1940 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013) and “The American YMCA and Russian Politics: Critics and Supporters of Socialism, 1900–1940,” in New Perspectives on Russian-American Relations, ed. William Benton Whisenhunt and Norman E. Saul (New York: Routledge, 2015). These works analyze the influence of the activities of the YMCA on Russians during the late imperial and early Soviet periods. This research is based on the YMCA’s archival records, observations found in Moscow and Paris archives, and memoirs of both Russian and American participants. 2   Gregory L. Freeze, “Handmaiden of the State? The Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, 1 (1985): 82. A few examples of this new research on the recent history of Russian Orthodoxy are Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); Chris J. Chulos, Converging Worlds: Religion and Community in Peasant Russia, 1861–1917 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003); Jennifer Jean Wynot, Keeping the Faith: Russian Orthodox Monasticism in the Soviet Union, 1917–1939 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004); Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come: Orthodox Pastorship and Social Activism in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008); and Laurie Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008).



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By fortuitous coincidence, the transformation of the political climate of Russia since 1991 coincided with shifts in the intellectual currents in Western scholarship, where renewed interest in cultural anthropology has driven a rush of work on religious life and culture.3 Textbook descriptions usually presented a rigid system of dogma and ritual which has operated as a closed system. Recent work, however, has looked at the interplay of Orthodoxy with local and national historical trends as well as at the individual desires of laity and clergy. Historians are examining the church not simply as an organization, but as a participant in the wider culture of Russia. More recently, Freeze has observed: Only in the last decade has Russian Orthodoxy finally become a major focus of research. If nothing else, that research has posed a challenge to antireligious assumptions and encouraged historians to give more attention to the role of the church and religion—in politics, social relations, and culture.4 A leading trend among scholars in this field is a focus on popular religion, the lived experience of Orthodox believers, rather than on episcopal politics and church-state relations. As one scholar summarizes, “we also need more studies of popular religion in the years before the revolution in order to substantiate statements about change in the early Soviet period.”5 The experiences of Orthodox office workers, students, and émigrés are considered in detail in this study of the YMCA. In spite of this historiographical progress, very little scholarly attention has been paid to one of the church’s leading concerns from the 1870s to 1917—the spread of the Baptist and Evangelical Christian movements in the Russian Empire. Two recent exceptions are the monographs by Heather Coleman and Sergei Zhuk.6 One reason for this limitation in American historiography may lie within the tradition of church history developed 3

  Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene, eds., Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 1. 4

  Gregory L. Freeze, “Recent Scholarship on Russian Orthodoxy: A Critique,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2, 2 (2001): 269. 5

  Heather J. Coleman, “Atheism versus Secularization? Religion in Soviet Russia, 1917–1961,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, 3 (2000): 557–58. 6

  Heather J. Coleman, Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905–1929 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); and Sergei I. Zhuk, Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830–1917 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). Another recent study on Orthodox-Protestant contacts is Arkhimandrit Avgustin (Nikitin), Metodizm i Pravoslavie (St. Petersburg: Svetoch, 2001). This volume contains an overview of contacts between American Protestants and Russian Orthodox, with a focus on Methodists, and highlights of the YMCA’s work with Russians on pages 149–51 and 157–66. See also Karina Ann Ham, “Interplay between Orthodoxy and Protestantism in Russia, 1905–1995” (Ph.D. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1998).

184 Matthew Lee Miller

within the Russian Orthodox Church. As Gregory Freeze has noted, scholars have often shown disregard of non-Orthodox groups and simply labeled them as heretical or schismatic.7 Many lay observers before and after 1900 noted the rapid growth of Russian Protestantism and saw it as a reaction to the postreform social changes and the shortcomings of the state church. The majority of bishops, however, simply assumed that Protestantism was treasonous and a threat to society. At this time, Konstantin Pobedonostsev was ober-procurator of the Holy Synod, the lay state official who supervised the Russian Orthodox Church. He “was firmly convinced that society could be kept together only by a single authority (the autocracy) and a single faith.” State and church officials developed a two-pronged approach to these heterodox Russians: state repression and church education. The state would attempt to hinder Protestant leaders, and the church would increase popular and clerical religious education.8 The YMCA entered Russia at a time when the Russian Orthodox Church was engaging more actively with social issues and philanthropy. Since 1860, clergy and lay leaders had been moving the church into new programs of charity and popular religious education; the center of this trend was St. Petersburg. Jennifer Hedda summarizes her research on this topic by arguing that by 1900, “the local church had become a vigorous institution that played a prominent role in the city’s public life.” St. Petersburg clergy were motivated primarily by their evaluation of growing social problems as an ethical challenge to the church. “They did not see poverty, intemperance and class tension as social problems that could be eliminated by legislating higher wages or providing better municipal services. They saw them as moral ills.” Their approach could not be described as overly optimistic or utopian, since The church did not teach that poverty could be eliminated or that the material differences between the fortunate and the unfortunate could be erased. Rather, it taught that people should not allow such material distinctions to divide them from each other or to alienate them from God.9 St. Petersburg’s largest voluntary association was the Society for the Dissemination of Moral-Religious Enlightenment in the Spirit of the Orthodox Church. The catalyst for the formation of this program had been the popularity of meetings led by the British evangelist Lord Radstock and his Russian friend Colonel Pashkov for the capital’s social elite in the 1870s. These meetings included discussions of the Bible, hymn 7

  Freeze, “Recent Scholarship,” 276.

8

  A. Iu. Polunov, “The State and Religious Heterodoxy in Russia (from 1880 to the Beginning of the 1890s),” Russian Studies in History 39, 4 (2001): 54–58. 9

  Jennifer Hedda, “Good Shepherds: The St. Petersburg Pastorate and the Emergence of Social Activism in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1855–1917” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998), iii, 215, 220. For discussion of a number of fundamental issues concerning the Orthodox Church during this period, see Robert L. Nichols and Theofanis George Stavrou, eds., Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978).



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singing, and informal prayer. They did not promote direct opposition to the Russian church, but Radstock’s informal ministry appealed to many among the nobility who were unsatisfied with their worship experiences in the state church.10 Hedda remarks, “Seeing how effective Radstock’s methods were, this concerned group of clergymen and laymen decided to adopt his methods for their own purposes.” She also notes the significant role played by this society in the development of civil society in St. Petersburg, as it encouraged voluntarism and civic responsibility.11 Simon Dixon’s research on the growing social awareness of clergy comes to similar conclusions and emphasizes the role played by Orthodoxy’s competitors in sparking new forms of activity within the state church.12 This essay will show how a number of clergy studied and utilized the YMCA’s programs and ideas—since the Y and social Orthodoxy shared a number of basic convictions. Protestant Perceptions of Orthodoxy As the YMCA entered Russia and began its interaction with society and the state church, all was not business as usual. For Y secretaries, gaining even a basic grasp on the spectrum of responses to church concerns was no simple matter. As Vera Shevzov’s groundbreaking monograph points out, the Russian Orthodox Church faced a variety of external and internal challenges to its own self-understanding. Marxists and other atheists challenged the church on political and philosophical grounds, while competing factions within the church attempted to shape its values.13 She compares this period to the Protestant Reformation and the Second Vatican Council: True, the “evolution” or brewing “revolution” (depending on one’s interpretation of those debates) in Russian Orthodoxy never had the chance to become

10

  See Mark Myers McCarthy, “Religious Conflict and Social Order in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Orthodoxy and the Protestant Challenge, 1812–1905” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2004); and Sharyl Corrado, “The Philosophy of Ministry of Colonel Vasiliy Pashkov” (Master’s thesis, Wheaton College, 2000). 11

  Hedda, “Good Shepherds,” 250–53, 217.

12

  Simon Dixon, “The Church’s Social Role in St. Petersburg, 1880–1914,” in Church, Nation and State in Russia and Ukraine, ed. Geoffrey A. Hosking (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 168, 175. See also Dixon, “The Orthodox Church and the Workers of St. Petersburg 1880–1914,” in European Religion in the Age of Great Cities, 1830–1930, ed. Hugh McLeod (New York: Routledge, 1995), 119–41. For a discussion on the cross-cultural expansion of Orthodoxy, see James J. Stamoolis, Eastern Orthodox Mission Theology Today (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Company, 1986). 13

  Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 258.

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a comparable definitive “event,” largely on account of the political aftermath of the 1917 revolutions.14 During the 1920s, YMCA leader E. T. Colton described what he saw as the three major American Protestant responses to the Russian Orthodox Church: proselytization, condemnation, and support. According to Colton, the first group included Baptists and Methodists. The second group was made up of left-wing Protestants, such as Anna Louise Strong and Harry Ward, who condoned Soviet measures to demolish an outdated church so that a new one could replace it. The third group, Anglicans, Episcopalians, and YMCA members, was attempting to support the more liberal and progressive wing of the Orthodox Church.15 An extensive review of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestant literature on Eastern Orthodoxy suggests that Protestant views on Eastern Christianity have often been linked to views on Roman Catholicism and Islam. Those Protestants who had been sympathetic to Catholics and desirous of reforms had also been open to the Orthodox churches. Those with a strict anti-Catholic approach usually presented a very negative view of the Eastern bodies. A number of writers were pragmatically guided by their strong desire to see Christianity advance in the Muslim world. Some advocated assisting the Eastern churches in evangelizing Muslims. Others suggested it would be better to avoid relationships with these clergy in order not to offend adherents to Islam. American Protestants formed a variety of opinions as they became more aware of Orthodoxy. The speakers at a 1918 conference discussing the evangelization of Russia demonstrated one very negative position. At this Chicago assembly, one speaker referred to the Russian church as a “condemned ecclesiasticism.” Another speaker explained that in this tradition “there is little room for intellectual worship” because of the “gorgeous display, semi-barbaric pomp, and endless changes of sacerdotal dress, crossings, genuflections.” Other American Protestants chose a divergent position—a romanticized admiration with a “veneration bordering upon enthusiasm and exuberance.”16 These opinions, ranging on a continuum from disdain to veneration, were primarily based on superficial impressions, for Protestants and Orthodox had lived separate lives since the Reformation. Few American and British Protestants had made a serious attempt to understand the heart and mind of Eastern believers. Evangelical and Orthodox Christians shared a number of common foundational elements but lived in different worlds. Their common theological heritage included the authority of the divinely inspired scriptures and a common understanding of 14

  Vera Shevzov, “Icons, Miracles, and the Ecclesial Identity of Laity in Late Imperial Russian Orthodoxy,” Church History 69, 3 (2000): 610. 15

  Letter from E. T. Colton to F. W. Ramsey, 16 July 1926, 3, Russia, Colton E. T., Reports, Addresses, and Papers, volume 2, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis [hereafter KFYA]. 16

  Jesse W. Brooks, ed., Good News for Russia (Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1918), 75, 156, 211.



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the Trinity and Christ defined by the councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Chalcedon (451 AD). Protestants and Orthodox experienced a variety of contacts since the sixteenth-century Reformation. Philip Melancthon, the German reformer, initiated the first formal contact in 1559, when he sent a copy of the Augsburg Confession to Patriarch Joasaph of Constantinople. More than twenty years later, Joasaph’s successor responded, condemning central aspects of the Confession’s explanation of justification and biblical interpretation.17 However, seventy years later, the new Ecumenical Patriarch, Cyril Lucaris, published a confession which included teachings adapted from the writings of John Calvin. The entire Orthodox Church rejected this confession—several councils of the church hierarchy condemned Lucaris’s views.18 In the following years, Anglo-Catholic theologians of the Church of England and the Russian Orthodox Church initiated an ongoing dialogue which continued into the twentieth century.19 After World War I, friendly contacts between Orthodox and Anglicans increased steadily. Both sides expressed a desire for Christian oneness and mutual respect. Of course, the motivations for these meetings were not only religious in nature. Russian church leaders in Europe were experiencing life after disestablishment; the Ecumenical Patriarchate found itself within a newly secular Turkish state, so support from the Church of England became desirable. Orthodox and Anglican history also played a role in forming new ties. A number of Anglo-Catholic and Orthodox leaders felt an extra measure of Christian brotherhood. Both communities argued that they represented authentic apostolic Christianity. Their common mutual opposition to certain positions of the Roman bishop and their belief that the Roman Catholic Church had created the existing schisms led some Orthodox and Anglicans to see existing differences between their communions as more apparent than real.20 The growing strength of Roman Catholicism in Britain, and its attractiveness to younger Anglo-Catholics, was a great concern to the older generation of high church Anglicans. Some of these elders saw the possibility of Orthodox recognition of Anglican clergy as a counterweight to the growing popularity of the Roman Church. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a variety of Protestant mission organizations conducted ministry with Russians, Greeks, Cypriots, Bulgarians, and other traditionally Orthodox ethnic groups. Missionaries, representing a variety of denominations, expressed a range of views on the nature and condition of the churches. The British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), an interdenominational Christian organization founded in 1804, coordinated the translation and distribution of the Bible throughout 17

  P. D. Steeves, “The Orthodox Tradition,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984), 807. 18

  Carnegie S. Calian, Icon and Pulpit: The Protestant-Orthodox Encounter (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1968), 22–23. 19

  Josef L. Altholz, “Anglican-Orthodox Relations in the Nineteenth Century,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 18–19 (2002–03): 1–14. 20

  Bryn Geffert, Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 3–4.

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the world.21 The BFBS quickly expanded its work to many regions, including Russia. The Russian Bible Society was organized in 1812 with the support of Alexander I, who maintained friendly contacts with evangelicals. The Russian organization’s work led to increasing involvement with the church hierarchy, and soon thereafter several priests served as members of the society’s leadership council. Initially, the Bible society was quite successful in distributing the Scriptures widely. The society’s efforts led to the translation of the Bible into modern Russian, as well as other significant minority languages within the empire. The society began its work with the hesitant support of the established church, but many clergy grew to resent its growing influence. Eventually, many began to view the society as a subversive organization, and in 1826 Nicholas I declared that it must cease operation. The service of the BFBS with the Russian Bible Society was significant, since it stands as a unique case in the history of Russian Christianity of sustained cooperation between the Orthodox hierarchy and the clergy of non-Orthodox Christian churches.22 The establishment of Methodism in Russia began in the late nineteenth century, primarily through the work of American missionary George Albert Simons.23 In 1908 Simons began his ministry in St. Petersburg. He ministered through evangelism, publishing, and social service until his departure in 1918. By 1928 the denomination claimed 2,300 adherents. Apparently, Methodist missionaries worked in Russia without any significant communication with the Orthodox Church. Simons viewed Orthodoxy negatively, yet he chose to speak carefully about the church in order not to provoke opposition.24 Historian David Foglesong has described the work and views of a number of Protestant missionaries, especially Methodists and Adventists. He argues that these workers shared a number of views regarding Russian Orthodoxy; for example, they assumed that the Russian people were only “superficially Christianised.” Also, they believed that they were justified in conducting missionary work in a traditionally Orthodox nation due to the limitations of the church’s missionary efforts and the immense size of the country. Foglesong presents additional information on Methodist 21

  Judith Cohen Zacek, “The Russian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church,” Church History 25 (December 1966): 413. For additional insight on the Bible Society, see James Urry, “John Melville and the Mennonites: A British Evangelist in South Russia, 1837– ca. 1875,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 54, 4 (1980): 305–22. For a Soviet perspective on this project, see Andrei Rostovtsev, “‘Britanskoe Bibleiskoe Obshchestvo’ i rasprostranenie Biblii: Torgovlia ‘dukhovnoi sivukhoi’ v Rossii,” Bezbozhnik, no. 24 (December 1927): 5–9. 22

  Zacek, “The Russian Bible Society,” 414–16, 436–37.

23

  Mark Elliott, “Methodism in Russia and the Soviet Union,” in Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, ed. Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1981), 22:15–18. For an analysis of similarities and differences in Orthodox and Methodist religion, see S. T. Kimbrough, Jr., ed., Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002). 24

  John Dunstan, “George A. Simons and the Khristianski Pobornik: A Neglected Source on St. Petersburg Methodism,” Methodist History 19 (1980): 24–25, 40, 38.



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missionary George Simons, who wrote to his supervisors, “The Russo Greek Church does not preach. Hers is a religion of male singing, ritual and image-worship. Like other branches of paganized Christianity, she offers a stone to those who are hungering for the Bread of Life.”25 American Congregational and Episcopal missionaries worked actively among Greeks in independent Greece and the Ottoman Empire and expressed different perceptions of the Orthodox churches. Pliny Fisk, one of the first Congregational workers, sharply criticized the established Greek church: “for though nominal Christians, they [the Greeks] pay an idolatrous regard to pictures, holy places and saints. Their clergy are ignorant in the extreme.” The Episcopal missionaries expressed a more positive evaluation. They wrote of how an understanding of Jesus Christ had been passed down from the apostolic Greek churches through years of tradition. The Episcopalians claimed that problems, such as “errors of doctrine” and “clerical ignorance,” were due to conditions of oppression under the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, they did not attempt to organize their own churches in Greece but focused on publications and the education of children.26 Congregationalists attempted to invigorate Greek churches in various ways, including education of children and distribution of Bibles. While carrying out these plans, they criticized local traditions, such as monasteries and the special attention accorded to Mary. They hoped that a focus on individual repentance would be more appealing to Greeks than ceremonies.27 In Cyprus, the attitudes of Congregational missionaries appeared to have been similar to the views held by their colleagues in independent Greece, but these workers were more restrained in their public criticism to avoid conflict. For this reason they attempted to build relationships with local priests. The stated goal was to reform the religious life of the island. The root motivation in their ministry seems to have been to increase the intellectual understanding of the Bible: they believed that biblical knowledge had been obscured on the island by clerical ignorance and superstitious rituals. Missionaries organized schools to raise the level of literacy and attempted to recruit local priests to distribute Bibles in the villages.28 The interdenominational British and Foreign Bible Society, Methodists, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians, all ministered actively within predominantly Orthodox countries. The Bible society chose to serve alongside the Orthodox in a 25

  David S. Foglesong, “Redeeming Russia? American Missionaries and Tsarist Russia, 1886–1917,” Religion, State and Society 25, 4 (1997): 355–56. 26

  Theodore Saloutos, “American Missionaries in Greece: 1820–1869,” Church History 24 (1955): 155, 164–65. 27

 Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 8. See also P. E. Shaw, American Contacts with the Eastern Churches, 1820–1870 (Chicago: American Society of Church History, 1937). 28

  Terry Tollefson, “American Missionary Schools for Cyprus (1834–1842): A Case Study in Cultural Differences,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 10–11 (1994–95): 37, 50. See also John O. Iatrides, “Missionary Educators and the Asia Minor Disaster: Anatolia College’s Move to Greece,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 4, 2 (1986): 143–57.

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way which assisted a wide variety of Russians, while the Methodists chose to serve through independent outreach. Congregationalists and Episcopalians both attempted to facilitate reform, but the Congregationalists were far more critical of weaknesses and distinctive practices. These encounters serve as points of comparison to the interaction between the YMCA and Orthodox believers. This wide variety of reactions to Eastern churches suggests that denominational membership played a key role in determining a missionary’s perception. Baptists and Methodists usually denounced the Orthodox faith and conducted their ministry independently of the established churches. Congregationalists frequently criticized certain aspects of Eastern Christianity, but expressed sympathy for the difficult conditions faced by the churches in Europe. Often missionaries from this denomination described the goal as “reformation” of the established church. Episcopalians and Anglicans typically expressed admiration more frequently than criticism. These workers often attempted to provide ministry support. In addition, interdenominational alliances also tended to express sympathy and aimed at a ministry of reformation. In general, staff members of denominations which included more traditional forms of ritual in their worship were more accepting of Orthodoxy than those from denominations which rejected traditional forms for a simpler sermon-centered worship. Russian Orthodox leaders also encountered Protestants in the Middle East, as both groups worked to set up schools in Palestine and Syria. While American Christians worked to expand their service in Russia through the YMCA and other organizations, Russian Christians actively supported educational development abroad through the Orthodox Palestine Society. Cross-cultural philanthropy did not simply operate as a one-way phenomenon.29 Missionary perceptions of the Eastern churches developed under the influence of American attitudes toward Orthodox immigrants. Negative perceptions in the United States and in Europe seem to have been mutually dependent. Relatively few publications written in English during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries examine Orthodoxy in depth. Several of these books presented a sympathetic description, but the negative evaluation provided by Edward Gibbon’s influential Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire overshadowed the other viewpoints in the minds of nineteenth-century Americans. During this century, many Americans feared the immigration of non-Protestants, such as Catholics, Jews—and the Orthodox. Different social values, financial practices, religious traditions, and ethnic heritages seemed to threaten accepted understandings of the American “way of life.”30 A key factor shaping missionaries’ understandings of Eastern Christianity was the information presented in books available in the United States and Great Britain. One could assume that travel and ministry accounts were popular reading choices for missionaries, especially before their departure for service. The Story of Moscow, Wirt 29

  Theofanis George Stavrou, Russian Interests in Palestine, 1882–1914: A Study of Religious and Educational Enterprise (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963), especially 62–63.

30

  Peter Carl Haskell, “American Civil Religion and the Greek Immigration: Religious Confrontation before the First World War,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 18, 4 (1974): 167, 180–81, 173.



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Gerrare’s travel account published in 1903, provided a description of the practices, beliefs, and landmarks of Russian Orthodox Christianity. One uncommon feature of the book was the warning that foreigners need to be careful when making observations of the Russian church. He wrote: For many, who are quite ignorant of its tenets and practice, the Eastern Church has an irresistible fascination; the danger is that these, on a first acquaintance will over-praise such details as they may appreciate and too hastily condemn others they may not rightly comprehend.31 John Bookwalter described his travels in the Russian Empire in Siberia and Central Asia (1899). He paid special attention to the role of icons in prerevolutionary Russia and used this theme to illustrate his claim that “the strongest trait of the Russian’s character is his intense religious sentiment.”32 A. McCaig published a very different view in his book, Grace Astounding in Bolshevik Russia. McCaig served as principal of Spurgeon’s College in London, a study center for conservative European Baptists. During a visit to Riga, he met Cornelius Martens, who told of his recent ministry in Russia. McCaig then collected and edited the accounts of Martens. One chapter, “Victory over Priestly Opposition,” included a dramatic story of how an Orthodox priest came with a group of followers to disturb one of Martens’s preaching services. His friends told him to flee “to save his life as they had intended to kill him.”33 During this period, key Protestant textbooks of systematic theology and church history included little information on Eastern Orthodoxy. This may have contributed to the assumption that distinctive Eastern theological positions and historical realities did not deserve serious consideration. A. H. Strong’s popular three-volume set, Systematic Theology (1909), did not comment on any theological positions of Orthodoxy after the Middle Ages. George Fisher’s History of the Christian Church (1897) and Williston Walker’s A History of the Christian Church (1918) also virtually ignored developments in Eastern Christianity after the medieval era. These were, for the most part, well-researched textbooks written by respected professors at Yale University. One exception to this trend was the English translation of the standard German textbook Church History, by J. H. Kurtz (1890), which commented extensively on developments in Greece and other countries. Many Protestant Christian leaders of this period adopted a negative view of Orthodoxy, due to the evaluation of Adolf Harnack, the influential German theologian and church historian. Harnack’s writings included an “uncompromising condemnation of the Eastern Churches as relics of the syncretistic cults of late classical antiquity coated by a thin Christian veneer.”34 31

  Wirt Gerrare, The Story of Moscow (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1903), 173.

32

  John W. Bookwalter, Siberia and Central Asia (Springfield, OH: n.p., 1899), 242.

33

  A. McCaig, Grace Astounding in Bolshevik Russia: A Record of the Lord’s Dealings with Brother Cornelius Martens (London: Russian Missionary Society, 1920), 99. 34

  Heinrich A. Stammler, “Russian Orthodoxy in Recent Protestant Church History and Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 23, 3–4 (1979): 208.

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YMCA Perceptions on Orthodoxy The YMCA’s efforts in Russia and Greece were unusual examples of cooperation between American Protestants and Orthodox Christians. In 1875, few association members would have dreamed that fifty years later their organization would be publishing works of Eastern Orthodox theology. At that time, almost all YMCA members belonged to evangelical churches and accepted a traditional form of Protestant theology. Few of these men knew Orthodox believers or studied the history of the Eastern Church. The position of the American YMCA regarding the Eastern faith shifted significantly from 1900 to 1940; the attitudes of its leaders and secretaries ranged widely across a spectrum from dismissal to praise over these years. It is simply not possible to identify one YMCA stance on Orthodoxy at any one time. However, basic steps in the shift in the prevailing position may be identified among this diversity of views—the following section provides a number of illustrations. From 1900 to 1918, the leaders of the YMCA’s Mayak ministry for urban men in St. Petersburg and Petrograd expressed and demonstrated resigned toleration of Orthodoxy—its doctrine, practices, and leaders. Mayak leaders functioned with state approval, so they maintained polite relations with the church in order to safeguard freedom for their activity. Though they encouraged and supported young Orthodox believers, they hoped for a day when they would be able to teach evangelical Protestant belief and behavior without restrictions. They resented the necessity of leaving all Bible teaching to state church priests and doubted the salvation of many clergy. They were, however, able to operate without serious opposition from the hierarchy. This attitude was similar to that held by the British and Foreign Bible Society. In the early nineteenth century, the Bible society chose to cooperate with the Orthodox Church in order to serve larger numbers of Russians. During the same period, the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSCM) usually operated without formal state approval, so it was not required to rely on clergy for religious programs. The Americans working with the RSCM welcomed the participation and leadership of Orthodox students but promoted an interconfessional approach which attempted to emphasize the common beliefs shared by all Christians and avoid religious controversy. In this way the American Protestant leaders offered pragmatic support for Orthodox believers but did not encourage them to share the distinctives of their heritage with those of other backgrounds. For a variety of reasons the leaders of the YMCA became more intentional and enthusiastic in their support of the Orthodox Church during the challenging years of world war, revolutions, and civil war. These leaders encouraged Y secretaries to back the ministry of clergy. However, the stated position of the YMCA for work in Russia did not exclude support for other non-Orthodox confessions: this period’s philosophy was one of limited support for Orthodox believers. After the revolution, the YMCA Russian work leaders in Europe eventually adopted a position of enthusiastic support: they even avoided supporting Russian Protestant ventures. This YMCA policy of a confessional approach was unusual and did not develop without challenges from some secretaries. By 1940, however, the Y had moved from resigned toleration to



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enthusiastic support of Russian Orthodoxy. Yet there was always a vocal minority ready to criticize the church and the YMCA’s support of its leadership. The YMCA’s growing support of Orthodoxy occurred as many of its secretaries abandoned several Protestant distinctives, such as the primacy of scripture over reason and tradition and justification by faith alone. Paradoxically, as the general Y organization in the United States moved away from the doctrines of traditional Protestantism, the Russian work staff became more supportive of Eastern Orthodox churches which held on to far more traditional doctrines. John R. Mott led the way for the YMCA with his sympathies for the Eastern churches and his desire to support and expand their ministry. Shortly before the opening of YMCA work in Russia, Mott met Archbishop Nikolai, the Russian missionary who had established Japan’s Orthodox Church. Meeting this hierarch challenged his perception of a corrupt and servile church. Mott “saw that one Orthodox missionary had established a large church even in a hostile country.”35 His enthusiasm grew as a result of his meetings with church leaders during his participation in the Root Mission of 1917. He sensed a mood of renewal and optimism. His public comments and writings frequently emphasized his enthusiastic evaluation. The first YMCA field worker to live and work in Russia was Franklin Gaylord, who was often critical of the traditional faith in his letters and reports. After eight years of work with the Mayak he wrote: There is great difficulty in securing Christian men as voluntary workers. Orthodox Russian Christianity is a low grade of Christianity and to find men of real spiritual development is next to impossible. He reported that the prominent religion was of little consequence in everyday life: [T]he Russian priests and the Russian people generally, are formally most religious. In fact, there is a shocking lack of Christianity in all of Russian society. The great need of Russia as indeed of every country is men of character and of all round Christian development. He was especially frustrated by the limitations placed by its official charter on the religious work of the Mayak: Although its work is largely preventive at the present time there is hope that with increasing religious liberty in Russia, the Society will become more and more similar to the American Young Men’s Christian Association on which, as far as possible, it has been modeled.36 35

  Paul B. Anderson, “A Study of Orthodoxy and the YMCA,” booklet printed in Geneva by the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations, 1963, 15, Pamphlets on Orthodoxy, YMCA of the USA, Anderson, Paul B, 1, KFYA. 36

  Franklin Gaylord, “Extracts from Report for the Year 1908 of the Society for the Moral, Intellectual and Physical Development of Young Men in St Petersburg Russia,” 10–11. Corre-

194 Matthew Lee Miller

Gaylord attempted to work with priests who could connect with young people and communicate well but was frequently disappointed by what he sensed as lack of spiritual fervor and Bible teaching ability: “Among the thousands of priests in this city, some must be true Christians.”37 Gaylord’s assistant, Erich Moraller, shared his negative views and hoped for wider opportunities in the future: We hope the time is not far distant when the name of Christian with its full meaning will dawn upon the whole nation. That all men may know Christ, as personal Saviour, and God in life and deed. As yet He is to them a far off inaccessible Being.38 The Y men who worked among university students held similar critical attitudes. In his 1914 annual report Philip A. Swartz gave an extended summary of his views: “The Orthodox Church is utterly inadequate for the new conditions to say nothing about its failure in meeting the spiritual demands of former years.” His evaluation was entirely negative and repeated the common criticisms of lack of biblical knowledge, entanglement with the state, popular superstition, clerical greed, and immoral leadership.39 The attitude of most secretaries became more positive as the Russian work expanded after 1914. Mott’s influence continued, especially after he became acquainted with the future Patriarch Tikhon during the Root Mission thanks to Charles R. Crane, a wealthy American philanthropist who was especially concerned with Russia and had financed Tikhon’s New York cathedral choir. After 1917 the entire Y program had the blessing of Patriarch Tikhon. Ethan T. Colton, senior secretary for the Russian work beginning in 1918, developed relationships of trust with the Orthodox hierarchy. In the years to follow Tikhon passed instructions to Metropolitan Evlogii in Berlin via Colton. However, Colton states that from 1917 to 1921 the YMCA received a mixed reaction from Russian Orthodox clergy: “We found perhaps half friendly, the others aloof.”40 In 1920 William Banton, a YMCA leader for the Russian program who was based in New York, wrote a letter that expressed the policy of limited support for Orspondence and Reports, 1903–1910, Russian Work Restricted, Correspondence and Reports, 1903–1917, KFYA. 37   Letter from Franklin Gaylord to John R. Mott, 11 March 1912, 1, Correspondence and Reports, 1911–1912, Russian Work Restricted, Correspondence and Reports, 1903–1917, KFYA. 38

  [Erich Moraller], “Report of the Physical Department and the Department of Bible Study in the Society “Miyak,” (an alternate spelling of Mayak) [1910], 4, Russian Work, James Stokes Society including Saint Petersburg, KFYA. 39

  Philip A. Swartz, “Annual Report of Philip A. Swartz,” [30 September 1914], 5–6, Correspondence and Reports, 1913–1914, Russian Work Restricted, Correspondence and Reports, 1903–1917, KFYA. 40

  [E. T. Colton], “The Russian Work Sequences with their Church Relations,” no date, 2–3, YMCA Relationships (1920–1925), 2, Russian Church, KFYA.



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thodoxy which had evolved to that point. Banton described Orthodoxy as “fundamentally sound” and believed that its weaknesses were rooted in years of state control. He then expressed his opinion that the Association could function in an Orthodox context: “As far as having to first evangelize the Russian nation before we plant the seed of an indigenous Association movement I do not believe that this is necessary or desirable.” Banton concluded his statement by describing his desire for the YMCA to work with the Orthodox Church—and other Christian churches in Russia: The official attitude of the Association in connection with the Orthodox Church is one of cooperation, but we do not limit ourselves to supporting this Christian body alone but desire to equally serve all Christian bodies existing in Russia.41 His letter expressed appreciation for the context of the Russian church, but listed a number of typical Protestant criticisms; the spirit seems to be sincere but not wholehearted. The approach was positive and interconfessional. Rev. Frederic Charles Meredith played a key role in educating YMCA secretaries about the history and beliefs of Orthodoxy and encouraging them to develop positive relations with clergy and lay people alike. He stopped short of full endorsement, however. His booklet, The Young Men’s Christian Association and the Russian Orthodox Church,42 was used as a staff training tool. Meredith had served as rector of the American Episcopal Church in Mayebashi, Japan, before his time of YMCA service in Siberia. He wrote that the senior national secretary of the YMCA in Russia, G. S. Phelps, saw that the youth of Russia could best be served in cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church, since it was “the determining religious influence of the country.” This view was not shared by all the secretaries. In general the Association workers who began to work in Siberia in 1918 were “ignorant” of Orthodoxy—and the church was ignorant of the YMCA. Meredith had been working among American troops at Spasskoe, when Phelps asked him to take up the assignment of studying Orthodoxy and helping the YMCA develop a relationship with the Russian church. Meredith had been studying Orthodoxy for some time and was familiar with developments in the relationship between Anglicans and Orthodox. Meredith set out with a five-step program for his assignment: 1) study the Russian church by meeting with clergy and attending worship services; 2) explain the YMCA to the clergy and lay people of the church; 3) explain the doctrine and worship of the church to YMCA

41   Letter from Wm. Walter Banton to Oliver J. Frederickson, 3 December 1920, 1, Correspondence and Reports, 1920, Russian Work Restricted, Correspondence and Reports, 1918–1921, KFYA. 42

  Frederic Charles Meredith, The Young Men’s Christian Association and the Russian Orthodox Church (New York: The International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations, 1921), Russian Work, Restricted, Pamphlets, KFYA.

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workers; 4) survey the religious conditions of cities and the influences of the church; and 5) survey the conditions of student life and the influences of Orthodoxy.43 He began his study in 1919 with a meeting with Bishop Anatolii in Tomsk, who was familiar with the Y from time spent in the United States. The bishop welcomed Meredith warmly and provided many suggestions for his program of study. Meredith described the worship services he attended with great enthusiasm. He also explained his understanding of a controversy surrounding the Y triangle: The apex of the triangle in many Russian Orthodox church decorations, and especially in representations and pictures of God the Father, points upward; therefore to many the red triangle, pointing downward instead of upward, seemed to be a popular “devil sign” or a Jewish emblem. Bishop Anatolii said that Meredith “should take part in church services as soon as I had acquired certain [Russian language] proficiency.” The services seemed to create the deepest enthusiasm for Meredith, and he was overwhelmed by “the splendor of Russian worship.”44 After his survey trip, Meredith gave a message to Y secretaries in Vladivostok on the history and doctrine of Orthodoxy. He emphasized that knowledge of the church depended on attending worship services. He “insisted that the duty of every secretary working in Russia is to do so.” The booklet closed with general observations and plans for the YMCA. He presented the doctrinal conservatism of the church in a positive way: The Russian Orthodox Church has never given one uncertain sound with reference to the center and core of Christianity, the divine Son of God, Jesus Christ, and when the treasures of the Church are really unlocked to Western minds, her progress in the understanding of the Christ will be made manifest. He noted that the Russian Orthodox Church needs to gain a better understanding of Protestantism and needs to continue with its reforms. The conclusion was not entirely positive: The Church has alienated thousands and her sins of omission and commission hang around her neck as did the albatross around the neck of the Ancient Mariner. However, as has been said, “the Church is indestructible and its influence inextinguishable in Russia. It can be made an agency to reach millions for good, who can in no other way be reached. It needs sympathy and it needs aid.”45

43

  Ibid., 3–4.

44 45

  Ibid., 8, 10, 13, 30.

  Ibid., 41–45, 49, 52.



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He commented that he felt sympathy for Russia’s other Christian confessions, such as the Old Believers and “various sects.” However, he did not believe that these groups would be able to provide a unifying faith for the Russian people. He suggested that Russian Protestants may use words that are similar to those of American Protestants, but there is only a “superficial resemblance” between these groups. He desired to serve and assist the Russian Orthodox Church and based his views on adopted positions of the YMCA on serving the local church. He agreed with the general orders issued by the leadership of the YMCA in Russia to support the Orthodox Church. He made these recommendations to the YMCA in Russia: 1) study and attend Orthodox worship services; 2) compile a handbook on Russian church history; 3) cooperate with local clergy in planning programs; 4) place icons in Y buildings and host Orthodox prayer services; and 5) distribute information on the YMCA to clergy and laypeople. We can be of great help to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Church can be of great help to us. With mutual respect and hearty cooperation, each in its own sphere can do much for “Poor Russia.”46 Colton continued to work within Soviet Russia from 1922 to 1925 with the American Relief Administration. During this time, he was able to observe the work of American Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, and Mennonites in Russia. The Methodist and Baptist workers were supporting the work of starting new churches, while the Lutheran and Mennonite workers were supporting relief efforts.47 He realized that at this time the Orthodox Church was facing stiffer opposition from the government than the “Sectarians,” which included the Baptists and Evangelical Christians. This situation doubtlessly deepened his sympathy for the Orthodox. He believed that the Soviet government was sympathetic to sectarians, since they had been persecuted during the period when revolutionaries had been opposed by the tsarist government. Also, he believed that the government was favoring the sectarians in order to help weaken the Orthodox Church.48 In 1922 Colton became involved in the church’s resistance to the Soviet government’s demand to turn over religious valuables as a contribution to famine relief. The patriarch and synod authorized a committee to obtain help from Colton: they requested that he contact the leadership of the American Relief Administration (ARA). The church hoped to turn over the valuables as security for a loan from the United States which could then be directed to provide additional state famine relief. In this way the church planned to protect its valuables from destruction. Colton spoke personally with Colonel Haskell, who expressed sympathy for the plight of the church but refused to go through with this plan for three reasons. First, the plan would be seen as a political move in violation of the ARA’s charter for Russia. Second, reliable 46

  Ibid., 53, 56–60.

47

  E. T. Colton, “Contacts with the Russian Church, January to April 1922,” 3–5, Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Work, Restricted, Ethan T. Colton Collection, KFYA. 48

  Ibid., 2.

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bankers would not accept the valuables as security. Third, limitations of transportation would mean that the funds could not actually get more food to those in need.49 In the 1920s Colton also found himself involved in the efforts of the modernizing pro-government “Living Church” wing of Orthodoxy to secure support from American Methodists.50 Colton was a Methodist and sharply opposed to this movement, which he identified as schismatic; the catalyst for Methodist support of this group was a former YMCA secretary, Julius Hecker, who had an uncanny ability to draw the Y into controversy. Hecker was a prolific and engaging radical writer and an outspoken opponent of traditional Orthodoxy, which he saw as devoid of moral power or creative thinking. In one article he argued that “the Russian, indeed, is pious, although his piety has little to do with his moral standards.”51 In another work he added that “religion had little to do with shaping the moral code and practices of the Russian people.”52 He showed little awareness and even less appreciation for the intellectual ferment of the prerevolutionary period: There exists some scholarship to perpetuate the traditional theology and guard against heretics who might undermine the Orthodox faith, but for original thinking there is neither need nor place in the Orthodox Church.53 In a 1924 article he barely disguised his glee over the Soviet attack on the church; Hecker believed that “the Russian Church hierarchy is reaping its own harvest,” since it had supported the suppression of both non-Orthodox groups and revolutionaries. He hoped that in the future Russia would adopt “a synthesis of the personal element emphasized in the Gospels with the social element emphasized by communism.”54 49

  Ibid., 5–6. See Bertrand M. Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 654–62. The church’s proposal to Colton is not included in Patenaude’s account. Colton’s report sheds additional light on the rumors surrounding the ARA and the Russian Orthodox Church; many Russians at the time believed that the church’s treasures were being taken to pay for the ARA food aid. 50

  For recent research on the Living Church, see Edward E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Scott Kenworthy, “Russian Reformation? The Program for Religious Renovation in the Orthodox Church, 1922–1925,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 16–17 (2000–01): 89–130; and S. T. Kimbrough, Jr., “The Living Church Conflict in the Russian Orthodox Church and the Involvement of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” Methodist History 40, 2 (2002): 105–18.

51

  Julius F. Hecker, “The Religious Characteristics of the Russian Soul,” Methodist Review 103, 6 (1920): 898. 52

  Julius F. Hecker, Religion and Communism: A Study of Religion and Atheism in Soviet Russia (London: Chapman and Hall, 1933), 33. 53

  Ibid., 29.

54

  Julius F. Hecker, “The Russian Church under the Soviets,” Methodist Review 107, 4 (1924): 554–55.



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Hecker became a counselor and promoter for the Living Church and an advisor for Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedenskii, one of its most prominent leaders. Colton described Hecker’s efforts with a mixture of sympathy and disappointment: “He wants the social program of the Government to succeed, because he believes it has the same goal as Christianity, and therefore that the Church should be in alignment with the Government.”55 Hecker arranged for the American Methodist bishop John L. Neulsen to meet in Moscow with Living Church leaders, who invited support and assistance from the American Methodists. Neulsen was very critical of the old regime and very enthusiastic about the Living Church and their plans to modernize the Russian Orthodox Church.56 When he learned of the plans of Hecker and these Methodist leaders, Colton intervened and provided information against the Living Church to prevent the relationship from developing further. He did not care to see his own denomination “undergird the schismatic ‘Living Church’ and capture it for something like Methodism.”57 Colton also advised the Federal Council of Churches in developing its policy of non-recognition toward the Living Church.58 He steadfastly supported the patriarchal church and refused to back any competing factions. Colton’s 1925 essay “The Russian Orthodox Church—A Spiritual Liability or Asset?” challenged the view held by Hecker that the persecution of the church was a just reward and a welcome development. Colton wrote that many of the common charges of clerical immorality and abuse of power are acknowledged by informed and loyal believers. However, he called on his readers to remember the more worthy leaders who are suffering persecution: The secular authorities are undertaking on a national scale to teach childhood to deny God. Is it good economy of the Kingdom under these circumstances to defame the lovers of Christ and cheer on the assault?59 Colton’s personal views and the ministry experiences already described are clearly embedded in the policy statement “The Position of the Y.M.C.A. in Regard to Church Bodies in Russia,” which clarified the stance of the organization on two positions that generated controversy: interconfessional ministry (which was controversial in Russia) and support of the patriarchal church (which was controversial in 55

  [E. T. Colton], “The Religious Situation in Russia,” 1 November 1923, 8–9, The Religious Situation in Russia, Russian Work, Restricted, Pamphlets, KFYA. 56

  “Soviet Russia: Address of Bishop Neulsen to Annual Meeting, Board of Foreign Missions,” [1922], 1–4, YMCA Relationships (1920–25) 1, Russian Church, KFYA. See also Kimbrough, “The Living Church.” 57

  [Colton], “Russian Work Sequences,” 6.

58

  Ethan T. Colton, Forty Years with Russians (New York: Association Press, 1940), 155–56.

59

  E. T. Colton, “The Russian Orthodox Church—A Spiritual Liability or Asset?” 1 January 1925, manuscript, 5, Russia, Colton E. T., Reports, Addresses, and Papers, 2 vols., KFYA. This was later published as “Is the Russian Church Christian?” in The Christian Century, 7 May 1925, 602–04.

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the United States). He acknowledged that it would be difficult to cooperate with every Christian group which wished to cooperate. Many Russian Orthodox leaders would be troubled by YMCA support of US Protestants who sponsored evangelism in Russia. On the other hand, many conservative Protestants would oppose assisting the Russian church, “which they will regard as having lost its witness and laden with not only formalism but superstition.”60 Donald A. Lowrie, a YMCA secretary who served among émigrés in the 1920s and 1930s made serious efforts to understand the worldviews and perspectives of Orthodox believers and attempted to integrate his insights in his work. He summarized some of his ideas in “A Method of Bible Study for Orthodox Groups.” Lowrie wrote on encouraging group Bible study among these believers, who were often hesitant to discuss a selection unless a priest was leading. Lowrie pointed out that the hesitancy was rooted in respect for the Bible and a fear of heresy. He suggested using the writings of the church fathers, such as John Chrysostom, to guide the selection of discussion questions. Chrysostom was noted for his insights into the problems of everyday life.61 In 1925 the American YMCA amended its constitution on the issue of membership requirements. Now anyone who believed in the “divinity” (a term used in different ways by different groups) of Jesus Christ could be an active voting member. So, Catholics and Orthodox could become members. However, “90% of the directing or managing committees and all delegates to Association national or international legislative gatherings must be members of Protestant Evangelical Churches.”62 During the 1920s, as the YMCA began working among Orthodox émigrés, they found themselves in a new environment. Criticism of the YMCA grew among the most conservative elements of the Orthodox hierarchy. Also, the church became increasingly popular among young people searching for spiritual roots. Y secretaries found themselves moving toward an exclusive support of Orthodoxy with programs built on a confessional, rather than interconfessional, basis. In one document, they defended their work in Russia: “In no case was it the intent of responsible Association leaders to subvert Russian Christian teachings. Simply their agents were too little informed.”63 The move toward supporting confessional Orthodox programs, such as the émigré 60

  E. T. Colton, “The Position of the Y.M.C.A. in Regard to Church Bodies in Russia,” no date, Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Work, Restricted, Ethan T. Colton Collection, KFYA. A similar view is advocated by Y secretary Ralph W. Hollinger in his paper, “What American Protestant Churches Can Do for Russia,” 15 April 1920, Correspondence and Reports, 1920, Russian Work Restricted, Correspondence and Reports, 1918–1921, KFYA. 61

  “A Method of Bible Study for Orthodox Groups (Prague),” [1925], 1–2, 1925, Russian Work—Europe, Restricted, Correspondence and Reports, 1920–29, Annual Reports, 1920– 29, KFYA. 62

  [Paul B. Anderson], “Fundamentals of the Young Men’s Christian Association,” unpublished draft, 1929, 23, Paul B. Anderson Papers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Archives [hereafter PBAP]. 63

  Ibid., 40.



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RSCM, the YMCA Press, and the St. Sergius Theological Academy, raised pointed questions from some leaders and secretaries. One view was expressed in “Survey of North American YMCA Service to Russians in Europe,” a detailed review of over 250 pages which surveyed the work through the 1920s. In the foreword the (unnamed) reviewer questioned the wisdom of exclusively supporting the Orthodox Church. This document expressed doubt that this church would ever “exert a controlling influence.” It went on to suggest that the program may be rooted in “the inevitable result of homesickness.”64 The survey, however, went on to explain the basis of the adopted policy of only supporting Orthodox programs: “Other historical denominations are of a foreign origin and until now were unable to become an integral part of Russian culture.”65 The experience and study of Paul B. Anderson, a consistent supporter of confessional ministry, were key factors in the development of this position. He outlined past and current issues which had separated the Y and the church in a 1926 three-page outline, “The YMCA and the Russian Orthodox Church.” Anderson addressed some of the conflicts that had developed between the YMCA and the more conservative elements of the church in exile. He grouped the issues under seven headings: 1) misconceptions regarding the YMCA; 2) weaknesses in Orthodoxy; 3) hostile attitude toward YMCA by authoritative bodies; 4) weaknesses in the YMCA; 5) fundamental differences, Protestant and Orthodox; 6) conservatism vs. liberalism in both Orthodox and Protestant communities; and 7) questions related to political and social theory. Each heading contained a variety of fundamental and peripheral matters which had contributed to the conflicts. For example, Anderson included the misconceptions of some Orthodox that the YMCA was a Masonic organization, that it had ulterior motives, and that it “has lost its faith in Christ as Savior and God.” Under Orthodox weaknesses, he listed jealousy of the responses of youth to the Y’s programs because the churches did not have such activities. He also included “pride of age”—disliking anything that was new. One of the Y’s weaknesses listed was “Insistence on the ‘minimalism’ of ideas on which all members might agree, rather than ‘maximalism’ which would allow each confessional group to bring its religious fullness.” From the beginning of the Russian work, the YMCA preferred that participants downplay confessional and denominational distinctives—this was the position of minimalism. Eventually, Orthodox participants argued that they should be able to express their Orthodox convictions fully within the Y movement—this was the position of maximalism. Also included were “Secretaries’ ignorance of Orthodoxy” and “Use of money creates mush64

  [International Survey Committee], “Survey of North American YMCA Service to Russians in Europe” [1930], ii, Russia, International Survey—1930, Roumania, Russia, South Africa, Box 12, KFYA. 65

  Ibid., 14–15. There is some irony in the fact that YMCA leaders consistently described Russian Protestantism as “foreign.” The first Baptist and Evangelical Christian churches in the Russian Empire were not organized by foreigners. There certainly was influence from Germany and Great Britain, but it was likely not more than the influence of the Byzantine Empire on Kievan Rus´ in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Russian Protestants did translate some Protestant hymns, just as the Kievan church used liturgical texts translated from Greek.

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room growth, not on firm spiritual basis.” Under fundamental differences, Anderson wrote, “Protestantism a developing doctrine. Orthodoxy rests on dogma.” In general, Anderson attempted to consider every possible angle for understanding the clashes, rather than seeing them as simple black and white problems. It is significant that he frequently challenged the YMCA’s previous actions, but never its theological shift.66 Anderson’s support for the Orthodox Church led him to avoid support of even the largest Russian Protestant church movements, the Baptists and Evangelical Christians, since he believed they were guilty of proselytization, the active recruiting of a person from one religious group to another. He was reluctant to offer support for Ivan Prokhanov, the key leader of the Evangelical Christians.67 Anderson seemed to equate any Protestant evangelism in Russia with proselytization, which is a problematic conclusion for a nation with a history of an established state church. He did not address in his books and articles how this view coexisted with his frequent calls for full religious freedom. Donald Lowrie’s book The Light of Russia provided readers with an introduction to Orthodox life and faith but also offered insight into the evolving position of the YMCA. He positively reviewed the unique role played by the church since the earliest days of Kievan Rus´.68 In spite of his enthusiastic support for the Russian church, Lowrie believed that the Y could make a significant contribution. Like other Y men, he never stated that the church was without weaknesses: they remained Protestants and believed that their heritage had something to offer. He hoped to see a greater emphasis on Scripture: Perhaps a new emphasis upon the study of the Bible is another step which Russian Christianity could take in its reorganization, using the gospel not simply in a devotional or inspirational sense, but as a source of method for making Christian every phase of daily life, social as well as personal. Lowrie believed that programs such as the theological institute could inspire change with “a new type of clergy, retaining all the good of the old order and still alive with the broader ideals and a higher cultural standard” so “the Church will again occupy its proper place as guiding the nation’s moral and religious life.” He summarized his conviction in this way: 66

  “The YMCA and the Russian Orthodox Church,” 27 November 1926, 1–3, 1925, Russian Work—Europe, Restricted, Correspondence and Reports, 1920–29, Annual Reports, 1920– 29, KFYA. A general work by Anderson on Orthodoxy is his article “The Eastern Orthodox Church in a Time of Transition,” published in “Over There with the Churches of Christ,” Bulletin 15, 1936 (New York: Central Bureau for Relief of the Evangelical Churches of Europe), 7–13, Pamphlets in English, Russian Work, Restricted, Pamphlets, KFYA, PBAP. 67

  Letter from Paul B. Anderson to E. T. Colton, 14 February 1933, ROTA, 1930–33, Russian Work—Europe, Restricted, Russian Orthodox Theological Academy, Russian Student Christian Movement, Russian Student Fund, KFYA. 68

  Donald A. Lowrie, The Light of Russia: An Introduction to the Russian Church (Prague: YMCA Press, 1923), 126, 190–91.



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If religion consists solely in beautiful worship, adherence to ancient belief and custom, reverence for holiness in every age, and a sincere desire to spread the name of Jesus Christ, Protestants have nothing to teach Russia: but if it means, beside all this, a growing activity in the service of mankind, a keen appreciation of the needs of modern life, and a desire to educate its youth to minister to the needy of the future, perhaps Protestantism has its message for Russian Christianity. Lowrie believed that American Protestants must work with the supply lines rather than take a spot on the front lines: “The Orthodox Church wishes every aid other Christian bodies can give it, but its preaching must be done by Russians if it is to appeal to the Russian mind.”69 This conviction motivated the YMCA staff as they worked behind the scenes to facilitate the work of Russian believers. Ethan Colton summed up the relationship between the two groups after 1917 in this way: The two groups were Eastern and Western, Orthodox and Protestant, sacerdotal and evangelical, trying to find basis and method for a common program. In both groups were men with scant knowledge and appreciation of the spiritual value in the doctrines, worship, and observances of the others. A few stayed so. Such had to be relegated. The uninformed but willing ones learned. The clumsy acquired skill.70 Many Russian Orthodox believers genuinely appreciated the generous financial support and program assistance provided by the YMCA. Patriarch Tikhon issued this endorsement of the YMCA on 10 May 1918: “[W]e give to those carrying out this good work our prayerful blessing, asking the Lord to help them in the successful fulfillment of this task.”71 Metropolitan Evlogii explained why the YMCA and the World Student Christian Federation had his blessing: “[N]o other foreign organizations had helped, more thoughtfully and respectfully, Russian youth on its way back to the Church and the Church itself.”72 However, many Orthodox leaders vehemently opposed the association as a subversive sub-Christian organization aiming for their destruction; others received aid while holding unspoken suspicions of this American venture. The most common accusation was that the YMCA was Masonic, while others feared that the YMCA was a Jewish scheme, a demonic movement, or a program of insincere Protestant proselytization. Freemasonry appeared in Russia in the eighteenth century as an international organization promoting “brotherhood,” love of one’s neighbor, and the equality of 69

  Ibid., 196–97, 232.

70

 Colton, Forty Years, 151.

71

  Vestnik khristianskogo soiuza molodykh liudei, Vladivostok, 17 August 1919, First year of publication, Number 1, 4, Lighthouse Herald, Russian Work, Restricted, Periodicals, KFYA.

72

  Letter from G. G. Kullmann to E. T. Colton, 28 July 1926, 1, YMCA Relations (1926–), Russian Church, KFYA.

204 Matthew Lee Miller

all men. Masons emphasized a general belief in God rather than the specific beliefs of any one religious group, such as the Orthodox Church. Historian James Billington describes Masonry as a “supra-confessional deist church.”73 The movement did not openly oppose the Orthodox Church and included Russian priests in its activities, but some Masons demonstrated more loyalty to Masonry than Orthodoxy. Catherine II prohibited Masonic activity in 1792; Alexander I reversed this position but banned it again in 1822.74 In 1900 many elements of Russian church and state continued to oppose the ideas of Masonry. The apparent similarities of belief, rather than documented organizational ties, led to suspicion of the YMCA being Masonic during its first years in Russia. As a result, American Masons were not allowed to serve as Mayak staff members.75 From 1900 to 1940 a number of Russians accused the Y of being a Masonic organization; these charges usually came from more conservative Orthodox leaders. As émigré leader Nikolai Zernov later wrote, many clergymen argued that the YMCA was simply a wing of the Freemason movement. Therefore, the goal of the Y was to undermine the traditional theology of Orthodoxy and destroy the church. According to these critics, any believers who participated in the work of the association were considered to be “dupes” or agents paid by the YMCA.76 Charges against the Y were especially intense and public during the mid-1920s, when the YMCA and the émigré church were developing closer ties. As Zernov pointed out, one frequent criticism was directed at the view held by many secretaries about Jesus Christ, that he was only an exemplary human rather than being fully God and fully man. As one critical report charged, the YMCA presents “Jesus Christ not as our God and Savior, but only as a great teacher.” This report cited a book by Hecker on the YMCA and two other books published in Russian translation by the YMCA: Social Principles 73

  James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 245; for his description of Masonry in Russia, see 242–52. For two recent studies of freemasonry in Russia and America, see Douglas Smith, Working the Rough Stone: Freemasonry and Society in Eighteenth-Century Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999); and Lynn Dumenil, “Religion and Freemasonry in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” in Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Essays Concerning the Craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States, and Mexico, ed. R. William Weisberger, Wallace McLeod, and S. Brent Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 605–20. 74

  Zacek, “The Russian Bible Society,” 412.

75

  D. E. Davis, “YMCA Russian Work: An Interview with Dr. Paul B. Anderson, September 9, 1971,” 62, Interview with Paul B. Anderson, Russian Work, Restricted, General, Personal Accounts, KFYA. Anderson also comments on this page, “Of course, during the war it didn’t make any difference.” 76

  Nicolas Zernov, “The Eastern Churches and the Ecumenical Movement in the Twentieth Century,” in A History of the Ecumenical Movement: 1517–1948, 2nd ed., ed. Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1967), 670. Two examples of such accusations, written in the 1930s, were recently reprinted: V. Ivanov, Pravoslavnyi mir i masonstvo (1935; repr., Moscow: Trim, 1993); and V. F. Ivanov, Russkaia intelligentsiia i masonstvo: Ot Petra Pervogo do nashikh dnei, reprint (Moscow: Moskva, 1997).



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of Christ by Walter Rauschenbusch, and The Manhood of the Master by Harry Emerson Fosdick. The report compared comments from Masonic handbooks to YMCA principles and concluded: “The similarity between these two ideologies—that of the Masons and that of the YMCA is very evident.” He quoted V. V. Zenkovskii, an Orthodox leader associated with the organization, to prove his point; according to this report, Zenkovskii had written, “We must forget the proud thought that God’s Spirit can only be found among us. When I was among Christians of other denominations I still felt myself to be in a Church.”77 This view would have been scandalous among the most conservative Orthodox. Conservative Russians often used the word “masonic” to describe a person or organization which displayed the essence of Masonry (anti-dogma, rationalist, etc.). They usually were not referring to membership in a Masonic lodge. In a sense, the YMCA work in Russia was not Masonic, in that no evidence has been seen which links the work of the YMCA and Masonic lodges in Russia. No evidence has been found which identifies which secretaries were Masons: an obituary for Louis P. Penningroth (1888–1973) notes that he was a member of a Masonic lodge, but this membership could have begun after his wartime service. However, one could argue that the Y was masonic, since it promoted several of the general principles of Masonry. In the United States these Orthodox conservatives might have called the Y “modernist” or “liberal,” but the fundamentalist-modernist controversy had not developed in Russia, so they used the word “Masons,” the nearest word in their vocabulary. Of course, a lack of documentary evidence does not prove that a connection did not exist. Documents on the YMCA in Poland reveal clear evidence of links between Masonic lodges and YMCA leadership. These ties may have been known to the Y’s opponents in Russia, especially due to the close political and cultural connections between these two cultures. The YMCA was also charged with participation in a “Judeo-Masonic” conspiracy: according to this theory, Jews had taken over the Masons in the past to destroy Orthodoxy, so now the YMCA had been snared by Jewish leaders. Critics often pointed at the Jewish interpreters hired by the Y.78 During the early years of the Russian ministry, YMCA secretary uniforms and other equipment often featured a logo which included an inverted triangle. Some Russians believed this to be a sign of the devil, since the point was directed down rather than up.79 Many clergy were simply convinced that the YMCA was intent on converting Russians to Protestant belief, in spite of assurances to the contrary. As one report 77

  Vladimir Vostokoff and N. S. Batiushkin, “Report Handed Over May 18/31, 1925 to the Episcopal Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in Foreign Countries by the Former Members of the Church Administration Abroad,” 5, 1–2, 7, 9, ROTA 1923–29, Russian Work—Europe, Restricted, Russian Orthodox Theological Academy, Russian Student Christian Movement, Russian Student Fund, KFYA. 78

  Davis, “YMCA Russian Work: An Interview with Dr. Paul B. Anderson,” 62.

79

  R. J. Reitzel, “Brief Report on YMCA Work for Russians,” Irkutsk, 18 December 1919, [3], Siberia 2, Russian Work, Restricted, North Russia: Archangel, Murmansk, Siberia, KFYA.

206 Matthew Lee Miller

suggested, “The tendency of this work is evidently Protestant. Cooperation with the Orthodox church is only tolerated.”80 As Zernov described the process, The fact that these international bodies [the YMCA, the Young Women’s Christian Association, and the World Student Christian Fellowship] publicly denied any intention of proselytism, and conducted their work in the spirit of respect for Eastern traditions, only increased the apprehensions of conservative-minded Christians who suspected some particularly sinister and secret designs behind the friendliness displayed by the Western leaders of the movements.81 This view of the YMCA was popularized as newspaper and other periodical articles commented on the Y with varying tones of anger and caution. This first example, published in 1925 in Novoe vremia, a paper for monarchist Russian émigrés in Belgrade, confidently demonstrated that the organization was an idealist group of capitalist Americans under the control of Jews and Masons—with proof contained in the fraudulent “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”: As is known, well-organized Semitism seeks to get into its hands the entire spiritual life of Christian peoples. How this should take place is described in the so-called “Zion Protocols.” … Semitism endeavors to gather into its hands organizations which influence the spiritual life of European Christian peoples. Thus Masonry became a simple tool in Jewish hands. It may be that other organizations, having nothing in common with Semitism, will fall into its grasp. Even the Y.M.C.A. has not resisted this fate.82 A second example, published in a 1927 issue of the organ of the RSCM, provides a more moderate, but no less intense, criticism of the YMCA. The author, Archbishop Mefodii, recommended that the association be cautiously evaluated on a case-by-case basis—with the final decision about any relationship left to church authorities. The editor introduced the archbishop’s statement with this comment: In the passionate atmosphere of our church disagreement, voices attract to themselves special attention from the general public by accusing their opponents of Masonry and secret heresies. Especially popular among us are references to the allegedly Masonic character of the YMCA.

80

  Vostokoff and Batiushkin, “Report,” 3.

81

  Zernov, “The Eastern Churches,” 670.

82

  A. Pogodin, “Unexpected Unpleasantness,” Novoe vremia, 3 April 1925, no. 1179, translation in archive, 2, Corr. And Reports 1925–49, Russian Work, Restricted, Publications, YMCA Press in Paris, KFYA.



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The archbishop wrote that the association was obviously sincere in its service to Christ and its support of Orthodox youth. However, he also urged caution in receiving gifts from this organization: “The Association helps the Orthodox with one hand, but with the other helps the enemies of Orthodoxy; that which the right hand does is destroyed by the left hand.”83 The fullest and most direct American YMCA response to all these criticisms is contained in Osnovy khristianskago soiuza molodykh liudei (The Fundamentals of the Young Men’s Christian Association), a 107-page booklet which gave a general overview of history and policy and commented on the history of the Russian ministry up to 1929. It included significant self-criticism, which is rare for most works published by the YMCA on its service among Russians. The booklet stated that secretaries made cultural misjudgments during their wartime service: It is understandable that in these conditions more than a few mistakes were made, particularly in relation to the Orthodox Church. The Association regrets these mistakes and is ready to confess that for which it is actually responsible. The book discussed the rumors and misunderstandings which developed after the war. The author acknowledged that the organization did not have enough qualified people to achieve its plans for serving soldiers and prisoners of war. Due to a perceived urgent demand for staff members, the association accepted people who did not possess the necessary cultural and language skills. The Y also employed workers who had been assigned by Russian military leaders—these workers did not reflect the values of the YMCA. The author emphasized that the Y took full responsibility for these choices. He addressed the Y’s publication of books written by American liberal Christian authors and stressed that leaders did not and do not agree with all the ideas in these books, which reflected the philosophical debates in America at that time. The booklet stated, A particular theology of the Young Men’s Christian Association does not exist. There only exist the theologies of the churches and confessions of the Association members—Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox.84 Informal discussions between YMCA leaders and Orthodox leaders from several countries led to three formal consultations held between 1928 and 1933. John Mott presided over these sessions, held in Sofia, Bulgaria; Kephissia, Greece; and Bucharest, Romania. At the 1928 consultation, participants adopted an “Understanding between Representatives of the Orthodox Churches and the World’s Committee of the Y.M.C.A.” According to this document, in predominantly Orthodox nations the 83

  Arkhiepiskop Mefodii, “Soiuz Y.M.C.A.,” Vestnik russkogo studencheskogo khristianskogo dvizheniia, June 1927, no. 6, second year of publication, 11–13. 84

  [YMCA], Osnovy khristianskogo soiuza molodykh liudei (Paris: YMCA Press, 1929), 57–61.

208 Matthew Lee Miller

YMCA was to organize its services in consultation with church leaders. This statement discouraged and condemned proselytism. Also, in Orthodox groups, Y leaders were to teach the Bible only in “full harmony with Orthodox doctrine.”85 After the 1928 consultation, international YMCA leader W. A. Visser ’T Hooft compiled his “Remarks on the Present Situation of the Orthodox Churches in the Balkan Area.” This essay summarized the status of the Eastern churches and then discussed a wide range of issues related to the Y’s work in Greece and other Balkan nations. Sections included: “Background,” “Signs of Vitality,” “Youth,” “The Y.M.C.A. in Orthodox Countries,” “Relations Between the Orthodox Churches,” and “Orthodoxy and Western Christianity.” Visser ’T Hooft demonstrated his knowledge of historical context when summarizing the effects of Ottoman domination and Greek nationalism. In addressing the conservativism of the Eastern churches, he also pointed out areas of relative openness and the significance of the Orthodox “renaissance” of the early twentieth century. He discussed the personalities of the Orthodox hierarchs, whom he knew personally. When addressing two acknowledged problems of the era, clergy preparation and preaching, he demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the issues and pointed out progress being made. He showed an understanding of the internal life of the Greek church by describing two movements, the Zoe Brotherhood and the Orthodox Youth Movement. Visser ’T Hooft also provided an open description of the struggle faced within the YMCA as it considered how to adjust to working in Orthodox countries. In the closing sections of the document on Orthodox-Protestant relations he displayed his attempt to see controversial issues from the point of view of the Orthodox, the believers he was attempting to serve. Visser ’T Hooft ended the essay with a summary of the YMCA’s vision for their work in the Balkans: The question now asked of the Protestant world is whether it is willing to enter in a true fellowship with Orthodoxy—based on mutual respect and understanding— and whether it will help the Orthodox world to express its own God-given mission in a fuller way. If such would become the attitude of Protestantism one may not only hope for new fruits in the lives of the Orthodox nations, but also for a great quickening of the Western church by the old, reborn churches of the East.86 The three consultations led to the publication of the Objectives, Principles, and Programme of Y.M.C.A’s in Orthodox Countries, which summarized and clarified the policies adopted in 1928.87 This 1933 document reflected the shift of the association’s 85

  D. A. Davis, “Understanding Between Representatives of the Orthodox Churches and the World’s Committee of the Y.M.C.A.,” unpublished report, 1928, World’s Committee—World’s Committee and the Orthodox Church, KFYA. 86

  W. A. Visser ’T Hooft, “Remarks on the Present Situation of the Orthodox Churches in the Balkan Area,” 1929, 15, Visser ’T Hooft Association Papers, May 1929, KFYA. 87

  Objectives, Principles, and Programme of Y.M.C.A’s in Orthodox Countries (Geneva: World’s Committee of Y.M.C.A.s, 1933), 16–17, PBAP.



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approach to Orthodoxy: from resigned toleration to pragmatic support to limited support to enthusiastic support. From 1900 to 1940 many Y secretaries developed a sympathetic and supportive approach to the Orthodox Church as they developed relationships, worked in partnership, studied culture and theology, and experienced the complex realities of the early twentieth century.

“Bolshevik Bishops” and the Russian Orthodox Mission in America: A Question of Church, Politics, and the Law, 1917–52 Keith P. Dyrud

In 1952, at the height of (Joseph) McCarthyism, when any hint of “left leaning” sympathies was considered treasonous, the United States Supreme Court reversed a New York Court of Appeals decision and ruled that St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City was owned by the appointed representatives of the patriarch of Moscow, as opposed to the Russian Orthodox Church in America (the Metropolia). The Metropolia was the successor to the Russian Orthodox Mission in North America. This ruling came in spite of allegations that the patriarch’s appointed representatives had close ties to the “Bolshevik” government in Moscow. The Court argued that the Russian Orthodox Church was a hierarchical church and, therefore, that the hierarchical authority, the patriarch, had control of church property.1 That decision ignored the continuity in membership and leadership that had existed in the Russian Orthodox Mission and its successor, the Metropolia, from the founding of the mission until 1952, when the court made the final decision on the ownership of the church property. The Russian Orthodox Mission In the last decade of the eighteenth century, Russia had expanded into North America by way of Alaska. That expansion into Alaska was not a particularly significant event. Alaska, on the North American continent, was a logical extension of the Siberian exploration. The motive for the Alaska settlements was primarily economic. The private company that settled there was intent on harvesting furs.2 Even though the original expansion into Alaska was economic, concerned religious leaders in Russia convinced the tsar to require the Alaskan company to christianize the local populations. There is some evidence that the fur company was not interested in such intrusion into their domain, so they implemented that instruction 1

  Myles C. Stenshoel, Religious Liberty: A Constitutional Quest (Minneapolis: Self-published, c. 1999), 8–9.

2

  For more on this, see Hector Chevigny, Russian America: The Great Alaskan Venture, 1741– 1867 (London: The Cresset Press, 1965); and Constance J. Tarasar, ed., Orthodox America, 1794–1976 (Syosset, NY: Orthodox Church in America, 1975).

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 211–22.

212 Keith P. Dyrud

very sluggishly. After several failures to reach Alaska, the first missionaries were finally able to reach Kodiak Island in 1794, where they established a hermitage. In 1824 a young priest, Father John Veniaminov-Popov arrived in Alaska. He learned the native languages, translated Russian religious books into Aluet, and published his ethnographic studies on the Aluets. Father John later became Metropolitan Innocent of Moscow. He worked vigorously to establish a mission among the Aleuts and Indians. In 1834 he was transferred from Unalaska to New Archangel (Sitka). His wife died in 1839, so he accepted tonsure as a monk in 1840, and in December of that year he was consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kuriles and Aleutians. Thus began the Russian mission in Alaska, and the developments which eventually led to the argument about ownership of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York. Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867. Russian negotiators of the Alaskan treaty were very conscious of the complications the sale would have for the Russian Church in Alaska. They also knew how cruel Americans were to their native populations. The treaty allowed any Russian citizens, including baptized natives, to move to Russian territory. But the treaty also required the United States to treat the “civilized” natives properly. “Civilized” presumably meant baptized members of the Russian Orthodox Mission. Furthermore, the Russian Orthodox Church was to remain in Alaska as a church now under American jurisdiction. In addition, Russia was to be allowed to protect the interests of that church. The treaty allowed the Orthodox bishop to report problems to St. Petersburg. The tsarist government could then complain to Washington if there were problems in the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the American governing authorities.3 The American governor general of Alaska, General Davis, did not have any regard for the Orthodox Church, and the church’s numerous complaints to Washington were, unfortunately, ignored. As a result of the extreme mistreatment by General Davis, the Orthodox bishop moved his cathedral from Sitka to San Francisco. While the Russian Orthodox Church came to the United States via the purchase of Alaska, the greatest expansion of the Russian Orthodox Church in America was not a result of the Alaskan mission but of the conversion to Russian Orthodoxy of tens of thousands of Eastern Rite immigrants who had been subjects of the Austrian Empire. This conversion took place in the United States after 1890. The Austrian subjects were the Ruthenians or Rusyns. Their homeland was in Galicia, an Austrian province, and in Ruthenia, a sub-Carpathian area in Northeastern Hungary. These Rusyns had come to the United States for economic reasons. While in the United States, they wished to establish their church. Their church was known as a “Uniate” Church. Sometimes it was called a “Greek Catholic” Church. In the sixteenth century, the church had been an Eastern Orthodox Church, but domination by Roman-

3

 Chevigny, Russian America, 223–44.



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oriented governments led to compromises, creating a Roman Church of the Eastern or “Greek” rite.4 When thousands of those Rusyns migrated to the United States, they wished to establish that Uniate Church in the United States. Unfortunately, the American Catholic Church was determined that the Latin rite would be the only Catholic Church in the United States. The Rusyns responded by building their own churches and calling pastors directly from their home dioceses. Thus, their legal status with Rome was ambiguous. The American bishops led by Archbishop John Ireland of Saint Paul, Minnesota felt so strongly that they did not want the Eastern rite to be established in the United States that they were willing to lose the members of that rite who refused to adopt the Latin rite. The American bishops’ meeting in Chicago in 1893 concluded: “the sooner this point of discipline is abolished…, the better for religion, because the possible loss of a few souls of the Greek rite bears no proportion to the blessings resulting from uniformity of discipline.”5 The Rusyns responded to the intransigence of the Catholic bishops by converting to Russian Orthodoxy, learning Russian, subscribing to Russian newspapers, and praying for the well-being of the tsar while they were residing in the United States. This massive conversion created a new Russian Orthodox Church in North America and raised new questions about the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state.6 Actually, the question was twofold: What was the relationship between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Mission in the United States, and what was the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Mission in the United States and its host state? This study will focus on the latter question, which can be phrased, how did the Russian Orthodox Mission adapt to the sociopolitical environment in the United States? In Eurasia, the Russian ideal for this adaptation has been labeled “symphonia,” implying harmony. Certainly, that harmony has never been achieved, but the Russian Church has always expected to have some kind of relationship with the secular state—even Lenin’s atheistic state. In Eurasia, at least, the church did not accept the American concept of “separation of church and state.”7 The Russian Orthodox Mission’s American experience ministering to the Rusyns demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt to the American environment. In 4   For more on this, see Keith P. Dyrud, The Quest for the Rusyn Soul: The Politics of Religion and Culture in Eastern Europe and in America, 1890–World War I (Philadelphia: The Balch Institute Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1992). 5

  Gerald P. Fogarty, “The American Hierarchy and Oriental Rite Catholics, 1890–1907,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 85 (1974): 18. 6

  See Dyrud, The Quest for the Rusyn Soul.

7   See James W. Cunningham, The Gates of Hell: The Great Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917–1918, Minnesota Mediterranean and East European Monographs 9 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Modern Greek Studies, 2002), especially chap. 7, “The Challenge of Symphonia.”

214 Keith P. Dyrud

their home environments both the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church could count on state coercion to enforce conformity. Among other benefits, to state the issue crassly, the state enforced the collection of funds to support the church. The European missions lacked that coercive power in the United States. In the United States, the Catholic Church adapted by attempting, with some success, to use its spiritual powers in a coercive manner. It could enforce conformity by placing “interdicts” on wayward parishes and by excommunicating wayward individuals. The cost of this less than perfect coercion was the “loss of a few souls.” In other words, the loss of a few souls was the price the Catholic Church paid to establish a centralized church authority in the United States while not being an “established” church. The Catholic Church also reinforced the powers of spiritual coercion by episcopal ownership of property. If the congregation resisted the orders of the bishop, the bishop could order the church closed.8 The Russian Orthodox Mission, on the other hand, had no automatic immigrant membership that carried over from the old country. If it wished to expand among the Rusyn Uniates, the Mission needed to attract its members. Thus, the Russian Orthodox Mission began to build its American Church based on the voluntary association of its members. That voluntary association was the cornerstone of American denominationalism. Lacking the coercive power of state support, the Russian Mission was left with only positive means of influence. It is little wonder that about one-third of the Rusyns joined the Russian Orthodox Mission.9 To meet the needs of the Rusyn immigrants who converted to Russian Orthodoxy, official Russian interests built a cathedral in New York. This cathedral, St. Nicholas Cathedral, was built with money donated by the tsar, by voluntary donations in churches back in Russia, by contributions from the Holy Synod, and by some donations from members in the United States. Normally, the church organization would own the cathedral. St. Nicholas Cathedral was not owned by the North American Mission, but by two trustees. The two trustees were owners by virtue of their offices: the Russian ambassador to the United States and the Russian consul general in New York. Under normal conditions such ownership would not be a problem, but that ownership and many other issues of leadership were called into question as a result of the Russian Revolution. The Effects of the Russian Revolution The original Russian Church Sobor, called in 1917 in Moscow, caused no questions of leadership. That sobor elected Tikhon to be the new patriarch of the Russian Church.

8

  See Fogarty, “The American Hierarchy and Oriental Rite Catholics.”

9

 Dyrud, The Quest for the Rusyn Soul, especially chap. 3, “The Influence of the Russian Orthodox Church on the Cultural Consciousness of the Rusyns in America.”



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Tikhon had been an archbishop of the North American Mission, so he would have been a responsive leader on issues dealing with the mission.10 The crisis of church leadership occurred with the Bolshevik Revolution and the establishment of a competing church leadership identified as the “Living Church” or the “Renovated” Church. The Living Church dissolved in less than a decade so its influence on the church in Russia was limited, but its existence left a long-term impact on the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States.11 In 1917, when the Kerensky government authorized the long-planned church sobor, the archbishop of the American mission, Evdokim, left for Russia to participate in that sobor. He left the American mission in the hands of Bishop Alexander of the Canadian diocese. When it appeared that Evdokim would stay in Russia for an extended time, Evdokim allegedly sent Bishop Alexander a telegram extending his temporary authority as head of the Orthodox mission. Alexander’s authority was immediately challenged in a New York court by a priest named John Kedrovsky. Kedrovsky charged that Bishop Alexander of Canada had been unlawfully appointed temporary bishop of the United States. He argued that, while Bishop Evdokim had been delayed in the Soviet Union, he was still the lawful bishop of North America and Bishop Alexander had no telegram extending his authority.12 While Kedrovsky’s challenge to Alexander’s authority was working its way through the courts, events in Russia continued to unfold. Apparently, the Bolshevik government, which succeeded the Kerensky government, had encouraged the development of the “Living” or “Renovated” Orthodox Church. In 1923 this Living Church temporarily wrested control of the church from the patriarch long enough to hold a “sobor” which ousted Tikhon as patriarch and, among other actions, elected John Kedrovsky, who participated in that sobor, archbishop of the North American Mission.13 When he came back to the United States Bishop Kedrovsky attempted to lay claim to St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral in New York. He physically walked into the cathedral, claimed it as his, and after a few hours was ejected with enough force that he could claim that he did not leave voluntarily. On the basis of his ejection, he brought suit against Archbishop Platon Rojdestvensky (the spelling is from court documents).14 The trial court upheld Platon’s possession of the cathedral, but on 27 November 1925 an appellate court reversed that decision and favored Kedrovsky, because 10   See Cunningham, The Gates of Hell, especially chap. 5, “Establishing the Patriarchate in the Shadow of the Revolution.” 11   Dimitry Pospielovsky, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982, 2 vols. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 60–65 and 285–89. 12

  Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in North America, 96 NE 2d 60 (1951). 13

 Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, 56–65.

14

  Kedrovsky v. Rojdesvensky, 204 NYS 442 (1924).

216 Keith P. Dyrud

he could demonstrate that he had been appointed by the mother church in Moscow. Throughout years of appeals, the New York Court of Appeals consistently supported the Kedrovsky challenge.15 To face such challenges, the Russian Orthodox Mission reconstituted itself as a temporarily autocephalous church at a church sobor held in Detroit in 1924 (generally called the Metropolia). That sobor elected Platon as its archbishop. The New York appeals court did not accept the authority of the Detroit sobor, and it did not accept the legality or authenticity of an oral message delivered from Patriarch Tikhon to the North American Mission. That message had been personally received and delivered by a representative of the YMCA and had verbally appointed Platon to the North American Metropolitan Diocese. The New York appeals court consistently accepted the authenticity of the Living Church Sobor of 1923. John Kedrovsky took possession of the cathedral and kept it until he died in 1934. His oldest son, Nicholas,16 continued his residency at the cathedral until he too died in 1944. At that time, Kedrovsky’s second son, known in the court documents as John Kedrov or Kedroff, took possession of St. Nicholas Cathedral.17 That history is only part of the story, and from the perspective of church-state relations, it is certainly the lesser part of the story. Legislation and Litigation When it became apparent that the New York courts were willing to support John Kedrovsky’s argument that he was the lawful representative of the Moscow Church, the Russian Orthodox Mission (Metropolia) went to the New York legislature. In 1925, the legislature amended the Religious Corporations Law of New York to specifically identify the Russian Orthodox Mission (Metropolia), not Kedrovsky, as the legal owner of all Russian Orthodox property in the State of New York.18 Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States developed a relationship with the state—New York State—that was akin to its familiar role in tsarist Russia. The “Russian Church in America,” as the New York law identified it, was created and protected by the New York legislature. It is ironic that the very church that was so successful in the United States because it recognized that it could only be successful if it conformed to the emerging American ideal of a “voluntary association” should seek the legislated protection of the state to legally exclude its competitor, the church represented by Kedrovsky. The courts did not accept that legislated settlement, however, at least not until 1950, when the cold war anti-Communist environment clarified their thinking. Repeatedly, the New York courts sidestepped the constitutional question concerning the 15

  Kedrovsky v. Archbishop, 212 NYS 273.

16   Kedroff, 96 NE 2d 64. In one court document the son was identified as Michael J. Kedroff (Kedroff et al. v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 77 NYS 2d 336). 17

  Kedroff, 96 NE 2d 64.

18

  Id. at 68.



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legislature’s authority to resolve a legal dispute between competing churches. The courts consistently suggested that the legislature could not have intended to specifically identify the Russian Church in America as the only Russian Church in New York and therefore entitled to all Russian Orthodox Church property. The courts argued that the legislative intent was that the law is applicable only to Russian Orthodox Churches which might thereafter be organized or which, having theretofore been incorporated, should thereafter be reincorporated, but it is not intended to accomplish a transfer of property of all Russian Orthodox Churches in the United States to the use of the newly recognized independent “Russian Church in America.”19 Actually, the New York legislature intended to do exactly the opposite of what the courts insisted they intended. So, the legislature found it necessary to amend the Religious Corporations Law two times after originally defining the Russian Church in America. They amended the original 1925 definition in 1945 and again in 1948 to overcome every possible misinterpretation of its intent.20 As late as January 1950, the New York court system was still supporting the Kedrovsky-Kedroff position. The Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department noted that the original 1925 ruling in favor of Kedrovsky may have been based on inaccurate knowledge of the canonical status of that Living Church Sobor in 1923. The court agreed that the sobor evidently was not canonical, and so Kedrovsky’s original appointment may not have been properly defended by the New York court; but in 1950, they argued, they were not dealing with that issue. The issue before the court in 1950 depended on whether or not Patriarch Aleksii of Moscow was the recognized leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. Both parties to the dispute agreed that Aleksii was the recognized leader of the Moscow Patriarchate. Both parties recognized that Aleksii had appointed Archbishop Benjamin Fedchenkoff to be the bishop of North America. Thus, the appellate court majority ruled, it had no choice but to allow Archbishop Benjamin and his co-defendant, John Kedroff, to remain in St. Nicholas Cathedral. The majority rejected the “iron curtain” argument, suggesting: Whether these church heads are truly religious men trying to keep the faith alive and to serve the religious needs of their people of Russia to the best of their ability or whether they are willing and servile tools of an anti-religious government is not to be decided by this court adversely to the contentions of the parties on any theory that we may take judicial notice of actual conditions behind the “iron curtain” in Russia today. Such matters are not so notorious as to be subject to the rule of judicial notice.21 19

  Kedroff et al., 77 NYS 2d 334 (1951).

20

  Kedroff et al. v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 US 94, 97 (1953).

21

  Kedroff et al. v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 94 NYS 2d 461–62.

218 Keith P. Dyrud

The jurists who dissented from that opinion made an interesting historical observation. They suggested that the Russian Orthodox Church itself was formed by breaking away from the patriarch of Constantinople, after he became subject to the “infidels”—to a lesser degree, however, than in Russia today—upon the fall of Constantinople to the Turks at the end of the Middle Ages in 1453. This, says a leading historian (Adeney, p. 392), had the immediate consequence of gaining ecclesiastical independence for the Russian Church, resulting in the election of the Metropolitan of Moscow by a council of Russian bishops instead of being appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople.22 Those dissenting judges concluded that “the Legislature has acted within the historical pattern of the Orthodox Eastern Church in accordance with which the church in Russia itself was established.”23 The Cold War Enlightenment In December 1950 the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, for the first time agreed to reverse its pro-Moscow position. The appeals court majority concluded: By our decision, we are not intruding unlawfully into the internal affairs of a religious body, but rather refusing to sanction such intrusion by an atheistic foreign government, so far as it affects property within our jurisdiction.24 In supporting the majority, Judge Froessel wrote: As I view the controversy, we have the rather unusual situation of a foreign government, which all of us agree is grossly antireligious, assuming domination and control over The Russian Orthodox Church, leaving that church fettered, helpless, and restrained of its freedom.25 In that argument the court implied but never proved, or sought evidence to prove, that the Moscow Patriarchate was controlled by the Soviet government. Actually, however, the appeals court did not wish to depend entirely on that argument. The court formally decided to accept the legislative revision of the Religious

22

  Id. at 481.

23

  Id. at 482.

24

  Kedroff, 96 NE 2d 75.

25

  Id. at 74.



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Corporations Law as the legal basis for rejecting the Moscow Patriarchate’s control over the Russian Orthodox Church in North America. They wrote: If there were any doubt as to the proper determination of the case along common-law lines, it has been completely eliminated by the Legislature. In April of 1945, L. 1945, ch. 693, the Governor signed a bill adding a new article 5-C to the Religious Corporations Law consisting of four sections, two of which, sections 105 and 107, are presently material. In 1948, L. 1948, ch. 711, important amendments were made to these sections.… [T]he Legislature defined the “Russian Church in America” … and carefully traced its origin.26 That legislative history specifically identified the Russian Church in America (the Metropolia) as the church body that had held a “convention (sobor) in Detroit, Michigan on or about or between April 2nd to 4th, 1924.”27 It is difficult for a law to get more specific than that, and the court finally accepted the legislature’s authority to establish a specific church body to the exclusion of another church body. It is important to note that the court did not appeal to the Constitution but made “the proper determination of the case along common-law lines.” The dissenters to the majority position maintained the previously consistent legal argument: We confidently assert that there is nothing in the statute itself to suggest such a legislative coup, that there is much to show that such was not the legislative purpose, and that the statute, if so intended or so construed, is plainly unconstitutional.28 The Supreme Court The dissenters proved to be legally correct. John Kedroff and Archbishop Benjamin Fedchenkoff appealed that decision to the United States Supreme Court. In 1952, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutional question. Actually, the Court heard arguments twice. After the first arguments, which were not focused purely on the constitutional issue, the Court requested argument based solely on the right of the state legislature to legislate ownership. The Court suspected that there were two legal problems with the legislative action. First was the question of the legislature violating the First Amendment to the Constitution regarding separation of church and state, and second was the problem of the legislature attempting to usurp the Court’s role by legislating a settlement to a property dispute between two parties.

26 27

  Id. at 69.

  Id.

28

  Id. at 78.

220 Keith P. Dyrud

The Supreme Court reversed the decree of the New York Court of Appeals. In so doing, the Supreme Court also analyzed the argument that the Moscow Patriarchate may be under the influence of a foreign power. The Court’s logic was interesting. The Court ruled that hierarchical churches needed to be ruled by the highest authority of that church. In the case of the Russian Orthodox Church, that authority was the Moscow Patriarchate. It was of no consequence to the American courts that the patriarchate was controlled by the Soviet government. The First Amendment right to free speech required that the church be allowed to function as it wished even if it should be expressing the views of a foreign power.29 The Supreme Court also ruled that the New York law was unconstitutional because by fiat it displaces one church administrator with another. It passes the control of matters strictly ecclesiastical from one church authority to another. It thus intrudes for the benefit of one segment of a church the power of the state into the forbidden area of religious freedom contrary to the principles of the First Amendment.30 Finally, the Supreme Court suggested that the legislature was improperly usurping the role of the courts. Ours is a government which by the “law of its being” allows no statute, state or national, that prohibits the free exercise of religion. There are occasions when civil courts must draw lines between the responsibilities of church and state for the disposition or use of property. Even in those cases when the property right follows as an incident from decisions of the church custom or law on ecclesiastical issues, the church rule controls. This under our Constitution necessarily follows in order that there may be free exercise of religion.31 In that statement, the Supreme Court indicated how emphatically church and state were to be separated. It noted, however, that “there are occasions when civil courts must draw lines.” Only the courts, not the legislature, might gingerly cross that line, and when they do, they must apply the rules of the church, not state law, to the dispute.

29

  Kedroff et al., 344 US 118–19. That specific argument is difficult to follow because it is phrased as a rejection of the argument accepted in American Communications Asso. C. I. O. v. Douds, 339 US 382, in which the Supreme Court agreed that Congress could intervene in outlawing a union that may be controlled by a foreign power. The Court suggested that the union was in a position to interfere with commerce. In the case of the Russian Orthodox Church, in contrast, the issue was not commerce but freedom of speech. Thus, the legislature could not intervene even if the church were controlled by a foreign power. 30 31

  Kedroff et al., 344 US 119.

  Id. at 120–21.



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Conclusions It seems that in this case, for some reason, the carefully established and argued principle of the separation of church and state, and the application of the principle of applying church law, not state law, to the resolution of disputes that reach the courts, failed. The history of the North American Mission of the Russian Orthodox Church does seem to identify a recognizable “church body.” That body of the church was headed by Archbishop Platon. It was the church body that met in Detroit in 1924. That American (Russian) Orthodox Church was not represented by John Kedrovsky. Perhaps the dissenting judges quoted above were correct when they noted that it was a tradition of the Eastern Church, specifically in the example provided by the Russian Church, that the new national church body breaks away from the mother church in a manner that is contrary to church law. The Supreme Court gave several indications that their view of the churches in the United States was a very limited view. The New York Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court noted that both sides agreed that there were no doctrinal differences between them. Apparently, that issue was significant. Second, the Supreme Court compared this case with a labor union case it had decided a few years earlier.32 In the labor union case, the Court ruled that unions with leaders who were influenced by communism could not enjoy the protections of the National Labor Relations Act. In that case, the Court argued that First Amendment rights could be abridged. The Court concluded, “legitimate attempts to protect the public, not from the remote possible effects of noxious ideologies, but from present excesses of direct, active conduct, are not presumptively bad because they interfere with and, in some of its manifestations, restrain the exercise of First Amendment rights.”33 That exercise of state authority did not, however, extend to church leadership, presumably because churches could only promote “the remote possible effects of noxious ideologies.” Foreign leadership of a church may well have been used for propaganda purposes and the foreign government may well have been anti-American, but the First Amendment protected such foreign activity. The Court felt that the heart of labor activity was the power of the strike, and thus it might be necessary to “restrain the exercise of [their] First Amendment rights.” But the Court also felt that the heart of the church is doctrine (even if the doctrine represents possible “noxious ideologies”), thus the state could not regulate it. The development of denominationalism in the United States may well have created American churches that are identified as doctrinal and for whom weekly assembly to discuss doctrine or ideas is the core of the church. But the Rusyns’ church (the Eastern European immigrants that made up a majority of the Russian Orthodox Church in America) was not just doctrine and ideas. Their church was the center of their community. It was a social and cultural institution. It was an “ethnic” institution, and as such it was “created” in America to serve the needs of the immigrant 32

  Douds, 344 US 119.

33

  Id. at 120–21.

222 Keith P. Dyrud

community. It was an American, not a Russian institution. The Rusyns had never been Russian citizens and they had not identified themselves as Russians until they came to the United States and adopted the Russian Orthodox Church as their church. The Supreme Court did not consider that the Russian Orthodox Mission was an American institution created to serve the needs of American immigrants. Its ruling, based on the hierarchical principle of the Russian Orthodox Church, never acknowledged the existence of the functional dimension to an American religious institution, nor did the ruling recognize that the Metropolia, not Kedrovsky, represented a continuity of the Russian Orthodox Church in America from before the Russian Revolution to the present.

Understanding Evangelical/Fundamentalist Approaches to “Anti-Communism,” 1953–91: A Critique of Billy Graham’s Participation in the World Peace Conference, 1982 G. William Carlson†

Introduction The Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestant communities in the United States, like all religious communities, were forced to respond to the challenge of Communism in the post-World War II period. The spread of Communism into such areas as Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, and Southeast Asia presented several challenges, including the need to interact effectively with their religious counterparts who faced persecution and significant legal restraints in Communist countries, develop ideological underpinnings for exploring effective theological and ideological interpretations of Marxian-Communism, and respond to the issues facing American foreign policy during the Cold War. These three areas were the focus of the Evangelical/Fundamentalist church communities as they interpreted the activities of such mainstream Evangelical organizations’ actions as the Baptist World Alliance and Billy Graham Evangelistic Organization. They were parachurch groups who made significant efforts to relate to the experiences of Russian Baptists from 1953 to 1991. One of the features of this interaction is the rise of the theme of “anti-Communism” as a model which fostered significant religious and political debate within the Evangelical/Fundamentalist community. Three major approaches sought support from various religious organizations. The first was the Fundamentalist far right, who developed a strong “anti-Communist” motif attached to a Communist conspiracy theory of world and national events. Many of the themes of this group were also adopted and articulated in the 1980s by the New Evangelical Right. A second option was entitled traditionalist conservative Evangelical anti-Communism. It paralleled and often supported the mainstream Western foreign policy commitments of containment as illustrated in the rise of NATO and the implementation of the Marshall Plan. This group endorsed a consensus Cold War foreign policy which will be more moderate in its understanding of American religious politics and a willingness to accept diverse points of view on national policy in areas such as civil rights, social welfare, and economic development.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 223–50.

224 G. William Carlson

A third viewpoint was entitled the Evangelical anti-anti-Communism perspective. It would be articulated by a variety of Evangelical theologians and political activists. Although they were committed to anti-Communist ideological beliefs and believed that Communism was a major challenge to the Christian community, they argued for a more broad-based understanding of the reasons for Communist expansion, believed that social and economic justice issues were a major component of Western internal policy, and accepted the necessity of selective negotiations with Communist countries to reduce world tension. They tended to believe that other issues such as poverty, world peace, and human rights may be more important in understanding American foreign policy options and that anti-Communism was not always a very helpful image in understanding many of the international problems at work in the world. Very few of these individuals went so far as to endorse the revisionism of the secular left and therefore maintained a reluctance to challenge the mainstream norms of American life and culture. Stalin’s death in 1953 began a new era for American responses to the Communist world and particularly the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union under Khrushchev went through a selective de-Stalinization effort and expanded direct contacts with the outside world. It meant the restoration of the authoritarian, one-party state, extensive travels abroad by the Soviet political leadership and preliminary discussions of possible arms control agreements, and increasing contacts between religious leaders from the Soviet Union and their counterparts in the Western world. The Soviet Union increased its foreign policy range to include greater influence in the Mediterranean and in Third World areas such as India and Cuba. However, it also exhibited a firm commitment to silence dissent and maintain Communist single-party states in Eastern Europe (which it claimed was its rightful sphere of influence after World War II) and experienced its first major crises concerning Soviet hegemony in the Communist world in China and Yugoslavia. Khrushchev, although somewhat tolerant of diverse scientific and cultural expression, was unwilling to relax political pressures on religious organizations. He developed an extreme antireligion agenda. By 1964 more than “half the churches of both Orthodox and the Baptists had been closed and the number of Orthodox clergy had been reduced by two thirds.”1 There was a special attempt to harass and persecute members of the unregistered churches and strengthen the laws governing the practices of the registered church communities. Khrushchev’s policy also included an expansion of antireligious materials and scientific atheism programs. Khrushchev’s ouster from power in 1964 allowed for an emergence of a more conservative authoritarian, Communist leadership team that would remain in political power until Brezhnev’s death in 1982. This era can be entitled the rise of the “conservative gerontocracy” or the era of “bureaucratic conservatism.” Internally this meant the development of the “dacha” culture, the centralization of major political and economic policy decisions, increased repression of intellectual, cultural, and religious dissent, and efforts at Russification of the non-Russian national areas. The 1

 Walter Sawatsky, Soviet Evangelicals since World War II (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1981), 131–32.

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foreign policy of Brezhnev achieved the development of a global influence, the rise and fall of detente, expansionist activity in Afghanistan, and the crushing of substantive dissent movements in Czechoslovakia and Poland. It was buttressed by a massive expansion of the military-industrial complex. The Brezhnev era continued to adopt a rather brutal approach to religious issues. The end result was the continued split in many religious communities over issues such as acquiescence to intrusive Soviet law or the development of alternative, non-registered church communities. The protests included the rise of the refusenik movement within the Jewish community, Orthodox dissent in Solzhenitzyn’s Letter to Patriarch Pimen and religious expressions of Gleb Yakunin and Dmitri Dudko, and rise of the dissident Reform Baptists under the leadership of Georgi Vins and Gennadi Kriuchkov.2 The rise of Gorbachev ushered in a new era in Soviet religious history, one that was defined by the terms glasnost and perestroika. Critical for the content of this paper is his attempt to lessen external tensions with the Western world in order to provide time and funds to explore ways to increase Soviet economic development, provide for a greater latitude of freedom of religious belief and intellectual debate within the guidelines of acceptable ideological parameters, and expand contact with the Western world through personal travels and effective use of modern vehicles of political communication. The celebration of the millennium of Christianity in the Soviet Union and the emergence of the citizen peace and human rights movements, especially in Eastern Europe (including some members of the Evangelical community), provided some new trends in Soviet-American religious interrelationships that had an impact on the use of the “anti-Communism” motif in understanding American foreign policy. The fall of Communism in late 1991 brought a whole new set of relationships between Russian religious organizations and their counterparts in the West. This is outside the parameters of this essay. However, the impact of the Russian religious church leaders under Communism did have an impact on post-Communism religious politics. Who are the legitimate religious leaders? How does one develop outreach ministries? What are the legitimate and helpful influences of Western religious groups in the development of Russian church life? What role should the Orthodox Church play in the post-Communist period? Should it resume a preferential status? These were partially answered in the new constraints on religious practices found in the 1997 Law of Religious Association.3 2

  Ibid., 227–33.

3

  For a general discussion of current issues facing religious denominations in Russia, see John Witte Jr. and Michael Bourdeaux, Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999). For an understanding of the 1997 New Religious Laws, read the following articles: Mark Elliott, “New Restrictive Law on Religion,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 5, 3 (1997): 1–2; Lauren B. Homer, “Human Rights Lawyer Criticizes New Russian Religion Law,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 5, 3 (1997): 2–3; Mark Elliott and Sharyl Corrado, “The 1997 Russian Law on Religion: The Demographics of Discrimination,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 7, 1 (1999): 1–3; Mark Elliott, “The

226 G. William Carlson

Fundamentalist Far-Right “Anti-Communism” When one explores the “anti-Communism” motif within the American Fundamentalist/Evangelical community there is a need to analyze the roots of its rise and influence and the major actors that help shape an understanding of its relevance to American foreign policy.4 One of the major groups involved in the creation of the “anti-Communism” motif is that of the Fundamentalist far right community, who after World War II helped to set some of the political agenda issues for the larger conservative religious constituencies in American life. This community was represented in the post-1953 period by such religious leaders as Carl McIntire, Edgar Bundy of the Church League of America, John R. Rice, editor of the Sword of the Lord, Dr. Bob Jones, Billy James Hargis, and Dr. Fred Schwartz, president and founder of Christian Anti-Communism Crusade.5 These religious activists united a Fundamentalist theology with far right politics and were influential in forming religious political debates on foreign policy issues in the Evangelical communities until the mid-1960s. After that they became increasingly strident and politically isolated. To a great degree, the mainstream conservative Evangelical communities launched other agendas and tired of the religious politics fostered by the Fundamentalist far right. The moderate conservative Evangelicals began to focus on more pluralistic Evangelistic activities, created targeted parachurch organizations, and developed more inclusive religious organizations. These include

Church in Russia: Between the Law and Administrative Practice,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 8, 1 (2000): 1–3; Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Religious Freedom: Russian Constitutional Principles—Historical and Contemporary,” Brigham Young University Law Review, no. 2 (2001): 511–36; and Marat S. Shterin and James T. Richardson, “Local Laws Restricting Religion in Russia: Precursors of Russia’s New National Law,” Journal of Church and State 40, 2 (1998): 319–41. 4   For an excellent analysis of some of the religious influences on the development of the “anti-Communist” theme in American religious politics, see Kenneth D. Wald, “The Religious Dimension of American Anti-Communism,” Journal of Church and State 36, 3 (1994): 483– 506. For a secular historical analysis of the role of “anti-Communism” in American history, see James V. Compton, Anti-Communism in American Life since the Second World War (St. Charles, MO: Forum Press, 1973). 5

  For a good discussion of the politics of the Fundamentalist far right, one could explore the following resources: Gary K. Clabaugh, Thunder on the Right: The Protestant Fundamentalists (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1974); Erling Jorstad, The Politics of Doomsday (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970); Richard V. Pierard, “Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Right,” in Protest and Politics: Christianity and Contemporary Affairs, ed. Robert G. Clouse, Robert D. Linder, and Pierard (Greenwood, SC: The Attic Press, 1968), 39–66; and Richard V. Pierard, The Unequal Yoke: Evangelical Christianity and Political Conservatism (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1970).

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World Vision, Young Life, Campus Crusade, Billy Graham Association, National Association of Evangelicals, and such periodicals as Christianity Today and Eternity.6 The Fundamentalist far right agenda included a belief in a Communist conspiracy of American history and politics, particularly since World War II; a commitment to a full-blown individualism in social, economic, and political relationships; a generally negative, pessimistic tone about the ability of America to wake up and confront the expanding Communist influence in the world; and an intense hostility to those who did not adopt the major points of their totalistic world view. These planks resulted in a political platform which included the need to develop a “pure” Christian testimony, to facilitate cooperation among only the theologically correct Christian churches, to project a stand against any form of religious modernism or political pluralism, to expose the Communist infiltration of American church life, and to oppose every economic and social system alien to the Fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. In practical terms this meant that the Fundamentalist far right leadership opposed such “socialist” giveaways as SALT I and SALT II, the Panama Canal Treaty, the participation of the United States in such Communist-dominated institutions as the United Nations, American trade with the Soviet Union, and recognition of the People’s Republic of China. In internal American politics they opposed the welfare state programs, the Civil Rights movement, and the progressive income tax. They believe that the Supreme Court led a movement to de-Christianize American society through the removal of prayer and Bible reading in the American public school system. Each of these trends are part of an American capitulation to the ever-expanding Communist conspiracy seeking to weaken America’s religious and economic commitment to freedom. Billy James Hargis emphasized this theme in his book Why I Fight for a Christian America: I’m afraid most still do not recognize the severity of the threat to democracy in America or of the potential stifling of Christianity’s outreaches. That’s because most look on the threat of Communism as being just another political system. That’s where they are wrong. It is a religion and its author isn’t holy. It was created by Satan to enslave the world. America is a Christian country. The men and women who braved an uncharted wilderness to carve out this Republic were rich in faith. With a Bible under one arm and a musket under the other, they were willing to fight for their faith and freedom as well as talk about it.… Communism has come along with insistence that America no longer look toward God, but instead to political government. Communism, through its associates—liberalism, progressivism, socialism and modernism, is creating 6

  For an understanding of the split between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, see George Marsden, “From Fundamentalism to Evangelicalism: A Historical Analysis,” in The Evangelicals: What They Believe, Who They Are, Where They Are Changing, ed. David F. Wells and John D. Woodbridge (New York: Abingdon Press, 1975), 122–42; and Mark A. Noll, American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 7–108.

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class warfare within America, fomenting hatred, stirring up various so-called “social crises,” destroying love of country, perverting morals of young and old. It is casting aside beloved traditions, banning the Bible from American schools and in general reducing the proud and free American citizenry to an insignificant, helpless pawn of a giant governmental system.7 Throughout the Cold War era, Carl McIntire protested any American church involvement with registered Russian church leaders. He believed they were KGB clergy and part of the Communist effort to undermine Christian America and spread Communist power. McIntire especially challenged the activities of the Baptist World Alliance and its supportive denominations, which often hosted Russian Baptist leaders and traveled to visit Russian Baptist churches. He stated: If peaceful coexistence with godless Communism is possible, then the Bible is a mistake and Christ should never have died to reconcile us to God. We could have peacefully coexisted with our sins. May I say to the preachers, we have reached our last battle line of defense. If this line cannot be held, the floodgate of Communism will overflow this country, with hundreds and thousands of Russians serving on commissions, coming for exchanges, and using what they think is best in the destruction of the USA. There must be no discharge, no retreat, no surrender to the forces of Communism and to the powers that will impose peaceful coexistence, with the militant atheists who lead Russia.8 In the 1950s Dr. Frederick C. Schwarz organized the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade and authored a widely distributed book entitled You Can Trust the Communists to Be Communists. He set up conferences and organized successful lecture circuits to spread the message. His essential anti-Communism motif went as follows: The Communists believe that they are at war with us. This conviction will never be changed in the slightest degree by any action of the Free World. If, tomorrow, the leaders of the Free Nations were to accede to every demand made by the Communist leaders, if they were to neutralize every Strategic Air Command base, if they were to grant the demands on Germany, if they were to neutralize Formosa, if they were to recognize Red China and admit it to the United Nations, if the United States were to withdraw every 7

  Billy James Hargis, Why I Fight for a Christian America (Nashville: Thomas A. Nelson, 1974), 154–55.

8

  Carl McIntire, “Christians Challenge Nixon Concerning Peaceful Coexistence,” Christian Beacon, June 1972, 2. For a history of the interaction between the Baptist World Alliance and Carl McIntire on the relationships with Soviet Baptists, see G. William Carlson, “Russian Protestants and American Evangelicals since the Death of Stalin: Patterns of Interaction and Response” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1986); and Carlson, “An Old Problem … Renewed in the 1980s,” The Standard, February 1984, 46, 48.

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serviceman and weapon within the borders of the continental United States, the Communists would merely believe they had won massive victories in the class war. A step toward our final conquest and destruction would have been taken. We must either recognize this and defend against it or ignore it and be destroyed. We have no other choice.9 In the late 1970s and early 1980s the emergence of the new Evangelical right reinvigorated the more strident “anti-Communism” motif within the Evangelical/Fundamentalist community and made it a major plank in their foreign policy analysis. This movement is best represented by such individuals as Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Tim LaHaye, and Rev. Pat Robertson, and expressed in such organizations as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. It was successful because it linked together segments of the Fundamentalist religious community, the effective use of television ministries, and a willingness to organize with non-Fundamentalist religious organizations and join forces with a right-wing conservative political organization to create a powerful ideological interest group which shaped conservative religious points of view about foreign policy concerns. The Evangelical new right was concerned about the moral decay evidenced in American life and strongly believed that secular humanism was the major ideology undermining American commitments to its former Judeo-Christian heritage. The end result is the demise of American influence in the world, the likelihood of the end times, the need for alternative institutions to teach children and adults the truths of the Christian faith, and the need to take a prophetic role in opposition to the immoral laws passed by the liberal government and sanctioned by the Supreme Court. The organizations are intensively politically active and start with the assumption that America’s wealth, prosperity, and power are a result of the Christian character found in the origins and institutions of American society. The nation’s continued blessing is dependent upon its faithfulness to God. In foreign policy issues, the new Evangelical right argued that Communism is the most blatant form of secular humanism and is Satan’s way of undermining American life and culture. Therefore, they generally opposed detente, the Panama Canal Treaty, the recognition of the People’s Republic of China, and the recent arms control agreements. They endorsed the Strategic Defense system as a necessary part of the protection of American society from Communism and believed in the doctrine “peace through strength.” These ideas were well expressed in Tim LaHaye’s monograph The Battle for the Mind. In it he wrote: And that brings us to the important subject of patriotism, or old-fashioned love for one’s country. All committed humanists are one-worlders first and Americans second.… Do you believe that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel?” Do your elected officials? If they are humanists, they do. And that is one of the 9

  Fred Schwartz, You Can Trust the Communists to Be Communists (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962).

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chief reasons our politicians have turned the most powerful country in the world after World War II into a neutralized state: they are more interested in world socialism than in America. That is why humanist positions permitted Russia to conquer the satellite countries of Europe and turn them into socialist prisons. That is why we were not permitted to win in Korea and Vietnam and why they voted to give away the Panama Canal. That is why Russia was allowed to turn Cuba into an armed camp with a submarine base, stationing at least 3,000 Russian troops, and who knows what else, there? No humanist is qualified to hold any governmental office in America— United States Senator, Congressman, cabinet member, State Department employee, or any other position that requires him to think in the best interest of America. He is a socialist one-worlder first, an American second. The giveaway of the Panama Canal is a prime example of whose team is number one in the hearts of American humanist politicians. America lost on that deal, but socialist and Communist countries all gained.… I am not saying that anyone who voted for the giveaway to the Communist government of Panama is an evil person. I am asserting that the issue stands as an example of the humanist philosophy functioning in the political sphere. Their first allegiance is to a socialist one-world view, then to America. Such politicians can be counted on to vote the same way on other issues: the continuing persecution of Rhodesia; permitting Cuban troops to enslave various African countries such as Angola; breaking off relations with Taiwan; or increasing United States appropriation to the UN.10 In an interview with Pat Robertson during his candidacy for the Republican endorsement for president he was asked to explain his position on American involvement in Central America. He stated: The consolidation of totalitarian control over the Nicaraguan people is in progress. There are promising efforts, however, to resist this process: the contras are willing to sacrifice their lives in their struggle against communist slavery. We should support this quest for freedom in Nicaragua, because it is consistent with our principles. We must support that quest because it is in the strategic interest of the United States to have communist expansionism brought to an end in Central America. Furthermore, we must interdict the introduction of offensive weapons into the region.11 Robertson’s view of the Soviet Union was based on a rejection of the policy of containment. The only “intelligent policy for the United States is the total elimination of 10

  Tim LaHaye, Battle for the Mind (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1983), 77–78.

11

  Pat Robertson, “Pat Robertson on the Issues,” Eternity, February 1987, 19.

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communism.”12 He combined his critique of Soviet Communism with a strong apocalyptic vision of the future, a future in which the Soviet Union would seek to expand throughout the world and lead an attack on Israel. He wrote in 1977 that the Soviet power grasp will be “God’s opportunity to rescue Israel and destroy the pretension of atheistic communism.”13 Jerry Falwell was asked to isolate the major motifs of his Christian political agenda. Although it seemed that most issues dealt with internal American policy issues such as abortion, pornography, and school prayer, he was also interested in establishing a strong anti-Communism theme: However, the debates over school prayer, abortion, and homosexuality are not as important as one issue that has recently loomed before us. If our country is militarily overshadowed by the Soviet Union, I believe that we will not have the opportunity for free and open debate about these or any other issues for long. Presently, the United States is inferior to the Soviet Union in its military buildup. We have been inferior for many years, and have cut back on defense programs while the Soviets have steadily increased their nuclear arsenal. I, for one, am not willing to sit back and wait for the Soviets either to propose nuclear blackmail or destroy us in a rain of nuclear warheads. I am not for war. But I am not a pacifist. I will do all I can to preserve my country’s freedom. I believe that America was raised up of God in this time for the purpose of world evangelization. I believe that America is a nation under God, the only nation on earth so constituted. And I believe that it is every Christian’s responsibility to take an active part in the effort to restore America’s greatness.14 A second group of people who supported the Fundamentalist anti-Communism image and emphasized its benefit in understanding American foreign policy was the Evangelical/Fundamentalist émigré community. Two major figures were popular in the Fundamentalist far-right community and also in the larger conservative religious world: Rev. Paul Voronaeff and Rev. Richard Wurmbrand. Rev. Paul Voronaeff’s father was born in Russia in 1886, emigrated to the United States, and pastored the first Russian Pentecostal Church in New York in 1919. He returned to Odessa in 1920 and began the development of a major work in that city. In 1936 he was arrested and sent to Siberia, where he most likely died. Paul Voronaeff

12

  Mark Toulouse, “Pat Robertson: Apocalyptic Theology and American Foreign Policy,” Journal of Church and State 31, 1 (1989): 91. 13

  Ibid., 91–92.

14

  Jerry Falwell, “A Bystander—How Not to be One,” Christian Life, October 1983, 22–26.

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joined Rev. McIntire in the mid-1960s and was a major commentator on Soviet religious politics, particularly those between the registered and unregistered church.15 Voronaeff’s comments in the Christian Beacon summarized and interpreted the status of Christianity in the Soviet Union as it emerged in the Soviet press, and analyzed the role and value of American-Soviet clergy exchanges and the relationship of these exchanges to Soviet foreign policy interests. He argued that the registered Soviet clergy were towing the Soviet line. They were engaged in propagating a Communist conspiracy. Any American clergy associated with these Soviet religious leaders is likely to be compromised and supportive of the Communist attempt to undermine American life and politics. The true Christian position was one that supported the Fundamentalist, far-right anti-Communism effort and separated itself from any compromised institutions.16 Richard Wurmbrand was for fourteen years a Lutheran minister in Romania. He was also a teacher of Old Testament history at a seminary in Bucharest before the Communist takeover in Romania. In 1948 he was arrested by the authorities and sentenced to prison, where he served three years in solitary confinement. From 1948 to 1964 he was in and out of Romanian prisons. In 1965 Lutheran Churches in Norway paid Communist authorities ten thousand dollars for the release of Rev. Wurmbrand to the West. In 1967 he founded an organization entitled Jesus to the Communist World, Inc., which was “dedicated to helping thousands of Christians who face persecution in Communist held countries.” The nonprofit agency sent “physical and spiritual aid to persons in the non-free world by way of secret couriers, balloons and radio broadcasts spoken in 28 different languages.”17 Wurmbrand’s testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in May 1966 helped to launch his religious/political career in American religious politics. His books, such as Tortured for Christ, were popular reading in many churches and the basis from which many Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians looked at American foreign policy. At an antiwar protest during the Vietnam era he told the demonstrators that “you will be forced to fight Communism here in your own country one day unless you stop it now in Vietnam.”18 Although Rev. Wurmbrand understood the dangers of a policy solely based on anti-Communism, he still supported a strong anti-Communism emphasis in American foreign policy. He wrote that “I don’t believe in what is usually called anti-Communism, and I refused to join any anti-Communist organization, but neither do I be15

  Steve Durasoff, The Russian Protestants: Evangelicals in the Soviet Union, 1944–1964 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969). 16

  Paul Voronaeff, “The Communist-Run Baptists of Russia,” Christian Beacon, 3 July 1980, 1, 4.

17

  Richard Wurmbrand: A Biographical Sketch (Glendale, CA: Jesus to the Communist World, n.d.), 1, 2. 18

  Jon Reid Kennedy, “Rumanian Refugee Pastor Backs US Viet Position,” Christian Beacon, 12 May 1966, 4.

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lieve in compromising with Communism in the religious or in the political sphere.”19 He concluded that every “bridge towards Communism will make it easier for the Reds to cross rivers and oceans to destroy freedom.”20 Christians ought to be on the side of the underground Church and associate with groups that understand the nature of the Communist menace and make no compromises with Communist political systems. He chastised the American West for its unwillingness to follow through on their commitment to stop the spread of Communism in Cuba and Vietnam. Wurmbrand argued that any linkage with the registered church was dangerous. He wrote: Christians are on the side of the people oppressed by the Communists. Their duty is to help them and their churches by providing them with Bibles and Christian literature, by broadcasting to them the Gospel, by sending relief to the innumerable families of Christian martyrs. Christians are on the side of the Underground Church in Communist countries, not on the side of official church leaders there, who have become stooges of the Communists. The Communists are anti-man, something similar to what anti-matter is in the physical realm. If anybody makes friendship with them and obeys them now, what will be his attitude when the Anti-Christ will appear.21 Rev. Wurmbrand, early in his émigré status, expressed discontent with the leadership of the mainstream Evangelical/Fundamentalist conservative which did not link themselves to the Fundamentalist far-right tradition. This was evidenced during his attempt to appear at the World Congress of Evangelism in 1966 when selective clergy from Eastern Europe were allowed to participate.22 Wurmbrand concluded that if religious leaders come from registered churches from behind the Iron Curtain, they must be men who were in the clutches of the Secret Police. From these Iron Curtain clergy the attendees of the World Congress of Evangelism would never get in touch with the real churches of Eastern Europe. The Western church would also be hampered in its ability to say anything significant against the cruel anti-Christian tyranny of Communism.23 The development of a needed commitment to an anti-Communism motif therefore necessitated disassociation with the registered clergy of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and firm interaction with the suffering church. This was an issue on which there could be no compromise. 19

  Richard Wurmbrand, If That Were Christ, Would You Give Him Your Blanket (Waco, TX: Word, 1970), 89. 20

 Ibid.

21

  Ibid., 89–90.

22

  “Wurmbrand’s Letter Deplores Stand of World Congress on Evangelism,” Christian Beacon, 8 December 1966, 1, 8.

23

 Ibid.

234 G. William Carlson

Several other émigrés also played a role in shaping the anti-Communism motif. They include Peter Popoff of the ministry entitled Evangelism to Communist Lands, Peter Deyneka, who founded the Slavic Gospel Association, and more recently Georgi Vins, who was part of the International Representation for the Council of Evangelical Baptist Churches in the Soviet Union, Inc.24 However, they most often associated themselves with a more mainstream traditionalist conservative anti-Communism. Moderate Traditionalist Conservative Anti-Communism A second model of analysis for the anti-Communism motif emerged from the mainstream conservative Evangelicals who were most frequently part of the National Association of Evangelicals and Baptist World Alliance. Most frequently this position was found in such periodicals as Christianity Today, Moody Monthly, United Evangelical Action, and Eternity. Early in the 1950s many Evangelical journals, especially United Evangelical Action of the National Association of Evangelicals, allowed the Fundamentalist far-right community to define the anti-Communist agenda. Such included columns by John Noble and J. B. Matthews.25 When asked about the benefits of Khrushchev’s visit to the United States in 1959, John Noble was concerned about the impression his visit left in the minds of Christians in the United States. He wrote: The impression that Khrushchev left in the hearts of many is that he is at the worst a man worth talking to and at the best a man with whom we should try to negotiate. History, however, does not justify the impression. He did not bat an eye as he took the lives of millions to get control in the Ukraine. The blood that flowed while he tightened his grip on Hungry caused him no sleepless nights. Nor did it rock his conscience to shoot down and enslave American boys in order to display his power and authority. But our impression was that he is a “man with a heart.” And what was Mr. Khrushchev’s impression of American and American people? No one really knows, but whatever, it was he said that it had not changed his opinion—or, we might add, his plans.… Destruction is the inevitable result if we are not willing to obey the Word of God. America is in danger! We have to take a stand for Christ or Communism. God will not tolerate an “in between” compromise.26 24

  For information on these groups, one could read Haralan Popov, Tortured for His Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970); Norman Rohrer and Peter Deyneka, Jr., Peter Dynamite (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1975); and Georgi Vins, Testament from Prison (Elgin, IL: David C. Cook, 1975). 25

  Periodically John Noble wrote an editorial column entitled “John Noble Slave IE241 Answers Your Questions about Communism” during the years 1959–61. See J. B. Matthews, “The World Council and Communism,” United Evangelical Action, August 1954, 3–5, 8. 26

  John Noble, “John Noble Slave IE241 Answers Your Questions About Communism,” United Evangelical Action, November 1959, 11.

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John Noble is best known for his book I Was a Slave in Russia which won the Freedom Book Award of 1959 from the American Heritage Committee. Even James Deforest Murch tended to reflect the more strident anti-Communism theme as he analyzed the presence of Eastern European clergy and the National Council of Churches meeting in Evanston in 1954. However, this drift toward a Fundamentalist far-right vision of anti-Communism was put aside for a more subtle and complex one. Traditional mainstream Evangelical conservatives generally tried to disassociate themselves from the Fundamentalist image and style. There was a strong belief in the dangers of Communism, but they were not willing to endorse the conspiratorial analysis, particularly as it might refer to differences of opinion within the religious community. However, the use of anti-Communism as a technique for an understanding of American foreign and internal policy concerns was a dominant reality in the writing of many of individuals in this model. They were influenced by such missionaries and political leaders as Walter Judd and such United Nations leaders as Charles Malik.27 Editorial comments were skeptical about, but not always in total opposition to, the benefits of talks between leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States, opposed to the recognition of Red China, supported efforts to discourage major trade relationships between the United States and the Soviet Union, and largely argued that a major problem in today’s world is the spread of Communism, a threat that the American public needed to recognize and respond to with great concern. In an editorial in Christianity Today the author expressed some concern about the talks between Eisenhower and Khrushchev: Criticisms of Mr. Eisenhower’s venturesome invitation are tart and many. Does he not confer personal dignity upon “the butcher of the Kremlin, symbol of political tyranny? Did not even Jesus speak of Herod, that ancient puppet of iniquity, as “the fox?” Will not Khrushchev’s visit widen the slobbering sentimentality for the Soviet among men who stress peace more than justice? The President bears the duty of guarding the exchange from conferring prestige on a power philosophy of naked naturalism and on the foes of freedom and Christianity. If Mr. Eisenhower can employ persuasion with a premier accustomed to renouncing persuasion for force; if he can promote the conversion of one who dismisses the fixed moral principles as sheer prejudices; if he can reflect the spirit of good will America preaches to the nations; if he can let men of violence know our high faith in a holy God charting the destinies of nations, and our firm devotion to true freedom much will be gained.28

27

  Walter Judd, “World Issues and the Christian,” Christianity Today, 23 June 1958, 6–8.

28

  “Eisenhower, Khrushchev Talks Shadowed by a Red Moon,” Christianity Today, 28 September 1959, 22.

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In the early 1960s the National Association of Evangelicals circulated a manuscript written by Thomas A. Kay of Wheaton College entitled The Christian Answer to Communism.29 In it he presented a moderate anti-Communism motif, a motif that would dominate most of the writings in Christianity Today. He concluded with the idea that “Communism is a well-established power in the world today. Because it has designs on the world—including us—we cannot ignore it.” The initial success was largely due to its claim to provide the answer to economic and material needs. The fact that this is a false claim is not important at this point, for “millions believe it is true.”30 It is in light of this that “Christians must act—or we lose by default.” Kay’s range of actions included foreign policy which assumed the reality of Soviet imperialism; a foreign aid program that lessened the attractiveness of Communism and responded to the most serious problems of poverty; diplomatic negotiations with the Soviet Union, when possible, from a position of military and diplomatic strength; and commitment to an effective ideological war with Communist totalitarianism for the hearts and minds of the free world. A significant part of the mainstream conservative agenda was a need to challenge trends in the United States which would make Americans less committed to the anti-Communism themes. Such included the dangerous expansion of the welfare state, the secularization of the public education system, the declining morality expressed in the entertainment community, and the lessening of America’s commitment to its Judeo-Christian heritage. Mainstream Evangelical “Anti-Anti-Communism” The final group of individuals entering the debate might be entitled the anti-anti-Communism activists, who took the anti-Communism motif and challenged its relevance as the major thrust in the development of a Christian response to American foreign policy. There is a risk in using this title since it had dangerous political and theological implications for mainstream Evangelical conservatives during the 1950s. It could imply that these individuals were theological liberals who had been soft in their recognition of the dangers of Communism both within the United States and the larger global community.31 However, this is not true. Although this viewpoint is not explicitly found in the literature it can be drafted to explain the viewpoints of the authors under discussion. The individuals expressing this anti-anti-Communism motif were substantively opposed to Communism and were willing to adopt Christian realism approaches to 29

  Thomas A. Kay, The Christian Answer to Communism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1961). For a broader understanding of the role of the magazine Christianity Today in the life of mainstream Evangelicalism, see Mark G. Toulouse, “Christianity Today and American Public Life: A Case Study,” Journal of Church and State 35, 2 (1993): 241–84. 30 31

  Kay, The Christian Answer to Communism, 88–89.

  James Deforest Murch, “Anti-Anti-Communism in the Churches,” United Evangelical Action, December 1953, 12–13.

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Soviet advances. However, they tended to challenge the value of the anti-Communism motif for four major reasons: they found it debilitating to efforts designed to maximize the opportunities of interlinkages between Western Evangelicals/Fundamentalists and their colleagues in the registered churches of the Soviet Union once the channels of communication had opened up after the death of Stalin; they concluded that anti-Communism was not helpful in the development of approaches to areas where the threat of Communism is likely; they believed that it underemphasized the possibility of change inside the Soviet Union and made the West incapable of responding to those changes because of potential ideological blinders; and they believed that the strident anti-Communism of the Fundamentalist far right made for paranoid internal American religious politics and kept the American government blindly committed to unwise interventionism and military weapons system development. One of the early supporters of this idea was Charles Wells, who was the cartoonist for the Watchman-Examiner, an interdenominational Baptist journal. In his editorial explanations of his cartoons he attempted to define four essential themes: Christians need to understand the differences between Christianity and Communism; Communist tyranny and religious freedom are incompatible with each other; despite persecution, Christians in the Soviet Union and other Communist lands are continuing to thrive; and Christians need to support policies against Communism which neither mimic Communist ideology and practice nor depend too heavily on an anti-Communism image or militaristic programming.32 To support these ideas he added some practical implications: although Communism is built on an anti-God philosophy, Christians in the capitalist world need to be certain that they do not fall prey to a godless Capitalism; Communism will sooner or later come to the recognition that individuals and communities cannot live without some transcendent value system and that Christianity, as one of those value systems, is fundamentally unconquerable; Christians in the West need to extend their hand of friendship to their brethren in the Soviet and Eastern European countries; and it is possible that Christians behind the Iron Curtain can teach Christians in the West what it means to be alive in Christ. Wells wrote: Prime Minister Winston Churchill coined the phrase, “The Iron Curtain” to mark the impenetrable line of separation between Soviet Russia and her satellite nations and the nations associated in ideals and principles with the United States. This Iron Curtain permits no free intercourse; yet it can be transcended by forces that no barrier can shut out. A great host of Christians in Russia are not atheistic communists. The communists could neither liquidate nor destroy them.… Americans are seldom told about this phase of life in Russia. Here is encouragement to prayer, an appeal for patience and sympathy, friendliness, and love. No barrier can forever be impenetrable to these powerful spiritual forces. When brotherly love, faith, fellowship, and above all, prayer, become effective, they eventually will melt away even the iron 32

  Charles Wells, “The Long Shadow,” Missions, April 1954, 3.

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curtain. Instead of the prospect of war there will be global harmony, world friendliness, and true peace.33 Wells applauded the meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower and was encouraged by the move to implement a policy of cooperation and exploration of mutual need. He argued that the stopping of the possibility of military arms escalation superseded the anti-Communism image as the proper basis for interaction. He wrote: A few months ago, there was little hope of peace. A thousand insoluble problems bore down upon us—the darkness, the atom bombs and guns crowded close. Then out of desperation, men tried another war. Even the Russians realized that there was only one path open—that of good will. Fortunately, the United States had leadership that was quick to forget the threats, the fears, the angry words, and arose to meet the new friendliness with sincere good will.… If the good will continues, solutions will soon appear, for good will creates the atmosphere of compromise and agreement. The United States, as well as Russia, has made mistakes. Our intolerance has caused bitterness in the world, while Russia’s cruelty has caused hatred. So there is room for both sides to move closer into the light. If we can now discover that good will springs from God’s will, we can be secure.34 John Bradbury, editor of Watchman-Examiner, an American Baptist journal, developed this theme further and more directly. He stated that “people should not be so obsessed by the fear of Communism that they see nothing else.”35 He supported the idea that the penalty for allowing our judgment to be controlled by the fear of Communism was that we may find ourselves defending injustice against the human cry for justice, and tyranny against the cry of freedom. Bradbury concluded that Communism was “not the author of the revolution of our time. It is one of the movements which exploits it. The revolutionary movement of our time has deeper roots and a wider meaning than Communism understands.”36 Many of the supporters of this anti-anti-Communism position found themselves the recipients of the Fundamentalist far-right protest movement. This was especially true for those who were associated with the Baptist World Alliance and Mennonite Central Committee. After the death of Stalin in 1953 leaders of the registered churches inside the Soviet Union were allowed to travel abroad and associate with their counterparts in the Western world. For the Protestant community this basically meant that organizations such as the Baptist World Alliance and the Mennonite Central Committee were able to include leaders of the churches in the Soviet Union in 33

  Charles Wells, “Across the Iron Curtain,” Missions, October 1947, 450.

34

  Charles Wells, ‘The Power of Good Will,” Missions, January 1956, 4.

35

  John W. Bradbury, “A Needed Warning,” Watchman-Examiner, 26 January 1961, 65.

36

 Ibid.

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their organizations. One interpretation of this trend was given by Dr. Erik Ruden and Dr. Gordon Lahrson in a short history of the Baptist church communities in Eastern and Western Europe which was distributed by the Baptist World Alliance.37 They argued four ideas: it was necessary to distinguish between Communism as an ideology and socialism as a political/economic system; the current situation in the Soviet Union for the Protestant churches needed to be understood within the larger context of Russian church history; the interrelationship of Western Fundamentalist/Evangelical churches with their counterparts in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe could best be enhanced through existing legal channels, working with the registered church leadership; and the antireligious climate could change for the better and the Western church ought to play a role in enhancing that possibility. A last illustration of this model of understanding the anti-Communism image is that of Paul Geren, whose address to the San Francisco Convention of Southern Baptists was given wide distribution.38 After a discussion of the tyrannical nature of Communism in the Soviet Union and a discussion of its origin, he asked what was the best approach to its reality in the Western world. He suggested four major ideas: the struggle against the threat of Communism may last for generations; to insist that there is a global Communist conspiracy in every movement for change is imprudent; many of the reasons for the advance of Communism in the world and its likely success in the future are a result of our inability to take seriously issues of human need and non-Communist tyranny in the world; and it is dangerous for Christians to be driven by an anti-Communism position. Two passages well illustrate his thinking on these issues: To insist that there is a Communist in every pew, behind every birch tree and in every government office, and that we are, in fact, already taken over by communism is not a prudent concern for communism, but a frantic and frenzied fear. This is to hand the victory to Chairman Khrushchev, to concede that he will bury us, that our grandchildren will live under socialism and that communism will win the peaceful war in the economic realm. Let the communists be enchanted by their own atheistic version of predestination, but let us not be taken in by it.… What can Christians do about Communism? There is an action which includes all the others. We are commissioned to go into all the world to preach, to teach, to baptize, to minister to human need in the name of Christ, not in the name of anti-Communism. The Christian gospel is our concern and, if we seek it first and faithfully, our opposition to communism will be well cared for.39

37

  Erik Ruden and Gordon R. Lahrson, An Outline of Baptist Life on the European Continent (n.p.: American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1963).

38

  Paul Geren, “Crisis of Communism,” Watchman-Examiner, 23, 30 August 1962, 612–13.

39

  Ibid., 613.

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Critique: Billy Graham’s Participation in the World Peace Conference In May 1982 Rev. Billy Graham traveled to the Soviet Union to participate in the World Conference of Religious Workers for Saving the Sacred Gift of Life from Nuclear Catastrophe. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Billy Graham modified his earlier commitments to a traditional conservative anti-Communism motif and began to explore the need for religious leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain to take a leadership role in lessening the Cold War weapons escalation process. While he was in the Soviet Union he addressed a controlled crowd at the Moscow Baptist Church, engaged in conversations with Georgi Arbatov, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and director of the Soviet Institute of the United States and Canada, addressed the Peace Conference, and visited the Siberian Pentecostals in the US embassy.40 Graham became convinced of the horror of nuclear war and expressed concern that if national and religious leaders continue to support the current nuclear buildup, it could lead to dire consequences. Rev. Graham did not argue a unilateral disarmament position nor did he outline a position that exhibited an anti-American rhetoric. He wanted to express his desire for a negotiated reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear armaments within a secure verification process. Graham also hoped to develop a process for future preaching missions in the Soviet Union, expressed his concern for religious freedom issues to major Soviet officials, and continued the process of interaction with registered church religious leaders.41 As early as the 1950s Billy Graham expressed an interest in preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ behind the Iron Curtain. This was enhanced by his visit to Red Square in 1959. One of the major figures in the development of relationships between the Billy Graham Association and Communist bloc churches was Alexander Haraszti. Haraszti was a Hungarian Baptist who translated Graham’s bestseller Peace with God into Hungarian, subtitling it Lessons in Homiletics for Students of Theology, and used it in his Baptist seminary classes in Budapest. He emigrated to the United States in 1956 and began to affiliate with the Billy Graham Association. By 1972 Haraszti used his contacts in Hungary to help facilitate Billy Graham’s trip to Hungary and Poland in 1977 and 1978, respectively. Martin writes: 40

  Tom Minnery, “Graham in the Soviet Union,” Christianity Today, 18 June 1982, 42–43, 48–49, 51, 52, 54–55, 59. The best historical analysis of Graham’s 1982 trip to the Soviet Union is found in William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 475–529. Other useful sources include Billy Graham, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 499–527; John Pollock, To All Nations: The Billy Graham Story (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 150–62; and Jay Walker, Billy Graham: A Life in Word and Deed (New York: Avon Books, 1998), 65–94. For a general analysis of Billy Graham’s ministry, see Russ Busby, Billy Graham: God’s Ambassador (Minneapolis: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1999). 41

  Kenneth Kantzer, “Graham in Moscow: What Did He Really Say?” Christianity Today, 18 June 1982, 10–12.

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At his first public appearance, hundreds who had packed into the city’s largest Baptist church heard him acknowledge that the anti-Communism message he had preached was out of date. He had come to Hungary with “an open heart and an open mind,” he declared. “I want to learn about your nation, I want to learn about your churches, I want to learn about your Christian dedication and sense of responsibility within your own social structure. But most of all, I want both of us to learn together from the Word of God.”42 Patriarch Pimen’s announcement in the summer of 1981 concerning the convening of a World Peace Conference became the focal point in early discussions of a possible Graham trip to the Soviet Union. Haraszti at first declared that Graham would have no part in this obviously Communist Party–sponsored event. However, Russian Baptist leader Aleksei Bychkov suggested that the Orthodox Church’s sponsorship was “entirely sincere” and that the Baptist Churches had contributed to the financing of the conference. Haraszti contacted Orthodox leaders to see if they would offer an invitation that Graham could accept.43 Graham would give a major address at the conference and would agreed to make “no statements criticizing Soviet foreign policy or religious or social conditions in the Soviet Union.”44 Several political leaders including Vice President George Bush and Ambassador to Russia Arthur Hartman encouraged Graham not to attend. Graham responded that only if President Reagan had told him not to go would he rescind his acceptance of the invitation. He attended the session not as a delegate but as an invited observer. Former president Nixon told Graham, “there is a great risk, but I believe that for the sake of the message you preach, the risk is worth it.” For Graham, refusal to attend would likely limit any further hope for a public ministry in the Soviet Union.45 Graham claimed that the reason he wished to attend the meeting was to speak about his growing concern for the danger of nuclear weapons and a need to find ways to avoid a nuclear war. He coded his discussion in the use of the term “SALT 10.” He was neither a pacifist nor a supporter of unilateral disarmament. I had started speaking out against nuclear weapons and calling for the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical or nuclear, but it was never in the press. So I decided the only way I could make my statement known was to accept the invitation to come to the peace conference in Moscow.46

42

  Martin, A Prophet with Honor, 485.

43

  Ibid., 495.

44 45

  Ibid., 496.

 Pollock, To All Nations, 153.

46

  Martin, A Prophet with Honor, 499.

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Graham’s address was given from a biblical perspective. He argued that God is the Lord of history and that “lasting peace will only come when the Kingdom of God prevails … the deepest problems of the human race are spiritual. They are rooted in man’s refusal to seek God’s way for his life. The problem is the human heart, which God alone can change.”47 He developed the need to endorse a commitment to religious freedom as it is found in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Helsinki Accords. He urged all members of the conference to rededicate themselves to be “peacemakers in God’s world.”48 During his stay in the Soviet Union Graham shared a list of more than 150 prisoners for the work of the Gospel with Soviet authorities in private conversation. He took off his earphones when a delegate from the Middle East began to lambaste the United States on nuclear weapons issues, thereby encouraging Soviet officials to stop that type of rhetoric in future addresses. Above all he demanded to have a pastoral visit with the Siberian Seven, Pentecostal Christians wanting to emigrate from the Soviet Union who had taken refuge in the American embassy. There is reason to believe that Graham’s presence in the Soviet Union and his quiet advocacy on behalf of religious freedom enhanced the process of their ultimate emigration in 1983. One Billy Graham official stated that the “Soviet church leaders informed him that Graham’s influence had been decisive but acknowledged that other groups had also claimed an influence.”49 It is clear that Graham’s experiences in 1982 laid the basis for future Evangelistic trips to the Soviet Union. He developed a twelve-day preaching mission in September 1984 and later in August 1991 and October 1992. When challenged concerning his Peace Conference appearance, Graham made two assertions. First, he faithfully preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in an atheistic state. There “wasn’t a single person whom I talked to, whether in the government or in the church, that I didn’t present my beliefs in the Bible as the word of God and Jesus as my personal savior.”50 Second, he challenged the “irrational fear” that it was impossible for Americans to have cordial and sincere relations with Soviet leaders.” He argued that “they are not all alike any more than we’re all alike,” and that such “outmoded stereotypes constitute a barrier to peace.”51 This event provoked an interesting dialogue with major groups of Evangelical/ Fundamentalist leaders. These responses were derived from the major models that they developed to explore the anti-Communism motif. The two questions that they raised were: Should Graham have gone to Moscow? and Did he betray his cause by things he said or omitted saying while he was there?52 47

 Pollock, To All Nations, 157.

48

 Ibid.

49

  Martin, A Prophet with Honor, 512.

50

 Walker, Billy Graham, 73.

51

  Martin, A Prophet with Honor, 517.

52

  Kantzer, “Graham in Moscow,” 10.

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The American Fundamentalist far right responded quite negatively to both the visit and Graham’s communications. Rev. Carl McIntire expressed extreme disgust at participation in the “Communist Peace Offensive” which he believed was the major intent of the Peace Conference in Moscow. He argued: Never before in the history of the United States has this country been so treated to the Communist design as is now apparent in the peace-nuclear freeze movement. The churches are claiming credit for it. They should credit Stalin who started the World Peace Council. The latest impetus given to their deceptive peace was promoted by the Communists’ Peace Conference of World Religions, May 10–14, which Billy Graham endorsed with his pleas to the Soviets to work hard and obey their government.53 McIntire took out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times and stated that the Moscow Peace Conference was part of the Soviet peace offensive designed to undermine the political and military strength of the West, that the leaders of the registered churches in the Soviet Union were KGB clergy, that these clergy had infiltrated and used such organizations as the Baptist World Alliance for Communist purposes, and that the freeze movement was inspired by the Communists to endorse their foreign policy interests.54 He concluded that Christians needed to advance a strong anti-Communist message or it would be too late for America. Dr. Bob Jones also expressed great displeasure at Graham’s trip to the Soviet Union. He continued expressing his concern for Graham’s association with leaders of the ecumenical movement, especially his consultations with Pope John II. He wrote: It is most significant that Billy Graham, in trying to wiggle out of the predicament be got himself into by his statements that be saw no religious persecution in Russia, excused himself for attending their “peace conference” on the basis that Southern Baptist leaders and “liberal” Protestants, to whom he referred by name, were there. He also mentioned that the Vatican had advised him to attend the conference. This surely must be the first time in history that a Baptist evangelist has sought advice from the Holy See as to where he should go to preach. If Dr. Graham’s statement is true, however, and he did seek Rome’s advice, it is not surprising that he received the advice that he did. Indeed there is nothing surprising about the whole affair, including Billy’s willingness to promote the Communist line and defend the Soviets. He has been headed in that direction for more than 30 years. One cannot laud the World Council of Churches, seek the support and friendship of its leaders, and speak for its sessions as Graham has done for the last two or three 53

  “Communist Peace Offensive Garners Wide Church Support in U.S.,” Christian Beacon, 10 June 1982, 1. 54

  “You Cannot Trust the Devil,” reprinted in Christian Beacon, 10 June 1982, 1.

244 G. William Carlson

decades without becoming tainted with the socialist and Communist aims of the World Council of Churches. Since the present pope seems to be heading the same direction as the apostate Council of Churches, perhaps we should not be surprised that Billy, following the advice of the Vatican, put himself in a place where he, gullible as he has always been, becomes a mouthpiece for the Soviet line.55 One of the most strident critiques of Dr. Graham’s trip came from the Church League of America. They argued that Graham’s trip and address gave “aid and comfort to the worldwide Communist conspiracy” and was derived from Graham’s failure to preach the true Christian gospel. It was time that the followers of the evangelist wake up and distance themselves from his ministry and join those groups which are truly involved in understanding and promoting the necessary anti-Communist message. The editorialist stated that whether it was defending Hollywood movie stars, attending presidential cocktail parties on Sunday evenings while church services were on, or changing his mind about Communism and the whole leftist ecumenical church movement, “Billy Graham has gone deeper and deeper in his own compromises and dragged a lot of his fans along with him.”56 One of the most scathing denunciations of Graham came from the Fundamentalist émigré community. Pastor Richard Wurmbrand wrote an editorial on the trip in the newsletter for the organization Jesus to the Communist World. Wurmbrand had been closely associated with the Fundamentalist far-right movement and argued the Communist conspiracy thesis and the need for the church to challenge it with a separatist anti-Communism motif. He wrote: Thirty U.S.A. church leaders went to MOSCOW to curtsy to Russia’s peace initiatives. Their names and what they said are not worth mentioning. When MOSCOW says “Peace,” it means expropriating another country like AFGHANISTAN and killing people by the hundreds of thousands. A Christian should not participate in such charades nor lend his name to such deceptions. One item, however, deserves explanation. BILLY GRAHAM took time to meet with DOBRYNIN, Soviet ambassador to the U.S. and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, an organization GRAHAM once called “THE DEVIL’S MILITIA. How GRAHAM has changed. After the visit he said, “Dobrynin and I became friends.” Is he in truth the friend of the killers of the Afghans, the oppressors of POLAND, the men who retain in their foul dungeons Billy’s own colleagues, the Baptist pastors BATURIN, RUMATCHIK, MINIAKOV, BOIKO, and SKORNIAKOV?…

55

  Bob Jones, “Editorial,” Faith for the Family 10, 7 (September 1982): 2, 23.

56

  “Billy Graham’s Moscow Performance,” News and Views, July/August 1982, 1–2.

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Billy Graham fears God. How then can he claim as a friend the murderer of millions of innocents? Would DOBRYNIN have become his friend if GRAHAM had asked, as was his duty, for the immediate release of his imprisoned fellow-believers? …We love OUR enemies, but not the enemies of God. We must be uncompromising in His defense. We cannot sip tea with the torturers of the body of Christ.57 Several other members of the émigré leadership community were not quite so damning of Dr. Graham’s trip. They were exponents of the more mainstream anti-Communism viewpoint. Although they were convinced that he made some serious mistakes, they were not about to chastise him severely. President of the Slavic Gospel Association Peter Deyneka, Jr., who argued that Billy Graham truly was a man of God, was concerned that the evangelist did not adequately respond to the needs of the persecuted church. This might lead to a misconception of the needs of the religious communities in the Soviet Union and lessen the ability of groups such as the Slavic Gospel Association to respond to those needs.58 Paul Popov, leader of an organization entitled Evangelism to Communist Lands, expressed his response in a “Commentary” in the official magazine. He set the tone of the commentary when he stated that “we have always had respect for Billy Graham as God anoints him and he puts his life into fulfilling the Great Commission. But he has deliberately allowed himself to be used by the world’s most effective propaganda machine.”59 Popov concluded that this was a “serious corruption of Christian principles which will set back any respect for the cause of Christianity in the Third World or other developing countries vulnerable to Marxist ideology.”60 Popov went out of his way to emphasize the popularity and respect that believers in the Soviet Union had for the life and ministry of Billy Graham. Graham’s serious mistakes such as preaching on the principle of submission to government and his proclamation of religious liberty in the Soviet Union were a “serious slap in the face of the Persecuted Church in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Great harm bas been done, and I pray that God will redeem a serious mistake.”61 Rev. Graham could have addressed the problem of religious liberty more effectively. If he did intend to do such it was a mistake to go to the religious and political three-ring circus which has been “exploited successfully by the communist government.”62 Rev. Billy Graham has for most of his career been a leader in the mainstream conservative Evangelical community. Although he has a strong history of promoting 57

  Richard Wurmbrand, “Billy Graham’s Friends,” The Voice of Martyrs, July 1982, 3.

58

  “The Church in the Soviet Union Today,” Sparks, July/September 1982, 3, 4.

59

  Paul Popov, “Graham Visit to Moscow: Backfire for Liberty,” Door of Hope, June 1982, 2.

60 61

 Ibid.

 Ibid.

62

 Ibid.

246 G. William Carlson

an anti-Communism motif in his early ministry, he has modified its implications in the past ten years. Part of this is a result of his ability and desire to carry out his ministry in various Communist nations and because he strongly believes that there may be more important messages for Evangelicals to proclaim. Such might be the threat of nuclear weapons, and the need for Christians to respond to racial injustice and analyze the danger of secularism and hedonism in American society.63 Kenneth Kantzer, in a editorial about Graham’s trip to the Soviet Union, states that he believed that Graham did not go naively or blindly. Graham is quoted as saying that he “knew there were risks involved in this mission.” He knew he risked being misunderstood and even exploited but he “considered the risk worth taking.” According to Kantzer, Graham wanted to “preach the gospel publicly at the nuclear conference, at the Orthodox cathedral, at the Baptist church, and privately to Soviet political officials”; “plead the case for religious freedom in private meetings with high Soviet officials”; “warn of the tragic consequences of nuclear buildup and the armament truce”; and “be permitted eventually to hold preaching missions in large cities throughout the Soviet Union.”64 Kantzer spent much time attempting to rebuke Graham’s critics of using misinformation about his trip to advance their own agendas. He was pleased that Graham was not silent about political and religious freedom, that he was able to preach the gospel in environments which need the message, and that his nuclear weapons position was not out of the mainstream of American politics. He believed that more could be accomplished by quiet diplomacy than through openly denouncing the Soviet government. He believed that God could use his message in ways that are not predictable. He concluded: Finally, those of us who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ is the dynamite of God, able to blast away sin and the sinful structures of an unjust society, may indeed regret any slips and the unfortunate infelicities of unplanned spontaneous comments. But we rejoice at the opportunity to preach the gospel—actual and potential—with the hope that the power of the gospel can change the hearts of men, as well as the evil structures of even a Communist society.65 He defended Graham’s nuclear weapons position by suggesting that he “never advocated a U.S. retreat before Russian aggression.” He instead “warned of the awful consequences of the nuclear arms race and called for mutual, negotiated, verifiable disarmament.”66 According to Kantzer, although Graham dropped his commitment to a strident anti-Communism motif, this did not mean that he was either a dupe of the Communist movement or an underestimator of the authoritarian structures within 63

  Billy Graham, “An Agenda for the 1980s,” Christianity Today, 4 January 1980, 23–27.

64

  Kantzer, “Graham in Moscow,” 10–11.

65

  Kantzer, “Graham in Moscow,” 12.

66

 Ibid.

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247

Soviet society. In a most public way, he “called the nations of the world to justice and freedom. He did so in a manner that all understood to be a rebuke of Soviet failures in this regard.”67 Another model of approaching the Graham trip among Evangelicals was made by leaders in the Mennonite Central Committee and more radical Evangelical leaders such as Jim Wallis. These individuals believed that the Soviet Union was capable of changing, that contacts with Soviet religious clergy might help to promote change, that Graham’s concern about nuclear weapons needed to be made clear, and that much of the criticism of Graham’s visit was made by people who were irrationally driven by the strident anti-Communist motif. Many of these individuals were spokespersons for the anti-anti-Communism motif. They believed that the motif was no longer helpful, even if it might have had some value in the era of Stalin. One of the leaders of the movement was Dr. Frank Epp, a leader in the Mennonite community who suggested that from “where I sit, Moscow was also Graham’s finest hour.”68 Dr. Epp was familiar with the problems of religious persecution in the Soviet Union, as two of his uncles died in Soviet labor camps and a first cousin had just completed a prison term for involvement in the underground religious press. He felt that Graham’s presence was a significant one, for the Soviet leadership was forced to endorse powerful appeals based on religious values. Therefore, “religion in the Soviet Union can no longer mean merely belief or liturgy; it is so profoundly ethical and social, hence also political.”69 He concluded that “the church in the USSR has started an irreversible redefinition of religious, perhaps even an ideological reformation. It was religion’s finest hour, an altar call that will be heard in history for many years to come.”70 For Epp, Graham’s trip to the Moscow Peace Conference was also important for what it communicated to the American religious community. For those first-strike, limited-nuclear-war rearmers of America, stated Epp, religion too has been redefined, and at long last the much misrepresented separation-of-church-and-state doctrine can no longer mean that Evangelists don’t call nations to repentance.”71 Graham also provided a rejection of all those Evangelicals who had been influenced by Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth and accepted the idea that the kingdom of God “can appear only after a nuclear war and the second coming.”72 Epp stated that Graham had three conversions: when he became a child of God; when he became a racial integrationist; and when he became a nuclear abolitionist. Similar ideas were addressed by John H. Redekop, editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald. He wrote: 67

 Ibid.

68

  Frank Epp, “Billy Graham and the Moscow Conference,” The Mennonite, 8 June 1982, 282.

69

 Ibid.

70 71

 Ibid.

 Ibid.

72

 Ibid.

248 G. William Carlson

Despite the exploitation of the visit, Graham deserves to be highly commended for his venture. At a time when many evangelists seem totally oblivious to the mind-boggling nuclear threat, Graham has at last committed his great prestige to doing something about it. More “peace power” to him. Years ago he seemed almost to be a perennial chaplain to the U.S. military establishment; now he has moved beyond that role. Finally he is stressing the full dimensions of the Gospel of Peace. Those of us who belong to the peace churches should now be encouraging and supporting him.73 One of the strongest statements of the Evangelical “anti-anti-Communist” position was Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine. Wallis complemented Graham for two significant departures from “Billy Graham’s characteristic political neutrality and accommodation.” First was his commitment to racial integration. He would not allow ethnic discrimination at any of his crusades. Second was his opposition to the nuclear arms race and his deep commitment to being a “peacemaker after the manner of his Lord.”74 Wallis commented that “to go to Moscow, to try to build some bridges, and to preach the gospel of peace clearly offended the practitioners of another religion, that of anti-Communism.” He concluded that “zealous anti-Communism of the Reagan administration and its allies on the Christian Right is a false religion, and should never be equated with biblical Christian faith.”75 Wallis was pleased that Graham had attended the Moscow Peace Conference. The mistakes that Graham might have made in his interaction with the American press were exploited by the Fundamentalist anti-Communism spokespersons and their allies in order to continue their long-standing diatribe against Graham. They were angry that Graham even considered going to Moscow. However, Wallis, while normally not a big fan of Graham’s politics, particularly his overly close association with American presidents, complemented Graham on his Moscow experience. He wrote: Billy Graham is no communist, but he is no longer the anti-communist he was in 1954 when he said, “Either communists must die or Christianity must die.” His religion is less American now than before, and therefore more biblical. Billy Graham is now trying to be a peacemaker. For that he is to be praised. In the perilous nuclear situation, one can only hope that more Christians might see his change of heart and heed his example.76

73

  John H. Redekop, “Graham in Moscow,” Mennonite Brethren Herald, 4 June 1982, 9.

74

  Jim Wallis, “Beleaguered Billy,” Sojourners, July–August 1982, 5.

75

 Ibid.

76

  Ibid., 5, 6.

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249

Conclusion The development of the “anti-Communism” motif has been an influential image in the development of Evangelical/Fundamentalist approaches to American foreign policy. First, it was a major issue in internal Fundamentalist/Evangelical American religious politics in the post–World War II era until the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by 1991. The Fundamentalist far right and to some extent the new Evangelical right have used the anti-Communism motif as a political test for religious authenticity for those who may not support its importance. They have challenged the integrity of persons in the mainstream conservative anti-Communism movement and the anti-anti-Communism group for the sacrifice of truth and their participation in the spread of the Communist message. This has been done through attacking people such as Graham, members of the Baptist World Alliance, and President Carter in the press, picketing events which they believe illustrate a compromised status, and attempting to raid mainstream organizations and recruit members who accept their vision of the Evangelical/Fundamentalist response to Communism in the world. Second, there has been a recent reflection on the influence of Fundamentalist “anti-Communism” and its impact on the ability of “saner” voices to develop a legitimate and more effective voice against Communism. The irresponsible actions of some of the Fundamentalist anti-Communists and such allies in the secular world as Senator Joe McCarthy made it difficult to sustain a legitimate, more moderate anti-Communist perspective. Diana Trilling, in a recent essay reflecting on the politics of the 1950s and 1960s, suggested that “McCarthyism had a lasting effect in polarizing the intellectuals of this country and in entrenching anti-anti-Communism as the position of choice among people of political good will.… It was Joe McCarthy who took anti-Communism out of the realm of respectable discourse and created for people of liberal impulse an automatic association between any voiced opposition to Communism and reaction.”77 Third, “anti-Communism” has tended to set the parameters within which many religious conservatives understood American foreign policy. Its use as a substantive priority tended to define the bases of other agenda items including such things as arms control, Third World poverty, crises in missions, and understanding and developing approaches toward religious communities within Communist countries. For a long period of time, the issue of the Communist menace has been the driving force in the development of a response not only to America’s foreign policy but also to America’s internal politics. Fourth, Fundamentalist far-right anti-Communism commitments made it difficult for that community not only to evaluate activities such as Billy Graham’s trip to Moscow in 1982 but also to understand and endorse the reform movements of Gorbachev. While more mainstream anti-Communism leaders were willing to work with Gorbachev and honor his changes, the Fundamentalist movement frequently challenged his legitimacy. Even Gorbachev’s support of the millennium celebration 77

  Diana Trilling, Newsweek, 11 January 1993, 32.

250 G. William Carlson

was seen as a strategy to capture the Western churches and give them a further, compromising Communist orientation. Fifth, Billy Graham should be honored for his efforts to preach the gospel behind the Iron Curtain. Jesus’ command to preach the gospel in all areas of the world did not exclude the Communist world from participation. Graham was able to strike the proper balance between working with the legal structures and registered churches and bearing witness to the cause of Jesus Christ. He argued that he believed that the propaganda “of the gospel of Christ is far stronger than any other propaganda in the world.”78 It provided not only an effective forum for articulating his nuclear weapons concerns, it also allowed him to effectively provide a base for future Evangelistic efforts in Communist societies. Finally, it would be interesting to explore whether this model of analysis might be applicable to American foreign policy responses to other Communist nations such as the People’s Republic of China and Southeast Asia, and whether it is applicable toward an understanding of the diversity of Evangelical/Fundamentalist responses to such contemporary issues as social change in South Africa, the threat of Communism in Central America and in particular Nicaragua, and the recent political changes in the People’s Republic of China.

78

  Martin, A Prophet with Honor, 516.

Greece and Cyprus

Alexander the Great’s Invincibility: Fact and Myth Achilles Avraamides

A comparison of the Macedonian territorial, economic, and population resources at the start of Alexander’s expedition against the Persians with those of the Persian Empire shows the Macedonians at a very serious disadvantage. Alexander’s decision to undertake such an expedition justifiably leads one to evaluate him as a rash, inexperienced, and immature youth who, in order to satisfy his adventurous drives, was willing to risk the fortunes of his kingdom. It is difficult to think of Alexander as a mature statesman who could deal with the complexities and tedium of administrative detail. It is easier to judge Alexander, as many have frequently done, to have been a gifted general who succeeded in defeating a superpower but who showed no interest in the administration of his newly acquired empire. This essay will try to adduce evidence that Alexander demonstrated maturity and sound judgment in the conduct of his campaigns that went beyond the actual military leadership in battles. The support for this position is to be found not in any newly discovered evidence but in a reexamination of his actions, which suggest a calculated use of public self-promotion and presentation of an image of himself that took seriously many nonmilitary aspects, such as the historical background of the people he encountered and their cultural values. For lack of a better term, we shall call such actions propaganda. That Alexander used propaganda will come as no surprise to historians of the ancient Near East. Many successful conquerors and rulers of the past, such as the Assyrian kings or Cyrus the Persian, used propaganda very effectively. Alexander was not an exception. In fact, as we shall see, he was exceptionally gifted in this area. Though Alexander’s use of propaganda has not been completely ignored by other historians, scholarship on Alexander has not focused much attention on this subject and its implications.1 A careful examination of the ancient sources on Alexander’s career

1

  For an illustration of the use of propaganda by Near Eastern rulers, one of the most effective manipulators of propaganda was Cyrus the Great, who, two hundred years before Alexander, accomplished almost comparable conquests. Cyrus used propagandistic claims to soften Babylonian resistance against him before he tried to capture the city of Babylon, whose fortifications appeared to be almost impregnable. “Cyrus Cylinder,” in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. J. B. Prichard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 315–16. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 253–63.

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reveals many incidents which have obvious propaganda intentions.2 Limitations of space do not permit an exhaustive list, but a discussion of a few representative promotional actions will illustrate how well he used propaganda and to what purpose: mainly to strengthen his position and weaken or even demoralize the opposition. He accomplished this by having himself compared or contrasted favorably with the great historical or legendary figures of the past, by undermining the will of potential enemies to oppose him, and by influencing the people he conquered to accept his rule as being in their best interest and in harmony with their tradition. A good example presents itself very early in his career. According to Herodotus, Darius crossed the Danube in 512 against the Scythians but had to retreat in defeat, and was never able to return to the Danube.3 At the very beginning of his reign, Alexander turned against these northern people, crossed the Danube, and, taking them by surprise, dealt them a crushing defeat. He thus kept them out of Macedonia for 2

  Numerous “histories” of Alexander were written, beginning with the first years of his expedition and multiplying soon after his death. Some of these were written by eyewitnesses, such as Cleitarchus, Ptolemy, Aristoboulos, and Callisthenes. All of our extant sources, though, are much later, dating from the middle of the first century BC, nearly three centuries after the death of Alexander, to the middle of the second century AD. In chronological order of publication, these ancient studies are: (1) Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, vol. 8, bk. 17, trans. C. Bradford Welles, Loeb Classical Library 422 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963) dates from the mid-first century BC and presents Alexander in a favorable light; (2) Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander, 2 vols., 10 bks., Loeb Classical Library 368–369 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946) was written in Latin, c. mid-first century AD, with a preference for a negative Alexander tradition; (3) Plutarch, Life of Alexander, Loeb Classical Library 47 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928) dates from the early second century AD and presents a very favorable image of Alexander; (4) Justin, the author of an abbreviated history which appears to be an abridgement of an earlier work, the original of which is now lost, by Pompeius Trogus, History of the World, of which books 11 and 12 deal with Alexander, often negatively; and (5) Flavius Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library 236 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929–33) is from the mid-second century AD and, though openly favorable toward Alexander, it is generally considered to be one of our best sources on the military aspect, Bosworth notwithstanding. Thanks to modern literary criticism, it is now possible to move from these later classical works back to their sources, which often were the published memoirs of eyewitnesses or were based on the official diaries of Alexander’s secretaries. These works have been organized together by Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, parts 2b and 2d (Berlin: Weidmann, 1927–30). They also appear in English translation in C. A. Robinson, Jr., The History of Alexander the Great, vol. 1, Brown University Studies 16 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1953). For a critical analysis in English of the early histories of Alexander, see Lionel Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great, American Philological Association Monographs 20 (New York: American Philological Association, 1960). For some of the later, especially medieval, romances on Alexander which at times preserve reliable tradition, see the study of D. J. A. Ross, Alexander Historiatus: A Guide to Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature, Warburg Institute Surveys 1 (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1963). 3

  Herodotus 4.136ff.

Alexander the Great’s Invincibility

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the next fifty years.4 This was a necessary and wise military action called for by the political realities in Greece and his anticipated long absence. It was, at the same time, a campaign that could not but call attention to a comparison with that of Darius the Great. It was a historical lesson that a greater conqueror than the great Darius was now on the march, especially since Alexander’s campaign was against the empire of that same Darius, who had failed in a similar campaign. The siege and capture of Tyre belongs to the same category, a practical necessity of the campaign. After the battle of Issus it was necessary for Alexander to reduce to submission all the coastal cities of the Mediterranean before pursuing the fleeing Darius III. The sea was controlled by the Phoenician fleet, and the Greeks could not be trusted. Sparta was in open opposition against Alexander. Only the island city of Tyre, among the Phoenician cities, secure in what its rulers believed to be its impregnable defense, refused to submit to him. The Tyrians’ confidence rested on the city’s successful defense against many would-be conquerors in its past history.5 It took Alexander seven valuable months to capture the city, but the final result was worth the effort.6 The successful capture of Tyre heightened Alexander’s already considerable military reputation. Its propaganda value can be seen from the fact that between Tyre and Egypt only one city, Gaza, dared to offer any resistance. The capture of Gaza within only two months served to make the claims of his invincibility even more credible.7 Egypt wisely considered resistance to be useless and saved Alexander the trouble of another battle, welcoming him instead as liberator and honoring him as pharaoh. Alexander’s behavior in Egypt appears to have been carefully calculated to show himself in a very favorable light and especially in contrast to the scandalous behavior of Cambyses, the Persian king who conquered Egypt, that is, the Cambyses that Alexander knew from Herodotus. Alexander presented himself as a liberator of Egypt from the Persians, rather than as a conqueror. He did not deprecate the religious traditions and superstitions of Egypt, instead he sacrificed to the Apis bull, and he rebuilt the Egyptian temples, especially the Serapeum.8 His behavior was carefully 4

  Arrian 1.3.5–6.

5

  R. Campell Thompson, “The New Babylonian Empire,” in Cambridge Ancient History, ed. J. B. Bury, S. A. Cook, and F. E. Adcock (Cambridge: The University Press, 1929), 3: 214. H. W. F. Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1962), 192–93, claims that, in the end, Tyre was taken by Nebuchadnezzar. 6

  Arrian 2.17; Curtius 4.3; Plutarch 25.1. If we disregard the propaganda value, the siege of Tyre does not make any sense. Then Ian Worthington would be right in saying that “the siege of Tyre in 332 lasted several months, cost the king a fortune in money and manpower and yet achieved little.” See Worthington, Alexander the Great: Man and God (London: Pearson Longman, 2004), 208. 7

  Arrian 2.26; Diodorus 17.48; Curtius 4.5; Plutarch 25.3.

8

  Arrian 3.1–5; Diodorus 17.49; Justin 11.1; Curtius 4.7; Plutarch 26.2. For pictorial representation of Alexander as a pharaoh, see Andrew Stewart, Faces of Power: Alexander’s Images and Hellenistic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Figure 54 shows

256 Achilles Avraamides

orchestrated to contrast him quite favorably to the Persian rulers in many spheres. One of the most widely discussed actions of Alexander in Egypt was his journey to the temple of Ammon at the Oasis of Siwah. This had no obvious strategic value, and was filled with dangers, but taking great risks was a characteristic of Alexander. These risky actions transformed a difficult and apparently unnecessary expedition into a means of elevating Alexander above other leaders and especially the first Persian conqueror of Egypt, Cambyses, who, according to Herodotus, had led an army of fifty thousand men through the Libyan desert with its destination the temple of Ammon at the Oasis of Siwah. He probably had other intentions than visiting the oracle. The expedition was a fiasco. Thousands of his soldiers died on the way, and their bodies remained buried in the desert of Egypt.9 Alexander journeyed to the same oasis, not as an invader but as an Egyptian pharaoh10 and pilgrim to this highly respected ancient oracle to consult it on a number of issues. At the temple, Alexander was received as the son of Zeus-Ammon, and the news of this recognition quickly reached Greece.11 The recognition of his divinity and his successful expedition were just what Alexander wanted. Now, he could match the Egyptian pharaohs as a ruler of Egypt. Before he left Egypt he placed the defense of the frontier districts under the control of Greeks and Macedonians, but he left two Egyptians in charge of the civil administration of Egypt. The stigma of the conquest was moderated by these actions, though the armed garrison kept Egypt secure for Alexander. This expedition to the temple of Ammon served many purposes not only for the present but also for the future, and perhaps even in reinterpreting past events. It provided Alexander with the required respected authority for claims of divinity which soon found expression in sculpture and numismatic portraiture. His superiority over the early Cambyses, and thus over all Persian rulers, could receive easy credit immediately. His claim to divinity and universal rule would be satirized by the Athenians

Alexander twice as a pharaoh on the exterior east wall of the Shrine of the Bark in the temple of Ammon, Mut, and Khorsu at Luxor. Once (on the left) he stands before Ammon Khanutef and in the other (on the right) Mentu introduces Alexander to Ammon. 9   Herodotus 3.26. A recent archaeological exploration in western Egypt has uncovered numerous skeletons of dead soldiers, corroborating Herodotus’s information. 10   Ernst Badian, The Deification of Alexander the Great: Protocol of the Twenty-First Colloquy, 7 March 1976 (Berkeley: The Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1976). A variety of opinions and discussions by various scholars is presented on the nature and meaning of this expedition, particularly as it relates to Alexander’s “deification.” Badian subsequently revised some of these views, and his revisions appear in “The Deification of Alexander the Great,” in Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1981), 27–71. 11

  This is the testimony of Arrian 3.3.2, 4–5, but some of our sources have both question and answer, though obviously embellished. Diodorus 17.51 provides a long dialogue between Alexander and the priest of Ammon. See also Justin 11.11; Curtius 4.7; Plutarch 27.3.

Alexander the Great’s Invincibility

257

behind his back and by the Macedonians more openly.12 It was, however, a useful claim for his new subjects in Egypt and in other Near Eastern countries who had a long tradition of connecting their rulers to the gods. This successful encounter with Ammon may also have been the motivation for going back to previous events and reinterpreting them to support the new claims. For example, when two years earlier Alexander was about to cross a coastal road in Pamphylia, southwestern Anatolia, the road was covered by the sea. This was the result of the tide being in while the southern wind was blowing. Suddenly, though, the wind shifted, and the road was uncovered for Alexander to pass. His diviners immediately interpreted this as a good omen from the gods. It was probably after the visit to the temple of Ammon that his historian and panegyrist, Callisthenes, publicized the miraculous interpretation of this event as a recognition of Alexander’s divinity by the sea itself, “so that in withdrawing it might somehow seem to make obeisance to him.”13 Such exaggerations did not come from Alexander’s publicists without his approval or even instigation. He showed a real flair for propaganda and the dramatic. There are occasions which appear to have no other purpose than propaganda and which give the distinct impression of being his own spontaneous acts. For example, we know of his love for Homer and especially the Iliad.14 The encouragement by his mother to believe that he was a descendant of Achilles probably cultivated in him a 12

  Demosthenes said of Alexander’s claims to be the son of Zeus, “[Let] Alexander be the son of Zeus and of Poseidon too if he wishes.” Quoted by Eugene N. Borza, in Ulrich Wilcken, Alexander The Great, trans. G. C. Richards (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 213 n. 342. The Macedonians’ objections to Alexander’s divinity were in line with their rejection of his adoption of Persian habits in governmental ceremonies and the introduction of Persians into his army. 13

  Artists presented Alexander as a divine being, without any protest on his part. Many of the representations are easily accessible in some of the recent studies on Alexander, such as the popular but sound study by Peter Green, Alexander The Great (New York: Praeger Publications, 1970; rev. ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Robin Lane Fox, The Search for Alexander (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980). Though Fox’s text is disappointing, the illustrations are good, numerous, well chosen, and beautifully presented. On coins, Alexander appears as Zeus-Ammon (Green, Alexander, 75; Fox, Search, 201); as Heracles (Green, Alexander, 158); and as the god Ammon, conqueror of India (Fox, Search, 207). The sculpture created by Lysippus, Alexander’s favorite artist, carefully cultivated the presentation of Alexander as a divine being in the best artistic style. Perhaps the best example is the famous “Azara Herm” in Egypt, which is a Roman copy of Lysippus’s original (Green, Alexander, 174). Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, no. 124 f. 31. The Callisthenes passage is translated by Robinson, History of Alexander, 1: 69. Plutarch 17.4 quotes Alexander’s contemporary, poet of the New Comedy Menander, as alluding to this event in jest: “How Alexander-like, indeed this; and if I seek someone, Spontaneous he’ll present himself: and if I clearly must Pass through some place by sea, this will open to my steps.” 14

  According to Curtius 1.11, “He so venerated Homer that he was called amator Homeri.… He always carried with him a copy of the poet’s works in the recension of Aristotle, called the ‘Iliad of the Casket’ and placed it under his pillow when he slept.” Cf. also Plutarch 8.2 and 26.1.

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sincere conviction that he was a second Achilles and his friend Hephaestion a second Patroklos. Thus, he could continue the familiar theme of the conflict of the West against the East, of Greek against Barbarian. It was in harmony with his heroic ancestry. It is not surprising, then, to find Alexander promoting the claim that a modern Achilles was now reenacting the invasion of Asia. Some of our sources inform us that, as he approached Asia Minor, Alexander, from the ship, hurled his spear onto the Asian coast, jumped down in full armor, and cried out that he received Asia from the gods won by his spear.15 The following spring at Gordium, Alexander continued the theme of this symbolism with the loosening, or, more likely, cutting of the Gordian knot.16 Having left behind him a defeated but resentful Greece, he did his utmost to gain as much good will with the Greeks as possible. He presented himself as an heir and champion of Greek culture, religion, and historical pride. In that role, even before he left Greece, he moderated the decision to destroy Thebes by saving the house of Pindar and the temples of the city. He made it look as though the decision for the destruction of the city and slaughter of numerous Thebans was the decision of his Greek allies.17 On his campaigns he promoted the impression that his respect for Greek civilization was so genuine as to exact punishment from the Persians for invading Greece and burning Athens. The burning of Persepolis in the winter of 331/30, intentional or unintentional, was promoted and accepted as revenge for the burning of Athens in 480. The sending of the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton from Susa back to Athens must have pleased many Athenians. Alexander’s love for propaganda extended beyond international relations and embraced the appeal to his own soldiers, whose admiration he continually fed with many gestures and symbolic acts that endeared him to them while at the same time causing them to magnify him in their minds as much larger than life. This can be seen in his behavior after the battle of Granicus, when Alexander honored the twenty-five dead companions with statues by Lysippus, permanent exemptions of their families from taxation, honorable burial of the dead, Macedonian as well as Persian, and visits to the wounded. He helped out with their medical needs and, above all, lent a very interested ear to their stories, even encouraging them to magnify their accomplishments.18 In the desert of Gedrosia, he further promoted identification with his soldiers 15

  Diodorus 17.17; Arrian 1.12.1; Justin 11.5.

16

  Arrian 2.3.1–8; Plutarch 18.1–2; Curtius 3.1.14–18.

17

  Arrian 1.7.1–9; Diodorus 17.8.12–14; Plutarch 11.4–13.

18   Arrian 3.8.10–12; Diodorus 17.70.1–72; Plutarch 37.1–38; Curtius 5.6.1–7. One should associate with this the sending back of the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton (Arrian 2.16.7), the statues of the honored Athenian tyrannicides of the sixth century whom Xerxes carried away in 480 BC to Susa. He also sent money to rebuild Plataea, the heroic small city that stood alone with Athens in 490 against the Persians at the battle of Marathon. The city was destroyed by the Spartans and Thebans in the early years of the Peloponnesian War. Alexander, with one gesture, championed Athenian Hellenism and condemned Sparta, the one city that refused to recognize him as hegemon. A. B. Bosworth, A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History Of

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by sharing the hardships of his foot soldiers rather than choosing the comfort of being carried by either horse or chariot. In this same desert, when, after a long and severe absence of water during the march, someone brought him a little bit of water, Alexander, rather than satisfying his thirst while his soldiers had nothing to drink, poured it out.19 To his soldiers, he always tried to show himself to be one of them, especially in times of crisis, and carefully took advantage of every opportunity to make this obvious.20 But, most frequently, Alexander directed his propaganda for political and military purposes, especially to undermine opposition. His many military successes gave him ample opportunity to do so. Each victory was treated as the result of his supreme generalship and the invincibility of his armies. The odds against which he fought were exaggerated considerably, inflating the numbers of the Persian armies and casualties.21 There can be no doubt that many looked at such numbers with skepticism. The numbers, however, kept growing, together with the legend of Alexander. Nevertheless, the long record of uninterrupted success made the doubters of the details unable to find many followers. It was manifest that this general led his army for thousands of miles through Persian territory with uninterrupted success. That made any exaggeration quite believable, and the effect of such exaggeration was the demoralization of the enemy, which either surrendered or put up a less effective resistance. The uncontested surrender of Egypt after the battle of Issus and the capture of Tyre and Gaza was repeated by the surrender of Babylon after the victory over Darius at Gaugamela. Alexander used propaganda also for the control of the people who became his subjects. Ancient history provides many illustrations of arrogant rulers who treated Alexander (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), F1: 126, itemizes the rather considerable exemptions involved in Alexander’s gesture to the families of the dead at Granicus. 19

  Arrian 1.16.4–6; see also Diodorus 17.21.6; Plutarch 16.8, Arrian 6.26.3, “and at this action the whole army was so much heartened that you would have said that each and every man had drunk that water which Alexander thus poured out” (Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, 2: 185). 20

  Arrian 6.26.

21

  The numbers for both Alexander’s forces and those of the Persians are impossible to estimate. The sources exaggerate the numbers of Persian soldiers and their dead in battle to an unbelievable level: 600,000 at Issus and 1,000,000 at Gaugamela. Alexander’s army is very ably calculated by Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) to a grand total of 48,100 at Granicus, about the same at Issus, and a little bigger at Gaugamela (see appendix 5, tables 4 and 5, pp. 146–48). For the disproportionately higher number of Persians vs. Alexander, see Diodorus 17.19.4; Justin 11.6; Arrian 1.16, 2.8–11; Curtius 3.9–11; Plutarch 20.5. The last three give huge numbers for Persian losses: Arrian 3.8.6, 2.15.6; Curtius 4.12.12–13, 16.26; Diodorus 17.61. That the losses of the defeated were disproportionately greater than those of the victors is credible, but not the actual figures, and in accordance with ancient warfare. The inflated numbers, though, show that there was intentional exaggeration. The more sober Oxyrinchus Papyrus 1798 gives the losses as 1,200 for Alexander and 53,000 for the Persians. See, Η Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους (History of the Greek Nation) (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1973), 4: 123.

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their subjects with disdain or kept them under control with calculated terrorism.22 The Assyrians were a prime example, but the reputation of the Persians among the Greeks was not much better. Alexander, in spite of his youth and the indoctrination he received from Aristotle against all Easterners, showed a great sensitivity toward the traditions and values of his new subjects. He became well informed about local issues and history and successfully presented himself in sympathy with his subjects’ traditions.23 He noted the diversity of the people under his control, their different traditions, institutions, and attitudes, and appealed to them with sympathetic understanding. Until his return from India, he tried to adapt his rule to all of these diversities rather than to force all onto a common level. He remained to the Macedonians a king, to the Corinthian League of Greek city-states a president (hegemon), to the Egyptians a divine pharaoh, to the Persians the king of kings, and so on. On a more immediate appeal, though, Alexander presented himself as the restorer of traditional and popular values. To the Lydians he restored their traditional pre-Persian laws.24 To the Ionian Greeks he proclaimed political liberty, supporting the replacement of pro-Persian oligarchies or tyrannies with democracies.25 The same awareness characterized his relations with both subjects and masters of the Persian Empire. After his final major victory over Darius, at Gaugamela, Alexander could have captured the major capitals of the Persian Empire by use of naked force. Yet, when he approached Babylon, the first of the imperial administrative centers, he did not attack it like an invader. In a manner reminiscent of Cyrus the Great in 539 BC, Alexander proclaimed liberty to the Babylonians.26 He accepted their traditional and religious practices for the coronation of the king by the Babylonian god Marduk. Just as he associated himself in Egypt with the nearly three-thousandyear-old pharaonic tradition, so also he associated himself with the nearly two-thou22

  Cambyses’s behavior in Egypt is presented by Herodotus as that of the proverbial bull in a china shop (Herodotus 2.14–33), and especially his alleged sacrilegious killing of the Apis bull. For a discussion of other evidence concerning Cambyses, see W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary On Herodotus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), 1: 260. More recently, Artaxerxes III (Ochus) in 343, after supressing an Egyptian revolt, also killed the Apis bull. See Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, no. 690 f. 21. 23

  Alexander had a big following of selected scholars traveling with him and collecting information. Much of the information was also sent back to Greece and especially to Aristotle’s Lyceum. Arrian (4.10.11) shows a debate of these scholars. 24

  Arrian 1.17.4.

25

  Alexander’s dealings with the Greeks were never uniform. He treated different Greek cities in different ways, and the same city, such as Athens, differently at different times, as his fortunes changed. A careful study is that of Victor Ehrenberg, Alexander and the Greeks (Oxford: Blackwell, 1938). See also Ernst Badian, “Alexander the Great and the Greeks of Asia,” in Ancient Societies and Institutions: Studies Presented to Victor Ehrenberg on his 75th Birthday, ed. Badian (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 37–69. 26

  J. B. Prichard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 315–16.

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sand-year-old Babylonian tradition.27 Alexander presented himself as a divine representative to restore the claims of the Babylonian religion and kingship. He also left the satrap Mazaeus, a Babylonian who fought impressively on the side of Darius a few months earlier, as the civil administrator of the Babylonian satrapy. The military garrison, though, he left in the hands of a Macedonian.28 He did not disrupt the Persian imperial organization into satrapies and generally kept the Persian satraps as the civil administrators, with Macedonian military watch. He left kings in their places with royal titles, such as the king of Taxila and the Indian Porus.29 Without wasting any time, Alexander moved quickly and took effective possession of all the other capitals of the Persian Empire, Susa, Persepolis, Pasargadae, and, finally, of the Median capital Ecbatana, where the fleeing Darius spent the winter of 331/30. The defeat of the Persian Empire was complete, both by victory on the battlefield and by the capture of the administrative centers. Two tasks only remained: the elimination of Darius and the actual occupation of inner Iran. Alexander pursued both goals simultaneously by chasing Darius into inner Iran. Bessus, Darius’s lieutenant, who, thinking that by leaving Darius’s corpse for Alexander, he would stop the Macedonian’s relentless pursuit and even earn his gratitude, killed his king. Bessus fatally miscalculated, for Alexander immediately saw the propaganda possibilities of this event. He sent the body of Darius to Persepolis to receive honorable burial, while he, from this moment on, presented himself as the legitimate heir to the Achaemenid throne.30 He made it his public responsibility to avenge the treasonous assassination of his predecessor and, at the same time, to take effective control of eastern Iran. The death of Darius and Alexander’s assumption of the authority to establish order and justice in the empire was a turning point in the self-image of Alexander. From this moment on, he presented himself not as a conquering Macedonian but as the Persian king, the Great King, who set himself the task of suppressing rebels and consolidating his empire.31 Bessus turned out to be an unworthy opponent, but his capture 27

  Arrian 3.16. Bosworth correctly identifies the temple of Belus with the ancient Esagila but denies that Xerxes destroyed it (Historical Commentary, 314). Whether Xerxes destroyed it or not, the Babylonians viewed him and many of his successors with strong opposition. Cf. A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 236–37. See also Diodorus 17.64; Curtius 5.1; Plutarch 35.1. 28

  Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great: A Biography (London: Penguin, 1973), 227, suggests that there was a collusion between Mazeus and Parmenio, and that Mazeus probably held back at the battle of Gaugamela, as he was the commander on the Persian right, opposite Parmenio. Then, he surrendered Babylon willingly, and his reward was to continue to be a satrap under Alexander, as he was under Darius. There is no evidence to support this, but it is an intriguing possibility.

29

  Claude Mossé, Alexander: Destiny and Myth, translated from the French by Janet Lloyd (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 70.

30 31

  Arrian 3.22; Diodorus 17.73.3; Justin 11.15.16; Pliny Natural History 36.132.

  Diodorus 18.77.4–7. Alexander assumed the title “King of Kings,” Persian attire, the royal diadem, and a harem of concubines, as many as the days of the year.

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and cruel execution as a traitor and rebel brought into the Persian resistance a gifted leader, Spitamenes, who, from the death of Bessus in 330 to the winter of 328/27, gave Alexander more trouble than any other opponent. Alexander treated Spitamenes and all other opponents as rebels to be subdued and punished.32 Having built an empire through military conquest, it was Alexander’s intention, to the end of his life, on the one hand, to govern effectively what he had already conquered and, on the other, to continue to expand it. On his return from India, Alexander chose not to return by the same route that he took on his way there but instead to explore and conquer new areas by going down the Indus River, traversing new land and sea. Before he left India, though, he made the customary sacrifices to the gods, but in this case there was added to the ceremony a propagandistic touch, a psychological weapon against the natives. He had his men erect twelve enormous altars to the twelve Olympians, expanded the circumference of the camp, enclosed with deep trenches and high walls, and left many artifacts, such as huge beds, military arms for men of gigantic size, and horse troughs and bits of bridle for abnormally large horses. As Plutarch observed, “his idea in this was to make a camp of heroic proportions and to leave to the natives evidence of men of huge stature, displaying the strength of giants.”33 When we direct our attention to Alexander’s use of propaganda, we are able to go beyond the traditional image of Alexander and see this man, who was indisputably competent and interested in military activities, to have had also competent administrative potential. His appeal to the great variety of people with whom he had to deal shows a sensitivity to different cultures, historical traditions, and institutions. He dealt with subtle diplomacy and showed such respect as to win widespread support. His actions were not those of an impulsive young man whose success went to his head, but rather of a crafty statesman who had somehow grasped the complexity of his world and approached its different problems with the tact of a mature statesman. This is not an attempt to deny that Alexander was a complex person. One can find many illustrations of the impulsive youth who, on occasion, went to extremes.34 What we have stressed here is this other side of a shrewd, calculating man. This is the aspect 32

  Ptolemy, as quoted by Arrian 3.30.5; additions and variations of Bessus’s execution appear in Diodorus 17.83.9; Curtius 7.5; Justin 12.5.11. After two years of desperate opposition, Spitamenes met his death at the hands of his Bactrian and Sogdianian allies, who hoped thus to satisfy Alexander and stop his pursuit (Arrian 4.17.7). Alexander treated rebels very severely. He had Philotas killed because of treason and ordered the secret execution of Philotas’s father, the old loyal Parmenio, because he might turn against him. See E. Badian, “The Death of Parmenio,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 91 (1960): 324–38. When Callisthenes opposed Alexander’s policies, he paid with his life. See Truesdell S. Brown, “Callisthenes and Alexander,” American Journal of Philology 70 (1949): 225–48. When Alexander returned from India, he was merciless in his punishment of unfaithful lieutenants (Ernst Badian, “Harpalus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 81 [1961]: 19–20). See also Arrian 3.22; Diodorus 17.73.3; Justin 11.15.16; Pliny Natural History 36.132. 33

  Diodorus 17.95.2; see also Plutarch 62.4; Curtius 9.3.19.

34

  His killing of his close friend Cleitus is the best illustration for it.

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of his personality that comes through to us when we consider his use of propaganda. It shows that Alexander took advantage of every opportunity to make himself appear and behave in a way that inspired both fear and love, anxiety and respect. He was able to use his successes in specific and unique situations in such a way as to reveal himself to his contemporaries as one who possessed superlative qualities and powers. A particular victory argued for Alexander’s invincibility. A particular capture of a city proved that no city was capable of defense against him. The humane treatment of a captured city was an illustration of his benevolent rule. The severe punishment of a rebel was a warning against any would-be rebel. His humane and flattering treatment of a few of his soldiers was proof of his humane and considerate treatment of all his soldiers. He successfully coordinated his considerable assets of an inventive mind, enormous self-confidence, an indomitable will, as well as his physical powers of endurance to promote an image of a superhuman person. In an age when the divine and the human were separated by a chasm capable of being bridged by exceptional individuals, Alexander may well have believed in his own divinity. Whether he did or not, he was willing and effective in advertising his divinity throughout his empire.35 Through his successful use of propaganda, Alexander prepared his contemporaries and future generations to accept his great military and political accomplishments as products of some superlative genius. His early death did not allow him or us to see how he would rule his empire, but the signs suggest that he would have done better than many historians have concluded.

35

  There has been much debate on this subject. Badian’s studies, mentioned in note 10, are among the most comprehensive. See also J. P. V. D. Balsdon, “The Divinity of Alexander,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 1, 3 (1950): 363–88.

Psichari Father and Son: A Generation at Odds J. Kim Munholland

This story is part of a generation’s intellectual and spiritual conflict, perhaps one of the most famous of such conflicts in modern French history. In this example, it involved a son, Ernest Psichari, a talented young writer who was killed in one of the opening battles of World War I, and his father, the well-known philologist and advocate of modern Greek, Jean Psichari, or Ioannis Psycharis. There are two other important figures in this relationship, the grandfather of Ernest and the father-in-law of Jean, Ernest Renan, and his daughter, Noémi Renan, who married Jean and was the mother of Ernest. This was a generation’s conflict that had a personal, family dimension to it. We turn first to the son, Ernest Psichari. Among the young French intellectuals who came of age at the turn of the twentieth century, and who would rebel against the secular, scientific, and pacifist values of their fathers’ generation, none was more uncompromising than Ernest Psichari. Grandson on his mother’s side of the historian and biblical scholar Ernest Renan, Psichari has left a series of writings that chronicle a spiritual quest that took him away from the secular, positivist, Republican, and antimilitary atmosphere of his youth and his family environment at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. This quest led first toward a military career in the French colonies and then brought him to the Catholic Church on the eve of World War I, when he entered the Third Order of St. Dominic, intending to become a village priest, perhaps in the strongly Catholic Brittany of his agnostic grandfather, Ernest Renan.1 This goal would never be reached. Within nine months of Psichari’s admission to the Dominican Order war broke out in Europe, and the young Catholic officer, serving at his colonial army garrison in Cherbourg, went to the front to lead his men in the just cause of France. On 22 August 1914, he fell in battle, one of the first casualties of that deadly conflict. Like his friend, Charles Péguy, who also had followed a course from Republican secularism to an ardent French nationalism, and who also would be killed in battle in September 1914, Ernest Psichari became a symbol and

1

  Henri Massis, Notre ami Psichari (Paris: Flammarion, 1936), 230.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 265–79.

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martyr for this staunchly nationalistic and intellectually conservative generation’s national sacrifice.2 Ernest Psichari’s trajectory from his early secular skepticism in religion, seen as a legacy from his grandfather Renan, toward the church by way of the colonial army has been extensively chronicled.3 As a young lycée student, Ernest Psichari at first adhered to the values of his father’s generation. In religious matters he was a skeptic and anticlerical. He became partisan in the cause on behalf of Captain Dreyfus and Republican justice in opposition to the military’s condemnation of the Jewish officer, an accusation of treason inspired by rampant anti-Semitism within the French Army. In a lengthy letter to his father Ernest deplored the way that “Catholicism and clericalism, anti-Semitism and narrow ideas have invaded France.” The late 1890s was a time of political engagement and controversy in France, and the lycée student was among those who were active in condemning the forces of reaction, seen in the army and the church. Yet even in this early, Dreyfusard phase of Ernest’s life, he greatly admired France, a France, as he put it, “that surpassed all other nations with its beautiful and great ideas.”4 Ernest’s father, Jean Psichari, was even more deeply involved in pursuing justice for Captain Dreyfus. The Psichari household became one of the active Dreyfusard salons, animated by discussions of events of the moment and agitated by debates over new social theories and projects for founding popular universities for working people. The turbulence of the Dreyfusard debates and the passions it aroused transformed the Psichari household. Ernest’s sister, Henriette, has described the way in which her father would discuss for hours legal texts and their meaning with his political allies and with his own family.5 Jean Psichari became one of the founding members of the Ligue pour les droits de l’homme in 1898.

2

  Ronald Thomas Sussex, The Sacrificed Generation: Studies of Charles Péguy, Ernest Psichari and Alain-Fournier (Townsville, Australia: University of North Queensland, 1980).

3

  The young generation has been described in several texts, among them, Agathon [Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde], Les jeunes gens d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1913); Richard Griffiths, The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature, 1870– 1914 (London: Constable, 1966); and Sussex, The Sacrificed Generation. Important works on Ernest Psichari include Wallace Fowlie, Ernest Psichari: A Study in Religious Conversion (New York: Longmans, 1939); Eugen Weber, “Psichari and God,” Yale French Studies, no. 12 (1953): 19–53; Henri Massis, La vie d’Ernest Psichari (Paris: L’Art Catholique, 1916); Massis, Notre ami Psichari; Daniel-Rops, Psichari (Paris: Plon, 1942; rev. ed., 1947); A.-M. Goichon, Ernest Psichari d’après des documents inédits (Paris; Éditions de la Revue des Jeunes, 1921; 1933, 1946); Henriette Psichari, Ernest Psichari, mon frère (Paris: Plon, 1933); and Paul Pédech, Ernest Psichari ou les chemins de l’ordre (Paris: Tequi, 1988). 4

  Ernest Psichari to Jean Psichari, 13 July 1898, in Lettres du Centurion, vol. 3 of Oeuvres complètes de Ernest Psichari (Paris: Conard, 1948), 110–13. 5

  Henriette Psichari, Ernest Psichari, mon frère, 73.



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Jacques Maritain has left a sympathetic portrait of the open, warm, and welcoming atmosphere of the Psichari household during these days.6 The Psicharis entertained a wide circle of friends, reflecting Noémi’s graciousness and Jean’s convivial and enthusiastic personality. Accounts of the time describe Jean Psichari and Noémi as a “brilliant couple,” although, as Jean Psichari’s biographer notes, the brilliance of their salon provoked envy among some intellectuals, who were inclined to look upon Jean Psichari as something of a parvenu.7 A more critical portrait may be found in Henri Massis’s account of the “liberal, political and literary anarchism … [that] had established its headquarters there during the Dreyfus Affair.”8 The proceedings and discussions were symbolically overseen by the portrait of Ernest Renan, painted by his son Ary, that hung in the salon, looking down like a benevolent, optimistic deity, seemingly lost in abstract thought and detached from the struggles of the real world. Eight years later this atmosphere had changed. Again Massis provides the description of a gathering in the spring of 1908 in which Noémi Psichari, despite her allegiance to her father’s ideals, seemed to give a spiritual serenity to the proceedings. Those present were mostly friends of Ernest Psichari, who was just back from Africa, where he had begun his career in the French colonial army. Among the visitors was Jacques Maritain, Ernest Psichari’s close friend from their days as lycée students together. Maritain had been with Ernest in the debates and engagement of the Dreyfus years, including a strong commitment to social causes, but he and his young wife, Raïsa, had recently abandoned their agnosticism and had converted to the Catholic faith. The turn away from the secular climate of their elders had already begun during the lycée years, when Jacques and Ernest had attended the lectures of Henri Bergson, whose critique of positivism, materialism, and abstract reason had attracted large crowds to the Collège de France. Both Ernest Psichari and Jacques Maritain were close to Charles Péguy, another Dreyfusard who also was in search of a new spiritual truth amid the secular climate of the now triumphant radical Republic. After his Dreyfusard years Péguy had adopted an intense nationalism that focused upon the perceived threat of Germany following the international crisis of 1905 that had nearly brought Europe to war. His journal, Cahiers de la Quinzaine, was a vehicle for the new thinking that gave voice to this generation of nationalists and spiritual seekers. Amid this search for spiritual and emotional truth, the figure of Ernest’s father, Jean Psichari, seemed increasingly irrelevant, at least in the eyes of Ernest’s friend and constant admirer, Henri Massis. Jean Psichari was a rationalist who, following the advice of his father-in-law and mentor, Ernest Renan, had abandoned his early dreams of becoming a writer. Instead, he applied scientific methods to the study of 6

  Jacques Maritain, Antimoderne (Paris: Éd. de la Revue des Jeunes, 1922), 211–12, cited in Ioanna Constantoulaki-Chantzou, Jean Psichari et les lettres françaises (Athens: Emman. Papadakes, 1982), 129.

7

  E. Haraucourt, Des jours et des gens (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1946), 154–56, cited in Constantoulaki-Chantzou, Jean Psichari, 4.

8

  Massis, Notre ami Psichari, 11–13.

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the Greek language, opening the way to the emergence of modern Greek that broke with the high culture of classical Greek tradition. Jean Psichari’s revolutionary approach to the language question provoked a storm of controversy in Greece when his seminal work, Taxidi (My Voyage), was published in 1888.9 Massis’s description of Jean Psichari’s presence in the Psichari home on rue Chaptal contrasted the serene and almost spiritual quality of Noémi Psichari with the exuberant and, in Massis’s judgment, almost comical appearances of the scholar and linguist. During these evening gatherings Jean Psichari would emerge from his large library, which was mainly devoted to scientific works on philology, to declaim what Massis condescendingly described as his “misplaced enthusiasms.” He would recite poetry in a “coarse and vulgar voice” to the young crowd gathered around Ernest Psichari and Noémi Renan. He would then retire to his library, to which he admitted only his students from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Massis more than implies that Jean Psichari’s preoccupations with his scientific work, however worthy, seemed arid, abstract, remote, and out of touch even with the calm, spiritual quality that Noémi expressed in keeping with the philosophical serenity of her father, Ernest Renan, whose presence continued to hover over the household. Clearly Massis, whose own work, Les jeunes gens d’aujourd’hui, chronicled the transformation of his generation into advocates of action in place of reason and skepticism, regarded the senior Psichari as a figure from the past. These contrasting images of the Psichari foyer suggest the sea change that was taking place in the intellectual climate of France at this time. Ernest Psichari represented the new voice of those who preferred action to reason, spiritual values to scientific ones, and a militant nationalism to the universal, humanistic concepts and pacifism of their fathers. What had happened in the space of eight very short but important years? The changes can be found in the experience of Ernest Psichari and his personal crisis, which in extremis became representative of his generation’s questioning of their received values. Ernest Psichari’s personal and intellectual crisis occurred when he was just eighteen. He had passed his baccalauréat impressively and seemed destined for an academic career in keeping with his family tradition. Throughout his youth his father had watched carefully over his progress, providing him with guidance and encouragement, particularly in the mastery of languages and in a love for French literature. Above all, there was an emphasis upon reason and scientific methods. In one of his early letters to his father, Ernest Psichari expressed his uncertainty on the choice between a career in science or in literature. He seemed better endowed for the latter, and his talent showed in his essays and youthful experiments in poetry. His father introduced him to Latin and Greek, applying his own methods of teaching. Yet Ernest Psichari would reject a seemingly logical, almost programmed turn toward the academic side of literature or philology. The break came when he was spurned in a love affair. He had become enamored of the elder sister of his good friend Jacques Maritain, but she was seven years his 9

  Hommage à Jean Psichari (1854–1929) à l’occasion du vingtième annniversaire de sa mort (29 septembre 1929) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1950), 17.



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senior, quite a difference when one is eighteen. Her decision to marry someone else plunged Ernest into despair. He left home and spent several months wandering the streets of Paris in search of menial employment, staying in cheap, rundown hotels. He twice attempted suicide and was stopped only by the intervention of a friend. He then decided to bury himself in the army. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair all young men were required to serve as draftees for two years in the French Army, although for lycée graduates the term of service was reduced to one year. Ernest volunteered to serve a year earlier than the law required. At the time he wanted no more than to forget the past and to submit to the discipline and obedience of a military hierarchy while putting his unhappy love affair behind him. As he put it in one of his diary entries, the army offered order against the disorder of his time. But he worried about the reaction of his family with its strong antimilitary traditions to his decision.10 He felt that only his mother would understand what had compelled him to follow in that path. From this point Ernest Psichari would confide in her and also in the mother of Jacques Maritain, Mme. Geneviève Favre, herself the daughter of Jules Favre, a Republican politician who had been instrumental in the forming of the Third Republic. Although still respectful in tone, letters to his father became less frequent than in his days at the lycée when he had sought paternal approval, but the relationship was not broken. Despite the distance, both intellectually and physically, Ernest kept in contact with his father. During his first tour of duty in the Congo, he wrote to his father that he was engaged in creating a grammar for the Baya language and he sought his father’s advice and approval. He also began his writing career with a series of journal entries that would be published after his death as Carnets de Route. These reflections served as the basis for his first autobiographical novella, Terres de Soleil et de Sommeil. Again he sent these early efforts to his mother asking for both her opinion and his father’s.11 On the other side of this relationship, his father was more sympathetic with his eldest son’s quest than someone like Massis might have imagined. On the eve of Ernest Psichari’s departure for a second tour of African duty in Mauritania, Jean Psichari recommended that he carry with him the Sermons of Bossuet and Pensées of Pascal, surprising recommendations from a religious freethinker. “If one wants to know a man,” Jean Psichari advised, “it is necessary to read Bossuet and read him in his sermons.”12 Jean Psichari was obviously not the total agnostic he was reputed to be. At the end of his first year in the army, Ernest Psichari’s reenlistment dismayed his family, as he had feared, and it caught his friends by surprise. Even his superiors were astonished that the grandson of Ernest Renan should embark upon a military career. He informed his parents and his commanding officer that a desire for action

10

  Henriette Psichari, Ernest Psichari, mon frère, 107.

11

  Ibid., 45–47.

12

  Jean Peyrade, Psichari: Maître de grandeur (Paris: Julliard, 1947), 35.

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and his distaste for Paris and a life as a bureaucrat inspired his decision.13 He wanted to go on campaign, which led him to choose service in the colonial army. Soon he was on his way to Africa, where he would encounter Islam and begin to reflect upon his own religious heritage. In his letters to his mother and to Mme. Favre, who even more than his mother became confidante to his innermost thoughts, he spoke of his spiritual dissatisfaction and his rejection of the skepticism and materialism of metropolitan France. The army appeared to be order against what he perceived as the disorder, the intellectual questioning, the decadence, and the spiritual emptiness of his time.14 He looked upon colonial service as a form of crusade on behalf of French civilization and its traditions. He also found a passion for writing, beginning first with his diary, in which he recorded his reflections and thoughts, evidence of his personal voyage of discovery. His spiritual quest had begun, but he was not yet ready to embrace the church. In a reply to a lengthy letter from Maritain, who hoped that he would return from his solitary adventures believing in God, Psichari readily admitted that he found the church’s values superior to those of the positivists and rationalists of the day. While he was attracted to the house, he informed his good friend, he was not yet ready to enter.15 After gaining a commission in the colonial artillery, Ernest Psichari returned again to Africa in 1909, this time to the solitude of the desert in Mauritania. It was here that his quest brought him to the brink of embracing a fervent Catholicism, and it was in the course of his experience in Mauritania that his break with the ideas and ideals of his father and his father’s generation became even more apparent. His encounter with Islam challenged his own culture and its material values. As a Moroccan put it, “You French, you have the realm of the earth, but we, the Moors, we have the realm of heaven.”16 What the French had, Psichari believed, was the civilization of Christendom, and this tradition was necessary to counter the faith of Islam. Earlier he had written that in Africa, France was “indeed alone in our pride and our domination.”17 France could secure its domain in Africa only by gaining or forcing the Moors to respect the religion of France. In a crucial passage he wrote, “During the six years I have known the African Moslems, I have realized the folly of certain moderns who want to separate the French race from the religion which has made it what it is, and whence comes all

13

  Ernest Psichari to Jean Psichari, 2 February 1904, in Lettres du Centurion, 125–27.

14

  Henriette Psichari, introduction to Oeuvres, 1: 15, 17.

15

  Ernest Psichari to Jacques Maritain, 6 August 1908, in Lettres du Centurion, 130; and Henriette Psichari, Ernest Psichari, mon frère, 129.

16

  Ernest Psichari to Maurice Barrès, 15 June 1912, in Lettres du Centurion, 229, cited in Henriette Psichari, introduction to Oeuvres, 1: 15.

17

 Psichari, Terres de Soleil et de Sommeil, in Carnets de route. Terres de soleil et de sommeil, vol. 1 of Oeuvres, 270.



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its greatness.”18 Only by returning to the tradition of the church could France prevail in its civilizing mission. Recovering faith meant rejecting the materialism of his father’s generation. Ernest Psichari’s experience may be found in his last work, published after his death, Le Voyage du Centurion. In this final, autobiographical novella the protagonist, Maxence, observes that the so-called educators and masters of French literature, such as Maxence’s own father, had forgotten the existence of a soul, of the human capacity for belief, love, and hope.19 Through Maxence, Ernest Psichari thanked Africa for having saved him from “a detestable life.”20 Above all he rejected all that was “modern.” The army and increasingly the church represented a French tradition that was permanent, even eternal, in opposition to the forces of change and progress. “Progress is one form of Americanism,” he has his protagonist of L’appel des armes complain, “and Americanism disgusted him.”21 In another passage he has two generations confronting one another. He wrote, “By a kind of transmutation of values, it was the father who represented the present and the son who represented the past, the son who turned toward history and the father who appealed to the future” in the name of progress rather than tradition.22 Rejecting his father’s scientific materialism, Psichari was almost ready to embrace the church, but struggling with his own conscience and knowing the pain that his conversion would cause his father and his mother as well, Psichari hesitated until the eve of his return to France at the end of 1912. In August he wrote to Mme. Favre that tradition rather than dogma attracted him to the church, and in a letter to Maritain two months earlier he admitted that he still lacked faith and Divine Grace.23 Then, on the eve of his return he wrote to Maritain that his days of meditation in the desert had brought him to God.24 In the crucial first weeks of 1913 he would find the faith and Divine Grace that would bring him fully, passionately, and unconditionally into the church. While he turned for support to Jacques Maritain during these crucial days, he also found consolation and support from Maritain’s older sister, whose marriage a decade earlier had left Ernest Psichari broken and despondent. Jeanne Maritain had a daughter from her marriage, but she had separated from her husband and had turned 18

  Ernest Psichari to Monsigneur Jalabert, bishop of Senegambia in Dakar, 1912, in Lettres du Centurion, 233, cited in Weber, “Psichari and God,” 24.

19

  Cited in Peyrade, Psichari: Maître de grandeur, 24.

20

  Ernest Psichari, Voyage du Centurion, in Lettres du Centurion, 42.

21

  Ernest Psichari, L’appel des armes, in L’appel des armes. Lex voix qui crient dans le désert, vol. 2 of Oeuvres, 25.

22

  Ibid., 93.

23

  Letters of 26 August 1912 and 15 June 1912, in Lettres du Centurion, 230–31, 224–27, cited in Weber, “Psichari and God,” 24–25.

24

  Ernest Psichari to Jacques Maritain, December 1912, in Lettres du Centurion, 239.

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toward the church for spiritual guidance. During his time in Africa, Ernest Psichari always had carried with him a small photograph of her. Upon his return from Mauritania at the end of 1912 he found her transformed by her faith, and she asked him to join her in prayers for his conversion.25 Psichari’s sister claimed that there was some thought of marriage, since Jeanne Maritain’s marriage had been only a civil ceremony that had not been sanctified by the church. Ernest Psichari, whatever his emotions, respected the institution of marriage as indissoluble, even if it were outside the church.26 Their relation resumed but in a purely spiritual sense, and Psichari always referred to her as “my beloved friend” and thought of himself as her spiritual brother. But he did convert. He decided to take up the faith that his father and his grandfather had abandoned. On 4 February 1913 Psichari read his confession of faith in a small chapel in the Maritain household where he received the benediction of the priest present. He also received absolution and was assured that his Greek Orthodox baptism was valid, something that he had questioned during his time in Africa. The following Saturday he became confirmed by Monsigneur Gibier, the bishop of Versailles. The next day he took his first communion. Father Clérissac, a Dominican who had been a major guiding spirit for Psichari, said mass, and Jacques Maritain assisted. That afternoon under a brilliant sky they made a pilgrimage to Chartres.27 Ernest Psichari’s conversion to the Catholic faith was complete and wholehearted. Almost immediately his spirit was tested by a family crisis. Upon his return from Mauritania in December, he had discovered to his sorrow that his parents were getting a divorce. The cause was Jean Psichari’s affair with a younger woman. The previous summer the senior Psichari had taken a cure where he met a twenty-year-old music student, Irene Baume, and fell deeply in love with her. He was so smitten with his young mistress that he had the audacity to invite her to Rosmapamon, the Renan home in Brittany where the family spent their summer vacations. Noémi could not put up with this blatant insult, and she asked for a divorce. This was not Jean’s first infidelity. He earlier had had an affair with a servant at Rosmapamon. The woman died young, and Jean had composed an epitaph in Greek, “komaso kala,” or “sleep well,” for her headstone. The divorce caused a scandal. Most of their friends understandably blamed and turned their backs on Jean Psichari, taking the side of Noémi. This family crisis, coming at the very moment of his conversion, tested Ernest Psichari, who retained strong emotional ties to his family. He was torn between respect for his father and tender affection for his mother. Whatever pain it cost him, he chose to stay with his mother. He wrote to Maritain that on the Sunday when he accompanied his father to the gate of the house on rue Chaptal he had “truly seen the depths of human misery, 25

 Pédech, Ernest Psichari, 169.

26

  After his conversion, Ernest Psichari asked that Jeanne help him “walk the difficult path” where God had called him and called upon her to follow as well. He concluded this letter by referring to himself as “your brother forever.” See Ernest Psichari to Madame T…, 20 February 1913, in Lettres du Centurion, 243–45. 27

 Pédech, Ernest Psichari, 162–64.



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and since then each hour has been poisoned, terrible.”28 His mother had become “an elderly, abandoned woman,” and he remained constantly at her side. As a sign of her bitterness over her husband’s betrayal, his mother resumed her premarriage name, Noémi Renan. Ernest regretted that his mother in her misery could not be consoled by his newly found faith, and he feared that the announcement of his conversion might add to her despair. When he told her of his conversion during this “long and miserable week” following Jean Psichari’s departure, she was sympathetic to his decision and told him that what he had done was right if he believed that faith was necessary for him. She then gave him the golden cross of his Orthodox baptism, which he wore constantly and was with him when he was killed in battle in August 1914.29 In an effort to distract her, he accompanied her on a tour in Belgium during Holy Week. After his post-African leave ended, Ernest Psichari rejoined his garrison in Cherbourg. His religious odyssey would continue, culminating in his initiation into the Dominican Order. The discipline and asceticism of the Dominicans appealed to Psichari. His decision to enter the Dominican Order marked a decisive turn toward the church and a step beyond his earlier commitment to the traditions of the army. Still, he intended to continue active military service, expecting to be sent to Morocco in October of 1914 while he prepared for a further advancement in the Dominican Order. He also completed his work on Voyage du Centurion, which he regarded as a kind of repentance for his previous work, L’appel des armes, which he considered not sufficiently devout since it was written before he had turned fully to the church. Nevertheless, the book won great critical acclaim, particularly among those close to the Action Française and its editor, Charles Maurras, and a number of Catholic writers also praised it. This would be his final work, and he would never make the next step in his religious vocation. Whatever the future might have held, Psichari had completed his pilgrimage toward an absolute devotion to France’s military and religious heritage. He would give his life in the service of this national devotion. His friend Massis would later claim that Ernest Psichari had died on the Western Front in order to expiate the sins of his grandfather, Ernest Renan.30 His sister, Henriette, denied that he had sought a martyr’s death and redemption or revenge for the sins of his grandfather (or his father, for that matter). This assumption distorted Ernest Psichari’s relationship to his grandfather, Henriette claimed, since Ernest had greatly loved Renan and admired the searching quality of his thought. According to her recollection, Noémi Renan saw a connection between her father and her son in their uncompromising search for truth. From Africa Ernest Psichari had complained

28

  Letter to Jacques Maritain, 25 February 1913, in Lettres du Centurion, 246, quoted in Massis, Notre ami Psichari, 170.

29

 Pédech, Ernest Psichari, 165–66.

30

  Richard Griffiths, The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature 1870–1914 (London: Constable, 1966), 217.

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of the harm that Anatole France had done to his grandfather’s memory.31 In any event, Ernest disliked being used in polemical controversy, and in 1913 he took exception with a priest who said that his grandfather would roast in Hell.32 When Father Clérissac assured him that it would be up to God to pass judgment on Renan, Ernest was reassured that his grandfather was not entirely lost. On the eve of the war Ernest’s father, accompanied by his young, second wife, had returned to Greece on a mission connected with his scholarly work. War broke out, and shortly after his return from Greece, Jean Psichari learned of his son’s death on the battlefield. Although they had been at odds intellectually and spiritually, the death of Ernest deeply affected Jean Psichari. In 1915 he published a poem in honor of Ernest, “Au fils tué à l’ennemi,” in which he gave vent to his grief. The death of his son was a lesson for the father that brought Jean Psichari closer to a rediscovery of his own faith. Jean Psichari’s grief further deepened upon news of the death of his second son, Ernest Psichari’s younger brother Michel, who fell in battle in Champagne in 1917 after having survived and been decorated for his exploits during the battle over Verdun in 1916. The brothers, although different in temperament, had shared a common interest in the military and in the intense spirit of French nationalism and taste for action that had developed among their generation before the war. Once again Jean Psichari expressed his sorrow in poetry, “Au second fils tué à l’ennemi” (1919). These losses deeply affected and greatly changed Jean Psichari. No longer the radical agnostic, pacifist, and detached “scientific” intellectual of the 1890s, Jean Psichari became an ardent, emotionally passionate nationalist. In the poem to his son Ernest he expressed his understanding and sympathy with his son’s spiritual quest, and in this poem and his poem to his second son killed in battle, he gave expression to his sympathy for the nationalism of the younger generation. Jean Psichari’s nationalism assumed a bitterly anti-German direction at the end of the war. His was among a minority five votes (out of thirty-three) that called for the exclusion of those German members of the Linguistic Society who had signed the petition of German intellectuals supporting the war effort.33 After the war, Jean Psichari’s intellectual and literary associations also changed. Like his son, Ernest, the elder Psichari drew close to the ultranationalistic Action Française and began writing for it. He admired conservative Catholic writers such as Paul Bourget. In his turn toward a staunch nationalism, his trajectory followed that of such illustrious republicans as Georges Clemenceau, who had evolved from a leading Dreyfusard and supporter of a radical, secular republic into the prime minister who drove France to victory in the last year of the war. Jean Psichari had fully approved of Clemenceau’s crackdown on advocates of a negotiated peace with Germany during the war, often turning against former political allies of an earlier time. Jean Psichari’s 31

  Henriette Psichari, citing from her brother’s unpublished “Pensées à dos de chameau,” in Ernest Psichari, mon frère, 208–09. 32

  Ibid., 210.

33

 Constantoulaki-Chantzou, Jean Psichari, 136.



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intellectual evolution toward nationalism and a questioning of the values of his own generation would be recorded in his postwar novel, Soeur Anselmine (Sister Anselm). This novel represented a return to fiction after a twenty-year absence punctuated by his poetic interlude of the war years. It marked a spiritual and personal turning point for Jean Psichari. Through the voices of two friends, a middle-class intellectual and an aristocratic man of letters, Jean Psichari reinterpreted his own spiritual and intellectual odyssey and that of his generation, which had witnessed both the war and the defeat of 1870–71 as well as the costly victory of the war of 1914–18. The plot bears resemblance not only to Jean Psichari’s life, but also to that of his eldest son, Ernest. The main protagonist is the bourgeois intellectual, André Pauron, who is a voice for Jean Psichari. Pauron is attracted to the younger sister of his aristocratic, literary friend, Jean de Warlaing. The two friends are poets who are admirers of the Parnassians, and they are also rationalists of their time, despite de Warlaing’s early education with the Jesuits. André chided his companion for his attending mass to please his mother for sake of appearances. As for the sister, despite André’s free-thinking, he admires what he perceives as an ideal piety in her devotion to her prayers, calling her “an angel of nature.” He considered her to be an ideal wife and mother, but he turned elsewhere and married Sophie, a non-believer whose intellectual certainties separated her from the spiritual torments of his friend’s sister, Anselmine. Devoting himself to his studies and a university career that followed, he distanced himself from Anselmine and even from her brother, Jean, who suffered from an illness that brought his premature death. André’s marriage to Sophie can be seen as a key to Jean Psichari’s own marriage to Noémi Renan, and intended as a narrative of Jean Psichari’s own intellectual and personal development. On the eve of war, André became increasingly dissatisfied with his life, constrained by the narrow rationalism of his household. Increasingly he felt separated from his wife, as if they were two individuals living apart. What separated them was André’s continued passion for poetry and writing and his impatience with the scientific, philological, and university environment. He blamed Sophie for ignoring his imaginative side and for drawing him away from the literary environment of his life before they were married. He no longer wanted to restrict himself to the life of a professor, but longed to escape into the world of poetry, fulfilling his long dream of a life in literature. Seeking to distance himself from Sophie, he traveled to England in search of English authors. When war erupted, André returned to France. Before his death, André’s friend, Jean de Warlaing, had asked his sister to send a book to André, which reflected his own turn toward a spiritual longing as he faced death. At that time both brother and sister had lost track of André, and the book with its message went undelivered. In the meantime, Anselmine married, but when she was left a widow not long after her marriage, she entered a convent and devoted herself to pious thoughts and charitable deeds. Only when André published a book in 1916 was she able to locate him and deliver the book as her brother had requested. Suddenly André, who had been depressed by his own personal life and greatly upset by the war, having turned strongly nationalistic in his views, found himself renewed and rejuvenated in the presence of Anselmine. In the twilight of his life, André found

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a new love, not the love of passion but a tranquil and serene love and a calm sense of renewal and purpose at the end of his life. Anselmine brought him a sense of spiritual renewal and emotional tranquility. He no longer found the company of priests disturbing. Instead, he sought them out. The spiritual climax of Soeur Anselmine comes rather melodramatically when André experiences a very high fever and fears that he is to die. He recovers, however, and with his recovery comes his faith and a new sense of Charity. This leads him to an awareness of a certain reality in the aftermath of a fratricidal war that was “‘a historical truth, a moral truth, a necessary truth,’ a French truth, which was the Catholic Church. That was his only reality, the only true lifeline.”34 In this thinly disguised autobiographical novel, Jean Psichari visited the events of his own life that had given him a certain direction. As his biographer notes, Jean Psichari’s postwar novel, Soeur Anselmine, and its message of renewal, nationalism, and faith, contrasted and made a diptych with his novel from the 1890s, La Croyante, which was harsh in its antireligious, anti-Catholic message. By the time he published Soeur Anselmine, Jean Psichari, changed by the hatred and cruelty of the war, seemed to achieve a kind of spiritual, philosophical balance.35 He left behind the turbulence and passionate debates of the Dreyfusard years to seek a spiritual and moral serenity upon which to rebuild a new sense of order after the trauma of the war. In this way, the message of André Pauron/Jean Psichari was also a national appeal for the French to overcome their differences, particularly in religious matters, that had divided them for half a century. If Soeur Anselmine marked a personal turning point for Jean Psichari and a return to literature, his second important postwar work revealed a philosophical evolution away from the intellectual legacy of Ernest Renan. The celebration in 1923 of the centenary of Ernest Renan’s birth was the occasion for Jean Psichari to rethink his relationship to this towering figure of French intellectual history. The publication of Ernest Renan–Jugements et Souvenirs was both a personal and a critical account of Jean Psichari’s relationship to his famous father-in-law. In his preface to this book, Jean Psichari warned the reader that this would not be a book like others on Renan. It would be less eulogy or appreciation than a reconsideration of Renan as a writer and as an influence upon Jean Psichari and his own career. His study and memory of Renan would reveal his turn from his self-description as “the old fountain of positivism” of the 1890s to a person who was more in awe of the unknown in the universe than certain about the prospect of knowing all the truths of the material world. He recalled his early relationship with Renan before his marriage to Noémi. In an early encounter shortly after passing his university examinations, he expressed his enthusiasm for French literature, particularly the golden age of the seventeenth century. He wanted to join the great writers and carve his own niche in the pantheon of French letters. Renan quickly discouraged him from thoughts of a literary career by attacking the

34

  The plot of this novel, to say the least, is a bit forced. The account is based upon ibid., 141–45. 35

  Ibid., 145.



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craft of fiction as a form of lying. Fiction was subjective, and from Renan’s scientific perspective, this was falsehood, not the search for truth. Renan’s was a dictated judgment that caused the young Jean Psichari to abandon thoughts of a literary career and take up philology, employing Renanian skepticism and scientific methods in the study of the Greek language.36 Renan strongly supported him in this direction, and Jean Psichari became his disciple, although the two had quite different temperaments, with Renan the more detached philosopher and Jean Psichari the more emotionally engaged crusader for a cause, a person of passion as much as one of objective, detached reason. Jean Psichari tried to reconcile the scientific and poetic in an essay that appeared in La Nouvelle Revue in 1884, which was a defense of the Parnassians, titled “La Science et les destinées nouvelles de la poésie.” He maintained his friendship with Leconte de l’Isle, whose writings he recommended to his son Ernest. There was little doubt about the consequences of Jean Psichari’s scientific approach to linguistic analysis, however, and in this sense modern Greek letters owes at least an indirect debt to the influence of Renan. Jean Psichari’s work led to a revolutionary transformation of Greek into the modern language that made possible the works of Kazantzakis, Sefaris, Elytis, and others among the remarkable lexicon of writers who shaped Greek literature in the twentieth century.37 The result was that in Greece, Ioannis Psycharis became as famous, influential, and controversial an individual as Ernest Renan had been in France.38 Although he accepted Renan’s advice, Jean Psichari still longed for an outlet that would enable him to exercise his imagination and express the emotional side of his nature. In 1891 on the eve of Renan’s death the following year, Jean Psichari took his first step toward liberating himself from Renan’s shadow when he published a work of fiction, Jalousie. As Jean Psichari’s biographer notes, this was a brief act of defiance on the part of a “son” (or son-in-law) releasing his own personality from a more famous elder. Here, of course, was a parallel with Ernest Psichari’s act of liberation from both his famous father and his even more famous grandfather. Yet this disobedience did not have an immediate sequel. Only with the war and its aftermath was Jean Psichari prepared to confront Ernest Renan. One of his objectives in writing Ernest Renan–Judgements et Souvenirs was to demolish what he regarded as the “negativism” in Renan’s thought, the constant skepticism and doubting. In so doing, he argued that Renan was in reality something of a mix, a cross between Voltaire and Chateaubriand, a rather strained juxtaposition but one that revealed his desire to find common ground for reason and faith. Another way of doing this was to stress Renan’s literary style as a writer alongside his strengths as a scholar. In so doing, Psichari opened up another controversy among Renan supporters and scholars who felt that Psichari was distorting Renan’s message as a result of his own intellec36

  Ibid., 173–74.

37

  Hommage à Jean Psichari, 17.

38

 Constantoulaki-Chantzou, Jean Psichari, 173. Constantoulaki-Chantzou also notes that Jean Psichari had many supporters and many enemies in Greece, just as Renan found advocates and severe critics, particularly from the Catholic Church, in France.

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tual and spiritual transformation. Jean Psichari’s biographer justifies his critique as making possible a more critical look at Renan, claiming that at the age of Ecclesiastes Jean Psichari could be permitted a judgment on his intellectual “father” without abandoning his filial respect. Yet Jean Psichari, as we have seen, had moved away from the rationalism and skepticism of the Dreyfusard years. In his twilight years he turned toward a spiritual order and regained his faith. The decisive influence upon him was no longer Renan but his own son, Ernest Psichari. His wartime poem in eulogy to the fallen soldier had been sympathetic to Ernest Psichari’s passionate quest of the immediate prewar years that had led him to the Catholic Church. As he put it in his reminiscences of Ernest Renan, it had been his son Ernest who had awakened his own faith and had exposed the shortcomings of Renanian rationalism. Jean Psichari now possessed the same commitment to order and spiritual certainty that his son had sought. He recalled that when he was sixteen he had nearly entered the order under the influence of a Dominican Father Didon. Now he returned to religion, and he had embraced the nationalism of the Action Française, admiring nationalistic and Catholic writers such as Maurice Barrès or Paul Bourget. Jean Psichari also embraced the doctrines of action in opposition to the reflection and detachment of reason. In this further distancing from the ideals of the Renanian generation, Jean Psichari reconsidered the pacifism that fed the antimilitarism of that generation’s ideology. Of course, the experience of the war and the tragedy of losing his two sons played an important part in this re-evaluation. He claimed that Renan’s spirit was inclined toward peace, but Jean Psichari argued that law as a guarantee of peace was a fragile instrument and had to be backed by force. The contrast in outlook toward questions of war and peace, reason and passion, to be found among the three generations, Ernest Renan, the grandson, Ernest Psichari, and the father, Jean Psichari, may be seen in three differing visions of the Acropolis and the spirit of Athena. In Ernest Renan—Jugements et Souvenirs, Jean Psichari turned to Renan’s “Prayer on the Acropolis” (“Prière sur l’Acropole”) and essentially revised Renan, producing a quite different interpretation. The Great War and the events in Smyrna in 1922, which led to the expulsion of the Greek community, led him to consider that Athena as a symbol of Justice had also something of the warrior spirit that was essential to the goddess of reason and justice. For France and for Greece, justice and the law could only be assured by force. Rather than a prayer to reason, Jean Psichari argued that his son, Ernest, “would have prayed differently on the Acropolis.”39 There is no doubt that Ernest Psichari’s vision of the Acropolis and its symbolism differed from Renan’s. Henriette Psichari noted that while Ernest Renan and Ernest Psichari shared an uncompromising search for truth, Ernest Psichari’s prayer would not be to the apostle of reason and wisdom that Renan had found in the Acropolis, but to the “mystical rose, a house of gold, … the morning star.”40 By the time Jean Psichari approached the end of his life, his vision of the Acropolis as the embodiment of wisdom, 39

  Cited in ibid., 181.

40

  Henriette Psichari, Ernest Psichari, mon frère, 142.



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reason, and justice was closer to the mystical one of his son than the rationalist one of his father-in-law. He admitted as much when he confessed that his two sons, Michel as well as Ernest, had opened him to unexpected points of view. Constantoulaki-Chantzou has argued that the nationalism that Jean Psichari embraced after the war and his admiration for the traditions of the Catholic Church anchored him firmly in French soil. But how firm was his attachment to France, and was he not rooted in two soils? Jean Psichari was at the crossroads of both French and Greek culture, French by education and Greek by birth. At the end of his life he turned not to the faith of the Catholic Church but returned to that of Greek Orthodoxy. Following his last trip to Greece in 1925, he prepared to face death, which would come four years later. He chose to be buried according to the Greek Orthodox rite and asked that his tomb be placed on the island of Chios facing Asia Minor.41 Jean Psichari participated in two intellectual and spiritual worlds, but on the French side he has remained in the shadow of both son and father-in-law, while he has stood as a towering figure for the culture on whose soil and in accordance with whose traditions he was buried.

41

 Constantoulaki-Chantzou, Jean Psichari, 216.

George Seferis and the Prophetic Voice Peter Mackridge

The significance of voice in George Seferis’s poetry is obvious right from its early stages. For Seferis (1900–71), as for all adherents of the Greek demoticist movement, the living voice was of supreme significance for the creation and reception of poetry and for human communication in general. As early as 1936, Seferis wrote, “Poetry that doesn’t invite the voice is bad poetry.”1 Fifteen years later (6 August 1951), in an unpublished letter to Philip Sherrard from London, he wrote: “[I]f you want to write a single word which sounds you must extract it from your guts,” and he went on to castigate those who are able only “to perceive printed characters on the paper; no wonder that they make no sense of anything.”2 These words bring to mind “certain old sailors of my childhood” in the poem “Upon a Foreign Verse,” who “used to recite, with tears in their eyes, the song of Erotokritos.” For Seferis, as for all Greeks until very recent times, the seventeenth-century verse romance Ερωτόκιτος (Erotokritos) was not a poem but a song, which had been handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. For Seferis, poetry was not a monologue but a dialogue between living people. In general, dialogue was a vital necessity for Seferis, whose essay entitled “Διάλογος πάνω στην ποίηση” (Dialogue on Poetry; 1939) only became a “Μονόλογος πάνω στην ποίηση” (Monologue on Poetry) after his interlocutor—his brother-in-law, the philosopher Constantine Tsatsos, had ceased to listen to him. In our technological world, communication by way of the living voice is becoming more and more scarce, as Seferis implies with reference to the recording of the voice on disk: “Is it the voice / of our dead friends / or the gramophone?” he wonders in one of his haikus. Seferis returns to the gramophone in the poem “Τρίτη” (Tuesday) from “Σημειώσεις για μια ‘εβδομάδα’” (Notes for a “Week”), where “on every disk / a living person plays with a dead one,” and the poet goes on to contrast the grooves of the disk with “the seams of the human skull.” As he writes sarcastically in the next 1

  George Seferis, Δοκιμές [Essays], 3rd ed. (Athens: Ikaros, 1974), 1: 33. The English translations of Seferis’s poetry in this essay are based on those by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard: George Seferis, Complete Poems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), but I have felt free to alter them where appropriate. All other translations are my own.

2

  Denise Sherrard, ed., This Dialectic of Blood and Light: George Seferis – Philip Sherrard, An Exchange: 1947–1971 (Limni, Evia, Greece: Denise Harvey, 2015). Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 281–92.

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poem in the same series, “Τετάρτη” (Wednesday), “our life is rich because we’ve invented perfected machines / for when our senses decay.” In the poem “Πάνω σ’ έναν ξένο στίχο” (Upon a Foreign Verse), the shade of Odysseus appears before the poet, “whispering […] words in our language,” and tells him “how strangely you grow into manhood conversing with the dead when the living who remain are no longer enough.” In this early poem the poet does not quote Odysseus’s actual words, but instead conveys them through reported speech. By contrast, in this essay I want to focus on cases where Seferis quotes the words of other persons, in direct speech, in order to express his views. It is well known that in his early poetry Seferis uses the voices of imaginary characters such as Stratis Thalassinos and Mathios Paschalis. Through these fictional characters Seferis was able to express certain emotions in a more objective manner.3 But Μυθιστόρημα (Mythistorima) too is a work for various voices—or for a voice that speaks in different tones—in which the poet plays various roles, among them those of Odysseus, Orestes, and Andromeda. It would be feasible to stage a theatrical performance of Mythistorima in which various actors spoke the dramatic monologues of the various characters.4 Mythistorima—literally “myth-story”—is the normal Greek word for “novel.” But, despite its title, Mythistorima is a dramatic poem par excellence. A note that Seferis once intended to accompany Mythistorima contains the following sentence: “My aim isn’t to write poems but to describe a character.”5 Even though in this note Seferis suggests he’s writing fiction, it’s clear that this multiple character speaks throughout the poem; far from being described, he presents himself to an audience as a dramatic character might do. A study of the role of the theater in Seferis’s poetry would reveal significant aspects of his poetics. But I do not propose to concern myself with this here; I will confine myself simply to pointing the reader to three relevant poems: “Saturday” from “Notes on a ‘Week,’” where the poet presents us with a Pirandello-like scene in which an actor does not know what role he is supposed to play (the indications are that it is Orestes); “Θεατρίνοι, Μ.Α.” (Actors, Middle East) from Ημερολόγιο καταστρώματος, Β΄ (Logbook II); and the section “Επί σκηνής” (On Stage) from Τρία κρυφά ποιήματα (Three Secret Poems). In his mature poetry Seferis makes increasing use of voices that do not belong to some persona or some alter ego of the poet, like Stratis Thassalinos and Mathios Paschalis, but to real (rather than mythological) characters, now dead, who possess some special authority and whose words carry particular weight. We can observe this 3

  See Dora Menti, “Στράτης Θαλασσινός και Μαθιός Πασχάλης: δυο προσωπεία του Γιώργου Σεφέρη” [Stratis Thalassinos and Mathios Paschalis: Two masks of Giorgos Seferis], Ποίηση [Poetry] 13 (1999): 188–204. 4

  It is characteristic of the Modernist aspirations of Mythistorima that Virginia Woolf’s “novel” The Waves, which is exactly contemporaneous with it (1931), also consists of the monologues of various characters.

5

  G. Giatromanolakis, “Η ποίηση-μοντάζ του Σεφέρη” [Seferis’s montage poetry], Το Βήμα [To Vima], 5 May 1995, quoted from Menti, “Στράτης Θαλασσινός και Μαθιός Πασχάλης,” 196.

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phenomenon especially in poems that were written in particularly critical historical and political circumstances. In such poems Seferis appropriates prophetic voices that comment on the situation of his time and in many cases warn of some impending catastrophe. Seferis was painfully aware that, like Cassandra, he had prophetic gifts that other people ignored.6 Thus, in the poems in Ημερολόγιο καταστρώματος, Α΄ (Logbook I; written 1937–40), he spoke about the imminent world war; in Κίχλη (Thrush; written in 1946), about the Greek Civil War, and in Ημερολόγιο καταστρώματος, Γ΄ (Logbook III; written 1953–55), about the liberation struggle of the Greek Cypriots and the intercommunal slaughter that accompanied it.7 The opprobrious description of Seferis by one of the Greek junta’s newspapers as “the old Smyrniot Pythian” after his famous public statement against the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1969—which indirectly prophesied the Cyprus debacle of 1974—was not wide of the mark. Despite this, however, and unlike the older poet Angelos Sikelianos, Seferis normally avoided displaying his prophetic gifts, at least in his own voice. Perhaps this was because he lacked Sikelianos’s faith and self-confidence.8 An exception is “Η μορφή της μοίρας” (The Shape of Fate), written during World War II, which ends with the following lines: Don’t ask, just wait: the blood, the blood will rise one morning like Saint George the horseman to nail the dragon to earth with his lance. We find an early form of the prophetic voice in “Ο δικός μας ήλιος” (Our Sun), written on 6 September 1937, a month before the creation of the Axis by Hitler and Mussolini. While the poet and his companion share the sun that conceals the violence and cruelty of reality, a woman shouts: “Cowards, / they’ve taken my children and cut them to pieces, it’s you who have killed them.” Here the poet and his like seem to 6

  As an official of the Greek Foreign Ministry, George Seferiadis had privileged access to information about world affairs. But in this essay I am talking about Seferis the poet, not Seferiadis the diplomat. By the same token, there is no evidence that Seferis himself actually heard disembodied voices. 7

  The late Th. D. Frangopoulos, writing in 1977 about the poet who “with his prophetic intuition that makes him see […] what is about to happen,” adds that Seferis had prefigured the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974: “It is no coincidence that the only two figures to whom whole poems of this collection are devoted, and who seem at first sight to lack an immediate connection with Cyprus, are Pentheus and Euripides, both of whom suffer a ferocious physical dismemberment. The poet (and maybe the diplomat) had a premonition of the partition [of Cyprus].” Th. D. Frangopoulos, “Ες Κύπρον: δευτερολόγημα πάνω στα κυπριακά ποιήματα του Σεφέρη” [To Cyprus: Second thoughts about the Cypriot poems of Seferis], in Καθημερινές τομές [Daily incisions] (Athens: Dioyenis, 1977), 29. I wish to thank my friend N. K. Petropoulos for bringing this passage to my attention. 8

  Edmund Keeley devotes an article to Seferis’s political voice in Modern Greek Poetry: Voice and Myth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 95–118. Keeley is more concerned with the message than the technique, which is what interests me in this essay.

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be held partially responsible for the violent actions that took place in the recent past because they were caught up in purely aesthetic concerns. Later, some messengers arrive after a long journey. The poet’s friend tells them to relax first and then to deliver their message, but they reply, “We don’t have time,” whereupon they immediately expire. Finally, the friend leaves, taking with her “the golden silk” that had veiled the reality of the world and thus enabling the poet to realize that the messengers were right: indeed, “we don’t have time,” since war is approaching and “tomorrow our souls set sail,” as Seferis puts it in a later poem, “Ένας γέροντας στην ακροποταμιά” (An Old Man on the River Bank).9 Later, Seferis uses prophetic voices that are not heard throughout the poem but are framed by the poet’s speech, as happens in “Our Sun,” except that now the voices belong to historical characters. Such voices belong to people who have some special relationship with the divine. In the prologue to his Modern Greek version of the Book of Revelation (1966), Seferis wrote: “The word of the prophet is the word of God, it isn’t his own. Sometimes it may be transmitted to him without the intervention of the consciousness.”10 Indeed, in some of his poems Seferis narrates the visitation of some voice that comes to him unbidden. In the final poem of Logbook II, “Τελευταίος σταθμός” (Last Stop), written on 5 October 1944, a few days after the signing of the short-lived Caserta Agreement between the Greek government of George Papandreou and the representatives of the resistance organizations, various voices of the dead are heard: the Old Testament prophets and St. Paul, the War of Independence hero General Makriyannis (who learned to write after that war), and a heroic soldier from the campaign against the Italians in Albania in 1940–41 named Michalis. The poet uses Makriyannis’s phrase “guile and deceit” with reference to the crimes committed in war in general, but especially, perhaps, the unjust actions committed both by the officials of the Greek government-in-exile and by those who remained in Greece. The poet goes on to introduce the motif of grass: Man is soft and thirsty as grass, insatiable as grass, his nerves roots that spread; when the harvest comes he would rather the scythes whistled in some other field. These lines are reminiscent of the words of Isaiah 40:6: “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.” At the end of the same verse-para9

  Perhaps because of the time when he was living, Seferis believed that every poem he wrote might be his last. See the words he wrote to Andreas Karandonis on 10 February 1950—words that he would have liked to address to their friend George Katsimbalis: “Chief, you must get used to saying that everything I publish is my last; and, if there’s anything more, you should know that for Seferis it’s an exceptional extension of time on behalf of fate, which has granted him a few extra hours.” See G. Seferis and A. Karandonis, Αλληλογραφία 1931–1960 [Correspondence 1931–1960] (Athens: Kastaniotis, 1988), 178. 10

  Η Αποκάλυψη του Ιωάννη [The revelation of John] (Athens: Ikaros, 1975), 10–11.

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graph we hear the pseudobiblical phrase, “A time to sow and a time to reap,”11 which announces “the time for payment,” implying that, now that the Greek politicians are returning to their homeland, unjust deeds will be punished. Two of these voices, then (that of Makriyannis and the pseudobiblical phrase), prophesy that justice will be done. At the end of the poem we hear the words of the soldier Michalis: “We go in the dark / we move forward in the dark”—words that imply that those who wish to do good are obliged to act without leaders and without compasses, simply following their consciences. It is significant that most of the voices heard in “Last Stop” utter phrases that are primarily oral and only secondarily textual.12 Seferis’s “symphonic” poem Thrush was completed on 21 October 1946, the month that saw the announcement of the foundation of the “Democratic Army of Greece” and the official beginning of the Civil War. Thrush is especially rich in voices—quite apart from that of Odysseus, who is heard throughout, and those of Elpenor and Circe in part 2. At the end of part 2 we hear the voice of a government minister on the radio announcing the beginning of the war. It does not matter whether this is the beginning of the Albanian campaign in 1940, or the German invasion in 1941, or the Civil War: the poet is referring to the successive announcements of war that were heard during those unhappy years. It is no coincidence that the first fragment of the minister’s speech that we hear, “There is no more time,” repeats almost word-for-word the prophetic words of the messengers in the prewar poem “Our Sun.” In part 3 of Thrush the poet-Odysseus makes the last of several descents into Hades to consult the dead. There he hears various voices: first Elpenor, then Tiresias, and finally Socrates. After the Athenian philosopher’s words, which refer to justice, exile, and death, the first section of part 3 culminates in the lines: Countries of the sun yet you can’t face the sun. Countries of man yet you can’t face man. These words do not belong to Socrates himself, but they appear as the conclusion to what he has previously said. The preceding words, “only God knows,” perhaps imply that these two lines, with their prophetic style, belong to some divine voice. At all

11

  This phrase is reminiscent of the following: “A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted” (Eccles. 3:2), and “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7). 12

  Michalis’s words (see their origin in the diary entries of 11, 20, and 26 February 1941, in G. Seferis, Μέρες [Days] [Athens: Ikaros, 1986], 4: 23, 28, 30) echo a favorite phrase from St. John of the Cross that Seferis had already quoted in one of his essays: “He who is learning the finest details of an art moves forward in the dark and not with his initial knowledge, because if he did not leave it behind he would be unable to free himself from it” (“Monologue on poetry,” May 1939, in Seferis, Δοκιμές, 1: 154). Seferis had already recorded the same passage in his diary on 31 December 1931: Μέρες [Days] (Athens: Ikaros, 1984), 2: 34. It is characteristic of Seferis that he identifies the process of groping one’s way to artistic creation with groping one’s way through the moral maze.

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events, the transition from mythical characters (Elpenor and Tiresias) to the historic (Socrates) is worth noting.13 In the second section of part 3 of Thrush, however, the voices disappear: “[A] s the years go by […] you converse with fewer voices, / you see the sun with different eyes”;14 in this final section of the poem voice gives way to vision, even though we still hear the words of the Pervigilium Veneris: “[W]hoever has never loved will love”—“in the light,” adds Seferis. In Logbook III, by contrast, voices abound, as Seferis watches the wound of Cyprus fester because of the persistent refusal of the British government to grant the right of self-determination to the Greek Cypriots.15 The first poem of Seferis’s Cyprus collection, Αγιάναπα, Α΄ (Ayanapa I), represents a farewell to the Odyssean Nekyia. Here the poet-Odysseus realizes that during his successive visits to Hades over the years he has been unable to hear the voices of the dead, but has seen them instead. The voices he has encountered in Hades have proved to be unsatisfactory.16 At the fishing village of Ayanapa in Cyprus he sees, as if for the first time, the light of reality. (Compare the words from the immediately preceding poem, Thrush, which I quoted earlier.) From now on the poet ceases to descend to Hades to consult the dead; instead, the voices of the dead now come to him unbidden, in this world.17

13

  Roderick Beaton, George Seferis (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1991), 46, points out that while in his later poetry Seferis “is still seeking communication with earlier periods of Greek history, he is now doing it primarily through the written record, rather than through the primitive vehicle of myth.”

14

  On this point compare “you gaze at the sun, then you’re lost in darkness,” and “you see them in the sun, behind the sun” in the same section of this poem. 15

  Cf. the words of G. P. Savvidis, “Μια περιδιάβαση” [An excursion], in Για τον Σεφέρη [For Seferis] (Athens: Konstantinidis and Mihalas, 1961), 393: “It is, I think, worth noting how many otherworldly voices, how many whispers, how many disembodied or fleeting presences haunt every page of this collection.” Savvidis goes on to list the titles of ten out of the seventeen poems of the collection in which such voices or presences make themselves known. It is significant that in part 3 of Thrush the voices of the dead are described as “whispers,” just as in some of the poems of Logbook III.

16

  Giorgos Giorgis, Ο Σεφέρης περί των κατά την χώραν Κύπρον σκαιών [Seferis on the mischievous events ion the land of Cyprus] (Athens: Smili, 1991), 114–15, implies indirectly that when Seferis refers to the voices of the dead, he means the reading of texts. 17

 In Μέρες [Days], vol. 7 (Athens: Ikaros, 1990), 43 (diary entry of 28 February 1957), after describing his wandering through the streets of the New York neighborhood where his dead brother Angelos had lived, he likens his visit to his childhood home at Skala Vourlon in Asia Minor in 1950 to a “descent into Hades” and concludes that he does not want to repeat this experience.

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The voice that is heard throughout the poem “Ελένη” (Helen) belongs “to some Teucer or other.”18 Teucer’s voice is a rare example of a mythical (as opposed to historical) voice in Seferis’s later poetry. Usually the voices we hear in his Cyprus poems belong either to historical characters such as Neophytos the Cloisterer or to pseudohistorical characters such as the anonymous speakers in “The Demon of Fornication.” Even though Seferis occasionally quotes the ipsissima verba of the renowned dead, more often he places in their mouths either free paraphrases of their words or else words they never spoke at all.19 The poem “Νεόφυτος ο Έγλειστος μιλά–” (Neophytos the Cloisterer speaks–) is one of the two poems of the Cyprus collection that have a dateline (“Enkleistra, November 21, ’53”).20 This rare indication of place and date highlights the topicality of this poem. The other such poem, “Σαλαμίνα της Κύπρος” (Salamis in Cyprus) (“Salamis, Cyprus, November ’53”), also conveys a highly political message. It is no coincidence that Neophytos is a monk, since most of the voices that Seferis appropriates in his mature poetry belong, as I said earlier, to persons whose authority stems from a privileged relationship with the divine. Neophytos’s is another voice from the past that comments allegorically on the present situation. In his poem Seferis has the twelfth–thirteenth-century monk Neophytos speak about the sorry state of Cyprus under Western domination and foretell the punishment of those responsible. According to the Cypriot historian Giorgos Giorgis, in this poem Seferis makes “an associative transition from the first to the second English occupation.”21 At the end of the poem, using a highly ironic anachronism, Seferis has Neophytos appropriate the voice of the English national poet, who, in his turn, speaks through the cynical and disillusioned voice of Othello: “You are welcome, sirs, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!”22 —words that, for Seferis, reflect the contempt shown by the British imperialists toward the Cypriot people (i.e., that Cyprus is full of goats and monkeys).

18

  In the first draft of “Helen,” after the epigraph and before the main body of the poem, Seferis wrote: “Teucer, taking his cue from a phrase he heard, speaks.” Compare the title “Neophytos the Cloisterer speaks –” in the same collection. 19

  At the end of “Helen” too we note the reference to messengers, who announce “that so much suffering, so much life, / went into the abyss / all for an empty tunic, all for a Helen.” This poem was partly inspired by the failure of the struggle against Hitler’s evil empire to enable the peoples of the world to gain their freedom from other empires. 20

  In each case the dateline most probably refers to Seferis’s visit to the particular site rather than to the date of composition. 21

 Giorgis, O Σεφέρης, 119.

22

  For this poem, see Katerina Krikos-Davis, Kolokes: A Study of George Seferis’ “Logbook III” (1953–1955) (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1994), 72–84. With these words (using the singular “sir”) Othello welcomes Ludovico, who has brought him the order replacing him with Cassio, whom he believes to be Desdemona’s lover. In a letter written on 26 August 1954 to G. P. Savvidis, Seferis mentions that the Cyprus Tourist Board uses the slogan “You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus…,” and he comments that “the ellipsis makes you complete the line: Goats and

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In a similar way the voice that speaks in “Ο δαίμων της πορνείας” (The Demon of Fornication) comments on current events by paraphrasing the narrative of the fifteenth-century chronicler Machairas—the Cypriot equivalent of Makriyannis as the voice of justice in Seferis’s view.23 “The Demon of Fornication” is Seferis’s most Cavafian poem; according to Georgis, it is also the most political.24 The first 59 lines present, from the viewpoint of the counsellors, the events that culminate in the assassination of King Peter. The counsellors, driven by political expediency, opt not for “truth” (l. 1) or “right” (l. 45), but for “the lesser evil” (l. 46), thus condemning the honest Juan Visconti to death in a dungeon.25 Perhaps Seferis is referring indirectly to the political leaders of Greece who opposed the union of Cyprus with Greece, preferring the independence of the island as “the lesser evil” (according to this interpretation the Catalans with their fleet might represent the British). While the question of references to contemporary reality in Cavafy’s poetry remains contentious, there is no doubt that Seferis’s reading of Cavafy as a political poet helped him to become a political poet himself. At the end of the poem, in order to comment on the fate of King Peter, Seferis abandons the viewpoint of the counsellors and adopts instead the voice of an omniscient narrator. After informing us that the knights killed the king and the Turcopolier cut off “his member and his testicles,” the narrator concludes: “This was the end / appointed for King Peter by the demon of fornication”—words that sanction the just punishment meted out to Peter for his unbridled sexual lust after his discovery of his wife’s infidelity.26 In “Salamis in Cyprus” the poet narrates a visit to the archaeological site of Salamis at a time when, according to Giorgis, “Cyprus was a volcano waiting to erupt.”27 At one point, says the poet, “I heard footsteps on the stones. / I didn’t see faces […] / But the voice, heavy like the tread of oxen.” This is once again the voice of Makriyannis, which is heard in a Seferian paraphrase: Earth has no handles to be shouldered and carried off, monkeys!” See G. Seferis, “Κυπριακές” επιστολές του Σεφέρη 1954–1962 [“Cypriot” letters from Seferis 1954–1962] (Nicosia: Politistiko Idryma Trapezis Kyprou, 1991), 42. 23

  For the similarities between the careers of the civil servant Machairas and the civil servant Seferis, see Georgis, O Σεφέρης, 114–15; for Seferis’s disagreements over their attitude toward the common people, see ibid., 126. 24

  Ibid., 130 and 135.

25

  See Georgis (ibid., 139), who talks about the “political opportunism” and the “political amoralism” of the counsellors (152 and 164). 26

  For this poem, see Krikos-Davis, Kolokes, 84–94. Another instance of the just punishment of a tyrant is to be found in Seferis’s late poem “On Gorse,” where the voice that utters the moral is Plato’s.

27

 Giorgis, O Σεφέρης, 86.

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nor can they, however thirsty they are, sweeten the sea with half a dram of water.28 Here the words of the just general, who had a special relationship with God, are mobilized by Seferis to condemn the unjust attitude of British imperialism towards Cyprus. Makriyannis’s prophetic words are amplified through the addition of fourteen lines by Seferis himself, who places them in the general’s mouth: And these bodies [i.e., the Cypriots], formed of a clay they know not, have souls. They [i.e., the others, the British] gather tools to change them; they won’t succeed […]. Wheat doesn’t take long to ripen, it doesn’t take much time for the yeast of bitterness to rise, it doesn’t take much time for evil to raise its head, and the sick mind emptying doesn’t take much time to fill with madness— These last words echo Machairas.29 The disembodied voice finishes with the phrase “there is an island,” which Seferis quotes from Aeschylus’s Persians.30 Soon afterwards we hear a paraphrase of the prayer of the heroic Royal Navy commander Lord Hugh Beresford, killed by the Germans near Crete in April 1941, who prays God to make us remember the causes of war: “greed, dishonesty, selfishness, / the desiccation of love.” The second of the three causes presented by Beresford (δόλο in the poem) accords entirely with the words of that other heroic soldier, Makriyannis, quoted by Seferis in “Last Stop,” namely, “δόλο και απάτη” (guile and 28

  Makriyannis’s actual words can be rendered as follows: “For the earth has no handles for people to carry it on their backs, neither the strong nor the weak.” The source of the second pair of lines has been located by Xenofon Kokolis, Σεφερικά μιας εικοσαετίας [Twenty years of articles on Seferis] (Thessaloniki: Epikentro, 1993), 346–47: “And what’s he (the king) struggling to achieve? To change the religion of an exhausted and tiny nation—to take half a dram of water and throw it in the sea to sweeten it so he can drink it.” Kokolis adds that Makriyannis is here addressing the “interloping representatives of authority.” 29

  For the connections with Machairas, see Savvidis, “Μια περιδιάβαση,” 373 and 395. Also see Roderick Beaton, Ο Γιώργος Σεφέρης και η χρήση της ιστορίας: Μαχαιράς και Ημερολόγιο καστρώματος, Γ΄ [George Seferis and the use of history: Machairas and Logbook III], in Πρακτικά Συμποσίου “Λεόντιος Μαχαιράς-Γεώργιος Βουστρώνιος, δυο χρονικά της μεσαιωνικής Κύπρου” [Proceedings of the symposium “Leontios Machairas—Georgios Voustronios, two chronicles of medieval Cyprus] (Nicosia: Idryma A. G. Leventi, 1997), 107–11. 30

  “There is an island in front of Salamis” (Persians, 447); the islet in question is Psyttaleia.

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deceit), while the third word, ιδιοτέλεια (translating Beresford’s “selfishness”) recurs frequently in Makriyannis’s memoirs. It is however worth noting that, whereas Beresford himself spoke of “the lack of love,” Seferis speaks of “the desiccation of love,” which echoes the phrase “love’s dried up” in “Santorini,” a poem he wrote twenty years earlier. Here we catch Seferis placing his own words in the mouth of some authoritative dead person, and we see clearly that the prophetic voices that speak in his poetry are not purely external but are closely related to the poet’s inner voice. Toward the end of “Salamis in Cyprus” the poet assures his interlocutor that the messenger moves swiftly and however long his journey, he’ll bring to those who tried to shackle the Hellespont the terrible news from Salamis, and the poem closes with the disembodied “Voice of the Lord upon the waters” repeating the words of Aeschylus and the imaginary Makriyannis: “There is an island.” Thus the voice that speaks within the “apocalyptic and mantic atmosphere” of the poem, as Katerina Krikos-Davis describes it,31 is identified with the omniscient voice of the Lord.32 In this way the poet’s voice, by appropriating the words of the just Makriyannis and the words of God himself speaking through the mouth of David (Psalm 29), acquires “divine sanction.”33 It is significant that in “Salamis in Cyprus” we are dealing with a complex of seven voices (the psalmist David—and, through him, God, Aeschylus, Machairas, Makriyannis, Beresford, and Seferis himself) that are all of one mind. It is also worth noting that the simple Greek Makriyannis takes his place beside other prophets, just as the simple soldier Michalis in “Last Stop” utters words that echo those of the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross. In the lecture on Makriyannis that he gave in Alexandria and Cairo in May 1943, Seferis describes the Greek general as “the sure messenger of our long and unbroken popular tradition” who speaks “with the voice of many men.”34 We recall Alcuin’s saying, Vox populi, vox Dei. In the same lecture Seferis points to the remarkable similarity between the words that Makriyannis puts in the mouth of a Turkish bey (“We’ll be ruined because we’ve been unjust”35) and Aeschylus’s message in the Persians, that Xerxes was defeated at the battle of Salamis because of his hubris: he was punished by the sea because he had committed the “overweening act” of flagellating it. In this lecture we see clearly some of the first 31

  Krikos-Davis, Kolokes, 147.

32

  Ibid., 140–41.

33

  Ibid., 147. Krikos-Davis connects the “voice of the Lord upon the waters” with the references to the voice that is heard repeatedly by St. John in the Book of Revelation (1: 15, 14: 2, 19: 6; we find the same image in Ezek. 42: 2). 34

 Seferis, Δοκιμές, 1: 261.

35

  Ibid., 257.

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seeds of the poem “Salamis in Cyprus.” At the end of his lecture, having described Makriyannis as “a guide,”36 Seferis says: “The only thing we can do is to converse with companions who are known or unknown to us; to heed the messages.”37 Up to now I have noted that the words of other characters are quoted especially in poems that bear some relation to the contemporary political situation. By contrast, in poems where the political dimension is less obvious, such as the final section of Thrush, “Το φως” (The light), “Έγκωμη” (Engomi), and Three Secret Poems, we are dealing with a vision rather than a voice. Yet the voices that speak in Seferis’s mature poetry don’t always utter prophecies relating to the political situation. We see an instance of this in the earlier poem “Les anges sont blancs,” where Seferis presents Henry Miller speaking in mythological guise. In two poems of Logbook III the voices are reminiscent of the end of the poem “Sacred Way” by Sikelianos, where the poet wonders if there will come “a time / when the souls of the bear and the Gypsy / and my own soul […] will celebrate together,” whereupon “a murmur spread over me […] / and it seemed to say: ‘It will come.’” We find a similar metaphysical prophecy in Seferis’s “Memory II,” written after the death of two men named Angelos: Sikelianos and Seferis’s younger brother. Most of the lines in this poem, which Seferis was inspired to write during his visit to Ephesus in 1950, are uttered by a figure reminiscent of Sikelianos, who appears before the poet as he sits in the ancient theater. When the poet asks the figure whether “the empty shells” of the theaters “will […] be full again some day,” it replies, “Maybe, at the hour of death.” If this prophecy is uttered without any particular certainty (“maybe”) and without any particular optimism (“at the hour of death”), at the end of another poem from the same collection “Μνήμη, Α΄” (Memory I) we hear a voice expressing a more positive message. This message is not uttered entirely by the voice of one of the renowned dead, but rather by the inner voice of the poet, though in the fourth line the poet appropriates the voice of Christ: one morning the resurrection will come, dawn’s light will blossom red as trees glow in spring, the sea will be born again and the wave will again fling forth Aphrodite. We are the seed that dies. I am reminded again of the lecture on Makriyannis that Seferis gave during World War II: “[S]uffering like ours today cannot but lead to a great resurrection.”38 Finally, in the second poem that contains references to Machairas, “Τρεις μούλες” (Three Mules), the poet hears a voice speaking to him in a dream; this is the voice of Oum Haram, aunt of the prophet Mohammed, who died at Larnaca when she fell from her mule during a visit to Cyprus. The description of this voice is similar to 36

  Ibid., 256.

37

  Ibid., 263.

38

 Ibid.

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the description of Makriyannis’s voice in “Salamis in Cyprus”: “I heard the clatter of hooves like silver dinars / and it was as if she was crossing hills of salt / towards Larnaca, astride her mule.” The poet, then, not only hears but sees Oum Haram, who speaks in a whisper about her death. It is significant that the holy woman does not blame the mule that toppled her to her death: I was full of the will of God; a mule can’t bear that much weight; don’t forget, and don’t wrong the mule. As we have seen, in certain poems by Seferis a dead person addresses us with his living voice: such is the case with Teucer in “Helen” and with Neophytos the Cloisterer in the poem of that name. In “Μνήμη, B΄” (Memory II) the Sikelianos-like figure appears to converse with the poet. But even in those cases where the character who speaks is not visibly present, Seferis does not simply quote a passage from a text; on the contrary, in his mature poetry the old text is brought back to life and reactivated as a living voice. When personages from the past speak to us and offer us advice, Seferis implies, we have a duty—both to ourselves and to history—to listen to their voices.

The Thoughts and Uncertainties of Good Citizen Anestis Volemenos1 George Philippou Pierides Translated from the Greek by Donald E. Martin

During the past three years since I retired, cut off from the contacts that bind us all to the world of our colleagues, I have come to feel somehow that I am in a void, without support. For all the thirty-five years I spent as an official at the Bank, I felt that I was solidly based, that I was solid myself, that I had a place in the community (as a bank official), a job waiting for me every day, even if it was only that dull routine at the Bank. I had something to look forward to, as an individual—my career—but also as a member of a group—my colleagues at the Bank—in the periodic musters that we do for one reason or another. But now that I am idle for hours at a time, I remember again the words of Mr. Lekousiotis, that beloved teacher of ours back when we were in high school: “The psychological make-up of every person is a many-sided composite, a serious part of which is the role he plays in the community, either in the profession he practices or in his dedication to an art or whatever he adopts as his social mission.” We loved Mr. Lekousiotis because he stood out as a teacher, for his humanity and for that way he had of stretching the narrow confines of a course subject to relate it to life. If those words of Mr. Lekousiotis remain engraved on my memory, it is because you, my good friend Crito, spoke to me of them many times to emphasize their meaning. I was not particularly interested in wise words and theories. But I would listen to you closely whenever you became engrossed with such matters. And I felt a pride in listening to you reflect so clearly about these subjects just as we are proud of anyone who speaks beautifully and correctly, even if (or precisely because) he does not share our own way of thinking. You were the best student in our class, while I was among the middling. But that does not mean that I was short on brains. If I did not get into literature, as they say, it was because my thoughts work—and work very sharply—upon the practical side of The original Greek text appears in Ο καλός πολίτης και οι άλλοι [The good citizen and the others] (Athens: Nefeli, 2003). Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 293–305.

294 Translated from the Greek by Donald E. Martin

my life, the immediate goal of each instant, a goal that I very often reach. In that area no wise man could think better than I. Is not my success as a citizen of the community a proof of my shrewdness? How many of my fellow students who got into literature are successful today, as I am? And yet even today something beautiful moves me from within when I recall the friendship that bound us, Crito, and I see you standing there, fine, independent; though how prosperous a citizen you succeeded in becoming is a matter that time and distance have kept me from knowing. Actually, you helped me get through my courses and examinations. And I owe you a favor for that. You concentrated entirely upon your school work because you were thirsty for learning and thinking, while for me study was a boring business, a necessity for getting from one level to the next in order finally to get the longed-for diploma. I found what I needed in your friendly efforts to help me, while for your part I think you found satisfaction in helping a friend, a noble intention not often seen. And we were neighbors. We would sit and study together, more often at your house, which was poorer but more peaceful. Tasia, your older sister, would sit at her sewing or take care of things around the house, careful not to disturb our work. Your father, a tailor, was at work during those hours. Your mother was no longer living. My house was anything but peaceful, with Gregoris and Panayotis, my two younger brothers, either playing or fighting and hollering, and my mother yelling even louder when she got after them. My father was a grocer at the market place. As the first-born, I should have been named after my grandfather Grigoris Volemenos, according to tradition. But since I was born on the night of the Resurrection, my pious parents agreed with Father Neophytos to honor the Resurrection of Christ and baptized me Anastasios. Even my grandfather, a stickler about what he considered his privileges, thought it inadvisable to resist the ecclesiastical opinion and gave in. Fortunately, he lived to see his name restored when the second son was born and baptized Grigorios. –

—

Now that my work at the Bank no longer fills up most of my day and I can sit idle by the hour, memories of those years often come flooding through my mind. Vague, fragmented, incomplete memories jostle one another, and something impels me to take up pen and write; perhaps it is the necessity to put them into order, to restore their continuity and shape. And as I write I feel for some unknown reason that I am speaking to you, that it is to you that I am writing, Crito. Perhaps because all these memories are bound up with the role you played in them. I feel that my former self, just as I was back then, is emerging with these memories into the present, obliterating years and distance; that we are returning, you and I and the others, whom I recall one by one such as they

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were back then, returning, not as shadows, but as ourselves, palpable, given a new life. Strange! You left shortly after graduation and went to England to work wherever you could find jobs. At the same time you were studying at some university in London. History. We used to correspond regularly back then. That is how I found out that you married an English girl, Jennifer, and later had a child, a boy. As time passed, our correspondence thinned out, perhaps because we took different paths. At one point I got a letter from you from Melbourne, where you said you were settled and teaching at a school. I gathered that you had become an English-speaking teacher. What else could you do? You had to survive and take care of your family. You did not say that in so many words in your letter. I got it from the wearied tone that I sensed in what you wrote. I hope that I am wrong. –

—

At the Bank I discovered a professional pursuit that I found satisfying in two ways. It put me in with reputable members of society, and it gave me well-grounded hopes that if I pursued a career at the Bank, I would not be long in becoming comfortably welloff; in a position to obtain whatever I pleased and to live well (as in fact it turned out). That is what every sensible person wants most. That and one other thing: to stand out. To stand out from the rest, in his possessions, in the luxury of his house, in the ease with which he spends money and maintains a good life. Often we even call upon God in our prayers to fulfill these desires. (What is not in your interest is to stand out from the rest in the matter of ideas. You will be regarded as unsocial if they see you as thinking differently from them.) After this fine arrangement there remains only to spend your time pleasantly, to fill your free time and your thoughts with whatever suits your natural inclinations, as you see so many men and women of the upper crust doing. One will be a fan of the soccer games or the horse races, another will keep up with the latest fashions, others will socialize at teas and parties, another will play cards, another will be into organized philanthropy, and on and on. Our society offers so many easy ways for the good citizen to kill time, to enjoy a comfortable life, a clear conscience, and sound sleep. And the assurance that everything is going well or, if it isn’t, it will. Even including the persistent struggle to save Cyprus from the Turkish occupation. You will say, what do I contribute to this struggle? Well, of course, I contribute in my own way. I belong to the class of citizens who have to do with the economy. And everyone knows that our economic strength, our economic development is the prop upon which the struggle for vindication leans. And if fortune smiles upon me and I prosper, I am no less patriotic than anyone else. –

—

296 Translated from the Greek by Donald E. Martin

As for me, I became a devotee of the automobile: automobiles in general and my own automobile in particular, to trade in regularly for the newer model. When I was still at the Bank I would frequently spend hours in the morning on some of my days off washing and shining it. I still do when it needs it. But I especially like driving it and knowing that it gleams and stands out as one of the most perfect and most expensive. Of course, I could indulge myself in this satisfaction only after I was making progress at the Bank and commanding an appropriately increasing income. While we are on the subject, the automobile is not just a useful means of transport. If it was just that, they would not have to make it so costly and expensive to keep up. The luxury car is a jewel, as is a beautiful house, with its luxurious furnishings, a jewel that shows good taste and comfortable economic circumstances. –

—

As for my wife Erato, I can say that we live well. We have been married for over twenty-six years, and she has never given me reason to say that I regret my choice, even though I took her with no more dowry than her piano and a number of books. In spite of the difference in our ages (I was thirty-seven and Erato twenty-four when we were married), she has never shown signs of the flightiness often characteristic of young women. Nor have I any reason to be dissatisfied with the way she runs the household, her carefulness always to appear well dressed and affable, as befits a lady of the house in our class. However, I have a vague impression that she gives only a part of herself to her role as lady of the house, though she plays it with all proper care and graciousness. She has a strange way of being and not being present when we are alone or with company. It is as if the other part of her is concentrated somewhere else; I know not where. What can that thing be which she feels the lack of or which she used to have that got away? She did not have anything. She used to take care of herself and her mother by giving piano lessons to young beginners. Now she has whatever any sensible woman would want: a beautiful house, financial security, a friendly circle of acquaintances in the upper crust. She has never indicated any objection to the way I manage our life and well-being or to my automotive hobby. And yet she would sit right there next to me in the car and make it subtly clear that she was not really there, that she was not sharing in my pleasure. In the first years of our married life she would occasionally attempt to persuade me to read some book that she was reading and thought important, or to go to a concert or a lecture. To make her happy I would make the attempt to read, or I would go to some cultural event. But how could I go on doing that? I was bored with the reading and all the rest. I did not say that to her, but of course she knew it. Later came pregnancy and birth. Erato dedicated herself entirely to the child, the only one we ever had, Vathoula. And the only other concern she had thereafter for all those years, as I said, was her housekeeping and social duties.

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But I see that our daughter has my own down-to-earth character. She likes living well. She is beautiful, and she knows it. (Fortunately, she got her beauty from her mother: fair skin, brown hair, svelte figure, almond-shaped green eyes.) The year before last, when she was twenty-two, she took part in a beauty contest, but came in second. That put her way out of sorts. Her mother tried to talk her around, but when she saw her persistence, she backed off. But there was no going with us to the beauty pageant festivities. That was the only occasion she refused to go anywhere with me. For several days after that episode Vathoula was bitter and not at all nice to her mother. But even then Erato did not lose her composure. Vathoula is gone now. For a year she has been in Italy, where she is studying commercial art. She plans to go into advertising. She picked this area and her future career by herself. I think it is a good choice. Advertising is a wide-open and lucrative profession for anyone, man or woman, who has the means to open his own office and is sharp enough to steer at will the shopping tastes of the consuming public. Erato, for her part, tried to suggest something else to her daughter. Painting, yes, she said, good, very good, but real painting, real art. I know, mama, Vathoula answered; what you are calling real painting can be great art, but you have to dedicate yourself to it without being sure of success. I belong to my generation, and I prefer my security. –

—

Now that we are alone, Erato and I, we continue to live well and harmoniously in the way that I described. I have stopped wondering about the “other” Erato, with that closed-up self that seems absent when we are together. After all, as long as she does her duties and behaves properly, why should I worry myself about what appears to be her mental absence? Perhaps it is not the way I think it is. And anyway, I do my duty and more on her behalf, seeing to it that she lacks for nothing. She even has a maid every other day for the housework, in spite of the high wages charwomen demand. Naturally, the years have begun to weigh upon us both. But I appear—and feel— younger than my age. I usually spend the morning at my club, drive my car as before, drink a couple of whiskeys when we entertain or are entertained; in short, I continue to live my life as well as I can. Erato looks older than she is. Still, she has not left off sitting down at the piano once in a while. In the evenings she usually spends her free time reading or listening to something from her collection of music on cassette tapes. She plays it softly, and with the dining room between us, it does not bother me in the big living room where I watch TV. Rarely does she join me, and then only for as long as the program she wanted to see lasts. Why she picks that particular program off the daily TV menu only she knows. With the exception of children’s programs, which I do not watch, anything, or almost anything, that comes on the screen is for me an effortless way of killing the evening hours before bedtime. You sit comfortably in your easy chair and the little screen serves up in color and in substantial quantities whatever you want: love stories, travelogues, heroic exploits, crime, adventures, wars, and

298 Translated from the Greek by Donald E. Martin

on and on. And all this without tiring your mind. Television does your thinking for you. I am especially interested in watching broadcasts of automobile rallies, local or foreign. Even the advertisements are interesting when they show something new and improved: cars, furniture, appliances, etc., which one can buy, so long as there is money enough to replace the old one. Erato has two friends of her own age who occasionally come over to visit, now one, now the other. They are, she said to me, fellow students from back in high school, with whom she shares intellectual interests and unforgettable memories. So she said, rose from her chair, went over to the open window, stood there a few moments looking out, came back, sat down again in the same chair, rested her hands on her knees, and remained there hunched over. She smiled an afflicted smile. “And dreams,” she murmured as if talking to herself. Her usual way of being there and elsewhere at the same time. When Erato mentions unforgettable memories, she means the uprising and struggle of 1955–59, in which she was somehow involved, then a high school student. She does not speak often about that time of her life, back when, in the enthusiasm of her youth, she took part in demonstrations, handed out fliers, and probably carried out other assignments, and, like so many other boys and girls, encountered dangers and coarse treatment at the hands of the English military.… As I was then a good deal older and was working at the Bank, I looked upon these things from the outside, as did most people of my generation, some with empathy, some with pride, some with anxiety. But those kids were in the thick of things. They lived through them passionately. And they followed from up close the fighters who were only a bit older than they were, practically of the same age, and they saw the sacrifices that many of them made. And as for what she means by “dreams”… As if I didn’t have dreams myself! We all did—each one according to what he wanted out of life—back when we had not yet confronted reality. Some of us came to our senses and forgot our dreams, others not. They stayed in limbo. It is just that which I do not understand in Erato, who in other respects I see is a sensible person. Why does she not wholeheartedly get into the happy life I offer her? Now and then I worry when I remember that we married for love. I cannot say how much she loves me anymore, but I do love her. –

—

It was natural for us, too, to dream; I mean us fellow students in high school. This coming together in the first flowering of youth is for every generation the first experience of shared friendship—and the only one free from cares. And each one of them who made up the group would guard it as an ideal in his memory. But, come now! This ideal picture is only an illusion, an imaginary and lost paradise. Even then, before we scattered, each taking his own road, the harmony that united us (in spite of our wrangling over ideas and theories) was based on our ignorance of reality. For us at that time reality was what books told us. And the books did not always tell us

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the bitter truth, the truth that one sees when he starts fighting and compromising in order to stay alive. What reality did each of us emerge into and how did we confront it when we came out of the warmth of student life and took the road carved by circumstances? I never gave it a thought for as long as I was occupied with my work at the Bank. Only now that my thoughts have set out to unfold on their own has the question come up. And I am at a loss when I see that I am in a position to answer it for but few members of that group. Among the photographs in my drawer there is one of us in our last year in high school. In the front row, seated in chairs, are our teachers, some with feet planted on the ground, others with legs crossed. In the middle is our principal, wearing his permanently austere expression (I cannot remember him ever smiling). Behind the teachers, standing in three rows, each of the back ones higher than the one in front of it, were the students, all twenty-three of us, all male (in those days the schools were divided into the boys’ and the girls’ schools). I look them over one by one, their faces and expressions, recalling the names of each, his character, his manner, all that was needed to sketch a person connected with my school years. But out of the twenty-three posing in this photograph, each of whom thought that our friendships would last for the rest of our lives, how many can I trace down to the present? I study their faces one by one and name off Crito, Pieros, Nikitas, Miltos, Kotsos, Giosifis … that’s all. I do not know where any of the others is or what he is doing now. I did not expect there to be so few … I know perfectly well that forty-five years have gone by since then, but I have never given them much thought, and it seems only yesterday. Now I understand that forty-five years ago is not yesterday. And I reckon that all these fellow students of mine, whom I have preserved unchanged in my memory, just as they appear in the photograph, are now over sixty—those who are alive at all! For a while after graduation, a short while for some, longer for others, we had stayed close and accessible, even if we saw one another but rarely. Then fate took them one by one out of our circle onto other roads, to other places, where they would keep the rest of us deep in their memories just as we appear in the photograph. –

—

I was in charge of the Department of Deposits at the Bank. I was sitting at my desk behind the counter where the other employees of the Department wait on the customers. While busy doing paperwork and signing documents, I heard a woman’s voice call out to me: Anestis! I turned and whom do I see standing on the other side of the counter? Lovely Tasia, your sister, Crito. She had just come in and was taking her place in line. She was not young any longer, but her face, with its normal features, its calm, open expression and laughing gold-brown eyes, was preserved almost unchanged. Tasia was not beautiful, but her good nature, mirrored in her face, made everyone like her. She was wearing a grey dress, no jewelry, hair cut short, as many women who worked with their hands normally wore it. I was torn by two opposite feelings. I was pleased to see

300 Translated from the Greek by Donald E. Martin

Tasia and at the same time I was annoyed that a woman dressed so commonly called to me so familiarly in front of the customers and my subordinates. I got up from my desk and went over to her, I on one side of the counter and she on the other. “I’m happy to see you, Tasia,” I said. “I’m happy to see you, too, Anestis,” she said. “I didn’t know you worked here. I came to open an account to put my savings in. How are you, Anestis? It’s been a long time.” I was just as eager to chat with Tasia, to find out what was new with her, but I could not forget my position, dally about the business of the Bank, and stand around shooting the breeze with her. I found a solution. “Are you still at the same place?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, “I’m there with my husband.” “I’ll come over one day for a chat.” “Come in the evening,” she said. “Both of us work during the day.” I handed her over to the teller and returned to my place. I indeed went over to Tasia’s one evening. I met her husband there. They lived at the same common level as before and I gathered that they got along well thanks to Tasia’s ability to accept with good humor the circumstances of her life and to create a cheerful ambience for them. From the little she told me I gathered that they had gone through difficult times after her father’s death, but she did not hesitate to find work in a garment factory, first ironing then sewing on the machines, where she has worked ever since. I was impressed by her husband. I believe that they are a good match. He is a farmer, a refugee from Morphou. His name is Vasilis. Starting from scratch he set up an independent landscaping firm here in town: taking care of the gardens around private homes whose owners, usually well-off, have either no time or no inclination to do this work. He equipped himself with the appropriate tools, hoes, spades, clippers, saws; he had a phone installed, put an ad in the papers, and set out with the first call he got. “And did it work out well?” I asked. “Yes, it’s going well,” he answered. “Now I’m working almost every day and make a good living.” He was speaking quietly and looking straight at me with his grey eyes, shaded by thick black brows. Tall, lean, and sun-burned, he sat with his hands, two great, sinewy bands, resting on his knees. “Do you ever think about Morphou, your family home?” I asked. “That’s always on my mind,” he answered. “But what can I do but hope that we’ll get back. No matter what the situation you’re in, the first thing you have to do is to get a livelihood.” “Do you have brothers and sisters?” “A sister, widowed in the first year of her marriage. Her husband was killed in the invasion. He was in the army. She’s with our parents now in a refugee settlement.”

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And he said these things calmly, without raising his voice, his hands untroubled on his knees. I was impressed. –

—

As I said before, I am in touch with very few of my old school friends. Not because I want it that way; it turned out quite contrary to my expectations. It is life, harsh reality, and not ourselves, which marks out the road each of us will take. We scattered. And most of them are now beyond my own horizon—as I am beyond theirs. But I cannot say that even the few of us who occasionally meet do so in the same climate of fellowship we once knew. The roads we followed, the ambitions, the circumstances, all the many details that compose the inner horizon of each, were different. –

—

Pieros was one of the best students in our class. A shortish, slight fellow with large brown eyes and thick brown hair, he was dedicated to his studies, clumsy in sports and games. His clumsiness did not raise him up in our esteem, but we loved him because he was honest and guileless, so much so that he was gullible to a laughable degree. We thought he was, in a funny sort of way, a good and serviceable fellow. After high school he attended the College of Education for the two years then required, and came out a teacher. I did not come across him again until only the year before last, after we had both retired. But I used to hear about him from Aunt Myrto. She was my father’s cousin and unbelievably competent for a woman that fat and immobile. She succeeded in being well informed about what every one of her acquaintances was doing and going through; she knew exactly what was happening in every household. But she knew especially about Pieros, because she got him his wife. Aunt Myrto was absolutely set on the notion of finding spouses for the people she liked. She considered it a meritorious act. At one point she met Ismene, a girl who worked in sales at a clothing salon. She was a bit older, with a lovely dark complexion and a slender figure. She took good care of herself, knew how to dress tastefully, even though—or perhaps because—she had begun to fear that she might never get married. Once or twice she confided to Aunt Myrto her uneasiness and her secret hope that a good man would be found to make her his wife.… he would be her pride and glory. As was natural (and Ismene knew it) Aunt Myrto laid her plans for a meritorious act. She knew Pieros and was aware that he was a good person, eager to do the right thing, to help others. And she touched precisely that string of his heart to help Ismene and make her his devoted spouse. And good Pieros, touched not only by Aunt Myrto’s words but also by Ismene’s beauty and modesty, married her.

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But Ismene was not long in showing her other side. She praised the Lord, but only because he helped her find a husband. Then she began to hen-peck Pieros to have her way in everything. And good Pieros never thought for a moment that he might fight back. He just left himself in her power. That is the story of Pieros, as Aunt Myrto recounted it to me when I told her that I chanced upon Pieros after so many years and that I was struck by his appearing so aged, both physically and mentally. “His difficulties are eating away at the fellow,” Aunt Myrto informed me. “But truth be told, he has himself to blame, too. The man who gets involved with a stubborn woman has two ways to deal with her. One way is to pay no attention to her. The other is to come on stronger than she does and knock the stubbornness out of her. Our good Pieros could do neither. Instead, he buckled under and now eats his heart out because he did so. For as long as he taught, he found solace in his work. Everyone says he was a good teacher and loved his work. But now he doesn’t have that consolation and he’s ended up as you see him. Who’s to blame for him?” It never entered Myrto’s mind for an instant that she might be to blame herself, when she applied all her expertise to get Pieros married. –

—

Nikitas was the opposite of Pieros. The only son of a wholesale cloth merchant, ill-mannered, he respected nothing and no one. His whims were his only guiding principle. He was among the last in the class and he did not care. Somewhat short and stocky, with a square jaw and curly hair, he would carry his points by shouting more loudly that anyone else, even though he did not usually have the slightest idea of what the conversation was about. After high school his father sent him to London to one of the trade schools that they call “institutes,” where he took a two-year course in finance and returned equipped with relevant certification for continuing more effectively his economic studies in the business, under the guidance of his father. Now he directs the business (his father died long ago). He is a very capable wheeler and dealer, very rich, and, naturally, passes for very clever, even though his mental capacity—what he has of it—does not go beyond the confines of his business. He has a private office, closed off with glass paneling, in one of the corners of his gigantic warehouse. Two picture frames hang on the wall, one containing a photograph of his father, the founder of the enterprise, and the other his “diploma” from the London Economics Institute. I go once in a while to see him, just to pass the time. His conversation is pleasant, because he is well informed about all the shenanigans and gossip of the market place. And whenever he tells you something he thinks is funny, he breaks out in a great guffaw.

The Thoughts and Uncertainties of Good Citizen Anestis Volemenos

–

303

—

Miltos was our poet. He was writing verses even back in our high school years. He was a regular borrower from the literature section of the school library, taking out a book and returning it in two or three days only to get another. One would have thought that he was in a hurry lest he leave one unread. I could never understand that appetite for books. Sure, reading your lessons is necessary to get your grades, to pass your exams, but to read just to be reading—that I do not understand. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that most everyone in our class had interests differing from those that occupied Miltos, we liked him because he was friendly to everyone, and he was never swell-headed about his poetical proficiency or the praises he got from the teachers or his good grades. Even his appearance—skinny, with sparse, light brown hair and big, blue, optimistic eyes—made him likeable. He went to Athens to study literature, but lasted only three years. He had to do without to make it that far. His father, a supervisor at the public works, had had a stroke and was not in any position to send him the little money he did send. He came back, then, and has been living ever since, into his sixties, giving private lessons to the weaker students at the high school. In time he found a second occupation as a proofreader for a daily newspaper. A difficult life. Yet he remained just as he was back in high school, head in the clouds, trusting in humanity, as he says, and writing poems. (From what I hear, he is one of our most distinguished poets.) We see one another now and then, early in the morning, when I chance to be out in my garden, as I often am at that hour, and he is out for a walk. The apartment building where he lives is not far from my house. We stand around talking, sometimes on opposite sides of the garden fence, sometimes in the garden. We have friendly talks, but we each preserve our own way of thinking and of living. I am satisfied with myself and my way of life, and I would not exchange it for the way Miltos lives. What can he earn from his two jobs? Chicken feed. And for him to have a wife and a daughter Vathoula’s age! And yet he seems carefree, or so I gather from seeing him always calm and thinking about things unrelated to his personal circumstances. I picture him as dedicated to something he believes true and beautiful, unheeding of the very human instinct of self-interest. But in spite of the fact that I am sure his head is in the clouds, I like and admire Miltos. Is that not strange? –

—

Kotsos was full of life, a non-stop mover and shaker and general hell-raiser. He liked to be in charge and was almost always the one to speak up for the class whenever there was to be some showdown. He studied law, went into politics, and became a leading political figure. I follow him in the newspaper and watch him on TV whenever he happens to be on. He is, in fact, an able politician and a good speaker, especially when he forgets

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that he does not believe what he is saying. With his deep, official-sounding, somewhat gravelly voice and the way he has of emphasizing his words by flailing the air with his fist, he persuades you to believe what he says, since it is always in agreement with what you want to hear. –

—

Giosifis, nicknamed “Arab” from his darkish complexion, was always first in the religion classes. When his father sent him off to Athens to study, we thought he would take up theology. I have not had any communication with him since then. Our relations have never been cordial. I used to be annoyed by his dedication to whatever had anything to do with religion, and by his ability to look good in church with his show of zeal. Not that I am not in sympathy with him: I, too, think that every devout man with any sense knows that it is to his advantage to make a show of his devotion. Giosifis gets to me in this matter because he is better at it than I am. I was puzzled, then, when I found out that he returned as a doctor, and a specialist at that. After he graduated in Athens, he did two years of post-graduate work in a university in London on a fellowship underwritten by some Christian brotherhood. Back here he married very richly, thrived in his profession, built a palatial clinic, and got rich. Even though I still cannot stand him, I admit that he is a very competent man. –

—

A number of others stayed here to live, but since then we have met only on rare occasions, and I do not know much about their lives. Things change and circumstances arise for each of us which willy-nilly alienate us from each other as if we were not living in the same place. Minas entered public service initially under the English, and continued under the democracy. He went far, up to the level of director. Now he is retired, too. Tasos was in insurance. Now he is a representative of a large English insurance company and earns a lot of money. He even owns race horses. Louis, cute little Louis, who loved music and took piano lessons from our high school days, kept on playing until he passed the examinations that take place here in the British Council. He founded a music conservatory which he is still director of. They say that even today, at his age, he is still a stylish fellow. He never married. He lives with his mother, who is over eighty. For most of us Pambos was nothing more than a dreamer. He milked his ideas out of his favorite books, which he would read and then speak beautifully about social justice, equality, and other such things.

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He entered the work force as soon as he got out of high school, but did not apply his common sense. He did not think to stick to one job and get ahead. He just wasted his time writing and publishing in the press comments and polemics to defend his socialist ideas or to attack whatever seemed shady to him. Finally, he became a reporter and continues writing his articles up to the present with the same spirit and the same devotion. The only thing that he has acquired after so many years of work is the good reputation he enjoys among the common folk and part of the intellectua1 set. But if you looked at the matter dispassionately, how many of the commoners or the intellectua1s who agree with his ideas would be willing to overlook their personal interests or even to stop pursuing and working for them to the exclusion of all else? They all proclaim together their esteem for whatever contributes to the good of all, but individually each one sees to it that he comes off as well as possible. –

—

I study the photograph again and find it strange. I have no clue about the rest of them, where their lot placed them, where their roads took them, what they look like now. It’s impossible for me to imagine them as different from what I see right here in the photo, as if the forty years gone by had not existed for them. And strangest of all is that the disappearance of the passing years suddenly brings me, too, back to that time, to recreate it in my mind, or rather in my heart, to relive it as though it were yesterday, and to want it back. The good part is that such seizures of the imagination come over me but rarely and do not last long. I find my solid self again. And I am puzzled: what can it be that now and again compels me—me, the practical, successful man—to pine after those times when I was still young and green, and unaware of what I wanted. Here I am, satisfied with myself and with my life, and yet suddenly willy-nilly a cloud of vague feelings moves inside me, feelings I have long ceased to bother with. I am puzzled, but I do not find an answer. 1988

The Cyprus Question: International Politics and the Survival of the Republic of Cyprus Van Coufoudakis

This essay is dedicated to Theo Stavrou, a colleague, a friend, a historian, and a Cypriot par excellence. From his position at the University of Minnesota he promoted the study of Greece and Cyprus in the academy and the community. He taught courses, edited journals and books, and organized conferences and lectures on topics of interest to Hellenism. These activities have provided a most valuable service to those with interests in Modern Greek Studies. Moreover, Theo Stavrou contributed to the development of the University of Cyprus, the first public university to be established in postindependence Cyprus. For these and for his many other contributions we owe Theo Stavrou a word of thanks. This essay is about his homeland, Cyprus. It addresses the international dimensions of the problems that beset sovereign Cyprus and threaten its independent existence and cultural heritage. –

—

In 1959, the governments of Great Britain, Turkey, and Greece arrived at a series of agreements providing for the independence of Cyprus from British colonial rule. The London and Zurich agreements ended a four-year-long Greek Cypriot uprising against the colonial authorities. However, the anticolonial struggle was complicated by the Cold War interests of the superpowers, by political conditions in Greece and Turkey, by rivalries between the two countries, by the relations of each of the Cypriot communities to their respective motherlands, and by Britain’s divide-and-rule tactics. The London and Zurich agreements on Cyprus provided the rigid framework on which the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus was based. Eminent constitutional experts characterized the Cypriot constitution as unique and unprecedented1 because of the unusual veto powers reserved for the Turkish Cypriot minority and the difficulty of amending the constitution. Confidential American diplomatic as1

  Thomas Ehrlich, “Cyprus, the ‘Warlike Isle’: Origins and Elements of the Current Crisis,” Stanford Law Review 18, 6 (1966): 1021–98; also, see Stanley A. de Smith, The New Commonwealth and Its Constitutions (London: Stevens and Sons, 1964). Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 307–28.

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sessments2 accurately pointed to the likelihood of deadlock and long-term instability in the new republic because of these complicated agreements. This was indeed the case. Minority obstructionism3 led President Makarios of Cyprus to propose thirteen constitutional amendments late in 1963, which were rejected first by the government of Turkey and then by the Turkish Cypriots, who promptly withdrew from the government. By December 1963, intercommunal violence had erupted on Cyprus, threatening the stability of southeastern Europe and NATO’s cohesion, and opening the door to possible Soviet involvement. In view of the limitations imposed on the Cypriot republic by its guarantor powers, the government of Cyprus sought to consolidate its independence and sovereignty through its participation in international organizations and by actively maintaining diplomatic relations around the world. Thus, the crisis that erupted on Cyprus in December 1963 set in motion a number of policies whose fundamental assumptions are still affecting the evolution of this perpetuated dispute. One such policy is that of the internationalization of the Cyprus dispute. The government of Cyprus saw the United Nations and other regional organizations as a means of upholding the legitimacy of the Cypriot republic and its government and of safeguarding its sovereignty and territorial integrity, especially in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the Turkish Cypriots from the government of the republic, and Turkey’s military threats against Cyprus. In contrast, de-internationalization was the policy thrust of the United States, whose preference was for quiet diplomacy through NATO, or through a Greco-Turkish dialogue. Washington sought to protect and promote American and Turkish interests in the dispute,4 because Washington valued Turkey’s strategic importance in the region. Washington and other influential actors viewed the Cyprus problem through the prism of international and regional politics, thus distorting the internal dimensions of the dispute. This has been a constant in the evolution of the Cyprus problem. Since the independence of Cyprus in August 1960, successive Cypriot governments, against overwhelming odds, have had as their primary policy priority the maintenance of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the republic and the recognition of its government. Thus, the issue of the continuity of the Republic of Cyprus has been another constant in the evolution of this dispute. From December 1963 to the 1974 Turkish invasion, the republic survived despite threats to its existence which included the threat of a Turkish invasion, Turkish Cypriot secessionist activities, and the destabilization of the Cyprus government by the Greek junta. There were also diplomatic initiatives by the United States, NATO, Greece, and Turkey that sought

2

  United States Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Intelligence Report No. 8047, “Analysis of the Cyprus Agreements,” 14 July 1959. 3

  On this, see Stanley Kyriakides, Cyprus: Constitutionalism and Crisis Government (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968).

4

  A classic example is the rejection of UN mediator Galo Plaza’s 1965 report. This report is one of the most perceptive documents on the Cyprus problem.

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the limitation, if not also the termination, of the independence of Cyprus. These initiatives were justified as serving Western strategic interests in the region.5 Under the urgency of the situation a UN peacekeeping force (UNFICYP) was placed on the island in March 1964, under the control of the Security Council. Although significantly reduced in size, the UNFICYP remains on Cyprus to this day. Peacemaking complemented the UN’s peacekeeping activities under the good offices of the secretary-general. However, UN peacemaking initiatives were systematically rejected or undermined when they contradicted Washington’s objectives.6 In seeking a settlement of the Cyprus problem acceptable to Turkey, three other tactics were used: (1) the destabilization of the government of Cyprus by the junta ruling Greece (1967–74); (2) the fostering of Turkish Cypriot secessionist activities in Cyprus through the formation of Turkish Cypriot enclaves, funded and armed by Turkey; and (3) the threat of force against the sovereign island state. This included the bombing of Cyprus by the Turkish Air Force in the summer of 1964, and the threat of a Turkish invasion in June 1964 and November 1967. Washington was instrumental in stopping both invasions. In the 1964 incident, President Lyndon B. Johnson, apprehensive of Moscow’s warning to Turkey and reluctant to face another confrontation with the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, delivered an “ultimatum” to Prime Minister Inonu. It should be noted, however, that, as Dean Acheson’s 1964 Geneva initiatives showed, Washington disagreed not with Turkey’s objectives in Cyprus, but only with its tactics, which risked broader American security interests. The 1967 American intervention also took place at a time of regional instability, following a devastating Arab-Israeli war. Moreover, the concessions made by the Greek junta to Cyrus Vance appeared to satisfy Turkey. Why then did Washington and NATO allow Turkey to invade Cyprus in 1974? While the coup from Athens provided the rationalizations for the invasion, the absence of a Russian threat gave Henry Kissinger the opportunity to permanently change the negotiating balance of power in Cyprus and to satisfy Turkey’s long-standing demands on the island. The post-1972 detente with the Soviet Union and the Kissinger-Gromyko understandings about regional superpower interests made Soviet-American relations very different from those of 1964. Kissinger assessed the role of the Soviet Union during the 1974 crisis in terms of what the Russians did not do. Moreover, contrary to his attribution of the 1974 crisis to the Watergate paraly-

5

  Following the constitutional crisis of December 1963, Washington and London considered various peacekeeping and peacemaking options through NATO, through the replacement of President Makarios, and even through limited Turkish military actions in Cyprus. The chief architect of these policies was George Ball. Dean Acheson’s Geneva initiatives in 1964 and the Greek-Turkish “Lisbon Consensus” of June 1971 were additional examples of American-inspired attempts to limit or even terminate Cypriot independence. 6

  As in the case of the 1965 Galo Plaza report and the mediation initiative by Secretary-General U-Thant in 1971.

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sis,7 Kissinger had far greater opportunity to manipulate events without White House supervision. With nearly 38 percent of its territory under foreign occupation and its legitimate president in virtual exile, Cyprus had reached another fork on its tortuous road to independence. The Greek-sponsored coup of 15 July 1974 not only gave Turkey the opportunity to attain a long-standing goal, it also destroyed the agreement reached between the two communities on 13 July 1974 on the issues that had divided them since 1963. Needless to say, Rauf Denktash had consented to virtually all “thirteen points” that had triggered the 1963 constitutional crisis. In the aftermath of the Turkish invasion, Cypriot diplomats, with support from various foreign governments, the US Congress, and the Greek-American community, were able to gain Washington’s reluctant recognition of the continuity of the Republic of Cyprus and its government since the 1963 constitutional crisis. Even though Cyprus won this diplomatic battle, with all its important consequences for the long-term settlement of the dispute, this issue remains a major point of leverage for American diplomats. This is especially true in the aftermath of the 1983 Turkish Cypriot Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and the creation of the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the occupied areas. Another constant in the evolution of the Cyprus problem involves the relations between Athens and Nicosia. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Cyprus has been an issue affecting popular sentiment in Greece and, consequently, Greek politics. Cypriots consider themselves culturally and historically to be part of the Greek nation despite the island’s geographical distance from the Greek mainland and the unique characteristics of Cypriot culture. Successive Greek governments confronted the dilemma of the domestic political pressures created by each phase of the Cyprus issue, which was ripe for exploitation by Greek opposition parties, and in the post–World War II period complicated Greece’s pro-Western foreign and security policy. When forced to choose, Greece relegated the issue of Cyprus to a secondary priority. This trend persists until today, further providing a source of policy continuity.8 The Cyprus problem caused the downfall of many Greek governments. Thus, in contrast to the total dependence of the Turkish Cypriots on Turkey, especially prior to the last decade of the twentieth century, Greek Cypriots, despite their dependence on Greece, were able to influence Greek policies and politics. In turn, Greece, often acting as the Ethnikon Kentron (the national center of Hellenism), attempted to impose its policies on the Cypriots. This reached a climax when the junta ruling Greece (1967–74) destabilized and eventually overthrew the Cyprus government in a coup that provided Turkey with the pretext to invade Cyprus. The bitter aftermath of the invasion and the inability of the newly restored democratic Greek government to stop the second phase of the Turkish invasion in August 1974 brought relations be7

  Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 192–239, 330–43.

8

  The latest examples are the decisions surrounding the deployment of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system in December 1998, and the impact of the Greek-Turkish rapprochement on the current phase of negotiations on Cyprus.

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tween Greece and Cyprus to a new level of maturity. Each side gained a better understanding of the other’s limitations and commitments. Political elites in both countries viewed the invasion and occupation of Cyprus not as an isolated event but as part of the broader threat posed by Turkey’s revisionist policies in the Aegean and in Thrace. This required coordination, consultation, and cooperation between the two countries in diplomatic, economic, and military matters. Athens, publicly at least, defined its role as a supportive one, while policy decision-making was centered in Nicosia. A final element of continuity characteristic of the Cyprus problem has been the consistency of Turkish policy and its adaptation to the evolving international environment. The 1959 Zurich and London agreements formalized Turkey’s position as a party of equal interest in Cyprus. While Turkey adopted a strict constructionist view of the Cypriot constitution and of the degree of the independence of the new republic, it liberally interpreted its role as a guarantor power, especially following the December 1963 constitutional crisis. Turkey argued that the right of intervention under the Treaty of Guarantee included the right of unilateral military intervention in Cyprus, even though such an interpretation was in conflict with the UN Charter. Turkey also maintained that the Turkish Cypriots were one of the two co-founder communities and not a minority in the Republic of Cyprus. This is why it promoted their maximum autonomy and opposed any limitation of the veto powers granted to the Turkish Cypriots by the Zurich and London agreements. Following the 1963 constitutional crisis, Turkey continued financing, arming, training, and directing Turkish Cypriot politics, and managing the movement of Turkish Cypriots into enclaves not under government control. These actions in turn, along with the various schemes for the partition of Cyprus, enhanced the suspicions of the Cypriot government as to the motivations of Turkey and its surrogates on the island. The issue of the degree of Turkish Cypriot autonomy confounded intercommunal negotiations from 1968 to 1974, because these demands were seen as a step towards the partition of the island. The fear of partition affected Greek Cypriot negotiating behavior even prior to independence, and has remained a constant of Cypriot policy since 1960.9 In the aftermath of the Turkish invasion and the escalating Greco-Turkish confrontation, Turkey lost interest in a traditional-type partition of Cyprus, as this would have extended Greece’s border to Turkey’s southern coast. Instead, Turkey shifted its position in favor of a loose confederation that would maintain a weakened Republic of Cyprus under Turkey’s hegemonial control. The 1974 Turkish Invasion and Its Aftermath Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus, the ethnic cleansing that was carried out by the Turkish army, and the occupation of nearly 38 percent of the republic’s territory not 9

  The issue of partition was first raised in 1955 in discussions between Greece and Turkey, and the idea was endorsed by the United States. Britain’s Macmillan plan, proposed in the closing days of colonial rule, would have partitioned Cyprus between Greece and Turkey. The idea of partition reappeared in various forms under the 1964 Acheson plan, the Toumbas-Caglayangil 1966 protocol, and under the Greek-Turkish “Lisbon Consensus” of 1971.

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only changed the negotiating balance between the two communities but also drastically altered the demographic makeup of the island. The organized influx of Turkish mainland settlers, who now appear to outnumber the Turkish Cypriot population, added a new dimension to the problem. The search for a comprehensive solution began in 1975 in Vienna and has continued to this day. After twenty-six years, some one hundred UN resolutions on Cyprus, and the involvement of special emissaries, representatives of the secretary-general, and other international mediators, the problem remains unresolved. At least four factors account for the perpetuation of the Cyprus problem. These include: (1) the failure to implement the UN Security Council resolutions on Cyprus; (2) the prevalence of strategic, economic, and political considerations over a functional and viable solution; (3) the intransigent policies of successive Turkish governments; and (4) the political conditions existing in each Cypriot community. Washington’s approach, in contrast to that of Nicosia, emphasized the de-internationalization of the Cyprus problem. All UN Security Council resolutions on Cyprus were adopted unanimously. They contain the fundamental principles for a viable solution of the problem. However, Washington succeeded in protecting Turkey from any effective sanctions for its violations of international law; it has watered down the wording of many resolutions, while introducing terminology compatible with American and Turkish goals; and it has opposed the implementation of these resolutions.10 President Gerald Ford, under considerable domestic and international pressure, continued American recognition of the restored democratic government of Cyprus as the government of the republic, despite the Turkish occupation of nearly 38 percent of the republic’s territory. That recognition was continued by President Jimmy Carter in the aftermath of President Makarios’s death in August 1977 and former foreign minister Spyros Kyprianou’s succession. As previously indicated, the issues of the continuity of the republic and recognition of the government as the government of all of Cyprus remained a constant of Cypriot policy. This goal attained even greater urgency in the aftermath of the 1974 invasion and occupation, and the unilateral declaration of independence of the occupied areas in 1983, when the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was established under Turkish auspices. Even though the TRNC has been recognized only by Turkey, the mere threat of its recognition by other states and American pressure, particularly in the last five years, for “acknowledgment” of the existence of a “political entity” in the occupied areas has become a new source of diplomatic pressure on the Greek Cypriots.

10

 The issue of implementation of UN resolutions gained prominence following the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and American demands for Iraq’s compliance with all UN Security Council resolutions. Washington has argued that the resolutions on Iraq were adopted under Chapter 7 of the Charter and not under Chapter 6, as in the case of Cyprus. International law experts argue that Article 25 of the Charter obligates UN members to carry out all Security Council resolutions.

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Washington’s post-1974 Cyprus policy attempted to minimize the impact of the Turkish invasion on Greek-Turkish relations,11 while also engaging in peacemaking efforts on Cyprus without undermining America’s strategic and economic ties to Turkey. Washington therefore focused on obtaining concessions from the Greek Cypriots in order to achieve movement on the peacemaking front. This was recognized by Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots, who anticipated that their goals would be met through a long-term, consistent, and intransigent policy that anticipated Greek Cypriot acceptance of the reality created by the 1974 invasion and occupation. American policy statements and peacemaking initiatives reflect this balancing act. The first formal American policy statement on Cyprus following the 1974 Turkish invasion was Kissinger’s 22 September 1975 statement before the UN General Assembly. His “Five Points” on a Cyprus settlement included acceptance of the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Cyprus. He emphasized the need for a territorial allocation that accounted for the economic and security interests of both communities and for Turkish Cypriot autonomy. Since then, for the Greek Cypriots, the challenge has been getting Washington to fulfill promises included in policy statements that appear to contain basic Cypriot objectives. The stalemate in the Vienna rounds of talks brought Clark Clifford, President Carter’s emissary, to Cyprus in February 1977. His primary purpose was to express Washington’s support for substantive talks on Cyprus reflecting constitutional tradeoffs for territory. He therefore sought from the Cypriot government unilateral concessions that would bring the Turks and the Turkish Cypriots back to the negotiating table with more flexible positions.12 This included the fulfillment of the Makarios-Denktash agreement on a bicommunal federation, which constituted a major shift in Greek Cypriot policy. Clifford employed a negotiating tactic that I describe as the “salamization” of the Cyprus problem. This involved getting a unilateral concession from the Greek Cypriots without anything in return from the Turkish Cypriots, in order to restart stalemated negotiations. Negotiations would end in a new stalemate due to Turkish Cypriot/Turkish intransigence, and the cycle would repeat itself. Clifford represented President Carter, whose principled stand on the Cyprus problem during the 1976 American presidential campaign had raised high hopes for an early, just, and viable solution of the Cyprus problem both in Cyprus and in the Greek-American community. This is why influential Cypriot leaders feel bitter to this day about the sincerity and credibility of American emissaries. Clifford’s visit came days after a UN-sponsored meeting between President Makarios and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash that produced a set of broad guidelines for the solution of the Cyprus problem.13 A couple of years later, Makarios’s successor attempted to refine these guidelines in another meeting with Denktash. 11

  The possibility of a Greek-Turkish conflict, the reintegration of Greece in NATO’s military wing, etc. 12

  Miltiades Christodoulou, Κύπρος, η Διχοτόμηση. Μία Πορεία Χωρίς Ανακοπή [Cyprus the partition: A course without pause] (Nicosia: Proodos, 1996), 164.

13

  Republic of Cyprus, Public Information Office, Cyprus Intercommunal Talks (Nicosia: P.I.O., 1979), 23.

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However, the Makarios-Denktash agreement, which was based on the constitutional principle of a bicommunal federation, changed the nature of the peacemaking efforts on Cyprus and opened the way to constitutional schemes akin to confederation demanded by the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey. In the spring and summer of 1978 the Carter administration, contrary to its pre-election promises, intensified its efforts to lift the congressionally mandated arms embargo on Turkey. This once more reflected Washington’s opposition to any sanctions on Turkey, based on the rationalization that sanctions would only strengthen Turkey’s intransigence. The embargo had at any rate become a merely symbolic act, because the executive branch systematically undermined the congressional action by making it possible for Turkey to procure weapons through NATO and other sources. President Carter narrowly succeeded in lifting the embargo late in the summer of 1978 by promising to redouble Washington’s peacemaking efforts in addition to providing Congress with bimonthly reports on the progress made towards a resolution of the Cyprus problem. These symbolic and rather meaningless reports present sanitized accounts of “progress” while failing to criticize Turkey for its actions. Turkey’s astute diplomacy has not failed to notice the fundamental assumptions of American policy. Some three months after the lifting of the arms embargo on Turkey, Washington presented its first comprehensive plan for the resolution of the Cyprus problem. Known as the “ABC” plan14 because of its co-sponsorship by Britain and Canada, the plan was the brainchild of Matthew Nimetz, legal adviser at the US Department of State. The plan presented on 10 November 1978, on the eve of the discussion of the Cyprus problem at the United Nations,15 included detailed constitutional proposals indicating Washington’s preference for a loose federation. The plan tempered its acceptance of the UN resolutions with “other agreements,” i.e., the 1977 Makarios/ Denktash agreement, and left open to negotiation issues critical to the Greek Cypriots such as those of territory, security, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, etc. Even though the “Nimetz Plan” failed to break the deadlock in the intercommunal talks, it is fair to say that it has become the foundation of subsequent American and UN initiatives on Cyprus. For this reason, the first substantive American plan is an important landmark in the post-1974 history of Cyprus. The 1983 unilateral declaration of independence by the Turkish Cypriots was the culmination of Turkey’s long-standing plans on Cyprus, despite Turkish arguments that Turkish Cypriot leader Denktash acted unilaterally. Even though Denktash was slowly gaining stature in the Turkish political world, his dependence on Turkish economic and military support made such a move virtually impossible without a “green light” from Turkey’s nationalist military establishment. Even though a rudimentary Turkish Cypriot “administration” attempted to control the Turkish Cypriot enclaves that were established in the aftermath of the 1963 constitutional crisis, and a suc14

  Ibid., 62–65.

15

  An old American tactic intended to preempt discussion at the UN that could “negatively impact” a new round of talks on Cyprus.

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cessor “administration” was set up in the aftermath of the invasion, the 1983 UDI was a turning point in the evolution of the Cyprus problem. The so-called TRNC remains unrecognized by all states except Turkey. It has also been condemned by all international and regional organizations,16 while states have been called upon not to recognize this entity. Moreover, national and regional courts have refused to give validity to acts of the so-called TRNC. However, Turkey has held steadfast in its actions, hoping that time will bring about an acknowledgment of the post-1974 realities, first by the international community and eventually by the government of Cyprus. At the time of this writing, Turkey’s long-term strategy appears to be working, while the government of Cyprus is fighting rearguard actions at the United Nations and elsewhere attempting to stem Turkey’s attempts to upgrade the standing of Denktash’s status and that of his regime. The creation of the so-called TRNC has also given impetus to the Turkish Cypriot calls for a confederation of two equal, sovereign, and recognized states. Washington’s diplomatic efforts face a number of dilemmas: how to keep the parties talking even though the gap separating their positions has increased, and how to get the Greek Cypriots to make the ultimate concession, i.e., acknowledgment of the TRNC, in what amounts to a constitutional confederation. The Cyprus Problem since the End of the Cold War The last decade of the twentieth century brought significant changes in the international dimension of the Cyprus problem. The end of the Cold War left the United States as the dominant power in the international system. The collapse of the former Soviet Union reduced even further Russia’s limited influence in this dispute. The ensuing collapse of Yugoslavia restored legitimacy to partition and ethnic cleansing as solutions to ethnic problems, creating a bad precedent for Cyprus. Finally, an invigorated European Union set a new framework for expansion in post–Cold War Europe. Cyprus concluded an association agreement with the European Community in 1972. In 1990, the government of Cyprus applied formally for membership in the European Community, and since then membership in the EU became a top Cypriot policy priority. In the fall of 1993 the Council of Ministers of the European Union accepted the Cypriot application, despite concerns expressed by the commission over the lack of a political settlement. Integration talks with Cyprus commenced in March 1998. The European Union recognized the continuity of the Republic of Cyprus and its government, and this was reflected in actions of European courts and other EU bodies. The prospect of membership and the application of the acquis communautaire offered new options for resolving intractable issues, such as those of human rights, borders, and security. The United States, until the Clinton administration, had not looked favorably at the involvement of the EU in the Cyprus problem. The change in American policy served a number of objectives. It provided a new source of pressure on the Cypriot government to resolve the problem. Working in cooperation with Brit16

  UN Security Council Resolution 541, adopted 18 November 1983.

316 Van Coufoudakis

ain, Germany, and other EU members, Washington promoted the idea of a solution prior to the entry of Cyprus to the EU. This was done despite public statements at the highest level of the EU that even though a political settlement was desirable prior to membership, the lack of a settlement would not stop the integration of Cyprus. Washington’s advocacy of a solution prior to entry gave Turkey an indirect veto over the membership of Cyprus, a power that Turkey did not formally have. Further, a solution prior to integration would legitimize derogations from recognized human rights17 that normally would be protected under the acquis and other European legislation. Washington’s policy change also served another objective. By pressing the Europeans to grant candidate status to Turkey,18 Washington gained political credit in Ankara by being Turkey’s sole promoter among the reluctant Europeans. The diplomatic activism of the 1990s carried over into the new millennium. UN Security Council resolutions on Cyprus called on the secretary-general to utilize his “good offices” in the peacemaking process. He was therefore primarily responsible for maintaining the dialogue between the government of Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriots. In this task the secretary-general has been assisted by his own special representatives, in addition to the special representatives of the United States, Great Britain, and other foreign countries, initiatives by secretaries of state and foreign secretaries, and the usual embassy level contacts. The involvement of so many foreign diplomats under the guise of supporting the secretary-general raised questions about the coordination of their efforts, their commitment to a substantive process, their knowledge of the issues, and the players involved in these talks.19 There were also questions about the aims and the tactics employed by these negotiators. The Americans in particular expressed their frustration with the inconclusive negotiations. They attributed the lack of progress to the two parties and their “lack of political will” to make necessary concessions. However, Washington did not question its assumptions about Turkey and its foreign policy, and its unwillingness to support the implementation of UN resolutions on Cyprus. The American approach appeared to be along the lines of “keep them talking,” even though the gap separating the two sides was growing larger each year with new Turkish/Turkish Cypriot demands. The negotiating initiatives fluctuated between attempts at a comprehensive solution through a framework agreement arrived at in high-level meetings, to limited confidence-building measures that could open the way to a comprehensive solution. Some of these meetings involved face-to-face ne-

17

  In particular, the implementation of the “three freedoms,” i.e., movement, settlement, and property ownership. 18

  Candidate status was granted to Turkey at the Helsinki meeting of the EU in December 1999. Turkey was expected to meet a number of conditions by 2004, prior to the commencement of integration talks. 19

  For example, President Clerides and Denktash have been involved in the Cyprus problem since its colonial days.

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gotiations between the president of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriot leader Denktash,20 proximity talks,21 or even informal exploratory talks among foreign representatives and representatives of the two sides.22 These meetings often produced documents such as the 1992 Boutros-Ghali “set of ideas” which reflected commonalities in the positions of the two sides and identified areas in need of further negotiation, or the 1993–94 proposals for confidence-building measures. These documents could not break the deadlock because the Turkish Cypriots used them as stepping stones to promote their separatist policies. On 29 August 1994, the so-called Turkish Cypriot Assembly endorsed Denktash’s negotiating position dropping federation as the aim of the comprehensive settlement in favor of a confederation. Needless to say that the formal shift violated the 1977 and 1979 high-level agreements and the UN resolution that endorsed the principle of a bizonal-bicommunal federation. While the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey continued with their unilateral actions,23 the government of Cyprus negotiated along lines agreed upon since 1977. Successive Cypriot governments never had the political courage to force the negotiations back to a zero base to counter Turkish Cypriot unilateral actions. By proving that they negotiated in good faith, the Greek Cypriots were forced into continuous concessions in order to keep the negotiations alive without any reciprocity from the other side. In a series on “non-papers” the secretary-general’s representatives in the 1997 face-to-face talks in Troutbeck, New York and Glion, Switzerland attempted to “bridge the gap” in the position of the two sides by attempting to force the Cyprus government closer to the idea of confederation and of an acceptance of Turkish Cypriot sovereignty. The government of Cyprus, however, did take some bold initiatives in an attempt to break the deadlock on security issues by presenting on 17 December 1993 a detailed demilitarization proposal. Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots rejected this proposal and insisted on a continued Turkish military presence and intervention rights. The United States in turn has used this proposal to push for Greek Cypriot demilitarization, while maintaining a smaller Turkish military presence in the occupied areas with limited intervention rights in a reconstituted international force, preferably under NATO command. Thus, by the end of the Clinton administration, the Cyprus problem was treated not as a problem of invasion and occupation but as an intercommunal dispute. The break-up of Yugoslavia had given new legitimacy to confederation schemes and to ethnic separation. Turkey maintained that the Cyprus problem had been solved in 1974, and that the purpose of any negotiations was to legitimize the condition created since 1974, while clarifying issues of borders and property compensation. Turkey’s 20

  Such as those between President Vassiliou and Denktash in New York in July and October 1992, the May 1993 meeting in New York between President Clerides and Denktash, and those of 1997 at Troutbeck, New York, Glion, Switzerland, and Nicosia. 21

  Such as those in the current phase of negotiations in Geneva.

22

  Informal talks held in London during the spring of 1995.

23

  The 1983 Turkish Cypriot UDI, the formal abandonment of federation in 1994, etc.

318 Van Coufoudakis

long-term strategy on Cyprus was finally paying off. Aware of American attitudes on the importance of Turkey, it considered the de facto recognition of the political entity in the occupied areas to be a matter of time, and that international mediators would force the Cyprus government to acknowledge that reality. In the second term of the Clinton administration the resolution of the Cyprus problem and the improvement of Greek-Turkish relations became a higher priority of American foreign policy. Greek-Turkish relations entered a new phase of instability in the aftermath of the January 1996 crisis over the Imia islets. Since 1974, Cyprus burdened Greek-Turkish relations even though implicitly it was not a Greek-Turkish issue. A resolution of the Cyprus problem was expected to have a positive effect on Greek-Turkish relations, while an improvement in Greek-Turkish relations would create a more positive climate for the resolution of the Cyprus dispute. Three other developments directly impacted the negotiations on Cyprus. First was the European Court of Human Rights ruling on the Loizidou case on 18 December 1996, which upheld not only the continuity of the Republic of Cyprus but once more held Turkey accountable for its control of the occupied areas and the consequent loss of Loizidou’s enjoyment of her property rights.24 This ruling directly impacted the American and Turkish attempt to resolve property issues through compensation and by limiting the rights of settlement and property ownership in the occupied areas by Greek Cypriots. The second development related to the killing in cold blood of unarmed Greek Cypriot demonstrators along the dividing line near Dehrynia in October 1996 by Turkish Cypriot security forces and members of Turkey’s right-wing terrorist group, the “Grey Wolves.” The third issue was the joint decision of the governments of Greece and Cyprus to acquire the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to enhance Cypriot air defenses in view of Turkey’s overwhelming air superiority. Washington did not allow the sale of American defensive weapons to Cyprus. It also opposed the deployment of the S-300 system in Cyprus, while remaining virtually silent as Turkey threatened military action against Cyprus in the event the anti-aircraft system were to be deployed. Under American pressure, in December 1998 the government of Cyprus announced that the S-300s would not be deployed in Cyprus but, instead, would be sent to Greece for deployment on the island of Crete. This decision effectively destroyed myth of a Greece-Cyprus unified defense dogma. Turkey had threatened the use of force, and Greece and Cyprus blinked. For Turkey, this was a significant victory, as it proved that its diplomats could rely on their country’s military strength to achieve their objectives. Washington in turn recognized Turkey as a regional hegemonial power. Greek-Turkish relations reached a low point with the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya in the spring of 1999.25 The Ocalan affair caused a shake-up 24   The Loizidou ruling, along with the US Federal District Court ruling on the Kanakaria mosaics, had significant political and legal implications. The European Court of Human Rights ruling on the Loizidou case remains unimplemented at this time, despite calls by the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe for Turkey’s compliance. 25

  Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdish rebellion against Turkey, had been evicted from Syria in October 1988 after Turkey threatened military action against Syria. In his quest

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in the Greek Foreign Ministry. George Papandreou, son of the late Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, assumed command of Greek foreign policy. The impact of the Ocalan affair and a summer of devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Greece gave Papandreou the opportunity to take bold initiatives vis-à-vis Turkey. These initiatives, and especially the support Greece extended at the Helsinki EU meeting to Turkey’s EU candidacy in December 1999, improved the image of Greek foreign policy in Europe and in the United States.26 The conditions imposed at Helsinki on Turkey’s candidacy placed the ball squarely in Turkey’s court and in the court of the EU, as the lack of progress in Turkey’s European vocation up until then had been conveniently blamed on Greece. The improvement in Greek-Turkish relations in the last year of the twentieth century has not had a positive effect on the Cyprus negotiations, as the next section will show. The United States, the G-8 Formula, and the 2000 Round of Proximity Talks Washington, capitalizing on the euphoria of the improved climate in Greek-Turkish relations, embarked on a campaign to make the governments of Greece and Cyprus more responsive to Turkey’s regional concerns. It also lobbied for Turkey’s EU candidacy, without linking Turkey’s compliance to any of the conditions set by the EU and expected of members and candidates of the EU. At the United Nations, Washington attempted to quietly upgrade the status of the regime in the occupied areas of Cyprus during the discussions on the renewal of the UN peacekeeping force. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council dated 20 April 1998, concluded that Turkey defined its Cyprus policy in the context of “two states and three problems.” This included the recognition of Turkish Cypriot statehood as the prerequisite for a solution. In turn, the three problems in need of resolution were those of security, settlement of property claims, and the delineation of borders. Further, they demanded the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of Denktash’s government and its political procedures; the lifting of the economic embargo; the continuation of Turkey’s military guarantee; and the acknowledgment of the political equality of the two sides in all aspects of the negotiations. Denktash also demanded the withdrawal of the Cypriot application to the EU, and that the UN and all external mediators accept this “new political reality.” The secretary-general acknowledged that Denktash’s “new positions” essentially rejected the intercommunal framework discussed in all previous rounds of negotiations. Turkish and Turkish Cypriot officials blatantly argued that the Cyprus problem had been solved with Turkey’s 1974 intervention and with the “population exchange” that followed. Turkey, in order to facilitate its EU aspirations, agreed late in 1999 to re-open talks on Cyprus for asylum Ocalan received clandestine support from members of the Greek government. He was arrested in Kenya in the spring of 1999 in a joint operation between the United States and Turkey. 26

  Helsinki European Council, presidency conclusion, 10 and 11 December 1999. Note in particular paragraphs 4, 9 (a) (b), and 12.

320 Van Coufoudakis

and seek a peaceful resolution of its differences with Greece. However, having attained candidacy status, it became clear that Turkey sought the de facto recognition of the occupied areas and the formation of a confederation of two independent, sovereign, and recognized states on Cyprus. It was in this context that they were willing to address issues of property compensation, security, and limited border adjustments. Turkey was fully aware of Washington’s progressive support of most of these ideas, especially because, in his mission to Nicosia in May 1998, Richard Holbrooke promoted the idea of an “acknowledgment” of the Turkish Cypriot political entity by the Greek Cypriots. That acknowledgment included the legitimacy of the laws and institutions established there since 1974, and the fact that the Cyprus government did not speak on behalf of the Turkish Cypriot community. Instead, the Turkish Cypriots were represented by leaders elected through legitimate procedures. Sir David Hannay, the British representative on Cyprus, shared similar views. Both argued that such an acknowledgment would provide the needed momentum in a new round of talks. This, of course, had been the history of the Cyprus negotiations since 1974. Washington once more took steps to undermine the United Nations by bringing the Cyprus problem to the meeting of the G-8 in Cologne, Germany, on 20 June 1999. The attempt to minimize the role of the United Nations has been a constant element of American policy since the 1950s. The G-8 formula27 on Cyprus was later endorsed by UN Security Council resolutions 1250 and 1251 of 1999. The two sides were called to a new round of talks based on the following four principles: talks without preconditions; discussion of all issues; sustained talks in good faith and until a solution is found; and full consideration of relevant UN resolutions and treaties. The G-8 formula contained both “good” and “bad” news. The reference to the UN resolutions implied an endorsement of a bizonal-bicommunal federation, with single sovereignty, international personality, and citizenship. Further, earlier resolutions condemned the pseudostate created by the Turkish army in the occupied areas and called for its nonrecognition. The “bad news,” however, was that “the parties” could put on the table all issues without preconditions. This meant that Denktash could present himself as president of a sovereign and independent state, and that he could present his proposal for a confederation of two sovereign states. The reference to the “other” international agreements implied discussion of the Treaty of Guarantee and Turkey’s intervention rights, in addition to the 1977 and 1979 high level agreements. Secretary-General Annan, in his report to the Security Council on 22 June 1999, closely reflected the American and British ideas by noting that the political status of the Turkish Cypriots needed to be addressed. He attempted to do that in an addendum on the status of UNFICYP in December 1999, but his attempt to do the same in June 2000 failed after repeated warnings by the Cyprus government. This was the reality facing the Cyprus government as it entered inconclusive rounds of UN-sponsored proximity talks with the Turkish Cypriots in the spring and summer of 2000. The proximity talks were also attended by American and British negotiators. What advice did Washington offer the “two sides” as they entered this latest phase of proximity talks? 27

  Press Release 20 June 1999, “G-8 Statement on Regional Issues,” 3.

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1. Look to the future and not to the past. 2. Do not debate whether the events of 1974 were an invasion or an intervention. 3. Do not debate abstract notions of federation/confederation, or the nature of sovereignty. Arrive at a constitutional solution first, and name it later. 4. Leave out of the negotiations “humanitarian” issues. These issues, in addition to the missing, included the 90,000+ Turkish settlers. 5. The government of Cyprus should commit to confidence-building measures, including the gradual lifting of sanctions against the so-called TRNC. 6. President Clerides and Denktash were urged to show political courage and imagination so as to close their careers with an agreement, because they have the moral authority over their respective publics, and can unburden their successors from politically costly choices. The irony and cynicism of American policy is that while publicly American officials endorse a settlement based on a bizonal, bicommunal federation, privately they have given their full support to a confederation of two independent, sovereign states. American officials promote the “land for constitutional concessions” principle. The greater the territorial compromise, the looser the confederation becomes. In 1992, the United States had presented some ninety-two map variations that were rejected by the Turkish Cypriots. These territorial concessions ranged from over 25 percent to almost 32 percent of the territory for the Turkish Cypriot “state.” Alternative scenarios have also been prepared on the structure of the executive branch, while selective provision from the Swiss, German, Belgian, and Canadian constitutions have provided justifications as to how sovereignty can be divided in a two-state confederation, despite the UN resolutions calling for a state with a single sovereignty. The following ten points offer insights as to how Washington has attempted to address the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot demand for recognition of the so-called TRNC as a precondition for substantive talks. 1. The United States will not support recognition as a precondition for the talks, but will assist the Turkish Cypriots to attain recognition as an outcome of the talks. 2. The United States is interested in having continuous negotiations between the two parties to keep the momentum created by American initiatives and by the recent improvement in Greek-Turkish relations. 3. Meaningful talks require that the Greek Cypriots need to come to terms with the reality that has been created since 1974, and to be sensitive to Turkish Cypriot needs and concerns. For Washington the problem is one of intercommunal power-sharing and not one of invasion and occupation. 4. It is up to the parties to decide what relationship they will have. They need to show flexibility, realism, and political courage. The United States will offer constructive suggestions and alternative scenarios to guide the talks.

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5. Even though federation may be desirable, it must be wanted by both sides. The reality, however, is that the new constitutional arrangement requires an acceptance of elements of “legitimized partition” reflecting the conditions existing since 1974. A stable partition will be better than the current unstable status quo. 6. The two sides need to negotiate the core issues and not debate issues like federation or confederation, invasion or occupation. The core issues involve: boundaries, property exchanges, resettlement of displaced persons, three freedoms, and compensation. Therefore, in these talks, it is the substance that counts, not the form! Once a settlement is reached, then, constitutional experts and politicians can name it whatever they may! 7. Rauf Denktash and the Turks are realists and will come to the talks with something less than the de jure recognition of the TRNC as an independent and sovereign state. Denktash will accept an “acknowledgment” by the government of Cyprus that he and his administration represent the Turkish Cypriots and speak on their behalf. Once granted such an acknowledgment he will negotiate in good faith. The US Department of State, Britain, and Australia suggest that the September 1993 exchange of letters between the government of Israel and the Palestinians be used as a precedent. 8. An “acknowledgment” by the government of Cyprus does not have to be disclosed publicly until negotiations have reached a satisfactory stage. 9. Even though “acknowledgment” amounts to recognition of the Denktash administration as the de facto government of the territory under its control, it will not have other legal consequences. Assurances will be offered to the Greek Cypriots that the international community, with the exception of Turkey, will not recognize de jure a Turkish Cypriot state. 10. When a full agreement has been reached, the international community will allow “a brief moment of sovereignty” to the Turkish Cypriots, so that both sides can form a new partnership on Cyprus based on the political equality of the two constituent states. By the end of July 2000, the gap separating the two sides was growing, and this created a serious dilemma for the government of Cyprus. Abandoning the talks would have serious political consequences, especially on the progress of the talks with the EU. Remaining in the talks exposed the government of Cyprus to American, British, and UN pressures for an acknowledgment of the Turkish Cypriot “state” and for the formation of a confederation of two independent, recognized, and sovereign states. Aware of these conditions, Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots held fast to their position on confederation, as shown in the paper submitted by Denktash to Alvaro de Soto, the representative of the secretary-general in Geneva during the July 2000 phase of the talks.28 28

  For an extensive, accurate summary in English, see Cyprus Weekly (14–20 July 2000), 5.

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The Proximity Talks during the Year 2000: An Assessment The much touted proximity talks failed to reconvene in January 2001 as UN, American, and British negotiators had anticipated. Turkish and Turkish Cypriot leaders held fast on their demand for the recognition of the TRNC29 as a precondition for any further talks. They also declared that the proximity talks had ended and that a new framework for negotiations was needed so as to account for the interests of two independent and sovereign states on Cyprus. In a desperate attempt to save the talks in the fall of 2000, UN secretary-general Annan made an opening statement to President Clerides and Denktash in New York on 13 September 2000. In that opening statement the secretary-general indicated that “each of the ‘parties’ represents its side—and no one else—as the political equal of the other … the equal status of the parties must and should be recognized explicitly in the comprehensive settlement.” Al Moses, President Clinton’s emissary to the Cyprus talks, indicated that the “deliberate ambiguity” surrounding this statement was intended to keep Denktash in the talks and that the secretary-general’s statement was made with the full knowledge and cooperation of the US government. To Denktash the statement of the secretary-general was welcome news, as it implied the first step toward the de facto recognition of his “state.” It is this “deliberate ambiguity,” the contradictory statements by various foreign diplomats,30 and the lack of any sanctions on Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots that has brought the Cyprus problem to the point where the existence of the Republic of Cyprus is now at risk. However, there is no ambiguity on most other key issues, including (1) that the United States and Turkey share the objective of a confederation on Cyprus despite American assertions on behalf of a bizonal-bicommunal federation; (2) that the final political settlement is likely to reflect the “realities” created since 1974, and will likely contain “elements of legitimized partition”; and (3) that the United States is seeking a comprehensive settlement prior to the entry of Cyprus in the EU in order to limit the effects of the acquis communautaire, especially on the “three freedoms” (movement, settlement, property ownership). The proposals contained in the “non-papers” handed to the two parties during the November-December phase of the talks fully support the assessments made in this essay. A few examples will suffice.

29

  The minimum Turkish/Turkish Cypriot position centers on a de facto rather than a de jure recognition of the so-called TRNC. Much as the United States suggested, Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, speaking to the Turkish Daily News on 8 December 2000, suggested that he would accept a “Palestinian status” for his “government” as it assured equality and sovereignty. Denktash acknowledged that this would not bring recognition by the UN or other Western powers. However, even President Clinton extended “red carpet treatment” to Arafat, who negotiated on an equal basis with the Israeli government.

30

  Especially on whether Cyprus can enter the EU without a political settlement.

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The Turkish Settlers International law is clear on the issue of settlements and settlers in occupied territories. Yet the United States for more than ten years has described the issue of the illegal setters as a “humanitarian” one that must be kept out of any political negotiations for a comprehensive settlement. Key American diplomats acknowledge that few settlers will relocate from areas that will be restored to government control, but that they will not necessarily return to Turkey. For those desiring to return to Turkey, the United States proposes international assistance. In reality, the more than ninety thousand illegal Turkish settlers now in the occupied areas are likely to remain there, compounding the flight of the Turkish Cypriots to Germany and Britain, thus totally changing the demographic profile of the Turkish Cypriot community. The Freedom of Movement In principle, Cypriot citizens will enjoy freedom of movement across the “border” after an appropriate transitional period. However, the Turkish Cypriot “authorities” will have the ability to limit access to the Turkish Cypriot sector to “undesirable” persons that may present a threat to the Turkish Cypriot community and its institutions. The preparation of these lists will be the exclusive right of the Turkish Cypriots and there will be no appeals from such restrictions. Territorial Adjustments The United States, in concert with UN negotiators, is proposing an “equitable” solution on this issue. The US/UN proposals provide from 25–32 percent of the territory for the Turkish Cypriot sector, with over 29 percent as an ideal arrangement. The actual territorial allocation will be affected by the nature of the constitutional formula that will be accepted by the Greek Cypriots. That is, the looser the confederation, the greater the territorial concessions by the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey. Four additional criteria will guide the final territorial allocation: (1) security, (2) population ratios, (3) productivity, and (4) economic development. For example, the Turkish Cypriot civilian airfield at Tymbou will remain in the Turkish Cypriot sector as it is vital to the economy of that sector. There is also a new condition introduced in the November 2000 round of the talks that is even more restrictive. Paragraph 15 of the secretary-general’s text calls for balance between the maximum number of Greek Cypriots who will return to areas formerly under Turkish Cypriot control and the least dislocation of Turkish Cypriots. This is why the secretary-general calls for the “least inconvenience” as the key factor behind any territorial adjustments. With these qualifications, the actual territorial adjustments will not amount to much.

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Property This issue of property rights relates to the freedom of movement, settlement, and territorial adjustments. It also raises the problem of derogations from the acquis communautaire. The U.S. and UN negotiators presented a “non-paper” on this issue early in the proximity talks. This was done for two reasons: (1) to preempt the application of the acquis through a restrictive bilateral agreement between the two communities; and (2) to stop efforts for the implementation of the Loizidou case and other similar cases by the European Court of Human Rights. Turkey, by refusing to implement this ruling, is likely to hinder its candidacy for membership in the EU. The issue of property ownership has another dimension. Property rights are individual rights under European law that may not be negotiated away by third parties. The secretary-general’s November proposals contain the usual mix of “good news and bad news,” with the latter dominating the negotiating drafts. Paragraph 14 of the US/UN proposals recognizes property rights under international law. However, the same paragraph qualifies the right to property by indicating that it cannot undermine the character of the “constituent states.” This is why Annan’s “non-paper” proposes a combination of exchange and compensation as a means of addressing the issue of property rights. Paragraph 13, in many respects, discloses the real intent of the US/UN mediation effort. Recognizing that proposed restrictions will violate the protection of the acquis, it asks for the understanding of the EU so that these terms will not have to be renegotiated. As for the “non-paper” on the constitutional structure of the new Republic of Cyprus,31 it makes the constitution based on the London-Zurich agreements look like an ideal constitution. The long history of the Cyprus problem shows how economic and strategic interests of external powers contributed to the deadlock and to the tragedy of Cyprus. In the process, the rights of all Cypriots were violated, along with the rules of international and American law. In addition, American policy undermined further the stature of the UN as an agent of conflict prevention and conflict resolution. The prospect of EU membership provides new opportunities for resolving this perpetuated problem. A solution based on the implementation of all UN resolutions on Cyprus and the principles of the acquis can only provide stability and protection of the rights of all Cypriots. Meanwhile, at the start of the new millennium, Cyprus remains the last divided and occupied country of Europe. Postscript The preceding pages have outlined the critical role played by the United States and the United Kingdom in the evolution of what has come to be known as the Cyprus Problem. Since the original essay was completed, a number of major developments

31

  The text has been reprinted in Cyprus Weekly, 24–30 November 2000, 4.

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have taken place confirming the continuity of Anglo-American policy and providing new venues for the resolution of this perpetuated problem. On 16 April 2003, the Republic of Cyprus along with nine other candidate countries signed the Treaty of Athens, which opened the way for the 1 May 2004 EU enlargement. Soon afterwards, Cyprus also became a member of the euro zone. Next to the 1974 Turkish invasion of the Republic of Cyprus, the accession of Cyprus to the EU remains the most significant event in the history of the republic. Delicate Cypriot diplomacy overcame objections raised by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, and EU discord over the direction of its next enlargement. The accession of Cyprus to the EU should facilitate the resolution of the Cyprus Problem if UN mediators pursue a solution based on the principles of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, the very principles on which the EU is based. The UN Secretary-General’s mission of good offices in Cyprus was defined by UN Security Council Resolution 186 (1964). The failure to reach a comprehensive and viable resolution of the Cyprus Problem led to a shift in the Secretary-General’s role and tactics. After intense preliminary negotiations held between the fall of 2002 and the end of 2003 with the government of the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriot leadership, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, assisted by American and British negotiators, assumed the role of an arbitrator in the Cyprus dispute. He had no explicit Security Council authorization for the change in his mission from one of “good offices” to one of binding arbitration. Between 2002 and 2004, Kofi Annan produced five versions of a comprehensive resolution plan. The final version, “Annan-V,” was presented at a meeting in Burgenstock, Switzerland in March 2004. It amounted to a complete adoption by the UN of all of Turkey’s demands. The text of the comprehensive solution included more than nine thousand pages of complex legal texts and annexes. This text was presented for approval by separate and simultaneous referenda to the two major Cypriot communities. There was little time for discussion of a complex document that confounded even legal experts. The president of Cyprus, the late Tassos Papadopoulos, inherited the concessions made by his predecessor. He addressed the Greek Cypriot public on 7 April 2004 and called for a “no” vote on the proposed settlement. As he stated, a “no” vote was not against reconciliation and reunification in Cyprus. It was a vote against a dysfunctional plan that legalized the outcome of the Turkish invasion. The Greek Cypriot public, already alarmed by the concessions made to Turkey without any reciprocity, overwhelmingly rejected the plan by 76 percent of the vote. In contrast, the Turkish Cypriot community and the Turkish settlers, who made up the majority of the population of occupied Cyprus, voted in favor of the plan by a nearly 65 percent margin. The vote in occupied Cyprus was not surprising. Annan-V granted Turkey all of its demands; gave the illegal settlers all the benefits of EU membership; extended to the occupied areas all the economic and social benefits available in the Republic of Cyprus; and granted the minority population veto rights in the affairs of the republic. The Greek Cypriot vote was fully justified, as Annan-V legitimized the outcome of the 1974 Turkish invasion and placed the financial burden of reunification (estimated between $12–15 billion) on the Greek Cypriot economy. A “donors conference” called on at the last minute by the United States and the UN in an attempt

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to rescue this plan was able to raise only $750 million to help the Cypriot economy! Turkey, the cause of all the economic dislocation and economic disparity on the island, pledged nothing. Annan-V included major derogations from European law and deprived Cypriot nationals of fundamental rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. The dysfunctional and unprecedented “bi-zonal bi-communal federation” constitutional model violated the European Convention on Human Rights, because it was based on discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion, and language. Annan-V would have also replaced the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus with a confederation of two largely autonomous states, much as Turkey demanded. The resolution plan granted Turkey, a non-EU member, the right to station troops with intervention rights in the affairs of the new republic. This was an unprecedented arrangement in post–Cold War Europe. The Secretary-General’s plan also revoked select treaties signed by the Republic of Cyprus. This included the 2003 treaty between the Republics of Egypt and Cyprus on the delimitation of their exclusive economic zone. This was another concession by Kofi Annan to Turkey. Ankara had not signed or ratified any of the UN’s three treaties on the Law of the Sea which are EU law. Annan-V also expanded Britain’s rights in its so-called sovereign base areas in Cyprus above and beyond the rights granted to Britain as a condition of Cypriot independence. These concessions to Britain and Turkey had nothing to do with the resolution of the Cyprus Problem. After many recriminations about the Greek Cypriot rejection of the 2004 UN plan, on 8 July 2006, the president of the Republic of Cyprus, the late Tassos Papadopoulos, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat agreed on a new set of principles to guide a new round of talks under UN auspices. These talks intensified following the election of Dimitris Christofias to the Presidency of the Republic of Cyprus in February 2008. At the time of this writing, the latest round of UN-sponsored talks is carried out under the auspices of a new UN mediator, former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer. The United Nations, United States, and United Kingdom, following the postmortem they conducted on the causes of the rejection of the 2004 arbitration plan, have changed tactics in the new round of negotiations. Gone are the public threats by Alvaro de Soto and Tom Weston, as well as the rigid negotiation deadlines demanded by the previous negotiators. Instead, there is a lot of rhetoric about the “Cypriot-led and Cypriot-owned” talks. Despite the toned-down rhetoric, the substance of the new round of talks remains the same, judging by documents leaked to the Cypriot press. It appears that Alexander Downer has reintroduced key portions of the failed Annan Plan for renegotiation. Repeated meetings between the president of the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriot leader with UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon have confirmed the change in the style but not in the substance of UN diplomacy. This time, the UN appears to be aiming at a comprehensive solution prior to the assumption by the Republic of Cyprus of the EU Presidency on 1 July 2012. If a solution is agreed upon by the two sides, it will be put to separate and simultaneous referenda, as was done with Annan-V. Now that the Republic of Cyprus is a member of the EU, the Greek Cypriot public is unlikely to endorse any resolution

328 Van Coufoudakis

plan that imposes a dysfunctional governance model, legitimizes the outcome of the Turkish invasion, and violates the rights of all Cypriots as European citizens. The resolution of the Cyprus Problem and the reunification of the Republic of Cyprus is a desirable goal. It is an achievable goal if the solution is built on the principles on which the EU is based. Failure to do so will perpetuate the division of the Republic of Cyprus, undermine the credibility and political standing of the EU, and increase political instability in the critical region of the eastern Mediterranean.

Economic Reform and the Rise of Political Forces in Early Post–Civil War Greece: The Case of Karamanlis’s ERE Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

In the past few years, the study of the postwar period has attracted increasing attention in Greek bibliography, as extensive archival material has become available, not only in the United States and Britain, but also in Greece itself. Predictably, the first wave of these new studies involved the Cyprus question, but there is now a growing tendency to look again at other topics, such as Greek foreign policy in general, the Greek political scene, and the economy. The publication in 2000 of a new volume of Ekdotike Athenon’s Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους (History of the Greek Nation) dealing with the post-1941 period was a clear indication that this era is already in the forefront of research. This article will attempt to discuss some of the fundamental options of Greek political forces in the 1950s. It does not aim to present a detailed account, but rather to examine some issues the author regards as crucial in understanding the course of the country’s history. It will be argued that Greek political history in the first post–civil war period should be seen in the context of the larger transformations of the country’s economy and society; political forces as well as individual leaders rose and fell exactly as a result of their ability to respond to these transformations; “conspiracies” and “foreign interventions” have played a much less important role than is sometimes suggested. It was in these years that Greece gradually managed to achieve economic development and lay the foundations for its integration into the Western world. Reconstruction and Development, 1950–56: The Need for Reform The years from the end of the civil war to the first electoral victory of Constantinos Karamanlis’s ERE were crucial for Greece’s future. The search for a better future after World War II (as well as for a new structure of Greek political life) was postponed until after the civil war. After the civil war and up to 1952 the former Venizelist parties (now called the “Center”) dominated the governments. In the 1950 general election the Liberals and the People’s Party (the major prewar political organizations and victors of the civil war) together received slightly more than one-third of the votes, 36 percent. This was an indication of the desire of the public for new

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 329–47.

330 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

schemes, new parties, and new policies.1 In 1950, the National Progressive Center Union (EPEK), under General Nicolaos Plastiras, a Center-Left party, appeared as the most dynamic new force, and played a major role in the political scene until 1952. But EPEK remained a loosely organized party, its leader fell ill in 1952, and anyway it never had an overall majority in Parliament; as a result, it had to form coalitions with the Liberals and never enjoyed full command of the political scene. Thus, this was a period of instability: three elections took place (March 1950, September 1951, November 1952), while the many differences between the two main Center leaders, Sophocles Venizelos of the Liberals and Plastiras of EPEK, meant that governments fell easily, and this was a great obstacle in the effort to undertake the badly needed long-term economic programs.2 During the next three years the victor of the 1952 election, Field Marshal Alexandros Papagos, and his conservative Greek Rally dominated Greek politics. It is in this period that the main step toward economic development was made, namely, the large-scale devaluation of the drachma and the adoption of liberalization measures by Spyros Markezinis, the minister of economic coordination, on 9 April 1953. Greece seemed to enter at last a period of development, but Papagos fell ill in 1955, at a time when the Cyprus question had come to the forefront, the Rally had split, and Markezinis had founded a new party, while the Left seemed to gain ground (a coalition of the Left-wing EDA party and Center-Left forces had scored an impressive victory in the 1954 municipal elections). This new political crisis led, after Papagos’s death in early October 1955, to the appointment of Constantinos Karamanlis to the premiership. King Paul’s decision to appoint Karamanlis without waiting for the election of a party leader was severely criticized by the Opposition, while it has also been suggested that the United States had played an active part in the advent of the new prime minister. Recent research, however, has shown that at that crucial moment the Americans had not intervened in favor of Karamanlis and that on the contrary the U.S. embassy was taken aback by his appointment.3 At any rate, the advent of Karamanlis provided a solution to the crisis: the new prime minister founded a new party, the National Radical Union (ERE), and won the February 1956 election, which thus stabilized a new group of conservative leaders in Athens. 1

  See this view in Grigorios Dafnis, Τα ελληνικά πολιτικά κόμματα, 1821–1961 [Greek political parties, 1821–1961] (Athens: Galaxias, 1961), 156–57; for the view that the result of this first post–civil war election involved a rejection of civil war practices as well as the search for new perspectives, see Elias Nikolakopoulos, Η καχεκτική δημοκρατία: Κόμματα και εκλογές, 1946–1967 [The sickly democracy: Parties and elections, 1946–1967] (Athens: Patakis, 2001), 110–24.

2

 Yiannis Stefanidis, Από τον εμφύλιο στον ψυχρό πόλεμο: Η Ελλάδα και ο συμμαχικός παράγοντας (1949–52) [From the civil war to Cold War: Greece and the Allied factor (1949– 52)] (Athens: Proskinio, 1999). 3

  Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, Η άνοδος του Κωνσταντίνου Καραμανλή στην εξουσία, 1954–1956 [The advent of Constantine Karamanlis to power, 1954–1956] (Athens: Patakis, 2001), especially 223–40 and 301–10.

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Yet, the picture of “governmental instability” until 1952 or the “domination of the Right” after 1952 is not enough to provide a full explanation of the many developments in these crucial years. It certainly leaves aside the most important issue in postwar Greek politics, namely, the search for development and its repercussions on the political level. The defeat of the Communist Party (KKE) in the civil war had provided for a military solution to the challenge of the Left, but it did not (and could not) remove the social causes—the extensive poverty after a period of great trials— which could strengthen the Communists again. Economic development was a major demand of the Greek public after the hardships of the 1940s: according to a prominent scholar, it was “a basic program of [political] mobilization in the 1950s.”4 It is indeed impossible to examine Greek political history in that period without appreciating the fundamental fear of the pro-Western Greek political forces about the revival of the Left exactly as a result of the low standard of living, or without taking into account the pressing need of the public for development. The extensive destruction of the 1940s, the occupation, the postwar hyperinflation, the civil war, the famine during the occupation (and the danger of famine after that) had left increasing numbers of citizens in miserable living conditions. The 1940s had also left traumatic memories to politicians as well as state officials of a country that had already gone through war, triple occupation, and a long civil conflict. Postwar reconstruction and, at a second phase, economic development were urgently needed after such turmoil. Electrification and industrialization were absolutely necessary in a country whose population had swiftly moved to the cities during the civil war; these people had to find work and security, otherwise they could be driven to despair and to political options that could once more reject the country’s social and political order. In other words, the pro-Western camp had prevailed in the civil war, but the social balances and the outcome of the ideological struggle remained uncertain.5 The potential of Greece for development had been noted before, even in the late 1940s,6 but these ideas had not been put in practice; perhaps many Greek officials and politicians did not even consider these schemes as anything more than wishful thinking. On the contrary, new prospects seemed to appear from outside Greece’s borders. Recent bibliography stresses the modernizing role of the American intervention in Greece, through the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in 1947–52: although sometimes harsh in their intervention, American officials transplanted new political methodologies based on the ideals of professionalism in the context of a 4

  Elias Nicolakopoulos, “Από το τέλος του Εμφυλίου Πολέμου έως την άνοδο της Ένωσης Κέντρου” [From the end of the civil war to the rise of the Center Union], in Ιστορία του Ελληνικού Έθνους [History of the Greek nation] (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 2000), 16: 183. 5

  See, for example, C. Tsoukalas’s paper on the ideological consequences of the civil war, in Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis, ed. John O. Iatrides (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1981): 319–41. 6

  Panos Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά: Οικονομία και πολιτική στη μεταπολεμική Ελλάδα, 1944–2000 [Between the state and the market: Economy and economic policy in postwar Greece, 1944–2000] (Athens: Patakis, 2001), 99–111.

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modern liberal democracy, and raised the prospect of industrialization and development.7 Bringing forward a new agenda, US leadership also played a major role in the survival of modernizing political forces that had emerged within Greece—often calling themselves “radical”—and that had been crushed in the passions of the civil war.8 Yet, US intervention itself could not solve all the country’s problems: the efforts of indigenous forces were needed to produce tangible results. This was why the survival of the Greek “radicals” in the late 1940s was so important: their parties (the Unionist Party and the Democratic Socialist Party) were sidelined, but their proposals remained on the political agenda; it was they who would carry out the post–civil war reform in the 1950s and early 1960s. Monetary stability was also regarded as absolutely essential, and this derived both from the memories of the terrible hyperinflation of 1944, and from the realization, as prominent intellectuals and economic officials stressed, that without monetary stability no hope for development existed.9 Of course, frequent changes of governments could endanger the aim of monetary stability. Thus, despite their efforts (especially in 1951–52, when George Kartalis was minister for economic coordination),10 the unstable Center governmental coalitions of 1950–52 failed to cover this 7

  See, among others, James Edward Miller, The United States and the Making of Modern Greece: History and Power, 1950–1974 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Konstantina Ε. Botsiou, “New Policies, Old Politics: American Concepts of Reform in Marshall Plan Greece,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 27, 2 (2009): 209–40; George Pagoulatos, Greece’s New Political Economy: State Finance and Growth from Postwar to EMU (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 24; and Sotiris Rizas, Η Ελληνική Πολιτική μετά τον Εμφύλιο Πόλεμο: Κοινοβουλευτισμός και Δικτατορία [Greek politics after the civil war: Parliamentarianism or dictatorship] (Athens: Papazisis, 2008), 120–22. See also Michalis Psalidopoulos, Ο Ξενοφών Ζολώτας και η Ελληνική Οικονομία [Xenophon Zolotas and the Greek economy] (Athens: Metamesonykties Ekdoseis, 2008). 8

  Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, “Greek Reformism and Its Models: The Impact of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 28, 1 (2010): 1–25. 9

  See, for example, the views of the leading academic, governor of the Bank of Greece from 1955 to 1981 (and prime minister of the all-party government in 1989–90), Xenophon Zolotas, in his books Νομισματική σταθερότης και οικονομική ανάπτυξη [Monetary stability and economic development] (Athens: Bank of Greece, 1958), and Νομισματική ισορροπία και οικονομική ανάπτυξη: ελληνική οικονομία κατά την τελευταίαν δεκαπενταετίαν—Προβλήματα και προοπτικαί [Monetary balance and economic development: The Greek economy during the last fifteen years—Problems and perspectives] (Athens: Bank of Greece, 1964). See also Psalidopoulos, Ο Ξενοφών Ζολώτας και η Ελληνική Οικονομία. 10

 See Stefanidis, Από τον εμφύλιο στον ψυχρό πόλεμο; Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά, 138–41; George Politakis “Οι πρωθυπουργικές Πλαστήρα και η οικονομία” [Plastiras’s premierships and the economy], in Ιστορικόν-πολιτικόν συνέδριο για το Νικόλαο Πλαστήρα: Πρακτικά [Historical-political conference on Nicolaos Plastiras: Proceedings] (Karditsa: Prefecture of Karditsa, 1994), 157–70; and Michalis Psalidopoulos, “Στις αναρχές της νομισματικής μεταρρύθμισης του 1953: Ο Γεώργιος Καρτάλης στο Υπουργείο Συντονισμού (1951–52)” [In the origins of the 1953 monetary reform: George Kartalis in the Ministry of

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demand of the public for development, and it is exactly this failure that must be held accountable for the decline of the Center and old Right-wing parties, as well as for the rise of Papagos’s Greek Rally. There were of course other reasons for the Center’s electoral decline in these years,11 but it has also been pointed out by a leading Greek analyst that its internal disputes and its consequent failure to respond to the public’s demand for development was the main reason why the Center (which, with its liberal tradition, seemed destined to govern postwar Greece) finally left the initiative to the conservatives.12 The Rally’s powerful lieutenant and minister of economic coordination, Markezinis, succeeded in bringing about a major reorientation of the economy. But it is important to note that the admittedly successful devaluation of April 1953 was followed by a period of transition until 1956, marked by high inflation (a result of the extensive devaluation) and by desperate attempts to reestablish the monetary balance through special taxation,13 at a time when the country continued to spend enormous sums on defense. These meant that the standard of living of large numbers of citizens remained low, if it did not actually drop in some cases. It is on these repercussions of the 1953 devaluation that the Opposition centered its criticism toward the Rally and it is because of these repercussions that the comeback of the Left was facilitated: with KKE illegal, the United Democratic Left (EDA) showed a steady increase in its vote both in the 1953 by-elections as well as in the 1954 municipal elections. In other words, neither the military victory in the civil war nor the first wave of economic reform (the 1953 devaluation) provided for a lasting solution to the country’s fundamental problem—how to eradicate poverty and thus to avoid a Left comeback. The transition from reconstruction to development proved difficult and full of potentially explosive political side effects. It is exactly the fear of these side-effects, combined with the prospect of Papagos’s death and with the electoral revival of EDA, that made the 1954–56 political crisis so dangerous in the minds of many politicians and observers; it is exactly the fear of EDA, the many failures of Vice Premier Stefanos Stefanopoulos and the hope that another person of reformist ideas could hold things that led King Paul to appoint Karamanlis to the premiership.14 It is indicative that in early October 1955, immediately after Papagos’s death, the leading liberal daily Το Βήμα (Tribune), without expecting Karamanlis’s appointment, rejected the Coordination (1951–52)], in Ο Γεώργιος Καρτάλης και η δύσκολη δημοκρατία: Σαράντα χρόνια από το θάνατον του [George Kartalis and the difficult democracy: Forty years since his death] (Athens: Society for the Study of Modern Greek Culture, 1998), 119–30. 11

  Thanassis Diamantopoulos, Η ελληνική πολιτική ζωή: Εικοστός αιώνας [Greek political life: The twentieth century] (Athens: Papazisis, 1997), 172.

12

  This is repeatedly pointed out in Grigorios Dafnis, Σοφοκλής Ελευθερίου Βενιζέλος, 1894– 1964 [Sophocles E. Venizelos, 1894–1964] (Athens: Ikaros, 1970), especially 517.

13

  See Bank of Greece, Τα πρώτα πενήντα χρόνια της Τραπέζης της Ελλάδος, 1928–1978 [The first fifty years of the Bank of Greece, 1928–1978] (Athens: Bank of Greece, 1978), 371–490.

14

 Hatzivassiliou, Η άνοδος του Καραμανλή.

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idea of early elections and noted that as things stood, such a course would amount to “a leap in a vacuum.”15 Running the danger of oversimplification, one could argue that in 1950–55 there were two kinds of political interpretations of the country’s economic situation. First, the idea that the economy could play a “defensive” role against the “challenge of communism.” All pro-Western political parties, either of the Right or of the Center, agreed that raising the standard of living could pose an effective barrier to an electoral revival of the Left. An editorial of the major conservative daily Η Καθημερινή (The Daily) in May 1955 (at a time when new taxes were being imposed) noted that per capita income in the United States was $1,200, in Britain and Belgium $800, in France $600, but in Greece only $180: “well, these 180 dollars are 180 open gates to communism.”16 There was, however, a second, more flexible view of the political role of the economy. Recent research points out that, as in other Western countries, in early postwar Greece a new development strategy appeared, which accepted a degree of state planning and state investment, mainly on the level of industrialization; this new economic/political strategy tried to insert a measure of state initiatives in a free market and thus create a mixed economy (this was why this thesis was described as “liberal eclecticism”); the main supporters of this view were academics like Xenophon Zolotas, governor of the Bank of Greece from January 1955, and politicians like Spyros Markezinis and Constantinos Karamanlis.17 There also were other representatives of the same view, such as Panayis Papaligouras, minister of commerce and of economic coordination in 1954–58 and 1961–63.18 It has also been noted that in the postwar period, under the leadership of these figures, the Greek conservative camp was characterized by “a relative reserve toward the ‘anarchic’ market,” and by the acceptance of the role of the state “as an instrument of capitalist integration and development.”19 The supporters of this view were not rigid “conservatives,” but reformists 15

  Το Βήμα, 5 October 1955.

16

  Η Καθημερινή, 15 May 1955.

17

  Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά, 169–79; for the emergence of these strategies, see also Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, Ελληνικός φιλελευθερισμός: Το ριζοσπαστικό ρεύμα, 1932–1979 [Greek liberalism: The radical trend, 1932–1979] (Athens: Patakis, 2010).

18

  See Michalis Psalidopoulos, ed., Παναγής Παπαληγούρας: Ομιλίες, άρθρα [Panagis Papaligouras: Speeches, articles] (Athens: Aeolos, 1996); and Psalidopoulos, “Ο ρεαλιστικός φιλελευθερισμός του Παναγή Παπαληγούρα και η οικονομική πολιτική της περιόδου 1952– 67” [The “realistic liberalism” of Panagis Papaligouras and the economic policy of the 1952– 67 period], in Η ελληνική κοινωνία κατά την πρώτη μεταπολεμική περίοδο (1945–67) [Greek society during the first postwar period (1945–67)] (Athens: S. Karagiorgas Foundation, 1994), 376–81. 19

  Thanassis Diamantopoulos, Η ελληνική συντηρητική παράταξη: Ιστορική προσέγγιση και πολιτικά χαρακτηριστικά [The Greek conservative camp: A historical approach and its political characteristics] (Athens: Papazisis, 1994), 40–41.

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who wanted radically to change the structures of the Greek economy and political scene. Arguably, in the 1954–56 political crisis, and especially in late September and early October 1955 (at a moment when the political system was threatened with collapse), it was namely to the representatives of this dynamic view of Greek politics that the king turned his attention. Markezinis had left the Rally, and thus the other representative came to the forefront: Karamanlis, the most successful minister of the home front, the minister of public works, a person who seemed capable of addressing the dual problem of development and political stability. Once in power, Karamanlis was to pursue the goal of development with an efficiency and determination unusual in Greek political history. In previous years he had already expressed the view that major reforms were needed in the country. For example, during his short service as defense minister in the autumn of 1950, he had often said that the economic and social progress of the country was the only way to ameliorate its problems, including that of stability and security. Thus, in September 1950, in an interview with Reuters, when asked whether the KKE posed a threat, he noted that “the KKE itself cannot now threaten the security of Greece. But there is a danger that it will acquire this opportunity in the future, if the civic parties do not pursue a more prudent policy.”20 Later on, Karamanlis often said that his primary aim was “to relieve Greece of its eternal poverty, which was the cause of its political misfortune.”21 After becoming prime minister, he had a chance to put his ideas into practice, as a leader of a new generation of political figures, such as George Rallis, Papaligouras, Constantinos Papaconstantinou, and former Liberal politicians who joined ERE, such as Constantinos Tsatsos or Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza—in other words, the people who would become the Karamanlis team until the late 1970s. This was why the February 1956 election was so crucial: first, it was a head-on clash between Karamanlis and the Democratic Union of all the Opposition parties (including EDA) except Markezinis’s Progressives; but mostly, it was the election which stabilized this new group of people in power and enabled them to take important initiatives in the following years.22 In this crucial election, Karamanlis came out strongly as the main representative of far-reaching reform. Thus, he founded a new party, the National Radical Union, an initiative which enabled him to take some distance from the old Rally. Furthermore, the founding declaration of ERE, by Karamanlis himself, could be described as a kind of manifesto of the new reformists. He pointed out that the election would bring a “new generation” of leaders to the forefront; he noted that the old National Schism 20

  Karamanlis, interview with Mario Modiano, 30 September 1950, in Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής: Αρχείο, γεγονότα και κείμενα [Constantine Karamanlis: Archive, events and texts], gen. ed. Constantinos Svolopoulos (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon and Constantinos Karamanlis Foundation, 1992), 1: 131.

21

  See Takis Lambrias, Στη σκιάν ενός μεγάλου: Μελετώντας 25 χρόνια τον Καραμανλή [In the shadow of a great one: Studying Karamanlis for 25 years] (Athens: Morfotiki Estia, 1989), 140. 22

  On the 1956 election, see Nicolakopoulos, Η καχεκτική δημοκρατία, 196–214; and Hatzivassiliou, Η άνοδος του Καραμανλή.

336 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

of Venizelists and anti-Venizelists was out of date and that the old parties merely reproduced that antiquated divide, which had brought [a] sick political climate, which had bred military coups, revolutions, changes of regime, economic bankruptcies, and mostly the loosening up of our political ethos. It often stopped the progress of the country and, mostly, made it impossible for the nation to fully take advantage of its sacrifices and struggles.… One could say that in our country, a state, meaning the function which encourages and furthers the activity of the nation, does not exist.… The increase of our national income, necessary for the survival of our race, the amelioration of the people’s condition through social justice, the necessary moral improvement [exygiansis; literally, “the reestablishment of a moral order”] and many others, are connected to this fundamental problem, the political problem. I believe—and my view is based on my personal experience and search—that Greece can change shape and its people [can change] destiny. Thus, he continued, ERE, as a new political force, promised to bring about a “peaceful revolution” and “the change that for many years is a demand of all our people.”23 This was an electoral declaration (hence Karamanlis’s reference to the primacy of the “political problem”), but the spirit of the new reformist view was all too obvious: Karamanlis suggested that in order to avoid another period of unrest, it was not enough to raise the standard of living; it was necessary for the pro-Western forces to make their own “peaceful revolution” and to change the structures of the country. It is notable that there is a general agreement in the bibliography that he was indeed characterized for his reformist priorities.24 Even writers who took a critical view towards Karamanlis have expressed similar views: “But perhaps the new element that ERE will introduce, apart from the [young] age and the activity of its leader, will be the effort for quicker economic development and for some modernization of the state.”25 ERE has often been described in older bibliography as a mere continuation of the Rally—perhaps because its term in office succeeded that of Papagos’s party and together they formed an uninterrupted period of eleven years of conservative domination (“’Ενδεκα χρόνια Δεξιάς,” eleven years of the Right). This view oversimplifies things and overlooks crucial aspects of the ERE’s nature and strengths. First, the Rally was a confederation of various conservative forces which had been united under Papagos’s leadership and were still under the influence of Papagos’s lieutenants (Markezinis, Stephanos Stephanopoulos, Panayiotis Kanellopoulos, or at a later stage the “younger men,” Karamanlis, Papaligouras, Rallis). The press often referred to this 23

  Karamanlis, founding declaration of ERE, in Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, 1: 337–38; for more on this, see Hatzivassiliou, Ελληνικός φιλελευθερισμός, chap. 9. 24

  See, among others, Meletis E. Meletopoulos, “Γενεαλογία της ελληνικής Δεξιάς, 1909– 1989” [A genealogy of the Greek Right, 1909–1989], Νέα Κοινωνιολογία 5 (1989): 22–32. 25

  Spyros Linardatos, Από τον εμφύλιο στη χούντα [From the civil war to the junta] (Athens: Papazisis, 1978), 3: 49.

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confederate nature of the Rally, especially after Papagos fell ill and the government showed signs of poor coordination. For example, the influential daily Εστία (Hestia) often criticized the “remnants of the People’s Party” under Stephanopoulos or the “children’s chorus,” i.e., the younger ministers.26 But ERE included new people (128 out of its 299 candidates in 1956 stood for election for the first time),27 and was much more coherent, perhaps also because the old barons of the Rally did not participate in it. Furthermore, its 1956 electoral victory gave to ERE exactly what EPEK or the Rally lacked—cohesion.28 ERE’s coherence was strengthened after Karamanlis managed to prevail in the party’s two internal crises in 1957 (when Vice Premier Andreas Apostolides resigned) and in 1958 (when the resignations of Rallis and Papaligouras over electoral reform were followed by the resignations of another thirteen MPs, leading to the May 1958 election which Karamanis won easily). It was now, after the 1958 election, that Karamanlis became the undisputed leader of the conservative camp.29 It is notable that ERE held together even in 1963, at a moment when King Paul, who had just ousted Karamanlis, evidently tried to use salami tactics and break the party.30 Indeed, ERE, especially after 1958, was under the tight control of Karamanlis, who was often criticized by the press or the political cartoonists about his explosive character and strong treatment of his ministers.31 A second important difference with the Rally can be found in the participation in ERE of some more “younger people” coming from the Liberals, among them Constantinos Tsatsos, Evangelos Averoff, and Grigoris Kasimatis, who joined the party in January 1956, immediately after its foundation. The participation of these figures also stressed the reformist attitude of the new party. Thus, in an article in Καθημερινή in February 1956 (during the electoral campaign), Tsatsos noted that these Liberal politicians had decided to side with Karamanlis, because they were tired of the old quarrels between Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, and because the economic effort of the country needed to continue under a reformist party with a strong leadership.32 Aver26

  See, among others, the editorials of Hestia on 3, 10, and 17 November 1954, or on 21 March 1955. 27

 Nicolakopoulos, Η καχεκτική δημοκρατία, 198.

28

 Dafnis, Τα πολιτικά κόμματα, 161.

29

 Diamantopoulos, Η ελληνική πολιτική ζωή, 177; and Rizas, Η Ελληνική Πολιτική, 181–204.

30

  See Karamanlis’s note (late 1960s) on his disagreement with the king and his resignation in 1963, in Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, 6: 26–28. 31

  On Greek political cartoons of that period, see Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, ed., Η εξωτερική πιλιτική της Ελλάδας με τη πένα του γελοιογράφου: Ο Φωκίων Δημητριάδης σατιρίζει τον Ευάγγελο Αβέρωφ, υπουργό των εξωτερικών, 1956–1963 [The foreign policy of Greece through the pen of the political cartoonist: Phokion Dimitriades satirizes Evangelos Averoff, foreign minister, 1956–1963] (Athens: E. Averoff Foundation, 2000), where references are being made to the strong character and leadership of the prime minister.

32

  Constantinos Tsatsos, “Η μόνη διέξοδος” [The only way out], Kathimerini, 11 February 1956; see also Dimitris Michalopoulos, “Η συμμετοχή των φιλελεύθερων στην ίδρυση της

338 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

off, who would soon become foreign minister (1956–63), publicly stated that the new party would express the ideas and principles of the “nationally minded Center.”33 It is important to note that the postelectoral Karamanlis government of 1956 included six former Liberals who had just joined ERE: Tsatsos (prime minister’s office), Averoff (agriculture), Kasimatis (without portfolio), Demetrios Makris (interior), St. Kotiades (merchant marine), D. Manentis (under-secretary for agriculture). It also included the first woman cabinet minister in Greek history, Lina Tsaldaris at social welfare. It is also indicative of Karamanlis’s desire to go beyond the old divides of Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, that in March 1956, at the twentieth anniversary of Eleftherios Venizelos’s death, the government officially paid homage to his memory34 —something inconceivable for the old Right. On the other hand, it has been noted in older publications that the participation of some Liberals was not enough to change the orientation of ERE, since many more Centrists had joined the Rally (including a former prime minister, Emmanuel Tsouderos), without changing its right-wing nature.35 But the Center figures who joined the Rally never acquired much power (and the aging Tsouderos was slowly left on the sidelines), while Tsatsos, Averoff, and Kasimatis immediately became leading personalities of ERE and its governments, and actually became members of the electoral committee of the party in the very same 1956 election.36 Their influence was important enough for the British embassy to allege in 1958 that the internal revolt of MPs which led to the election of that year was also triggered by their displeasure over the excessive power that these former Liberals had acquired at the expense of the older “Right” figures in ERE.37 Taking into account that the old conservative barons (Markezinis, Stephanopoulos, and, during a first phase, Kanellopoulos) did not participate in ERE, Karamanlis’s party had significant differences compared to the Rally. In recent bibliography there is a tendency to view the Rally period as a “transitory stage” to ERE, rather than as a part of a monolithic period of unchanging conservative domination.38 ΕΡΕ και η προσωπική συμβολή του Κωνσταντίνου Τσάτσου” [The participation of the Liberals in the foundation of ERE and the personal contribution of Constantinos Tsatsos], Τετράδια Ευθύνης 16 (1982): 150–64. 33

  See Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, “Ευάγγελος Αβέρωφ-Τοσίτσας: Πολιτική πορεία (1946– 1990)” [Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza: Course in politics (1946–1990)], in Ευάγγελος ΑβέρωφΤοσίτσας (1908–1990) (Athens: E. Averoff Foundation, 2000), 48. 34

 See Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, 2: 30.

35

 Linardatos, Από τον εμφύλιο στη χούντα, 3: 49.

36

 Hatzivassiliou, Η άνοδος του Καραμανλή, 257.

37

  Allen to Selwyn Lloyd, 7 March 1958, London, The National Archives, FO 371/136220/6.

38

  Meletopoulos, “Γενεαλογία της ελληνικής δεξιάς”; see also that Nicolakopoulos, in Η καχεκτική δημοκρατία, examines the Rally and the ERE periods in different, successive, chapters.

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Another interesting aspect of ERE is the term “radical” in its title, which also appeared after 1974, in Karamanlis’s description of the New Democracy ideology as “radical liberalism.” Even today, this term provokes strong criticism as being either meaningless, or a contradiction in terms (for in the Greek political vocabulary, “radicalism” is regarded as a characteristic of the Left: thus, the KKE’s official newspaper is called just that—Ριζοσπάστης [The Radical]). Yet, research provides a different picture. “Radicalism” had already been used in Greece with another meaning: it was the translation in Greek of the name of the French radicals of the beginning of the century, who suggested that in a free economy, the state should still play a supervising role; at that time this was indeed a novel concept, expressing a new trend of European liberalism. The term appeared for the first time in a Greek political text in March 1908, when the Cretan paper Κήρυξ (The Herald) of Chanea used it to describe the new political ideas that Eleftherios Venizelos brought to Greek political thinking.39 And it was exactly this idea, the limited yet crucial “supervising” role of the state in economic affairs, that was central in the new “radical” trend in the 1930s and 1940s, of which Karamanlis now was the main political representative. The members of Karamanlis’s team (including the former liberals who joined ERE) had been prominent in this radical trend, which had been crushed during the civil war but now reappeared to claim political hegemony.40 Of course, one should not go as far as suggesting that Karamanlis in 1956 expressed a form of Venizelism. It is also obvious that Karamanlis used this term as an easily understood political slogan to declare that his party was a new political force. Yet, it is similarly clear that in the Greek political culture of that time, “radicalism,” especially as an economic strategy, had a specific meaning with which Karamanlis and his team were associated.41 The Take-off, 1956–63: Development and Transformation of Greece It was now, after 1956–57, that the Karamanlis team managed to lead the country to a phase of rapid development; the country’s GNP rose by 6 percent per year, inflation remained at an average 2 percent per year and per capita income rose at a total of 85 percent.42 The Greek “economic miracle” became possible also thanks to careful planning which paid special attention to three sectors of the economy: agriculture, 39

  Constantinos Svolopoulos, Ο Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος και η πολιτική κρίσις εις την αυτόνομον Κρήτη, 1901–1906 [Eleftherios Venizelos and the political crisis in autonomous Crete, 1901– 1906] (Athens: Ikaros, 1974), chap. 2, on the ideological aspects of Venizelos’s activity in that period. 40

  See Hatzivassiliou, Ελληνικός φιλελευθερισμός; see also the introduction of that book for a discussion of the term “radical” in the Greek context. 41

  See also Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά, 296–97.

42

  On Greece’s rapid development in these years, see, among others, Bank of Greece, Τα πρώτα πενήντα χρόνια; Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά, chap. 2; George Alogoskoufis, “The Two Faces of Janus: Institutions, Policy Regimes and Macroeconomic Performance in Greece,” Economic Policy 20 (1995): 149–92; and Pagoulatos, Greece’s New Political Econ-

340 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

industry, and tourism, which were the priorities of the two five-year plans—of the “provisional” one of 1959 and of the 1960 plan. At any rate, the very idea of economic planning was a novelty in Greek economic and political history. This period (especially the years 1958–61) could be described as the great leap in the development of Greek industry, since it was then that the greatest investments were decided: to name but a few, new electricity plants and hydroelectrical works, the large oil refinery in Thessaloniki, the sugar refineries, the aluminium plant at Locris (a project which caused severe criticism from the Opposition), the fertilizer plants etc., while three industrial centers emerged in northern Greece (Ptolemais, Thessaloniki, and Kavala). Furthermore, thanks to large public works of land reclamation and dams, agricultural production increased, and Greece for the first time achieved the much desired σιτάρκεια (sufficiency on wheat), the lack of which was one of the factors responsible for the famine during the war. In 1962, despite protests from Athens, the United States decided to end military aid to Greece, arguing that the Greek economy had now sufficiently developed.43 It is no coincidence that in 1961 the population of the major cities became for the first time in Greek history equal to that of the agricultural areas at about 44 percent, that in the same year the share of industry in the gross national income surpassed that of agriculture, or that the number of automobiles reached over 100,000 (compared to less than 23,000 in 1956).44 Equally interesting were the political consequences of this process: the Karamanlis governments’ priority was exactly to give the country a sense of direction, politically as well as economically. Hence their anxiety to develop more than one sector of the economy, and to essentially build a Western European society. Their reformist understanding led them to consider that development was important not merely because it raised the standard of living, but mostly because it gave the opportunity to integrate Greece into the Western world. Thus, the effort on the home front was combined with a reform in the country’s foreign policy which has been outlined elsewhere:45 from 1956 onwards, Greek foreign policy under Averoff searched for a long-term orientation of the country which was finally achieved in the Treaty of Association with the European Economic Community (EEC) of 9 July 1961.

omy, 29–45 and 56–62. For a collection of primary sources, see Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, vols. 2–5. 43

  On the end of U.S. aid, see Sotiris Rizas, Η Ελλάδα,οι Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες και η Ευρώπη, 1961–1964: Πολιτικές και οικονομικές όψεις του προβλήματος ασφαλείας στο μεταίχμιο Ψυχρού Πολέμου και ύφεσης [Greece, the United States and Europe, 1961–1964: Political and economic aspects of the security problem in the passage from Cold War to detente] (Athens: Patakis, 2001); and Miller, The United States and the Making of Modern Greece, 68–72. 44

 Diamantopoulos, Η ελληνική πολιτική ζωή, 182–83.

45   Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, Greece and the Cold War: Frontline State, 1952–1967 (London: Routledge, 2006). The best analysis on postwar Greek foreign policy can be found in Constantinos Svolopoulos, Η ελληνική εξωτερική πολιτική [Greek foreign policy], 2: (1945–1981) (Athens: Hestia, 2001).

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It is important to stress that for the Karamanlis governments, mere cooperation with the West (through NATO) was not enough; they aimed at the country’s “detachment” from the political, economic, and social context of the Balkans and at its full integration into the Western system. To achieve this, Athens turned its attention to novel concepts of European integration and became the first country to sign a Treaty of Association with the EEC.46 The Greek decision to form an association with the EEC was made in 1958, at a time when coordination was being discussed between the EEC and the emerging European Free Trade Association (EFTA). At that moment, association could come only in the context of such a multilateral arrangement, but in November 1958, shortly before Karamanlis’s and Averoff’s successful visit to Bonn, a brief for the prime minister stressed that “Greece aims at any event [οπωσδήποτε] at the closer cooperation with the European Economic Community, probably in the form of an association in the EFTA framework, or even independently of that.”47 Indeed, immediately after the EEC-EFTA negotiations broke down in December 1958, Greece rushed to submit its own application. In August 1959, at the start of the negotiations with the Six, Athens decided that its primary aim was to make sure that association would provide for future full membership. The document which outlined Greek aims noted: 1. Acceptance of the principle that the association of Greece with the European Economic Community aims at full entry; therefore it is necessary to provide for the method of revision of the agreement for the gradual achievement of this aim.48 The Treaty of Association provided for precisely that. During the negotiations, Athens often stressed to the EEC members that Greece had now achieved development and did not want to orient its exports to the “easy solution” of seeking markets in the Communist East, but to integrate economically in the Western European system. This was also repeated in Karamanlis’s important letter in November 1960 to his EEC counterparts: The association of Greece with the Common Market cannot but be evaluated through the wider European interest in keeping the Greek economy, while properly developing, inside the context of the free western European econ-

46

  See Konstantina Botsiou, Griechenlands Weg nach Europa: Von der Truman-Doctrin bis zur Assoziierung mit der EWG, 1947–1961 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 1998); and Mogens Pelt, Tying Greece to the West: US-West German-Greek Relations, 1949–1974 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006).

47

  Brief for Karamanlis for the Bonn visit, November 1958, in Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, 3: 280.

48

  Note on Greece’s aims in the negotiations with the EEC, 5 August 1959, in Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, 4: 162–63.

342 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

omy. This would prevent the dependence which threatens the Greek economy [from the Eastern bloc].49 In other words, the Greek decision to join the EEC was made in the late 1950s, not in the mid-1970s; the Treaty of Association embodied the aim of a long-term orientation of the country diplomatically, but also economically, socially, and politically. This new orientation followed (and became possible thanks to) the rapid development of the country’s economy in the same period. It was an integral part of the reformist view of Greek politics, as put forward by Karamanlis and his team. However, a further notable view has recently been put forward about the decision to seek association with the EEC: the country’s European option involved first an effort to modernize the economy in a wider European context, because, as Papaligouras noted in Parliament, modernization was impossible within the narrow confines of the Greek market; second, association involved the stabilization of the country’s political regime as well; this was why it was accepted by the pro-Western Center Opposition, while it was fiercely resisted by the Left (the EDA party) and by those members of the Greek political and intellectual elite who were skeptical about its integration into the West.50 There is much in this view: the dual process of development and association with the EEC was seen as an interactive process which aimed to seal the country’s history for many years to come; it was in line with Karamanlis’s emphasis on longterm efforts. In recent Greek bibliography, the role of Karamanlis and of his close associates in planning and implementing the policy of integration in the Western system is universally accepted—even by those who in earlier periods doubted the merits of this policy. Yet, it is necessary to put things in their proper perspective. It is true that Karamanlis and his team doggedly tried (both in 1958–61 and again in 1974–79) to secure Greece’s path toward Europe, facing strong criticism—sometimes, in 1958–61 even disbelief, since their policy was ambitious: Greece was a Balkan country recently destroyed by war and civil war, strategically vulnerable in the midst of the Cold War, geographically detached from the Six, and yet wanted to join the union of the most advanced European states. But Karamanlis and his associates also had some important cards in their hands, which are often overlooked. Mostly, Greece was a European country: it had an old parliamentary tradition (since 1843); it had a political tradition of radicalism since the days of Rigas, which sought its roots in the French Revolution; it also had a maritime and commercial tradition which helped an outward-looking understanding of the world. All pro-Western parties understood Europe as Greece’s “natural space”: it must be remembered that even during its “relentless struggle” against ERE in 1962–63, the Center Union did not dispute this European option; indeed, this was the only issue on which the Center Union did not attack the government in those years. The European option (even in a less ambitious form than 49

  Karamanlis to the prime ministers of the EEC, 26 November 1960, in Κωνσταντίνος Καραμανλής, 4: 451–52.

50

  Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά, 231–43.

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the one pursued by Karamanlis) had been a common element in all forces of liberalism in modern Greek history: for example in 1929–30, Greece under Eleftherios Venizelos was one of the very few European countries which unreservedly accepted Aristide Briand’s plan for a European Federation;51 even in the late 1940s, facing a desperate situation at home during the civil war, Greek governments (coalitions of the Liberals and the People’s Party) kept showing a strong interest for the development of ideas on European cooperation.52 Thus, the pursuit of a European option was acceptable to a wide spectrum of Greek public opinion and of the political elite. This was a solid foundation on which Karamanlis and his associates could build: they did not invent the European option and they did not build it from scratch. But they dared proceed from the level of a theoretical acceptance of Greece’s European character to the actual implementation of this policy (on the economic, as well as the diplomatic levels); they also realized that Greek society in the 1950s had the strength and the will to pursue this goal. Finally, they were the first European statesmen outside the Six who realized that the future belonged to the EEC, with its supranational institutions, rather than to less ambitious schemes such as the EFTA. Certainly, despite the success of the economic effort, not all was smooth and easy. There were other factors, which have been perceptively described as “the dark side of the economic miracle”—for example, the extensive immigration of this period.53 Of course, immigration was a social phenomenon which manifested itself in other countries of the European South which were going through a phase of rapid industrialization, while in the case of Greece it was also to a large extent the result of the destruction of the countryside during the war and the civil war in the 1940s. But it also was a sign of the extreme stress to which Greek society was still subjected. Similarly, rapid economic growth was facilitated by tight government control on workers’ unions. There also were excesses of parts of the state mechanism which dealt with “internal security,” there were efforts by the Palace to exert control on the army, as well as the rigidly conservative character of the 1952 Constitution. Although contemporary views on the “state of the Right” have shown that it was less monolithic than often suggested, and that Karamanlis himself was trying to limit the influence of such “parallel” power centers, the legacy of the civil war made its presence felt throughout this period. Finally, the economic success of the country did not mean that all was perfect or that social tensions could not rise again; the following extract from the annual review for 1959 (sent in January 1960) by the British ambassador, Sir Roger Allen, a good observer of Greek affairs, is indicative of the important progress 51

  Constantin Svolopoulos, “L’ attitude de la Grèce vis-à-vis du projet Briand d’ union fédérale de l’ Europe,” Balkan Studies 29, 1 (1988): 29–38. 52

  Marietta Minotou, “Η προοπτική της ευρωπαικής ενοποίησης μετά τον Δεύτερο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο: Η επίσημη στάση της Ελλάδας (1946–1950)” [The perspective of European unification after World War II: The official attitude of Greece (1946–1950)], Διαχρονία 3/4 (1998): 3–16. 53

  Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά, 224–28.

344 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

of Greece in the 1950s, but also of the potential tensions that rapid modernization could trigger in the country: Athens is no longer an overgrown Levantine village; it has pretensions to being a cosmopolitan or at least a European capital. Throughout the country there is a network of comparatively good main roads with frequent bus services. Some villages now have a piped water supply system of a kind; a few even electricity. There are cars, there is the radio. Village schools have been built, though the supply of teachers is still very inadequate. There has been a growth in agricultural production. But the fundamental weaknesses of the economy remain. The lack of any real system of social welfare remains. The disparity between the rich and the vast majority who live on a barely subsistence level remains. The lack of outlet for the literate lower and middle-class remains. Maladministration and corruption in official circles are still rife. And the effect of these things has only been accentuated by the changes that have taken place. Greece, in short, is an underdeveloped country which is still beginning the painful process of development.54 Another important conclusion of recent research touches upon the role of the Western powers, especially the United States, in Greek politics. Since 1947, there certainly was a strong dependence of Greece on the United States, which repeatedly intervened in Greek politics. Ambassador Peurifoy’s famous statement in favor of the first-past-the-post electoral system in 1952 is correctly regarded as the peak of this American tendency to intervene in the Greek political scene—although it is often overlooked that this electoral system was favored by both the Rally and EPEK, and therefore Peurifoy’s intervention was directed against the Liberal preference for proportional representation, and not against the Center in general.55 After 1952, however, things started to change: the emergence of the Rally government, based on a huge parliamentary majority and under the leadership of a strong personality, Papagos, together with the steady improvement of the Greek economy as well as with the obvious priority of the United States, especially under Eisenhower, to reduce economic and military aid to its European allies, led to a more complex relationship with the Western superpower. As noted before, despite allegations about a US intervention at that moment, the American embassy, far from “imposing” Karamanlis in the premiership in 1955, was surprised at his appointment. Nor did the Americans play any role in bringing him down in 1963 (as has sometimes been alleged); in 1963 the US embassy actually preferred a victory by ERE, but also noted that Karamanlis could not stay in power forever, and was ready to work with the Center Union.56

54

  Allen to Selwyn Lloyd, 13 January 1960, TNA/FO 371/152961/1, Greece: Annual Review for 1959. 55

 Nicolakopoulos, Η καχεκτική δημοκρατία, 159–60.

56

  Rizas, Η Ελλάδα, 142–51.

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Recent research has shown that, far from seeking to impose their own solution, in times of crises the Americans used to step back and wait for the Greek political system to produce a resolution. The United States reacted along these lines both in 1955 and in 1963 exactly because it believed that in case of a change of government, it should make certain that the next one, whatever that might be, was friendly to Washington. Since such a new government could be a coalition, the Americans wanted to make sure that they could keep excellent relations with all pro-Western Greek political forces. It was only in the 1956 election, when Karamanlis stood against a coalition, which they perceived as a Popular Front, that the Americans clearly supported him. Apart from 1956, the United States might prefer Karamanlis, but would not endanger its connections with the other Greek parties in order to support him. In other words, recent research suggests that although U.S. influence should not be overlooked, the US role in the shaping of political events was substantially smaller than what the Greeks themselves sometimes want to admit.57 Conclusions It is, of course, impossible, in the context of an article, to provide a detailed overview of such a crucial period as the first post–civil war decade. This author does not claim that the story, or even the article’s bibliography, are complete. Undoubtedly, there are additional important aspects on which one may expand. This article was an attempt to outline the importance of the wider demand for economic reform as a factor which largely determined political developments; it was inside this wider context that individual personalities could make their impact and political parties could rise and fall. Thus, the “great game” in Greek history was played in exactly this period, from the end of the civil war to the early 1960s and the Treaty of Association with the EEC. In the 1940s the country had to make a choice between two worlds; and it had to make it in a painful way, through a civil war. After that, new political forces, mainly represented by the Karamanlis team, pursued the long-term option of integration into the Western system, and were finally successful in achieving development, thus changing the structures of the Greek economy and society. To be sure, this success also had its flip side of the coin: for example, it is now argued that one of the main tools for development, the state’s role in the economy, lay the foundations for rigidity in later periods.58 But the economic miracle was real and the country did change.59 Here, in the end, lay the major success of Karamanlis and the explanation for his electoral domination of postwar Greece: his importance did not derive from the fact that he was a “great man,” or “clever” (in fact, he always put emphasis on common sense rather than the touch of genius, which he considered as leading sometimes to irresponsibility). On the contrary, he managed to make an impact exactly because 57

  See mostly Miller, The United States and the Making of Modern Greece.

58

  This is a main argument in Kazakos, Ανάμεσα σε Κράτος και Αγορά.

59

  See also the analysis in William H. McNeill, The Metamorphosis of Greece since World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

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he kept his sight firmly fixed on the long-term effort of Greece’s integration into the Western system, and thus he was in a position to respond to and to “translate” politically the wider political and social demands of Greek society. Such an argument can also provoke objections: people may point to the mechanisms of the “state of the Right” and the position of the Left in that period: aspects which have also been underlined by writers friendly to Karamanlis himself (for example, the subtitle of one of his biographies was exactly “la démocracie difficile.”) 60 This article, however, suggests that, although extremely important, these were “temporary” phenomena, compared to the more permanent changes that economic development brought in Greek society and in the orientation of the country. Similarly, the argument of this article should not be taken to mean that there were no reformist forces and people outside the ERE. Perhaps the most notable case was that of George Kartalis, the young leader of the DKEL (Democratic Party of the Working People), whose policy as minister of coordination in 1951–52 is now being praised by research; it is also suggested that he would have played a major role in Greek politics in later years, but his untimely death in 1957 deprived the Center of a great leader. Kartalis was in favor of electoral cooperation with the EDA—which made the conservative Center and the Americans extremely reserved, if not outright hostile, to him—but he did have the ability and the dynamism to leave his mark. Similarly, Markezinis (had he not left the Rally in 1954), could also play the role of the prime reformist of the Right; but Markezinis was a tactician (a characteristic which often appears in people of unusual intelligence), and this cost him dearly against the cold, pragmatic, “common sense” attitude of Karamanlis. Finally, the Center Union after 1961 did put forward some new views, which could be described as an evolving social democratic agenda (although the CU never actually used this term), but it disappointed many of its supporters with its concessions to populism after acquiring power in 1963. At the same time, although the ERE’s group of leaders around Karamanlis (the “radicals”) were reformists, the party itself included people of ultraconservative— sometimes reactionary—views, stemming out of the anticommunism prevalent in a country which had experienced the start of the Cold War through all-out civil war; the cases of Andreas Apostolides, a former Metaxas supporter and vice premier until his resignation in 1957, and of Constantinos Maniadakis, former minister of public security under the Metaxas dictatorship and then an ERE MP, were indicative. Furthermore, during electoral campaigns ERE often proved ready to take up the anticommunist banner—as happened in 1956 during its head-on clash with the Democratic Union, which resembled a Popular Front, or in the 1961 election, when (regardless of 60

  Maurice Genevoix, La Grèce de Karamanlis: Ou la démocratie difficile? (Paris: Plon, 1972). It is interesting that this adjective, or a similar one, appears in the title of many books on Greek political history of that period: for example, in the one about Kartalis (Ο Γεώργιος Καρτάλης και η δύσκολη δημοκρατία), the major book by Nicolakopoulos (Η καχεκτική δημοκρατία), and the constitutional overview by Aristovoulos Manessis, Η εξέλιξη των πολιτικών θεσμών στην Ελλάδα: Αναζητώντας μία δύσκολη νομιμοποίηση [The evolution of political institutions in Greece: Seeking a difficult legitimization] (Athens-Komotini: Sakkoulas, 1987).

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later accusations of “violence and fraud”) both the ERE and the Center Union aimed to limit the EDA’s 25 percent of 1958. But, on the whole, Karamanlis and the group of the ERE’s leaders did have a fresh, outward-looking view on the strategic options about the economic and political status, as well as the international orientation of the country. The dual process of development and the European option was the crux of the “peaceful revolution” which Karamanlis had declared in 1956. Thus, it was in the 1950s and early 1960s that the country moved decisively toward becoming a developed member of the Western world and its European subsystem. This, of course, made a political reform necessary as well, and that was exactly what Karamanlis tried to do with his 1963 proposal for the revision of the constitution, which evidently made the Palace turn against him and bring him down. After that, a relatively modernized Greek society was left with an outdated institutional system, and this also played its role in the mid-1960s political crisis, with dire consequences. But that is another story.

Using Humor to Cross the Greek Tu/Vous Line: A Personal Account Kostas Kazazis†

This paper is about subverting the familiar-versus-formal system of address in Modern Greek (that is, the tu versus vous modes of address). In particular, I examine humor as a strategy that people may use if they are unhappy about being expected to address intimates in the deferential, second-person-plural (vous) mode. I do not know if other Greek speakers, besides myself, use the same strategy. I will, therefore, illustrate my points with examples from my own linguistic behavior. I often use the adverb sociolectally: the technical term sociolect refers “to a linguistic variety (or lect) defined on social (as opposed to regional) grounds, e.g., correlating with a particular social class, or occupational group.”1 Ancient Greek did not make the tu/vous distinction with a singular addressee. When ancient Greeks said ὦ Σώκρατες ‘Socrates!’, they did not necessarily treat the addressee in a familiar fashion. Or, to put it neohelleno-centrically, the ancient Greek vocative Σώκρατες has at least three counterparts in Modern Greek, to wit: (1) Σωκράτη which we normally use with the second-person-singular (tu) mode of address; nowadays, it is only exceptionally that we use a bare first name with the second-person plural (vous)—whereas in French, for instance, this is routine, as in Vous avez faim, Marianne? ‘Are you hungry, Marianne?’; (2) Κύριε Σωκράτη, literally, ‘Mr. Socrates’; this I regard as sociolectally lowermiddle-class or even lower: it can be used with either the singular (tu) or the plural (vous) mode of address; and, finally; (3) Κύριε Σωφρονίσκου, κύριε Σωφρονισκόπουλε, κύριε Σωφρονισκίδη—or what have you—; in other words, κύριε ‘Mr.’ + last name, which we normally use with the second person plural (vous); when used with the second person singular (tu), I regard it as sociolectally “lowish.”

1

  Dwight L. Bolinger and Donald A. Sears, Aspects of Language, 3rd ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), chap. 9, as quoted in David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 4th ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997), s.v. “sociolect.”

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 349–53.

350 Kostas K azazis

Unlike what was happening in ancient Greek, urban modern Greeks—and, increasingly, also their rural counterparts—today are likely to take umbrage if someone addresses them inappropriately in the familiar, second-person-singular (tu) mode. That is because, by the middle of the nineteenth century, urban Greeks had begun to use the opposition between the familiar second singular and the polite or deferential second plural more or less like their French counterparts, who probably also had served as their models. Now, some Greek parents, including my own, used to insist that their children address them in the deferential (vous) mode. I say “used to insist,” because that custom has retreated considerably since the time when I was a child (I was born in 1934). In fact, it is my impression that addressing one’s parents in the vous mode was somewhat rare even among those of my contemporaries who belonged to the same urban middle-middle class as I did. Once, when I was already an adult, an acquaintance expressed surprise that I used the deferential second-plural (vous) mode in addressing my father. My father’s response was, “That’s the way Kostas wants it.” He then turned to me and asked, “Isn’t that so?” It certainly was not! It was my parents who insisted that I address them with vous, not me. Still, I was so scared of my father that I did not dare contradict him, especially in the presence of a mere acquaintance; so I agreed. As a child, I was secretly envious of friends and classmates who used the familiar mode of address when speaking to their parents. What I was really envious of, of course, was the easy relationship between parent and child that this linguistic usage seemed to reflect. Given my uneasy relationship with my father, I did not much mind addressing him in the second person plural. But with time my mother, the parent with whom I felt the greater affinity, became a friend. While I suspected that she would have been shocked if I suggested that I begin addressing her in the familiar (tu) mode, I nevertheless felt awkward speaking to her in the deferential (vous) mode. What bothered me was the distance implicit in the deferential mode of address. To reduce that awkwardness somewhat, as an adult, when speaking to my mother, I began to switch intermittently from the deferential second plural to the familiar second singular. In order not to appear disrespectful, however, I did so only by also switching into a seemingly tongue-in-cheek, anything-goes type of discourse, and that only in contexts in which I thought the switch was appropriate. The variables that determined whether the tongue-in-cheek mode was called for coincided only vaguely with the usual sociolinguistic ones of topic and setting. By far the most important determining factor was who else was present. Thus, to spare my mother any embarrassment, I never addressed her in the familiar second-personsingular (tu) mode in the presence of complete or virtual strangers. In 1967, I spent several months in Athens taking care of my mother, who was suffering from terminal cancer. During that period, I probably spoke to her most of the time in the deferential mode, which for me remained the customary, “straight,” unmarked way of addressing her. For instance, when I would enter her bedroom first thing in the morning or after her afternoon siesta, I would ask her



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(4) Κοιμηθήκατε καλά (μανούλα) ‘Did you (plural) sleep well (mommy)?’ Or I would let her in on my immediate culinary plans by saying (5) (Μανούλα,) γιὰ ἀπόψε λέω νὰ σᾶς κάνω φρουτοσαλάτα· ἐντάξει (Mommy,) for tonight, I thought I’d make you (plural) some fruit salad, OK?’ On the other hand, I would sometimes choose to say more or less the same things in the tongue-in-cheek, anything-goes, marked mode, as in (6) and (7), below: (6) Κοιμήθηκες καλά, Ζωρζεττάκι μου ‘Did you (singular) sleep well, my Georgette (diminutive)?’ (7) Μάνα, γιὰ ἀπόψε λέω νὰ σοῦ κάνω φρουτοσαλάτα· ἐντάξει ‘Mother, for tonight, I thought I’d make you (singular) some fruit salad, OK?’ Notice that the tongue-in-cheek utterances, (6) and (7), contain a noun in the vocative, whereas the straight ones, (4) and (5), do so only optionally. Now, my normal, unmarked way of addressing my mother was μανούλα, literally, ‘little mother’. Μανούλα is the diminutive of the somewhat folksy (or poetic) noun μάνα ‘mother’. Μανούλα differs from μάνα, however, in that it is sociolectally neutral; in other words, unlike μάνα, the diminutive μανούλα is not in the least folksy. For me it would have been strange to address my mother as μανούλα and at the same time use the familiar second-person singular, as in sentence (8): (8) Κοιμήθηκες καλά, μανούλα ‘Did you (singular) sleep well, mommy?’ Sentence (8) would have been stylistically incongruous, since it combines the tonguein-cheek second-singular mode of address with the “straight” term of address, μανούλα. On the other hand, in my tongue-in-cheek, marked utterances, I deemed it indispensable to use also a tongue-in-cheek, marked vocative—as we saw in (6), Ζωρζεττάκι, and (7), μάνα. A few words about some of these tongue-in-cheek, marked vocatives are in order here. My mother’s given name was Γεωργία ‘Georgia’, but that was only her baptismal, official name. Her intimates called her Ζωρζέττα ‘Georgette’ or sometimes even Ζωρζέτ ‘Georgette’ (usually pronounced more or less as in French). Some people also addressed her by a diminutive form of Ζωρζέττα, namely, Ζωρζεττάκι or Ζωρζεττούλα. And so did I, in my tongue-in-cheek mode, in addition to calling her by some form or other of the male counterpart of her given name, such as Γιῶργο

352 Kostas K azazis

(which is sociolectally neutral for ‘George’), Γιώργη (which is folksy), or Γιωργάκη (a sociolectally neutral diminutive of Γιῶργο, itself the vocative of Γιῶργος ‘George’)—I have discussed the use of male first names in addressing women in a previous work.2 I sometimes prefaced those tongue-in-cheek vocatives with some form of the words for ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Mr.’, as required. For ‘Mrs.’, I’d use κυρία or its folksy counterpart κυρά- (neither of which can be used with the grammatically neuter diminutive Ζωρζεττάκι); for ‘Mr.’, I used either κύριε or its folksy counterpart κυρ-. As we saw in the case of κύριε Σωκράτη in (2), even the sociolectally neutral terms for ‘Mrs.’, κυρία, or ‘Mr.,’ κύριε, if combined with a first name, produce a sociolectally lowish impression, at least as far as our family was concerned. We’ll see below why that did not bother me in the least, but on the contrary suited my purposes very well. In addition to those proper names, in switching to the familiar (tu) mode, I would also address my mother by what for me were marked terms for ‘mother’, such as μάνα ‘mother’ (which we have already encountered in [7]) and its augmentative, μανάρα; I regard both of these as sociolectally rather low, except that μάνα can also be poetic, as I noted above. Not surprisingly, I did not use a marked vocative in every single one of my tonguein-cheek utterances. Nevertheless, I always saw to it that every time I switched to the tongue-in-cheek mode, my first utterance would also include such a marked vocative. Thus, that vocative served as a marker signaling that what accompanied it was not the usual, “straight” register I normally used in speaking to my mother. I did that in order to make sure that she realized that this was merely my jesting mode and not think even for a moment that I was being disrespectful. And the best way I knew how to achieve this was by supplementing my grammatically second-person-singular forms with vocatives that would have been unthinkable in my normal, unmarked way of addressing her. That is also why I did not balk at using some modes of address that we considered socially “beneath” us, such as κυρία Ζωρζέττα, κυρα-Ζωρζέττα, κυρα-Ζωρζεττούλα, μάνα, κυρα-μάνα (lit., ‘Mrs. mother’), μανάρα, κύριε Γιῶργο, κυρΓιώργη, Γιωργάκη, and so on. To paraphrase what I said earlier, this verbal redundancy (or overkill) on my part ensured that my mother would never take my familiar, second-person-singular way of addressing her as “straight,” “normal,” and unmarked. When we were alone, my mother never protested against my verbal ruse. In the presence of friends and acquaintances, however, she would sometimes turn to them and say, in unambiguously mock-indignant or mock-resigned tone: (9) Εἶδες πῶς μοῦ μιλάει ‘Do (lit., ‘did’) you see how [disrespectfully] he talks to me?’

2

  Kostas Kazazis, “Gender and Sex in Standard Modern Greek Pet Names,” in The Joy of Grammar: A Festschrift in Honor of James D. McCawley, ed. Diane Brentari et al. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1992), 161–71.



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This way, she presumably preserved her image as a parent whose child normally treated her with respect, even though he occasionally engaged in a bit of harmless verbal horse-play. To sum up, by making it clear to my mother that these departures from my habitual, deferential discourse were done in jest, I spared her generational and class sensibilities. At the same time, those departures from the norm gave me a chance to take a break from the deferential mode of address, which I found stifling when speaking to someone who was as close to me as my mother was.

Poetry Translation Reviews Reviewed: Possible Criteria for Reviewing Poetry Translations David Connolly

Slaves we are, and labour in another man’s plantation; We dress the vineyard, but the wine is the owner’s; if the soil be sometimes barren, then we are sure of being scourged: if it be fruitful and our care succeeds, we are not thanked; for the proud reader will only say the poor drudge has done his duty. —John Dryden (1631–1700)

The words above by John Dryden describe the lot of the literary translator in the seventeenth century. Three centuries later, very little would appear to have changed, if we are to judge from most reviews of translations of literary works. Reviews of works of literature in translation almost invariably focus on the original work rather than on the translation of the work. Reviewers without first-hand knowledge of the original work opt for a criticism of the translation, as if it were the original, dealing wholly with the product as opposed to the process of translation. Alternatively, reviewers who know the work in the original content themselves with an appreciation of this and have little or nothing to say about the quality of the translated work other than general remarks of a highly subjective nature, usually confined to the end of the review as, so it often seems, a kind of afterthought. The result is that one has the impression, when reading reviews of literary works in translation, that the translation process plays no part whatsoever in the presentation and reception of the work. A random survey of reviews of literary works in translation would normally reveal the following types of review.1 First, there are those reviews where no mention is made that the work under review is, in fact, a translation or, at least, no criticism of the translation is attempted, leaving the reader to infer that this is a translated work and providing no information as to what kind of translation is being offered. Most attempts at translation criticism by reviewers fall, however, into the category of the “last paragraph afterthought.” This may take the form of the reviewer’s arrogant one-sentence dismissal (“this translation is insensitive” or “the translation will 1

  The comments which follow are all gleaned from recent reviews of Greek literature in English translation. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 355–65.

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prove tolerably useful as a crib”) or the condescending concession (“the translator makes a competent attempt”), but with no explanation of why the translation under review is “insensitive” or “competent.” The same criticism could be made of those subjective value judgments of reviewers who sum up the translation in one word as being “excellent” or “accurate,” though without stating the criteria on which these judgments were made. Other reviewers avoid opening themselves to this criticism by evaluating the translation in terms of “fluency” or “readability”; criteria, that is, that they consider to be self-explanatory but that are often unreliable criteria on which to assess the quality of the translation. Perhaps the most common approach by reviewers is to begin their few comments on the translation with a positive statement about the translator’s attempt, before going on to point out lexical inaccuracies (usually minor and often debatable) which, of course, the reviewer implies that he would never have made. Usually, reviewers make no reference to where or how the translator has been successful, only to how many “mistakes” or infelicities the reviewer has been able to spot. Alternatively, if such mistakes are hard to find, the reviewer will have recourse to comments of the type “I would have worded it differently.” In fact, reading reviews of translated literature, one often wonders why the omniscient reviewer did not translate the work himself as he leaves the reader in no doubt that he could have done far better than the “poor translator, who did his best, but….” Translation criticism, particularly by literary scholars, seems unable to rise above quibbling about semantic accuracy on a lexical or, at most, sentential level. This, together with whether or not the translated work reads fluently seem to be the only criteria used for assessing the quality of the translation (where this is attempted). What, then, becomes painfully evident from an examination of reviews of translated works is the lack of any critical apparatus on the part of reviewers for assessing literary works in translation. One of the major issues in the field of literary translation studies concerns the question of evaluation of translations and what the criteria (other than purely subjective ones) might be for such an evaluation. There are, of course, those who see “good” and “bad” as empty words when used of translations, and it has to be said that translation studies have, in recent years, begun to focus on the way texts have been translated in a particular culture and in a particular age as reflecting the view of translation in that culture and age.2 There has been a shift of emphasis in the discussion to the examination of questions such as who translates, why, and with what aim? Who makes the selection of texts to be translated? How does the translated text function in the receptor-culture?3 According to this approach, a literary translation, therefore, is simply that which is accepted as a literary translation by a certain cultural community at a certain time. It is a wholly target-orientated/product-orientated approach. So, the focus of attention is not on evaluation but simply on the description of the translated text. However, as both a student and teacher of literary translation 2

  See A. Lefevere, “Literature, Comparative and Translated,” Babel 29, 2 (1983): 74.

3   See, for example, the work of I. Even-Zohar, “Polysystem Theory,” Poetics Today 1, 1–2 (1979): 287–310; and G. Toury, In Search of a Theory of Translation (Tel Aviv: The Porter, 1980); Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995).



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(not least, as a practitioner), I have to believe that the art of literary translation can be taught or at least that students can be helped to develop their talents and skills in order to produce not only different kinds of translations but also better ones. And if translations are to be thus evaluated, in terms of better or worse, this automatically requires the existence of criteria (other than purely subjective ones). I will attempt in what follows to suggest some general criteria for reviewing translations of poetry. –

—

Any evaluation of a translation of a poetic text should, first of all, be in terms of the translator’s aims, which should always be stated. As Kimon Friar writes: “There is no one form of translation which is valid or ‘better’ than another, for this depends on intention. Once the translator has stated clearly what he set out to accomplish, and for what purpose, his work then should be judged according to the integrity of his accomplishment and not be condemned for what it was never meant to be. All forms of translation are valid and should be judged on their own terms.”4 The problem often created is by reviewers and critics wishing to establish a hierarchy of value between these different kinds, but again on very questionable criteria.5 A great deal of the literature on poetry translation is about value judgments based on the critical method of comparison with the original with the result that imitations and adaptations fare badly. There are, of course, numerous reasons why the translator may choose to translate a particular text. He may choose to translate because he wishes to test the capacities of the target language (TL) to express a certain kind of poetry, perhaps enriching and renewing the TL at the same time (as with George Seferis and his translations of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot into Greek).6 He may translate because he is commissioned by either poet or publisher to do so (for financial or other reward). He may translate because he feels an affinity with the poet’s work and is inspired to want to appropriate the poem in the TL (for personal reasons). He may use the poem as a starting point for creating a new poem in the TL, through emulation, imitation, adaptation, and all the other extreme forms of free translation (as, for example, with Ezra Pound and Robert

4

  K. Friar, Modern Greek Poetry: From Cavafis to Elytis (New York: Simon & Schuster 1973), 652.

5

  There has been much discussion on the demarcation lines between translations, versions, imitations, etc. According to A. Lefevere, Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1975), 76: “The translator proper is content to render the original author’s interpretation of a theme accessible to a different audience. The writer of versions basically keeps the substance of the source text, but changes its form. The writer of imitations produces, to all intents and purposes, a poem of his own, which has only title and point of departure, if those, in common with the source text.” 6

  See G. Seferis, Αντιγραφές [Copies] (Athens: Ikaros, 1965), 7; and Seferis, Δοκιμές [Essays], 2 vols. (Athens: Ikaros, 1974), 2: 19.

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Lowell).7 Or, his aim may be to make the poet known in the TL culture because the author is, in the translator’s opinion, a major and original poetic voice that is worth the “thankless efforts” (according to both Odysseus Elytis and Seferis) involved in translation.8 A statement of the translator’s aims, whatever these may be, is essential from the reader’s (and reviewer’s) point of view. It should be the reader’s right to know what kind of translation is being offered. Only if the translator’s approach is known can the reader even begin to discern the original’s outline behind the translation. We may assume like Robert de Beaugrande that the TL reader selects a translation with the intention of finding a text that represents the original as completely and as accurately as possible, unless, of course, he reads the translation because it is by a particular poet, so that emphasis of interest is on the work of the poet-translator rather than poet of the source text (ST).9 The former view would seem to be widespread among practitioners judging from the conversations with notable translators in the collection edited by Edwin Honig. So, Fitzgerald remarks that “the translator serves the poet being translated, and the service done is exclusively to bring the foreign work across into the other language,” and Christopher Middleton maintains that “translators are there to put themselves at the service of the spirit of the author.”10 This contrasts with the Romantic ideas exemplified by Dante Gabriel Rossetti that “the only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty.” Perhaps the greater emphasis in recent times on the translator’s duty to the ST author and his literature stems from the fact that foreign authors are often translated today as representative of their literary tradition and culture with the aim to highlight not only the author but the whole of his literary tradition. This is particularly evident with literatures belonging to what Eric Dickens refers to as “languages of lesser currency.” He points out that it is ultimately individual authors who make or break the reputation of such literatures with an English-speaking audience, and that translators of such literatures tend to have two basic aims: “bringing worthwhile individual authors into their corner of the in-

7

  Pound, for example, defined his Homage to Sextus Propertius (London: Faber & Faber, 1934) as something other than a translation; his purpose in writing the poem, he claimed, was to bring a dead man to life. It was, in short, a kind of literary resurrection. Compare Lowell’s statement: “I have tried to write live English and to do what my authors might have done if they were writing their poems now and in America.” R. Lowell, Imitations (London: Faber & Faber, 1962), xi.

8

  See O. Elytis, Δεύτερη Γραφή [Second Writing] (Athens: Ikaros, 1976), 11: “The task is a thankless one”; and G. Seferis, Μεταγραφές [Transcriptions] (Athens: Leschi, 1980), 232: “The translation of poems is the form of writing that gives the least satisfaction.” 9

  R. de Beaugrande, Factors in a Theory of Poetic Translating (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1978), 123. 10

  E. Honig, ed., The Poet’s Other Voice: Conversations on Literary Translation (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 103–04, 186.



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ternational limelight, and highlighting the fact that certain small cultures possess a body of literature potentially interesting to a wider audience.”11 Evaluation must, then, be based on the translator’s aims. A translation has to be judged in terms of its consistency with these aims and not for something it was never meant to be. Ben Belitt emphasizes this when he says: “I asked to be judged in terms of what I initially set out to do and what I initially concede you cannot expect of me.”12 All aims are acceptable provided they are clearly stated. What is not acceptable is inconsistency with these aims or mistakes in decoding and encoding, or loss that is due to the translator’s lack of skill. It is the translator’s duty to state what kind of translation is being offered and the reviewer’s responsibility to assess the translation for its consistency with these aims. Though, it must be said that the aims themselves may be open to criticism. For example, the reviewer may disagree with the translator’s choice of idiom as not being appropriate to a particular poet, but he cannot fault the translation if the translator is consistent in using his adopted idiom throughout. Having established and commented on the translator’s aims and kind of translation offered, what criteria are then available to the reviewer for evaluating the translation in terms of consistency with these aims? –

—

As noted earlier, one of the two basic criteria used by reviewers in their attempts to evaluate translations is to hunt for mistakes on a lexical level alone and base their “evaluation” of the translation purely on whether a word is referentially accurate or appropriate (reviewers rarely give examples of the translator’s successful solutions). The misreading of one word by the translator, or an infelicitous rendition in the context of the whole poem, let alone a whole collection of poems, does not warrant the attention given to it by reviewers. Mistakes of this kind are not really as important as they are often made out to be, at least as long as they are incidental, and do not make nonsense of the poetic text as a whole. But, apart from this, the insistence of reviewers on confining their evaluation to questions of referential accuracy and interpretation reveals an insensitivity to the other levels on which a poem functions. Fortunately, translators do not generally exhibit such insensitivity. On the contrary, what is stressed continually by practising translators, over and above any one particular aim or approach, is the need for constant reworking and reassessment of the translated text in an attempt to make it correspond to the original poetic text on all the levels on which a poem functions. What are these levels? First, a poem contains information; it conveys the poet’s ideas or sentiments and, as such, consists of some statement or message referring to the real world. It thus functions on a semantic level. Second, a poem not only informs but delights through the manner or style in which it informs, or as Horace puts it: 11

  E. Dickens, “Translating from Languages of Lesser Currency,” In Other Words 3 (1994): 30–31.

12

  Ben Belitt in Honig, The Poet’s Other Voice, 76.

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“Poets aim at giving either profit or delight, or at combining the giving of pleasure with some useful precepts for life.”13 It may not exhibit the traditional verse forms of meter or rhyme, but, insofar as it is successful as a poem, it will be characterized by rhythm and certain formal devices, which constitute its orchestration and allow us to talk of a poetic style. It functions, therefore, on a second, stylistic level. Third, any poem, insofar as it functions as a poem for a particular reader, will have an emotional effect on that reader; it will have a communicative impact on the reader over and above any message or style it may possess. In other words, a poem also functions on a pragmatic level.14 If a translation of a poem is to be successful, it must, therefore, also function on these three levels, and in ways corresponding to those of the original poem. The added difficulty for the translator is, of course, that these levels interact. There are many points in a literary text where, for example, pragmatic and stylistic considerations coincide. Similarly, on a semantic level, it could be argued that the full meaning of any text lies in the intricacies of stylistic and semantic interaction (the old concept of the inseparability of form and content). In the transfer between languages and cultures, however, achieving equivalence on all levels will rarely be possible. So, for example, in order to maintain equivalence of sound patterns, it will be necessary to sacrifice equivalence on a syntactic or semantic level. Similarly, pragmatic equivalence is often at variance with semantic or stylistic equivalence. The demand for equivalence on all the various levels of a poem creates tensions pulling in different directions which the translator will either have to try to balance or to decide which will be given preference. James S. Holmes, in his model of translation, asserts that as soon as the translator begins looking for correspondences, he will be faced with a choice between three types of correspondences which he terms semantic, formal, and functional, and which correspond more or less to what I refer to above as the semantic, stylistic, and pragmatic levels.15 He notes that “it is a rare thing when the three happen to coincide across language barriers” and elsewhere, he stresses the

13

  Horace, “On the Art of Poetry”, trans. T. S. Dorsch, in Classical Literary Criticism (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1965), 90.

14

  S. Gontcharenko, “The Possible in the Impossible: Towards a Typology of Poetic Translation,” in Translators and their Position in Society: Proceedings of the Xth Congress of FIT, ed. H. Bόhler (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumόller, 1985), 143, expresses a similar view: “[A]t the basis of any translation lies the law of triune equivalence…. First, of semantic equivalence, due to which the translation conveys exactly what the original does. Second, of stylistic equivalence, which makes the translation a stylistic match to the original. Third, of perceptive, or pragmatic equivalence, which assures the identity of impact exercised by the translation and the original on their respective readers.” 15

  He calls these types of correspondences “semasiologues” (i.e., features corresponding in meaning, but in neither function or form), “homologues” (i.e., features corresponding in form, but not in function), or else “analogues” (i.e. features which correspond in function, but not in form).



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inadequacy of any definition of translation postulating correspondence on any single one of these levels.16 The aim of the reviewer should not be, as in so much translation criticism, to simply hunt for and highlight mistakes or quibble with the translator’s interpretations. To examine how successful a translation is will require an analysis of the way the original functions as a poetic text in a particular language, in a particular tradition, and at a particular time, together with an examination of whether the translated text functions in a similar or corresponding way in the target language and culture. This will entail an examination and comparison of the translation and the original (always in terms of the translator’s stated aims), with examples concerning the way in which the translator deals with the problems that arise on the semantic, stylistic, and pragmatic levels. With single poems, such an analysis is feasible. With collections of poems or novels, all that can be done is provide one or two characteristic examples of the general problems on each level. What is not acceptable, or is at least open to criticism, is when loss on any one level (semantic, stylistic, or pragmatic) is a result not of the often insurmountable difficulties faced by the translator when crossing linguistic and cultural borders but is due to the translator’s incompetence, as when a translator has made error after error due to ignorance of the language or an insensitive reading. In this case, we are dealing with an irresponsible misrepresentation of the poet’s work. Equally unacceptable, however, is the review which criticizes a translator for mistakes or infelicities on any one level alone, without taking into account the degree of successful correspondence on the other levels and on all the levels together. A mistake or infelicity on the semantic level may have been dictated by an attempt on the part of the translator to achieve closer correspondence to the original on the other two levels. It is the reviewer’s duty to point this out, assuming, of course, that he is aware of the problems involved, which is often not the case. –

—

Apart from having recourse to pointing out mistakes in the translation, usually the reviewer’s only other criterion for assessing translations is whether the translated text is “fluent” or “readable.”17 What the reviewer means by this, however, is rarely 16

  J. S. Holmes, Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), 85, 101. 17

  This practice of reading and evaluating translations on the basis of their fluency has long prevailed in the UK and US, as has been discussed at length by Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation (London: Routledge, 1995). He argues convincingly that a translated text is judged acceptable by most publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads fluently, when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities makes it seem transparent, giving the appearance that it reflects the foreign writer’s personality or intention or the essential meaning of the foreign text; the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation, but the “original.” The illusion of transparency, Venuti asserts, is an effect of fluent discourse, of the translator’s effort to ensure easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax, fixing a precise meaning. What is so remarkable here is

362 David Connolly

explained. Even more perplexing is the fact that it is often used as a criterion for assessing translations of literary texts that are not intended to be particularly “fluent” or “readable” in the original. Translators who in their translated text normalize language which in the original text deviates from the norms of the source language seriously misrepresent their author and should meet with reproof, not approbation, from reviewers. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Reviewers praise translations for their “fluency” even though the original text may be far from fluent. Every translator knows that deviations from the norms of the target language and/or from the “poetic” norms of a particular tradition will be attributed to his incompetence rather than to the author’s creativity. Most reviews only consolidate this situation. So, in addition to the three levels discussed above, on which the translator has to seek correspondence, we might add one more level: the “poetic” or normative level, which simply means that in addition to the difficulties involved in accounting for the poem’s content, form, and effect, the translator of poetry has also to produce a text that will meet the reader’s and reviewer’s expectations of a poem in the TL culture. The “poetic” or normative level refers to the fact that if you want acceptance for your translations, your translated poem has to conform to the prevalent poetic norms or poetic sensibility in a given culture. It has to have some intrinsic poetic quality defined in terms of the poetic norms of a particular time, place, and tradition. This basically amounts to an acknowledgement of the expectations of the readership for poetry in a specific language or tradition. This is succinctly expressed by Tess Gallagher, who notes: “Though we often can’t tell how much fidelity [or correspondence] the translations we read bear to their originals, we do know a good poem in English, and this seems to be the deciding factor in the translations that win us.”18 And, similarly, R. A. Brower remarks: “The average reader of a translation in English wants to find the kind of experience which has become identified with ‘poetry’ in his readings of English literature. The translator who wishes to be read must in some degree satisfy this want,” though presumably the reader is also looking for something different or wouldn’t turn to foreign literature.19 On the purely poetic level, then, the search for fidelity or correspondence to the original poem on the three levels discussed above becomes secondary to the criterion of conformity with the poetic norms of a particular culture and tradition.20 that this illusory effect conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made, starting with the translator’s crucial intervention in the foreign text. The more fluent the translation, the more invisible the translator. Venuti gives examples from translation reviews of the dominance of fluency in English-language translations as a criterion for “good translation”. 18

  T. Gallagher, “Poetry in Translation: Literary Imperialism or Defending the Musk Ox,” Parnassus—The Poetry Review 9, 1 (1981): 166. 19

  R. A. Brower, On Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 173.

20

  As T. Hermans, ed., The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation (London: Croom Helm 1985), 165, writes: “Translation is evidently a goal-oriented activity and in terms of this need to make the translation conform to what is considered poetry in a particular socio-cultural system, the translator is obliged to conform with the norms of that system, i.e. the norms of the target or recipient system. So the act of translating is a matter of adjusting



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This may, in part at least, explain Elytis’ cool reception in translation in the English-speaking world 21 in contrast to Cavafy and Seferis, whose poetry conforms— or has been made to conform through translation—to what the English reader has come to expect of poetry in the twentieth century.22 As an example, I might refer here to a review in the TLS of Elytis’ collection The Oxopetra Elegies in my English translation.23 The review begins as follows: “In the thankless discipline of translating poetry, certain combinations of author and language are particularly intractable; and few tasks can be harder than to make a convincing English version of Odysseus Elytis’ late poems. The problems stem partly from the poet’s adoption of a declarative, highly rhetorical and at times would-be prophetic voice—a style no one since Whitman has successfully invoked in English, and which at its most heated is more likely to provoke ridicule than awe. The greatest difficulty, however, remains Elytis’ language, with its almost rococo love of flourish and ornamentation; the English equivalent is indigestible unless leavened by irony, a quality in which these poems are entirely lacking.”24 Given the fact that, in Greece, the critical acclaim for this collection when published in 1991 was overwhelming, and the fact that the reviewer is not, on the whole, critical of my translation, I can only assume that the criticism of the poems in English has to do more with their failure to conform to the prevailing poetic norms in the English-speaking world. –

—

and (yes) manipulating a Source Text so as to bring the Target Text into line with a particular model and hence a particular correctness notion, and in so doing secure social acceptance.… The ‘correct’ translation therefore is the one that fits the correctness notions prevailing in a particular system, i.e. that adopts the solutions regarded as correct for a given communicative situation, as a result of which it is regarded as correct. In other words, when translators do what is expected of them, they will be seen to have done well.” 21

  E. Keeley and G. Savidis, The Axion Esti (London: Anvil Press, 1980), 10, note: “Generally, our aim throughout the poem has been to create a rhetorical equivalent that sounds natural and contemporary in English, even if sometimes a bit abstract or hyperbolic by comparison to the language normal to poetry in the English-speaking world since Pound and Eliot and Auden established what has become the contemporary idiom in their tradition.” 22

  E. Keeley, “Collaboration, Revision and Other Less Forgivable Sins,” in The Craft of Translation, ed. J. Biguenet and R. Schulte (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 59, explains that in his translations with Sherrard of Cavafy: “Our impulse was to bring Cavafy into the post-Sixties by creating a voice for him that we hoped would sound as contemporary as the best Anglo-American poetry of the day.” He also adds (ibid., 61) that: “Our effort to bring Cavafy into the post-Sixties world met with a generally warm reception from reviewers.” 23

  D. Connolly, Odysseus Elytis: The Oxopetra Elegies (bilingual) (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996). 24

  J. Stathatos, review of Odysseus Elytis: The Oxopetra Elegies, by D. Connolly, The Times Literary Supplement, 30 May 1997, 25.

364 David Connolly

To sum up, I have suggested the following as possible criteria for the evaluation of poetry translations: • What kind of translation is being offered? If the translator has not clearly stated his aims, it is the reviewer’s responsibility to at least infer these aims in order to assess the translation accordingly. Is the translation consistent with these aims? Are these aims reasonable, given the type of poetry being translated and the linguistic and cultural traditions involved? • Does the translation function in a way that is similar or that corresponds to the way the original poem functions on all levels. Does it exhibit those same linguistic and stylistic features which characterize a particular poet in his own language? Is the choice of idiom in the TL suitable for rendering this particular type of poetry? • Where there is significant semantic, stylistic, or pragmatic loss in the translation, is this unavoidable or due to the translator’s lack of competence? This does not mean hunting for mistakes, but requires the reviewer to be aware of the problems involved and the solutions possible. • Is the translation acceptable as a poem in the target language and culture or does it at least function as a piece of creative writing in its own right? This is not the same as requiring that it appear as if originally written in the TL or that it be totally domesticated in keeping with the linguistic and poetic norms of the receptor-culture. I can see no justification for demanding that The Axion Esti appear as an English poem. It is a Greek poem not only in subject matter but also in formal conception, and should, in my opinion, appear to be so and retain its Greek accent even in the TL. • Was the poetic work worth translating? Assessment in this respect should be made both in terms of the work’s importance and originality in the poet’s own cultural tradition but also in terms of its potential interest and influence (if any) on the language and literature of the TL culture. Similar questions to be asked here are whether it is a work that inevitably loses so much in translation that the translator is, in fact, rendering a disservice to the author. Every experienced translator knows that there are limits to what can be achieved; these have to do with the capacities of the TL and the constraints of the TL culture, and norms as discussed above, but also with the translator’s skill.25 The translator’s skill is not limited to the linguistic level. He also needs the critical ability to judge works from foreign literatures, to discern what may be of potential interest to his target readership and to assess what works can be effectively translated. He should have a thorough knowledge of the literary tradition and sociocultural background against which a certain ST is written, and he must possess a certain amount of creative talent 25

  See Lefevere, Translating Poetry, 101–03, who lists a five-point inventory for assessing the competence of the literary translator.



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himself. The ideal translator should therefore combine the personalities of the linguist, scholar, critic, and creative writer. The difficulties involved and the demands made upon the translator perhaps help to explain why the translation of a poem is never totally satisfactory, and why the translator has eventually to stop somewhere. Many statements by practicing translators testify to the fact that no matter how long the translator works, no matter how many drafts are rejected, no matter how many rewritings are undertaken, no matter how successful the resulting text may be, there will always be the original remaining to show that the translation is less than we would wish it. The difficulty of accounting for all the various aspects and functions of the original poem has led many translators and poets alike to declare that translating poetry is impossible. Personally, I side with those who, like the late Joseph Brodsky, see it rather as “the art of the impossible.” Reviews of translated texts would be more constructive and meaningful if reviewers themselves were perhaps a little more practiced in this “impossible art.”

Russia and Eastern Europe

Khazaria, Kiev, and Constantinople in the First Half of the Tenth Century Thomas S. Noonan†

Mesmerized by chronicle accounts of the route from the Varangians to the Greeks and the Rus´-Byzantine trade treaties of the first half of the tenth century, too many historians assume that the foreign relations of the early Kievan state revolved primarily around its ties with Byzantium. In fact, Rus´-Vikings first appeared in northwestern European Russia around 750, and by the late eighth century, they had established a lucrative trade with the Near East via the Don-Donets basins and Khazaria. This trade flourished during the course of the ninth century, when millions of Islamic silver coins or dirhams were imported into European Russia and the Baltic by Rus´ merchants operating from bases in northwestern Russia (Ladoga and Riurikovo gorodishche) and the upper Volga (Timerevo and Sarskoe). As the result of this trade, the Rus´ developed very close ties with the Khazar khaganate and were very much influenced by its institutions. In the ninth and tenth centuries, for instance, Khazaria was run by a ceremonial head of state called the khagan and an actual ruler called the beg. In 839, a group of men who called themselves Rhos appeared in Constantinople and professed to have been dispatched there by their ruler, who was called Chacanus (rex illorum Chacanus vocabulo). The Byzantine emperor, in turn, sent these men to the western emperor in Ingelheim as part of an official embassy and asked the emperor to help them return home safely, since the route by which they had come to Constantinople was blocked by ferocious barbarians.1 While there is great controversy surrounding this report, it seems clear that these Rhos/Rus´ were either agents of the Khazar khagan sent to Constantinople or representatives of an independent entity located somewhere in European Russia whose leader had borrowed the title of the Khazar ruler.2 In the latter case, from the 830s at the latest, one band of Rus´ was in such close contact with the Khazars that it sought to legitimize its own power by assuming the sacred title of the charismatic Khazar dynasty. This process of legitimization through the adoption of the Khazar title of khagan continued in the tenth century. Both Ibn Rusta and Gardîzî noted that the Rûs 1

  The Annals of St.-Bertin, trans. J. L. Nelson (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1991), 44.

2

  For the latter point of view, see P. B. Golden, “The Question of the Rus´ Qaǧanate,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 77–97. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 369–82.

370 Thomas S. Noonan

ruler was called the khâǧan/khagan of the Rûs.3 Similarly, the anonymous Ḥudûd al-cÂlam indicates that the Rûs king is called the Rûs khâǧan.4 The parallels between the tenth-century Khazar and Rus´ ruling structures were also functional. Ibn Faḍlân, describing the situation ca. 921, noted that the king of the Rus´ “has a viceregent who manages his armies, fights his enemies and represents him among his subjects.” He then went on to note that the Khazar beg, not the khagan, “leads the [Khazar] armed forces and manages them, conducts the affairs of the kingdom and assumes the burdens thereof, appears before the people and raids [external enemies].”5 The Rus´ borrowed more than just a legitimizing title from the Khazars; they had also adopted the Khazar practice of a dual kingship with a ceremonial khagan who ruled nominally along with a beg, who had real executive power. The desire to associate themselves with the Khazar khagan was so strong that even in the eleventh century, long after the khaganate had collapsed ca. 965, the Rus´ grand princes of Kiev were sometimes referred to as khagans. Around 1050, Metropolitan Hilarion, for example, called Grand Prince Vladimir “our khagan” and “the great khagan of our land,” while he alluded to his patron and contemporary, Grand Prince Iaroslav, as “our devout khagan.”6 These references seem strange coming as they did from a man who described Grand Prince Vladimir as “the new Constantine” who had brought the true faith to Kiev. But, such sentiments were not unique among Rus´ of the eleventh century. The north gallery of the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev contains a graffito, ascribed to the time of Grand Prince Sviatoslav II (1073–76), which asked God to “save our khagan.”7 Finally, it is worth noting that the controversial Igor´ Tale, considered by some to be a genuine work of the Kievan period, has references to khagans Sviatoslav, Iaroslav, and Oleg.8 The above evidence makes it clear that very strong economic and political ties existed between the Rus´ and the Khazars going as far back as the late eighth and early ninth century and that the Rus´ borrowed both the title khagan and the institution of dual kingship from the Khazars. Nevertheless, it is also clear that starting in the early tenth century the Rus´ grand princes of Kiev developed increasingly strong 3

  A. P. Martinez, “Gardîzî’s Two Chapters on the Turks,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 167; and Golden, “Rus´ Qaǧanate,” 82.

  Ḥudûd al- cÂlam. “The Regions of the World”: A Persian Geography, 372 A.H.–982 A.D., trans. V. Minorsky, ed. C. E. Bosworth, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Press, 1970), 159. 4

5

  James E. McKeithen, trans., “The Risâlah of Ibn Fadlân” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1979), 152–54. 6

  Metropolitan Hilarion, “Sermon on Law and Grace,” in Sermons and Rhetoric of Kievan Rus´, trans. and ed. Simon Franklin (Cambridge, MA: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University, 1991), 3, 17, 18, 26. 7

  S. A. Vysotskii, Drevnerusskie nadpisi Sofii Kievskoi XI–XIV vv. (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1966), 1: 49–52.

8

  The Song of Igor’s Campaign, trans. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 71.

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economic and political ties with Constantinople, ties which were greatly strengthened by the conversion of Grand Prince Vladimir to Byzantine Orthodoxy ca. 989. In the course of time, these ties became so potent that the earlier close relationship with Khazaria was largely forgotten or ignored. It is the purpose of this study to explore the great “diplomatic revolution” in the foreign affairs of Kiev which saw it move out of the Khazar orbit and into that of Byzantium, a development which, as we shall see, took place in the first half of the tenth century. Khazar hegemony over the middle Dnepr region in general and Kiev in particular dates to the first half of the ninth century. According to the Primary Chronicle, some­ time after the death of the legendary founders of Kiev (Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv), the Khazars imposed a tribute of one sword per hearth upon the Polianians, the East Slavic tribe inhabiting Kiev and surrounding areas.9 An alternative version, also found in the Primary Chronicle, indicates that in 859 the Khazars imposed a tribute of one white squirrel skin per hearth upon the Polianians as well as the Severianians of the Desna basin and the Viatichians of the upper Oka basin.10 This Khazar imposition of tribute over the East Slavic tribes of the middle Dnepr leaves no doubt that Khazar rule extended over these areas. This domination is reiterated in entries dated to the 880s that state that the Severianians paid the Khazars a “light” tribute while the Radimichians of the upper left-bank Dnepr paid the Khazars one shilling, i.e., one dirham, apiece.11 Since the Derevlianians allegedly began to pay the Rus´ of Kiev a tribute of one black marten skin apiece in the 880s, they may also have been subjected to Khazar tribute although this is not specifically stated.12 Khazar rule over some of these East Slavic tribes apparently lasted for some time. The Primary Chronicle noted, in an entry dated to the late 950s, that the Viatichians still paid the Khazars a tribute although it had now been converted to one silver coin per ploughshare.13 Lest there be any skepticism about these reports of Khazar domination over the East Slavs, we need only consult the Extended Redaction of the Reply of the Khazar King Joseph, where he stated, ca. 950, that his realm included the Arisu (=the Mordvin tribe of Erza?), the Ts-p-mis (probably the Cheremis), the V-i-i-tit (Viatichians?), the S-v-r (Severianians?), and the S-l-viiun (another Slavic tribe, perhaps the Radimichians or Ilmen´ Slavs?). Joseph went on to note that each of these peoples serve him and pay tribute to the Khazars.14 In other words, both Rus´ and Khazar sources agree that many East Slavic and even Finnic tribes later incorporated into the Rus´ state centered in Kiev had previously paid tribute to the Khazars. While it is not clear 9

  The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text, trans. and ed. Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1953), 58. 10

  Ibid., 59.

11

  Ibid., 61.

12

 Ibid.

13

  Ibid., 84.

14

  P. K. Kokovtsov, Evreisko-khazarskaia perepiska v X veke (Leningrad: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1932), 98.

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when Khazar rule over the Rus´ lands began, it was no later than the first half of the ninth century. Let us now examine Rus´-Khazar relations in the second half of the ninth century. According to the Primary Chronicle, Askold and Dir, two men serving under Riurik in Novgorod (actually Ladoga or Riurikovo Gorodishche), received permission to go to Constantinople. While sailing down the Dnepr, they came to Kiev, where the descendants of Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv “were living … as tributaries of the Khazars.” The chronicler then states that Askold and Dir decided to stay in Kiev and subsequently extended their control over the lands of the Polianians, i.e., the middle Dnepr region around Kiev. A few years later, Askold and Dir allegedly attacked Constantinople, but their fleet was destroyed in a storm.15 This entry, while plausible, raises a number of serious problems. In the first place, there are some grounds to question the very historicity of Askold and Dir as well as their supposed exploits. Recent scholarship, for example, argues that the 860 attack on Constantinople was launched from somewhere in northern Russia rather than from Kiev.16 At most, Askold and Dir seem to be the leaders of a small band of adventurers who headed south in search of fame and fortune. At the least, they were inventions of the later chroniclers who apparently sought to legitimize the establishment of the Rus´ grand princes in Kiev by having them seize the city from Askold and Dir.17 This account also raises problems because it omits all mention of the Khazars. We are supposed to believe that a band of Rus´ from the Novgorod region suddenly appeared in Kiev, a town whose inhabitants were Khazar tributaries, and established their undisputed rule over it and the surrounding area while the Khazar overlords seemingly did nothing. Rather than conclude that the Khazars meekly withdrew without any resistance, it seems far more realistic to assume that Askold and Dir, if they existed, came to some understanding with the Khazar rulers of Kiev. Co-dominium is no doubt too strong a word for the new situation that arose in Kiev ca. 860. It is more likely that Askold and Dir entered into Khazar service and helped the Khazars collect tribute from the local peoples. Just as other Rus´ served the Khazar khagan as envoys and mercenaries, so the Rus´ of Askold and Dir became part of Khazar local government in the middle Dnepr. Askold and Dir were not the only Rus´ from the Novgorod region to move south to Kiev and the middle Dnepr. Around 880, Oleg, Riurik’s successor, supposedly led a large army south to Kiev pretending to be a merchant on his way to Constantinople. When Askold and Dir came out to meet them, they were promptly killed, and Oleg 15

  Primary Chronicle, 60.

16

  Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200 (London: Longman, 1996), 50–58; and Constantine Zuckerman, “On the Date of the Khazars’ Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus Oleg and Igor: A Study of the Anonymous Khazar Letter from the Genizah of Cairo,” Revue des Études Byzantines 53, 1 (1995): 270. 17

  Before Oleg killed Askold and Dir and seized control of Kiev, he purportedly said to them: “You are not princes nor even of princely stock, but I am of princely birth.” See Primary Chronicle, 61.

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then announced that Kiev would be “the mother of Rus´ cities.”18 This chronicle entry describing Oleg’s seizure of Kiev also omits all references to the Khazars. We are led to believe that there was no Khazar dominion of any kind over the city and that Askold and Dir were its sole rulers. Furthermore, subsequent chronicle entries from the 880s, as we have seen, relate how Oleg forced the other East Slavic tribes of the middle Dnepr to stop paying tribute to the Khazars and to give the tribute to his band instead. Again, this transfer of tributary status from Khazaria to Kiev supposedly took place without any opposition from the Khazars. The chronicler implies that Khazar rule over the entire middle Dnepr simply melted away when Oleg’s band appeared in Kiev and then demanded tribute from the various East Slavic tribes. Such an interpretation is clearly unacceptable. There is no reason to believe that the Khazars beat a hasty retreat and relinquished all control over the middle Dnepr once Oleg and his army arrived. How then do we explain Oleg’s relationship with the Khazars ca. 880? Recently, Constantine Zuckerman has undertaken a detailed reanalysis of the chronology of Oleg’s and Igor’s reigns based on an examination of the Primary Chronicle, First Novgorod Chronicle, and the Schechter Text/Cambridge Document. He concluded that the time of Oleg’s movement from the Novgorod region south and his seizure of Kiev should be moved forward from the 880s–890s to the 910s–930s. This redating would help to explain why Oleg, whose death is recorded in the Primary Chronicle under the year 912, perished, according to the Cambridge Document, in Persia during the early 940s.19 Since Zuckerman’s argumentation makes good sense, Oleg’s appearance in Kiev should now be dated to the early tenth century. Askold and Dir, if they existed, probably died sometime in the second half of the ninth century. The accounts of Askold, Dir, and Oleg, even though they may be apocryphal or misdated, do highlight one crucial fact. During the second half of the ninth century and especially its last twenty-five years, Kiev and the middle Dnepr received increasing attention from Rus´ bands in central and northern Russia. It is now believed (based on archaeological excavations) that significant numbers of Rus´ first appeared in the city during the 880s.20 What was it that made Kiev more attractive to the Rus´ of the north starting in the late ninth century? While the Primary Chronicle focuses its attention upon the political activities of such semilegendary Rus´ leaders as Askold, Dir, and Oleg, it is also important to consider the economic situation of Kiev during the second half of the ninth century. As noted earlier, during the ninth century, the Rus´ conducted a very active commerce with the Islamic world via the Khazar khaganate. Based on the find spots of the hoards of Islamic silver coins or dirhams deposited at this time, the main routes for this trade led via the Don and Donets 18

  Ibid., 61.

19

  Zuckerman, “On the Date,” 259–68.

20

  Johan Callmer, “The Archaeology of Kiev to the End of the Earliest Urban Phase,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 11 (1987): 323–53; and Volodymyr I. Mezentsev, “The Emergence of the Podil and the Genesis of the City of Kiev: Problems of Dating,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 10 (1986): 48–70.

374 Thomas S. Noonan

basins to the upper Volga and upper Dnepr. The middle Dnepr, like the middle Volga, had little or no place in the Islamic trade of the Rus´ at this time.21 Rus´ commerce with the Near East via Khazaria was dominated by well-organized bands of Rus´ who operated from long established bases in northern and central Russia. Their monopoly over the Islamic trade proved very profitable. During the period from 780 to 899, some 30,000 dirhams have been reported from finds in European Russia alone. If we add the dirhams from the Baltic that passed through Russia (around 20,000) and multiply by a wastage factor (to account for dirhams that were melted down, never recorded, or have not yet been found) of from 10 to 100, then it is possible to estimate the volume of trade at 500,000 to 5,000,000 silver dirhams. If each dirham weighed around 2.8 grams, then between 14,000 and 140,000 kg of silver were involved. The rich and powerful Rus´ bands who controlled the Islamic trade had no interest in sharing their profits with other Rus´ bands, especially those new bands (like Riurik’s) that had only appeared in European Russia around the middle of the ninth century. New Rus´ adventurers like Riurik, Askold, Dir, Oleg, etc., had to look elsewhere if they were to gain fame and fortune. Consequently, it is not surprising that some newly arrived Rus´ began to seek their fortune along the middle Dnepr. The Rus´ who first became active in Kiev no doubt functioned as Khazar servitors and had as their primary duty the maintenance of Khazar rule, which was primarily manifested in the collection of tribute from the local peoples. They had no role in the Rus´ trade with the Near East that went through the Caspian and Caucasus. This trade was in the hands of other Rus´ bands, bands that were quite independent of the Rus´ in Kiev. The Rus´ of Kiev were thus less prosperous than other Rus´ bands and were unquestionably excluded from the eastern trade. Given the above background, let us now explore the diplomatic revolution in Kiev’s relations with the outside world that occurred during the first half of the tenth century. Sometime early in the century, an ambitious and able Viking parvenu named Oleg assumed leadership of the small band of Rus´ inhabiting Kiev. Oleg had to face the fact that his band was relatively poor compared with the Rus´ who dominated the Islamic trade, while his overlords, the Khazars, had to contend with a severe military-economic crisis. Khazaria had maintained good relations with Byzantium over the course of several centuries. In the 620s, Khazars had allied with the emperor Heraclius against the Sasanian rulers of the Caucasus. In the first half of the eighth century, a marriage between the Khazar and Byzantine royal houses cemented an alliance against an expansionist Umayyad caliphate that threatened both empires. Finally, in the late 830s, Byzantium helped the Khazars to construct a fortress in the Don steppe to guard against an unidentified foe. At the same time, Khazar and Byz-

21

  Thomas S. Noonan, “Ninth-Century Dirham Hoards from European Russia: A Preliminary Analysis,” in Viking-Age Coinage in the Northern Lands, ed. M. A. S. Blackburn and D. M. Metcalf, British Archaeological Reports, International Series, no. 122 (Oxford: British Archeological Reports, 1981), 57; and Noonan, “Coins, Trade and the Origins of Ninth Century Rus´ Towns,” in XII. Internationaler Numismatischer Kongress Berlin 1997: Akten —Proceedings—Actes, ed. Bernd Klug (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2000), 934–42.

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antine interests came into conflict in the Crimea and the northwestern Caucasus.22 As borderlands located between these two empires, it was natural that both states would seek to dominate them. The inherent territorial tensions between Byzantium and Khazaria would inevitably become more severe when there was no common enemy like the Arabs to force them into an accommodation. Under these circumstances, Byzantium was apt to exploit any weaknesses in Khazaria. In the ninth century, Khazaria experienced serious problems in the steppe regions between the Volga and the Dnepr. As noted above, in the late 830s the Khazars had requested Byzantine assistance to construct a fortress in the lower Don steppe to help repel some anonymous enemy. While the identity of this enemy is the subject of much discussion, the group threatening the lower Don steppe was most likely the Hungarians.23 The creation of the Hungarian land of Lebedia in the Don-Dnepr steppes represented a serious threat to the Khazar position here. Then, in the 880s, when the Khazars apparently used the Pechenegs to drive the Hungarians westward out of Lebedia,24 the situation deteriorated further. The Pechenegs, who now occupied Lebedia, became enemies of Khazaria who presented a major threat to the khaganate. The Khazar lands in the Don-Dnepr steppe were now lost while the prosperous regions of the Don-Donets forest steppe and Crimea, with their developed agriculture, rich pasture lands, and extensive craft production, were exposed to constant danger. By the late ninth century, Byzantium no doubt concluded that the time had come to attack Khazaria and regain control over the entire Crimea. While the exact dates and identities of the parties involved remain the subject of some discussion, the Schechter Text or Cambridge Document clearly reveals the animosity that existed between Byzantium and Khazaria at the time.25 During the reign of the Khazar king Benjamin, ca. 880–ca. 900, a potent anti-Khazar alliance consisting of the Burtās, the Torks or Oghuz, the Black Bulghars, the Pechenegs, and the Macedonians, i.e., Byzantines, attacked Khazaria. The khaganate was saved and the anti-Khazar alliance defeated, thanks to the intervention of the king of the Alans on the side of Benjamin. As Pritsak notes, it seems evident that the organizer 22

  Thomas S. Noonan, “Byzantium and the Khazars: A Special Relationship?” in Byzantine Diplomacy, ed. J. Shepard and S. Franklin (London: Variorum, 1992), 109–32; and Noonan, “Why Dirhams First Reached Russia: The Role of Arab-Khazar Relations in the Development of the Earliest Islamic Trade with Eastern Europe,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 4 (1984): 151–282.

23

  K. Tsukerman, “Vengry v strane Lebedii: Novaia derzhava na granitsakh Vizantii i Kha­ zarii ok. 836–889 g.,” Materialy po arkheologii, istorii i etnografii Tavrii 6 (1998): 659–84; Constantine Zuckerman, “Les Hongrois aux pays de Lebedia: Une nouvelle puissance aux confins de Byzance et de la Khazarie ca. 836–889,” in Byzantium at War, ed. N. Oikonomides (Athens: National Research Foundation, 1997), 51–74. 24

  Tsukerman, “Vengry,” 666–67.

25

  I have followed the interpretation of Pritsak regarding the Schechter Text. See Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), esp. 132–44.

376 Thomas S. Noonan

of this anti-Khazar coalition was Byzantium.26 Following this setback, Byzantium tried a new approach against the Khazars during the reign of the Khazar king Aaron, ca. 900–ca. 920. Early in the tenth century, the Alans were converted to Byzantine Orthodoxy. The emperor then induced the king of the Alans to attack the Khazars. This time, however, Aaron hired the Torks/Oghuz as his allies and the Alans were defeated. Presumably as a consequence of this reverse, the Alans abjured Christianity sometime in the 920s and expelled the Orthodox clergy sent to them by the Byzantine emperor.27 The late ninth and early tenth centuries were thus marked by a series of campaigns against the Khazars instigated by Byzantium. The Byzantine objective was apparently to use its proxy forces to weaken the Khazars and thus regain territories in the Crimea which had been lost to the Khazars earlier. While this strategy failed, due to the ability of the Khazars to recruit their own mercenaries, it illustrates very clearly the pronounced anti-Khazar policy that dominated Constantinople. Despite these failures, the Byzantines were not prepared to abandon their aggressive anti-Khazar policy. In the early 940s, they found a new proxy to pursue their wars against Khazaria. The emperor Romanus Lecapenus bribed Helgi/Oleg, the king of the Rus´, to attack Tmutorokan´, the main Khazar city in the Kerch straits. Oleg seized the city and looted it during the night while the local commander, the pesah, was absent. When the pesah heard of this raid, he marched into the Byzantine Crimea, took several Byzantine towns and cities, including Kherson, and presumably looted them. The pesah then marched from Kherson against Oleg, defeated him after a four-month campaign, and took back the loot seized in Tmutorokan´. When Oleg pleaded that he had been lured by Romanus to attack Tmutorokan´, he was compelled by the pesah to launch a naval raid against Constantinople or the Byzantine coasts somewhere in the Black Sea. After four months at sea, Oleg’s forces were destroyed by the Greek fire employed by the Byzantine navy. “Ashamed to return to his [own] country, he fled to Persia by [the Caspian] sea and there he and his troops fell.”28 Several points in this account of Oleg’s adventures are crucial for our analysis. First, the Byzantines now considered the Rus´ of Oleg as one of the peoples inhabiting the northern coasts of the Black Sea who could be induced to fight Byzantium’s wars for it. Usually, such a role was reserved for nomadic peoples such as the Pechenegs. Oleg’s Rus´ must thus have established close ties with Byzantium. Second, the Khazars presented a very dangerous threat to Byzantine possessions in the Crimea. The pesah was able to ravage these territories and threaten Kherson, the very center of Byzantine power in the peninsula. The ease with which Khazaria could endanger the Byzantine position in the Crimea suggests why Byzantium was so keen to weaken the khaganate. Third, despite their close ties with Byzantium, Oleg’s Rus´ were still under Khazar domination. Although it took the pesah four months to bring Oleg to bay, the Rus´ of Kiev were defeated by the Khazars and compelled to accept Khazar overlordship again. Khazar rule over Kiev was still real. Finally, just as the Byzantines tried to use 26 27

  Ibid., 112–15, 132–35.

  Ibid., 114–15, 135–36.

28

  Ibid., 114–19, 137–38.

Khazaria, Kiev, and Constantinople in the First Half of the Tenth Century

377

Oleg against the Khazars, the Khazars tried to use Oleg against Byzantium. Oleg was caught between the two powers and he suffered greatly from their efforts to use his Rus´ as their agents against the other. Quite clearly, it was in Oleg’s best efforts to extricate himself from this untenable position. If he could not free himself from the demands of both empires, then at least he could try to gain his independence from one of them. In any event, the late ninth and first half of the tenth century was marked by growing hostilities between Byzantium and Khazaria, hostilities which began to have very negative consequences for Oleg and the Rus´ of Kiev. Khazaria’s economic problems arose from the major change that took place in Rus´ trade with the Islamic world around 900. Prior to that time, as we have seen, the eastern trade of the Rus´ went through the Khazar khaganate across the Caspian and Caucasus to the Near East. The Khazars collected a tithe on all the goods that were transported through their lands as well as collecting other tolls and taxes. Start­ ing around 900, however, the main trade route connecting European Russia with the Islamic world shifted. This commerce now ran along the upper Volga to Volga Bulgharia on the middle Volga. Rus´ merchants brought their slaves and furs here, where they exchanged them with Islamic traders who had come across the steppe by caravan from Khwârizm in Central Asia. This dramatic shift is clearly revealed in the numismatic materials. Most of the dirhams deposited in northern Europe dur­ ing the ninth century were struck in the cAbbâsid mints of the Near East such as Baghdad/Madînt al-Salâm. Tenth-century dirhams deposited in northern Europe were overwhelmingly struck in the Sâmânid mints of Central Asia such as Tashkent/ al-Shâsh and Samarqand. Judging from the coin evidence, around 80 percent of the Islamic trade with the Rus´ now went via the caravan route from Central Asia, while only 20 percent of the eastern commerce continued to come by the old Caspian– Caucasus route. At the same time, the volume of trade increased markedly during the tenth century. If some 50,000 dirhams were deposited in northern Europe during the ninth century, then some 300,000 were deposited here during the tenth century. While the volume of the Rus´-Islamic commerce going via the khaganate was still substantial, the volume of this trade going through Volga Bulgharia was four times greater. To put it bluntly, Khazaria had lost 80 percent of its former market share, which meant huge losses in tithes, tolls, taxes, and other revenues. Since the Volga Bulghars were tributaries of the Khazars, the latter recouped some of these losses from the tithes assessed on merchants involved in the Khazar-Volga Bulghar com­ merce along the Volga. But, these revenues did not make up for the fact that the main intermediary in the Islamic trade was now the Volga Bulghars, who amassed a vast fortune from this commerce. To increase the wealth and power of his band and to deal with the economic-military crisis confronting his Khazar overlords, Oleg devised a threefold strategy. The first part of his plan was to tap into the wealth derived by the Bulghars from their trade with Central Asia. This effort is reflected very clearly in the numismatic evidence. During the ninth century, no hoards of Islamic dirhams were deposited in Kiev or surrounding regions of the middle Dnepr.29 Then, suddenly, in the early tenth 29

  Noonan, “Ninth-Century Dirham Hoards,” 57.

378 Thomas S. Noonan

century, two huge dirham hoards appeared in Kiev. One of these hoards, unearthed in 1851, apparently consisted of 2,000–3,000 dirhams. Unfortunately, most of the hoard was dispersed and only 512 dirhams were preserved. However, the largest group of the preserved dirhams, the 401 coins sent to the Coin Cabinet of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, has not been published, and the detailed, written account of them has not been made available to scholars. Nevertheless, based upon the hundred or so dir­ hams which have been published, the hoard can be dated to 905–06. About half of these hundred or so dirhams were recent Sâmânid dirhams issued by Central Asian mints.30 Fortunately, we possess a very detailed account of the second huge hoard from Kiev, which was uncovered in 1913 and contained 2,930 dirhams. Most of the genuine dirhams in this hoard (87.6 percent) were Abbâsid coins struck prior to 880. In other words, they were dirhams imported into European Russia during the ninth century. However, 10.7 percent were new Sâmânid dirhams struck in Central Asia.31 The presence of recent Sâmânid dirhams in both hoards indicates that Kiev was now obtaining dirhams from Volga Bulgharia where these coins were imported into European Russia from Central Asia. Under Oleg, a direct connection between Kiev and the Islamic trade was brought about for the first time. However, the Rus´ merchants of the upper Volga and northwestern Russia who controlled the Islamic commerce on the Rus´ side had no desire to let their rivals in Kiev have a share in their highly profitable monopoly. Consequently, only two other hoards were deposited in Kiev during the remainder of the first half of the tenth century, and one consisted of 6 dirhams preserved from a larger group of perhaps 40 found in a grave.32 The second of these hoards contained over 190 dirhams and was deposited ca. 935–36.33 In short, Kiev’s participation in the Islamic commerce that Oleg had initiated in the early tenth century came to a rather abrupt end. The Rus´ of Kiev were not going to get rich and powerful through the eastern trade. If one could not gain fame and fortune through the Islamic trade, then it was possible to achieve the same goals by raiding the Islamic lands. Thus, during the time of Oleg, the Muslim population along the Caspian coasts became a favorite target of the Rus´. Mascûdî, for example, recounts the famous Rus´ raid against the Muslim towns on the western coast of the Caspian which took place some time after 912–13. An expedition supposedly containing some five hundred ships carrying five hundred men each appeared in the Sea of Azov and entered into negotiations with the Khazar king. The Rus´ requested permission to pass through Khazaria and sail down the Volga by the Khazar capital of Itil´ and enter into the Khazar Sea (the Caspian). The Rus´ marauders promised to split the booty from their raids on the towns along the coast evenly with the king. The king agreed and the Rus´ sailed up the Don, portaged across to the Volga, and then sailed down the Volga into the Caspian. The Rus´ ships 30

  Thomas S. Noonan, “The Monetary History of Kiev in the Pre-Mongol Period,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 11 (1987): 411–13, no. 4.

31

  Ibid., 414–15, no. 16.

32

  Ibid., 414, no. 11.

33

  Ibid., 413, no. 6.

Khazaria, Kiev, and Constantinople in the First Half of the Tenth Century

379

then spread out over the Caspian coasts looting and pillaging everywhere they went. When they concluded their raiding, they returned north to the estuary of the Volga and informed the Khazar king that they were prepared to divide the spoils of their raids with him equally. However, the Muslim mercenaries of the Khazars along with other Muslims resident in Itil´ heard what the Rus´ had done to their brethren along the Caspian coast and told the king that they were going to deal with these butchers who had attacked their fellow Muslims. Unable to resist their demands, the king warned the Rus´ raiders that the Muslims were going to fight them. The Rus´ disembarked from their ships and confronted a Muslim force said to have numbered fifteen thousand. In the ensuing battle, the Rus´ suffered a catastrophic defeat, with thirty thousand men supposedly perishing. Some five thousand Rus´ were able to escape but most of them were apparently killed fleeing north by land.34 This was not the first raid undertaken by the Rus´ into the Caspian. The first such raid documented in the written sources dates to the period 864–83 and was directed against the southern coasts of the Caspian in Jurjân province. This raid was unsuccessful. It is important to note that Jurjân was located along the route followed by Rus´ merchants who crossed the Caspian on their way to Baghdad. The second raid came in 910 and was also directed against Jurjân. With the aid of the Sâmânids, the Rus´ were again defeated. The third raid was launched by the Rus´ in 911–12 in retaliation for their defeat the prior year. After some initial success, the Rus´ were once again defeated. The fourth naval expedition is the one described above at some length. The Rus´ raids in the Caspian share some common characteristics. First, all four raids were unsuccessful. The Rus´ were either defeated by the Muslim forces along the southern coasts or they were annihilated on their return home through the Khazar capital of Itil´. Raiding in the Caspian was very dangerous. The local peoples seemed able to defend themselves and could sometimes count on the assistance of regional states such as the Sâmânids. In the event the Rus´ expeditions were victorious and much booty was gathered, there was no guarantee that the Rus´ could safely escape from the local Muslim population of Itil´ on their way up the Volga to the place where they apparently portaged to the Don. Raiding in the Caspian was not very profitable for the Rus´. Second, it would appear that all four raids were conducted with the connivance of the Khazar rulers, although this is only stated explicitly with respect to the fourth raid. The Khazars maintained close control over the entrance to the Sea of Azov from the Kerch strait and were well aware of the dangers presented by Rus´ raiders. King Joseph, for example, specifically stated: “I protect the mouth of the river [Volga] and do not allow the Rus´, coming on ships, to enter the [Caspian] sea in order to go against the Muslims.”35 However, as we know from Mascûdî, the king was sometimes willing to make an exception to this rule and allow the Rus´ to raid his Muslim 34

  Mascûdî, Murûj al-Dhahab [Meadows of gold], in V. Minorsky, A History of Sharvān and Darband (Cambridge: W. Heffner and Sons, 1958), 150–53.

35

  Kokovtsov, Perepiska, 102.

380 Thomas S. Noonan

neighbors, especially when he would receive a share of the booty. The Rus´ could not proceed freely through Khazaria on their way to the Caspian. They had to first obtain the permission of the Khazars. Finally, there can be no doubt that the Rus´ raiders who operated on the Caspian with the consent of the Khazars must have come primarily from Oleg’s group in Kiev. Aside from some freebooters, almost all the other Rus´ were involved in the trade with Volga Bulgharia. Oleg’s band was the only group active in Khazaria on a regular basis that had both relatively good relations with the Khazars and easy access to the Caspian. In sum, the efforts by Oleg to supplement his income and power through raiding in the Caspian proved unsuccessful. Oleg was not able to gain the fame and fortune he sought through such an uncertain and dangerous tactic. Since trade with the Volga Bulghars and raiding in the Caspian could not provide the wealth and power Oleg sought, he was forced to turn to a third alternative, the establishment of commercial relations with Byzantium. The aim of Oleg and his band was to develop trade ties with Constantinople. It was possible to raid Byzantine possessions in the Black Sea and Constantinople itself, but the Rus´ suffered greatly from the Greek fire employed by the Byzantine navy. It was not that easy to escape from a determined Greek fleet within the limited confines of the Black Sea. Thus, while raiding did take place, trade was unquestionably a more dependable source of wealth and power. The Primary Chronicle records four major events in Rus´-Byzantine relations during the first half of the tenth century: (1) a 907 Rus´ raid on Constantinople followed by a trade treaty; (2) a 911 Rus´-Byzantine trade treaty; (3) an unsuccessful 941 Rus´ expedition against Byzantium; and (4) a 944 Rus´ expedition against Constantinople which culminated in a new trade treaty.36 While there is considerable debate about the authenticity and dates of each of these events as well as their relationship to each other, it is possible to place them in a general framework which makes sense. Around 907, Oleg decided that the time had come to establish regular trade ties with Byzantium. Having established themselves in Kiev and the middle Dnepr, albeit as Khazar dependents, the Rus´ had access to an abundance of furs, slaves, wax, and honey collected as tribute or captured from the East Slavic tribes of the area. Constantinople, the greatest city in all of Europe, offered a lucrative market for these goods. And it was a market in which the Khazar authorities of Kiev had little interest. The furs which they collected from the East Slavic tribes were evidently shipped to Itil´, where they were exchanged with Islamic merchants from the Near East. Byzantium, however, maintained a highly regulated commercial system. One did not simply travel to Constantinople and begin trading. Furthermore, after the 860 Rus´ attack on Constantinople, the Byzantines had very good reasons to be suspicious of any Rus´ who approached their capital. The Rus´ therefore had to compel the Byzantines to open the markets of Constantinople to their merchants. The opening salvo in Oleg’s Byzantine policy was to attack Constantinople in 907. Since his campaign went well, Oleg quickly got the attention of the Greeks. At this point, Oleg was able to advance his real objective, i.e., his demand for a trade treaty with Byzantium. The Greeks were not adverse to such a treaty providing that the safety of their capital was 36

  Primary Chronicle, 64–69, 71–77.

Khazaria, Kiev, and Constantinople in the First Half of the Tenth Century

381

ensured and provisions were agreed upon to maintain law and order while Rus´ merchants were in Constantinople. The 907 expedition came to an end with a short, provisional Rus´-Byzantine trade treaty. This provisional treaty was soon replaced by a more permanent and detailed 911 treaty that no doubt reflected the experience gained from the first Rus´ merchant groups to engage in commerce in Constantinople under the terms of the 907 treaty. In any event, Oleg now had what he wanted, a formal trade treaty with Byzantium that guaranteed the Rus´ merchants of Kiev free access to the richest market in all of Europe. If the Rus´ of Kiev could not become rich and powerful through trade with the Volga Bulghars or raiding in the Caspian, then they were on their way to fame and fortune through their commerce with Constantinople. The Rus´-Byzantine commerce established by Oleg ca. 907–11 functioned quite well for some thirty years. Then, suddenly, Oleg launched an attack on Constantinople around 941. This expedition, as we have seen, was not Oleg’s idea. Rather, having raided the Khazar lands at Byzantine request, Oleg was subsequently defeated by the Khazar pesah and forced to conduct a naval campaign against Byzantium in retaliation. This campaign ended in disaster for Oleg’s forces and he never returned home. By doing Byzantium’s bidding, Oleg ended up completely disrupting Rus´ trade with Byzantium. Oleg’s successor, Igor´, now had the task of restoring Rus´-Byzantine relations. Whether or not he initiated an expedition against Constantinople is immaterial. What is crucial is that Igor´ was able to negotiate a new trade treaty with Byzantium. And a very enlightening clause of this new treaty stated: “Your Prince shall moreover prohibit his agents and such other Rus´ as come hither from the commission of violence in our villages and territory.”37 There was to be no repetition of the 941 campaign. In fact, the Rus´ ruler of Kiev was now responsible for certifying that any Rus´ who ventured south from Kiev to visit Constantinople was a genuine merchant. Those who lacked certification were to be detained and held prisoner until Constantinople and Kiev conferred over their arrest. In the years following the new 944 treaty, Rus´ commerce with Constantinople flourished. A Byzantine source paints a vivid picture of the situation ca. 950 when each fall the Rus´ prince of Kiev and his retinue made a circuit through his lands collecting tribute from the East Slavic tribes. In the spring, boats carried a huge quantity of furs, slaves, wax, and honey from the entire upper and middle Dnepr water basins toward Kiev. Here, the goods were transferred to more seaworthy boats which then descended down the Dnepr in large caravans. Following a variety of dangers including the Dnepr rapids and Pecheneg raiders waiting on the riverbanks, this caravan entered the Black Sea and then sailed along the coast to Constantinople.38 This report, compiled from one or more eyewitness sources, leaves no doubt that under Igor´ Kiev’s commerce with Constantinople was flourishing and the bad days at the end of Oleg’s reign were forgotten. 37

  Ibid., 74.

38

  Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, trans. R. J. H. Jenkins, ed. Gy. Moravcsik (Budapest: Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Görög Filológiai Intézet, 1949), chap. 9, 56–63.

382 Thomas S. Noonan

Oleg’s successful Byzantine option necessitated a readjustment in relations with the Khazars. Given Byzantine enmity for Khazaria, it would be impossible to continue as a Khazar dependent who had an active trade with Constantinople. It is not clear when Khazar domination of Kiev ended. As late as 945, there was a Khazar quarter of Kiev.39 The so-called “Kievan Letter” was composed ca. 930 by representatives of the Jewish community in Kiev.40 But, despite the continuing presence of a Jewish/Khazar population in Kiev, the city slowly but surely passed from Khazar control and became independent under Oleg and Igor´. The latest date for this change was probably in 944 when Igor´ had to reestablish trade relations with Byzantium. Forced to choose between Khazaria and Byzantium, Oleg and Igor´ decided that the only real route to wealth and power for them and their band was the “Byzantine card.” The profits denied to the Rus´ of Kiev from the Bulghar trade and raiding in the Caspian could be more than compensated for by the lucrative commerce with Constantinople.

39

  Primary Chronicle, 77.

40

  Golb and Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents, 5–32, 71.

Preparations for Travel to St. Petersburg in the Eighteenth Century Michael Bitter

For as long as I have known him, Professor Stavrou has been, quite literally, on the move. In fact, he rarely seems to be stationary for long. His travels for business and pleasure frequently take him to very distant places, such as the Mediterranean and Russia, as well as to a variety of domestic destinations. One of the most daunting aspects of distant or lengthy travel always seems to be that of adequate, yet efficient preparation and packing. With his lifetime of travel experience, Professor Stavrou has undoubtedly reduced his own packing routine to a science. So, too, it was in the past, when travel to Russia often required packing a supply of items unobtainable there, as well as arranging letters of introduction to grease the wheels of the state bureaucracy. Most often, those who have gone before have provided advice and introductions for novice travelers to Russia, and Professor Stavrou has supplied both to many of his students. These aspects of preparing for travel to Russia are something that recent researchers have shared with earlier Western travelers to Moscow and St. Petersburg. One such traveler has been the object of my own research for some time, and his preparations for a mission to St. Petersburg in 1733 provide an interesting comparison of the similarities and differences in travel to Russia over time. In the spring of 1733, King George II of Great Britain sent George, Lord Forbes, the future third earl of Granard, as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the Russian court of Tsarina Anna Ioannovna. The purpose of this high-ranking diplomatic mission was the negotiation of a commercial treaty that would regain for English merchants the privileged position within the Russian market they had occupied earlier, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since that time, English merchants had lost ground in their commercial dealings with Russia to political disputes and continental competition, especially from the rapidly growing Prussian cloth industry. Lord Forbes was sent to reverse this trend. He was a career naval officer with substantial international experience, who would later become an admiral of the British fleet. His distinguished social position and his close association with the king made him an excellent choice as representative to the prestige- and status-conscious Russian court at St. Petersburg. Throughout the course of his mission to Russia, Forbes drew on the knowledge and experience of the British resident to the tsarina’s court, Claudius Rondeau. At the time of Forbes’s arrival, Rondeau had represented the BritThresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 383–92.

384 Michael Bitter

ish crown in Russia for six years and had befriended some of the most influential individuals at court. The combination of Forbes’s position and Rondeau’s connections proved a potent and successful force in Anglo-Russian diplomacy. Lord Forbes began preparing for his mission to St. Petersburg in December of 1732. In January 1733, even before the official notification of his appointment had reached St. Petersburg, he sent Claudius Rondeau a friendly letter of introduction. Rondeau replied enthusiastically to Forbes’s overture. Writing on 20 February 1733, the day after receiving the message from Lord Forbes, Rondeau thanked him for his “kind and obliging letter.”1 He promised to “always do my utmost, to deserve your Lordship’s friendship, which you are pleased so graciously to offer me.”2 Owing to the fact that it was winter, Rondeau assumed that Forbes would travel to St. Petersburg over land, rather than by sea. Ordinarily, much of the Gulf of Finland, on which St. Petersburg is located, was frozen until the late spring. Though his appointment was announced in February, Lord Forbes did not begin his journey to Russia until May. This explains Rondeau’s concern that Forbes would “find it very fatigueing in this Season of the year, that the Roads are almost impassable after you have passed Berlin.”3 He assured Forbes that, upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, he could “depend to find a hearty welcome, and an Appartment of three or four Rooms in my House and my Equipage will also be at Your Service, and I shall do my best to render this place agreeable to Your Lordship.”4 From this earliest contact, Rondeau was determined to contribute as much as possible to the personal comfort of Lord Forbes and to the success of his mission. Rondeau’s letter also provided Lord Forbes with some very useful information concerning the customs of the Russian court. In an attempt to prepare the minister for life in the Russian capital, Rondeau warned him that he “must not expect to find St. Petersburg a Second London, or Paris.”5 Indeed, the severe climate and unfamiliar living conditions had often led the resident to complain of the cold and isolation. Though, according to Rondeau, life in St. Petersburg was less cultured and cosmopolitan than in some of the other great European capitals, the Russian taste for luxury and the extravagance of the court made the cost of living there almost prohibitive. Throughout the years, Rondeau had often described the material magnificence of the Russian court. Balls and dinners were sumptuous. Clothes and equipages were extravagant. Customarily, the most lavish events were the annual celebrations of the tsarina’s coronation and name day. The yearly coronation celebrations usually lasted three days. They included balls, dinners, fireworks, and, frequently, Italian plays. The annual celebrations of Anna Ioannovna’s birthday on 28 January and her name day 1

  Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), document T3765/H/6/8/2, the correspondence of the third earl. 2

 Ibid.

3

 Ibid.

4

 Ibid.

5

 Ibid.



Preparations for Travel to St. Petersburg in the Eighteenth Century

385

on 3 February obligated the Russian nobility as well as the foreign representatives to go to great expense purchasing separate attire for each occasion. Rondeau’s detailed account of these celebrations in 1732, the year before Lord Forbes arrived, provides a glimpse of this Russian extravagance. On the tsarina’s birthday, all of the foreign ministers and notables in the capital were invited to dine at court. That afternoon, the troops in the city paraded on the frozen Neva River before the palace. Part of this display included a mock battle with General Count Münnich commanding an attack on entrenchments specially built for the occasion. In the evening, there was a ball and another court dinner. Rondeau reported: I cannot well express how magnificent this court is in cloathes: though I have seen several courts, I never saw such heaps of gold and silver lace laid upon cloth and even gold and silver stuffs as are seen here. The third of next month is Her Majesty’s name’s day, which will be another great holyday, so that till that is over nobody will think of any business, for at present everybody is taken up in preparing fine cloathes against that time.6 This ostentation and show was understandably astonishing for someone of Rondeau’s social position and fiscal constraints. A significant part of his personal and professional life included identifying the most responsible and accountable course of action in both business and diplomacy. The king had warned him never to use his official position to defend any British merchant in a dispute of questionable merit. This habitual regard for financial responsibility led him to question the ability of the Russian nobles to continue to afford their extravagant displays. He expressed his concerns to his superior in London, Lord Harrington: I cannot imagine, my lord, that this magnificence will last many years, for, if it should, it must ruin most part of the russ nobility, for several of them are obliged to sell their estates to buy fine cloathes.7 Of course, Rondeau had no way of knowing that he was witnessing only the first, rather modest years of what, especially under the reigns of Elizabeth I and Catherine II, was to become one of the most extravagant and fiscally irresponsible periods in Russian court history. Rondeau felt the need to inform Lord Forbes about the expensive tastes in clothing and accoutrements cultivated by the Russian court. Foreign ministers of Forbes’s rank were expected to conform to these same standards or risk derision. The cost of all such luxury items in St. Petersburg was exorbitant. In his letter of 20 February, Rondeau suggested that Lord Forbes purchase all of these necessary items in London and bring them with him to the Russian capital. He wrote:

6

  Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva (SIRIO), 168 vols. (St. Petersburg: A. Devrient, 1867–1916), 66: 410. 7

 Ibid.

386 Michael Bitter

I think it necessary to inform your Lordship, that nothing can be bought here, but at an extravagant rate, and as this Court is Magnificent in equipages, and particularly in fine clothes I believe it would be very necessary you should provide yourself in England with everything of that nature before you come away.8 An examination of Forbes’s ledger shows that he took Rondeau’s advice to heart. Lord Forbes kept a detailed account book of the expenses he incurred in preparation for his mission to St. Petersburg.9 His clothing was the third most costly category listed, totaling almost £213, and was by far the most detailed listing. The first purchase of cloth was made on 18 December 1732, only one month after news of Forbes’s appointment had reached the Russian court. According to the British ministers of the Northern Department, the appointment was still nothing more than a rumor, yet the envoy was already purchasing his wardrobe. This first acquisition consisted of nine yards of black velvet and three and one-half yards of scarlet Florence satin. Subsequent purchases included such exotic-sounding fabrics as dove-colored velvet, yellow Padua soye, and white and yellow shagrine. In addition to the fabrics, Lord Forbes also purchased gold and silver lace and buttons, silk and woolen stockings, six pairs of shoes, one dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of buckles, two wigs, hats, ribbons, and a gilt-hilted sword. The tailoring bill for making four suits of clothes amounted to £15. The largest items were the costs of embroidering one suit of velvet with gold, amounting to £43, and another with silver, at £38. The next most costly items were the broad and narrow gold and silver lace, £22 and £11, respectively, which were purchased by the ounce rather than by the yard. The only other individual items which amounted to £10 or more were the combined purchases of velvet, totaling over £25, and the two wigs, costing £10. The smallest recorded purchase was that of needles and pins, amounting to just three shillings. This section of the ledger is one of only two which continued to record expenditures after Lord Forbes’s arrival in Russia. The final entries listed as clothing expenses were recorded on “June the 20th at Petersbourg.” They consisted of four and one-half arshins of “Black Cloth,” fifteen arshins “Black Shagrine,” and “the making of the Black Cloths and Furniter.”10 After he went to so much trouble and expense to acquire a suitable wardrobe in London before his departure, it may seem strange that Lord Forbes bothered to have one additional, plain suit of clothes made for himself shortly after his arrival in St. Petersburg. Clues to the explanation of this action lie in the color and simplicity of design of these clothes, as well as in the timing of their purchase. On 14 June 1733, the duchess of Mecklenburg, older sister of Tsarina Anna Ioannovna, died at the age of forty-one. Catherine Ioannovna had married Duke Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg in 1716. The marriage had been arranged by the bride’s 8

  PRONI, document T3765/H/6/8/2, the correspondence of the third earl.

9

  PRONI, document T3765/H/5/5/1, the folio account book of the third earl.

10

  Ibid. An arshin was a Russian unit of measure equal to 28 inches or 71 centimeters.



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uncle, Peter the Great, primarily because of the strategic importance of the Duchy of Mecklenburg in the tsar’s conflict with Sweden. Infamous for his obnoxious personality and behavior, the duke was unpopular within his own duchy and was shunned by many of the courts of Europe. He had originally proposed to the widowed Anna Ioannovna, hoping to leave his unpopularity in Mecklenburg to become duke of Courland. Owing to the importance of Mecklenburg in Peter’s military calculations, he was unwilling to allow Karl Leopold to leave the duchy for a region already controlled by Russia. The tsar proposed substituting his unmarried niece for the widowed Anna. Catherine Ioannovna’s marriage to the Duke was difficult from the start. Eventually, the duchess decided to separate from her ill-tempered husband and return to Moscow. She had lived at the Russian court with her young daughter since 1722. Anna Ioannovna was very fond of her sister and her young niece, Anna Leopoldovna, whom she considered heir to the Russian throne. The death of Catherine Ioannovna in June of 1733 was a great blow to the tsarina. Not having anticipated the death of a member of the tsarina’s family, Lord Forbes had not purchased appropriate mourning attire in London before his departure. It seems reasonable to assume that the plain, black suit of clothes Lord Forbes purchased shortly after the death of the duchess, and several days before her internment, was required as proper mourning attire. His first audience with the tsarina was not held until the beginning of July and he might have worn this mourning suit out of respect for Anna Ioannovna’s grief. In addition to his own clothing, Lord Forbes also purchased new liveries for those of his servants who accompanied him to St. Petersburg. He spent over £103 on liveries for his servants, almost half of the amount spent on his own clothing. The account book shows that Lord Forbes dressed his servants in blue liveries with yellow trim and lining. The livery purchases were made in large quantities. In the first three months of 1733, the account records purchases of twenty pairs of both shoe and knee buckles, ninety-one dozen livery coat buttons, thirty dozen livery breast buttons, fifty-seven yards of blue cloth, fifteen yards of yellow, and a surprising one hundred and five yards of yellow shaloon, a lightweight twill cloth used for lining coats and other garments. The single most costly livery expense was £30 and 18 shillings for “livery lace bead.” The silver lace for twelve livery hats cost more than the twelve cockaded hats themselves, £4 11s. 9d. versus £3 7s. 6d. By far the largest single category of purchases was that of silver plate. As George II’s envoy, Lord Forbes would be expected to entertain members of the Russian court and other foreign ministers on important occasions at his residence in St. Petersburg. To accomplish this in a style befitting his post, he commissioned an entire silver table service for his mission to Russia. The smallest item listed in this category was £66 for a silver epergne, weighing two hundred and three ounces.11 In March, the account book shows that almost £276 was paid a Mr. Crag and Comp., Silversmith, for “plate to compleat the epargne and eight salt sellers; weighing in all 349.5; Workmanship

11

  An epergne is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “an often ornate tiered centerpiece consisting typically of a frame of wrought metal (as silver or gold) bearing dishes, vases, or candle holders or a combination of these.”

388 Michael Bitter

Engraving and Box.”12 Finally, on 18 April, nine days after George II had issued his instructions and letters to Lord Forbes directing him to proceed to Russia “with what expedition you can,”13 the account book records the largest silver purchase, consisting of over 3,233 ounces of “Wraght Plate Workmanship, Cases and engraving, Blades [etc.].”14 This final acquisition of tableware cost a remarkable £1,112, bringing the total Forbes paid for silver plate to over £1,354. As a matter of comparison, Rondeau rented his house in St. Petersburg, which he described as being “very dear,” for £100 per year.15 At this rate, the silver plate Lord Forbes took with him to St. Petersburg cost more than Rondeau’s housing for his entire term of service in Russia, from 1727–39. Even in London, the Russian representative at the British court, Prince Kantemir, was able to rent a fully furnished house suitable to a minister of his rank and position for £200 per year. The second largest category of purchases consisted of “Coaches, Horses and other Things Belonging to the Stables.” Again, in this instance, Lord Forbes heeded Rondeau’s advice concerning the exorbitant cost of equipages in the Russian capital. He made sure that everything necessary for the proper conveyance in and around St. Petersburg of a minister of his rank and standing was ordered and sent to Russia to coincide with his own arrival. The largest expense within this category was the purchase, in Lübeck, of eight coach horses, totaling almost £230. Shipping these horses from Lübeck to St. Petersburg, along with the two men who accompanied them, cost an additional £22. The account book even recorded an extra £5 paid to send the two grooms back to Germany. Lord Forbes needed eight horses in order to pull the two coaches he shipped from London. One of these coaches was a Berline. The other was a state chariot lined with crimson velvet that cost £130. This vehicle was specially outfitted with silk fringe and lace for an additional £10. The state coach was pulled by six horses with one additional horse ridden by a “fore rider.” Thirty-five pounds was paid for two “town harnesses,” probably for the Berline, and a set of harnesses for six horses, additional fittings, and three saddles. A small tailoring expense recorded the making of a seat cloth for the Berline and “housings” for the fore riders out of the same “Blew Cloth” of which the servants’ liveries were fashioned. The total bill for coaches, horses, and these other, related expenses amounted to more than £455 sterling. The smallest category of expenses included in the account book was labeled “Stationary.” It totaled only slightly more than £14, yet it is equally as interesting and informative as any of the others. The most expensive single item in this category was the stationer’s bill of exactly £5. This amount was most likely spent on writing paper, pens, and ink. Listed separately are such necessities as the account book itself, along with two “daily books” and a journal, a seal, sealing wax, a tin case, and a “foot rule.” 12

  PRONI, document T3765/H/5/5/1, the folio account book of the third earl.

13

  SIRIO, 66: 577.

14

 Ibid.

15

  SIRIO, 66: 436.



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The cost of Lord Forbes’s actual voyage to St. Petersburg totaled only slightly more than £197, and represented 8.5 percent of his total initial expenses. Lord Forbes traveled with two ships. The smaller was the Tuscany Galley, which carried only luggage, consisting of Forbes’s coaches, silver plate, and part of his equipage. The larger vessel was the Lowestoff, a man-of-war of twenty guns commanded by Captain Cotterell. Lord Forbes, all his servants, and the rest of his luggage traveled on the Lowestoff. The record of actual travel expenses included in the account book spans the period of the voyage itself, since the cost of Lord Forbes’s transportation was paid only upon his safe arrival at Kronstadt, the port island of St. Petersburg. Upon his arrival at Kronstadt, the expense account records the payment of £52 10s. with the explanation, “Gave to Capn. Cotterell at his coming to an Anchor two miles from Cronslot.”16 Additionally, Lord Forbes “Gave to the rest of the ship company,” the sum of £33 10s. He paid only slightly less than these combined amounts, £73 9s., for the freight of his equipage carried in the Tuscany Galley. Though these payments account for most of the voyage expenses recorded in the account book, Lord Forbes had to pay additional fees to have himself taken ashore near Peterhof and his servants and luggage transported approximately twenty-six miles, from the port of Kronstadt to the city of St. Petersburg. The ledger records that Lord Forbes “Gave to Admirall Gordon Boat Crew [sic] me a shore and for carrying my equipage from Cronslot to Petersburg,” the sum of £11 13s.17 Considering the comparative distances involved, St. Petersburg proved, from the very first, to be a rather expensive destination. In addition to all of these expenses associated with his Baltic voyage, Lord Forbes also furnished the provisions for the entire journey. His account book shows that he paid over £46 for the “fresh Provisions” at the beginning of the voyage. Another £25 was paid to Captain Cotterell for the shipboard provisions he provided. This was in addition to the provisions Forbes purchased and shipped to Russia for his personal use over the course of his residence in the capital. The section of Lord Forbes’s ledger devoted to the accounts of provisions and additional expenses offers a glimpse into a more practical aspect of his appointment to the Russian court. He paid out over £20 in advance wages to his servants, presumably so that the servants left behind and the family members of those accompanying him to Russia would have something on which to live during his absence. For food items, Lord Forbes paid the “Cheese Monger” nearly £5; the “Oyl Monger” more that £3; and the grocer £9 15s. “for 300. Waight of Sugar.”18 In addition, he purchased corks, “a Peck of Mustard Seed,” hartshorn, and Isinglass to take with him to St. Petersburg.19 The only entry among the accounts of provisions that is difficult to identify is 16

  PRONI, document T3765/H/5/5/1, the folio account book of the third earl.

17

  Admiral Thomas Gordon was commandant of the port of Kronstadt and was, at various times, in charge of the entire Russian fleet. He died in 1741. 18

  PRONI, document T3765/H/5/5/1, the folio account book of the third earl.

19

  Hartshorn was “a preparation of ammonia used as smelling salts.” Isinglass (the origin of which may be the Middle Dutch huusblase, from huus ‘sturgeon’ + blase ‘bladder’) was “a semitransparent whitish very pure gelatin prepared from the air bladders of fishes (as stur-

390 Michael Bitter

the purchase of “a pound of Bark,” for which Lord Forbes paid sixteen shillings.20 The total amount spent for these personal provisions and servants’ wages was nearly £45. The final page of the ledger book is titled, “Abstract of the whole Expence of Lord Forbes’s seting out for his Commiss. to Petersburg—in 1733—.” The total amounts in each category of expense are listed and then totaled as follows: 1.

For Clothes

212p.

6s.

6d.

2.

For Liveries

103p.

14s.

2d.

3.

For Coach Horses & Equipages

455p.

14s.

8d.

4.

For Plate

1354p.

6s.

3d.

5.

For Stationary

14p.

3s.

11d.

£

2140p.

5s.

9d.

For his Voyage & Freight for his goods

197p.

6s.

3d.

This abstract could not have been drawn up before Lord Forbes’s arrival in St. Petersburg, since several of the freight and clothing charges were incurred in Russia. The total expense of his mission to Russia, including certain purchases within the first month of his residence in St. Petersburg, amounted to slightly more than £2,337. The commission of silver plate was responsible for more than half of this total amount. The initial cost of Lord Forbes’s appointment to Russia represented a substantial investment on the part of the British government in the improvement of Anglo-Russian relations. The care that went into maintaining the outward dignity of the envoy’s office was evident. The total initial expenditure was considerable, though it is difficult to place within a meaningful context. The sum was equivalent to more than twenty-three years of rent for the house in which Rondeau, the British resident, lived in St. Petersburg. Conversely, upon his departure from St. Petersburg in 1734, Lord Forbes received a diamond ring as a gift from Empress Anna Ioannovna. This ring was later appraised at £1,100, nearly half the value of these initial expenses. To the average Briton, the initial costs of Lord Forbes’s appointment amounted to a princely sum. Yet, at the courts of Europe, this sum might not have been considered extraordinary. Rondeau had earlier reported that certain members of the Russian nobility spent as much as a tenth of this amount on a single suit of clothes.

geons) and used esp. as a clarifying agent and in jellies and glue” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary). Great Britain imported a significant amount of isinglass from Russia, where sturgeon were plentiful. Ironically, then, the isinglass Lord Forbes purchased to carry with him to St. Petersburg may actually have originated in Russia. 20

  Possibilities for the identity of this item are Cinnamon or Cinchona, the bark of a tropical tree that was used to produce quinine as a treatment for malaria. St. Petersburg is surrounded by water and provided a favorable summertime habitat for mosquitoes, yet Forbes and Rondeau never expressed a concern with malaria in their correspondence or diaries.



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Lord Forbes heeded Rondeau’s advice and equipped himself in London with most of the accoutrements of a minister plenipotentiary. His preparations and purchases were appropriate to a diplomat of his title and position as well as to the perceived importance of his mission. The successful negotiation of the Anglo-Russian Commercial Treaty of 1734 by Forbes and Rondeau fully justified the care and expense accorded his preparations for travel to Russia. The preparations of few modern travelers could compare to those of Lord Forbes in 1733. Today, we have the advantage of traveling to St. Petersburg at high speed and in relative comfort. However, just as Lord Forbes benefited from the advice and guidance of Claudius Rondeau, so, too, many of Professor Stavrou’s students have benefited from his knowledge and experience, in addition to the numerous “letters of introduction” he has written for those traveling to Russia and other destinations. For this guidance and assistance, we will always be grateful.

Battling Bishops in Catherine II’s Russia Gregory Bruess

Introduction This essay seeks to accentuate some of the complexities of religion and empire in Catherine II’s Russia by examining the relationship between two archbishops who served along the southern frontier in the late 1780s and early 1790s. The two prelates in question were the archbishop of Astrakhan and Stavropol, Nikiforos Theotokis, and the archbishop of all Armenians in the Russian Empire, Joseph Argutinskii-Dolgorukii. The titles of office alone not only betray a potential source of administrative conflict between the two hierarchs but also reflect the peculiar nature of religious life in late eighteenth-century “Orthodox” Russia. First, Nikiforos was the archbishop of the diocese of Astrakhan and Stavropol. Accordingly, his ecclesiastical authority extended no farther than the boundaries of the diocese. Joseph, spiritual leader of all Armenians in the Russian Empire, clearly was not constrained by the same spatial limitations. Second, Nikiforos’s title possessed no ethnic qualifier whereas Joseph’s did. Third, Nikiforos was an archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church while Joseph was an archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church, yet both served the Russian state. These seemingly unorthodox differences do, however, make sense when examined in the light of Catherine’s domestic and foreign policies. Catherine’s Policies Catherine the Great consciously adopted and implemented policies that reflected the reforming spirit of the French Enlightenment and German Aufklärung. Centralization, classicism, consolidation, standardization, rationalization, regularization (reguliarnost´), and unification were the watchwords of her regime. At the most fundamental level, Catherine’s reforms expanded the domain of the state into realms previously dominated by other institutions. Her reform efforts affected all matters political, social, economic, and cultural. Catherine was an avid student of the economic and populationist theories of the French Physiocrats and the organizational theories of the German Cameralists.1 1

  On foreign colonization policies, see Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 1762–1804 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 393–402.

394 Gregory Bruess

These rationalist theories simply stated that more subjects and more territory translated into more economic productivity and wealth. Furthermore, a highly centralized and uniform government was essential to tapping that wealth. Catherine planned to acquire more subjects through territorial expansion and colonization schemes directed at all Europeans, but specifically at the oppressed Christians of the Ottoman and Persian Empires. Their departures would serve two positive purposes for Russia: first, they would weaken the Ottoman and Persian economies through the loss of productive merchants while strengthening Russia’s, and second, they would create a sizable community of former Ottoman and Persian subjects who aspired to gain religio-national independence for their fellow countrymen. Catherine’s religious policies reflected her belief that, although the state was responsible for the material and spiritual well-being of its subjects, the church was instrumental in assisting the state in this task. Even though Catherine had “instrumentalized” religion, she understood that religious belief and, more important, the institutions that propagated those beliefs, were essential for creating and maintaining a semblance of social harmony and control. In this sense religion was to be encouraged but at no time was it to rival the state for secular power. Catherine, as she noted in her Nakaz, believed that it was beneficial to the state that all her subjects should hold religious beliefs and be free to practice them without fear of persecution. In such a state as ours, which extends its sovereignty over so many different nations, to forbid, or not to allow them to profess different modes of religion, would greatly endanger the peace and security of its citizens. [T]he most certain means of bringing back these wandering sheep to the true flock of the faithful, is a prudent toleration of other religions, not repugnant to our Orthodox religion and polity.2 To that end, Catherine and Governor General Potemkin intentionally selected non-Russian clerics to serve as diocesan heads in southern and southeastern Russia because of the ethnic diversity of that region and its proximity to the Ottoman and Persian territories inhabited by their Orthodox countrymen. While perhaps not sharing Catherine’s utilitarian views on religion, these prelates were able to contribute to the realization of her agenda of imperial expansion and consolidation while actively promoting the liberation of Christians from the Ottoman and Persian Empires in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Although each appreciated religion differently, each understood its importance in giving meaning to life and determining identity in late eighteenth-century Russia. In the broadest terms, two foreign policy problems confronted Russia during Catherine’s reign: Poland and the Ottoman Empire. In regard to the latter, Catherine’s desire to secure the southern borderlands and the northern littoral of the Black Sea to advance Russian commercial and military interests met with resistance from the 2

  W. F. Reddaway, ed., Documents of Catherine the Great: The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767 in the English Text of 1768 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), 209.



Battling Bishops in Catherine II’s Russia

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Ottoman Empire whose vassals, the Crimean Tatars, controlled that territory. Catherine also irritated the Ottomans and Persians by taking up the time-honored cause of fomenting dissent among their respective Christian populations. As a consequence of the growing hostility between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the two empires went to war in 1768. The war concluded six years later with the signing of the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji in 1774. Among the treaty’s provisions were Russian territorial acquisitions on the Black Sea coast to the east and west of the Crimean Peninsula, the freedom of commercial navigation on the Black Sea, independence of the Crimean Khanate, and Russia’s right to make representations on behalf of Christians in Constantinople. The treaty also allowed those Christians who fought alongside Russian forces, primarily Greeks, to emigrate from the Ottoman Empire to Russia. Catherine quickly created the two new provinces of Novorossiia and Azov from the recently acquired territories and appointed Prince Grigorii Potemkin to govern them. Catherine was transfixed by the promise of Novorossiia. It was a blank slate upon which she was free to write whatever pleased her enlightened sensibilities or piqued her imagination. Just as Peter I had transformed the north in his quest for Western technology Catherine II sought to invent a “New Russia” in the south in her search for an Enlightened Russia. It was in this new land that the Greeks, and other Christians fleeing the Ottoman Empire, settled. The Bishops Two bishops who served the Russian state in the capacity stated above were Nikiforos Theotokis and Joseph Argutinskii-Dolgorukii. Nikiforos was born on the island of Corfu in 1731.3 His earliest education was under the direction of a local monastic priest (ieromonakh), Ieremias Kavvadias, who recognized his potential and convinced him to further his education at the Greek Gymnasium in Padua, which he did in 1749. He returned to Corfu in 1754, was ordained as a ieromonakh, and became an accomplished educator and preacher. In 1765, the ecumenical patriarch summoned Nikiforos to a new position in Constantinople. His departure from Corfu initiated an odyssey that would include two visits to Constantinople, two short stays in Iassy, publishing activities in Leipzig, a brief tenure as metropolitan of the diocese of Philadelphia in Venice, and, finally, end ten years later with his arrival in southern Russia. In 1779, Catherine appointed him archbishop of Slaviansk and Kherson (the provinces of Novorossiia and Azov). He succeeded Archbishop Voulgaris, who was also a Greek prelate in the service of Russia and also from Corfu. In 1787, Potemkin decided to transfer Nikiforos to the diocese of Astrakhan and Stavropol. Joseph was, in a sense, the Armenian equivalent of Nikiforos and Voulgaris. The Russian government was very active in recruiting Greek ecclesiastics as a means to lend support to its foreign policy against the Turks and domestic programs in the southern Ukraine and Crimea; all of which was a part of the so-called “Greek Proj3

  On Nikiforos Theotokis, see Gregory L. Bruess, Religion, Identity and Empire: A Greek Archbishop in the Russia of Catherine the Great (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1997).

396 Gregory Bruess

ect.” In a similar manner, Archbishop Joseph was to serve as an integral part in Russian designs in the Caucasus or what Prince Potemkin referred to as his “Armenian Project.” While Voulgaris and Theotokis played almost no role in the actual implementation of Russian foreign policy in the Balkans, Joseph was to have a more active role in Russian foreign policy in the Caucasus. All, however, had in common a very strong desire to protect and assist the communities of their countrymen in Russia. Joseph was born in the small village of Sanachin near Tbilisi in 1743. He entered the monastery of Echmiadzin (the seat of the Armenian Church and its head or catholicos) outside Erevan and studied under Catholicos Simeon, who ordained him as bishop in 1771.4 Two years later, Joseph was elevated to archbishop. In June 1774 he arrived in Astrakhan as the new archbishop and leader of the Armenians living in Russia. In 1778, Nikiforos (although not archbishop until 1779, he arrived in Russia in 1776) and Joseph were both involved in the resettlement of thirty thousand Christians who, at the instigation of Potemkin, were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses in the Crimean Khanate. The Christians were predominantly Greek and Armenian. In 1779, the Greeks founded the town of Mariupol and the Armenians the town of Nakhichevan. The evacuation from the Crimea of two-thirds of the Christian population was part of a broader scheme to annex the Crimea to the Russian Empire, which occurred in 1783. At the same time, Catherine was directing her attention toward Ottoman and Persian dominions in Transcaucasia. Wishing to establish a foothold in the region and to create yet another distraction for the Ottomans, the empress sought a more formal relationship with the small Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti and its leader, Tsar Irakli.5 In 1783, Archbishop Joseph participated in the negotiations with Irakli that concluded with his acceptance of Russian suzerainty and military protection in the Treaty of Georgievsk. Catherine was not only correct in her estimation that her new treaty with Irakli would pique the Turks, but coupled with the annexation of the Crimea and her famous “voyage to the Crimea” in 1787, her provocative actions drove them to declare war in 1788. By Catherine’s order, Joseph accompanied the Russian army and furnished it with strategically important information on conditions in the Ottoman Empire that he obtained from Armenians fleeing the Turkish territories of Bessarabia and the Danubian Principalities. In 1792, Potemkin founded a town on the Dniester River for the Armenians who had fled the Ottoman Empire and named it after himself, Grigoriopol. Apart from their activities associated with the expansion of empire, Nikiforos and Joseph, as bishops, had certain fundamental responsibilities. Upon consecration a bishop is bequeathed with three powers: ruling, teaching, and celebration of the sacraments. The main duty of the bishop is to guide and rule over the members of 4

  Russkii biograficheskii slovar´ [hereafter, RBS] (St. Petersburg: Izdanie Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, 1896–1918), 333. 5

  Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 55–59.



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his diocese in all matters relating to faith and morals. Of particular importance to the guidance of his flock is his teaching of the true faith and his assistance to them in maintaining that faith. He is empowered to act as a teacher of the faith through the receipt of charisma (a gift) from the Holy Spirit. This special gift does not confer on him infallibility in teaching, which would reject his humanity, and any errors in teaching will be corrected by the church as a whole. Finally, it is through the bishop or one of his delegates (e.g., priest) that the holy sacraments are celebrated. Thus, the bishop is an integral part of the hierarchy and history of the church, but he does not exist apart from the main body of the church which is his flock. Only in union with the laity does the bishop become whole.6 The Russian Orthodox Church during the Synodal Period (1721–1917) elaborated upon the traditional threefold powers of a bishop to make the position more amenable to the Russian situation as initially perceived by Peter the Great. The standard duties of a Russian Orthodox bishop in the eighteenth century were quite simple, but this did not mean that they were easy to fulfill. A bishop was required to reside in his appointed diocese (the fact that this was a listed requirement suggests that one could expect not to find the bishop in his diocese at any given moment), make regular visitations to the parishes in his diocese (this often times proved impossible given the sheer number of churches in the central dioceses and the poor road systems in the extensive outlying dioceses), oversee diocesan administration, open seminaries (when the money was available), and submit annual reports to the Holy Synod on the condition of the diocese. As part of the bureaucratic and administrative rationalization of Russia embarked on by Peter I and continued by his successors, the boundaries of any particular diocese came to mirror those of its secular equivalent: the province. Just as the governor general was responsible for all subjects in his province and was in turn responsible to the emperor, the bishop was responsible for all members (i.e., priests, monks, laity) of the church residing within these boundaries and reported to the Holy Synod. This applied equally to all ecclesiastical establishments, including seminaries, parish schools, monasteries, churches, and other church buildings with one exception: stavropigial´ monasteries. Stavropigial monasteries, for a variety of historical reasons, fell under the jurisdiction of distant ecclesiastical bodies, usually the Holy Synod in St. Petersburg or the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople. Astrakhan As a result of Catherine’s enlightened religious policies and aggressive colonization efforts, the number of non-Orthodox believers in Russia increased dramatically in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. This was especially true of the southern provinces that absorbed the majority of the foreign colonists. The inhabitants of the provinces of Astrakhan and the Caucasus were for the most part Orthodox, but Old Believers, Armenian and Georgian Christians, Protestants (Lutherans, Mennonites, Moravian Brethren), Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus also made up the popu6

  Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), 252–53.

398 Gregory Bruess

lation. The diocesan leadership’s toleration of other religious groups, of course, reflected Catherine’s wish for all of her subjects to live in harmony without the threat of persecution, harassment, or proselytization. Diocesan toleration faded, however, when it perceived attacks on its flocks’ immortal souls. By all accounts, the number of Catholics in the diocese of Astrakhan and Stavropol was minuscule. Theotokis’s feelings toward them, however, had not substantially altered since his experiences with a Catholic majority twenty years before. On 18 March 1788, Archbishop Nikiforos published a directive concerning Catholics in the diocese. He was troubled by the possible negative ramifications of Orthodox believers who were in the service of non-Orthodox households (and specifically of the Catholics whom he regarded as active proselytizers). The consistory wanted to determine, with the assistance of the parish priests to whom this directive was sent, whether or not these individuals were still “sons of the true Church” who attended Orthodox services, feast days, observed Lent, and received the Eucharist as other Orthodox. Priests were to compile lists of all those in the service of non-Orthodox households within their parish and submit them to the consistory annually. The consistory wanted the names of any individuals prevented from doing their duty. This directive, it was noted, pertained to Orthodox believers who “not only live with Indians, Muslims, Armenians, Lutherans, Catholics, etc., but Schismatics, slaves or servants of merchants and other raznochintsy, not only in Astrakhan town, but in the whole eparchy.” Most of the Orthodox in this position lived with Tatars and Armenians, and some with Old Believers and Lutherans. According to official consistory records, not one priest reported that a master had in any way impeded his Orthodox servants from participating in Orthodox services.7 Two very different conclusions can be drawn from this: either the priests were bribed by the offending individuals and were not reported, or a spirit of religious toleration pervaded these particular interfaith situations. There were, of course, situations in the diocese when religious toleration was noticeably absent. The largest non-Orthodox community in the city of Astrakhan was Armenian. In 1793, the city had four thousand households and sixteen hundred (ten thousand people) of those were Armenian. The religious leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church and, in effect, the Armenian community in Astrakhan was Archbishop Joseph Argutinskii-Dolgorukii. The Armenian community in Astrakhan was under considerable pressure to convert to Orthodoxy in the early 1770s and a large number did. Joseph possessed a moral strength that the secular leaders (the Armenian sud or court) of the community entirely lacked, and he used it to his advantage in stemming the tide of apostasy. In the four years after his arrival the number of apostates diminished drastically: only seven men and one woman.8

7

  Ioann Savvinskii, Astrakhanskaia eparkhiia, 1602–1902 gg. (Astrakhan: Tip. V. L. Egorova, 1905), 1: 261–63. 8

  Ibid., 2: 154.



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Archbishop Joseph acted exceedingly harshly toward those who did convert in spite of his blandishments. In February 1790 Archbishop Nikiforos received a letter from Father Ivan Ivanov, an Orthodox priest who had converted from the Armenian Church and was living in Mozdok. Ivanov requested that Theotokis offer him protection from an irate and malicious Archbishop Joseph. The archbishop, according to Ivanov, “does not allow Armenians to visit me at my home, publicly damned me twice in sermons in 1784 and 1788 and harasses me constantly.”9 The source of this vitriol can be found in an incident ten years earlier when the recently converted Father Ivanov and two Armenian merchants, Egor Panin and Boris Naskidov, petitioned Archbishop Antonii (Nikiforos’s predecessor) to place in their possession one of the Armenian churches in Mozdok, which was built by Panin, in order to attract other Armenians to Orthodoxy. Antonii informed the Holy Synod and Astrakhan Chancellery of this request; the synod deferred to the secular authorities, who reasoned that if there were no objections from the Armenian community the request would be approved. Not surprisingly, Archbishop Joseph vehemently opposed such an event and worked assiduously and fervently to prevent its realization. Archbishop Joseph correctly chose to repulse this assault on the Armenian Church by strengthening it institutionally by establishing the Astrakhan Spiritual Consistory and the Mozdok Spiritual District in 1785.10 Joseph used the authority and offices of these institutions to discourage and punish “enemies” of the church. One month after receiving the letter from Father Ivanov, Nikiforos received a similar complaint from another Armenian in Mozdok who had converted to the “Greco-Russian rites” and was systematically harassed by Archbishop Joseph.11 This individual, Andrei Ivanov, was the brother of the first complainant. He recounted how he was treated as a second-class citizen and how, at one time, a congregation, incited to violence by one of Archbishop Joseph’s sermons, set upon him and chased him through the streets of Mozdok.12 As a last resort, Andrei Ivanov went to the local military commander, Colonel Taganov, to seek protection. The commander recognized Ivanov’s precarious position and ordered the local police to protect him from his fellow citizens but was able to provide this for only two weeks. Andrei Ivanov closed his letter with a plea for protection from the diocesan leadership.13 Archbishop Nikiforos sent his report to the synod and it replied on 3 May 1790. The synod stated unequivocally that Archbishop Joseph was in violation of the synod’s 1782 statute no. 202, which allowed for the practice of all beliefs without being 9

  Rossiiskii gosudarstvennii istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA) f. 796, op. 71, g. 1790, d. 107, l. 2. This is the Russian translation of the original which was in Armenian. 10

 Savvinskii, Astrakhanskaia eparkhiia, 2: 159–60.

11

  RGIA f. 796, op. 71, g. 1790, d. 107, l. 6.

12

  That Archbishop Joseph was actually personally responsible for all the maltreatment accorded the Ivanov brothers is doubtful (his offices were in Astrakhan), but he bore indirect responsibility for not condemning the actions of others. 13

  RGIA f. 796, op. 71, g. 1790, d. 107, ll. 6ob.–7.

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subject to abuse, profanity, or quarrels, and no. 244, which pronounced that anyone who breached no. 202 could be taken to court and punished for the infraction.14 The synod instructed Theotokis to inform Joseph of these statutes and of the severity of the penalty for not abiding by Her Imperial Majesty’s wishes. The response also suggested that Archbishop Joseph was transgressing the intent of Catherine’s Charter to the Towns and Nobility of 21 April 1785 that included sections on religious tolerance. The synod concluded by recommending that if Archbishop Joseph continued this behavior he must be reported to Governor General P. S. Potemkin.15 Archbishop Nikiforos informed the synod in June 1790 that he had forwarded material on the case to the Astrakhan Chancellery and he had written to the Astrakhan Armenian consistory concerning the events in Mozdok.16 In an apparent attempt to protect himself, Archbishop Joseph ordered the Mozdok Spiritual District to begin an investigation into the alleged incidents of 1784 and 1788 and collect depositions from Armenian citizens who had been harmed by the pernicious influence of the Ivanovs. These depositions were sent to the Holy Synod by the Armenian consistory in Astrakhan as evidence in defense of Joseph. The witnesses stated that they were infuriated by the turbulent life of the priest and had requested that the archbishop do something about it. The archbishop promised them that he would put a stop to the quarrels between them and the “turbulent man.”17 The synod issued an ukaz on 12 August 1792 which declared that Archbishop Joseph’s activities had been fully examined and found to be outrageous in their blatant disregard of Catherine’s statutes on religious toleration. The synod added that the Armenian consistory was guilty of complicity in this affair because it sent to the Holy Synod the depositions which all contained sentences taken from the archbishop’s own injunction to the witnesses “in clear violation of the law.” The consistory also acted in a negligent manner when it arbitrarily discredited the evidence of the local commander. The case was now to be passed on to the civil authorities of the Caucasus namestnichestvo.18 Archbishop Joseph’s importance to Catherine’s plans in the Caucasus and the prosecution of the war against the Ottoman Empire during this affair effectively precluded any action being taken against him by the government. Marriage difficulties also attracted the attention of the consistories and the synod if the difficulties involved mixed-faith couples. In April 1791, Archbishop Nikiforos reported to the Holy Synod the interesting case of an Armenian man, Gavriil Manuilov, who recently had converted to Orthodoxy and wanted his estranged wife to return to live with him.19 It seems he was singularly impossible to live with and the wife simply refused. When the wife, Tsagika Azarapetova, was questioned about 14

  Ibid., l. 9.

15

  Ibid., ll. 18–18ob.

16

  Ibid., ll. 21–21ob.

17

  Ibid., ll. 31–32.

18

  Ibid., l. 35ob.

19

  RGIA f. 796, op. 72, g. 1791, d. 149, l. 1.



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her situation by the Astrakhan consistory, she revealed that she and her husband already had requested a divorce from the Armenian consistory (before he converted to Orthodoxy) and added that upon receiving the divorce she was entering a second marriage. Disregarding this, Theotokis ruled in Manuilov’s favor but was informed by Governor Brianchaninov that the request could not be allowed because the Armenian consistory had granted her the divorce, but was awaiting Archbishop Joseph’s approval. Theotokis refused to accept this reasoning and appealed to the Holy Synod to allow his decision to stand because the Armenian archbishop had not yet responded.20 The synod argued against this action by Theotokis and recognized Tsagika’s right to an answer from the Armenian Church. If the Armenian archbishop, however, did not confirm the consistorial decision soon then she should return to her husband. Theotokis finally received word of Archbishop Joseph’s confirmation and the divorce was granted.21 Although these incidents highlight the conflicts between the Orthodox and Armenian community and their respective spiritual leaders, there is reason to believe that the communities also cooperated. For example, in one incident, an Armenian couple in Astrakhan could not get married on one particular day because the Armenian parish church did not have any marriage crowns (ventsy). They solved the problem when they simply walked to the nearby Orthodox parish church and asked the priest if he had any crowns in the church. He, according to the story, did and quite gladly gave them to the couple. The Orthodox priest even accompanied the couple back to the Armenian church for the wedding ceremony.22 Conclusion By the fall of 1792, both archbishops had left Astrakhan. Nikiforos retired to Danilov Monastery in Moscow. He served as its abbot, wrote a number of religious and scientific works, and continued to advocate the cause of Greek independence. In 1797, Paul I bestowed on him the Order of St. Anne, First Class. In 1799, allied military successes against Napoleonic France had placed the Ionian Islands under Russian control. Church and civic leaders in Corfu considered him as a possible candidate for bishop, but concerns about his advanced age and health ultimately denied him the position. He died at Danilov in May 1800. Joseph moved his archepiscopal offices to Holy Cross Monastery in Nakhichevan, where he later established a Gregorian-Armenian printing press.23 A few years later, he once again served the Russian army by accompanying it on the Caucasian 20

  Ibid., l. 2ob.

21

  Ibid., ll. 7–7ob.

22

 Savvinskii, Astrakhanskaia eparkhiia, 2: 155 n. 2.

23

  In 1793, the Nakhichevan press published two books: Dveri milostyni (Doors of alms), a short history of the two Armenian cities of Grigoriopol and Nakhichevan, and a translation of Fenelon’s Adventures of Telemach. Archbishop Joseph was himself a published author: in

402 Gregory Bruess

campaign of 1796 under the command of Count Valerian Zubov (the youngest brother of Catherine’s lover, Platon). In 1799, Paul I bestowed on him the Order of St. Anne, First Class, and later that same year, church and civic leaders in Echmiadzin elected him to the position of catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He was granted leave from Russian service and departed for Armenia. He died en route in March 1801 in Tbilisi.24 The careers of Nikiforos and Joseph clearly reflected Catherine’s policies as they affected religion and empire. Her staunch advocacy of religious toleration (not to be confused with religious freedom) was emblematic of Enlightenment-inspired subordination of matters religious to matters secular. During her reign, exclusive adherence to Russian Orthodoxy was not required to be a loyal Russian subject. Above all, the ethnic and religious diversity of Russia’s southern frontier demanded equally diverse policies from St. Petersburg and its representatives. The appointments of Nikiforos, an Orthodox bishop, and Joseph, an Armenian bishop, underscore this approach. Nikiforos was responsible for the spiritual and moral well-being of the empire’s Orthodox subjects and Joseph for the empire’s Armenian Christian subjects. That the two bishops had conflicts as they saw to the needs of their respective flocks is not surprising. In sum, Nikiforos and Joseph were extremely similar. The empress appointed them to be competent ecclesiastical administrators in a region where the secular power of the central government was relatively weak. Catherine was also aware of the potential foreign policy implications of enticing non-Russian Christian communities and hierarchs to Russia from the Persian and Ottoman Empires. The bishops’ duties, however, extended well beyond the administration of imperial subjects; more important, from the perspective of the bishops, was the struggle to keep their believers on the paths to eternal salvation and, quite possibly, to “national” independence. Thus, there were instances when purely administrative (imperial) duties collided with pastoral obligations. Although neither bishop blatantly refused an imperial command, there did seem to be plenty of room for idiosyncratic interpretation. Just as the bishops were constantly negotiating with the imperial center over the importance and appropriateness of decrees to their local conditions, their respective religious communities were negotiating the meaning and practice of proper or correct Christian belief. The “lived” religious experience of Orthodox and Armenian subjects at times had more in common with each other than with their own ecclesiastical hierarchy. As with the empress, the bishops nearly always sought accommodation over confrontation with their believers. Perhaps most instructive about this study of the battling bishops, Nikiforos and Joseph, is that it reveals not only the diverse and contested nature of the Russian southern frontier in the late eighteenth century but of that entire grand experiment: imperial Russia.

1790 Potemkin published Joseph’s history of Russian-Armenian relations during the reign of Peter the Great. 24

  RBS, 333.

Europe’s Bellicose Periphery: Russia and the Cretan Insurrection of 1841 Lucien J. Frary

Nineteenth-century Russian foreign ministry files and journalistic literature provide telling details and first-hand impressions of the diversity of Ottoman society, the rivalries among European powers, and the passions and interests of Russian educated society. During the reign of Nicholas I (1825–55), the foreign ministry in St. Petersburg was willing to place religion at the forefront of international affairs. Russia’s position as the protector of the Orthodox world had helped define it as a great power. The 1841 rebellion for the unification of Crete with the young Greek kingdom is one of many episodes illustrating Russia’s engagement in Mediterranean and Balkan Orthodox affairs. Although St. Petersburg exercised self-restraint and caution during the Christian-Muslim conflict on Crete, its depiction in the Russian press encouraged readers to ponder a more active role in world affairs. Balkan Orthodox Christians were a popular topic in nineteenth-century Russian journals. As print media evolved, the Pravoslavnyi Vostok (Orthodox East) assumed a special place in Russian literature. Russia’s long-standing ties to Orthodox lands contributed to the cultural and ideological ferment of the 1830s and ’40s. Press reports of non-Orthodox missionary societies and the heterodox challenges of nationalism sparked interest in Russia’s religious heritage and its spiritual connections with the Holy Land and Mount Athos. The religious revival, characteristic of the period, marks an important stage in the evolution of the modern Russian identity. More specifically, the success of the Greek Revolution, and the sympathetic portrayal of Christians in jeopardy, perpetuated a commitment to religious values, but also posed a challenge to the tsarist autocracy. The cultural atmosphere of Nicolaevan Russia was rich in artistic and intellectual expression. A transformation had taken place. Russian literature was beginning to take on a larger public forum. The advent of the publishing industry and the spread of education allowed readers to follow events both inside and outside the empire. Opportunities for new literary figures, including travel writers and journalists, emerged during this golden age of Russian letters. Works by the artist Karl P. Briullov and the historian Mikhail P. Pogodin, by the theologians Aleksandr S. Sturdza and Porfirii Uspenskii, by the statesmen Andrei N. Murav´ev and Konstantin M. Bazili, by the

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 403–16.

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Lucien J. Frary

composer Fedor N. Glinka and the poet Vil´gel´m K. Kiukhel´beker paint a tapestry of Russian interest in Eastern Orthodox lands. After a long war against the Ottoman Empire, Greece, in February 1830 (under the London Protocols) became an independent, sovereign state. During its formative decades, the Greek kingdom became a popular topic in the Russian press. Almost daily, information about increased Russian-Greek trade contacts appeared in Russian newspapers. Statistical surveys, charts, and tables informed readers about Greece’s economy and potential profits for Russian merchants.1 Greek Romance, folklore, and heroism were common topics featured in book form and in journals, like Biblioteka dliia chteniia (The Reading Library), Moskvitianin (The Muscovite), and Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland).2 Reports of archeological discoveries, religious reforms, and educational enterprise kindled Russian society’s commitment to Orthodox culture.3 Philhellenism inspired Boris I. Ordynskii, one of Russia’s first neo-Hellenists, to teach classical and modern Greek at the Iaroslavskii Gymnasium in the 1830s. He published translations of Aristophanes and the three-volume work of Spyridon Trikoupis, Ιστορία της Ελληνικής Επαναστάσεως (History of the Greek Revolution).4 Vasilii F. Dombrovskii, founder of the Kiev Archaeological Commission and professor of history at the University of Vladimir, pioneered the studies

1

  Odesskii vestnik, 8 April 1836; 27 June 1836. Examples include “Narodonaselenie grecheskogo korolevstva,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 8 (1835): 24–25; “Afiny v 1839 godu,” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 5 (1839): 92–97; K. F. Lippert, “Gretsiia v nyneshnem svoem sostoianii: Stat´ia pervaia. Zhizn´ i literatura v noveishei Gretsii,” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 11 (1841): 14–32; and Lippert, “Gretsiia v nyneshnem ee sostoianii,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia 34 (1841): 20–28. 2

  See Vissarion Belinsky, review of G. Evlampios, Amarantos, ili rozy vozrozhdennoi Ellady, Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 3 (1844): 1–4; N. F. Shcherbina, “Klefty,” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 5 (1841): 72–76; D. P. Oznobishin, “Umiraiushchii kleft,” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 3 (1842): 69; I. I. Panaev, “Grecheskoe stikhotvorenie,” Sovremennik 9 (1851): 42.

3

  On cultural establishments, such as the Greek Archeological Society and the University in Athens, see Odesskii vestnik, 9 April 1839; and Severnaia pchela, 5 February 1836; 27 May 1839; 11 August 1839; 25 July 1840. For essays in journals, see “O pestrote arkhitekturnoi u drevnikh Grekov,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 23 (1837): 43–69; “Nyneshnee sostoianie Gretsii,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 26 (1838): 118–26; “Pribytie grecheskoi korolevy v Afiny i pridvornyi bal v Gretsii,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 28 (1838): 47–51; V. A., “Ogorcheniia i udovol´stvye nemtsa v Afinakh,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 37 (1839): 46–62; and T., “O vozobnovlenii afinskikh pamiatnikov drevnosti v kontse 1836 i v nachale 1837 godov (Iz zapisok russkogo puteshestvennika),” Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 7 (1840): 31–42. 4

  The Aristophanes translations appeared in Otechestvennye zapiski, no. 1 (1849): 1–40; no. 6 (1850): 123–60, 75–122; “Otpadenie Gretsii ot Turtsii i evropeiskaia politika togo vremeni, otnositel´no Gretsii i Turtsii,” Russkaia beseda 19, 1 (1860): 131–84, is the translation of Trikoupis. For more, see E. A. Bobrivyi, “Boris Ivanovich Ordynskii,” Varshavskie universitetskie izvestiia, no. 8 (1903): 1–32; and Russkii biograficheskii slovar´ (St. Petersburg: Izdatel´stvo Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, 1896–1918), 12: 305–06.

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of Byzance après Byzance.5 Since its foundation in 1827, Odesskii vestnik (Odessa Herald) catered to the large Greek community of Odessa. When reporting on the inauguration of the Greek Archeological Society, it asserted that “the liberation of Hellas is an extremely important event for the study of antiquities and history.”6 Even the Journal de St.-Pétersbourg, an official foreign ministry publication, disseminated pan-Orthodox views in its news columns on free Greece. The Russian press often contrasted Greek enlightenment with European decay. The rebirth of Athens, as a political capital, became a beacon of material and cultural progress. Severnaia pchela (Northern Bee) informed readers of the success of the Greek people, mentioned prominent individuals by name, and stressed the merits of Russian involvement.7 Although it would be incorrect to say that journalists wrote in support of the Greek kingdom’s territorial expansion, colorful versions of irredentist operations—at times restrained, at times exaggerated—were reported. For a country of slightly over 740,000 subjects, Greece received generous coverage.8 Under Nicholas I, the Russian foreign ministry took religion seriously. The writings of Russian consuls and agents illustrate foreign policy-making from the primary outposts, where ecumenical Orthodoxy confronted religious nationalism and ecclesiastical independence. The multifaceted reflections of Russian consuls in Greece (Athens, Thessaloniki, and Patras), in Cyprus (Larnaca), in Crete (Chania [Canée]), and in Asia Minor (Smyrna) demonstrate the complexities of foreign policy formation and introduce social, religious, and cultural commentary. St. Petersburg’s decision, in 1841, to abstain from intervention in Crete, shows how tsarist policy, while driven by Orthodox interests, aimed to cooperate with the Western powers in the interest of peace. Yet, the unrest on Crete shows how efforts to enforce the principles of the Congress of Vienna (1815) in the European center led to the eruption of violence in the periphery. Scrutiny of peripheral outbursts, like the Cretan insurrection of 1841, challenges Paul Schroeder’s scholarly conceptualization of the era as one marked by international law, peace, and stability.9 5

  V. F. Dombrovskii, “O vliianii Gretsii na razvitie grazhdanskogo obrazovaniia Drevnei Rusi,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia 29, 1–3 (1841): 1–20; and “Opyt istorii nachertatel´nykh khudozhestv v Rossii,” Khudozhestvennaia gazeta, 31 August 1838. 6

  Odesskii vestnik, 12 January 1838.

7

 See Severnaia pchela, “Grecheskoe torgovoe morekhodstvo,” 20 October 1839; “Vzgliad na sovremennuiu Gretsiiu,” 10 June 1842; “Nyneshnie Afiny,” 6 October 1842; and “Obshchestvo v Afinakh,” 22 February 1843.

8

  The population figure appeared in Severnaia pchela, 23 December 1837. The foreign column heading “Gretsiia” began replacing “Turtsiia” and “Turetskaia Granitsa” in Severnaia pchela, 22 March 1828. 9

  The authoritative international history of this era is that of Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). See also Edward Ingram, “Bellicism as Boomerang: The Eastern Question during the Vienna System,” in The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848: Episode or Model in Modern History?, ed. Peter Krüger and Paul W. Schroeder (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 205–27; and

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–

—

A long-time source of international discord, the island of Crete—a strategic area on Europe’s periphery—became an Ottoman possession in 1669 after a long war with Venice. During the following century, Crete recovered and enjoyed relative peace. However, latent anti-Ottoman sentiment led to intermittent outbursts of violence (1770, 1821–23, and 1827–30), in some cases encouraged by Russia. Toward the concluding phase of the Greek Revolution, the so-called protecting powers (Russia, France, and Great Britain) struggled with the sensitive problem of safeguarding Christians on Crete, while upholding the sultan’s authority. Their decision was a compromise of sorts; allied vessels blockaded the island to restrict the spread of violence. Although St. Petersburg aimed to cooperate with its allies, Russian admirals were willing to intervene when Christians were in danger.10 After lengthy discussions among the protecting powers, the London Protocol of 1830 left Crete under Ottoman rule. As compensation for losses in the Peloponnese, the sultan awarded its governorship to the Egyptian Pasha Mehmed Ali. But Ali rejected it, considering it unlikely to be a gainful affair. Instead, through a mixture of force and reform, the pasha’s talented subordinate, Mustafa Pasha, reestablished tranquility.11 Although Ottoman rule was sanctioned by the European powers, “abandoning Crete to the Turks” was generally unpopular among Russian observers. Spyridon I. Destunis, Russian consul in Smyrna (1818–21) and translator in the Asiatic Department, expressed his opinion in an essay completed in the early 1830s: What will be the future fate of this island?… Would the Greeks, who for nine years fought for their emancipation, want to bear again on their already liberated neck all that has weighed on them under the yagatan [sword] of the ayan [official] to work the land for the profit of their tyrant?… The proximity of Crete with independent Greece will keep the inhabitants of the [Aegean] islands and the Greek peninsula in continual alarm in regard to the plague. You only have to cast your eyes on a map to convince yourself that the island is, so to say, an appendix of Greece.12 Another outspoken critic of Ottoman rule over Crete was the well-known Russian writer and religious thinker, Aleksandr Sturdza. In a position paper composed in the early 1830s, Sturdza aimed at convincing powerful men in St. Petersburg of the Matthew Rendall, “Russia, the Concert of Europe, and Greece, 1821–29: A Test of Hypotheses about the Vienna System,” Security Studies 9, 4 (2000): 52–90. 10

  Karl Nesselrode, “Otchet o deistviiakh nashei diplomatii za 1829 god,” Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (RGADA) f. 3, op. 1, d. 86, l. 23.

11

  Mustafa Pasha commanded a body of Egyptian troops on the island since its capture by Ibrahim Pasha in 1824. 12

  S. Iu. Destunis, “L’île de Crète” (1826–32), Rukopisnyi Otdel, Rossiiskaia Natsional´naia Biblioteka f. 250, d. 75, ll. 62–65.

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political, economic, and moral disadvantages of Ottoman governance: “The island of Crete is a European island like all of those which have been ceded to Greece; she is not a member of the system of islands which are Asiatic.” According to Sturdza, the imagined contrast between Western and Eastern civilizations was more than a question of geography; he alleged that the Greeks were culturally superior to their Asian governors. Claiming that their “primitive institutions” made the Ottomans unfit to govern, Sturdza propagated the viewpoint of Ottoman inferiority and European enlightenment. He was also concerned about the security of Greece, when he wrote: “A Crete still inhabited by Greeks offers no advantages to Turkey other than to hold Greece always in distress, to cause it great expenses, and to promote attack as soon as the occasion presents itself.” In addition, Sturdza alluded to the danger of British expansion, as Ottoman authority declined.13 Orientalist perspectives like Sturdza’s were not isolated private affairs, as shown by a Severnaia pchela column praising the “extraordinary achievements” of the Greeks after centuries of “tyrannical rule by the Turks.” “Social enlightenment takes gigantic strides,” wrote the author, “ancient Greek is taught in all schools. Homer and Plato are read freely … not rarely do you meet twelve-year-old boys who can solve problems of trigonometry.”14 Later publications echoed this sense of Western superiority and declared that the “second part of the history of Crete”—the era of Ottoman rule—“is reproachful and a blow to the pride of our European civilization. We think that we have reached the ideas of humanitarianism, progress, etc., whereas a whole string of coarse facts show … that we are still far away from genuine civilization.”15 Observers like Sturdza professed certain reservations about Russian intervention, yet viewed the Orthodox East as an area of vast potential material wealth and moral probity waiting for engagement. The emotional appeal did not go unnoticed among the tsar’s top foreign servicemen, who warned of future troubles if Crete and the motherland (Greece) remained divided.16 Uprisings on the island of Crete (1866–68 and 1897–98) have been the subject of adequate scholarly attention.17 Of lesser magnitude, the insurrection of 1841 pro13

  A. S. Sturdza, “Bumagi, kasaiushchiesia Gretsii: Kopii protokoli, konferentsii i dr.,” Otdel Rukopisei, Institut Rossiiskoi Literatury f. 288, op. 2, d. 13, ll. 58, 62–63. On Sturdza, see Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008). 14   Severnaia pchela, 26 March 1841. A two-page essay in Severnaia pchela, 11 November 1841, explores contemporary Athens. 15

  I. Kapustina, “Istoricheskii ocherk ostrova Krita,” Russkaia mysl´ 12, 1 (1899): 32–33.

16

  Nesselrode to Heiden, St. Petersburg, 31 March 1829; and Nesselrode to Heiden, St. Petersburg, 24 April 1829, RGADA f. 15 (dopolnenie), op. 1, d. 53, ll. 77–81, 84–92. 17

  S. K. Smirnov, “Kandiia,” Russkii vestnik 68, 3 (1867): 341–69; Emmanuel Papadaki, Ostrov Kandiia: Neskol´ko zametok kandiota o geografii, istorii i nyneshnem sostoianii ostrova (St. Petersburg: A. Transhelia, 1867); I. Kapustina, “Istoricheskii ocherk ostrova Krita,” Russkaia mysl´ 12, 2 (1899): 22–40; Iu. Abegg, “Zametka o Krite,” Sbornik konsul´skikh donesenii MID, vypusk IV, V, VI (St. Petersburg: MID, 1898): 340–56, 522–26, 426–35; M. M. “Proshloe

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vides a useful prism to view the Ottoman system, the functioning of the Russian foreign ministry, and reactions from the Russian press.18 The episode constitutes an important signpost in Greece’s irredentist quest and shows how state interest could overpower pan-Orthodox sympathy. It demonstrates how, while outwardly cooperating with its allies, St. Petersburg also aimed to maintain its traditional influence in the Orthodox East. The violence on Crete was part of a chain of insurrections generally known as the Near Eastern Crisis of 1839–41. The crisis began when Sultan Mahmud II attempted to recover the losses from the Near Eastern settlement of 1833 by harnessing the independent aspirations of Mehmed Ali. The result was disastrous for the Ottoman armies; in quick succession the sultan died, and the entire Ottoman fleet set sail for Alexandria and surrendered to the Egyptian pasha. Simultaneous revolts broke out in Serbia, the Danubian principalities, Macedonia, and Thessaly. As threats against the Ottoman throne multiplied, many Greek patriots aimed for more immediate roads toward the unity of Crete with Greece. The intersection of Ottoman reform efforts and expanding contacts with the outside world had important consequences on Crete. At the time of the 1841 crisis, the majority of the island’s approximately 130,000 inhabitants were Christians. According to Russian consuls, many Muslims were ethnic Greeks who had adopted Islam.19 Contemporary accounts confirm a shared Ottoman culture: Christians and Muslims differed little, and Greek was the common language. Yet, the chronic outbreak of rebellion attests to tensions which underlaid daily interactions. Based on the reports of P. Thoron, Russia’s agent in Chania, Mustafa Pasha’s government was efficient, fair, and beneficial throughout the 1830s.20 A garrison of Arab ostrova Krita,” Nabliudatel´, no. 7 (1898): 211–17; Aleksandr Shtiglits, Ostrov Krit, mirnaia blokada i mezhdunarodnyi plebistsit (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia G. Ia. Gertsa, 1897); I. G. Senkevich, Rossiia i kritskoe vosstanie 1866–1869 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1970); G. M. Piatigorskii, “The Cretan Uprising of 1866–1869 and the Greeks of Odessa,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 14/15 (1998/1999): 129–48; E. Driault and M. Lhéritier, Histoire diplomatique de la Grèce de 1821 à nos jours, 5 vols. (Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1925–26), 3: 180–238; and O. V. Sokolovskaia, Rossiia na Krite: Iz istorii pervoi mirotvorcheskoi operatsii XX veka (Moscow: Indrik, 2006). 18

  M. Stavrinos-Paximadopoulos, Η αγγλική πολιτική και το κρητικό ζήτημα, 1839–1841 [English policy and the Cretan question, 1839–1841] (Athens: Ekdoseis Domos, 1986), provides the British perspective. Also see D. G. Rozen, Istoriia Turtsii ot pobedy reformy v 1826 godu do Parizhskogo traktata v 1856 godu, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Akademiia Nauk, 1872), 2: 53– 55; N. A. Dulina, Osmanskaia imperiia v mezhdunarodnykh otnosheniiakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 130–38, 170; and M. Sabry, L’Empire égyptien sous Mohammed-Ali (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1936), 395–404.

19

  See Senkevich, Rossiia i kritskoe vosstanie, 21; Smirnov, “Kandiia,” 341; and Abegg, “Zametka o Krite,” 354. According to Russian consuls, in the 1860s approximately 250–300,000 people lived on the island, two-thirds Christian and one-third Muslim.

20

  A selection of Thoron’s correspondence is available in René Cattaui, ed., Le règne de Mohamed Aly d’après les archives russes en Égypte, 3 vols. (Cairo: Impr. de l’Institut franç ais

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regular soldiers from Egypt helped maintain peace. Patriotic Cretan Christians, however, viewed the Near Eastern crisis as a moment propitious to sever ties with their Ottoman governors. The insurrection in Crete gained impetus from several springs: desire for national unity (at least, according to Russian archival and journalistic materials), distrust of the Ottoman administration, and Muslim-Christian rivalry. Another cause was the change in administration in the spring of 1838, when Mustafa Pasha was ordered to Syria to suppress an uprising. Thoron reported that “the departure of Mustafa Pasha was for Crete a day of true grief and the entire population expresses deep regrets… Both Greeks and Muslims are sorrowful and worried about the loss of his paternal administration, which has gained the esteem and love of all classes.”21 In the fall of 1838, Thoron began reporting on the hostile designs of Cretan émigrés living on mainland Greece, and the infiltration of Greek subjects into the island. In the summer of 1839, a group of prominent Christian-Cretans petitioned the protecting powers for intervention against “the Turks.” One year later, Mario Santi, Russian consul in Cyprus, reported of the spread of confusion and disorder on Crete “provoked by the indecision of the vast group of different parties.”22 When Crete came again under Ottoman control (according to the Convention for the Pacification of the Levant, signed in London in July 1840), the desire for revolt gained force. Mesmerized by patriotic euphoria, many Greeks aimed to liberate Crete from “foreign rule.”23 In the winter of 1840, an armed revolt was secretly planned. The rebellion began in February, when a group of about fifty palikaria (brave young men) assembled in Platissia, a village just south of Chania, and proclaimed independence and national unification. They published a pamphlet entitled Κρητικοί Συνάδελφοι (Cretan Compatriots) and a statement of protest against alien rule endorsed by an assembly of notables and priests. Thoron, the executor of tsarist directives, adopted a policy of non-intervention and applauded the prudence of the Ottoman governor. In Thoron’s estimation, British agents were exploiting the situation to expand their influence and promote a constitutional government under their protection.24 His concerns were seconded by Karl d’archéologie orientale du Caire, pour la Société royale de géographie d’Égypte, 1931–36). The Russian consul in Sofia (Abegg, “Zametka o Krite,” 346–48), confirmed the appraisal of Mustafa Pasha’s government. See also Henry Dodwell, The Founder of Modern Egypt: A Study of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), 242–48. 21

  Thoron’s report appears in Alexander Medem (Russian consul in Egypt) to Peter Ruckman (Russian agent in Constantinople), Alexandria, 27 April 1838, in Cattaui, Le règne de Mohamed Aly, 3: 94.

22

  Santi to A. P. Butenev, Larnaca, 30 May 1840, Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii (AVPRI) f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1083, l. 3. 23

 Stavrinos-Paximadopoulos, Η αγγλική πολιτική και το κρητικό ζήτημα, 179–81; and Driault, Histoire diplomatique, 2: 214. 24

  Thoron to Medem, Canée, 19 March 1841; Thoron to Titov, Canée, 10 April 1841; Thoron to Titov, Canée, 21 April 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1154, ll. 2, 10–11, 16–18.

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Kiuster, the Russian agent on Syros, who reported that the British resident and naval commander had proposed a show of force to remind the insurgents of the consequences, if they failed to disperse.25 St. Petersburg reacted to Thoron’s reports with a statement expressing the tsar’s unwillingness to participate in the Cretan affair.26 In March 1841, thousands of armed Christian rebels, under the banner of a Greek National Commission, assembled in the northwest Apokoronas region of Crete. The rebellion gained momentum in April, when a Greek from Zakynthos, named Lefteris, killed a Muslim Cretan on a secluded street in Chania. The morning after, an assembly of 500 Muslim Cretans demanded satisfaction. Without a trial, the Ottoman authorities arrested and executed Lefteris for the murder. A posse of armed Christians recovered his body and displayed it under the windows of the pasha’s residence. Violence erupted when “two armed Turk-Cretan fanatics,” according to Thoron, “accidentally” murdered “two Cretan Greeks.” “Blood begets blood,” wrote the tsar’s agent, who was certain that the entire Greek population was now in open revolt. Approximately 3,500 Christians prepared for a showdown, as the Ottoman government mustered its forces.27 By mid-April 1841, the rebel leaders, now based in the southern village of Vafi, issued a statement to the protecting powers demanding national unification of Crete with the kingdom of Greece. Thoron hoped that tranquility and order would soon be established, for “the Turkish cause suffers when the Greek cause gains partisans.”28 In early May, an expedition of 2,000 troops under the command of Admiral Tahir Pasha was preparing to crush the rebels in the south. Skirmishes commenced between Sfakiotes (Greek Christians from a mountainous area in southwestern Crete), and Ottoman regular soldiers and Albanian mercenaries. According to Thoron, casualties remained low because the Greeks would strike rapidly and then flee to the mountains.29 Turmoil on Crete drew the interest of the Russian Embassy in Athens. From October 1840 until late summer 1841, First Secretary Ivan E. Persiany was in charge of the Russian Embassy. His voluminous dispatches during this period (most of which relate to disturbances on Crete and elsewhere in Ottoman Europe) demonstrate how Russian representatives had informed the Greek government in Athens of St. Petersburg’s condemnation of disorder. He supported the efforts of the Ottoman army to disperse the insurgents on Crete. His Greek heritage notwithstanding, the Russian first secretary spoke eloquently against Greek irredentism. 25

  Kiuster to Persiany, Syros, 21 March 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 197–201.

26

  Thoron to Titov, Canée, 14 April 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1154, ll. 3–4.

27

  Thoron to Titov, Canée, 14 May 1841; Thoron to Titov, Canée, 10 April 1841, ibid., ll. 3–4, 10–11. 28

  Thoron to Titov, Canée, 21 April 1841, ibid., ll. 12, 13.

29

  Thoron to Titov, Canée, 6 May 1841, ibid., ll. 22–23. On the Sfakiotes, see William Miller, Essays on the Latin Orient (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), 44, 186, 188, 189, 194.

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Persiany’s communiqués and instructions, devoted to the conflict between the sultan and the Egyptian pasha, contain valuable descriptions of the unrest apparent throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Persiany claimed that secret francophile societies and groups of bandits were on Mehmed Ali’s payroll.30 Coincidentally, Severnaia pchela reported on disturbances in Albania fueled by bribes from the Egyptian pasha. The same newspaper report accused prominent Greeks of involvement in an insurrectional society called the Cretan Committee, and condemned the raids of the famous Macedonian rebels (Theodoros Grivas and Ioannis Velentzas) into Ottoman territories. Brigandage, rapine, and piracy in the eastern Mediterranean became common topics in the Russian newspapers.31 When news of events on Crete reached the Aegean archipelago, Catholics on Syros demonstrated in support of the insurgents. Russian Consul Kiuster, who reported on the hearty sympathy felt by all Syros Greeks for the Christian Cretan rebels, claimed that more than four hundred native Cretans had left Syros to join the fighting.32 After reaching Crete, they were joined by numerous Sfakiotes who had refused to turn in their arms, as the Ottoman governors had demanded. Some rebels insisted on the immunities and privileges promised them under the Egyptian governor. Others desired a system of limited autonomy, like the one instituted on Samos. Persiany insisted that members of the Cretan Committee, including Cretan natives Nikolaos Renieris, Archimandrite Missael Apostolidis, and Emmanuel Antoniadis (editor of the pro-British Greek newspaper Αϑήνα [Athens]), were to blame for the troubles.33 As the Russian embassy in Istanbul worked on what was to become the Straits Convention of 1841, Secretary Persiany was ordered to collect as much fresh, detailed information about the Cretan affair as possible.34 The Russian ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Vladimir P. Titov, was concerned that the turmoil on Crete would upset the newly reestablished order in the eastern Mediterranean. His feelings were shared by the British Ambassador, John Ponsonby, who had reported earlier of armed Greek captains landing vessels on Crete, and of an Ottoman force of 2,000 dispatched from Istanbul. Meantime, in Athens, hundreds of armed Greek men were preparing to join the rebellion. Some were Cretan natives, but others simply craved the action. In late 1840, the return of control of Crete to the Ottomans increased the Christians’ resentment against the governors of the sultan. Fedor A. Ivanov, Russian consul in Smyrna, wrote that rumors about the transfer of authority raised a storm of protest, 30

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 19 December 1840, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 11–17. 31

  Severnaia pchela, 11 January 1840.

32

  Kiuster to Titov, Syros, 29 June 1841; Kiuster to Titov, Syros, 1 August 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1399, ll. 20–21, 27. Kiuster served a decade on Syros, the headquarters of the Russian postal service in the eastern Mediterranean. See “Kiuster, K. K.,” AVPRI f. 159, op. 464, d. 1914. 33

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 24 March 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8, ll. 141–42.

34

  Titov to Persiany, Büyükdere, 18 June 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1809, ll. 157–58.

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for the inhabitants of Crete preferred to live under the Egyptian government.35 A contemporary Greek Russian observer disagreed: life under “the Egyptian dynasty” was bitter. “Christian Cretans were reduced to such extremities that they lacked daily bread because of the tribute.”36 In any case, Persiany reported that the rebels “preferred to die than abandon their country without having obtained the goal of their grievances.”37 Fearful of the specter of popular rebellion, the Greek government had to be careful not to become too closely associated with the insurgents and risk antagonizing the representatives of the protecting powers. To be sure, the government in Athens did not turn a blind eye to the organization of Cretan relief. King Othon himself donated several thousand drachmas at a theatrical performance, the proceeds of which were to benefit the insurrection. According to Persiany, the king’s contributions were symbolic and “created a profound sensation” among the public.38 Severnaia pchela reported that King Othon had donated about eight thousand drachmas to assist the poor: “the money will probably be used to subsidize the needs of Cretan families which live in Greece or fled there recently.”39 Charitable actions of monarchs were favorite subjects of Russian publishers, only in this case the king’s handouts were used to assist a popular rebellion. At this time, St. Petersburg was willing to surrender whatever commercial and political privileges in the Black Sea it had obtained from previous international treaties; this served Russia’s aims to reconcile with Great Britain, while keeping France in check. It was a good policy and explains, in part, why St. Petersburg abstained from taking part in the Cretan imbroglio. But despite the atmosphere of cooperation, Great Britain and Russia continued their rivalry on the margins of the continent. Agent Thoron described the uprising on Crete as “a crude English intrigue.” Members of a secret society, he observed, including some Sfakiotes and “a relative of the British envoy on Crete,” were taking advantage of the occasion to place the island under the authority of a freely elected president.40 To policy makers in St. Petersburg, this was tantamount to British domination, a concern that was furthered by reports of discrimination on the British-governed Ionian Islands. While Russia maintained its policy of non-intervention, French and British naval officers attempted mediation to reestablish tranquility. The Sublime Porte responded

35

  Ivanov to Titov, Smyrna, 11 September 1840, ibid., d. 1454, l. 121.

36

 Papadaki, Ostrov Kandiia, 18.

37

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 27 March 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, l. 175.

38

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 27 May 1841, ibid., ll. 278–85.

39

  Severnaia pchela, 12 June 1841.

40

  Thoron to a friend in Syros, Canée, 10 March 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 192–93.

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by setting up a blockade, a development that received extensive coverage in Russian dailies.41 During the final week of May 1841, the rebel situation became desperate. Significantly outnumbered, the rebel leaders delivered to Persiany (via Archimandrite Missael) a supplication signed by hundreds of Cretans pleading for Russian protection. In his capacity as first secretary, Persiany, replied that the Russian embassy was unable to interfere in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire. Contrast Persiany’s comment with the following report from British Ambassador Ponsonby: I learn from an excellent authority that the Russian minister in Greece has constantly repeated to those of his partisans in Candia who are employed in spreading Russian influence on that island that the Russian government will procure the union of Candia with Greece on the terms of the King of Greece being considered suzerain, Candia to pay a small tribute, etc., and have a government entirely independent of exterior control or influence.42 Archimandrite Missael responded to Persiany’s laissez faire attitude with a despondent message reiterating the tenet that the Greeks would rather perish than resubmit to “the Turkish yoke.” With marked reservation, Persiany forwarded Missael’s note to St. Petersburg accompanied by a last-minute comment on the newly established rebel government.43 Accepting the appeal was significant, for some observers construed it as Russian acknowledgment of the insurgents’ demands. As a result, Nesselrode reprimanded Persiany for his “incautious actions” and for behaving in a manner that outwardly condoned the rebellion. Persiany was ordered henceforward “to do nothing more than gather information and act with extreme circumspection.” 44 St. Petersburg continued to instruct its envoys to work in concert with the other powers. Russian Ambassador Titov praised agent Thoron for reinforcing the efforts of the Ottomans to crush the insurgency. Angelo Moustoxydis, the Russian consul in Thessaloniki, reported that about four thousand Albanians had been sent to Crete to reinforce the Ottoman troops. This news was favorably received by the Russian embassy in Istanbul. Moustoxydis referred to the governor of Thessaloniki’s efforts to muster forces as “wise and prudent.”45 Yet tranquility was rarely long-lasting in nineteenth-century Ottoman Europe. After the Albanian mercenaries began to rebel against their Turkish officers because of insufficient pay; the sultan’s government was 41

  Severnaia pchela, 12 May 1841; 13 May 1841; 28 May 1841; 12 June 1841; 10 July 1841.

42

  Ponsonby to Palmerston, Therapia, 12 December 1838 [n.s], RGADA f. 1, op. 2, d. 90, ll. 70–71. 43

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 11 May 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 254–69.

44 45

  Nesselrode to Persiany, St. Petersburg, 17 June 1841, ibid., d. 9/1841, ll. 109–13.

  See Titov to Thoron, Pera, 15 March 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1154, ll. 58; Titov to Thoron, Pera, 8 April 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1154, ll. 59–61; and Moustoxydis to Titov, Thessaloniki, 10 June 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1306, ll. 108–10.

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forced to raise their salaries. Recruiting sufficient troops to cover all the regions in turmoil was becoming a problem for the Sublime Porte. The reaction of the Ottoman chargé d’affaires in Athens, Constantine Musurus Pasha (whose father was from Rethymno, Crete), sheds light on Greek-Ottoman relations during this period. Musurus protested over an incident in which a vessel carrying two thousand rifles, one thousand okes (an oke was about 2.8 lbs.) of gunpowder, and a considerable quantity of lead was intercepted near Poros by Greek pirates.46 A translation of an article from the Greek newspaper Ελληνικόν Ταχυδρομείον (The Greek Post), printed in Severnaia pchela, informed Russian readers that “doubtlessly, these arms were meant for Crete.”47 Given the circumstances, Persiany warned that Greek-Ottoman relations “were destined to be compromised,” as King Othon persevered in “his system of inertia.”48 The tsarist representative urged the Greek government to redouble its efforts to curtail the passions of its subjects. As the Cretan insurrection reached the boiling point, another major rebellion was under way in Thessaly (along the northern border of independent Greece). In order to suppress the uprising, thousands of Ottoman and Greek troops gathered there. According to Persiany, King Othon approved of the borderland revolts, for he favored uniting these territories with Greece.49 For months, the situation in Thessaly was extremely tense, as Greek captains, sailors, priests, and palikaria threatened the lives of the outnumbered Muslim population. Musurus informed Greek prime minister Paikos about the government’s lack of urgency. Istanbul’s envoy complained that the rebels were making preparations in broad daylight.50 The new movement on Crete for national liberation reignited old sympathies and hopes which twelve years of peace had been unable to erase. The Greek Russophile newspaper Αιών (Century) reported that news about the massacres and anarchy in the borderlands “would clearly prove to Europe that Christians cannot live with the Turks … and that the natural and legitimate heir of Turkey in Europe is free Greece.”51 Persiany remarked that secret associations organized in Greece “continue to furnish funds, provisions, and munitions of war to all those who go to Crete [and] to the islands of Saint Eustratios and Saint Marine, where there is a concentration of adven-

46

  Musurus to Paikos, Athens, 23 June 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 407–10; Musurus to Mavrokordatos, Athens, 3 July 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 411–12; and Kiuster to Titov, Syros, 29 June 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1399, ll. 20–21. 47

  Severnaia pchela, 26 July 1841.

48

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 27 March 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, l. 171.

49

  See Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 27 July 1841, ibid., ll. 420–21; and John S. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece, 1821–1912 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 116–19. 50

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 11 August 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 429–31.

51

  Αιών [Century], 3 June 1841. Coincidentally, Severnaia pchela, 1 December 1841, praised Ottoman efforts to forbid subscriptions to Greek newspapers.

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turers, who wish to stir up revolt in Thessaly.”52 In his dispatches, Persiany included pamphlets by the Cretan rebels, titled Radamanthys and Emancipation des Populations Chrétiennes et Israélites en Orient, both in French translation. Events on Crete reached a climax in June 1841 with the arrival of over 10,000 Ottoman soldiers. Their presence forced the rebels to submit in July. In order to prevent a bloodbath, French and British vessels helped hundreds of insurgents (including Archimandrite Missael) to return to Greece. The Russian squadron did not assist, even though at least three warships that we know of (the Ajax, Paris, and Silach) were stationed nearby. Under the cover of night, French and British vessels with refugees on board ran the Ottoman blockade. Thoron observed, bitterly, that “the guilty Greeks” (that is, the rebels) were abandoning their debts on Crete: “this is truly a sad gift that they bestow on Greece.”53 In other words, Thoron felt the insurgents deserved punishment. News of the cessation of hostilities was well received in the Russian capital. Severnaia pchela repeatedly reported that the restoration of the sultan’s authority had returned peace and tranquility to the island.54 Although the Ottoman reaction can be characterized as restrained, the insurrection of 1841 had important consequences. Once law and order was reestablished, unconditional amnesty was extended to all Greeks who took part in the rebellion. The final pacification of the island, however, was not so simple: thousands of Albanian mercenaries, unpaid, and hungry, were left on the island. In his report in December 1841, Thoron reflected on the immediate past, noting that Mustafa Pasha’s rule was less than perfect, and that a better future seemed possible, now that civil and military authority was divided between two Ottoman officials. However, in the year’s final dispatch, Thoron warned of brewing disorder caused by the reimposition of the jizya (head tax) and an unfair system of justice.55 –

—

Analysis of the general reaction to the Cretan revolt of 1841 displays the contradictions among the principles of religious piety, monarchical legitimacy, and national unity in the minds of Russian readers. Sympathetic Russian reports about the Cretan rebels suggest a difference of opinion between educated society and the state. Thanks, in part, to news from independent Greece, the image of the struggle of the Orthodox Christians under Ottoman rule became an important feature of Russian print culture in the following decades. During the early 1840s, as Tsar Nicholas I adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward Great Britain, Russian foreign policy in the Near East retained its religious 52

  Persiany to Nesselrode, Athens, 27 May 1841, AVPRI f. 133, op. 469, d. 8/1841, ll. 282–83.

53

  Thoron to Titov, Canée, 6 August 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1154, l. 37.

54 55

  Severnaia pchela, 13 May 1841; 12 August 1841; 26 August 1841; 29 August 1841.

  Thoron to Titov, Canée, 6 December 1841, AVPRI f. 180, op. 517/1, d. 1154, ll. 56–57.

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character. With respect to Greece, the tsar continued to emphasize the benefits of strong monarchical institutions and the maintenance of the territorial status quo. In the broader picture, although Russia and Britain, the great European flanking powers, were not at war with each other, they competed for prestige and influence in conflicts on the margins of the continent. The principles of the Concert of Europe helped maintain peace in the center but failed to account for troubles on the fringes. The cost of tolerating and even promoting a limited amount of instability in the Ottoman Empire became most apparent in 1853 and again in 1914. Thus, in general terms, this essay supports the proposed conceptualization of the Congress of Vienna era (1815–48) as one of mutual consensus, law, and political equilibrium, but at the same time suggests that the price for peace in the European core was the export of bellicosity to the continent’s periphery.

The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (1871–1917): A Minority Civic Organization in Late Imperial Russia John A. Mazis

The years between the Great Reforms and the beginning of World War I were in many respects the golden age of the Russian middle class. To be sure, even during its golden age the Russian bourgeoisie did not even begin to rival the political and social prominence of its Western counterpart (for, even after the concessions of 1905, the Russian autocracy continued to frustrate the attempts of the middle class to share political power). Nevertheless, the changes which occurred after the 1860s brought about a resurgence of the middle class, which attempted to play a larger role in Russian public life. This was the time when civil society appeared on the Russian scene and civic organizations became a more frequent phenomenon. It was in this spirit of civic involvement that the Odessa Greeks, Russia’s largest and wealthiest Greek community, established themselves in a philanthropic society. While this society was in many ways similar to other Russian associations of the kind, it was also different in that it was from its inception a political as well as a philanthropic entity. Due to the privileged position of the Greeks in Imperial Russia the organization was able to flourish without hindrance from the authorities. Thus, the story presented here cannot be taken as representing the norm for the Russian Empire as a whole but, to use the title of one of Isaac Babel’s works, it represents “The Way Things Were Done in Odessa.” The majority of the Greek immigrants, the subject of this study, were refugees of war who had come from Greece during the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. As a result of the Russian-Ottoman War of 1768–74 thirty thousand Greeks who had revolted against the Ottomans in support of Russia’s war effort became refugees. Catherine the Great felt obligated to accommodate these coreligionists, many of whom had fought in Russian-organized military units.1 Most of these Greeks settled in coastal cities of southern Russia.2 The Greeks of Russia 1

  Franco Venturi, The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1776–1789, Part II: Republican Patriotism and the Empires of the East, trans. R. Burr Litchfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 776.

2

  Grigorii Arsh, “Οι Έλληνες της Ρωσίας” [The Greeks of Russia], in Μουσείο Φιλικής Εταιρίας [Museum of the Friendly Society] (Athens: Foundation for Hellenic Culture, 1994), 17–18.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 417–30.

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became easily integrated into Russian society and provided their host country with a number of outstanding individuals in a variety of fields. By the 1860s and 1870s the Greeks of Odessa were looking for ways to make their mark in their community.3 That desire was instrumental in the creation of the Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (known as Ελληνική Αγαθόεργος Κοινότης εν Οδησσώ in Greek and Grecheskoe blagotvoritel´noe obshchestvo in Russian). By its very nature, Imperial Russia was not a fertile ground for the creation and operation of civic groups. The idea corporate entities not sponsored and controlled by the government was rejected by the regime, which believed that sooner or later such entities would come under the influence of antigovernment forces.4 Such associations as were allowed to exist were nonpolitical in nature. Since Russia had problems with many of its minorities, it was deemed dangerous to allow the existence of ethnic civic groups, as they could easily become hotbeds of opposition to the regime. It is not without design that, during the reign of Nicholas I (1825–55), new restrictions were placed on civic groups. It was not until after Nicholas’s death and the relative openness of the society that accompanied the reform efforts of the early sixties that civic groups were allowed to flourish. As a result, the number of benevolent associations in Russia increased from 40 in 1855 to 348 by 1880,5 and to approximately 3,700 by 1901.6 The creation of civic groups can be attributed not only to the desire of philanthropy, but also to the frustration of the progressive Russian middle class. That middle class, which included among its members not only the wealthy but also educated professionals, was committed to social change and understood the importance of public initiative (samodeiatel´nost´). Therefore, since it was excluded from implementing social reforms through political participation, the middle class channeled its efforts into social improvements through civic action.7 Indeed, the new activism of the middle class has been called “silent bourgeois revolution” because, as Adele Lindenmeyr put it, “[i]n the Russian context, all independent public initiative was political, even when it was not overtly opposition, because it challenged, indirectly if not directly,

3

  Vasilis Kardasis, “Νότια Ρωσία τον 19ο αιώνα: Οι Έλληνες Ομογενείς” [South Russia in the nineteenth century: The Greek diaspora] (paper presented at the conference “The Greeks in Ukraine [Eighteenth–Twentieth Century]: Social Life, Trade, Culture,” Foundation for Hellenic Culture, Institute for Balkan Studies, Odessa State University, Odessa, 27 September 1996). 4

  Adele Lindenmeyr, “The Rise of Voluntary Associations during the Great Reforms: The Case of Charity,” in Russia’s Great Reforms 1851–1881, ed. Ben Eklof (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 267. 5

  Adele Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice:Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 116–22.

6

  Lindenmeyr, “The Rise of Voluntary Associations,” 265.

7

  See Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 123; and Lindenmeyr, “The Rise of Voluntary Associations,” 270–71.

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the autocracy’s control over society.”8 To be sure, the government continued its tight control of such entities, but the general relaxation by the state allowed even minority groups to establish their own ethnic associations. The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (henceforth GBAO) was created in order to solve two major problems facing the Greek community of that city. The first problem was financial in nature. After the end of the Crimean War (1856), when Odessa experienced a relative decline as a commercial center, the Greek community of the city felt the negative impact of that economic downturn. The other problem resulted from changes in Russian policies vis-à-vis the empire’s ethnic minorities. In an attempt to unify the country and make it more manageable, the state fostered a policy of systematic russification which aimed at homogenizing Russian society by absorbing the various minorities into the Russian majority culture.9 Since, by virtue of already being Orthodox, it was halfway to the government’s goal, the Greek minority was an ideal target for russification. As a result of Russia’s policy of russification, as many as half of Russia’s Greeks were to an appreciable degree assimilated by the beginning of the twentieth century.10 The greatest concern of the Greek minority was russification through intermarriage. A large number of Greeks married Russians and as a result their children became russified.11 The leaders of Odessa’s Greek community wanted to create an organization which, among other things, would help preserve the Greek national identity. The GBAO came into existence on 25 August 1871.12 Among the 103 founding fathers of the GBAO one finds the most prestigious leaders of the Greek community.13 Its charter provides some explanation as to the organization’s ultimate success and longevity. The first article of the charter sets forth the association’s goals: (a) to take care, by any means, of Odessa’s needy Greeks both those living in the city as well as of those who are passing through; (b) to provide for the upkeep of the Greek Church of the Holy Trinity; (c) to maintain and improve Odessa’s existing Greek educational and philanthropic institutions; and (d) to create such new institutions as it deemed

8

 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 196.

9

  “Russification in Tsarist Russia,” in The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History ed. Joseph Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1983), 32: 205–11.

10   Theologos Panagiotides, Ο εν Ρωσία Ελληνισμός [The Greeks of Russia] (Athens: Trembela, 1919), 11, 15. 11   Emmanuil Kapsambelis, Αναμνήσεις Διπλωμάτου [Memoirs of a diplomat] (Athens: n.p., 1939), 27. 12

  Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Odesskoi oblasti (GAOO) f. 765, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 12–19. The leaders of the Greek community petitioned the city authorities in 1867 for permission to form an association. Due to various legal and bureaucratic problems, the petition took four years to be approved. 13

 Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 1794–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 151. See also GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 1, ll. 18–19.

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necessary.14 If one excludes political activity (an option unavailable to civic groups in nineteenth-century Russia), religion, education, and philanthropy were the three areas in which a group was legally allowed to operate. Thus, the new Greek organization was from its inception designed to dominate the affairs of Odessa’s Greek minority. The second article of the charter dealt with the association’s membership. All Greek residents of Odessa, regardless of citizenship, could become members provided they paid annual dues of at least three rubles. All members had the right to participate fully in the association’s annual meeting, vote, and be elected to office. (Although not explicitly barred from participation, Greek women were not involved in the GBAO.) Article 35, Section A mentions eleven ways by which the needy could be helped: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

A one-time cash payment Monthly cash payments Non-interest loans Free medical care Free or low-rent housing Food and clothing for free or for minimal cost Work for those unemployed for whatever reason Care for the families of those in jail Legal assistance for those due to appear before the court Help for those needing a passport or residency permit Help for those wishing to repatriate15

The inaugural meeting of the board of trustees of the GBAO convened on 10 December 1871.16 Most of the board members came from the wealthy mercantile class. The board elected Theodore Rodokanaki as president, Gregory Maraslis as vice president, and John Voutsinas as treasurer. Rodokanaki served as president until his death in 1882. He was succeeded by Maraslis, who served until his death in 1907. The board of trustees of the GBAO lost no time in fulfilling its stated goal of supporting the church. During its third meeting (17 January 1872), the following financial arrangements were made: Out of the 12,000 rubles available, one-third, or 4,000 rubles, was earmarked for the upkeep of the Church of the Holy Trinity. The GBAO’s support to the church continued over the years at the same level. Although percentage-wise the allotment to the church was never again as high, in absolute numbers it continued to increase.17 A few months later, the GBAO assumed direct administration of the Church of the Holy Trinity.18 In addition to the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy 14

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 1, l. 12.

15

  Ibid., l. 17.

16

  Ibid., d. 2, l. 1.

17

  Ibid.; GAOO f. 2, op. 1, d. 857, ll. 56 and 157; and GAOO f. 274, op. 2, d. 13, l. 18.

18

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 5–6.

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Trinity, the GBAO assumed management of the Greek Commercial School for Boys, an educational institution of long standing and another jewel in the crown of the Greek community in Odessa. The fourth item of article 1 of the GBAO charter stated that one of the organization’s goals was the creation of such institutions as the organization deemed necessary.19 Over the years the GBAO was responsible for the establishment of three new institutions which were to serve the Greek community of Odessa. In 1908 a certain Mr. Paraskevas proposed to establish a craft school for Greek girls. The new school was to accept girls from the age of thirteen and above and offer a two-year course in sewing. The GBAO was to administer the school in cooperation with the Paraskevas family.20 Another institution established by the GBAO was the Maraslion Nursing Home. As the name suggests, the nursing home was made possible due to the generous contribution of Gregory Maraslis. The nursing home was completed and opened its doors in August 1896.21 The most important institution created by the GBAO was the Rodokanakio School for Girls. From today’s point of view, one might be surprised to find that the GBAO, a nineteenth-century bourgeois entity, run exclusively by men, was progressive enough to establish a school for girls. However, it should be remembered that the Greek community of Odessa already had the means to provide a first-class Greek education to its male members. By the 1870s, when the GBAO was formed, the Greek Commercial School for Boys was already in existence for over fifty years and had an excellent reputation for scholarship even among non-Greeks. Its curriculum was more classical than business-oriented. Clearly, the educational needs of the Greek males of Odessa were being met. Thus, it was only logical that similar educational needs of females should have high priority. On 17 January 1872, a short time after the creation of the GBAO, its board of trustees allocated 2,000 rubles (out of a total of 12,000 at its disposal) to be used for the benefit of the School for Girls.22 The board was unanimous in agreeing that it would retain close supervision over all aspects of the school’s operation. Most of the teachers were to be Greek or Greek speakers. The board agreed to allow up to fifty poor girls to study for free (the Girls’ School was a boarding establishment), while the rest would pay 30 rubles per year for the lower and 50 rubles a year for the upper grades. The GBAO board agreed on a temporary home for the school and then hired two Greek teachers to teach the Greek, Russian, and French languages, calligraphy, mathematics, and home economics, while German and piano were elective subjects.23 The subjects taught at the new school were in line with state guidelines for secondary public education for girls. At the time in Russian schools for girls, religion, 19

  Ibid., d. 1, l. 12.

20

  Ibid., d. 10, l. 68.

21

  See Sofronis Paradissopoulos, “Activities of the Greek Charity Society in Odessa 1871– 1896” (unpublished essay), 9. 22

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 2, l. 1.

23

  Ibid., ll. 7–8.

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John A. Mazis

Russian, mathematics, geography, history, natural sciences and physics, handwriting, needlework, and gymnastics comprised the core curriculum, while French, German, drawing, music, singing, and dancing were electives.24 After graduating from the Rodokanakio School, the young ladies were eligible to attend the third grade of any Greek gymnasium. The fact that the Greek Parliament passed a law according to which the Rodokanakio School for Girls was recognized as equivalent to Greek secondary schools was indicative of the school’s high standards.25 Soon after the opening of the School for Girls, it became clear that due to increasing enrollment the GBAO needed to build a permanent home for the school. For the academic year 1874–75 the board of trustees planned to enlarge the school so that it would have a kindergarten, three lower, and two higher grades. For that reason, it proposed to hire three more teachers and increase the school’s annual budget to 6,640 rubles. On 15 November 1874 it was announced that the building of the new school house was almost completed, and since Theodore Rodokanaki was a major benefactor (he donated the total amount of construction, which came to about 40,000 rubles) and the president of the GBAO, the board of trustees resolved to petition the authorities to name the school “Ροδοκανάκειον Ελληνικόν Παρθεναγωγείον και Νηπιαγωγείον” (Rodokanakio Greek School for Girls and Kindergarten).26 The various institutions supported by the GBAO could not address all the problems facing the Greek community of Odessa. In many cases, poor individuals or families needed immediate and direct assistance, often in the form of cash. For that reason the GBAO was active in providing assistance to individuals on a case-by-case basis.27 Any Greek resident of Odessa, and even those passing through the city, who found themselves in need of financial assistance could apply for help at the GBAO. The direct assistance which the GBAO provided to the needy can be divided into two broad categories. The first consisted of regular cash payments distributed twice a year (Christmas and Easter) to a number of poor individuals. The second was assistance to individuals who faced particular needs. In some cases the GBAO provided monetary assistance, in others assistance in kind. The usual amount of money given to individuals was three to five rubles.28 The GBAO recognized that some individuals and families needed, and were worthy of, continued support. Such were families whose breadwinner was dead or chronically ill and the children still too young to earn a living. With the passage of time, and as the GBAO became better known as a char-

24

  See Nicholas Hans, History of Russian Educational Policy (1701–1917) (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 127–28.

25

  Paradissopoulos, “Activities of the Greek Charity Society in Odessa 1871–1896,” 7–8.

26 27

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 19–20.

  Ibid., d. 1, l. 17.

28

  Ibid., d. 8, ll. 33–34, 59, 67–68, 71, 73–73; ll. 2–3, 21–23. In a few cases the amounts given were larger (twenty-five rubles to a priest’s widow and twelve rubles to an unidentified individual were only two such cases). See ibid., d. 2, l. 30, and d. 8, l. 1.

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itable institution, the number of petitions rose steadily.29 While poverty among the Greeks of Odessa did not disappear, the GBAO’s efforts went a long way in providing a “safety net” which alleviated much of the problem. The GBAO was a typical Russian voluntary charitable organization in a number of ways. For example, like the majority of Russia’s private charities, the GBAO was located in an urban center.30 Also, like the overwhelming majority of Russian charitable associations, it demanded relatively low annual dues in order to attract more participants. According to Russian government sources, the dues for most charities were between 1.5–3 rubles per year. As an association of an ethnic minority the GBAO was a rare, but not unique, phenomenon in the Russian Empire. Although only 3.5 percent of charitable associations were formed by minority ethnic groups, in absolute numbers 130 such entities existed.31 While the GBAO was in many ways a typical Russian charitable association, when it came to wealth and membership it was quite atypical. The GBAO budget for the year 1873 shows an income of 27,689.66 rubles and an equal amount in expenses.32 In comparison the GBAO balance sheet (Γενικός Ισολογισμός) for the year 1917 shows receipts of 98,647.46 rubles and expenses of 95,731.75 rubles.33 The gross value of the GBAO’s assets came to 529,693.18 rubles.34 The assets of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and the School for Boys were omitted from the balance because they, although controlled by the GBAO, had separate boards of administrators and budgets. The 1917–18 balance sheet of the School for Boys shows a gross value of 878,634.91 rubles.35 Comparing the GBAO with other Russian organizations of the same type demonstrates its privileged economic condition.

29

  Ibid., d. 24. Thus, the GBAO file for the year 1903 contains about 250 pages out of a total of 260 (11 x 8 inches) of petitions. See ibid., d. 16. 30

 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 200–01, and 205. The GBAO dues were 3 rubles a year until an increase during World War I. Some elite organizations, such as the Imperial Philanthropic Society, had a minimum requirement of 25 rubles a year.

31

 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 204–05.

32

  GAOO f. 2, op. 1, d. 857, l. 56.

33

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 26, ll. 184–87. This document is dated 31 December 1917, and given the political events of the era should be considered the last budget of a “normal” year. 34

  In comparison, the 1898 balance sheet of the St. Petersburg Noble Assembly shows a total endowment of 360,890 rubles. See Seymour Becker, Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985), 140. 35

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 24, l. 124. Unlike the GBAO balance sheet, that of the Boys’ School is not a detailed account but more of a summary.

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Table 1. Capital Assets of Charitable Associations Circa 190136 Capital Assets

Number of Societies Reporting

Percentage

No capital assets

216



1,000 rubles or less

942

28.2

1,000–3,000

643

19.2

6.5

3,000–5,000

298

8.9

5,000–10,000

403

12.1

10,000–50,000

612

18.3

Over 50,000 rubles

227

6.8

The GBAO with capital assets of almost 530,000 rubles (in 1917) belonged to the select few, less than 7 percent, of well-to-do Russian charitable associations.37 Also, the GBAO was one of few Russian charitable organizations that enjoyed the high income that enabled it to engage in several charitable activities. Table 2. Charitable Associations’ Income and Expenditure Circa 190138 Income

Number of Societies Reporting

Percentage

500 rubles or less

779

23.3

500–2,500

1,320

39.6

2,500–10,000

827

24.8

Over 10,000

410

12.3

500 rubles or less

1,073

32.2

Expenditure 500–2,500

1,227

36.9

2,500–10,000

681

20.5

Over 10,000

348

10.4

Total GBAO income for 1917 came to a little over 44,000 rubles, while expenditures for the same year totaled over 54,000 rubles.39 This kind of evidence leads one to 36

 In Poverty Is Not a Vice, Adele Lindenmeyr presents a number of informative tables which help to better quantify the phenomenon of nineteenth-century Russian civic groups. The tables presented here are found in ibid., 238–39. Another work which includes a number of important tables and figures is Rossiia 1913 god: Statistiko-dokumental´nyi spravochnik (St. Petersburg: Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk, 1995), 381–400.

37

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 26, l. 185.

38

 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 239.

39

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 26, l. 187.

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425

deduce that the GBAO was secure in its position as one of Russia’s foremost charitable associations. As stated above, one of the reasons for establishing civic organizations in Russia was the desire of the middle class to participate in public life in any way possible. While the various charitable organizations did not become mass movements, they did make it possible for a large number of people to participate in charity works. As table 3 shows, GBAO membership was relatively large compared with the average number of participants in other Russian charitable organizations. In 1901 Russia’s charitable associations had a total membership of almost 450,000. Membership in those associations was distributed as follows.40 Table 3. Size of Charitable Associations by Location, circa 1901 Location

Number of Associations

Average Membership

Provincial Capitals

1,419

194

District Towns

1,283

86

Other Towns

195

156

Countryside

361

94

Average membership for all associations was 138. The GBAO membership (334) was almost two and a half times the national average. Given the fact that membership in the GBAO was limited, not by rule but by custom, to males, one should calculate the members as a percentage of Odessa’s Greek males. Out of a total of 3,166 Greek-speaking males in Odessa, 334 (9.5 percent) belonged to the GBAO.41 Furthermore, since not all Greek-speaking males of Odessa were of adult age, the percentage of eligible Greeks who joined the GBAO was even higher. Clearly, then, the GBAO, was quite representative of the Greek community of Odessa. During its forty-five years of existence the GBAO had a good track record as a charitable institution. Evidence shows that it not only fulfilled but even surpassed the mandate stated in its charter. As it turned out, the GBAO became much more than an ethnic benevolent organization. Due to its longevity, stability, wealth, and the institutions, and individuals it supported, the GBAO became the leading organization of the Greek community of Odessa. In that respect, it was political, not in the narrow definition of partisan politics (although in time it did play that role as well), but rather in the broader sense of representing a community in an informal yet real way. Clearly, the GBAO did not seek to influence general Russian policy, domestic or foreign. Besides, the Russian political system was opposed to any type of external input. At the same time, however, the GBAO sought, and gained, preferential treatment from the Russian government in some important areas. For example, Greek educational institutions were unofficially exempted from the more onerous demands of the russification policy. As the GBAO became better known in Odessa, it attracted 40 41

 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 239.

  For the number of Odessa’s Greek-speaking males, see Herlihy, Odessa, 242.

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John A. Mazis

the attention of other official organizations.42 Even the Russian authorities recognized by deed, if not by word, that the GBAO was the community’s leading institution, as attested by the following incident. On 12 December 1881, the imperial authorities of the Black Sea port of Batum asked the GBAO for financial support in order to make accommodations for some needy Greeks. According to the request, an unspecified number of Greeks had come to Batum from the Ottoman Empire, presumably as refugees. The latter received some help from local authorities and private sources but needed supplementary support. The GBAO responded swiftly and positively to the request. Within a week the organization had collected 2,876 rubles to be used for that purpose. Another 500 rubles came from Maraslis, while Rodokanakis donated 50 sacks of flour.43 This event was symbolically important as it demonstrated that although the Russian authorities did not recognize the GBAO as the official representative of the Greeks of Odessa, it did turn to the organization as the leading institution of that community. This was not the last time that the GBAO helped Greek refugees in Russia. During World War I, when Romania was overrun (1916) by the German army, a number of Greek refugees crossed the frontier into Russia. The GBAO was instrumental in helping those refugees as well.44 The fact that the GBAO had assumed the position of the leader of the Greek community as a whole can also be detected by the official calls to the organization’s officers by prominent Greeks passing through the city. When the queen of Greece, Olga, who was Russian by birth, was passing through Odessa in 1873, the GBAO organized and hosted her reception. GBAO officers as well as students of the various GBAO institutions welcomed the queen, who dedicated the cornerstone of the new building of the school for girls. In addition to a gift of flowers and some icons, the GBAO gave Olga 10,000 rubles to be used by her for charities in Greece.45 Since Olga made the same trip many times on her visits to her Russian relatives, the GBAO played the host repeatedly. The GBAO also hosted welcoming ceremonies on the occasion of other visits by VIPs to Odessa. Lastly, there were the occasions when the Greek community of Odessa came together to celebrate a Greek national event. Such was the case with the annual celebration of Greek Independence Day (25 March), when the GBAO was again both the organizer and host of the celebration.46 The GBAO was always receptive to requests for support of Greek national causes. This was the case in 1911, when the government of independent Crete solicited help from the GBAO.47 The GBAO’s level of support for national causes is evident in the handwritten letter it received from Greece’s prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, 42

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 10, ll. 53, 114.

43

  Ibid., d. 2, ll. 36–37.

44 45

  Ibid., d. 10, ll. 271–82.

  Ibid., ll. 13–14, 43, and 41.

46

  Κόσμος [The World], 25 March 1908, 3.

47

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 19, ll. 89–96. Crete was semi-independent from 1897 until its union with Greece in 1912.

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427

dated 31 January 1913, at the height of the First Balkan War. Venizelos took time out of his busy schedule—in addition to being premier he was also minister of defense—to thank the GBAO for its generous donation of 90,000 gold French francs earmarked for “national needs.”48 In addition to its monetary contribution to Greek national causes, the GBAO continued to provide assistance in other ways. Over the years, whenever Greece became involved in war, the GBAO offered “humanitarian” aid. Quite often the GBAO and the Greek community of Odessa financed the transportation of volunteers from Russia to Greece in support of the Greek army. Also, the GBAO made sure that, if need be, the families of those volunteers were taken care of in their absence. A case in point is the Russian-Ottoman War of 1877–78, when a number of Greeks from Russia joined the Russian army as well as Greek paramilitary units.49 Similarly, after the disastrous (for Greece) Greek-Ottoman War of 1897, the GBAO opened its coffers and helped a number of Odessa Greeks who volunteered to fight in that war.50 The GBAO and the Greeks of Odessa were also involved in helping volunteers join the Greek army during World War I.51 During World War I, the GBAO became politicized (particularly in respect to Greek affairs) in an unprecedented way. Political events in both Russia and Greece created a climate in which the Greeks of Odessa could voice their political beliefs openly, even though Russia was still governed by an autocratic regime. While Russia was involved in the war against the Central Powers, Greece was hesitant. Venizelos, the Greek premier, was an admirer of France and Britain. He argued that because of treaties and national interests Greece should enter the war on the side of the Western allies. King Constantine I, who had studied at the German Military Academy and was married to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s sister, favored neutrality. Eventually the country was split into two, creating a “National Schism” that transcended national boundaries and manifested itself in the Greek communities of the diaspora. The Russian emperor, Nicholas II, had many ideological and personal ties with the Greek royal family. As an autocrat, Nicholas understood the “right” of kings to govern independently from parliaments. On a personal level, Constantine was related to the Romanovs through his mother Queen Olga, who was a Russian grand duchess. At the same time, Russia was at war with Germany and Constantine’s pro-German sentiments put him at odds with his Russian relatives. This ambivalent official position allowed Odessa’s Greek community to voice its preference for one or the other of Greece’s two opposing factions. The Greek community of Odessa had a history of supporting Venizelos’s policy of political and economic change. After the successful conclusion (1913) of the First 48

  Ibid., d. 22, l. 62.

49

  The activities of Odessa’s Greeks during that war have only recently been examined by Professor Piatigorskii, who took advantage of the postcommunist opening of state archives. See Grigorii Piatigoskii, “The Cretan Uprising of 1866–1869 and the Greeks of Odessa,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 14/15 (1998/1999): 129–48. 50

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 8, ll. 43–44.

51

  Αναγέννησις [Renaissance], no. 6 (4 June 1917): 3.

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John A. Mazis

Balkan War, Odessa’s mainstream Greek newspaper, Κόσμος (The World), hailed Venizelos as Greece’s leader, noting that the Greek premier’s efforts not only rejuvenated Greece itself, but the new spirit spilled over to the Greeks of the diaspora, including the Greek community of Odessa.52 On 4 March 1915, when Venizelos was still premier and Greece neutral due to royal insistence, the Board of Trustees of the GBAO passed a resolution asking Greece to abandon its neutrality and enter the war on the side of the Western powers.53 Later that year, when the disagreement between the king and Venizelos led to the premier’s resignation, the GBAO came out openly for Venizelos, sending him a telegraph expressing their support.54 Over the next few years, up to the communist victory in the Russian Civil War, the GBAO, while maintaining its character as a benevolent organization, came to assume the characteristics of a political organization.55 In 1915 many communities of the Greek diaspora clamored for their country’s entrance into the war on the side of the Western powers. They decided to act independently of the Greek government and convene in a representative body composed of Greeks from different communities of the diaspora. That body would coordinate the actions of the diaspora Greeks, show that there were Greeks who supported the West, and bring pressure on the king of Greece to change his policy. The Greek community of Odessa was invited to send representatives to Paris, the site of the proposed gathering. On 21 December the Board of Trustees of the GBAO agreed to designate as their representatives to Paris, the site of the proposed meeting, Messrs. Rallis and Triantafyllidis, two GBAO members who had the advantage of being already in that city.56 The indication from the GBAO record is that the association acted independently without asking the permission of the Russian authorities or the advice of the Greek consul. Thus, during World War I, the GBAO behaved as a political organization: it advocated a particular course of political action and pursued its aims independently of both the Greek and Russian governments.

52   Κόσμος, 5 May 1913, 1. It should be noted that this newspaper was not partisan Venizelist, having often editorialized that Greece needed the royal family. See Κόσμος, 1 November 1909, 1. 53

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 24.

54

  Ibid., l. 21, dated 18 September 1915. The telegraph was sent after unanimous vote by the GBAO Board of Trustees. This gesture put the GBAO and the Greek community of Odessa, which the organization clearly represented, on the liberal side and openly against the wishes of the king of Greece. 55

  The GBAO and its energetic vice president, Eleftherios Pavlides, were the force behind the creation of an umbrella organization representing all the Greeks of South Russia. See Αναγέννησις, 25 June 1917, 3, and 23 July 1917, 1. Pavlides was the most active member of the Board of Trustees of the GBAO and the sponsor of the earlier resolution supporting Venizelos. After the Russian Revolution Pavlides went to Greece, where he became the leader of Greece’s community of Greek refugees from Russia and long-time president of their union. 56

  GAOO f. 765, op. 1, d. 24, l. 22–23. The Board of Trustees of the GBAO discussed the telegram for the first time on 8 December 1915.

The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (1871–1917)

429

The GBAO did not limit its overt political activities to Greek matters. Taking advantage of Russian political developments, the Greeks of the Russian Empire as a whole assumed a political role. In 1917, between the February and October Revolutions, the various Greek associations of Russia created an umbrella organization in order to respond to the monumental events sweeping the country. All of the Greek philanthropic organizations (each South Russian city with a sizable Greek minority had its own civic group) were represented.57 These organizations met on 29 June 1917 in Taganrog and agreed on the following objectives: 1. union of all the Greek associations in Russia; 2. safeguarding the independence of the Greek Orthodox Church from its Russian counterpart; 3. recognition by the Russian authorities of the Greek schools as ethnic schools with the right to teach Greek language, history, etc.; 4. establishment of a Greek bank and other institutions which would help the community; 5. publication of a Russian-language Greek newspaper; 6. focus on the problems of rural Russia; 7. definition and coordination of the political position of Russia’s Greek community in order to achieve its other goals.58 Objectives 2 and 3 dealt with traditional institutions, which the Greeks of Russia had come to view as national and independent from the host state. Objectives 5 and 6 dealt with the vast majority of ethnic Greeks, who lived in rural areas and were Russian speakers. A Russian-language Greek newspaper could achieve two goals: (1) reach hundreds of thousands of Greeks who spoke only Russian; and (2) make the Greek case known to the Russian public in general. By focusing on the rural question, the Greeks of Russia once again had two targets: protecting the interests of the thousands of Russian-speaking Greeks (who were mainly rural dwellers) as well as the interests of the leaders of the Greek community, many of whom were large land owners. At the time of the above meeting, the Greeks of Russia were walking a tightrope. On the one hand, they wanted to organize themselves on a pan-Russian level and thus take advantage of the liberal policies of the new government, which was willing, unlike its tsarist predecessor, to accommodate the various minorities (the attempts by the tsarist government to russify the Greek element were eased by the new government).59 On 57   It is reported that Vice President of the GBAO Eleftherios Pavlides called for a panhellenic meeting of the Greeks of Russia with the goal of creating an umbrella organization. See Αναγέννησις, 14 May 1917, 1–2. 58

  Αναγέννησις, 2 July 1917, 1.

59   Michael Dendias, “Αι Ελληνικαί Παροικίαι ανά τον κόσμον” [Greek communities throughout the world] (Athens: Sideri, 1919), 24. The Provisional Government was willing to allow more freedom for the country’s ethnic minorities mainly for two reasons: (1) it accepted self-determination in principle, which meant either allowing a part of the empire to become

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John A. Mazis

the other hand, the Greeks did not want to become too involved in Russia’s political affairs and run the risk of being identified with a party that might lose the political battle. In any case, the October Revolution changed the country’s political and social conditions, and the newly formed pan-Russian body of Greeks did not play any role in the country’s future. The Bolshevik coup and the eventual victory of the Reds against the Whites spelled the end of the GBAO. Given the events of 1917–20s, the end of the GBAO was inevitable. The communists, more so than the tsars, were ideologically opposed to nongovernmental charity organizations, wanted to control the property of such institutions, and distrusted all types of non–communist-led civic groups. The Bolsheviks tolerated private charitable institutions and allowed them to operate during the 1921–22 famine but banned them soon thereafter.60 The long history of Hellenism in Russia and Odessa came to an abrupt end. The few Greeks that are left in the city today are either elderly Greek speakers or young Russian speakers.61 The Maraslis house is now a medical school.62 The Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity is still in use, serving a dwindling, mainly Russian, number of faithful. Recent grants by the Greek government have restored an old Maraslis property, which now houses the offices and library of the Athens-based Foundation for Hellenic Culture. Tourists to the city who do not know its ethnic history would be surprised to find that in Odessa’s center there is a “Greek Square” and a “Greek Street,” reminders of a time when Greeks from all over the Greek world came to Russia, as later they would come to America, to make their fortune.

independent, such as Finland, or at a minimum granting smaller minorities a large measure of autonomy; and (2) the Provisional Government was surrounded by external and internal enemies, thus it was willing to compromise in order to attract support. 60

 Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 3.

61

  While Odessa is located in Ukraine, it is a city of mixed ethnic groups with a clear Russian character. 62

  Many thanks to Lilia Belousova, director of the Odessa Regional State Archives, for providing me with information regarding Maraslis’s house.

Sir Arthur Evans in the Balkans: A Romantic Crusade Thomas A. Emmert

For nineteenth-century British travelers, the exotic East began in the Balkans somewhere south of Zagreb and a kilometer or two out of Belgrade. Scores of Victorian vagabonds left the comforts, security, and predictability of home to roam the territory of the moribund Ottoman Empire. The Balkans and Anatolia offered a romantic adventure with the certainty of exotic culture and the possibility of danger. In most of the inevitable travelogues which resulted from these journeys, the authors themselves are the heroic figures, suffering the vicissitudes of travel with a modicum of pain, some humor, and a respectable dose of good grace.1 The Victorian public devoured these works in their search for adventure, vicarious peril, and a glimpse into the life and customs of a strange and unknown land. In the 1860s some of this literature found its way into the hands of Arthur Evans, the young son of John Evans, a British paper mill owner and amateur numismatologist and paleontologist. The Evans home was a perfect laboratory for Arthur, the future discoverer of Knossos on Crete. Arthur’s grandfather, a country parson and avid bibliophile, left his young namesake a collection of some fifteen hundred etchings and engravings of places in the world that he had visited only in the pages of Victorian travelogues. He also gave Arthur one of his favorite books, Robert Walsh’s Overland Tour from Vienna to Constantinople (London, 1828). This work, which Arthur read many times, helped to plant the first seeds of a romantic wanderlust. Arthur Evans’s childhood fascination with the world was also nurtured by his father’s love for the past. Not only did Arthur enjoy the benefits of his father’s impressive library, but he accompanied his father to archeological digs and scholarly con1

  Among the more interesting works were George Carlisle, Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters (Boston: Hickling, Swan, and Brown, 1855); James Creagh, A Scamper to Sebastopol and Jerusalem in 1869 (London: R. Bentley and Son, 1869); Francis Galton, The Art of Travel; or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries (London: J. Murray, 1855); H. A. Leveson, The Old Hunting Grounds of the Old World (London: Saunders, Otley, and Co., 1860); R. R. Madden, Travels in Turkey, Egypt, etc. (London: H. Colburn, 1933); Murray’s Handbooks: A Handbook for Travellers in Turkey. Describing Constantinople, European Turkey, Asia Minor, Armenia, and Mesopotamia (London: J. Murray, 1854); Laurence Oliphant, Episodes in a Life of Adventure (London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1887); C. Pridham, Kossuth and Magyar Land: Adventures during the War in Hungary (London: J. Madden, 1851); and H. J. Ross, Letters from the East, 1837–1857, 2nd ed. (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1902). Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 431–42.

432 Thomas A. Emmert

ferences. Scattered among the countless books of the Evans household were ancient coins, pottery, and other artifacts from John Evans’s digs. Of all the Evans children, only Arthur shared his father’s intense interest in the past. He read voraciously and poured over coins and pieces of pottery. His early years were clearly an apprenticeship for a lifetime of scholarship. His mother, on the other hand, helped to encourage the romantic impulses in Arthur. She had spent a number of years in Madeira, spoke Portuguese, and entertained her son with passionate tales of life in the Mediterranean. Arthur was constantly transported beyond the confines of middle-class England, and thus the foundation was laid for the vivid imagination and immoderate idealism of the mature archeologist.2 In the summer of 1871 when he was only twenty years old, Arthur set out to discover the exotic world of the Balkans. He was a restless young man. In 1870 he had entered Brasenose College at Oxford, after a somewhat undistinguished public school career. Known more for his wit and his rebellion against convention than for his excellence in scholarship, Evans was, nevertheless, determined to pursue a career as a scholar. His summer travels in 1871 were the first step towards realizing that goal. Accompanied by his brother and a friend, Evans journeyed to Zagreb and Sisak and then made a seven-hour trip to the town of Kostajnica, where he was completely enraptured by the colorful character of this settlement on the borders between East and West. He spent only one day there, but it was apparently enough to whet his appetite for a lifetime of adventure in the Balkans.3 The following summer, with knapsack in hand, Evans returned to the region with a difficult journey from Hungary into Wallachia. He traveled over unknown mountains to escape border patrols and clearly demonstrated that spirit of raw adventure which would serve him well later in Bosnia and Herzegovina and eventually on Crete. His travels took him to Ploesti and Bucharest which disappointed the romantic sleuth because he found them only “caricatures of a French town.”4 Only when he reached Belgrade did Evans find the exotic world he knew so well from his well-trained imagination. The brilliant colors of the women’s costumes and everything about the city overwhelmed his senses. He had found his home. It would be two years before Evans returned to the Balkans to pursue more serious travel and research. In the meantime he finished his studies at Brasenose, visited 2

  There are two biographies of Arthur Evans. The first appeared shortly after his death and is a study of three generations of the Evans family by Arthur’s half-sister, Joan. See Joan Evans, Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and His Forebears (1943; repr., Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974). The second and a somewhat more popular account is by Sylvia L. Horwitz, The Find of a Lifetime: Sir Arthur Evans and the Discovery of Knossos (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 14. Both of these works were important in providing some essential background in Evans’s biography for this article. 3

  See Joan Evans, Time and Chance, 165.

4

  Quoted in ibid., 172, from Arthur Evans’s own account of the journey which he published in 1873: “Over the Marches of Civilized Europe,” Frazer’s Magazine 7 (May 1873): 578.

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Sweden, where he traveled all the way to the Arctic Circle, and enrolled in the spring of 1875 at the University of Göttingen for a term of postgraduate studies in history. When that term ended in late July he traveled to Zagreb, where he met his brother and began a much more ambitious journey into Bosnia. The trip would change his life forever. Even before he left for Zagreb, Evans had decided to write a book about his journey. He wanted to describe the region and its people, their history and antiquities, for the British reader. More than anything else he was determined to become an expert on the region, and the book would be good training for his critical eye. This aspiring archeologist brought with him a solid background in the classics and in the history of the region, the curiosity and descriptive ability of an anthropologist, and the idealism of a romantic liberal who was ready to champion the cause of the oppressed. For this man of adventure it would be his good fortune to cross the Sava just as a major insurrection was breaking out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He traveled from Zagreb to Sisak, along the Sava River to Brood (Slavonski Brod), south to Sarajevo and Mostar, and finally along the Neretva River to the sea and his final destination of Dubrovnik. This trip was the inaugural experience in his lifelong devotion to scholarship and, more popularly, to the cause of freedom in the Balkans. During the two months of his trip he fulfilled the expectations of the careful travel writer by making everything an object of intense interest. Evans was marvelously descriptive of flora and fauna, of folklore and antiquities, of a world which time had seemingly left untouched. He marveled at the traditions of the peasant population, the zadruga (the peasant commune), undocumented ancient inscriptions, Bogomil stecci (tombstones), and the beauty of the hills, mountains, and meadows. He talked with everyone he met, collected Serbo-Croatian vocabulary, and struggled to make himself understood in Latin, German, Italian, and French. He saw everything through the eyes of a historian, always looking for the historical context of an idea or phenomenon, and often trying to understand the deep roots of a problem and not just the contemporary manifestations of that problem. He worked tirelessly, took copious notes, and returned to London with enough material to finish his book in a matter of weeks. The result of his efforts, entitled Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot, was a great success.5 Unlike many of the travel books of his fellow Englishmen, however, in Evans’s work the native population was not simply a backdrop for the self-discovery and personal heroism of the author. Evans searched for the soul of the region’s people and never hid his partisan perspective on both the history and the contemporary dilemma of these people. By the time he had finished his peregrination and writing he was a committed disciple of South Slavic unity and a strong proponent of Gladstone’s anti-Turkish platform. The account of Evans’s travels reveals a remarkable young scholar, not always objective but clearly comfortable with his material. In a lengthy review of pre-Ot5

 He also included a rather lengthy subtitle: During insurrection, August and September, 1875, with an historical review of Bosnia and a glimpse at the Croats, Slavonians, and the Ancient Republic of Ragusa (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1876), 5.

434 Thomas A. Emmert

toman Bosnian history prefaced to the travelogue, he demonstrates his impressive background in the medieval historical literature of the region.6 Unfortunately, he finds it difficult in this survey to tame his antipapist sentiment. He considers the Bogomils the first Protestants of Europe, blames Rome for the Turkish conquest, and reminds his own readers that England itself owes a debt to Bosnia for the “sublime Puritanism” of its medieval legacy. His analysis of the uprising in its early days is impressive for its understanding of the longtime grievances of the Christian peasantry, the particular policies which helped to spark the insurrection, and the early development of the confrontation. Evans first heard of the insurrection in early August as he prepared to enter Ottoman territory from Slavonski Brod. There he received news that an insurrection was spreading from Herzegovina and that the Vali Pasha had proclaimed martial law throughout the region. Evans demonstrated no alarm at the situation but rather plunged ahead on foot into Bosnia. He managed to avoid the rebel arena until he arrived in Herzegovina. During the first few days of his visit, he quietly observed the customs of the local population and labored diligently to assess those similarities among people which might encourage political unity someday. Certain similarities in customs between Croat and Serb accounted for much more, he believed, than the “perceived animosities” between these two peoples.7 He attended a religious festival in honor of the Assumption, enjoyed roast lamb on the spit, and listened to what must have been a ganga, for he described the sound of the singers as “a positive nightmare of bagpipes.”8 He marveled at the oral epic which he believed encouraged Bosnians to see themselves as brothers of Montenegro or Old Serbia. He met Catholic monks who worried about the “Great Serbian” idea and hoped to prevent it with Austrian control of the region. In Sarajevo he began to understand better the impact of the insurrection. There was panic there as news arrived that the uprising had begun in Banja Luka and was spreading along the Sava. The Christian population feared that the Muslim nobles, resentful after the loss of many of their provincial privileges in the reforms of 1850–51, might use the insurrection to massacre the Christians. In that context Evans reported that many viewed the newly completed Orthodox cathedral as a clear provocation. Sarajevo, he observes, is “a vast garden, from amidst whose foliage swell the domes and cupolas of mosques and baths. Loftier still, rises the new Serbian Cathedral, lancing upwards, as to tourney with the sky, near a hundred minarets.”9 The fear of massacre forced two English teachers, Miss Irby and Miss Johnston, to pack up their small school and evacuate the city with some of their best students. They managed to get to Prague, but eventually the women would return to the Bal6

  Ibid., xix–lxiii.

7

  Ibid., 119–20.

8

  Ibid., 138.

9

  Ibid., 241–42.

Sir Arthur Evans in the Balkans

435

kans to spearhead a refugee relief effort out of Knin. Evans would be in frequent contact with them during his years in the Balkans. Evans was not hesitant to repeat the rumors he heard of oppression and torture. Unlike the British consul in Sarajevo, W. R. Holmes, who refused to believe most rumors, Evans generally accepted them. Eventually in the course of his years in the region he did what he could to verify his accounts with eyewitness interviews with victims and survivors. As he relates tales of Bashibazouk actions, reports on the tyranny of turkophile Phanariot bishops, and agonizes over the reign of terror which appeared to be developing, Evans realizes that the future is not promising. “Nothing but the present [is] certain,” he reflects, “her nearest future overclouded, forebodings of internecine struggles within; the sulphurous vapours of civil and religious war rising around her.”10 In Mostar he met with the British consul Holmes, who presented Evans with the official Turkish version of the insurrection which blamed the whole affair on some forty outside agitators from Montenegro and Dalmatia. While the consul was apparently willing to accept this somewhat myopic interpretation of the uprising, Evans provides a much broader reading of the situation. In his view, no outside agitators were necessary to spark this essentially agrarian revolution against the Muslim landowners. For Evans the blame rested clearly with anti-Christian policies; with the tax farmers, especially in 1875 after the failed harvest of 1874; and with those who committed violent or discriminatory actions against the Christian population.11 Near the village of Nevesinje, for example, where the uprising in Herzegovina began, peasants told Evans that they had clear demands: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

To end the molesting of Christian women and girls; To stop the desecration of Christian churches; To gain equal rights with the Turks; To receive protection from the violence of the local police; To force the tax farmers to take only what they were entitled to take and only at the proper time of the year; 6. To guarantee that every house should pay only one ducat in total taxes each year; 7. To end all forced labor by humans and animals.12 Technically, the peasants were not allowed to cut their crops until the taxmen had made their appearance. But fearing famine in 1874 they did harvest them and then refused to comply with the demands of the tax farmers when they finally arrived in January of 1875. In his description of the insurrection that began in June, Evans’s sympathies are clearly on the side of the Christian peasantry. He compares their situation to that of 10

  Ibid., 282.

11

  Ibid., 331–32.

12

  Ibid., 336.

436 Thomas A. Emmert

the peasants in the French Revolution. And while he admits that there were some terrible atrocities perpetrated by the Christians, he absolves them of their excesses by placing the blame on “the tyranny of the centuries.”13 Evans ended this journey to the Balkans with a first visit to Dubrovnik. He was completely captivated by the city, and he knew immediately that someday he would call this “Athens of Illyria” his home. While his attention was drawn to the history and antiquities of Dubrovnik, his concern for the insurrection was never far from his mind. He could hear the noise of fighting in the hills of Herzegovina, and the city had become a refuge for hundreds of Christian peasants from the interior. He even began to envision a role for the city and its environment in the future South Slavic nation he came to champion. In his words, “the plodding genius of the Serbs needed to be fanned into energy by these fresh sea breezes—their imagination languishes for want of this southern sunshine.”14 Evans returned to England in September 1875, but his heart remained in the Balkans, and from the moment he reached Dover he was already plotting his next journey. In June 1876 Evans’s hastily prepared book appeared on the shelves of London bookstores. Its success was certainly helped by the fact that Serbia and Montenegro joined the rebellion that same month. Suddenly this young student who had failed to win a fellowship for graduate work at Oxford was a Balkan expert. He was called on for comment and reviews of books on the Balkans, and he was frequently quoted in Parliament. More than anything else, of course, Evans was determined to return to the Balkans. He did not have to wait long. His father, who usually supported his son’s efforts in spite of their political differences, had a friend whose nephew was the editor of the Manchester Guardian. The paper was supportive of Gladstone and opposed to Ottoman policy and presence in the Balkans. It took little influence to convince the editor to send Arthur Evans to the region to serve as a special correspondent for the paper. Toward the end of January Evans left for Trieste, and on 8 February he sent his first dispatch back to the Guardian.15 He stayed in the region until the end of November and used Dubrovnik as a base of operations. By this time there was no doubt about Evans’s partisan passion for the Balkan Slavs. Having little concern for his own safety, he appeared determined to press his case by following the rebellion and by interviewing both Turk and rebel. Evans wanted the English public to know how desperate the situation had become in the areas he visited. At the same time he was eager to find a grassroots sentiment for South Slav unity. He began his investigation in Knin where the English teachers, Miss Irby and Miss Johnston, were working with refugees from Bosnia. It was the plight of the refugees which had the greatest impact on Evans. Since the English public had already reacted with horror and indignation at the reports of the Bulgarian massacres, Evans 13

  Ibid., 338.

14

  Ibid., 434.

15

  Cf. Arthur Evans, Illyrian Letters (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878), 16.

Sir Arthur Evans in the Balkans

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wanted his readers to understand that the situation was just as horrible in Bosnia. He argues that over a quarter of a million people were refugees in Austrian territory, while countless others were barely alive and hiding in caves near the frontier. He de­ scribes unbelievable suffering: emaciated victims of famine, smallpox, and typhus, and people in caverns whose “faces [were] literally eaten away with hunger and disease.”16 Having learned of Turkish atrocities in the village of Očijevo, Evans was determined to hike there himself in order to verify the victims’ reports. Even the swollen and icy Una River was no obstacle to this tenacious adventurer. In Očijevo he listened to shocking stories of pillage, rape, and murder. He examined the victims and documented their bruises. And he carefully named his sources in order to provide evidence to counter the embarrassing silence that characterized the attitude of the British Foreign Office. Evans repeatedly ridiculed Holmes, the British consul, for refusing to accept the validity of any of the rumors. Even the British vice consul in Mostar was reporting impalements and beheadings and essentially contradicting most of what Holmes was reporting. The impact of Evans’s telegrams and letters to the Guardian was swift. Members of Parliament demanded prompt investigation of the situation in Bosnia by the British Foreign Office.17 In the meantime, Evans forged ahead with his dogged determination to investigate the rebellion. With a courage that seemed to belie his five-foot-two frame, he struggled on foot to the headquarters of Mileta Despotović, a Serb who was appointed to command the Bosnian rebels by Prince Milan Obrenović. Evans was not impressed with the man who offered him “tea a la Russe and spongecake glace,” all within miles of Christian refugees who were dying of hunger.18 The commander’s pretentious bravado and his “despotic” manner did not impress the British correspondent. Evans’s most undaunted adventure was his visit to the Bosnian begs in Kulen Vakuf, which he describes as the “Delphi of Moslem Bosnia.”19 He had been warned to avoid this eagles’ nest for his own safety, but Evans wrote to the mudir of the Ottoman sultan at Vakuf and was eventually received like the padishah himself. The residents of the town had been cut off by the insurgents for almost two years and were ready to assume that Evans came in some official capacity from the British Foreign Office. He found Kulen Vakuf to be crowded with “three thousand of the worst fanatics in Bosnia, Begs who had lost their rayah serfs, Mahometan villagers dispossessed by the insurgents, townspeople whose bigotry had at all times been conspicuous even in Bosnia.”20 The experience convinced him that the only solution for the region 16

  Ibid., 15.

17

  See ibid., 84–91. In his collected letters to the Guardian, Evans provides some appended notes concerning the policy in the Balkans of the representatives of the British Foreign Office. 18

  Ibid., 20.

19

  Ibid., 108.

20

  Ibid., 93.

438 Thomas A. Emmert

was Austrian occupation. He assumed that Austrian influence would strengthen the Christian element in the region, guarantee an influx of foreign capital, and act generally as a civilizing element on behalf of the powers of Europe.21 While arguing this, however, Evans also came to the conclusion that the problem in the Balkans was not essentially a conflict between Islam and Christianity. It was rather a question of Western progress and Asian stagnation.22 As he moved through Bosnia his disdain for the imperial Ottoman system only became more and more intense. He writes: History, geography, everything that can expand the mind is hunted from the schools; science is unborn; and the small fanatic training that the children do receive is worse than none at all.… Wander where you will in Bosnia, it is still the same—roads fallen to rack and ruin, bridges broken down, or where some mightier work of engineering still withstands the hand of time … the curious traveler discovers that they are the handiwork of Serbian kings or Roman emperors.… Look where one will in Bosnia, the melancholy conclusion is forced on one that the mediaeval civilization of the Christian kingdom was distinctly on a higher level than the nineteenth century standard of the provincial Turk.… Turn out the Osmanli bureaucracy from Bosnia, establish Western control, cut off the native Mahometan from his oriental associations, and it may yet be found that Islam in Bosnia is no more opposed to liberal ideas than it was amongst the Moors of Spain.23 Eager to discover what historical traditions had been preserved from the “higher civilization” of the Bosnian medieval kingdom, Evans found that the peasants’ traditions in this region of western Bosnia were all Serbian. Tsar Dušan and Prince Lazar were their heroes, and everything seemed to suggest the “silent advance of Orthodoxy born on a tide of nationality.”24 This encouraged Evans to believe that South Slavic unity was indeed possible in the future. Unfortunately, his anti-papism was never in retreat. He suggests that some Croats in Zagreb were not supportive of South Slav unity because of the “denationalizing influence of Rome.”25 He describes the Orthodox as more manly and moral than the Latins, and observes that while the Orthodox priest grasps his congregation by the hand, the “Romish priest leads them by the nose.”26 He is even so indiscreet as to suggest that the only region of Bosnia where there are prostitutes is where Catholic

21

  Ibid., 107.

22

  Ibid., 127.

23

  Ibid., 125–27.

24

  Ibid., 24.

25

  Ibid., 66.

26

  Ibid., 29.

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439

priests are in ample number.27 Finally, in order to counteract what he considered a clerical influence in the refugee schools in Dubrovnik, Evans procured for these students one hundred popular histories of the Serbs. “There is now,” he writes, “scarcely a small Hercegovinian there who can’t pass an exam in the history of the national heroes and of the ancient Serbian Czardom.”28 In late June 1877, Evans shifted his concentration to the war in Montenegro. He continued to observe the confrontation there through September with the successful Montenegrin siege of Nikšić. Clearly, these proud Montenegrin warriors impressed the young Englishman. He identified them as the protectors of Serbian independence and emphasized the enormous importance these men placed on the liberation of Kosovo, which he described as the “cradle of the Serbian Empire, [the] desecrated shrine of the Serbian Church.”29 In his descriptions of Montenegro Evans is clearly at his best. He paints an unforgettable portrait of Cetinje and the extraordinary beauty of its people, of the monotonous dirges of a nation in mourning, and of the proud mountains which “[haunted] him like a passion.”30 He was in Cetinje when the news of the fall of Nikšić reached the village, and he describes a scene which he feels almost incapable of narrating: The people surged along the street, firing, shouting, singing, leaping with joy. It is an enthusiasm, an ecstasy, unintelligible, impossible in a civilized country—hardly to be expressed in civilized terms.… Crowds are continually bursting into national songs, and hymns, broken at intervals with a wild ‘Živio! Živio!’.… These ballads are the poetic chronicles of four hundred years of incessant fight for freedom against the Turk, and those who hear them seem to clothe themselves in the flesh and blood of generations of heroic forefathers.… But the night grows old.… The Metropolitan gives the signal to conclude the festivities by moving towards the monastery. The crowd follows his footsteps, and bursts as by a spontaneous instinct into that most thrilling of Montenegrin songs—a song which touches on the most hallowed memories and the dearest aspirations of a people three quarters still enslaved … ‘Onamo, onamo, za b’rda’ … Out there, out there, beyond the mountains; In some dark cave beneath the hill, They say my Czar is sleeping still. He wakes! and rising in our wrath

27

 Ibid.

28

  Ibid., 147.

29

  Ibid., 164.

30

  Ibid., 166.

440 Thomas A. Emmert

We’ll hurl the proud usurper forth: From Dechan church to Prisrend towers is ours!31 Throughout his adventure Evans never relinquished his idealism that spoke of unity and a better future for the people of his adopted land. He also never forgot his love for scholarship. It was the archeologist in Evans who could offer a poignant report of a people’s utter misery and still include the discovery of an artifact or a description of a Roman stone. He thrilled at the ruins of castles and churches and made sketches of old monuments, pieces of pottery, and village costumes. He observed a local skupština in session and marveled that every villager appeared to be a musician, poet, and historian. In November, after almost ten months of this extraordinary adventure, Evans returned to the refugee camps run by Miss Irby, where he celebrated another sign of hope in the midst of the most awful wretchedness. With a mortality figure of perhaps sixty thousand refugee deaths in the camps in Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, there was ample reason for Evans to wonder, “Who might not be tempted to doubt whether a future still existed for these degraded pariahs?”32 But then he met some of the two thousand children in Miss Irby’s refugee schools, and his spirit was reborn. With these children, he says, “one feels that the hope of Christian Bosnia may not have set for ever!” One experience in particular impressed him greatly: Nothing took my fancy more than the spirit with which the children repeated parts of their national heroic lays that they had learned by heart. I think that they had been told to fold their arms while reciting, but one lad, when he came to a thrilling passage in the lay of Kosovo, unlocked his arms, and, throwing one hand behind him, pointed, with an energy of gesticulation all the more impressive from his previous calmness at some imaginary actor in that national tragedy. It was quite natural: he so obviously had the hero before his eyes.… Their imagination, their powers of realizing what is not patent to the eye—of converting ideas into realities—are something quite abnormal among European peoples.33 At the end of November 1877, Evans returned to England in order to edit his recent dispatches to the Manchester Guardian for a second book, which he entitled Illyrian Letters.34 In April 1878, however, he was back in Dubrovnik, eager to monitor developments over the mountains as the war ended and the Great Powers met to redraw the Balkan boundaries. In July he traveled to Belgrade and hoped to explore Serbia and Kosovo, but the Serbian government had a prohibition against the travel of any for31

  Ibid., 186–92.

32

  Ibid., 220.

33

  Ibid., 224–25.

34

  Illyrian letters, a revised selection of correspondence from the Illyrian provinces of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, addressed to the Manchester Guardian, during the year 1877 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1878).

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eigners into the interior of the country. Evans complained, “that for meanness, petty tyranny, duplicity, and corruption the official Serbia, under the Ristic administration can hardly have a parallel.”35 From there he tried to accompany Austrian headquarters into Bosnia but without success. Evans returned to England in August 1878 and the following month was married to an English woman he had met in Dubrovnik during his extended residence there in 1877. By the end of October they were both on their way to Dubrovnik, where they would spend the next five years. Evans continued to write and to carry out his historical and archeological research. He left Dubrovnik regularly to follow rumors of renewed insurrection and to gather evidence for his usual partisan articles. It was not long before he was convinced that the Austrian occupation was a terrible mistake. Evans’s career as a Balkan correspondent culminated in the autumn and winter of 1881–82.36 An uprising against the Austrian occupation broke out above Kotor, and Evans entered the region clandestinely to report on it. His activities and his anti-Austrian rhetoric understandably raised the suspicion of the Austrian government. Before long the journalist was more than a partisan observer of the rebellion. He was hiding refugees in his home, receiving secret messages about Austrian troop movements, and arranging shelter for some of the rebels. On 2 March 1882 the Austrian authorities arrested him in Dubrovnik and ordered his expulsion from their territory. Five days later they imprisoned him and confined him until 23 April, when he was formally released and expelled from Austrian territory. He would not return to Dubrovnik until 1932. The rest of Arthur Evans’s story is the familiar one. Exiled from his adopted home, he returned to England to settle down and write articles about the antiquities he had studied in the Balkans. Before long, however, the restless romantic was on his way to Greece, where he met Heinrich Schliemann and eventually began his fabled adventure which ended in the discovery of Knossos on Crete. Although his work on Crete was to become the focus of his life, he never forgot his “Illyrian people.” His activities during World War I were vivid testimony to his dedication to the goal of Yugoslav unity. He gave lectures in which he encouraged the creation of an independent Yugoslav state. When the English authorities detained some refugees from Dubrovnik because they were considered citizens of an enemy state, Evans gave them shelter at his estate. When Serbian boys were rescued from Serbia and brought to England in order to avoid conscription by the Germans, Evans set up tents for them on his land until more permanent housing could be found.37 In July 1917, Evans was invited to Corfu to meet with representatives of the South Slavs to discuss a future nation. At home in England he held secret meetings with South Slav leaders and also with representatives of the Czech National Council. And finally, at the end of the war when peace negotiations in Paris seemed to be at an

35

  Joan Evans, Time and Chance, 213.

36

  Cf. ibid., 239–58.

37

 Horwitz, Find of a Lifetime, 192–93.

442 Thomas A. Emmert

impasse concerning the Yugoslav cause, Evans traveled there to lend his wisdom and support to the South Slav delegation.38 Arthur Evans enjoyed only one visit to the new state of Yugoslavia. In 1932, a half century after the Austrian authorities released him from the prison in Dubrovnik, Evans returned as a quiet hero to the place he had wanted to live in forever. “Where else,” he once asked, “is Earth wedded like this in eternal sympathy to the heaven above?”39 By then he was an eighty-one-year-old man, satisfied by his own success but weary from the failures and fears of his contemporary world. Certainly, his brief visit had its moments of poignant nostalgia and sadness. But as he sat in the garden of his former home in Dubrovnik and looked out at that “evanescent lilac” sea, there surely was a smile of satisfaction as he recalled the extraordinary adventure of his romantic crusade.

38

  Joan Evans, Time and Chance, 189–95; and Horwitz, Find of a Lifetime, 193–94.

39

  Joan Evans, Time and Chance, 209.

Identifying “the Asian” in Russian Colonial Writing: Evgenii Markov’s Russia in Central Asia (1901) Peter Weisensel

One of Russia’s most popular travel writers in the late nineteenth century was Evgenii L´vovich Markov (1835–1903), the author of the most thorough book on Central Asia published in its time, Rossiia v Srednei Azii (Russia in Central Asia).1 Russia in Central Asia appeared fifteen years after the fall of the last organized resistance to Russian expansion in the region by the Tekke Turkomans in 1884. At more than one thousand pages in two volumes Russia in Central Asia was an educated Russian’s best hope for understanding what the conquest of Central Asia had accomplished by 1901. Analysts of the cultural texts of Russian imperialism typically focus on the writings of professional Orientalists or the texts of Russia’s literary greats.2 Markov’s 1

  E. P. Markov, Rossiia v Srednei Azii, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: M. M. Stasiulevich, 1901). Translations in the present essay are the author’s unless otherwise indicated.

2

  For commentaries on Russian Orientalism, see Paul Austin, “The Exotic Prisoner in Russian Romanticism,” Russian Literature 16–18 (1984): 217–74; Katya Hokanson, “Literary Imperialism, Narodnost´ and Pushkin’s Invention of the Caucasus,” Russian Review 53, 3 (1994): 336–52; Hokanson, “Russian Women Travelers in Central Asia and India,” Russian Review 70, 1 (2011): 1–19; Hokanson, Writing at Russia’s Border (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Susan Layton, “Imagining the Caucasus Hero: Tolstoj vs. Mordovcev,” Slavic and East European Journal 30, 4 (1986): 1–17; Layton, “Primitive Despot and Noble Savage: The Two Faces of Shamil in Russian Literature,” Central Asian Survey 10, 4 (1991): 31–45; Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Layton, “Eros and Empire in Russian Literature about Georgia,” Slavic Review 51, 2 (1992): 195–213; Peter Scotto, “Prisoners of the Caucasus: Ideologies of Imperialism in Lermontov’s ‘Bela,’” PMLA 107, 2 (1992): 246–60; David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to Emigration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Tolz, “Orientalism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Diversity in Late Imperial Russia,” Historical Journal 48, 1 (2005): 127–50; Milan Hauner, What Is Asia to Us? (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990); Leah Feldman, “Orientalism on the Threshold: Reorienting Heroism in Later Imperial Russia,” Boundary 2 39, 2 (2012): 161–80; John P. Hope, “The Self and the Other: Aleksandr Griboedov’s Orient,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 57, 1–2 (2015): 108–23; Daniel Brower and Susan Layton, “Liberation through Captivity,” Kritika: ExploraThresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 443–62.

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The Southeastern Frontier of the Russian Empire. Source: Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 29.

book, however, represents a different category—the middlebrow text written for people desiring real-world information coming out of contemporary Central Asia. Markov took his place in this huge body of writing, but, as we shall see, his book left an ambivalent message. tions in Russian and Eurasian History 6, 2 (2005): 259–79; Victor Taki, “Orientalism on the Margins: The Ottoman Empire under Russian Eyes,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, 2 (2011): 321–51; Nathaniel Knight, “Grigor´ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862,” Slavic Review 59, 1 (2000): 74–100; Adeeb Khalid, “Russian History and the Debate over Orientalism” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, 4 (2000): 691–99, and Nathaniel Knight’s response to Khalid, “On Russian Orientalism,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, 4 (2000): 701–15; Maria Todorova, “Does Russian Orientalism Have a Russian Soul?” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, 4 (2000): 717–27; Ewa Thompson, Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000); Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatoly Remnev, eds., Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); and Nile Green, ed., Writing Travel in Central Asian History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014).



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Extended study and reflection on the notion of Orientalism have coalesced lately in a consensus that Orientalism is an imperfect tool for cracking open the meaning of Russian texts of empire. Others studying a colonial discourse—for example in the Dutch East Indies, Australia, and the Pacific islands—have found similar results.3 The Oriental discourse, however, cannot be ignored completely in the Russian case, as Markov’s Russia in Central Asia amply shows. In colonial-era texts, proponents of the theory of Orientalism maintain, the Oriental discourse takes a form not unlike Marx’s superstructure-substructure dichotomy. Namely, the exigencies of time and place (the historical context), such as facts of the author’s biography or the aesthetic choices the author makes, may influence the text in some ways, but, like Marx’s superstructure, they are not determinant, but of secondary importance. Dominant and most important are those textual elements which reveal the epistemological basis of Western thinking, a style of thinking that bifurcates the West, rational and superior, from the Orient, backward, inferior, and unchanging. This bifurcation, found in texts and other cultural objects of the colonial era, the West uses to justify imperialism.4 Evidence supporting the presence of a Russian Orientalism (in the above sense of the word) is too great to overlook. Still, Orientalism and the Oriental discourse seem an incomplete theory, and Markov’s Russia in Central Asia is a case in point. This essay turns from a superstructure-substructure-like formula, which hierarchizes or subordinates information, and substitutes another in its place: all information is to be considered equally important. From this starting point context becomes more provocative. It challenges the Oriental discourse, and contradictions begin to appear in the text. This is not to deny the existence of a “we-they” Oriental discourse, but to emphasize that the discourse varied in strength depending on contextual features. The reader should look at this essay as an effort to establish a balance between, on the one hand, critical theory and, on the other, site- and time-specific information from the Russian experience in the region. The decisive contexts are three. The first is Central Asia’s nationwide importance among the array of other public political and cultural concerns of the late nineteenth century. An overview of news items and editorial opinion of semi-official papers like Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti (St. Petersburg Gazette), the penny press in the northern capital, Peterburgskii listok (Petersburg Leaflet), and the provincial paper Orenburgskii listok (Orenburg Leaflet) reveals a consistent pattern. Most of the time 3

  Ann L. Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 134–61; Stoler, Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, 1870–1979 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995); and Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). 4   Khalid and Knight (see n. 2) differ over the relative importance, on the one hand, of an Oriental discourse and, on the other, the exigencies of time and place to a writer’s understanding of the Orient. See also Edward Said’s ordering and hierarchizing of textual information in Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 5–8, 13–14, and passim.

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the press (and perhaps the press is a stand-in for the public’s interests and concerns) watched the West, not the East in everything from politics to theater and ladies’ fashions. Matters in Turkestan, Russia’s new colony, became topics of commentary when something seized the public’s attention: the events of the conquest; cases of revolt; the cost of maintaining Russian rule; and the local people’s progress toward “civilization.” Most readers probably gave only passing attention to matters in Turkestan when compared with, for example, the national cause of raising the civil and cultural level of the newly emancipated Russian peasants. Turkestan as a topic of public interest or concern probably did not occupy the first position. If, as Orientalist theory maintains, whom one juxtaposes one’s self to determines the “they” of the Oriental discourse, then the “they” would appear to be, with some exceptions, Europe, not Turkestan. The second context is Russian rule in Turkestan itself. At first Russia’s colonial enterprise differed little from the pattern of other colonial powers. The events occurring between 1865 (the conquest of Tashkent) and 1884 (the surrender of the last Turkoman strongholds of Mary and Tedjen) were similar to what we see in other colonial wars, such as the French wars of conquest in West Africa. Generals, especially after the Crimean defeat, yearned for career-building exploits and were willing to take unauthorized steps to gain them, steps which the Imperial State Council, the Imperial Council of Ministers, and the tsar would later sanction.5 The Central Asian states—the medieval monarchies of Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva—were divided among themselves, and their armies were unprepared to compete against Russia’s modern nineteenth-century military technology. Consequently, the conquest was relatively easy. Only a few hundred Russian troops died in combat between 1865 and 1884, whereas tens of thousands of Central Asians did, and the territorial gain for the Russians was enormous, about 1.5 million square kilometers, or an area slightly smaller than Alaska. The justification was also familiar: the “civilized states” had a right to secure their borders and commerce from the incursion of wild and nomadic peoples with whom they had contact. The absolute necessity, so the argument went, was greater than their ambition.6 The conquered territories, the khanate of Kokand, portions of the khanates of Bukhara and Khiva, and portions of the Kazakh steppe, were combined to form a new colonial entity, the Governor-Generalship of Turkestan. It eventually comprised 5

  The career of General M. G. Cherniaev is particularly relevant here. See David MacKenzie, The Lion of Tashkent: The Career of General M. G. Cherniaev (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1974), chaps. 3–4. 6

  This was the explanation of Foreign Minister Gorchakov to the capitals of Europe, attempting to explain Cherniaev’s march on Tashkent in 1864. See Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1860–1914, trans. Bruce Little (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 94–95. The standard account of the conquest in Russian is M. A. Terent´ev, Istoriia zavoevaniia Srednei Azii, 3 vols. and atlas (St. Petersburg: Tip. V. V. Komarova, 1906). In English, see V. V. Grigor´ev’s translated account in Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1877), 2: 391–415; and Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, “Systematic Conquest, 1865 to 1884,” in Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule, ed. Edward Allworth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 131–50.



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five oblasti (districts), each with its own military governor but all under the authority of the governor-general in Tashkent. At first, the largest number of Russians in Turkestan consisted of the occupying troops and military administrators who lived in military camps or in segregated communities on the outskirts of the native cities. The local elites and mounted troops were taken into Russian service, but most people remained apart. Whether nomadic, semi-settled, or settled, all locals were denied full rights and, by the Turkestan Statute (1886), which guided the colony’s administration, were relegated to a legal category, inorodets (pl. inorodtsy—“alien”) outside Russia’s estate system. The term was also widely used metaphorically by this time to mean any non-Russian group in the empire that maintained a non-Russian, non-European culture and was difficult to assimilate.7 As Andreas Kappeler has emphasized, they remained a segregated, colonial people.8 Turkestan did not rest easily in the Russian Empire.9 Dan Brower was the first to observe (see his Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire cited in n. 9) that the two fundamental principles of the Turkestan Statute (1886), authoritarian control and civil citizenship, were mutually incompatible. The Russian administrators in Tashkent and St. Petersburg agreed in principle on certain things: the civilizing mission leading to the merger of Turkestan with the imperial legal and administrative system; promotion of the Russian language and Western education; religious toleration; and promotion of public health. However, they broke into conservative and reform camps when issues, or crises, arose that seemed to threaten the security of the Russian endeavor. In the coexistence of resistance and collaboration in the local community, one might say, a parallel situation existed. Evidence of what seemed like Muslim resurgence and resistance confirmed the fears of the conservatives, often the governor-generals of Turkestan and the Ministry of War, who then proposed to inter-ministerial committees in St. Petersburg a revision of the Statute in favor of more authoritarian control. Conversely, when the situation warranted it, the reformers, usually officials from the civilian ministries of finance, education, and internal affairs, would press forward their priorities, developing and expanding civil liberties and local control for the inorodtsy. The army, on at least one occasion, referred to the reformers as “the young gentlemen from St. Petersburg,” that is, naïve, uninformed do-gooders. 7

  Dov Yaroshevskii, “On Both Sides of the Boundary: Social Mapping of Tatars in Imperial Russia, 1832–1905” (paper presented at the National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, DC, November 1995). 8

  Andreas Kappeler, Russland als Vielvölkerreich (Frankfurt/Main: C. H. Beck, 1993), 166.

9

  The most recent works on the Russian administration of Turkestan are Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London: Routledge, 2003); Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); A. S. Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865–1923 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); and Elena I. Campbell, The Muslim Question and Russian Imperial Governance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015).

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Peter Weisensel

At times the advocates of patience and the advocates of force confronted one another, for example, after a violent incident at Andijan in 1898, when a Sufi ishan and his followers, incensed by the spread of Russian culture and the passivity of the Muslim religious elite, attacked the local Russian garrison with loss of life. Consequently, in 1900 Governor-General Dukhovskoi brought forward a proposal to abandon religious toleration as the best protection of civil order. Representatives of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Internal Affairs responded that the attack should not be taken too seriously. The Andijan incident was relatively insignificant when compared to the achievements of Russia’s entire commitment to Turkestan, which were attained by religious toleration and patience. Perhaps the most explosive complication was land ownership. Russian peasants came to Central Asia under government auspices following an official decision that a sizeable Russian presence would reinforce imperial control. Beginning in the early 1890s, this extended to arming Russian settlers, which accelerated after the Andijan uprising. To meet the need for more land for Russian settlers, the Resettlement Administration of the Ministry of Interior surveyed plots for farming settlements on a restricted basis in the Steppe province, but as pressure for land continued, the restrictions were loosened. In 1891, the government made a decision, disastrous for its relations with the Central Asians, by declaring certain land “excess,” that is, land left after an allotment of 30 hectares per nomad and 6 hectares per farmer had been calculated, and the “excess” was made available for Russian settlement.10 The Russian population of Turkestan and the Steppe province grew from ca. 325,000 in the early 1880s to 690,000 in 1897 and 1.95 million (in a total population of 8.17 million, excluding Bukhara and Khiva) in 1911.11 To show the volatile nature of the land question, the Andijan revolt occurred in the Fergana oblast´ one year after it had been opened to Russian settlement in 1897. Markov visited the Fergana oblast´ in 1891 and observed that “already too much of Asia has fallen into Russian hands.”12 Whether sparked by the land question, or by perceived disrespect for Islamic customs, as when Russian public health officials mishandled a cholera epidemic in 1892,13 the incidents of violence that followed, Jeff Sahadeo maintains, tended to legitimate existing anti-Muslim feeling among the Russian population. Sahadeo proposes that violent clashes, such as the cholera riot, began to change the feeling among informed Russians that it was wise and useful for Russia to become an Asian power. The third context, Markov’s literary biography, helps us explain his style, his appraisal of Russia’s merits as an imperial power, and, importantly, his thinking about the minorities of the empire. After graduating from Khar´kov University, Markov took a teaching position in the Tula Men’s Gymnasium. He was attracted to the ideas 10

  Kappeler, Russland als Vielvölkerreich, 167.

11

  Richard Pierce, Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917: A Study in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 137; and V. Kabuzan, Russkie v mire (St. Petersburg: BLITS, 1996), appendix 14, 303. 12

  Markov, Rossiia v Srednei Azii, 2: 76.

13

 Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 94–107.



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of the physician and pedagogue N. I. Pirogov that education should develop the whole individual. A colorful and prolific publicist, Markov became well known for his writings on contemporary social and educational issues in serious, reform-oriented journals of the day, Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland), Delo (The Cause), and Russkaia rech´ (Russian Speech). He was a liberal Westernizer who, encouraged by the reforms of Alexander II (1855–81), strove for a reform program of civil liberties, nationalism, and capitalism. Later, Markov’s disagreement with the increasingly conservative regime in the Ministry of Education brought him to resign his post as director of the Simferopol´ Men’s Gymnasium. This was followed by a yearlong sojourn in Switzerland and Germany. He published his travel notes, which were well received, and thereafter part of nearly every year was spent traveling and writing up his impressions for the press.14 His descriptions, filled with colorful imagery and lyrical to the point of excess, always found a publisher and a willing audience. He was particularly fond of warm and sunny places: the Balkans, the Crimea, Transcaucasia, Greece and the Greek islands, Turkey, Egypt, and Italy. His writings whetted the appetite for travel by the wealthier middle and upper classes, seeking to escape St. Petersburg’s and Moscow’s winters. Others, without the wherewithal for steamship tickets and suites in European hotels, could travel vicariously, swept along by Markov’s exuberant lyricism.15 Although his travel essays included descriptions of antique sites, historical background, and the state of the roads and ports, Markov was no Russian Baedeker.16 His perspective was impressionistic rather than practical. Particularly revealing for us, Markov observed other traveling Europeans in Athens, Cairo, or Damascus, and commented on how these tourists’ behavior seemed to embody their national character: the Americans, bluff and abrupt; the British, cool and aloof; the Germans, arrogant and loud. Although Russia, too, was an empire, Markov concluded from these encounters that the Russian national character, which he described as one of meekness and mildness, would prove to be undeniably successful in the newly absorbed Orient because it would reassure Asians of Russia’s good intentions and make them more inclined to accept Russia’s “civilizing.”17 Today one might interpret this as a cynical effort to whitewash Russia’s dirty imperial business in Asia. But, we should not overlook a patriotic goal that fairly jumps out of the text. Often disparaged in the 14

  “S chuzhoi storony,” Otechestvennye zapiski, nos. 6–8 (1869): 225–50, 1–32, 313–44 respectively.

15

  Not everyone completely appreciated his style. V. G. Korolenko called it “trenchant, quite tasteless,” and marked with “brilliance of exposition and clearly inappropriate familiarity” See Russkoe bogatstvo, no. 4 (1904): 18. 16   For a complete bibliography of Markov’s works, including his travel essays, see S. A. Vengerov, Istochniki slovaria russkikh pisatelei (Petrograd: Tip. Imp. Akademii Nauk, 1917), 4: 183–85. 17

  See, for example, his commentary on the European, especially English, tourists in Cairo, in E. L. Markov, Puteshestvie na vostok: Tsar´grad i arkhipelag. V strane faraonov, 2 parts in 1 (St. Petersburg: M. M. Stasiulevich, 1890), 2: 210–24.

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West for her own backwardness, Russia had the means, her meek national character, with which to best the mean-spirited Westerners in the common European task of “civilizing” Asia. Otherwise, Markov’s encounters in the hotels of Cairo did not diminish his enthusiasm for Europe as the ideal model for Russia’s future. In the essay “On the Russian People and the Russian Way of Life,”18 he described the Russian national virtues as “endurance and patience.” In the final analysis, though, the Russians (he meant the peasants) must absorb Western European culture and cooperate with their tutors— the educated class—to improve themselves. We get an inkling of Markov’s views on empire and Russia’s minorities in his fiction. In the novel The Seashore one finds a link to the non-Russians.19 The protagonists were high-minded landowners who established a successful family estate in the Crimea by dint of hard work. They devoted themselves to freedom, nature, and health. The local Crimean Tatars watched, learned, and followed the landowners’ example. It seemed that, like the peasants, the Tatars were in need of leadership and civilizing by educated Russian landowners, like Markov, who owned an estate in Khar´kov province. Two travel accounts, Crimean Sketches20 and Caucasian Sketches,21 also revealed Markov’s concern for protecting the Tatars from russification. This earned him praise by critics.22 Markov thought of himself as a moderate in all things: the truth lies neither on the right nor on the left, but always in the middle.23 Nevertheless, Russians (if they were educated) were entitled to a leading, “civilizing” role. After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, Markov’s views on the intelligentsia, reform, and the non-Russians changed dramatically. In the article “Riot of the Minds,”24 he turned on the intelligentsia, demanding that they abandon “vapid Frondeism” and support the government against the “heroes of dynamite.” This constituted for Markov a flight to the regime of Alexander III, which, for all intents and purposes, broke his links to a program of reforms. After impressing the critics with his defense of the Tatars, he now shifted his sympathies to the new regime, whose program was synonymous with persecution and russification of the minorities. Paternalistic defense of minority interests turned abruptly to doubt and suspicion of all forces critical of the new Russian nationalist course taken by Alexander III, including

18

  Otechestvennye zapiski, nos. 11 and 12 (1865).

19

  Golos, 11–13 September 1875.

20

  Ocherki Kryma (St. Petersburg: Tovarishchestvo M. O. Vol´f, 1872; 4th ed., St. Petersburg, 1911); originally published in the journals Otechestvennye zapiski and Vestnik Evropy, 1867–72. 21

  Ocherki Kavkaza (Moscow: Izd. Tovarishchestva M.O. Vol´f, 1887; 3rd ed., Moscow, 1915).

22

  Novoe vremia, 8 February 1873; and Nedelia, no. 4 (1873).

23

  “V chuzhom piru: Pro domo sua,” Novoe vremia, 11, 20, 31 August 1882.

24

  “Smuta umov,” Russkaia rech´, no. 1 (1882).



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the minorities. It was in this state of mind that Markov and his wife visited Central Asia in the spring of 1891.

Russia in Central Asia and the Oriental Discourse Seen alone through the prism of the Oriental discourse, Markov appears as an agent of the colonial culture. He conveys back to his readership a kind of knowledge, which is dismissive of Asians and which sharpens the Russians’ self-identity. A bifurcated, we-they discourse, visible in Russia in Central Asia, reminds us of the classics of nineteenth-century Orientalism by Burton, Nerval, Cromer, Chateaubriand, Lamartine and Flaubert, where the knowing, defining, modern, and superior West gazes at the unchanging, passive, fatalistic, and backward Orient.25 Using the engineering feats of the empire, the Transcaucasian and Transcaspian railways, Markov traversed in days distances that had taken weeks in the past. Using his vantage point next to the window, and occasionally a stroll among the local people on the platform when the train stopped, he enlightened his readers with the distinctive physical and cultural characteristics of each group, bringing the whole group to life by describing only one or two individuals. He observed, for example, the Abkhazians at the port of Batum: Murders in this underpopulated and half-wild region are a common occurrence. Recently, General Zavadskii was murdered and his murderer was hung after a quick trial. Here justice is in the hands of military courts. Quick justice is the only deterrent to these born highwaymen and robbers. For centuries before the Russian occupation they maintained the slave trade, in which neighbor would steal the children of neighbor, and every village was at knifepoint with every other. Naturally the robber’s soul originated in this setting and neither church nor school has had much effect to this day.26 Markov compared the Muslim Abkhazians to Russians in sharp terms. Christianity was meager protection, because the Georgians also found themselves distinguished from Russians and were lowered to the level of dogs. The Georgians are a naturally handsome people known for their bravery against exultant Islam. There is no hatred of the Turks fiercer than that of the Georgians. In all Russia’s wars with the Turks they have advanced to the forward positions seeking out their historical enemies just as bred hunting dogs seek the game.27 25

  Said highlights these authors as the structurers and restructurers of Orientalism in the nineteenth century. See Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 113–97. 26

  Markov, Rossiia v Srednei Azii, 1: 48.

27

  Ibid., 1: 74–75.

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At Baku, Markov reminded readers of the hierarchy established between those who had and those who lacked the power of correct speech. He met a Persian cabby who tried to praise the achievements of Russian power, but in pidgin Russian: [Baku was] just a village, there was nothing! Now Baku has what Tiflis [i.e., Tblisi] has. Every day is bazaar, steamship every day. Many merchant, much monies. Man rich in Baku, Persian rich, Armenian rich, Tatar rich, Russian rich. There is kerosene and oil. Only no waters, no garden. Many garden but far away.… In the mountain much water; might bring it, only much monies.28 Markov and his wife embarked from Baku and crossed the Caspian to Uzun Ada on the eastern shore. Markov’s vantage point on the upper deck gave him the opportunity to ascertain the actual significance of this relatively short voyage. It was a crossing from Europe to Asia, a journey from life to death: “This is the fateful line where the great Asiatic desert, the realm of death, leaps out in a desperate face-toface struggle with the water, the wellspring of life.”29 His characterization of the crowd at the dock was disdainful, in terms that were undistinguishable from the worst cases in other colonial cultures: Our ship ties up tight to the dock and a small knot of dusty and furtive blackskinned Oriental people eagerly surround the disembarking passengers, staring with preying eyes, wondering about [the prospect of] some pickings. [We] somehow are terrified to leave the civilized comfort of the steamship, its mirrored dining rooms and velvet couches, to turn ourselves over to the ominous sands and to this filthy, and also ominous, crowd. There are no cabbies, servants, hotel touts, or porters, no one. Ragamuffins of an athletic type, with black, thieves’ eyes and brown mugs burned by the sun and covered with greasy sweat, push through, almost tear our things from us, and rush off somewhere hidden by the pressing crowd of the same pop-eyed mugs.30 Aside from being “mugs” and later, “two-legged wolves,”31 the Tekke Turkomans, inhabitants of the Transcaspian district, were creatures living without reference to time; Markov characterized them as “living monuments to the life-long struggle” of nomads—Turan—with Aryan agriculturalists—Iran—which had been going on “since the beginning of time.”32

28

  Ibid., 1: 121–22.

29

  Ibid., 1: 187.

30

  Ibid., 1: 188–89.

31

  Ibid., 1: 205.

32

  Ibid., 1: 202.



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They arrived at Khiva, pacified in 1876 by Russian bayonets but unbroken of “the old wildness, the old Asianness,”33 and then on to Bukhara with its ancient mosques and madrassas. They toured the town in a great carriage, accompanied by an armed escort from the Bukharan police, who drove the people from the road with their whips so that the Russians could pass. Bukhara though was disappointing, like all the auls (villages) in Turkestan: Endless narrow lanes are bounded by endless clay walls, only rarely interrupted by arched gates, wicket gates leading to courtyards and solid walls or clay urns belonging to one or another house. [The clay mosques] are just as monotonously constructed and as unremarkable as the domestic dwellings.34 A visit to the Bukhara bazaar revealed that each national group in the crowd, Tadjiks, Uzbeks, and Kazakhs, were essentialized, reduced to a fixed set of physical and behavioral features. Kazakhs, whom Markov called “the dressing gowns” after the long frock worn by men and women, were identifiable on sight: The Kazakh face is not entirely the same as the Uzbek or even the Turkoman face; there is much more Mongolian or Kalmyk in it. His entire demeanor is somehow wild, half-bestial. The yellow and shriveled ones are particularly wild-looking, toothless, without whiskers but with little tufts of hair on their chins. Pointed caps of white leather like sugar cones with broad brims, lined sometimes with red or blue as they have been since the time of Tamerlane, convey the Mongol presence even more than their physical appearance.35 Sexual speculation entered the text when Markov speculated about Tadjik women, unseen behind their veils; they must all be beautiful because Alexander the Great chose Roxanna from the Tadjiks.36 They visited Samarkand, the “Hungry Steppe,” and crossed the Syr Daria to Tashkent, the capital of Turkestan. Tashkent, as other cities in Turkestan, was divided into a Russian “new” Tashkent and a squalid, monotonous native Tashkent, “a mass of small houses, yards, parks and kitchen gardens throughout its entire expanse.” Tashkent’s Russian enclave, though, with schools, government buildings, and a new jail, was a model of good order, cleanliness, modernity, and clever design. Continuing eastward, they passed through the rich agricultural Fergana and Zaravshan valleys, but the native settlements and cities, Khodjent (Khudjand), Kokand, Margelan (Margilan), Andijan, and Osh, aside from their bright and new Russian suburbs, were all squalid and dull. Outside Osh Markov and his party witnessed an inci33

  Ibid., 1: 363.

34

  Ibid., 1: 371–72.

35

  Ibid., 1: 427.

36

  Ibid., 1: 404.

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dent on the road: a crowd was being roughly pushed aside by a Russian colonel with his family on their way to visit some village headman. This was, Markov reminded his readers, no worse than what the local people had endured under previous regimes, and besides, power that was felt was power obeyed.37 Their own traveling companion, the Russian district police commander, roughed up a local headman when he found the road through the man’s district in bad repair. But Markov saw nothing abnormal in this: “Without such quick and rough investigations, which the locals consider normal, it would be difficult to keep order in this wild land.”38 The mountain valleys of the Pamirs provided Markov with opportunities for his lyrical descriptions but he focused on the nomadic Kara-Kirgiz people, their clans, camps, and customs concerning women and marriage: “primitive humanity in a land ancient even in the time of the biblical patriarchs.”39 His return to Samarkand and description of its architectural monuments took up the last portion of the stay in Central Asia. He returned to Russia via the Transcaspian railway and the Volga River. This précis reveals features typical of the Oriental discourse identified by many critics of colonial culture (Fanon, Said, Fabian, Todorov, Curtin, Kiernan, and others). The West, symbolized by the Caspian Sea (life-giving water), abutted on Asia, where the sea met the dead sands of Transcaspia. The people, powerless and reactive, were locked in time; their attitudes and customs were essentially the same as in the times of Alexander the Great or Tamerlane. The catalyst in their lives was the example of Russian culture, demonstrated and executed by the Russian administration. The Asians resisted or only slowly emulated this irresistible model of Western civilization, suggesting that they may never become civilized. Markov made the obvious distinctions among nomads, farmers, merchants, and the major ethnic groups, but in the most important respects they were the same; all had the same ideas and goals, and all were to be treated roughly because Asians understood only power. Aside from an occasional ancient architectural monument, their cities were monotonously the same. Heightening the distinction between Russian and Asian was the animalization of the inorodtsy: the “simian mug” of the Kazakh; the tiger-like whiskered face of the Turkoman, and so on. Russia in Central Asia in a Historical-Cultural Context Thus far the selected passages seem to demonstrate in Markov a Manichaean vision of the Russian-Central Asian encounter. Now we examine the text through the prism of context. Focus will be on four themes often ascribed to the Oriental discourse: Russians and “Others”; the Oriental “gaze”; Europe’s “mission civilisatrice;” and culture as the driving force of policy. Russians and “Others” 37

  Ibid., 2: 93–94.

38

  Ibid., 2: 122.

39

  Ibid., 2: 119.



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Russians called themselves Europeans, but they had their own way of describing their “Others.” Researchers have pretty well established that the appearance of modern European biological racism vis à vis dark-skinned people sometime in early nineteenth century was associated with the concurrence of several events: the large-scale slave trade; the Enlightenment’s passion for grouping biological forms into different species; and the introduction of a method of thinking and speaking about biological forms which made a whole species knowable by knowing only one individual in it. The primary taxonomy of the “Others” in Russia was culture, not race. The heart of the difference between race and culture was that a taxonomy based on culture did, in fact, allow for the possibility of progress, while the biological model did not. The “pop-eyed mugs” of the Turkomans, consequently, were not what they seem. Peter I (1682–1725) and his successors opened Russia to all manner of Western imports, including the European Enlightenment. In the eighteenth century, enlightenment meant compiling a taxonomy of the physical world. By mid-century, taxonomical efforts shifted from bees, parrots, gorillas, and elephants to humans. The task became the search for order within the “family of man.” First principles were arrived at: name, territory, habitat and faith. But the inadequacies of such categories led gradually through the century to the ascendancy of customs. In this new universe the Russians clearly established their superiority over the non-Russians of the empire because of their education, or enlightenment, and their Christianity, because they were sure that truth and piety were the best transmitters of science. The touchstones of identity became, not race, but diet, treatment of women, type of habitation and, later, cleanliness and the possession of a coherent religion. The categories though piled up and resulted in an ethnic rating system with the perfection of the Enlightenment and the Russians at the top, and none of the markers of enlightenment and those who lived without them at the bottom. The bottom dwellers were called dikii (wild), not because they were dark-skinned, but because they lived in a state of savagery, ignorance, and stupidity. All, nevertheless, was not lost even for them. As Aleksandr Radishchev (1749–1802), the most famous liberal critic of serfdom in the era of Catherine II, wrote, “Nature needs several generations to equalize intellectual abilities in humans,” and those lower on the scale could always learn from the Russians and improve themselves.40 The idea of different levels of civilized life and the possibility for upward mobility became thoroughly ingrained in Russian thinking, and, obviously, the notion was fundamentally at odds with distinctions based on biology. The “evolutionary model” was incorporated into the Statute of Alien Administration of Siberia (1822), composed by the great statesman of the era of Alexander I, Mikhail Speranskii, and his assistant, G. S. Baten´kov. The categories of evaluation were not always clear, but the assumption was that wanderers would eventually become nomads, and nomads,

40

  This portion of the essay leans heavily on Yuri Slezkine, “Naturalists versus Nations: Eighteenth-Century Russian Scholars Confront Ethnic Diversity,” Representations, no. 47 (Summer 1994): 170–85. The quotation is from page 185.

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settled agriculturalists.41 The emphasis in the Siberian Statute was on gradual and voluntary change. This concept was incorporated later in the Turkestan Statute of 1886, which guided the governor-generalship down to the end of the empire. The inorodtsy could eventually achieve civilization and then they would be rewarded with full membership in the Russian Empire.42 The pace of this transformation, however, was never clear. As measured by the privileges granted by the Russian authorities, the inorodtsy in Turkestan advanced so slowly that when the 1917 revolution came they had not achieved legal equality. Part of the reason lay in the casual way the authorities took on their part in the civilizing mission. The Russian army did not take active measures to advance “civilization,” but left progress to advance at a pace set by the inorodtsy themselves. Russian schools were established for them but enrollment was entirely voluntary. Even though the behavior of Russian soldiers was to serve as an example for the Asians to emulate, in practice the soldiers’ rowdiness hardly advanced the prestige of Russia’s culture. The Russian authorities refrained from interfering in local customs, so long as it did not diminish Russian authority. Local people retained their preconquest courts, customary courts for the Kazakhs and Islamic courts for the Uzbeks and Tadjiks. Custom was allowed to adjudicate water use, recordkeeping, and tax collection, and the Orthodox Church was forbidden to proselytize.43 Underlying the Russian inaction was also the fear that aggressive “civilizing” would undermine order. Markov absorbed the notion of the perfectibility of all. He recognized that some inorodtsy stood higher than others on the ladder of progress and deserved corresponding treatment. At the top were the Kazakhs. At the Men’s Gymnasium in Tashkent, the students were Russian and Kazakh. Because they were less under the sway of the mullahs, Markov said, the Kazakhs were most interested in Russian educational institutions as a way to advance themselves. An examination witnessed by Markov revealed that although they were not great scholars, the Kazakh students had mastered the Russian language. They were already finding places in the Russian administration, and soon they would no longer be foreigners. “The school is a wonderful reformer,” Markov explained. He went on to the Tashkent Teachers’ Seminary and 41

  Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 81–88. See also Marc Raeff, Siberia and the Reforms of 1822 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956).

42

  Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia tip., 1888– 1916), series 3, vol. 6, no. 3814 (1886), the Turkestan Statute. 43

  On the general relationship between the church and state in Turkestan, see, also, among the annual reports of the bishops of Tashkent and Turkestan to the Holy Synod the following: for 1890 (Bishop Neofit), Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA) f. 796, op. 442, d. 1366, ll. 10, 12, 20; and 1895 (Bishop Nikon) RGIA f. 796, op. 442, d. 1595, ll. 17. In passing, it is interesting to note that the army decided it was dangerous to proselytize and meddle in local customs, but, oddly, it was not dangerous to turn land over to Russian settlers, despite local custom. See “Ob ustanovlenii pravil otvoda chastnym predprinimateliam svobodnykh kazennykh zemel´ v Zakavkaze i Turkestane dlia ogrosheniia i ekspluatatsii, 1910–1917,” Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA) f. 400, op. 1, d. 3933. ll. 1–123.



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found Kazakh students being trained to teach in the inorodtsy schools. “They constitute the main path to Russian education and Russian citizenship.” He continued, “a well-prepared teacher is a conqueror of souls in the broad expanse of our foreign conquests.”44 Later, visiting Kazakh camps, Markov was moved to introspection by their hospitality and nobility: I will not say that the visit to the nomads shook my natural bias for the forms of life developed by European civilization. But in a bothersome way I recognized that this much-despised patriarchal way of life of the half-wild nomadic people was no longer impenetrable or bottomless, separated from our own multilayered and cunning-minded way of life. I was convinced that the ways of human happiness and fulfillment fortunately are much more diverse, broad, and numerous than they seemed to us, contemporary Europeans, who have been partially blinded by the false brilliance of our own civilization.45 At the lowest rung of Markov’s ladder stood the Turkomans, the nomadic inhabitants of the arid lands just to the east of the Caspian Sea. In a passage typical of his treatment of them Markov remembered the comment of a Turkoman in a conversation about the unattractiveness of participating in Russia’s market and getting a regular job: Why work? If I need money I’ll go to Persia, nab three Persians and sell them in Khiva. I’ll live on the proceeds for six months without having to do another thing. It’s possible.46 The Turkomans, Markov continued, shunned cities and settled, civilized life, and were more at home with the asses and the antelopes. Their settlements were less like towns than like armed camps. They were innate thieves and they felt nothing of enslaving anyone, even another Muslim. Here, there was little desire to adapt one’s self, a complete denial of Russia’s mission civilisatrice, but it was their behavior, not biology, that set them apart. 47 If the Kazakhs and Turkomans occupied the high and low rungs of the ladder of progress, the Uzbeks, the farmers and merchants of Bukhara and Khiva, rested on a middle rung. They were not animalized because they did not behave like asses, antelopes, or tigers. Rather, like the Russians, they were farmers and businessmen, and had, in fact, even a better work ethic than the Russians.48 Still, they showed dramatically little interest in becoming “civilized.” There was only one Uzbek student in 44

  Markov, Rossiia v Srednei Azii, 1: 501–03.

45

  Ibid., 2: 172–73.

46

  Ibid., 1: 228

47

  Ibid., 1: 201–10, 222–28.

48

  Ibid., 2: 16–17. They also work better than Arabs or Turks. See ibid., 2: 72–73.

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the Teacher’s Seminary, Markov noted, and others whom he interviewed knew almost no Russian after six years’ study.49 The reason was the deadening influence of the fanatical Muslim mullahs: The Uzbeks have their own clergy, and the Uzbek clergy strictly opposes Russian institutions. The fanatical mullahs think that this [i.e., not opposing Christian institutions] is the first step leading to Christian conversion.50 We will return to Islam presently. The Oriental Gaze To Markov the power of the mullahs and qazis over the people was the greatest obstacle to Russia’s civilizing mission. They propagated the ridiculous rote memorization of Arabic texts, when no one could understand Arabic. They exhorted the people with false tales about the Russian “infidel culture,” and they resisted Russian law and Russian institutions.51 It was a “fanatical mullah” and the mob that he controlled who drove Markov and his companions from the steps of one of the mosques in Bukhara and forced them to beat a hasty retreat in their phaeton.52 My wife and I unmistakably felt the hatred of the Asian for the Russian, and the hatred of the Muslim fanatic for the Christian, a hatred on which all these Bukharan theologians in white turbans and green robes feed. The crowds, which gather around the mosques, look at us with an undisguised expression of hostility. My wife’s uncovered face somehow has incensed them. Our unclean, heathen-dog presence in this sacred place has obviously touched them to the depths of their souls, and only the presence of the karaul-beg [Bukharan policeman] who carries an impressive lash, and yes, perhaps the memory of the Russian soldiers’ tunics, barely keeps this snarling crowd within sensible limits.53 There are two ways to interpret this quotation. First, Markov here gazed at the angry mob of Muslims, whose faith he interpreted entirely through a Western prism. To Markov it was obvious that a Muslim unquestioningly and mindlessly followed a mullah’s lead, and to the crowd and the mullah he and his wife were unclean heathen dogs. He knew nothing of the prescription against women going about in public with 49

  Ibid., 1: 501.

50

  Ibid., 1: 503.

51

  Ibid., 1: 411–12 (infidel culture); ibid., 2: 70–71 (resist Russian institutions); ibid., 2: 90 (resist Russian law). 52

  Ibid., 1: 412–13.

53

  Ibid., 1: 411–12.



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face uncovered, and only violence impressed Muslims. Only the threat, or memory of violence—the soldiers’ tunics—kept the crowd in check. Markov was agitated and he continued: Do not comfort yourself with a view through rose-colored glasses; we must be prepared for any situation and expect anything possible. [They] are neither pacified nor completely occupied with their trades, handicrafts, or fieldwork. There can be no doubt that with the first slip-up of Russian power in Asia … Muslim fanaticism and hatred of us, the hatred of the defeated for the victor, will determine everything.54 But, there is a second interpretation. What should we make of the angry crowd? Was it not “gazing back” at the Europeans and thereby empowered? Markov sensed just that and for a moment he was frightened, and the tables were turned. Momentarily Europeans like him were no longer masters. He was struck by the haughty stare, so out of place for a native. Only the policeman’s lash, he thought, kept the crowd from tearing him to pieces. If, though, the mob realized its power, one policeman’s whip could never hold them back, and they would strike. Fearing the worst, Markov and his companions rushed to their carriage and left immediately. One can say that Markov’s description of the incident, the beginning point of which was the gaze of the mullah, empowered the mullah and the crowd. Markov frequently recorded the hostile, even haughty, demeanor when he encountered the inorodtsy in the streets and villages. Vicious village dogs “snapping at our legs” mimicked the hostility of their masters toward the intruders.55 Adults refused to acknowledge gifts of candy to their children, and they would “glare hostilely” at the European lady’s morning dress.56 The Mission Civilisatrice and Russia’s Rank in the World: Culture and Policy Russia in Central Asia is replete with comparisons of the Russian and Western European missions civilisatrice in Asia. Markov saw not just inorodtsy and Russians, a binary model, but the other European colonial powers as well. A ternary, not a binary, model took shape. Continually lagging behind England, France, and Germany in the most important measures of nineteenth-century civilization—rule of law, democratic political institutions, secularization, and economic and scientific advancement—Russia’s acquisition of a colony in Central Asia gave her a new challenge, or a new chance, to match the “civilized” colonial standard set by the premier imperial states. If successful, Russia could prove to Europe and to herself her own Europeanness.

54

  Ibid., 2: 283.

55

  Ibid., 1: 275, 288–89

56

  Ibid., 1: 286, 2: 71–72

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In the context of the conquest of Central Asia, books, like Eugene Schuyler’s Turkistan (sic!) (1876), found Russia’s backwardness on display everywhere in Turkestan. Schuyler presented a witheringly negative critique of Russian colonial ineptitude, brutality, and corruption. Perhaps Russians were not entirely European but, in significant respects, Asian. The Russian press reaction was indignant and patriotic.57 George Curzon, the viceroy of India and the premier colonial voice of Great Britain, more or less agreed with Schuyler after visiting parts of Central Asia in 1889: “The conquest of Central Asia is a conquest of Orientals by Orientals.”58 A comparison of Russia’s and Europe’s accomplishments in Asia, was woven through Markov’s narrative. Incidentally, the demand for Europe’s respect in the Russian press may have played a role in shaping his response. Newspapers were well aware of Europe’s dismissal of Russia’s Europeaness. In the Orenburgskii listok (15 March 1898) the editor surveyed the imperial world: “The English, Germans, and French have failed either by doing nothing (France), their brutality (Germany), or through bad relations with their colonial subjects (England). Without pride in our accidental ascendancy over the native and without the slightest desire to make him accountable, we have lived in Central Asia only 30 years and we feel that it has already become our native province.” The success of the campaign on Khiva in 1873 encouraged the editor of the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti to offer the Americans some free advice on how to pacify their hostiles: “The American system by which the number of regular troops is severely restricted … is not particularly practical. It is much better for civilization to take a defensive position than to neglect [it], and as a result of the oversight have neglect become a bloody avenger and destroyer of humanity.” The editor of the penny-press Peterburgskii listok imagined the victories in Turkmenia earning Europe’s respect. “The attention of the whole world is turned to the Russian conquests in Central Asia… All Europe marvels at the limitless endurance of the Russian soldier.”59 Markov divided the world into three parts: Russia, Europe, and Asia. He began by assuming that Russia was joining a common European struggle to civilize Asia. The struggle was not Russia’s alone, but Europe’s as a whole.60 In the Russian suburb outside Samarkand Markov was moved by the orderliness and cleanliness to point out that both England and Russia were fulfilling Europe’s responsibility in the colonial world. Wherever it went, the British Empire dispersed the Englishman’s freedom of initiative. But if England had its methods, so did Russia have hers. 57

  Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan, 2 vols. (New York: Scribners & Armstrong, 1877). Schuyler’s book could not be translated and published in the Russian Empire until after 1905 when censorship laws were relaxed.

58

  George N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question (London: Longmans Green, 1889), 392.

59

  Orenburgskii listok, 15 March 1898; Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, 13 May 1873; Peterburgskii listok, 15 April 1885.

60

  Markov, Rossiia v Srednei Azii, 1: 169.



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Markov maintained that the Russian colonial model of generosity, respect for local customs, and modesty in power avoided the evils of segregation and arrogance. Russian soldiers in Turkestan were “meek heroes.”61 England and Europe’s neglect of these virtues was their Achilles’ heel in Asia. Meekness and modesty in power was reinforced by Russia’s superior knowledge of Asia, assuming knowledge as experience gained by centuries of interaction with the Tatars and nomads. With the combination of culture and experience Russia became a kind of superior Europe, fulfilling Europe’s mission civilisatrice, but doing a much better job of it. The third player, Asia, became reimagined as a proving ground where Russia hoped to demonstrate to Europe her Europeanness. A Japanese newspaper in 1901, responding to a Russian editor’s bragging in the Birzhevye vedomosti (Bourse News),62 disputed Russia’s noble goals in Asia, claiming that Russia’s intent was theft sustained by force of arms. Had Markov been aware of the exchange of opinion, he would have defended both the goal, Russia’s mission civilisatrice, and the use of necessary force to protect it. Markov was not concerned with the incompatibility of civilization and violence. Russia was meek and patient when the inorodtsy cooperated with Russia’s mission. But, as many passages in Russia in Central Asia show, if the inorodtsy resisted or dissimulated, Russia was compelled to drive them to civilization at bayonet-point. Conclusion A discourse in colonial literature that bifurcates Europeans and their “Others” has become an identifying feature of Western Europe’s encounter with Asians. Extending our field of vision beyond England and France to Russia, and to books like Markov’s Russia in Central Asia, reveals however considerable diversity in European colonial culture. Appraising Russia in Central Asia through two different prisms—the Oriental discourse and a cultural-historical context—displays the merits but also the limits of each to uncover meaning individually. Together, however, they do better than alone. One important conclusion from this study is that the West-East binary opposition is undermined. Russians defined people culturally, not racially; hence progress, or change, was always possible. Markov’s treatment of the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Turkomans reflected this cultural definition of people. If racial difference was characteristic of Western colonial literature, changing the critical identifier to culture had to represent a softening of the West-East discourse in the Russian cultural world. Nor is the European “gaze” intact. Sometimes the powerless could “gaze back.” Lastly, merging passages in the text with a larger cultural context revealed another discourse. In this case, the venture in Central Asia became more than a mission civilisatrice. It was as well a Russian writer’s defense of Russia’s European identity, and even its superiority to Europe, running parallel to, but apart from, what appears to be a typical 61

  Ibid., 1: 533. See also ibid., 1: 296–301 (Europe does not understand our methods in Asia).

62

  Birzhevye vedomosti, 26 October 1901, 1.

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Oriental discourse. The binary discourse becomes a ternary discourse. Russia becomes the middle element, identifying herself by contrasting herself to both Europe and to Asia. In Russia in Central Asia West-East differences become greyer, more relative, and indeed not black and white. Beyond that, Markov’s book stumbles upon a central problem that vexed contemporary colonial administrators. How should Russia rule Turkestan before a time when the inorodtsy had advanced sufficiently to allow them to be absorbed into the normal legal and institutional structure of the empire? And, if they did not advance sufficiently, evidenced by cases of hostile outbursts, were forceful means justified? Like the regime in Turkestan itself, at times Markov came down on the side of the bayonet when events seemed to warrant it, but at other times he recognized that not all inorodtsy were equally obstinate. Markov’s book captured the character of governance in Turkestan and brought it to the Russian public. As regards the culture-policy relationship, some may think that culture (books) creates policy, but in Markov’s Russia in Central Asia culture reflects policy. By ignoring the conflict between civilization and force, Russia in Central Asia reconciled the irreconcilable.

“A Link with Time”: Anna Akhmatova’s Poetry for History Courses Marjorie W. Bingham

No one absorbs the past as thoroughly as a poet. —Joseph Brodsky1

Theofanis Stavrou and Joseph Brodsky introduced me to the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. In our Russian history class at the University of Minnesota, Professor Stavrou not only did political history but spoke of the Acmeist poets of the “Silver Age.” In 1969, he organized a group of professors and graduate students involved in Russian studies to go to the Soviet Union. As part of the trip, some would meet with dissidents, spiritual heirs of that pre-Soviet age.For them, poets like Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak were models not only of fine poetry, but also moral integrity. A recent Ph.D. in American Studies, I did not have the Russian background of other participants of the trip, but my assigned task was to bring contemporary American poetry to the future Nobel Prize poet Joseph Brodsky. Meeting with Brodsky was a bit like undergoing another Ph.D. oral: who were America’s greatest poets? Which are better, Frost’s shorter or longer poems? How do you feel about blank verse? Generally, I seemed to have passed, but Brodsky was truly dismayed at my meager knowledge of Akhmatova’s poetry. Chagrined, I would return home to read her works and, eventually, devote a chapter on her in the Russia book in the Women in World Cultures series.2 Over the years her poetry became a continued part of the history survey courses I taught at St. Louis Park High School and Hamline University and in women’s history workshops around the country. Akhmatova’s poetry is particularly good for use in history classes for three reasons: (1) her “triple sense of time”—past, present, and future all in one poem; (2) its clarity and engagement with readers; and (3) the shift from autobiography to an enhanced biography of a generation of Russians. But before we take up these three major points, I would like to explore the idea of using poetry in what may already seem heavily burdened by history survey course. T. 1

  Joseph Brodsky, “Introduction,” in Anna Akhmatova: Poems, ed. and trans. Lyn Coffin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), xvii. 2

  Marjorie Wall Bingham and Susan Hill Gross, Women in the U.S.S.R.: The Scythians to the Soviets (Hudson, WI: G. E. McCuen, 1980), 117–23. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 463–71.

464 Marjorie W. Bingham

S. Eliot, in his essay “Hamlet and His Problems,” developed the idea of an “objective correlative.”3 The poet takes an object, idea, or event and weaves around it various levels of significance to provide multiple meanings. In teaching survey courses, including a one-semester course on “Western Civilization” (Neanderthal to NATO, we called it in anguish), I had found it necessary to choose materials that could “weigh heavily”; that could cluster many points in a brief amount of time. Certainly, students were reading all sorts of material outside of class, but to encourage a dialogue in limited class time, more focused, accessible materials were important. Over the years I shifted many readings, class projects, debates on World War I, for example, but I found I always included Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem to a Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est.” These two poems, in their contrasting languages—the first formal, elevated, the second colloquial—marked a major shift to the modern, the ironic questioning of values, and the poet’s life itself part of the generational cost of the Great War. Further, Owen’s contemporaries, like Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Virginia Woolf, and Vera Brittain, offered a “cluster” for further study. But the poems could also lead to military history—the “rattling” of the machine guns, the use of gas warfare—there was that as well. Not all poems “work” as well, at least for me. Though I have tried to work in some of my favorites like John Keats or Emily Dickinson, the connections to world trade and politics often mean too steep a detour to connect their work to the flow of the course. But Akhmatova’s work not only ties centrally to the Russian story, it makes it meaningful. Brodsky, in describing the twentieth century, suggests something of T. S. Eliot’s view and the significance of a great poet in tragic times: “At certain periods of history, it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise couldn’t be sustained by the mind.”4 What Akhmatova sustained was, in her own words, “two of everything, two wars, two destructions, two famines, two revolutions.”5 World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the Purges, World War II, and the Cold War mark her years and poetry. Often I used the following poems in class to either introduce or summarize these eras. While there are certainly many others that are relevant, these seem to work well in class. If only one poem can be chosen, Requiem is probably the most crucial: First World War: “July 1914” (“All month a smell of burning…”); “We Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye” (1917) Civil War/Exiles: “I Am Not One of Those Who Left the Land” 3

  T. S. Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems,” in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (London: Methuen, 1920).

4

  Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One: Selected Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986), 52. 5

  Quoted in Anatoly Naiman, “A Guest Upon the Earth,” in The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, trans. Judith Hemschemeyer, ed. Roberta Reeder (Somerville, MA: Zephyr, 1990), 2: 22.

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Purges: “The Last Toast” (“To lying lips that have betrayed us”) World War II: “Courage” (“We will preserve you Russian speech”) Stalin Era: “Requiem” (“I have learned how faces fall to bone”) Cold War: “The Last Rose” (“With Morozova I should bow and obey”) In a history course, most instructors do not have the luxury of time enough to analyze the more complex of Akhmatova’s poems, like Poem without a Hero. Nevertheless, her verse lends itself to the study of history because she herself believed that history was significant. As the critic Kornei Chukovsky put it, “Akhmatova was a ‘master of historical painting.’”6 She was so because she had a “triple” sense of time, a clear, accessible vision, and an awareness of how her life was part of a larger story. Her triple sense of time—past, present, and future—may have been the result of her early studies. Generally not emphasized in her biographies, Akhmatova began her serious academic studies in the field of history. Attending Higher Women’s Courses (academic courses held when women were excluded from Russian universities) in Kiev and St. Petersburg, she selected a history of law and general historical studies as her emphasis.7 The sense of precedent in law and historical chronology may have provided her with this underlying “triple” sense of time. Then, too, the events of the twentieth century swirled about her personal life: “My memory has become incredibly sharp. The past surrounds me and demands something. What? The kind shadows of the distant past almost speak to me.”8 In even such a brief quotation, we can see Akhmatova in the present—“her sharp memory”; the past—“kind shadows”; and the future—“demands something, what?” Almost all the poems listed above have this triple sense of time. For example, the “Instead of a Preface” that begins the poem Requiem: In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered here): —“Can you describe this?” And I said: —“I can.” Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.9 6

  Ibid., 2: 15.

7

  Anna Akhmatova, “A Little about My Life,” in Anna Akhmatova and Her Circle, comp. Konstantin Polivanov (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 1994), 3.

8

  Anna Akhmatova, “From a Letter to XXX,” in ibid., 19.

9

  Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward, comp. and trans., Poems of Akhmatova (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), 9.

466 Marjorie W. Bingham

The past is represented by the months waiting in line; the “now” by the women asking in a whisper about describing their situation; and the future by the poet’s intent to write. Further poignancy about the past is added by Akhmatova noticing the fleeting smile “over what had once been her face.” This thinking back and forward in time was also part of Akhmatova’s speculation about chronology and how her generation fit into time. According to her, the twentieth century—the real century—began in 1913–14 with the beginning of World War I—a view many historians would later share.10 In her poem “In Memorium, July 19, 1914” (the date of Russia’s entry into the war), she stated that between 1913 and 1914, “We aged a hundred years, and this / Happened in a single hour.”11 She wondered about her century, “Has this century been worse / than the ages that went before?”12 She defended the time of her youth (1910s) from the Soviet view of it as decadent: No one really knows in what epoch one lives… I recently heard someone say: “The 1910s were the most vulgar time.” Perhaps that is what one feels compelled to say today, but I replied that along with everything else, it was the time of Stravinsky and Blok, Anna Pavlova and Scriabin, Rostovtsev and Chaliapin, Meyerhold and Diaghilev. Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Tsvetaeva began their careers… This was their time. In the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, statues of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michelangelo and da Vinci are displayed. I thought they were the busts of famous men, but an Italian told me: “No, they’re just native Florentines.” It was the same in the 1910s.13 Though Akhmatova had pride in her contemporaries, she also could be brutal in the evaluation of her generation and present a later, darker side. “Ask my contemporaries— / Convicts, hundred-and-fivers, prisoners— / And we will tell you / How we lived in unconscious fear / How we raised children for the executioner, / For prison and for the torture chamber.”14 Though Akhmatova does not seem to have read much of William Faulkner, her outlook on history is much the same as his “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The villain in her Poem without a Hero is the man who ignores and forgets his role in his friend’s suicide. She was, however, somewhat critical of memory and memoirs: “Regarding memoirs in general, I warn the reader that 20 percent of all memoirs are false in one way or another… Continuity is also a delusion. The human memory is constructed in such a way that, like a projector, it illuminates separate moments, leaving the rest in impenetrable darkness. Even a wonderful memory can and should

10

  Anna Akhmatova, “1910s,” in Anna Akhmatova and Her Circle, 16.

11

  Anna Akhmatova, “In Memorium,” in Complete Poems, 1: 449.

12

  Ibid., 1: 517.

13

  Anna Akhmatova, “1910s,” in Anna Akhmatova and Her Circle, 14.

14

  Anna Akhmatova, “Poem without a Hero (Additions),” in Complete Poems, 2: 473.

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forget some things.”15 Further, in her poem “Cellar of Memory” (18 January 1940) she wrote of how engulfing memory can be: “through this mold, these fumes and slime / Flashed two green emeralds. And the cat mewed. Well, let’s go home! / But where is my home and where is my reason?”16 In some ways, it turns out that history was her home. Most of her life, Akhmatova lived with others and was “homeless,” partly because of her distaste for domestic chores but also because the Stalinist state had taken so many rights from her. As she put it in another way, “People of my generation are not threatened by such returns— we have no where to return to.”17 But for her there was a kind of permanence elsewhere: “for me poetry is a link with time, with the new life of my people.”18 This serious consideration of the past, “links with time,” gives another dimension to the use of Akhmatova’s poetry in survey classes. More than accumulation of facts, lessons, problem solving, students also need a vision of how time plays a part in their lives and some healthy skepticism about how historians put together a story. Akhmatova provides one kind of role model, reconciling past pain with future vision. Her poetry has another quality that makes her work valuable for the teacher of survey courses. Her writing is accessible, clear, and engages the reader. Though I have “walked” students through T. S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and parts of Dante’s Inferno, the explanation of allusions often means overburdening the historical point. Though Akhmatova could certainly write difficult poetry, as in Poem without a Hero, her aim was to write verse that could directly communicate with the reader. As the beginning of Requiem states, “Can you describe this? Yes, I can.” Her audience was the lines of women outside the red walls of the Stalinist prisons—and the rest of us. Clarity is not the same as simple, as any language arts instructor could tell students. It means thinking clearly about a subject, having a definite point of view, and directly confronting the issue. All of these were dangerous qualities for a writer in the Stalin years. Unlike writers, say, in the prerevolutionary era in France, who often masked their views in more abstract language, Akhmatova’s early verse is remarkably direct. In some of the later poems she did resort to “secret writing,” making literary allusions which would signify what she really meant. But most of her poems, while the meanings may become complex, have a kind of openness about them. Judith Hemschemeyer makes the point that Akhmatova’s poetry is often one of “encounter,” direct address; she “almost always needed a ‘you.’”19 One of her reasons for disliking Robert Browning’s writing was that he wrote in the second person, distancing himself from the poem. In the index of opening lines of her poems, the “you” and “we” listings go on for several pages. Even in poems without a direct encounter, there is often a sense of intimacy with a character, frequently seen in contrasting pub15

  Anna Akhmatova, Poem without a Hero, in Anna Akhmatova and Her Circle, 22.

16

  Anna Akhmatova, “Cellar of Memory,” in Complete Poems, 2: 125.

17

  Anna Akhmatova, “The Shukhardina House,” in Anna Akhmatova and Her Circle, 9.

18

  Ibid., 5.

19

  Judith Hemschemeyer, “Translator’s Preface,” in Complete Poems, 1: 2.

468 Marjorie W. Bingham

lic and private moments. One of the poems I have used with more advanced students is “The Gray-Eyed King.” At first this seems a simple poem about a king dying, a queen’s hair turning gray, and a non-royal couple sharing the news. But then we see the wife putting her daughter with “eyes of gray” to bed, and another level of meaning comes into the poem. We look at the king, the queen’s gray hair (and wonder how suddenly it really turned to gray), the husband and wife and their relationship differently. Distant grief about a public figure becomes more private for the wife. This poem may seem rather remote from historical concerns, but I then ask students to reflect on the poem, written in 1910, and compare it to later Soviet indictments of Akhmatova’s “decadence” and lack of “class solidarity.” The poem is accessible, then, as a human story, but students can also see how levels of meaning become political and, even, dangerous later; it’s not safe to mourn kings even in metaphor. But probably the most important attribute of Akhmatova’s work for use in a history class is the way in which she is able to make her seemingly autobiographical poems into the biography of a generation. She is not only able to address the “you” of Russia, but also to create a “we.” Most clearly, this comes across in her World War II writing, for example in her “An Address Broadcast on the Program ‘This is Radio Leningrad’” (September 1941). Akhmatova, until her evacuation to Tashkent from October 1941 to June 1944, was part of the population that suffered German attacks on St. Petersburg. Like the women she addressed in the radio broadcast, she had sewn sandbags, stood in bread lines, and lost friends to German shelling. While the language is general about the courage of Leningrad women, Akhmatova also brings it down to the particular: Like all of you now, I am kept alive by the single, unshakable belief that Leningrad will never become fascist. This belief is strengthened in me when I see the Leningrad women who defend Leningrad so simply and courageously and maintain its normal human life… Our descendants will give every mother … her due, but their attention will be particularly riveted by the Leningrad woman who stood on the roof during the bombing with a boat hook and tongs in order to protect her city from fire; the Leningrad air-raid warden who aided the wounded amidst the still burning debris of the building… No, a city that has nurtured such women cannot be conquered.20 Her poem “Courage” states, “We are not afraid though housetops fall.” Significantly, however, it is “Russian speech” that is being protected, not the Soviet state.21 Her long Poem without a Hero is dedicated to the Leningraders of World War II. Students may miss the implications of her insistence on Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and instructors may need to remind them of the bitterness many felt about the siege of 20

  Anna Akhmatova, “An Address Broadcast on the Program ‘This Is Radio Leningrad,’” in Akhmatova, My Half-Century, ed. Ronald Meyer (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 259. 21

  Kunitz and Hayward, Poems of Akhmatova, 125.

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the city. There was a sense that the long siege could have been lifted earlier and that Stalin, in particular, had not done all he could to prevent the huge casualties sustained by the city. Typically, Akhmatova did not waste much emotional energy in attacking her enemies; instead, her focus was on the bravery of the victims. In another poem, “To Londoners,” she reflects on all the plays of Shakespeare, what “we’d rather read,” instead of reading about the Blitz, the bombing by the Germans in 1940. The details she picks from the poem set up the war itself, the vulnerable Juliet carried to her grave “with songs and torches to lead” and the murderous Macbeth “in darkness as in an abyss.”22 The war she sees as Shakespeare’s “twenty-fourth” drama—his folio contains only twenty-three. Curiously, though Akhmatova seems to have taken for granted that the Germans acted immorally and does not have much time for them, she is not above using irony about those who remained neutral during the war. Indifference seems to have been a major failing in Akhmatova’s category of values. She had criticized those who exiled themselves from Russia; “We [those who stayed] are the people without tears, straighter than you … more proud.”23 After World War II, she shared her feelings about a Swedish professor who came to see her: I received a letter from a Swedish professor who is writing a book about me. He wrote that he was coming to see me. And he did come, but I was in the hospital, so he went there to see me. A fine fellow and he knows a lot, but the most amazing thing was the blinding whiteness of his shirt. It was as white as the wing of an angel. While we had two bloody wars and a lot of other blood, the Swedes were washing and ironing that shirt.24 Probably the poor man had just purchased a new shirt to be respectful to a poet he admired, but the hospital image, representing the strains of those listed disasters, marks Akhmatova’s contrasting fates. Her use of autobiography to identify with others beyond herself can also been seen in her interest in women’s issues. She and her friend, editor Lydia Chukovskaya, were not above making fun of other women. When Akhmatova received one letter, they categorized it as “rapturous, provincial, a typical woman’s letter.” Chukovskaya said, “I tried to express my indignation at those female readers who imagine that Akhmatova writes for women.”25 Fear of being seen as just a “woman’s poet” is reflected in her comment that historians would lump Akhmatova with other female writers who came from entirely different political positions—like Communist Larisa Reisner or Symbolist Zinaida Gippius. “All of us … will be called ‘women of their 22

  Anna Akhmatova, “To Londoners,” in Complete Poems, 2: 175.

23

  Kunitz and Hayward, Poems of Akhmatova, 75.

24

  Meyer, Akhmatova, My Half-Century, xiii.

25

  Lydia Chukovskaya, The Akhmatova Journals, 1: 1938–41 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), 133.

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time’… They are sure to find a common style.”26 The underlying rebellion against the assumed male historians doing the evaluation does suggest, however, some of her support for women’s rights. Sioban Dillion, in her essay “Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova: Overview,” deals with some of the complex ways the poet was both connected to feminism and apart from it.27 Akhmatova’s very name is a story in itself. Her birth name, Gorenko, was dropped at the request of her father, who did not want his name associated with her poetry. Instead, Anna chose the name of a Tatar female relative. Her poetry, in “Lot’s Wife,” often deals with women in rebellion. Instead of condemning Lot’s wife, who went against what she was told to do, Akhmatova asked, “Who will weep for the woman … Who gave her life in a single glance.”28 Akhmatova also became annoyed at the Soviet establishment singling her out as being divorced but writing biographies of male writers without mentioning their divorces.29 Annoyed, she also wondered why her looks mattered when those of Walter Scott did not. Though her poetry deals with many aspects of love, the following may suggest why there were three divorces in her life: Submissive to you? You’re out of your mind! I submit only to the will of the Lord, I want neither thrills nor pain, My husband—is a hangman, and his home—prison.30 One of the challenges of teaching history survey courses is how to include women’s history along with all the other material. Not only does Akhmatova’s poetry represent women’s views, but she also, in the integrity of her own life, illustrates someone who was “prepared to endure the unexpected gifts of Destiny.”31 Her divorced first husband shot by the Soviets; her son imprisoned twice, friends like Mandelstam dead in the camps, and her own life threatened—these were her ironic “gifts.” So shunned was she when out of favor that she felt a leper with a rattle in her hand. Though she was forced to write some pro-Soviet verses to save her son’s life, the bulk of her work stood for honesty in human feeling. It was this honesty that also makes Akhmatova part of a significant historic “cluster.” Just as Owen was part of a network of writers and artists still seen as a significant era in British cultural history, so Akhmatova was part of the Russian resistance to Soviet impersonalization. Like Pasternak, Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, and, later, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky, Akhmatova was a great writer, but she 26

  Ibid., 1: 62.

27

  Sioban Dillion, “Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova: Overview,” in Gay and Lesbian Literature, 2, ed. Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast (Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 1998).

28

  Anna Akhmatova, “Lot’s Wife,” in Complete Poems, 1: 567.

29

  Meyer, Akhmatova, My Half-Century, 32. 

30 31

  Anna Akhmatova, “Anno Domini MCMXXI,” in Complete Poems, 1: 553.

  Anna Akhmatova, “Grand Confession,” in ibid., 2: 709.

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also traveled in significant company. In teaching survey courses, I have often found it easier for students to see individuals more clearly when compared to others. Rather than dealing with a list of women suffragists, we examine Susan B. Anthony as activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton as intellectual, Carrie Chapman Catt as organizer, and Lucy Stone as moderator. Rather than a mishmash of painters of the Renaissance, we look at how each dealt with the question of light and perspective. Akhmatova was one of those individuals who touched lives significantly, whether supporting Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memorization of her dead husband’s poetry or encouraging the next generation of poets like Brodsky. She was, Brodsky said, “the poet of human ties.”32 So often names march across history textbook pages like so many black dotted ants. Often it is the most terrible examples of humanity that students come to know— Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khan. Akhmatova represents something else—courage, humanity, and artistry. As she said, “I was with my people, then, / There, where my people, unfortunately, were.”33

32

 Brodsky, Less than One, 52.

33

  Anna Akhmatova, “Requiem,” in Complete Poems, 2: 95.

Rethinking Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground Bryn Geffert

Even cursory readings of Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground reveal numerous similarities: both are highly charged, ideological works; both employ fictional narrators who exhibit behaviors and beliefs abhorrent to their respective authors; both focus on fractured and abusive relations between the sexes; the protagonists in each have withdrawn from society; and both tales provoke and aggravate the reader. These similarities prompted Robert Louis Jackson’s conclusion in a 1978 essay that The Kreutzer Sonata is “perhaps the most ‘Dostoevskian’” work of Tolstoy. In that essay and in a subsequent work, he argued that fundamental similarities can be found in the two works’ structure, characters, ideology, and use of the protagonist/narrator.1 Admiration for Jackson’s insights notwithstanding, this essay contends that such similarities are overstated. Jackson’s primary point—that certain common elements can be identified in the works—is beyond dispute. But Jackson’s points of comparison, particularly in his 1978 essay, also suggest profound differences that Jackson either skips over lightly or ignores altogether.2 The Kreutzer Sonata and Notes from the Underground are, at root, markedly different works concerned with quite different problems. Jackson identifies the following similarities in the two tales: 1. Both Pozdnyshev, the protagonist and narrator of The Kreutzer Sonata, and the Underground Man, the protagonist and narrator of Notes from 1

  Robert Louis Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” in American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists: Zagreb and Ljubljana, September 3–9, 1978, 2: Literature, ed. Victor Terras (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1978), 280–91; Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night: Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground,” in Dialogues with Dostoevsky: The Overwhelming Questions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 208–27.

2

  While the thrust of both pieces is similar, Jackson moderates some of his claims in the later article, drawing a more nuanced comparison that admits to somewhat greater differences between the two works. This essay draws upon both pieces. The translations here are the author’s unless otherwise noted. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 473–88.

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2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

the Underground, strive ardently to maintain their freedom, and both believe that freedom can be threatened by the commitment implied in sexual relations. Both use money to distance themselves from such commitments: the Underground Man tries to pay the prostitute Liza after sex, and Pozdnyshev recollects that he once became “terribly upset when I did not manage to pay a woman who, after apparently falling in love with me, had given herself to me.”3 Dostoevsky and Tolstoy exhibit other, varying degrees of discomfort with sex. Dostoevsky’s views of the family “remarkably coincide with [Tolstoy’s] views in The Kreutzer Sonata, views that assume a more frenetic expression, of course, in the monologue of Pozdnyshev.”4 Tolstoy’s attention to such themes makes The Kreutzer Sonata “singularly ‘Dostoevskian.”5 Pozdnyshev and the Underground Man both relate their tales in the form of confessions. Both works are polemics, in which “a hard core of ideological, social, and philosophical discussions are interwoven with personal narratives.” Both constitute “a broad critique of society.”6 Pozdnyshev’s murder of his wife suggests the Underground Man’s “spiritual murder” of Liza. These crimes weigh on their consciences and provide the primary “psychological motivation” for their narratives. Both the Underground Man and Pozdnyshev live on the periphery of society, in darkness, from where they reveal disgusting truths about themselves and their contemporaries. Both protagonists “give evidence of the triumph of biological, instinctual man over rational, social man.”7 Both works employ an irrational hero to “simultaneously expose and exemplify what in the author’s view is a social calamity.” “The confessions of Pozdnyshev and of the Underground Man are outpourings of men who, although conscience-stricken, are bent on justifying themselves.”8 Both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy suggest ambivalence about their stories.

We may add other points of comparison to this list. Both Pozdnyshev and the Underground Man serve as cautionary examples, warnings of the depths to which one can 3

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 280; and Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 209.

4

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 284.

5

  Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 209.

6

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 285.

7

  Ibid., 287; and Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 221.

8

  Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 218.

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sink by emulating their lives. John Kopper suggests that The Kreutzer Sonata “produces rituals of self-exposure,”9 a description that applies equally well to the Underground Man’s tortured recollection of his treatment of the prostitute Liza. Both narrators are excruciatingly unsympathetic. Both serve as mouthpieces for their authors while simultaneously exhibiting behavior each author finds repellent. One, however, must be careful of taking these parallels too far or suggesting that such similarities imply similar goals or structural themes; these points of comparison also reflect deep divisions in style and polemical intent. Sexuality and Marriage We must acknowledge, as Jackson notes, a striking similarity between the Underground Man’s attempt to pay Liza for sex and Pozdnyshev’s recollection that he became “terribly upset” when he “did not manage to pay a woman who, after apparently falling in love with me, had given herself to me.”10 Indeed, both protagonists profess to be entirely uninterested in a meaningful commitment beyond the physical act, and both believe they can escape this commitment by paying for services rendered. Jackson is wrong, however, to believe that these passages suggest a similar attitude towards sex. Granted, neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky approves of the sex that occurs in their stories, and both find their characters’ treatment of women repellent. But Jackson moves to shaky ground when he suggests common approaches toward sexuality and sensuality—“a certain similarity between Pozdnyshev’s apocalyptic approach to marriage and sexuality and [Dostoevsky’s] own view of this matter.”11 Nothing in Notes from the Underground indicates an indictment of sex itself. The Underground Man heaps criticism on himself for his verbal abuse of Liza, but he never condemns the act of sex. He does speak of “something loathsome” rising in him before their sexual encounter, but this “loathsome” feeling likely describes his desire to dominate; we should not read it as a criticism of the sexual urge per se. Nothing in Notes from the Underground suggests the “apocalyptic” approach to sexuality that Jackson finds in The Kreutzer Sonata. Thus, to develop a parallel between Pozdnyshev’s and Dostoevsky’s views on sexuality, Jackson turns from Notes from the Underground to Dostoevsky’s other writings, in which he identifies a “duality” in Dostoevsky’s attitudes toward sex. Jackson finds such a “duality” when comparing Dostoevsky’s condemnation of “swinish sensuality with all its consequences” in his notebook on The Brothers Karamazov, with Dostoevsky’s concurrent admiration for the “earthly Karamazovian” force in the

9

  John Kopper, “Tolstoy and the Narrative of Sex: A Reading of ‘Father Sergius,’ ‘The Devil,’ and ‘The Kreutzer Sonata,’” in In the Shade of the Giant: Essays on Tolstoy, ed. Hugh McLean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 179. 10

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 280.

11

  Ibid., 281.

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novel.12 But must an admiration for earthiness alongside a condemnation of “swinish” sensuality constitute a duality? Or if we concede this suggestion momentarily for the sake of argument, might not such a “duality” in fact suggest Dostoevsky’s attempts to limit the bounds of acceptable earthiness? Jackson argues that Dostoevsky “tends to identify the highest consciousness of moral beatitude with personalities in whom the sexual instinct is sublimated, underdeveloped, or crippled.”13 Such a sweeping statement invites elaboration that Jackson does not provide. But were he able to make this case, it would not necessarily follow that a “sublimated, underdeveloped, or crippled” sexual instinct in highly developed characters implies the sort of vituperative condemnations of sexuality we find in The Kreutzer Sonata. Even Jackson acknowledges that Dostoevsky “refuses to idealize the asexual state.”14 (He concedes in the latter of his two pieces that “fundamental differences separate Dostoevsky’s position from that of Tolstoy’s anti-hero,” but he continues to insist on a “duality” in Dostoevsky’s views on marriage and sexuality.)15 Such an admission makes it difficult to understand how, exactly, The Kreutzer Sonata reflects Dostoevsky’s thinking. There is nothing in all of Dostoevsky to suggest The Kreutzer Sonata’s call for total chastity or Pozdnyshev’s characterization of sex as “nasty and shameful” (merzko i stydno).16 Pozdnyshev describes sexual relations with his wife as spiritual murder, a debasing, brutal act that leads to actual murder. But the Underground Man never points to his sexual encounter with Liza as the basis for his treatment of her, and there is reason to believe Dostoevsky means to suggest other causes (see below). It is clear that the Underground Man feels trapped after sex, but we should assume such feelings stem from the emotional commitment implied by sex rather than from the act itself. He berates Liza for trusting him and loving him but never for sleeping with him. He abuses Liza emotionally, but nothing in the narrative suggests physical abuse, and nothing equates sexual contact with physical abuse. Jackson also concludes that Dostoevsky’s views on marriage “remarkably coincide” with Tolstoy’s views in The Kreutzer Sonata, and he turns for evidence to a passage about the resurrection in Dostoevsky’s notebook: [For in the resurrection] (1) They do not get married and do not seek to possess—because there is no reason to; to develop, achieve one’s goals by means of changing generations, is no longer necessary, and (2) marriage and seeking 12

  Ibid., 283; and Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 213.

13

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 283. In his later draft Jackson substituted “sublimated, crippled, or dormant” (“In the Darkness of the Night,” 213).

14

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 283.

15 16

  Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 214–15.

 Lev Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1960–65), 12: 162.

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to possess women is as it were the greatest deviation from humanism, the complete isolation of the pair from everyone (little remains for everyone). The family, that is the law of nature, but still an abnormal, and egotistical state in the full sense, coming from man. The family—the most sacred thing of man on earth, for by means of this law of nature man achieves the goal through development (that is, through the change of generations). But at the same time, also according to the same law of nature, in the name of the final ideal of his goal, man must continuously deny it.17 But do such (somewhat cryptic) views of marriage “remarkably coincide”18 (or, in Jackson’s latter essay, “at essential points coincide”)19 with Tolstoy’s views in The Kreutzer Sonata? Dostoevsky here describes two states of being: one temporal and one spiritual, one before the resurrection and one after. Marriage will prove unnecessary in the still-to-come celestial world, yet for now it remains, as he writes, “the most sacred thing of man on earth.” Other writings suggest that Dostoevsky bore nothing but respect for the temporal ideal of marriage, family life, and children. His wife, Anna, wrote that upon the birth of their child, Dostoevsky “knelt for a long time before my bed and kissed my hands. For the first ten minutes we were so stunned with happiness that we did not know whether we had been given a boy or a girl.”20 In The Devils, Shatov describes similar rapture over a birth: There were two, and suddenly a third person, a new spirit, whole [tsel´nyi], complete [zakonchennyi], as if not from human hands; a new thought and a new love, even frightening. And there is nothing more lofty [vyshe] in the world!21 In his Diary of a Writer, Dostoevsky speaks of the “sanctity of the family” (sviatynia sem´i), which can be “holy” (sviata).22 Such passages challenge any comparison between Dostoevsky’s attitudes towards marriage and those of The Kreutzer Sonata, a work in which marriage, sexuality, and even procreation are reviled: “Children are a torment [muchen´e], nothing 17   Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 214–15; translated slightly differently in Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 284; passage from Fedor Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 30-ti tomakh, ed. V. G. Bazanov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972–88), 15: 173. 18

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 284.

19

  Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 214.

20   Geir Kjetsaa, Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer’s Life, trans. Siri Hustvedt and David McDuff (New York: Viking, 1987), 218. 21

 Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 10: 452.

22

  Ibid., 22: 72.

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more.”23 Making a case for an end to procreation, Pozdnyshev sardonically replies to his listener’s objections Yes, would not the human race perish?… Preach abstinence from childbearing in the interest of greater pleasure [chtoby bol´she bylo priiatnosti]—that’s allowed; but just hint at [zaiknis´] abstinence from childbearing in the name of morality—and, gracious, what a cry [batiushki, kakoi krik]: as if the human race would cease because every tenth person wants to stop being a swine?… Why should it continue?… And why should we exist?24 Such sentiments echo Tolstoy’s statements in his nonfiction, and we can take Pozdnyshev here to be a direct spokesman for Tolstoy. (Tolstoy once noted that the conclusions of The Kreutzer Sonata appalled him, but he nevertheless found them impossible to dismiss.)25 But where, in all of Dostoevsky’s writings, are we to find a character speaking for Dostoevsky who espouses sentiments such as these? In The Kreutzer Sonata marriage appears as little more than economics: social conventions dictate that women be treated as goods; women become commodities marketed to others; and prearranged marriages force a woman to become “a slave in a bazaar or bait in a trap” (raba na bazare, ili privada v kapkan).26 Even an ideal marriage (at least society’s understandings of that ideal) is corrupt. Pozdnyshev carefully notes that, in the midst of his debauchery, he continued to live what he considered “an honest family life” (chestnaia semeinaia zhizn´).27 For Tolstoy and for Pozdnyshev marriage does not justify sex; it does not make sex moral. Sex within marriage produces “nothing except the mutual hatred of partners in crime [nenavist´ vzaimnaia soobshchnikov prestupleniia], both for the instigation of and participation in the crime.”28 Pozdnyshev knows his wife “only as an animal.” “I didn’t know then that ninety-nine percent of married people lived in a hell [v takom zhe adu] such as the one in which I lived, and that it cannot be otherwise.”29 The presence of children, born of carnal relations, “not only did not improve our life but poisoned it [otravlialo ee].”30 The Underground Man speaks of families in far more positive terms. He does acknowledge that “Many families have trouble” (Mnogo iz-za etogo v sem´iakh khuda byvaet), and he bemoans “those cursed families [v tekh sem´iakh prokliatykh] 23

 Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 12: 169–70.

24

  Ibid., 157.

25

  Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 224.

26 27

 Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 12: 152.

  Ibid., 165.

28

  Ibid., 162.

29

  Ibid., 175.

30

  Ibid., 173.

Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground

479

in which there is neither love nor God.”31 But he continues: “And what if all in the family succeeds, if God blesses it, if the husband turns out to be good, loves you, cherishes you, does not leave you! It is good in such a family!”32 True, such rhapsodizing represents at least in part the Underground Man’s self-aggrandizing pomposity, an attempt to impress Liza by spewing lofty sentiment. But we need not dismiss such sentiment simply because he puts it to ill use, or because he lacks the means to live according to its precepts. An equally reasonable interpretation might suggest that Dostoevsky here describes an ideal state eluding the Underground Man’s grasp. Dostoevsky employs this speech, in other words, not to indict the ideal, but to indict the failure to reach it. Given Dostoevsky’s own admiration for the family, we may assume that the Underground Man acts in this instance as a spokesman for Dostoevsky, as an example of one who partially grasps the ideal but lacks any hope of obtaining it. Narratives as Confessions Jackson asserts that both The Kreutzer Sonata and Notes from the Underground can be read as “confessional” narratives. He does not provide a definition of “the confessional form,” although he seems to equate confession with the “outpourings of men who are both conscience-stricken and bent on self-justification.”33 So do these works accord with common understandings of confessions? Neither can be considered a confession in Rousseau’s tradition. Ralph Matlaw, Carol Flath, and others suggest that Notes from the Underground, is, in fact, a parody of Rousseau’s Confessions and a subversion of the Enlightenment and Romantic ideals it enshrines. Dostoevsky even considered borrowing Rousseau’s title as part of his parody. Whereas Rousseau celebrates a Romantic fascination with innocence, the Underground Man excoriates those intoxicated by Romanticism. Notes from the Underground undermines the notion that one can account for oneself simply by attempting a sincere, honest history. Barbara Howard writes: The underlying assumption of the Confessions that it is possible to resolve the paradoxes and discontinuities of the self by relating its history (“l’histoire de mon âme”) is rejected in the Notes.34 Unlike Rousseau, the Underground Man can resolve nothing. He retreats from the world because he cannot resolve the seemingly irresolvable problem of acting in total

31

 Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5: 157.

32

 Ibid.

33

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 285.

34

  Barbara Howard, “The Rhetoric of Confession: Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground and Rousseau’s Confessions,” Slavic and East European Journal 25, 4 (1981): 28.

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freedom.35 J. M. Coetzee observes that although the Underground Man promises a confession that will outdo Rousseau’s in truthfulness, his confession “reveals nothing so much as the helplessness of confession before the desire of the self to construct its own truth.”36 Carol Flath terms Notes from the Underground an “anti-confession” or a narrative by a narrator who repeatedly casts doubts on his own words. Rousseau seeks certainty and clarity through his confession. But the Underground Man, feeling no basis of certainty … cannot make decisions and act. He cannot even act upon his own self-consciousness to freeze it in some position or other, for it obeys its own laws. Nor can he regard himself as a responsible agent [as does Rousseau], since accepting responsibility for oneself is a final position.37 In Rousseau, self-consciousness leads to self-understanding and clarity. In Notes from the Underground, self-consciousness simply feeds on itself. It is thus more accurate to refer to Notes from the Underground as an apologia than a confession. The Underground Man does admit his sickness—“I am a sick man … I am an evil man. I am an unattractive man” (Ia chelovek bol´noi … Ia zloi chelovek. Neprivlekatel´nyi ia chelovek)38 —yet he strives to justify his behavior: he proves unwilling and unable to reject or even modify it. While repeatedly asserting that he writes only for himself, his habit of addressing “gentlemen” (gospodi) underlines his supreme concern with the impression he conveys; he strives to convince his readers of the inevitability (and hence, in a sense, rightness) of his actions. His repeated (though unreliable and sporadic) self-deprecation is, in fact, a plea to be understood, embraced, and even worshipped. Hence we should read Notes from the Underground as the apologia of a self-destructive and self-hating man, who believes against all reason (which he has largely abandoned) that he can make a sympathetic case for his behavior. Pozdnyshev, of course, makes no attempt to excuse his own behavior. He does identify its external causes, but he never suggests that such causes absolve him of guilt. His narrative aims not to win sympathy for his actions, but to renounce them. Like Rousseau—whose work impressed Tolstoy—Pozdnyshev identifies the causes premiéres of his behavior. Without ignoring enormous differences between Tolstoy and Rousseau, we can identify a common quest for truth in both The Kreutzer Sonata and The Confessions. Pozdnyshev could easily say with Rousseau: “Je me suis montré 35

  I contend that Howard is wrong to claim that the Underground Man “lacks Rousseau’s confidence [my emphasis] in his ability to discern the ‘causes premiéres’ (primary causes) of his behavior” (ibid.). I will examine such causes later in this essay. But I accept Howard’s point about his inability to escape the paradoxes in which he is caught.

36

  J. M. Coetzee, “Confession and Double Thoughts: Tolstoy, Rousseau, Dostoevsky,” Comparative Literature 37 (1985): 220.

37

  Ibid., 216.

38

 Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5: 99.

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tel que je fus, méprisable et vil quand je l’ai été” (I have shown myself as I was, as contemptible and vile when my behavior was such).39 Again, what the narrators of The Kreutzer Sonata and The Confessions make of contemptible and vile behavior differs significantly. The point here simply is that Pozdnyshev adheres to Rousseau’s faith in the rightness of confession. Pozdnyshev admits that his entire life was a waste. The Underground Man cannot, for such an admission would deny his ability to act freely. Thus, Pozdnyshev can ask forgiveness—“Forgive me” (Da, prostite)40 are his last words—but the Underground Man cannot. Pozdnyshev’s narrative assumes aspects of a religious confession: he acknowledges his sin, retreats from that sin, and asks forgiveness. But the Underground Man, as Carol Flath notes, cannot confess faithfully and thus cannot accept forgiveness. He cannot ask forgiveness from a God he cannot accept. In fact, Flath finds a blasphemous mockery of God in the Underground Man’s attempt to make others ask for his forgiveness, thus appropriating what rightly belongs to God. In Dostoevsky’s well-known letter to his brother Michael (which complained of the censor’s removal from Notes all references to Christ), Dostoevsky argues that only faith will release the Underground Man from his imprisonment. But faith, of course, holds no place in the Underground Man’s thought. And without faith in one who is higher, there remains nobody to whom he can confess. Motivation Jackson is right to note that both Notes from the Underground and The Kreutzer Sonata contain “a hard core of ideological, social, and philosophical discussion” and that both constitute a “broad critique of society.”41 Both the Underground Man and Pozdnyshev take frequent jabs at high society and at various popular, ideological positions. But although both works constitute critiques of society, those critiques differ markedly. Dostoevsky suggests that the Underground Man’s intellectual and ideological positions account for his state, while Tolstoy and Pozdnyshev place the blame on societal norms and permissiveness rather than on any political or philosophical ideology. We must concede that both narrators do, at times, criticize similar things. Both take swipes at Romanticism. Pozdnyshev laments “It’s astonishing how complete is the illusion that beauty is goodness” (Udivitel´noe delo, kakaia polnaia byvaet illiuziia togo, chto krasota est´ dobro).42 He bemoans the confusion of “lofty sentiments”

39

  Jean Jacques Rousseau, Les confessions (Paris: Bordas, 1966), 30.

40

 Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 12: 211.

41

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 285; and Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 217. 42

 Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 12: 118.

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(vysokye chuvstva) with simple lust.43 The Underground Man echoes these concerns: “The more I became conscious of goodness, and of all that is ‘beautiful and lofty,’ the deeper I lowered myself into the mud and the more capable I became of getting completely stuck in it” (Chem bol´she ia soznaval o dobre i o vsem etom “prekrasnom i vysokom,” tem glubzhe ia i opuskalsia v moiu tinu i tem sposobnee byl sovershenno zaviaznut´ v nei).44 “Our romantic,” he concludes, is “a grand person [shirokii chelovek] and the greatest rogue [perveishii plut] of all our rogues, I assure you of that.”45 The polemical differences between the works, however, prevent us from taking these similarities much farther. Upper-class society and its moral code serve as Pozdnyshev’s primary target: “I’m a landowner and a graduate of the university, and I was a marshal of the nobility. “I lived before my marriage as all live, that is lecherously [razvratno], and like all people of our circle living lecherously, I was sure that I lived as was necessary. I thought I was a cute fellow and a fully moral man.”46 Society provides no moral guidance: “I never heard those older persons whose opinions I respected say [promiscuity] was evil [durno]. On the contrary, I heard from people I respected that it was good.”47 Even the best of society is immoral: “I know several girls of higher society who were enthusiastically [s vostorgom] given by their parents to syphilitics. Oh, oh the abomination [merzost´]!”48 Even seemingly innocuous social fashions come under attack. But look at those unhappy and despised [prostitutes], and at the highest, refined ladies: the apparel, the fashions, the perfumes, the baring of arms, shoulders, and breasts, the tightly clothed, prominent rear, the passion for little stones, for expensive, glittering things, the amusements, dances and music, the singing.49 Pozdnyshev comes to hate all displays of conspicuous consumption: exchanging gifts, gorging on sweets, expensive weddings, and flattery heaped on the wealthy. In short, he directs his diatribe largely against the socioeconomic conventions of the society he believes reduced him and his wife to their depraved state. “She was raised as the position of women in our society requires [trebuet polozhenie zhenshchiny v nashem obshchestve], and therefore as all women of the privileged classes without exception

43

  Ibid., 12: 149.

44 45

 Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5: 102.

  Ibid., 5: 12.

46

 Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 12: 142–43.

47

  Ibid., 12: 144.

48

  Ibid., 12: 147.

49

  Ibid., 12: 150.

Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground

483

are raised, and how they cannot but be raised.”50 Almost every aspect of society bears responsibility for the “refined conventions [svetskie usloviia] in which a man and woman are allowed the greatest and most dangerous closeness [blizost´].” “You would become a laughing-stock to other people if you prevented closeness at balls, closeness of doctors with their female patients, closeness in the occupations of art, painting, and especially music.”51 Thus, marriage and the marriage market constitute just one expression of a polluted society. As John Kopper notes, the microcosm of marriage replicates “the codes of a larger universe, a society of wide-ranging permissiveness.”52 The Underground Man, on the other hand, directs his criticisms almost entirely towards philosophy and ideology. Granted, we find hints of his age’s general corruption: “I was piteously developed [Ia byl boleznenno razvit], just as a man of our times should be developed.”53 But societal norms do not inform the Underground Man’s behavior as they do Pozdnyshev’s. Immediately after admitting to his “morbid development,” he criticizes similarly developed competitors— dismissing them as “obtuse” (tupy) and like a “flock of sheep” (barany v stade)54 —an attack that reflects his desire to rise above and prove himself superior to the other “sheep.” He does not strive, as did Pozdnyshev, to be ordinary and enmeshed in convention; he strives, rather, to become extraordinary. To be extraordinary, one must rise above such convention, not be swept along by it. Before continuing this thought, we must note Dostoevsky’s dual use of the Underground Man, both as a spokesman against certain philosophical schools and as a cautionary example of becoming enamored with these schools. The Underground Man serves as both critic and victim. Dostoevsky employs him in the first sense—as a direct spokesman—to take shots at positivism, utilitarianism, and Romanticism. He criticizes Russia’s positivistic journalists. His long diatribe against a table of values predetermining the best action for any given situation constitutes a jibe at utilitarianism. Romanticism is not spared: The characteristic of our romantic is to understand everything, to see everything and see often incomparably more clearly than our most positivistic minds see; not to accept anyone or anything, but at the same time not to disdain anything.55 But the Underground Man also represents the very ideologies he condemns. Like the Romantics, he is overwhelmed with the beautiful and the elevated when imagining himself as Liza’s savior. Like the utilitarians, he calculates endlessly how best to 50

  Ibid., 12: 165.

51

  Ibid., 12: 188.

52

  Kopper, “Tolstoy and the Narrative of Sex,” 168.

53

 Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5: 125.

54 55

 Ibid.

  Ibid., 5: 126.

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increase his standing and advantage. And like the positivists he so dislikes, he obsesses over certainty: “You see, to begin to act you must first be completely at peace [nuzho byt´ sovershenno uspokoennym predvaritel´no], without a doubt remaining. Well, how am I, for example, to put myself at peace?”56 The answer, of course, is that he cannot. He is disabled and unable to act; he retreats underground. The certainty he criticizes in others he desires for himself, but he cannot obtain it. The most resolute action he can muster is a refusal to move from the path of an oncoming officer, and even this act requires repeated, tortuous tries before he succeeds. Pozdnyshev, on the other hand, requires no certainty. His passions sweep him along. He finds comfort in whatever norms his social class promotes. Action requires no real decision on his part. He shows no concern over finding perfect truths or preserving autonomy—he simply follows the crowd. Pozdnyshev’s interests are society’s interests. The Underground Man’s interests are his own, and he knows they are his own because he defines them against society (and even against his own welfare). The question of rationalism or advantage does not much concern Pozdnyshev. Even his relations with his wife—though selfish and vindictive—are driven more by pure hatred than by any calculation of personal advantage. Lust (endorsed by society) drives him. But advantage means everything to the Underground Man. His interactions with Liza, with his school “friends,” with the officer, are all calculated to assert his advantage. Freedom is the maximum advantage, and thus even actions injurious to himself (the metaphor of running into the wall) have value if they preserve freedom: But I repeat to you for the hundredth time, there is one case, only one, when a man can purposely, consciously [soznatel´no] want for himself even that which is harmful, stupid, even the stupidest—namely in order to have the right to want for himself that which is stupidest.57 We may concede that Pozdnyshev does desire what turns out to be highly injurious to himself (although he escapes a murder conviction, his life is in tatters); but the motivation that leads to murder is informed by the lust that leads to hatred, not by a conscious attempt to deny his self-interest in the name of freedom. Thus, although both Pozdnyshev and the Underground Man act in similar ways towards women, the motivations or passions behind their behavior differ markedly. We can put all of this another way: the Underground Man is dissolute in large part because he is seized with ideas; Pozdnyshev is dissolute because he capitulates to societal norms. Ironically, the Underground Man retreats into inaction through a failed, active engagement with ideas, while Pozdnyshev acts violently and decisively due to his passive and unquestioning acceptance of society’s norms. The Underground Man arrives at inaction through action, while Pozdnyshev arrives at action through passivity.

56

  Ibid., 5: 108.

57

  Ibid., 115.

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485

Murder Jackson links Pozdnyshev’s murder of his wife to the Underground Man’s “symbolic murder” of Liza. The Underground Man, writes Jackson, “fells Liza, as though with an ax, by his cynical confession.”58 We must consider two questions here: Are both Pozdnyshev and the Underground Man “murderers,” and are both Liza and Pozdnyshev’s wife “murdered”? There can be no question that Pozdnyshev murders his wife. Tolstoy offers a graphic description of the gruesome act. But it is not clear that the Underground Man “murders” Liza, even in a metaphorical sense. He berates her, humiliates her, and tries to subjugate her. But do such acts constitute “symbolic murder,” and, if so, how do we explain the glimpses of real concern in his interaction with her, glimpses wholly absent in the last days of Pozdnyshev’s relations with his wife? The Underground Man’s passions are so befuddled that we cannot be sure he wants to destroy Liza. His professed desire to save her need not be negated by the egotistical thrill he obtains by imagining himself a savior. It is tempting to dismiss any altruistic motive on the Underground Man’s part by pointing to his own observation that “knavery so easily goes hand in hand with feeling” (Da i plutovstvo ved´ tak legko uzhivaetsia s chuvstvom).59 But such an admission does not prove that he possesses no genuinely good feelings. In another attempt to dismiss any altruistic motives he claims, “The game [igra], the game attracted me,” but then he admits, “yet it was not only the game.”60 There is something more to his feelings for Liza than his freedom-loving ego would have us, and him, believe. As noted earlier, we must be cautious of accepting wholesale the Underground Man’s attempts to impugn his own motives. When he criticizes himself for exercising compassion, he attributes such compassion to “nerves” (nervy) and a tendency to “exaggerate everything” (vse-to ia preuvelichivaiu).61 He dismisses his concern for Liza as “sentimentality” and its expression as mockery. But is his concern nothing more than sentiment? Or are his revisionist accounts of his motives a panicked attempt to maintain autonomy in the face of a frightening commitment, a commitment he decides to break by humiliating Liza? This latter possibility is equally reasonable, and perhaps even more so, given his constant attempt to rework and subvert past statements and actions. If we accept this latter possibility, we can more easily understand his claim that his cruelty towards Liza “was not from the heart” (ne ot serdtsa).62 Such an explanation also helps us understand his admission that “I did not know then that even in fifteen years I would still picture Liza with that pitiful [zhalkii], distorted, 58

  Jackson, “Tolstoj’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground,” 290.

59

 Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5: 156.

60 61

  Ibid., 162.

  Ibid., 166.

62

  Ibid., 177.

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unnecessary smile she had at that minute.”63 In short, he cannot dismiss his real feelings. He is torn, not because he loathes Liza, but because he fears the consequences of loving her. “Would I not come to hate her [Razve ia ne voznenavizhu ee], perhaps even tomorrow, namely because today I kissed her feet?”64 Hate becomes an artificial means of preserving autonomy, not an expression of true passion. The Underground Man presents himself as a murderer because those feelings incompatible with murder threaten his independence. If one of our protagonists is not a murderer, we must then ask whether both victims are murdered. Again, there can be no argument that Pozdnyshev’s wife is murdered, both in spirit and in body. Tolstoy portrays her—if not exactly as an accomplice or a deserving victim—then as a participant in the crass and degrading act leading to the mutual hatred and spite that result in murder. Pozdnyshev’s wife is not innocent. While it would be foolish and unjust to suggest that she deserves her fate (even Pozdnyshev, who felt nothing but hatred towards her, recognizes she does not), she is, like her husband, at least partially implicated in Tolstoy’s mind by her participation in sexual economics. Liza, however, is innocent. She exhibits compassion and something akin to love for the Underground Man despite of his humiliating treatment of her. When he tells her that he laughs at her and will hate her—that he wants to reduce her to tears, humiliate her, and induce hysterics—she holds out her hands, throws her arms around him, and kneels motionless beside him for a quarter hour: truly a breathtakingly selfless and compassionate act.65 It is not the act of one who, as Jackson maintains, has been murdered. Neither has Liza been subjugated. When the Underground Man presses money into her hand, she leaves it on the table, maintaining a measure of self-respect. We do not know what becomes of her, but our last glimpse is of a compassionate woman who endures terrible treatment, exhibits love, and refuses to be treated as a prostitute. Unlike Pozdnyshev’s wife, she lives, and with more than a scrap of dignity. The Periphery of Society Jackson is right, of course, that the Underground Man and Pozdnyshev live on the periphery of society. He notes that both protagonists narrate their stories in darkness (the darkness of the underground and the murky darkness of a train carriage). Both have retreated from society, dispensing with society’s norms and prevailing ideologies. But it is worth asking how permanent their retreat is. Do they intend to remain underground or on the periphery, stuck in their frustration and sin? The Underground Man, alienated from society, mired in his irresolvable obsessions with autonomy and self-interest, will never emerge from his morass apart from Christ. He is dead, as dead as the casket bearing the prostitute to be buried in the Volkovo Cemetery. 63

  Ibid., 166.

64

  Ibid., 177.

65

  Ibid., 173–74.

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But we find hints that Pozdnyshev may be on his way to recovery. The Kreutzer Sonata lacks the consistently strong death imagery found in Notes from the Underground. Jackson is right to see the darkness of the railway carriage as an indication of Pozdnyshev’s retreat and of his moral condition during the early parts of his narrative (a condition Pozdnyshev describes as dead and rotted away). But Pozdnyshev’s entire narration does not occur in darkness. Pozdnyshev and his listener are both conscious of the coming dawn, and thus it is difficult to agree with Jackson that the train “is itself an embodiment of apocalypse.”66 Pozdnyshev, we must admit, is wary of the dawn; he wants to tell his entire story before sunrise: “We still have plenty of time, it’s not dawn yet [ne rassvetalo eshche].”67 But dawn is coming, and Pozdnyshev does not finish before it arrives. Towards the end of the tale the atmosphere in the train turns from darkness to “semi-darkness” (v polutemnom).68 The “half-light” of the coming dawn (v polusvete zari)69 suggests, perhaps, the possibility of a partial rebirth. It is significant that Pozdnyshev makes no protest nor expresses any discomfort with the coming light—a marked change from his earlier complaint about a lamp. This new light parallels developments in his own confession. Dawn approaches as he relates the most horrific part of his tale—the most complete acknowledgment of his sin and the immediate prelude to his plea for forgiveness. In other words, sunrise coincides with his final, most open admission of his worst deed and with his unmitigated expression of remorse. The carriage lightens as he describes “the first time I saw in [my wife] a human being” (v pervyi raz uvidal v nei cheloveka).70 He begins to weep, sobbing and shaking.71 We need not agree with Jackson that the murder has locked “him into an eternal prison of alternating hatred and remorse,”72 for here we find sincere contrition, an admission of guilt that holds nothing back. Morning twilight suggests a new transparency in his emotions. The earlier desire for darkness, real and metaphorical, is waning. He is not yet fully in the light (he covers himself with a blanket just before his listener departs, and we never see the sun’s first rays), but those rays approach from just beyond the horizon. The Underground Man exhibits no such consistent or lasting remorse. He does, of course, repeatedly castigate himself, and he even asks Liza for forgiveness, but these acts do not represent true remorse—they are too inconsistent and too intermingled with self-absorption and attempts at self-justification. Whereas Pozdnyshev pleads (genuinely, we assume) for forgiveness, the Underground Man asks for forgiveness 66

  Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 210.

67

 Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, 12: 177.

68

  Ibid., 197.

69

 Ibid.

70 71

  Ibid., 210.

  Ibid., 211.

72

  Jackson, “In the Darkness of the Night,” 212.

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as he concurrently tries to humiliate Liza—to push her symbolically back into prostitution by pressing money into her hand. Carol Flath notes that the Underground Man cannot confess faithfully and thus cannot ask for forgiveness. But Pozdnyshev does both. And because he does, there is cause—however uncertain—for hope. –

—

The roots of evil in Notes from the Underground differ fundamentally from the roots of evil in The Kreutzer Sonata. Pozdnyshev’s tale demonstrates the consequences of no self-control, that is, it demonstrates what happens when the sexual urge receives free reign, unencumbered and even encouraged by society’s skewed norms. But the Underground Man, obsessed with the philosophy of his youth, reaps the consequences of his desire for absolute control. A desire for control motivates nearly everything he does and, in the end, does not do. He strives to be free of all strictures, even those mandated by logic. He tries to control his fate absolutely, even if doing so means acting contrary to his own interests. He wants to control others, and he is willing to deny love and human feeling to gain such control. He gives himself up to nobody—not even (and, perhaps, most important) to Christ. In the end, he can control nothing, not even his thoughts: his retreat to the underground represents the final confirmation of his failure. Pozdnyshev, on the other hand, possesses no desire to control himself prior to his confession. He is governed by passions. Those mores to which we often attribute a controlling function—notions of propriety, sentiment, convention—only legitimize and exacerbate his baser instincts, creating a man totally out of control. It is ironic that this lack of control leads to a desire for absolute control, concluding with the murder (the ultimate form of control) of his wife. In this sense, at least, the result for Pozdnyshev is the same as for the Underground Man—a final, desperate attempt at total control that spirals totally out of control. But the paths that lead to this desire could not be more different. And only Pozdnyshev chooses the path to repentance and forgiveness.

From Scylla to Charybdis: Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State Elizabeth A. Harry

For what did we shed workers’ blood? —Party member and miner, February 1925

This essay examines one aspect of the tensions in the early years of communism in Russia caused by continuing economic and social inequality, which contributed, near the end of the 1920s, to the so-called Stalinist revolution—a revival of revolutionary militancy, a renewed attempt to level society.1 In spite, or perhaps because of the horrors of war and revolution from 1914 to 1921, there were in the early Soviet state great expectations of a new and just society, expectations that were further fueled by communist rhetoric and propaganda. When, in 1921, in an attempt to quell popular unrest and economic collapse, the Bolsheviks adopted the New Economic Policy (NEP), those expectations were dashed.2 During the Russian Civil War (1919–21), grain requisitioning alienated virtually the entire peasantry. At Lenin’s behest, in March 1921 the Bolsheviks instituted the NEP, which, among other things, substituted grain seizure with a tax in kind, allowing peasants to market their surplus. The government also legalized private trade, denationalized and privatized small production (keeping control, however, of the “commanding heights” of the economy), and adopted budget austerities that led to a sharp contraction in social services. Although they enabled a restoration in agriculture and industrial production, these policies appeared, to many communists and nonparty citizens, to represent the return of capitalism, social injustice, and the byvshie (literally, “formers,” the old elites).

1

  The epitaph at the beginning of this chapter quotes an appeal sent in February 1925 to the party leadership from a party member and miner in the Shakhty region of the Donbass who wrote to protest workers’ low wages. The supplicant found the situation unacceptable, considering the revolution and workers’ contributions to industrial recovery and growth, and especially in comparison to the considerably larger salaries of spetsy (specialists, i.e., the technical intelligentsia). See Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial´no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI) f. 17, op. 84, d. 646, ll. 287–88. 2

  NEP was a term used to describe an ad hoc policy.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 489–526.

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The NEP of the 1920s has been idealized as a relatively open period in Russia’s history, characterized by rapid social change, cultural experimentation, and economic freedom.3 This social experimentation stood in stark contrast to the cultural conformity and conservatism that characterized Stalinism. However, in spite of the government’s efforts, many studies have illustrated that the 1920s were also years of political and social chaos, economic disparity, and deep anxiety over national—and individual—prospects.4 A long-standing sense of social injustice pervaded Russian society, and the revolution only fueled growing expectations of change. Instead of social justice, the 1920s brought only new and widespread suffering—famine, inflation, unemployment. More importantly, deprivation and hardship were was not shared equally by all. On the contrary, the limited economic opportunities afforded by NEP enriched private entrepreneurs, government officials, speculators, and the ubiquitous middlemen who plied trade and plundered state industry. While the workers suffered from cutbacks, the Nepmen (private entrepreneurs) reaped profits, and industrial specialists were paid increasingly higher salaries. Moreover, NEP seemed to favor the interests of the stronger peasants over those of the poor peasants and workers. In short, NEP brought economic growth and cultural freedom, but exacerbated economic and social disparities. In doing so, it violated the egalitarian assumptions of the October Revolution and contributed to the popular perception that the Bolsheviks had abandoned socialism. These policies and developments later brought grave social and political consequences.

3

  See Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). For a recent comparative study on how twentieth-century communist regimes in Russia, China, and Cuba attempted to create new, superior human beings on which the construction of new societies would depend, see Yinghong Cheng, Creating the “New Man”: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009). A recent work, which argues that the effort to construct new human beings was based not on Bolshevik ideology but on modern Western state practices that both the Russian and Soviet governments imitated, is David Hoffman, Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). On similar efforts by the Provisional Government and the soviets to enlighten and remake Russian citizens during 1917, see Sarah Badcock, “Talking to the People and Shaping Revolution: The Drive for Enlightenment in Revolutionary Russia,” The Russian Review 65, 4 (2006): 617–36.

4

  A major collection of articles on the problems of NEP is Andrei K. Sokolov, ed., NEP v kontekste istoricheskogo razvitiia Rossii XX veka (Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2001). Sokolov, “Istoricheskoe znachenie NEPa,” 6–12, bemoans the tendency to view NEP outside its historical context, namely, the difficulties inherent in a volatile and thus unstable Soviet society and government immediately following the revolution. Sokolov is not specific about what caused NEP’s demise but suggests, among other causes, unemployment. In another article in the same collection, contrary to the tendency among historians to view the failure of NEP in a lack of political liberalization to accompany economic liberalization, G. B. Kulikova posits the existence of a “political NEP.” See “NEP i problema vovlecheniia mass v deiatel´nost´ gosudarstva,” 86.

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Recent studies exposed numerous areas of conflict and tension in 1920s Russia—an abiding, angry resentment among the lower social orders within the society—that exploded at the end of the decade in the “Great Turn” under Stalin.5 This essay explores and decodes the meanings that lay beneath the expressions of rage and

5

  Some notable studies that have focused on discontent during NEP, particularly among key groups, begin with Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921–1934 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), a pioneering work on the social history of the Soviet Union. Fitzpatrick examined the Soviet education system during NEP and showed that higher education at first retained its prerevolutionary character in instructors, student body, and philosophy, but during the Cultural Revolution opened its doors to a new generation of Red specialists and administrators who would form the future Soviet ruling class. See also Peter Konecny, “Chaos on Campus: The 1924 Student Proverka in Leningrad,” Europe-Asia Studies 46, 4 (1994): 617–35. On worker-peasant tensions, see Douglas Weiner, “Razmychka? Urban Unemployment and Peasant In-Migration as Sources of Social Conflict,” in Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 144–55. Other contributions to the same volume on the working class include John B. Hatch, “Labor Conflict in Moscow, 1921–1925”; Diane P. Koenker, “Class and Consciousness in a Socialist Society: Workers in the Printing Trades during NEP”; and Wendy Z. Goldman, “Working-Class Women and the ‘Withering Away’ of the Family: Popular Responses to Family Policy.” See also Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald G. Suny, eds., Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class, and Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); William J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); David L. Hoffmann, “Land, Freedom, and Discontent: Russian Peasants of the Central Industrial Region prior to Collectivisation,” Europe-Asia Studies 46, 4 (1994): 637–48; Lynn Viola, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). For a study of the NEP period in general, see Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918–1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Recently, the study of NEP has expanded with the founding of the journal The NEP Era, 1921–1928, edited by Alexis Pogorelskin at the University of Minnesota–Duluth. In an issue of Russian History/Histoire russe devoted to the journal’s inauguration (the first volume appeared in 2007 as The NEP Era: Soviet Russia 1921–1928), Pogorelskin noted that during the 1990s, NEP historiography was sharply divided between East and West, the Russians concentrating on politics, and Western scholars, particularly Americans, focusing on the social history of the period (“Guest Editor’s Introduction: The Politics of NEP and the Politics of Its Historiography,” Russian History/Histoire russe 27, 4 [2000]: 377–79). This is an interesting observation, considering its possible relevance for the debate on how Stalinism developed— from above or below. However, the social history of NEP and its problems was subsequently addressed in archival studies by other Russian scholars, including Andrei Sokolov, whose work on examining NEP’s social history through letters to the center is discussed below. On the question of NEP discontent, see my essay based on the present work, “Petitioners and Their Discontents: The Lost Generation of the 1920s,” The NEP Era: Soviet Russia 1921–1928 2 (2008): 61–80.

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animosity, thereby providing a dynamic picture of the frustrations and resentments during the NEP.6 NEP was not merely an economic system. The individualism and private enterprise of the 1920s permeated all aspects of society, as any Marxist would expect: economic relationships were reflected throughout society and culture. Seven years of war and revolution left millions of people indigent and desperate. But with NEP, the Communist government apparently abandoned an egalitarian solution to the crisis—in effect, Russia was no longer communist. For many citizens, NEP signified abandonment of themselves and the revolution. Far from constructing an egalitarian socialist society that would ensure material security, NEP unwittingly promoted class differentiation and impeded an equitable distribution of material resources. The revolution thus underwent a mutation; for average people, the collective struggle became an individual struggle, just as in a capitalist state; individuals could not rely on the collective for protection, but were left to sink or swim on their own, competing for work and survival. In short, the collective struggle became an individual struggle to gain admittance into the collective. The collective per se exhibited stratification. Egalitarianism became passé; social Darwinism prevailed; competition replaced cooperation as the predominant economic and social ethic. This change in course dashed the expectations of those who viewed the communist revolution as an antidote to the evils of prewar Russia; supplicants found this new emphasis on individuality and independence inconsistent with socialism. Indeed, it was noted that individual existence in the free market system was more difficult under NEP than it had been before the revolution, or under similar systems in the West. Growing unemployment during NEP aggravated competition for survival. Among the unemployed, women and youth were disproportionately represented, although even party membership or Red Army service did not ensure employment. Ubiquitous complaints reached the central leadership from communists and veterans, who were worn out from sacrifice and overwork, and now discarded. Their appeals were rife with expressions of incredulity and indignation at their treatment by the government they had brought to power. Unemployed people shared a pervasive sense of hopelessness and uselessness. Supplicants commonly described the pain of being a burden in a system that vilified idleness. The irony of being unemployed in a workers’ state was not lost on the unemployed themselves. In the new communist society, idleness was perceived as criminal; thus, even the involuntarily idle often sought to demonstrate in their appeals that they were blameless in their indigence. Both the party leadership and society at large were aware that high unemployment, especially of communists, presented political and security risks. Political unrest among the unemployed caused weakness and disunity in the party. And a weak party doubtless would encourage opposition both internally and externally. Average 6

  The use of letters to the center to examine the problems of NEP society was first done by Andrei K. Sokolov, gen. ed., Golos naroda: Pis´ma i otkliki riadovykh sovetskikh grazhdan o sobytiiakh 1918–1932 gg. (Moscow: Rosspen, 1998).

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communists and nonparty citizens alike, incredulous that a country of such vast resources was unable to support its population, shared the leadership’s concern. Fear of unemployment contributed to demands for education and job training. On the one hand, the jobless hoped to improve their marketability through higher education and specialized courses; on the other, those already employed sought education for job security. Obtaining higher education came to be considered a prerequisite for entering, or remaining within, the newly competitive socialist collective. And in a culture in which education traditionally defined elite status, citizens with ambition to rise above their circumstances and communists newly promoted to positions of greater authority felt inadequate without education. Vydvizhentsy (workers promoted to administrative ranks) hoped that education would raise their self-confidence. For their part, cultured citizens and even party leaders held a thinly veiled contempt for the uneducated that discouraged their inclusion in the vanguard of the proletariat. Because of the limited resources of the early Soviet government, however, education, like other branches of government, operated on a restricted budget. The system could not even remotely satisfy the demand, especially for higher education. This situation further threatened the building of socialist society; unequal access to education meant unequal access to the fruits of education. During NEP, higher education remained especially impervious to the throngs of workers and peasants clamoring for admission. Administrators and professors bemoaned the influx of “zero” students entering universities with little preparation and a working-class background. Since, therefore, the education system could not, or would not, meet the demand, the government made admission to courses and schools more difficult through arbitrary impediments and requirements. Moreover, poverty and, in the case of peasants, simple lack of access to the most basic tools of education impeded advancement. Both the Bolsheviks and widespread elements throughout society assumed that the Soviet Union would have to raise the general level of education and culture of its population to compete with the West, particularly with the English and Americans, who were used as a yardstick for material success. Thus, many Soviet citizens endeavored to do their duty and educate themselves. Unfortunately, many fulfilled that duty, only to find that they remained unemployed. Their frustration was profound. Mutation of the Revolutionary Struggle Lenin’s abandonment of radical communism in 1921, intended as a temporary change in economic strategy, meant that both individual businesses and individuals would have to survive on their own.7 According to one observer, the principal change under the new system was that suddenly “the bulk of the population was obliged to shift for

7

  In his study of Moscow metal workers, Kevin Murphy concluded that as NEP matured, the threat of unemployment eroded worker solidarity and collective action and paved the way for Stalinism. See Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory (2005; repr., Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007), 226.

494 Elizabeth A. Harry

themselves [as in the West] … only [it was] vastly more difficult.”8 Security, the real benefit that people hoped to gain in their social contract with the government under communism, no longer formed part of the bargain; the contract was null and void. A young, unemployed woman from Baku, abandoned by her relatives and slowly dying from starvation, pleaded with Stalin for work of any kind, lamenting that “on top of everything else, I am utterly alone.”9 In effect, with the introduction of NEP in 1921, the definition of revolution changed. For the majority, the market made competition for work and survival the goals of everyday life. In May 1923, the party secretary of Kostroma guberniia (province) noted in a confidential letter to the Central Committee a “great surge of revolutionary spirit” among peasant and working-class youth, who were joining the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in record numbers. The secretary noted, however, that, “in any case, the incentive [to join] is material.”10 Competition for resources became the route to survival not only on an individual plane, but also on the organizational level throughout the government and party apparatus, discouraging cooperation and consultation among government agencies. Organizations and factories chafing at economic independence became indignant at the suggestion that a socialist government would sooner see the demise of industry and, consequently, of jobs than subsidize their operations. In a March 1922 letter to an administrator of Glavmetall (central administration for the metallurgical industry), the director of the automobile trust TsUGAZ protested the recommendation to turn over auto factories within the trust to khozraschet (cost accounting; industrial self-sufficiency under NEP), arguing that such a measure would sound the factories’ death knell. The director appealed to the administrator, “not only as the director of TsUGAZ, but also as member of a party to which we both have the honor of belonging.” As it was, the director observed, workers were on the verge of striking at the factories because TsUGAZ did not have the money to pay them and was struggling to fill orders under a shrinking credit supply. The director concluded that already in two or three weeks in such a situation, the auto factories will die a natural death from disintegration. Personally, I do not have the least desire to be their gravedigger.… For four years I scraped along during the Republic’s most difficult time.… In your position you can find some obliging people who will not explain themselves to you with long letters, but who will do everything you want them to, but I, happily, cannot. I consider myself responsible to the revolution. 8

  Edwin Ware Hullinger, The Reforging of Russia (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1925), 7.

9

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 517, l. 65. There is evidence that Stalin actually helped the woman; at least, he gave instructions to that effect: l. 64 is a directive to Narkomtrud (People’s Commissariat of Labor) to find her work. But this type of attention, especially to a nonparty citizen, seems to have been unusual. In the large sample of letters used for this study, appeals from women to the central party leadership on any subject were rare. 10

  Ibid., op. 67, d. 109, ll. 163–71.

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Echoing this message, an auto factory director sent a long discourse to the government on the history of the automobile industry in foreign countries, arguing that nowhere was a national auto industry able to thrive without “consistent government support.”11 But in the Soviet situation, that support was not forthcoming, either for the auto industry or for individual citizens. As the factory director suggested, many found this new emphasis on individualism inconsistent with socialism. Unemployment and Abandonment As the preceding discussion implies, building socialism in NEP Russia became not only difficult but, ideologically, an oxymoron. There was palpable and widespread concern that the revolution’s intended beneficiaries were not receiving an equal chance to participate in the construction of Soviet society. That perception grew along with the rate of unemployment, which John Maynard Keynes described in the mid-1920s as “severe and increasing.”12 The plight of the indigent was exacerbated by the Soviet government’s inability to extend financial assistance to all those who needed it: the unemployed; pensioners, invalids, workers, and peasants with incomes below subsistence; and the armies of besprizorniki (homeless children) that roamed the Soviet countryside.13 Rural migration exacerbated urban overcrowding and unemployment. Between 1923 and 1928, unemployment grew steadily, the national rate more than doubling, and in Moscow, almost tripling. The higher rate in the capital was due to a constant rate of immigration of 100,000 per year. Moreover, these estimates were probably low after 1925, when registration with the ineffectual labor exchanges became voluntary. As many appeals to the center indicate, the unemployed held out little hope for finding work through labor exchanges and often did not bother to register with them. After 1925, there was a “free market” in labor, meaning that employers had even more freedom to hire whom they would. In practice, this meant that skilled workers and union members were laid off in favor of migrant labor, peasants who were willing to work under any conditions and for lower wages.14 11

  Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE) f. 4086, op. 1, d. 33, ll. 20–22, 24.

12

  John Maynard Keynes, A Short View of Russia (London: L. and Virginia Woolf, 1925), 21.

13

  Unemployment assistance from the Moscow government was well below the minimum wage and did not extend to migrant laborers (who had to demonstrate three months’ residency to obtain assistance). William J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 140, 159. 14

  Ibid., 136–38, 144. Chase noted that economic necessity was the biggest cause for rural migration to the cities. He also noted that, until 1925, employers hired workers illegally—evading the labor exchange—in order to hire whom they wished. The trade unions exerted pressure against this trend until November 1924, when peasant migrants were granted equal rights on the exchange. From January 1925 to March 1927, the “free market” in labor gave employers total control over hiring. The worsening of employment conditions for urban workers after

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Among the various social groups, women consistently suffered most from unemployment. Employers routinely laid off women to make room for men, as after demobilization in 1921 and 1922, despite the government’s decree that women and men should be considered on an equal basis for layoffs. Nor did women benefit after 1925, when unskilled male peasant laborers were hired in preference to women. Under conditions of severe unemployment, discrimination against women in the workforce held true, even in traditionally female-dominated industries, such as textiles.15 By the late 1920s, unemployment had reached close to 20 percent, about the rate on average experienced in the West during the Great Depression. This estimate included only those officially registered by the trade unions and the 281 local labor exchanges. Peasants swelling the urban workforce aggravated Lenin’s celebrated smychka (worker-peasant alliance), causing resentment that later contributed to worker support for the collectivization campaign under Stalin.16 Rural overpopulation and competition for land caused friction in the village that would be exploited through divide-and-conquer tactics by party activists and administrators during collectivization.17 Competition for work created conflicts not only between workers and peasants, but also among various strata of the working class. The working class was made up of skilled and unskilled workers, who had significantly different goals. The skilled labor force was opposed to wage equality after the revolution and fought to preserve their relatively higher status. Nonetheless, because of a general superfluity of labor, skilled workers scarcely fared better under NEP than the unskilled. Moreover, in the campaign to raise productivity, management aggravated competition among workers, whom they separated into productive, “proletarian” workers and “backward” workers who opposed productivity campaigns. The result was that competition not only failed to heighten “socialist corporate consciousness,” but further alienated workers from the means of production.18 That lack of a collective consciousness was reflected dramatically in the fate of the besprizorniki. The increasing exclusivity of the socialist collective, operating on 1925, combined with the general rise in unemployment, may account for the fact that appeals to the center concerning unemployment appear more numerous during the later NEP years. 15

  Ibid., 149–50. For a comprehensive discussion of women’s unemployment and poverty during NEP—which in many cases drove them to prostitution—see Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially chap. 3. 16

  Weiner, “Razmychka?”, 144–55.

17

  David L. Hoffmann, “Land, Freedom, and Discontent: Russian Peasants of the Central Industrial Region prior to Collectivisation,” Europe-Asia Studies 46, 4 (1994): 637–48. Discontented landless peasants made inroads throughout the decade into rural soviets, which remained dominated by the “peasant farmers” for some time after the revolution. See Orlando Figes, “The Village and Volost Soviet Elections of 1919,” Soviet Studies 40, 1 (1988): 21–45. 18

  John B. Hatch, “Labor Conflict in Moscow, 1921–1925,” in Fitzpatrick, Rabinowitch, and Stites, Russia in the Era of NEP, 58–71.

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both material and emotional levels, becomes clear in the following. In May 1927 the Central Committee received an appeal, “or more precisely a huge request,” from a bezprizornik, an 18-year-old who had been orphaned at an early age. The supplicant “grew up in train stations,” working at casual labor of various kinds to support himself, and saw that “everywhere [there was] injustice, everywhere the influence … of NEP.” Eventually he found work in construction, and “began a new life, the life of a producer.” But this newfound security and sense of purpose proved to be short-lived when he lost his job “because of politics.” He apparently spoke out against the factory administration’s policies on wage rates and distribution of work among artels (peasants’ or workers’ cooperatives). He was fired, and “the party cell could not do anything about it.” Following this, the author found himself once again on the streets, suffering from deep emptiness: Now … when I see a meeting, hear the “hoorah!”, then I am prepared to give everything to the masses, dissolve into them, tears uncontrollably well up in my eyes, but this dream is cruelly choked by the deep root of bureaucratism and narrow-mindedness. Explain to me and help me so that this [dream] in my head will not be in vain, use me, for that, I only need the minimum for life and nothing more.19 Notable here is the youth’s apparent willingness to fulfill whatever purpose the collective required of him, in return for a chance to survive. The appeal further shows how the loss of work and lack of inclusion caused not only material but also emotional distress.20 The number of homeless children in the 1920s ranged from the conservative estimate in the Bol´shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Great Soviet Encyclopedia) of seven million, to “the precise figure of 9,351,467 children to be found in an émigré source.” Soviet officials attempting to find a remedy were stymied in their efforts both by 19

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 518, l. 23.

20   Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 293, claims that orphanages became fertile recruiting grounds for the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Alan Ball notes that while Narkompros administered 90 percent of the detdoma (orphanages) during the 1920s, other government agencies, including the OGPU, also operated detdoma, colonies, and clinics. The primary difference between the detdoma run by Narkompros and those by OGPU was that the latter stressed discipline in reforming street children. Ball also notes that Feliks Dzerzhinskii, head of the OGPU, was notorious for his concern for homeless children. Dzerzhinskii had approached Narkompros head Lunacharskii as early as 1921 and insisted that the GPU assist in the task of saving them. See Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 137, 157. A less sympathetic assessment of Dzerzhinskii and his motives for helping abandoned children is given by Lennard D. Gerson, The Secret Police in Lenin’s Russia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976), 128–29. The source for the claim that the NKVD recruited from the detdoma apparently came from the US Air Force’s interviews of defectors from the Soviet secret police. See Gerson, Secret Police, 296 n. 129.

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the enormity of the problem and by the lack of resources under NEP. All government agencies saw their budgets drastically reduced, including Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment) and others responsible for the besprizorniki. The burden for a solution fell on local government agencies that could not afford it. Officials found the causes for homelessness not only in the upheaval caused by war and famine, but also in “the social conditions of the middle part of the decade,” specifically, rural youth escaping poverty and abuse or parental exploitation of their labor, or seeking work and excitement in the city; family disintegration; and inadequate schools for both regular and special education. The problem of the besprizorniki that existed in the 1920s was not solved until the 1930s, when Stalin’s industrialization drive offered employment opportunities for older children and educational opportunities for younger ones.21 Young people comprised one of the biggest groups among the unemployed, since they had neither seniority nor experience.22 In his letter of greeting to Lenin in October 1922, a representative of the Komsomol from Kursk province wrote that “for us this greeting is symbolic. In Il´ich, communist youth sees for itself a model in the struggle against exploiters and, especially, in the current conditions of NEP which sharply aggravate conditions of existence of youth.” The komsomolets (member of the Communist Youth League) wished Lenin a speedy recovery, so that he might continue to be a model for Soviet youth.23 But to what purpose, one might ask? Members of the Komsomol, who were encouraged to educate themselves in preparation for leadership in the campaign to build socialism, were presented with little opportunity for building any future, socialist or otherwise. A komsomolets from a village in Voronezh province wrote to Stalin in 1927, pleading for work. The youth had written previously to Kalinin,24 but without result. His next appeal, to the head of the Komsomol, Comrade Chaplin, was equally fruitless: “his answer was, ‘we have in our ranks 1,000 unemployed komsomoltsy, and we cannot get work for everyone.’”25 The desperate situation of youth came through to the party leadership in countless appeals for work. A sixteen-year-old from Rostov-on-Don appealed in February 21

  Margaret K. Stolee, “Homeless Children in the USSR, 1917–1957,” Soviet Studies 40, 1 (1988): 64–83. Of course, as Stolee observed, other initiatives under Stalin, such as collectivization and the resulting famine, caused new waves of besprizorniki. 22

  Unemployment for juveniles became increasingly severe during NEP. The number of juveniles employed in industry had dropped from 120,000 in 1921 to only 5,000 by 1923. High unemployment exacerbated the plight of the besprizornye. Youth also fared poorly; by 1928, 75 percent of registered unemployed nationwide were ages 18 to 29. Like women, juveniles often were not hired for lack of experience, while older workers and union representatives often viewed youth who received some job training as threats, since they were trained and willing to work more intensively. See Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 150–52. 23

  RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 1677, l. 2.

24

  Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was the nominal head of state of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1946, and one of the few Bolshevik leaders of peasant background. 25

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 516, l. 291.

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1927 to Stalin for work of some kind. His father, a communist and inspector with the railroad, had been killed three months earlier under the wheels of a train. Consequently, he and a sister had to support a family of seven.26 The boy’s appeal appeared to have met with some success. It merited a directive to the local party secretary to find him some work.27 Even so, there is no evidence to indicate that Stalin’s directive actually was implemented. Another appeal from an orphan came in March 1927, from the eldest brother of a family in Perm. His mother was dead and his father killed by the Whites during the Civil War. Since his family had no other means of subsistence, the boy’s sisters were entering into a life of prostitution in order to feed them. Their appeals for help were rejected by the local party organization.28 A seventeen-year-old from Leningrad appealed to Stalin in March of the same year, requesting help to find work, because he possessed neither boots nor a coat to face the Leningrad winter.29 Another appeal for work or some means of subsistence came from a komsomolets in Moscow, who had enlisted in the Red Army at the age of sixteen, and whose family and friends back home in Kaluga province were all dead. The supplicant wanted to avoid “wandering around the city and being considered homeless.”30 Such a fate was harder still for civil war veterans. Making the transition to the relative insecurity of NEP civilian life was difficult for former soldiers. Once demobilization began in earnest, Red Army soldiers fell into sixth place in priority for food rationing.31 Distraught, a former Red Army soldier from Nizhnii Novgorod whose monthly pay of 22 rubles was insufficient to sustain his family implored the leaders “to plot to fight NEP and strangle it like a dog, so that my mother and sister do not die of hunger.”32 The veterans’ level of sacrifice and subsequent desperation were enormous. In one pathetic case, a former soldier who had suffered serious wounds and become addicted to morphine, appealed to Stalin to be euthanized.33 The government’s seeming disregard toward the revolution’s most ardent supporters caused bitterness. One Civil War veteran, an invalid with ten years of service in the army and a family of four, wrote: “My family and I live in inhuman conditions … but people are still deaf, the revolution has still not reeducated them.… It is not

26 27

  Ibid., l. 135.

  Ibid., l. 134.

28

  Ibid., l. 274.

29

  Ibid., ll. 35–37.

30 31

  Ibid., d. 517, l. 206.

  Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 8, 130.

32

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 517, l. 152.

33

  Ibid., d. 518, ll. 207–10.

500 Elizabeth A. Harry

their affair if someone else is dying, as long as their own family enjoys well-being and to see that causes pain in my heart.”34 In their frustrated search for employment, those who were not party members often suspected that the latter were favored. Thus ran the appeal from a recently demobilized peasant from Nizhnii Novgorod province. He expressed his indignation in a letter written in April 1927, addressed not to Stalin but to Kalinin, “defender and patron of the poor.” The peasant explained that he and his fellow peasant-soldiers had been promised a new life upon demobilization. In exchange for fulfilling their duties they would receive “work without having to stand in line, lumber on favorable terms, privileged access to insurance and living space, and so on.” However, the soldiers encountered “just the opposite.” The supplicant had already gone four months without a job. In his frustration and disillusionment, the peasant wondered where one could find justice, and asked, For what did I serve? The fate of tribulations and contempt of local authorities? And all for what, for what… Now, wherever I go to present my services for work they always ask me: “party member, trade union?” What stupid questions. I maintain that all have an equal desire to live. Do party members or trade union members really work more or carry more responsibility in the Red Army? Not in the least.35 Yet, while nonparty citizens complained about the advantages that party cadres enjoyed, the fact was that party membership was no guarantee of survival, let alone privilege. One party member, a former fireman in Saratov province, pointed out his willingness to go wherever the party sent him, and had moved “without complaint … when it was necessary for the party.” But now he found himself in Saratov, where the raikom (district-level party committee) was unable to find work not only for him, but for many other fellow communists as well. The fireman ended his appeal by requesting that they give him “the opportunity to exist.”36 Another desperate appeal came in September 1927 from a party member in Artemov raion (in the Sverdlovsk region in the Urals). His wife, herself a former party worker, at the time cared for their baby, and both husband and wife suffered from tuberculosis. The husband wrote his appeal to the central government from jail, where he was serving time for assaulting a militiaman in a state of drunken despair. He was concerned that his family had neither winter clothes nor food.37 Another appeal for financial assistance came from a party member, a family man with a wife and two children, who in 1921, while working for the party, had suffered “psychological damage” at the hands of bandits. The

34

  Ibid., d. 517, l. 38.

35

  Ibid., l. 34.

36

  Ibid., d. 516, l. 192.

37

  Ibid., d. 524, l. 201.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

501

supplicant had been in and out of sanatoria and was unable to work, and his family was starving: I should move away, I should go far from home. I should make a clean break in life, because at home I howl, I cry, I tear my hair out, I am a nervous wreck—I see terrible visions. I beg you to save me. I leave home … I leave my naked, hungry family. The children cry: “Papa, do not go, we want to eat.” … It is shameful that a party member should have to write this, but I am telling you this and howling like no one else.38 Many found it difficult to comprehend that ten years after the revolution, even party members went untreated and unfed in a socialist state. This reaction was common in appeals from veterans who were also party members. These supplicants commonly expressed astonishment at the party’s failure to provide either work or support. One appeal for work came from a komsomolets and Red Army veteran from Astrakhan´. His father and brother had both been communists; the father was killed in the line of duty, and the brother disappeared in Moscow “without a trace.” His sister had also been killed by “a band of Antonov’s men.”39 The supplicant himself had previously searched for work through the labor exchange without result, and his appeal to the gubkom (province-level party committee) for work had been refused, with the explanation that he was only a member of the Komsomol. Incredulous over the response, the komsomolets asked: “Would the authorities really allow a revolutionary to die?”40 This astonishment is echoed in a letter to Kalinin in May 1927 from a komsomolets from Vladimir province. The author appealed for work or a pension for his family. The father and eldest son had been killed in the war. The family at first received some assistance from the government, but subsequently got nothing, and the young communist could not get work at the local factory. He fairly sputtered with indignation: And truly, Mikhail Ivanovich, look, we lost two for the cause of the October Revolution, and the third worked on behalf of society. But now—they will not give assistance or hire me—no help of any kind from anywhere—and truly we will die—the ones who defended October, who gave up our lives—and now, and now, although I have been a komsomolets since 1921, with pleasure I would go and beat and cut up those communists who are sitting there now at the Kol´chuginsk factory—sitting there sweating and do not know anything else about it.… You know there are a lot of rich peasants around here who 38

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 118.

39

  A. A. Antonov was a Socialist Revolutionary and the leader of a major anti-Bolshevik peasant revolt in the Tambov region at the end of the Civil War. The revolt was crushed in 1921, but Antonov survived another year with a small band of followers. 40

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 524, l. 116.

502 Elizabeth A. Harry

are working, and they will be able to survive, but our brother-bedniak [poor peasant] soon will not be returning.41 The young communist’s appeal strongly suggests the widespread suspicion among unemployed supplicants that there were jobs for those with connections. As if in response to this suspicion, the factory cell secretary, who was the object of the desperate youth’s wrath, answered his charge by assuring the authorities that he would be happy to hire the komsomolets as soon as there was a vacancy. But, as it was, there were not enough positions open at the factory to hire other party members.42 Another interesting and common aspect of this appeal is the tendency of exasperated supplicants to turn their frustration on scapegoats or favored groups perceived to benefit, in this case, “rich peasants.” Nevertheless, the soldiers of the revolution had fulfilled their end of the bargain and demanded that the government now do the same. Thus, a party candidate from Zhitomir okrug (district) in Ukraine appealed to Stalin in June 1927 for work. The supplicant had served as a commander and commissar in the Civil War and still had bullet fragments in both legs, but could obtain neither work nor a pension. Despite his sacrifice for the sake of the revolution, the veteran became “unnecessary,” an outcome that clearly astonished him.43 Similarly, a former Red Army soldier sent his demands to the central authorities in July 1927. After demobilization, he had been hospitalized for some time but was subsequently unable to secure a place in a sanitarium because he no longer served in the army. The soldier, who had worked as a daily wage laborer in Moscow, had for two months been without work: As for relatives, I have not had any since 1914.… I gave the best years of my life … but now have been thrown out on the street, no good to anybody. I only ask that I be allowed to exist. I need: 1. medical treatment. 2. means for survival.… I honestly fulfilled my duty until the last and to the letter [during the Civil War].… I am convinced and believe now, as I did then, that we always must defend [the revolution] against the white parasite.44 Evident here is the common progression from distress over individual insecurity to the wish or expectation, even demand, to eliminate enemies. Unemployed party members deeply resented their perceived dependence for work on class enemies. In 1927 a party member from Chernigov province begged the Central Committee

41

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 42.

42

  Ibid., l. 38.

43

  Ibid., l. 142.

44

  Ibid., l. 199.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

503

to answer my question—why … is it impossible for a communist to find work anywhere, and only go to meetings from which nothing good comes. I have been out of the army for six months and cannot find work anywhere.… I waited as long as I could, but now have to go to the nepman for work. Give me an answer.45 As the rigors of war service and party work took their toll, veterans and party members often became invalids due to disease, most commonly tuberculosis, or nervous exhaustion. Thus, the party was constantly in need of new blood. On the eve of the “Lenin enrollment” (recruitment of new party members in 1924), the vast majority of old communists were suffering from “physical and moral exhaustion.”46 In early 1924, during internal discussions on party democracy, one party cell in an electro-mechanical plant in Moscow province proposed an addendum to their resolution on unity that was seemingly unrelated. The addendum urged that measures be taken “as soon as possible to provide for party members losing their health on the revolutionary front struggle.”47 The party’s appeal for unity, it seemed, prompted a reciprocal appeal from party workers for support. Besides incredulity and resentment, worn-out revolutionaries expressed a feeling of uselessness. The feeling of emptiness outside the collective was most profound for those who had once belonged to it. A request for work—from a twice-wounded Civil War veteran from Cherepovets province—echoed a common refrain: Why, comrades, when I was needed by Soviet Russia, then they knew me and found me useful and considered me a son of the proletarian defense, but now that I have been wounded and crippled, I became of no use to anybody?48 Along with anger and resentment, unemployed and abandoned communists and veterans often expressed shame. The more desperate supplicants became, the more deeply they felt their disgrace. A party member and Civil War veteran, four times wounded during his service, appealed from Moscow in April 1927, as many did, “as a communist,” hoping that the center would pay attention to one of their own, “with a request to give me proper advice on how to get myself out of this stupid situation.” The veteran and his family had no possessions to sell, and to expect help was apparently useless, since I am nothing to the party. If some party member named Tosov kicks the bucket from hunger, you can replace him with anyone you please.… In fact, I myself would not be here crying for help, but when you have a family and a hungry baby, you are prepared to do 45

  Ibid., d. 517, l. 83.

46   T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R. 1917–1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 117. 47

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 11, d. 205, l. 9.

48

  Ibid., op. 85, d. 516, l. 303.

504 Elizabeth A. Harry

anything. I hope, comrade Stalin, that all the same you will give me an opportunity to escape from this situation.49 Similarly, in March 1927 an old revolutionary and party member from Voronezh province who had worked for many years in the revolutionary underground appealed for assistance, because he and his wife were both ill. Together they received a monthly pension of 11 rubles, 63 kopecks, and found themselves in “the most critical circumstances … things could not be worse.” A previous appeal addressed to the Central Committee had generated no help. The old communist now pleaded with Stalin personally “not to allow a party member to be subjected to the ridicule of the kulak element.”50 Another appeal came from a party member from Saratov province, who had been a batrak (agricultural laborer) and served in the Civil War and who had contracted tuberculosis. Unable to work or obtain support for medical treatment, he sent an astonished appeal to Stalin: How offensive, how disappointing, when I was healthy—I was necessary, but when I became ill everyone turned away from me, did not even give me the means to live, I cannot work.… Surely this cannot be! Surely I have earned a cure from the government wherever necessary. Have I really earned this contempt, even though I lost my health for the sake of the workers? Such treatment of a worker is unfair.… It cannot be.51 Because Soviet society condemned it, idleness, voluntary or not, was perceived as criminal. Those without work often felt that they were being punished for some unnamed crime, their outrage and desperation mixed with guilt over unknown transgressions. As Red Army units were disbanded, soldiers often saw demobilization as a punishment for some error on their part.52 Many unemployed thus perceived their situation to be not merely shameful. Idleness in a workers’ state implied political unreliability, and so unemployed supplicants often sought to convince the party leadership that they should not be blamed, because they were willing to work. In 1927 a komsomolets from Rostov-on-Don appealed to Stalin for work. He had grown up in Penza province, but during the Civil War part of “Antonov’s band” attacked his village; while defending their home, his father was “cut to pieces with their sabers.” The youth became homeless and could not find work:

49

  Ibid., d. 517, l. 57.

50

  Ibid., d. 516, l. 249. Apparently, the government was not unwilling to extend assistance but cautious in its response. The appeal merited a directive to the Voronezh gubkom to verify the author’s history (ibid., l. 247). 51

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 203.

52

  Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, 176.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

505

“I want to be a worker, but no one will give me the opportunity.”53 There was great irony in the lack of work in a workers’ state, irony not lost on the unemployed themselves. The contradiction between party propaganda and reality was apparent in the appeal of another komsomolets, a former batrak from Ukraine. He complained that in the old days, “when there were landlords,” one was at least “free to earn money.” But now, ten years after the revolution, there was no work to be had at all, and “to live without work is very difficult.” The writer went on to lament that “to beg for help is shameful, only ‘cripples’ beg, and everyone says that a healthy man needs to work, and not beg. But where do you find work?”54 The party’s inability to take effective action to ease unemployment was devastating. The unemployed and indigent commonly described their plight as bezvykhodnyi (hopeless). This was a far cry from the psychological uplift communism had promised to the proletariat. Supplicants often indicated that their appeals were a last resort, as some of them were even considering suicide to escape the hopelessness of their situation; their very lives depended on action from the center. Indeed, who else was there for them, and thousands like them, to appeal to, when local officials turned a deaf ear? One komsomolets, a bedniak and village correspondent from Smolensk province, appealed for assistance.55 He was suffering from tuberculosis and expressed no hope of recovery in his current circumstances. For him, a “passionate [desire for] building Soviet power” was closely connected to escaping “cold, hunger, want, [and] poverty.” He appealed to Stalin: For a long time I have been a komsomolets and active within the school cell as head secretary.… Comrades! Now, when I look back over this appeal objectively, it is too, too painful. Sometimes I think about killing myself, but … I still want to live, I am still only twenty-two years old.… Comrade Stalin, I make my request to you.56 Supplicants occasionally sought to establish some kind of personal connection with the party leadership in an attempt to escape the killing anonymity. Thus, a komsomolets in Siberia who had formerly served in the Red Army and was now an “invalid of labor” requested only to see “the leader of the Comparty [Communist Party]” and meet with him, “to receive advice for further existence.”57 53

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 524, l. 145.

54

  Ibid., d. 517, l. 186.

55

  The so-called Rabsel´kor (worker and peasant correspondent) movement was instituted in the early Soviet state to enlist workers and peasants in contributing articles to Soviet journals and thus become actively involved in the production of Soviet literature and propaganda. 56

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 524, l. 157. On the high party debate in the 1920s over the role and function of the Rabsel´kor movement, see Jeremy Hicks, “From Conduits to Commanders: Shifting Views of Worker Correspondents,” Revolutionary Russia 19, 2 (2006): 131–49. 57

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 517, l. 203.

506 Elizabeth A. Harry

In order to find work or assistance of any kind, however, one had to warrant inclusion in the family of labor, and so supplicants who apparently were not workers in the strict sense nevertheless were careful to identify themselves as such. Thus, an actress with a worker-peasant theater in Moscow appealed to Stalin for help by emphasizing her working-class status. She had been married to a student in a military academy, but they split up; she continued to live in his dormitory for lack of other quarters. The actress had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance for an operation and, upon returning, she discovered she was evicted. “That is the kind of country we live in,” she wrote, “where laborers do not have the right to a place to live!”58 Notably, the actress identifies herself not as an artist or performer, but as a worker. Both the superfluity of the unemployed and their attempt to escape it through connections were illustrated matter-of-factly by a party member writing to Stalin in July 1927: I am in the Bashkir organization of the VKP(b), which at the present time in one district alone has ninety unemployed party members, the majority of whom are workers, and without hope of receiving work anywhere. I find myself in the most critical circumstances and have no means of existence. I wish to go to Central Asia, or maybe still anywhere you see fit to send me … or maybe I need to come to you, in order to get acquainted.… I have been a worker and party member since 1919, voluntarily served in the Red Army from 1918 to 1924 inclusive, and finished officers’ training with the … R.K.K.A. I was demobilized in 1924. I await your answer with impatience.59 Political Risk of Unemployment As the preceding discussion illustrates, the assumption that the communist government would provide for its people was widespread, especially among party members and veterans, who considered both their status and sacrifice beyond that of average citizens. The great numbers of desperate and disaffected communists and Red Army veterans, not to mention nonparty workers, posed a grave political danger of which the Party was fully aware. For example, the Leningrad party committee directed the labor exchange to extend special attention to communists and party candidates through quotas, and reminded local party committees of their responsibility in finding work for party members.60 Those who were unhappy with the Party’s treatment could be drawn into opposition. Supplicants lost no time in making this point to the center, trying to manipulate the leadership’s omnipresent fear of losing their tenuous hold on power. Disaffection and demands for security appear to have reached a peak in 1927, coinciding with the apparent threat of war with England. Collective insecurity height58

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 52.

59

  Ibid., l. 57.

60

  Ibid., op. 67, d. 352, ll. 36–37.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

507

ened perceptions of individual insecurity and vice versa. A demobilized Red Army soldier residing in Moscow had been placed with his family on a waiting list for an apartment; others like him had been on the list for two or more years. Writing to Stalin in 1927, the soldier wished to speak to the leader personally about the problem since, as he pointed out, “the morale of the Red Army depends on such questions.” The soldier wrote that, while serving in the army from 1921 to 1926, the only thing that kept his spirits up was the promise of a good apartment in which to live “and, in case of war, which will come for sure, my wife and baby would have their corner, and no one could throw them out.”61 The year 1927 was also conspicuous in another regard: it was the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The occasion caused many to reflect on how little they, as individuals, had progressed and, by extension, how little had changed for the masses of Soviet citizens. In October a party member and veteran of ten years’ service in the Red Army wrote to his comrades in the center to vent his anger. He explained bitterly that he and his family would be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the revolution starving and freezing to death in an unheated attic. Here, they had been waiting in line for housing, having been registered with the Krasnaia Presnia district soviet in Moscow, for almost a year. The supplicant appealed to the secretariat “as a communist” and implored the central authorities to rectify his situation “as soon as possible, since it is already getting colder.” The veteran warned that if “the highest organs of the party could not take care of their members,” then perhaps it was time to take them to court. He found such neglect of those who had served the revolution unacceptable. Lest his readers miss the point, the soldier left no doubt as to the possible consequences of such neglect: In my opinion, the Central Committee of the party needs to pay attention not only to me, but to party members in general, and determine their situations and take appropriate measures to get the situation in hand, so that there would be no “aggrieved” people among party members, for, as we say, the “aggrieved” border on opposition.62 Just as the general population, party leaders were especially anxious over domestic problems. In June 1924—just months after Lenin’s death—the Moscow party committee discussions showed deep anxiety that the labor exchange was too “remote” from the needs of the unemployed. Committee members suggested that the unemployed be sent to the country to work as field hands, or to sanatoria or rest homes. They also stressed the necessity of paying special attention to unemployed trade union members, and of approaching the question of closing factories with the “utmost care.”63

61

  Ibid., op. 85, d. 521, ll. 139–40.

62

  Ibid., d. 515, l. 75.

63

  Ibid., op. 67, d. 122, ll. 1–2.

508 Elizabeth A. Harry

Solutions to Unemployment Concern over unemployment was not limited to the party leadership. As early as August 1923, a citizen from Kiev appealed for the second time to Trotsky to impress upon him the gravity of the problem of overpopulation and unemployment, and the urgent need to colonize Siberia.64 He reminded Trotsky of Lenin’s injunction to “repartition the earth” and criticized party leaders for their eagerness to send people east, “when the talk was of Kolchak,” and for their silence now, “when there should be discussion about the economic front in the East.”65 The supplicant continued: We have, along with an abundance of vulgar elements that made their appearance especially with NEP and in the presence of an even greater number of scum [mraz´], … a very large number of people (party and nonparty) for whom the revolution is just now beginning. Many of them are falling into apathy, some driven to disappointment, to despair, nearly to suicide, not being able to reconcile reality with the ideal. This is not just because they are unstable, or for lack of ability.… It means that they need to be sent quickly to a different front, not military … but where they can apply their energy … and where there will not be room for parasitic elements to grow.66 Another letter came in 1927 from a Leningrad citizen, with a plan for liquidating unemployment. The plan, based on his assumption that the Soviet Union had almost unlimited land for resettlement, did not take into account the fact that the cities were 64

  Russian colonization of Siberia began in the imperial period. The literature on peasant resettlement is vast; major works include Donald Treadgold, The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957); Richard Pierce, Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917: A Century of Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); L. F. Skliarov, Pereselenie i zemleustroistvo v Sibiri v gody Stolypinskoi agrarnoi reformy (Leningrad: Izdatel´stvo Leningradskogo universiteta, 1962); M. S. Simonova, “Pereselencheskii vopros v agrarnoi politike samoderzhaviia v kontse xix–nachale xx v.,” in Ezhegodnik po agrarnoi istorii vostochnoi Evropy 1965 g. (Moscow: Izdatel´stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1970); B. V. Tikhonov, Pereseleniia v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine xix v.: Po materialam perepisi 1897 g. i pasportnoi statistike (Moscow: Nauka, 1978); Barbara Anderson, Internal Migration during Modernization in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); B. V. Ananich et al., Krizis samoderzhaviia v Rossii, 1895–1917 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984); and E. E. Leizerovich, “Kolonizatsiia i razvitie Kazakhstana i Srednei Azii v xix–xx vekakh: Dinamika natsional´nostei, transformatsiia khoziaistva, perspektivy regionov,” in Rossiia i Vostok: Problemy vzaimodeistviia (Moscow: Institut vostokovedeniia RAN, 1993). 65

  Alexander V. Kolchak was a commander of the Imperial Russian Navy who established an anti-communist government in Siberia and led White Russian opposition to the Bolsheviks during the Civil War from 1918 to 1920. 66

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 84, d. 646, l. 464.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

509

besieged by peasants looking for work. But to the supplicant, the very thought of unemployment in the Soviet Union was inconceivable. He argued that in Western countries, where every piece of land was privately owned, unemployment was the “inevitable accompaniment” of the capitalist system. But in Russia, “all the land belongs to the laboring people.” Each should be able to have his share, and then no one would go hungry.67 The Party ultimately offered an alternate solution to the question of land and hunger. In 1925, reflecting current party policy toward the peasantry, at a guberniia-level party conference in Smolensk the conferees concluded that the unemployment situation is getting worse. To improve it, the peasants must be allowed to become more prosperous, which will enable them to hire more work hands. War Communism must go. One cannot close one’s eyes to the fact that the top layer of peasants will become better off.… Nevertheless, this policy is necessary for the state.68 The party resolution stands in notably stark contrast to the non-party Leningrader’s more egalitarian solution. Another egalitarian solution to the problem came from a “former military sailor” from Vladimir, who in 1927 wrote to complain to Stalin that “the great mass of workers and civil servants find themselves in the situation … that [NEP] strikes such a heavy blow on the proletariat that one cannot even begin to say.”69 This self-appointed spokesman for the proletariat had several recommendations: (1) instead of throwing out such a mass [of people] on the labor exchange, it would be preferable to lower salaries and grant everyone the opportunity to exist; (2) categorically prohibit the concentration of positions, especially in the hands of those civil servants who work in two or more establishments and receive separate salaries from each; (3) in hiring, do not take into consideration seniority or education, but rather capacity to work; (4) prohibit management from hiring workforce from outside of the labor exchange; (5) absolutely give preference in hiring to workers and peasants first, since it is not necessary to employ them the way they were … [under] the tsarist system, that is, the workers and peasants were needed only for military service, but the rest of the time … there was no work [for them]. The author of the appeal was a casualty of staff reductions, apparently in a legal office in which “the son of a priest, the son of a nobleman, an officer, a general, and so on” were employed. Essentially, the sailor was protesting the privileges in pay and 67

  Ibid., op. 85, d. 519, l. 170.

68

  Olga A. Narkiewicz, The Making of the Soviet State Apparatus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970), 88–89.

69

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 516, ll. 123–26.

510 Elizabeth A. Harry

employment opportunities of white-collar workers—who were, in his mind, dominated by former elites. Moreover, his frustration in 1927 over hiring from outside the labor exchange is significant, since this practice became legal only in 1925, and doubtlessly contributed to unemployed workers’ frustration. Finally, his reference to the presumed advantages of those with education ironically points to both growing anti-intelligentsia sentiment and growing demand among workers and peasants for education to escape unemployment. Employment through Education For those seeking work, the question of acquiring education was more immediate than for party theorists. Lenin and the leadership postulated that raising the general standard of living was impossible without raising the cultural level of the population, and elevating the people’s cultural level was impossible without education.70 Thus, for many individual communists the immediate goal was to obtain an education, which would lead to a better job and a higher standard of living, to more personal freedom and leisure time, ultimately to a culturally richer and more satisfying existence—in short, to the type of existence previously enjoyed only by a small elite. Literacy would grant them independence and control over their lives. It thus became axiomatic that, as the population became educated, a redistribution of wealth would occur—if opportunities for education were distributed equally, then the fruits of education would also be equal. The education of the masses, however, would not take place overnight. A group of students at a rabfak (workers’ faculty in higher educational institutions preparing undereducated workers and peasants for coursework) at the Moscow Institute of Communications Engineers wrote to Lenin in September 1922: The October fissure smashed the locks on the doors of this institute, through which had tread only the legs of the bourgeois-noble. At first, workers and peasants timidly began to percolate into the institute in insignificant numbers. These numbers that were insignificant in the beginning now have turned into a wide, working-class torrent.71 70

  On the Bolsheviks’ attempts to integrate and reform Soviet citizens through a government literacy campaign during the 1920s, see Charles E. Clark, Uprooting Otherness: The Literacy Campaign in NEP-Era Russia (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2000). The author begins by citing (anti-Soviet/émigré?) scholarship suggesting that contrary to Soviet government claims, literacy was on the rise in the late tsarist period. Clark asserts that peasants resisted attempts to politicize education under the socialist campaigns and concludes that the people generally resisted reformation attempts by the government during the 1920s. His thesis is at odds with appeals used in this study; Clark also appears to treat the various groups within Soviet society as monolithic (e.g., “the peasant”), with one common, unified agenda (i.e., to use Soviet power to their own individual ends). 71

  RGASPI f. 5, op. 1, d. 1678, l. 45.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

511

Thanks to the revolution, the floodgates of education had opened to workers and peasants. The numbers turned out to be overwhelming.72 Incentives to Education In the competitive atmosphere of NEP, education became almost a prerequisite for membership in the socialist collective. Anxiety over the future was omnipresent for communists and nonparty citizens alike. Supplicants hoped that an education, or more education, would assure their future prospects. Building a socialist society was beginning to look a lot like building a capitalist society. As in a capitalist society, the first consideration was material; most of those appealing to receive an education were primarily motivated by economic considerations. For many, education offered the only escape. Thus, in May 1927, two komsomoltsy from Georgia appealed to Stalin for the opportunity to continue their studies; the translation from Georgian explains that, “from their letter, it is apparent that the boys are very needy; they indicate that their economic situation is so bad that they have considered suicide.”73 Similarly, in September 1927, a komsomolets and unemployed factory and office worker sent an appeal to study to become an “engineer-mechanic,” or to obtain work of some kind, “either in the mines or in an office, it does not matter to me.”74 Another unskilled, semiliterate worker, requested help from Stalin to take courses in machinery. The worker suffered from a nervous ailment contracted during the Civil War, when the Whites attacked his home and family. Now, he had to support his family on an insufficient income and was at the end of his rope. The supplicant’s desperation was evident in his concluding words—Stalin could either shoot him or help him; it was all the same to him.75 The unskilled and inexperienced were the most desperate in their struggle to obtain work or education. In July 1927, a seventeen-year-old komsomolets appealed to Stalin for help; he was unemployed, unskilled, and without connections. In short, his prospects were bleak. He begged: “Save me from hunger and poverty and thieving 72

  Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), examines the lower classes’ struggle for access to and control over education, especially higher education. Many of the appeals that follow shed light on the political trends and developments that Fitzpatrick discusses. William Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State, 151–52, notes that the party’s programs for job training far exceeded the numbers of unemployed who required them. For an important discussion on the rabfaky as social, political, and cultural battlegrounds during NEP, see also Christopher Read, Culture and Power in Revolutionary Russia: The Intelligentsia and the Transition from Tsarism to Communism (London: Macmillan, 1990), chap. 5, “Compromise or Confrontation? The Contours of Cultural Policy, 1923–5,” especially 220–29, “Cultural Policy in Practice: The Workers’ Faculties (Rabfaky).”

73

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 523, l. 5.

74

  Ibid., d. 524, l. 245.

75

  Ibid., d. 514, l. 303.

512 Elizabeth A. Harry

and a thousand times I beg you, help me.” Pleading “simply from my worker’s heart to send me to study,” the youth sought to persuade Stalin to assist him by pointing out that “it would not cost you anything to help me, but would bring me great joy.”76 As in a capitalist society, in NEP Russia individuals sought an edge on their comrade-competitors. A worker from Pskov guberniia appealed for help: he had received permission to attend a rabfak in Leningrad only to be refused for lack of space. “As a member of the proletariat” the aspiring worker possessed a “very strong desire to study,” because he felt he was ill-prepared for “white-collar-social-responsible work, and I feared I would become marginalized and unemployed.”77 This was not an idle fear. Another party member from Leningrad, a vydvizhenets, lost his position in the railroad administration for lack of an engineering degree and appealed, in March 1927, to Stalin for “the opportunity to gain a technical education.” Neither the fact that he was a Red Army veteran with a large extended family to support nor his years of work apparently had made much difference in the decision to let the would-be administrator go: “With the coming of [NEP], I entered the ranks of red specialists, confronting and overcoming every difficulty, never dreaming that after five years of work I would be laid off because I did not have an engineering degree.”78 The incentive to obtain an education, however, was not only material. Lenin had said that the cultural level of the population as a whole was inadequate to the task of government; thus, several appeals requested financial assistance from the center for projects intended to raise the people’s cultural level. In January 1927, a citizen from Ukraine wrote on behalf of a group organizing an “International Academy of the Arts” to provide free education to children of poor workers and peasants in all arts, “from theater to architecture.” The supplicant himself, who came from a poor peasant background, had been a worker with the railroad for thirty years and a political worker in the army, and his brother was in the Komsomol.79 A similar request came from a Red Army soldier enrolled at a military academy in Nizhnii Novgorod. The soldier, a Georgian by nationality, asked Stalin for costumes and other necessities to stage theatrical productions for his school club, since, he argued, “Red Army men have great cultural need.”80 In the early years of Soviet power, the vast majority of party members had little formal education, and elites both in Russia and abroad bemoaned the general lack of intelligence and administrative capability among communists. In describing a local soviet in Simbirsk, one of the famine regions, a Western observer noted that the commissars … are all young men in their twenties, except the chief, who is perhaps in his early thirties.… none of them give the impression of much 76

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 122.

77

  Ibid., l. 224.

78

  Ibid., d. 516, l. 267.

79

  Ibid., d. 521, ll. 9–10.

80

  Ibid., ll. 188–89.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

513

education, great intelligence, or high character.… They are neither serious-minded nor reliable.81 This observer described Chekists (Soviet secret police) as “generally unintelligent and … likely to misinterpret one’s meaning.”82 Another foreigner remarked that the “proletariat, as such, were not fitted to wield supreme power—above all, not the peasant class.… Nor was even the artisan class competent as a whole.”83 Young members of the Komsomol were “fully convinced of their ability to rule Russia,” despite the fact that, “according to Bukharin … 80 to 90 percent of them are political illiterates.”84 These observations were naturally fed by doubts about the lower classes’ capability to rule in general, doubts that appeared as a matter of course to attach to individual party members, regardless of their inherent or uncultivated abilities or practical experience. Administrative competence was assumed, in short, to be a class rather than an individual quality that depended on a background inaccessible per se to the lower classes. Many average communists were aware of the assumption that they were inherently unsuited to government or administrative work. A nonparty specialist who worked on the first Five-Year Plan remarked that workers in the administration made great efforts to appear educated in the presence of technical specialists and administrative personnel.85 Such efforts no doubt stemmed partly from the frustration and hostility of specialists forced to take directives from their less-educated directors. At a meeting of the central administration of the Commissariat of Trade held in July 1925, the work of certain vydvizhentsy was discussed. The protocol stated that “concerning our vydvizhentsy, it has been indicated that some of them adapt themselves, and some are unsuitable. The main use of the vydvizhentsy was in [the area of] inspection. Comrade Shibailo … is of the opinion that vydvizhentsy already have practical experience, but lack theoretical preparation to promote them to responsible work.”86 Thus, semiliterate workers and peasants once placed in positions of authority were perpetually nagged by a sense of their own inadequacy. Party members promoted to administrative positions often felt unprepared. In March 1927, a former factory worker and party member of long standing from Tver guberniia appealed to the center for admittance to an economics institute and for financial aid to support his family. For four years, while holding various administrative posts in the economic sphere, the supplicant had felt his knowledge inadequate to the tasks before him. 81

  Frank Alfred Golder and Lincoln Hutchinson, On the Trail of the Russian Famine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1927), 43–44. 82

  Ibid., 100–01.

83

  Anton Karlgren, Bolshevist Russia (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1927), 12–13.

84

  Ibid., 57–61.

85

  Vladimir V. Tchernavin, I Speak for the Silent (Boston: Hale, Cushman and Flint, 1935), 34–35.

86

  RGAE f. 5240, op. 1, d. 4, l. 25.

514 Elizabeth A. Harry

With study at the university level, however, he felt he would be able “to cope.” The real work of the revolution, of learning how to run the country, had overwhelmed the vydvizhenets: “In the course of my work since the October Revolution in various … posts, I became convinced that my devotion to the party alone was no longer enough; I needed knowledge, and mine was shaky.”87 As some appeals suggest, however, party members’ feelings of inadequacy stemmed from want not of ability but of a formal education that would legitimize their power and authority; the sense of inadequacy was based not on a lack of education, but on a lack of appearing educated. What vydvizhentsy often requested in their appeals was thus not practical administrative training, but “a good Marxist education.” In their position as administrators in a party and a culture that prized theoretical knowledge, they felt a greater need for a theoretical grounding. This was the request of a party member and metalworker by trade who had served in the Red Army and occupied a number of party posts. Although elected to a position in the Tashkent Obkom (regional party committee), “work with which I am completely satisfied,” the supplicant felt deeply inadequate because he had “almost never studied anywhere.”88 There is nothing to suggest that the metalworker’s duties actually outstripped his abilities. Workers and party members aspiring to rise above their social and economic position experienced pressure, from within the party, to acquire theoretical knowledge and culture. In November 1924, Stalin received an appeal from a worker and former party member, who had been expelled during a purge the previous spring due, in part, to “semiliterateness and lack of ambition to replenish his knowledge.” Answering this charge, the supplicant argued that his political training was weak, because, while a volunteer on the Polish front in 1920, the party did not allow him to complete any systematic coursework. Nevertheless, noted the worker, he had endeavored to make up for the deficiency on his own by studying “the program of all Russian [political] parties and reading through if not all, then the majority of works published at the time of the revolution.” The party had also charged the worker with “carelessness” in his work, a charge that was “sharply contradicted” by recommendations filed on his behalf by the factory cell. In fact, the worker argued, his work record at the factory and as an activist within the party was exemplary; he himself had founded his factory party cell.89 In seeking to rise within the new society, education would provide workers and peasants not only theoretical knowledge but also a sense of confidence. In the workers’ clubs established after the revolution, spontaneously and independently from the party, It was characteristic of the work in these circles [within the clubs] that further education in all fields was envisaged. This did not mean a mere acquiring of 87

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 516, ll. 182–83.

88 89

  Ibid., d. 517, l. 210.

  Ibid., op. 84, d. 647, l. 103.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

515

basic knowledge, but the opening of new fields which up to then had been shut off from workers because of their economic and social situation. This included a first visit to a theater or museum, learning to read and write, as well as practicing one’s own artistic abilities or training in rhetorical skills in order to facilitate one’s own confidence in articulating opinions and interests.90 What the workers lacked was not only what higher learning might provide for them in practical terms. Education and culture continued to confer status even in postrevolutionary society. Moreover, that value automatically adhered to those who possessed such education and culture. As a batrak and komsomolets from Ukraine stated in his appeal to Stalin for books (especially the collected works of Lenin), he knew that Stalin was a great man, because “you yourself have written many books [and] brochures,” in contrast to the supplicant himself, who “cannot write such books and do not even own them.”91 Thus, self-esteem and respect from others was a powerful incentive to get an education. Both rural and working-class communists harbored a great desire to learn more about their party in order to remain connected to the elite. In 1924 a komsomolets and factory worker from Belorussia appealed to his comrades in the Central Committee to send him an “outline of Marxism and Leninism, and methods for studying them.” The worker wanted to understand these things myself; I have already begun to sort out a book of Lenin’s on “State and Revolution,” … and therefore I beg you to send me abstracts of books, some knowledge.… I would like to correspond with you; I will write in detail about everything in the country.92 Similarly, a peasant from Viatka province, a party member and veteran of both World War I and the Civil War, appealed to Stalin for an education. He had no cattle or any other means with which to support his family of three, including his “little daughter Roza.” The local party organs would not give him any work. He begged his “dear you [ty] our leader, Comrade Stalin Iosif Vissarionovich, help me in this.” The supplicant lamented that there were those “in our village who laugh at me.”93 Similarly, a fatherless batrak from Kharkov guberniia appealed to Stalin to help him gain admission to “some kind of school,” because he feared he would be unable to do so, on his own, due to “weak technical preparation.” Before the revolution he had been unable to study, since “those who worked for the kulaks never studied.” The batrak, nevertheless, taught himself to read and write, but after the revolution had to work once more “for 90

  Gabriele Gorzka, “Proletarian Culture in Practice: Workers’ Clubs, 1917–1921,” in Essays on Revolutionary Culture and Stalinism: Selected Papers from the Third World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, ed. John W. Strong (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1990), 39.

91

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 517, l. 72.

92 93

  Ibid., op. 84, d. 647, ll. 117–18.

  Ibid., op. 85, d. 517, l. 188.

516 Elizabeth A. Harry

the kulaks,” until he entered the Komsomol. His great desire for a formal education apparently stemmed from a wish to be “on equal footing with intelligent comrades.”94 The idea that the country’s future wealth and prosperity depended on raising the general level of education was widespread. In April 1927, a village teacher from Kursk province appealed to Stalin for financial assistance to build a school. The appeal clearly illustrates the assumption that there was a direct progression from education to culture to wealth to power, for the individual as much as for the country as a whole. As the teacher pointed out, the school would be a testament, on the eve of the revolution’s tenth anniversary, to the Soviet government’s dedication to enlightenment. He hoped that the school would make available to both children and adult peasants “not only literacy, but also educated management of agriculture.” Ultimately, the teacher hoped “to prove that our people could be as educated and rich as, for instance, the Americans or the English.”95 Obstacles to Education Educational opportunities were hardly widespread or equal in their distribution. Admission to institutes of higher education was in great demand, as many appealed to the center for assistance to obtain admission, or to overturn a refusal for admission. Supplicants often attributed refusal to the prejudice of professors or administrators, who wanted to keep out historically undereducated and underprepared students. In theory, supplicants argued, higher education was supposed to be available to all those who qualified, not just those “pupils sent there just because parents [could] provide the funds.”96 In fact, it seemed, the competition was such that access once more seemed to be a privilege of the elite. Yet, even party membership did not automatically entitle one to an education. This fact angered young and old communists alike. A komsomolets and former worker from the Kirghiz republic sent an appeal to the center asking for an opportunity to study in Leningrad. The supplicant had no means to pay for his own education and found it “extremely offensive that children of former nobility and merchants, as it happens in the city of Osh, formerly had the opportunity to study and still do, sometimes even at government expense, even though they scarcely think to study for the sake of the government.”97 The author wondered whether he would have to choose 94

  Ibid., l. 66.

95

  Ibid., l. 196.

96

  George A. Burrell, An American Engineer Looks at Russia (Boston: The Stratford Company, 1932), 184.

97

  Although the government set quotas for admitting workers, peasants, and communists into higher education in 1921–22, apparently the individual VUZy (higher educational institutions, still dominated in the 1920s by non-Marxists) set their own ratios among party, soviet, Komsomol, military, trade union, and individual candidates. This meant that universities were able to enroll large numbers of class-alien students. Moreover, under pressure from Vesenkha, beginning in 1926, “academic criteria had equal or greater weight” than social origin in ad-

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

517

between begging or suicide, and could not believe that his government would allow his efforts to come to such an end. Indeed, he maintained that he had “a right to life, but not the kind of life I lead now, when one road remains for me, the road to death.” He appealed for help to Stalin “as a party member and as a human being” and, closing his appeal, asked whether “it was really true, that only those who have money and good connections have a right to live?”98 Supplicants complained that all types of impediments were placed in the way of party and nonparty citizens clamoring to obtain an education. Competition for places in rabfaky and every other kind of educational establishment compelled the government to create arbitrary barriers to make admission more difficult. Age requirements were one device for limiting access to education. One komsomolets from Baku, whose father worked in oil production, appealed to Stalin for assistance in obtaining a place at a communist university. He had been refused admission because of his youth and lack of party tenure. Yet, the young communist pleaded with his leader to grant him the right to continue his education “while I am still young and I have the energy.”99 A twenty-year-old komsomolets residing in Vladimir, a batrak since the age of ten who had long been unemployed, echoed these sentiments. Despite his lack of means, the batrak was active in party work but was forced to lead a vagrant existence, because of his low pay. The officials had rejected his application to a VUZ, citing his youth. The homeless youth hoped that Comrade Stalin could lend him some assistance and answer his plea, in which case he “could say that all the same I have a comradely friend and brother in the TsK VKP(b).”100 Even though impediments existed for everyone, the young found it more difficult to get an education, just as they did in their search for work. A peasant komsomolets from Tver guberniia requested Stalin’s help for admission to study in Leningrad. The gubkom of the Leningrad Komsomol organization had refused to support him in his endeavors, suggesting that he find his own means. The young peasant nevertheless insisted on his right to obtain special training in order to “improve” himself, pointing out that “there is no law in our Soviet, communist, free government prohibiting anyone … from studying.” He cited Lenin’s famous exhortation to Soviet youth to “study, study, and study some more.”101 Barriers to admission also included various types and lengths of party tenure. For instance, one party member and Red Army veteran from Ukraine appealed to central authorities in September 1927 for the opportunity to obtain training for propaganda work. His appeal with the local authorities had been tossed back and forth, and, “in the end, I came to the conclusion that I would never be admitted, because my onemission to higher education. See Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 89–90, 106. 98

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 517, l. 197.

99

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 238.

100 101

  Ibid., l. 10.

  Ibid., d. 516, l. 145.

518 Elizabeth A. Harry

year party tenure was insufficient.”102 Similarly, a communist from Voronezh province who had been in the party only two years appealed to the center for assistance in May 1927. It seemed that a new rule had been promulgated, providing that acceptance into a Komvuz (communist university) required party tenure of a minimum of five years. The supplicant, son of a batrak, argued that the new rule discriminated against those with lengthy party candidatures. He had been a candidate for four years; for a time, only workers from the bench were being accepted into the party. As a batrak and soldier until 1924, the supplicant felt he had been held back arbitrarily. Although he had received some education in the army, he “naturally considered it insufficient” and thus sought admission for further study.103 Yet, for many, neither age, nor veteran status, nor party or class affiliation would suffice for admission to education. A party aktiv (militant), Civil War veteran, and former miner from the Donbass appealed for assistance to continue his education. Orphaned as a baby, the supplicant had supported himself from an early age; but after studying at a rabfak for only one year, he left his educational pursuits to do “practical work.” He pleaded with Stalin “as a party comrade,” since, after all, he wished to study not only for himself, but “in order to be in the avant garde.”104 Another party member and former Red Army man from Kursk requested help in September 1927 for admission to a rabfak which he had been refused on the basis that he was too old. He argued, however, that it was “better late, than never” for him to get an education and be “of greater benefit to the cause of the working class and peasantry and party in general.” He contended that, as a communist, he would need “to lead the masses in the decisive struggle against the worldwide bourgeoisie, and that would be soon.”105 Yet another party member, a student at the Institute of Red Professors in Moscow, wrote to complain that party members younger than he—and not even workers by origin—were being promoted to further study, while he was left behind. This was unfair, the supplicant argued, considering that he had ten years on the bench and fifteen years’ active party work.106 The fact that the government constantly erected such arbitrary and shifting barriers to education caused great frustration and disappointment for those seeking to better themselves and, in so doing, further the cause of socialist construction. One classic horror story came from a bedniak and komsomolets from Siberia, who wrote in August 1927 that he had been trying to enter a party school for two years. Red tape had held up his application, until he finally was accepted to study for the upcoming fall term. The prospective student was prepared to begin school and anticipated the fulfillment of his dream with great excitement, when at the last minute he was in-

102

  Ibid., d. 524, l. 113.

103

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 30.

104 105

  Ibid., l. 15.

  Ibid., d. 524, ll. 120–21.

106

  Ibid., l. 263.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

519

formed that a new directive from the center would not allow him to study, since he was to enter the army within one year’s time. His disappointment was profound: I thought for sure that in 1927 I would be able to go to school, to broaden my knowledge and become a useful member of society … thinking that by studying I could raise my low level of education.… I cannot describe how happy I was, that a peasant lad would be able to go to study; all the bedniaks awaited the 5th of September, then on the 20th of August they tell me at the district committee that there is a new directive from the Central Committee. …Comrade Stalin, explain to me why they pursue such a policy.… For two years I went to the Rubtsovskii Okrug with my request, and I cannot understand it.107 Ironically, party membership could at times even be a hindrance to advancement in education. A student at the Kiev Medical Institute wrote to Kalinin in April 1927 to complain about the burden of party work. He pointed out that nonparty students were doing better at school because they did not waste so much time on “social work,” endless and nonproductive meetings and lectures, and other distractions. As the exasperated student noted, “even semiliterate workers and peasants would say, if you asked them, that for socialism to be victorious in our country we need professional forces, we need good engineers, technicians, doctors and so on.” But the fact, for instance, that, according to the supplicant, party members and komsomoltsy made up only 2 percent of the membership in student science organizations blatantly illustrated the party’s confusion of priorities. Armies of skilled personnel—within and under the control and direction of the party—would never materialize under such conditions. The student also discussed the peasant question and added to his criticism of party policy that the opposition was not counterrevolutionary. After remarking on this, significantly, the student reconsidered his boldness and added: “I am afraid to write more. You do not have time to read about things you have known for a long time. But, all the same, I thought it would interest you to know the opinion of the masses.”108 A komsomolets from Komi autonomous oblast was more self-assured in his remarks. He appealed to the central leadership for leave from his party work in order to pursue his education; the oblast authorities had refused him. The author pointed out that, having spent a childhood in poverty as a batrak, he had been unable to receive “even the bare minimum general education,” and, as a party worker, “always felt the most extreme lack of theoretical preparation.” But, he continued, he had the right to obtain the education necessary to continue his work.109 As the batrak and many others suggested, plain and simple poverty remained, for the vast majority of the people, the greatest obstacle to education and self-improvement, despite the government’s professed ideals. Most supplicants apparently 107

  Ibid., l. 43.

108

  Ibid., d. 522, l. 228.

109

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 99.

520 Elizabeth A. Harry

disagreed with the party leadership’s theory that cultural advancement had to precede material improvement. In February 1927, a communist worker from the Urals described to party leaders local living conditions—the general scarcity and high prices of products, such as sugar and meat, the low wages and high cost of living, and the horrible housing (with many workers camped in filthy barracks). The worker concluded: The fact is that low wages and high cost of products do not permit the growth of cultural construction. Workers must concern themselves every minute over a crust of bread, and therefore one almost cannot begin to talk about cultural growth. Consequently, he lamented, “among party members there are workers whose cultural level and knowledge about society in no way differ from [that of] the rest of nonparty comrades.”110 Many supplicants reminded the government that its future depended on a timely investment in the working class, which presumably constituted its main political base. Thus, a communist factory worker complained to Stalin of workers’ lack of access to education: student stipends were insufficient to support workers with families (the majority of young workers and peasants, according to him). He emphasized that the “cultural” (not practical) education of young workers and peasants determined the ability to build “our socialist society”; he further maintained that many were frustrated by the gap between the professed ideals of the government and the possibilities that real life offered them. He closed with a warning that if workers were unable to educate themselves simply for lack of means, and if only the privileged, who could afford to study without government assistance, had access to education, then “we will return to the old [system], from which we only recently emerged.”111 In short, many supplicants believed that the opportunity for education and progress was slipping away from those who deserved it most. Thus, in May 1927 a party member and former Red sailor complained: “In recruitment to institutions of higher education, fewer and fewer workers dedicated to the cause of the revolution receive help from [worker] organizations to enable them to get in somewhere to study.” This trend was especially unsettling, “now, when the war front has shifted to the front of the great construction of the Soviet Union,” and the country was in need of educated workers. The former sailor, however, would not give up the fight; he maintained that he could not “remain passive and want[ed] to be in the front lines, beating a path to socialism.”112 The language employed here is telling: supplicants frequently ex-

110 111

  Ibid., d. 522, l. 90.

  Ibid., d. 513, l. 257.

112

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 517, l. 194.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

521

pressed the effort to build socialism in militant terms, reflecting not just communist rhetoric but also the years of warfare by which they (and the rhetoric) were shaped.113 The special disadvantages of the poor peasantry in gaining an education formed the basis for many complaints to the party leadership. The growth of the Komsomol in villages was spontaneous, driven by a hunger among village youth for education and information about the outside world.114 A variety of obstacles, however, stood in the way of all peasants seeking education to escape rural backwardness. For many, the basic problem was simple lack of educational materials. One party member working in Voronezh province appealed to Stalin on behalf of a group of village communists. They requested Lenin’s collected works; it seemed that they were too poor to buy any books, and the nearest library was eighteen versts (about twelve miles) away.115 Similarly, a komsomolets from “a wild, remote corner of Siberia” sent a desperate appeal to Stalin, in February 1927, wondering how rural youth were to obtain an education. The youth appealed to Stalin “not as secretary of the Central Committee, but as Comrade Stalin, communist.” The supplicant had apparently appealed to various government organs without success and lamented that only those who had connections with party cadres got ahead. The rest in the countryside were left to educate themselves under impossible circumstances, perhaps in a village reading room where it was “colder than outside.” The komsomolets implored Stalin to turn his attention to the village youth, “who struggled for a future, that is, toward the building of socialism.”116 Requests for reading materials from rural communists, komsomoltsy, and pioneers were common. One party member and village correspondent from Ukraine sent Stalin a convoluted request for a history of the party, which he could not afford to buy.117 In another appeal, a schoolboy from Nizhnii Novgorod province wrote on behalf of his friends, requesting books and journals for their Red Corner.118 He de113

  Recent studies on this include O. M. Morozova, Dva akta dramy: Boevoe proshloe i poslevoennaia povsednevnost’ veteranov grazhdanskoi voiny (Rostov on Don: Izdatel´stvo Iuzhnyi tsentr RAN, 2010); and Sean Guillory, “The Shattered Self of Komsomol Civil War Memoirs,” Slavic Review 71, 3 (2012): 546–65. Kevin McDermott noted the influence of Civil War experience on the party leadership, but not on the population at large: “War and revolution were inextricably inter-related in Marxist-Leninist theory … but for Stalin war became also a central tenet of his domestic policies—the idea of an internal ‘class war’ against ubiquitous ‘enemies’ seemed to take possession of him by the early 1930s.” And further: “Wars, civil wars and the threat of war and social unrest formed a constant leitmotif in the political careers and personal experiences of all top Bolsheviks” (8).

114

  Isabel A. Tirado, “The Komsomol and Young Peasants: The Dilemma of Rural Expansion, 1921–1925,” Slavic Review 52, 3 (1993): 460–76. 115

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 524, ll. 193, 196.

116

  Ibid., d. 516, l. 46.

117

  Ibid., d. 522, l. 297.

118

  In prerevolutionary Russia, a red corner was a space for Orthodox worship containing icons; under the Soviet government, it was co-opted for veneration of Lenin and the study of communism.

522 Elizabeth A. Harry

scribed himself as an orphan, having lost his father in the Civil War and with a mother too old to work, but made no material request beyond something to read.119 Similarly, komsomoltsy from the Minsk region requested literature on political and agricultural subjects, as well as some posters and portraits to decorate their Red Corner. They considered their request part of a bargain, assuring Stalin that if he fulfilled his end, then “we for our part will try to put our knowledge to use and present a good example on how to practice agriculture.”120 Many supplicants complained that their educational goals were undermined by a system unwilling to make allowances for the traditionally disadvantaged, and that workers and poor peasants never would break into the education system unless it was modified to accommodate them. In 1924 a party candidate, a former batrak and veteran, appealed for help in clearing him of criminal charges leveled against him in his village; he was in the midst of his studies and lacked the time and means to exonerate himself. The supplicant protested this burden, considering the effort he was making to be a communist “not on paper but in deed,” and that he had formerly worked unceasingly and had nevertheless “remained illiterate.”121 In another case, a former worker was dismissed from an officers’ training school in Orel due to “lack of success,” and his military pay was consequently reduced to 3 rubles 50 kopecks per month, on which he had to support himself and his elderly parents. The aspiring officer argued that his dismissal was “unjust,” since he was not to blame for his general lack of preparation: Like all workers, I created the means for socialist construction, and, therefore, as a laborer I have a right to education, and if my general educational preparation did not provide me the opportunity to become an officer of the RKK, then I am not to blame, and therefore I should not be punished for my failure.… Tell me how to support a family on 3.50 rubles. The worker’s tone was respectful but demanding. He knew his rights and was not prepared to see his future ruined due to disadvantages the revolution was meant to correct.122 Solutions to Lack of Education In contrast to the party’s prevailing approach to economic and cultural advancement which upheld class differentiation and cultural and economic disparities, supplicants appealing for education commonly argued for a leveling of resources and opportunities. In January 1927, a “union of shepherds and batraks” working in the forestry 119

  RGASPI f. 17, op. 85, d. 516, l. 96.

120 121

  Ibid., d. 523, l. 96.

  Ibid., op. 84, d. 646, l. 204.

122

  Ibid., op. 85, d. 515, l. 122.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

523

industry in the Northern Caucasus sent a joint appeal to Stalin. They extended their regards to their “esteemed comrade” in honor of the upcoming anniversary of the revolution, then proceeded to ask him for a grant from his own salary to open a veterinary school: We heard that you receive 180 rubles [a month], so we ask you to send us some money … so that … we could know when and why our cattle become ill. We would start a school ourselves, but some of us workers and peasants receive 5 or 3 rubles a month. If we spent it, our families would have nothing left, and therefore Comrade Stalin we appeal to you.123 Similarly, in March 1927, a komsomolets from Tambov uezd (district) wrote of the difficulties of rural party work. The Party, he maintained, needed to come to the assistance of bedniaks by cutting party salaries and using the money to buy farm machinery for poor peasants. In addition, standards for admitting bedniak children to institutes of higher education had to be lowered, since only “the wealthy [peasants] passed entrance exams, because they have greater means for preparation.” For that reason, bedniaks would never come to power, and their interests would continue to be ignored. The author warned: [The bedniak] says that our party and Komsomol have long since diverged from the Leninist path.… we need to drive alien elements from power, pay lower salaries, beginning with uezd [party] workers and higher, and use this money to improve bedniak agriculture, those who have nothing.… But until now they have received nothing, so I decided to write to you, maybe you do not know about it.124 Undeniably, the vast majority of the population still lacked the most basic services to raise their level of existence, of which educational opportunity was but one. Supplicants often expressed the belief that, until a general improvement in the standard of living was effected, general access to education and a corresponding rise in the “cultural level” of the population would remain only an ideal. In March 1927, a nonparty citizen wrote to the center on the problems of “provocation, banditism, and hooliganism” that generally plagued the country. The author’s discussion of the universal shortage of educational materials and books and of hospitals and trained medical personnel suggested a direct connection between shortages and social ills.125 In a similar vein, in March 1927, a peasant from Saratov guberniia wondered whether socialism could indeed be attained if all or most of the party’s attention was not focused on the peasantry who, after all, constituted 75 percent of the population. He

123

  Ibid., d. 521, l. 5.

124

  Ibid., d. 522, l. 76.

125

  Ibid., l. 48.

524 Elizabeth A. Harry

stressed the necessity of providing mass education to all of the country’s inhabitants, in order to address the peasantry’s needs.126 Thus, the connection between economic and cultural disparity was central. One factory worker, not a communist, wrote to complain about unemployment of party and nonparty workers and suggested that unemployment was related to bureaucrats’ high wages. The worker further lamented that, while there were many schools, relatively few workers were being educated, due to their poor preparation. He, therefore, suggested that highly paid specialists “need to be utilized 100 percent” to teach introductory subjects to workers, without pay. He clearly resented the gaps in opportunities and living standards and advantages in educational opportunities and wages of white-collar workers. The playing field was not evening out, and this, according to the factory worker, was wrong.127 Another proposal for leveling the field came in a remarkable appeal from a student at the United Belorussian Military School in Minsk. He advocated the adoption of Esperanto as a common language to facilitate communication among the various nationalities and workers of the world. The student argued that, for lack of time, “our workers” never learned foreign languages: “it is only the bourgeoisie who, out of idleness, sitting on soft couches in sumptuous dwellings, had time to study languages.”128 Supplicants often argued that it was the government’s responsibility to lower entrance requirements. A twenty-two-year-old party candidate appealed to Stalin to waive the requirement for the entrance exam to either a “naval academy or technical institute.” The supplicant was orphaned when his father, serving in the navy, was drowned at sea; he wished to study to become “an educated and useful person for the republic.” As a factory worker, however, he feared that entrance exams would prove too difficult and effectively put an end to his aspirations.129 As another unemployed party member argued, the difficulties encountered by unskilled workers in finding work were the fault of the tsarist system. But now, under the new system, the party needed not only to help unskilled party members obtain education and training, but also to encourage “comradely” relations between communists in a position to hire them and rank-and-file party members. Such equality would enhance party unity. The author pointed out that such questions concerned not only him, “but also a number of other comrades, of whom some would be extremely pleased if Comrade Stalin … answered.” He closed his appeal by asking Stalin to excuse his semiliterateness.130 In the short run, however, the creation of hoards of educated citizens often increased frustration and resentment, because there were no jobs for them anyway. Those who were fortunate enough to receive an education discovered, to their profound dismay, that their efforts were in vain. Superfluity of human beings was the 126 127

  Ibid., ll. 102–04.

  Ibid., d. 513, l. 128.

128

  Ibid., d. 516, l. 272.

129 130

  Ibid., d. 517, l. 253.

  Ibid., d. 515, l. 185.

Discontent with Employment and Education in the Early Soviet State

525

problem. In July 1927, a nonparty citizen from Ukraine sent a long, indignant appeal for justice. After having completed an eight-month course for workers in the judicial system, the supplicant related bitterly, he found out that no such work was available. Along with 140 other participants he had been promised a job upon completion of his studies. Instead, all were instructed to register with the labor exchange which, the supplicant observed, amounted to remaining unemployed. As it turned out, his unemployment resulted from a new initiative to hire only those with party or trade union tenure.131 Similarly, in March 1927, a VUZ graduate wrote bitterly of his disappointment. Unable to find a job after finishing school, he reckoned that only communists received employment upon graduation, regardless of their merits or abilities, and not even all communists at that: Just as before, when those who were not of the nobility or capitalists, etc., but simple muzhiks [peasants] were condemned to eternal suffering, so today those without a party card share the fate of their fathers.… You are a nobody, you are garbage.… Former priests, clerks, “esteemed citizens” again accommodate themselves. The collective offered education but no opportunities to put that education to use. The formerly privileged had already infiltrated the Party and managed to retain their old advantages. Nothing had changed; the situation remained as before the revolution. The supplicant’s bitterness and resentment toward certain elite groups is unmistakable. But beyond that, the graduate concluded, the communists were creating legions of educated citizens they could not use, simply “because here we have a sufficient army of persons immediately available for work.”132 –

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During the revolution there were great expectations that a new, egalitarian society would emerge and provide work and sustenance for all. NEP disappointed those expectations, altering the revolutionary struggle from a collective effort of oppressed against oppressors to an individual struggle for survival. This competition defined society, promoting a general mood of atomization and alienation. The change of revolutionary goals did not occur without protest through mass party resignations and numerous appeals to the party leadership. Official elites— party members, komsomoltsy, veterans, workers, and poor peasants—protested their abandonment by the government, expressing incredulity, anger, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. They threatened the center with political opposition, playing on the party leadership’s fear of losing power. The unemployed and indigent also sometimes

131

  Ibid., d. 518, ll. 62–88.

132

  Ibid., d. 522, l. 126.

526 Elizabeth A. Harry

experienced a sense of guilt. In a workers’ state, those without work felt a particular loss of dignity and self-esteem. Many without work or those fearing unemployment sought a competitive edge through education. Considering education a prerequisite of material advancement, Lenin himself had exhorted the masses to educate themselves. Moreover, Bolshevik ideology dictated that the proletariat would be led by an educated vanguard, and socialism built by a cultured, educated proletariat. However, the lack of opportunity either for work or education laid bare the contradictions between Bolshevik ideology and Soviet reality. In the short run, the cultural imperative also caused a pronounced sense of inferiority among less-educated party cadres. Ultimately, educating the population was impossible without sufficient funding or action on the part of the state. Lacking both of these during NEP, the government was inundated with appeals protesting the arbitrary barriers erected to reduce the number of applicants. Many supplicants observed bitterly that poverty was still the greatest barrier to cultural advancement, and, unless the government eliminated the material disadvantages of the majority, the revolution would in fact have changed nothing.

The Russian Student Fund and Its Role in the Diaspora Daniel A. Panshin†

The Russian Emigration As a result of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and the ensuing civil war, a million or more refugees left Russia starting in 1917 and continuing into the early 1920s.1 In this paper I use the word refugee in the particular sense of one who has been stripped of protection of country of origin, has been rendered stateless, and has not acquired another nationality. Exact figures on the size of the emigration are not possible, primarily because of the chaotic nature and many different routes of the refugees’ departure from Russia, and because of their frequent lack of passports and identity papers. The emigration took place “at a time of confused and constant flux,” as refugees moved from country to country, especially within Europe.2 Other factors that prevented an accurate 1

  The author is indebted to the University Archives of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for access to the Russian Student Fund Records, 1919–74, and the Paul B. Anderson Papers, 1913–82; the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, housed at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, for access to the archival records of the YMCA’s Committee on Friendly Relations Among Foreign Students and to the records of the McBurney Branch of the YMCA in New York City (where the Russian Student Fund was officed from the early 1930s to 1964); and the College Archives of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, for information on the student records of Alexis J. Panshin and on the academic program, tuition, and fees of the college in the mid-1920s. In his 1922 report to the League of Nations, Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, high commissioner for refugees, estimated that “there are altogether in Europe roughly one and a-half [sic] million Russian refugees.” See Russian Refugees: General Report of the Work Accomplished to March 12, 1922, by Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, High Commissioner of the League of Nations (League of Nations document C. 124, M. 74), 1922, 11. Sir John Hope Simpson in a retrospective study reported that “the emigration involved numbers variously estimated, but probably about one million souls.” See John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 62. Other estimates ranged as high as 2,935,000. See Hans von Rimscha, Der russische Bürgerkrieg und die russische Emigration, 1917–21 (Jena: Frommann, 1924), 50–51, quoted in Simpson, Refugee Problem, 80–81. 2

 Simpson, Refugee Problem, 81.

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 527–35.

528 Daniel A. Panshin

count include births and deaths in the diaspora, repatriations, additional refugees after 1922, and naturalizations in their various countries of refuge. No coordinated international mechanism for recordkeeping existed, and those not needing aid were often omitted from the estimates.3 The vast majority of Russian refugees settled in Europe, especially in France, Germany, and Poland, but they were to be found in all the countries of Europe, and beyond. Wherever they settled in the 1920s, “the Russians continued to consider themselves exiles, retaining the hope that their residence beyond Russian borders would be temporary, and that their return would soon be possible with the collapse, deemed imminent, of the Soviet government.”4 They typically lived in Russian communities where they preserved a Russian society quite distinct and separate from that of the host country, and within which they spoke Russian and passionately nurtured a prerevolutionary Russian identity and an active Russian cultural life. This society in exile came commonly to be known as Russia Abroad. Their emigration to Europe has been well described by Robert Johnston, Marc Raeff, and Robert Williams, but the emigration to other places has been much less thoroughly documented.5 “The first place of refuge rarely became permanent.”6 From the primary initial places of refuge—Constantinople, Europe, the Far East—additional scatterings took place to virtually all the countries of the world. From Brazil to Australia, from the Philippines to South Africa, Russian refugees could be found in the diaspora. To the United States came 20,000–30,000 of these souls, a number held down both by distance from Russia and by the severity of immigration quotas then in effect.7 Because many refugees had served in the defeated army or navy, the emigration included a large number of young men between the ages of eighteen and forty. All strata of Russian society were represented, although peasants made up a smaller proportion in the diaspora than they did in the homeland. On the whole, the refugees were literate, relatively well educated, and excruciatingly poor.8

3

  Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 23; and Simpson, Refugee Problem, 72.

4

  Raeff, Russia Abroad, 4.

5

  Robert H. Johnston, “New Mecca, New Babylon”: Paris and the Russian Exiles, 1920–1945 (Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988); Raeff, Russia Abroad; and Robert C. Williams, Culture in Exile: Russian Emigres in Germany, 1881–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972). 6

  Raeff, Russia Abroad, 17.

7

 Simpson, Refugee Problem, 469; and Paul Robert Magocsi, “Russians,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 887. 8

 Simpson, Refugee Problem, 85; and Raeff, Russia Abroad, 5, 11, 24–26.

The Russian Student Fund and Its Role in the Diaspora

529

Russian Student Fund Of the 20,000–30,000 Russian refugees who came to the United States, about 1,000 were university students whose educations had been interrupted.9 One organization, the Russian Student Fund, stands out in the help it provided to Russian refugee students to continue, and complete, their university educations in America. Its roots emanate directly from Alexis R. Wiren. Wiren’s undergraduate studies in naval architecture at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute had been cut short by World War I. He then transferred to the Naval Academy, receiving a wartime commission in the navy as a lieutenant junior grade in early 1917. In the early fall of 1917 the Provisional Government of Russia sent Wiren to the United States as part of its Russian Naval Aviation Commission. When the October Revolution of 1917 stranded him in the United States, he enrolled in 1918 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and continued his studies in naval architecture. Wiren, one of the first Russian refugee students to complete his undergraduate studies in the United States, received his bachelor’s degree in 1919.10 “In October 1919 he was summoned to the Russian Embassy [of the Provisional Government] in Washington where his services were needed in the Staff of the Naval Attache.”11 Boris Bakhmeteff, ambassador of the Russian Provisional Government to the United States, asked Wiren to work out ways to help some thirty young Russians who were then continuing their studies in the United States and urgently petitioning the embassy for assistance. “The ambassador allocated some small funds left over from uncompleted war contracts,” making available about $20,000.12 But the embassy had precious little money, and it soon became clear that early arrival of many more Russian refugees, and refugee students, was imminent. In June 1920 Wiren was relieved “from his duty at the Embassy in view of the necessity to reduce the staff” and went to New York City, with the encouragement of Ambassador Bakhmeteff, to continue his work to assist Russian refugee students.13 He enlisted influential and well-to-do Americans in the endeavor of establishing a revolving interest-free loan fund, first through a predecessor organization, the Russian Students’ Christian Association, organized under the auspices of the Committee on Friendly Relations Among Foreign Students of the Young Men’s Christian Associa9

  “Russian Reconstruction,” Russian Student in the American College and University 1, 1 (1924): 2; and R. E. Bowers, “The Origins of the Russian Student Fund,” Russian Review 16, 3 (1957): 46.

10

  Stephen Duggan, “Alexis R. Wiren,” Russian Review 5, 1 (1945): 102.

11

  I. Mishtowt, captain, Russian Navy, naval attache to the Russian embassy, “To Whom It May Concern,” 4 June 1920, Russian Student Fund Records [hereafter, RSF Records], 1919– 74, University Archives, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 12

  Wiren interview in “Nobles Study Here to Aid Russia; Prepare to Put Bear on Its Feet,” Boston Sunday Advertiser, no. 5 (December 1920); and Bowers, “Origins,” 48. 13

  Mishtowt, “To Whom It May Concern.”

530 Daniel A. Panshin

tion—and then through the Russian Student Fund, affiliated also with the YMCA, and which was incorporated in April 1923 to “aid persons now or formerly of Russian nationality to obtain academic, technical or professional training in the United States of America.”14 From 1921 to 1923, the period of operation under the aegis of the Russian Students’ Christian Association, assistance was provided to an average of 74 students per academic year. For the remainder of the first decade of operation (from 1 September 1923 through 31 August 1930), the Russian Student Fund assisted an average of 129 students per year; the peak year was 1926–27, when 165 students received loans. During its first decade, the fund helped a total of 476 students, of whom 358 had graduated by 31 August 1930. Thus, by 1930 the fund had assisted approximately half of the Russian refugee students who had come to America. The average aid provided per year was $442, but of equal importance was the help extended to the students in locating a suitable college or university, a task made appreciably more difficult by the frequent lack of transcripts covering the portion of their collegiate educations they had completed in Russia and by the students’ typically fragmentary command of English. In addition, the Russian Student Fund was often able to assist students in obtaining tuition scholarships. Most students majored in technical subjects such as engineering, agriculture, forestry, and business. About 3 percent were women.15 The Russian Student Fund continued in independent operation until 1965, when it merged with United Student Aid Funds, having assisted “almost 1,000 students in a total of over $1,000,000.”16 After 1930, as a marked decrease took place in the arrival of new Russian refugees whose university educations had been interrupted by revolution and war, the Russian Student Fund started assisting children born in Russia and in the diaspora to Russian parents, and after the end of World War II to displaced persons of Russian origin. The fund in its later years also took on other worthy, Russian-related activities, such as assisting in the establishment of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and of the interdisciplinary journal, the Russian Review. “The Russian Student Fund, as compared with other Russian emigre organizations in America, had extraordinary longevity … [and] its service was outstanding both in number aided and sums expended.”17

14

  Certificate of Incorporation of Russian Student Fund, Inc., as filed with the secretary of the State of New York, 9 April 1923, RSF Records. 15

  Alexis R. Wiren, “Ten Years of Work,” introduction by Stephen P. Duggan, Russian Student Fund, 1931; Wiren, “Twenty Years of the Russian Student Fund,” introduction by Duggan, Russian Student Fund, [1941]; “Summary from January 1, 1921, to August 31, 1930,” Russian Student Fund, n.d.; Wiren, “Summary of Operating Results for Classes from 1921 to 1930,” Russian Student Fund, n.d.; all of above in RSF Records. 16

  Ellen Routsky, Bonds of Friendship: The Story of the Russian Student Fund ([New York]: n.p., 1970), 47.

17

  Donald E. Davis, “Americanizing Ivan: The Case of the Russian Student Fund,” Historian 43, 2 (1981): 209.

The Russian Student Fund and Its Role in the Diaspora

531

One of the Students One of the students that the Russian Student Fund assisted was Aleksei Ivanovich Pan´shin. He (the Russian who would become my father) was born on 5 October 1901 (Old Style) in the family home in the city of Voronezh. He was the youngest of thirteen children (four sons and nine daughters) of the merchant Ivan Nikiforovich Pan´shin and his wife Sof´ia Aleksandrovna Pan´shina. A relatively prosperous merchant, Ivan Pan´shin owned several houses, a thriving horse business, and a steam-powered flour mill in the city of Voronezh. In Voronezh guberniia, in the heart of the fertile Central Chernozem region, he owned three working estates totalling more than 4,000 acres. On these estates he conducted diversified crop, livestock, and poultry operations, and also bred and raised horses, both mixedbreeds and Orlov trotters. As a boy, Aleksei Pan´shin spent winters in the city of Voronezh, where he attended the First Gimnaziia, and summers at the family’s Mikhailovka estate, some thirty miles southeast of the city. In June 1917 he graduated from the First Gimnaziia, and during the 1918–19 academic year attended Iur´ev University (now Voronezh State University) in the biology faculty, the closest available faculty to forestry, the field in which he had decided to major.18 In early October 1919, the White Army of southern Russia, then under the command of General Anton Denikin (and later under the command of General Petr Wrangel), occupied Voronezh as it reached the northernmost point of its advance. At this time, a few days before his eighteenth birthday, Aleksei Pan´shin volunteered for duty as a foot soldier in the White Army and left Voronezh, never to return. The White Army’s advance soon turned into a full-fledged retreat. By March 1920, only a remnant of Pan´shin’s unit was left, and it found itself in the vicinity of Batalpashinsk in Kubanskaia oblast´ in the far southwest of Russia (now Cherkessk, the administrative center of Karachaevo-Cherkessiia Autonomous Republic). Pan´shin and two other soldiers sought refuge in the Spaso-Preobrazhenskii Monastery, a woman’s monastery located forty-five miles south of Batalpashinsk on the north slope of the Caucasus Mountains. In early December 1920 word reached them that General Wrangel in mid-November had evacuated all of his forces from the Crimea to Constantinople, and that organized resistance to the Bolsheviks in southern Russia had ended. The few soldiers who were scattered about here and there in the foothills south of Batalpashinsk, some seventy in all, gathered together and decided to attempt a winter crossing of the Caucasus Mountains (in preference to being captured by the Red Army). The crossing on foot, by way of Klukhorskii Pass, proved successful, and the group reached the Black Sea port of Sukhumi in the Republic of Georgia, then briefly independent. By late February 1921 the group had worked its way east down the coastline to Batumi. There it commandeered a coastal freighter and set sail for Constantinople on 18

  Iur´ev University had been established in Estonia in 1632, and had moved to Voronezh in 1918 when the Germans threatened.

532 Daniel A. Panshin

21 February, five days before the Red Army occupied Tiflis (Tbilisi), the capital of Georgia, thereby effectively bringing Georgia’s independence to an end. When the freighter reached Constantinople in late February, that city was already overcrowded with thousands of Russians, mostly the remnants of Wrangel’s army and their families and dependents. For the next two years Pan´shin and his group pursued an impoverished refugee existence, but Constantinople could be only a temporary stop for them. Others in Pan´shin’s group left Constantinople for various places: one for the French Foreign Legion, one to a monastery in Serbia, another to join his sister in Paris, and so on. Pan´shin briefly considered emigrating to Serbia, Poland, and Brazil. When clarification reached Constantinople in early 1923, however, that university students from Russia whose educations had been interrupted would be admitted to the United States in excess of the severely limited immigration quota, he made his decision to leave for America. A clerk in the American Embassy in Constantinople changed my father’s name to Alexis John Panshin (an action I never heard him protest). Armed with his new name and a satchel, he boarded the King Alexander of the National Greek Line on 7 June 1923. Panshin was one of 160 Russian refugees in steerage class, in the first group of Russian emigres bound for the United States from Constantinople, 142 of whom were students. After a stop in Piraeus to pick up more passengers, the King Alexander set sail for America, entering New York harbor just after the stroke of midnight on 1 July, one of twelve ships racing to beat the July quotas and unload their human cargoes at Ellis Island. For the next year Panshin lived the typical life of the newly arrived immigrant in the Russian community of lower Manhattan. His first job in America was baking Lorna Doones for the National Biscuit Company, followed by jobs at cemeteries, first in the Bronx and then in Brooklyn. In the spring of 1924, determined to return to college if possible, Panshin applied to the Russian Student Fund for assistance, and was accepted. The Russian Student Fund made arrangements for him to attend the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, one of two forestry programs with which the fund worked (the other being Yale University). The fund extended assistance to him in the amount of $50 a month plus tuition. Receiving credit for his year at Iur´ev University, Panshin was admitted as a sophomore, resuming his university studies in September 1924 after a break of five years. In June 1927 he received his bachelor’s degree, graduating second in his class.19 After working for the Sikes Chair Company in Philadelphia in 1927–28, he returned to the New York State College of Forestry for graduate studies, completing his master’s degree in wood technology in 1929 and his Ph.D. degree in 1931.

19

  During Panshin’s three undergraduate years, the Russian Student Fund advanced him a total of $1758.31, of which $383.31 went for tuition and fees, and the remaining $1375.00 for the $50 monthly subsistence allowance during the academic year. Panshin made his first loan repayment of $10.00 in July 1927, and by July 1939 had repaid the full amount.

The Russian Student Fund and Its Role in the Diaspora

533

Panshin pursued a long and distinguished academic and professional career in wood technology and forest products in the United States, including more than thirty years as a teacher, researcher, and administrator at Michigan State University. From Russia Abroad to Assimilation At its outset in the early 1920s, the Russian Student Fund was fervently committed to sustaining Russia Abroad. Its founding precept was to assist Russian students in a temporary stay in the United States while they completed their university studies and prepared for an early return to Russia, “once it was free of the scourge of Bolshevism,” to help with reconstruction. Indeed, such sentiments permeate all of the early Russian Student Fund documents. The financial assistance agreement form Panshin signed had as its initial item, “I understand that this Corporation [Russian Student Fund] is helping Russian students complete their education and training in the United States in order that they may prepare themselves for participation in Russian reconstruction.” The first paragraph of the personal information sheet he completed stated that “the Russian Student Fund, Inc., is organized for the purpose of aiding those who can be of service in the future reconstruction of Russia.” But, by the late 1920s, when it had become clear that the Bolshevik regime was not to be short-lived, a shift started taking place in the point of view of the Russian Student Fund. For instance, the slogan in the masthead of its monthly publication, the Russian Student in the American College and University, which had been established in November 1924, read: “Raises funds and advances aid to young Russians of promise to study in America for future participation in Russian reconstruction.” In September 1927, when the publication shortened its name to the Russian Student and changed its format, it also dropped the slogan and replaced it in the masthead with: “Non-Political Non-Partisan Non-Sectarian.” In a 1930 letter to Norman H. Davis, chairman of the fund’s board of directors, Alexis Wiren wrote, “A few years ago I thought that conditions are slowly changing and that a moment approaches when any honest Russian, regardless of his individual political views, may work for Russian reconstruction. What has taken place since then has proven to me that this hope was unjustified and that the situation is becoming rather worse than better.”20 In an article in 1930 summarizing the first ten years of operation of the Russian Student Fund, Wiren stated that “the hope that conditions will change so that these young specialists could return and work for their country has not materialized as yet.”21 By the time of its twenty-year report, the hope of return to Russia had been abandoned. “When the Fund was originally established it was hoped that the political situation in Russia would change to a point that some graduates, within a comparatively short number of years might be in a position to return to Russia and be a sort of ‘connecting link’ between the two nations. This hope had to be abandoned years 20

  Alexis Wiren to Norman H. Davis, 26 June 1930, RSF Records.

21

  Alexis R. Wiren, “Ten Years,” Russian Student 7, 1 (1930): 1.

534 Daniel A. Panshin

ago.… In the meantime, the Fund can continue to do the useful work of giving encouragement and assistance to young men and women of Russian origin, to become better citizens of the country which has been so friendly to them.”22 In fact, only one or two students assisted by the Russian Student Fund did return to Russia. –

—

In his Constantinople years of 1921–23, Panshin lived in Russia Abroad. On his arrival in America, he continued to live in Russia Abroad in 1923–24 in New York City. Although New York City was no match for the major Russian emigre centers of Paris, Berlin, Prague, and Kharbin, it had a large and active Russian community with a vibrant cultural life, Russian restaurants and schools, and a number of Russian Orthodox churches and cathedrals. During his fourteen months in New York City, Panshin lived in this community, isolated from America. He lived with Russians, spoke only Russian, read Russian newspapers, observed Russian traditions and customs, and received his mail at a Russian club on the Lower East Side. For Panshin, his first break with Russia Abroad took place on the September day in 1924 when he boarded the train at Grand Central Station that would take him to the New York State College of Forestry in Syracuse. In his first years in America, Panshin was homesick and was still clinging to the hope of returning to Russia; this dream is reflected in the letters he received from his family. In October 1923 his brother-in-law Josef Szulc wrote, “I’m convinced that your stay in America will do you a lot of good, if you stay there temporarily.”23 And in June 1924 his sister Vera commented that “even if you get married, you still will want to come back to your Mother Russia.”24 By 1925 the advice from his family had started to change. “You write that sometimes you feel a strong desire to relinquish everything and come back to Russia. This is understandable, but I think you can and should struggle with this kind of mood.”25 In 1927 his sister Shura responded to him again, just three months before he received his bachelor’s degree: “You ask me what is my opinion about your returning to Russia.… You would suffer and as a final matter you would be extremely sorry about your decision to return. My advice is to forget about this desire.”26 A larger break with Russia Abroad came about when he returned to graduate school in Syracuse in 1928. By then, Panshin had decided that he wanted to pursue an academic career in the United States. A symbolic, and also real, marker of the evolution taking place within him was his naturalization in 1930. 22

  Wiren, “Twenty Years,” 9, 10.

23

  Josef Szulc to Alexis Panshin, 28 October 1923.

24

  Vera Pan´shina to Alexis Panshin, 1 June 1924.

25

  Aleksandra Pan´shina to Alexis Panshin, 24 June 1925.

26

  Aleksandra Pan´shina to Alexis Panshin, 22 March 1927.

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In his memoir, he wrote that “the naturalization papers were, however, only official confirmation of the slow process of my Americanization. I was hardly aware of this gradual change of a Russian refugee into a bona fide American citizen, but change there had been. It was brought forcibly to my attention when I revisited New York, and found my former Russian friends more foreign—their ideas and aspirations, their whole outlook on life, more incomprehensible—than those of my American friends.”27 The steps in his assimilation continued. In 1933 he met Lucie Padget, a Syracuse University graduate of English heritage and daughter of a small-town doctor in upstate New York. On Memorial Day in 1934 they—my father and my mother—married. Also in 1934 Panshin achieved a significant success in his budding professional career in his new country by coauthoring the first wood technology textbook to be published in the United States. Perhaps by 1930, and most certainly by the mid-1930s, Panshin had made his transition: from citizen of Russia, to citizen of Russia Abroad, to assimilated American.

27

  Alexis J. Panshin, I Remember (Okemos, MI: self-published, 1972), 230, lithographed in approximately twenty copies and distributed to family members and friends.

Folk in Soviet Music in the 1930s Susannah Lockwood Smith

In the 1930s the Soviet Union saw a tremendous upsurge in official support for folk art genres. Following Maksim Gor´kii’s address to the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, in which he underlined the importance of folklore in Soviet society, amateur folk arts received unprecedented attention from state and Party officials, and professional versions of folk genres acquired new status. This support for folk genres put new demands on Soviet musicians and musicologists, from amateur singers in villages to leading figures in the Composers’ Union in Moscow. Their reactions to the new policies produced changes in the music traditionally called “folk” and broad additions to what was included in that category. New requirements set members of the Soviet music establishment scrambling to establish their own “folk” credentials, even while prejudice against folk genres persisted. In the end, the turn toward folk genres established a significant place in musical discourse for the idea of folk music, while the results in music were mixed. For the good Communist, there was a plausible theoretical foundation for supporting folk music in Soviet society. Folk music is, by definition, music of the people. As Gor´kii pointed out in his 1934 address, folklore is closely connected with people’s real life and working conditions, and expresses the deep hopes and aspirations of the masses—precisely the kind of art that should be encouraged in a people’s state.1 There were other, more practical reasons for encouraging, as opposed to discouraging, folk music. Among a population that still had significantly rural roots, folk music remained through the 1930s an important popular genre. Even by the end of the 1930s almost half of the Soviet urban population still consisted of former peasants This essay stems from work begun with my dissertation, which was completed and defended in 1997 under the supervision of Theofanis Stavrou. I am very grateful to Professor Stavrou for his support of my project and scholarship, and particularly for his willingness to step in as my adviser at the dissertation stage. His wide scholarly interest, knowledge of an extensive literature, and generous spirit guided me during that critical period, and I continue to feel the benefit of his advice. It is an honor to be able to dedicate this essay, which addresses one of the underlying issues of my scholarly work, to him. 1

  Maksim Gor´kii, “Sovetskaia literatura: Doklad na Pervom vsesoiuznom s˝ezde sovetskikh pisatelei 17 avgusta 1934 goda,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1953), 27: 300, 305. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 537–54.

538 Susannah Lockwood Smith

who had migrated from the village in the previous decade.2 Among many of these new workers, as among the collective farmers, peasant cultural tastes and traditions persisted. Traditional folk songs and songs like them were more familiar, and were more easily understood and enjoyed than such genres as classical music or jazz.3 Giving the official nod to folk performers—by featuring them on the radio, publicizing their work in newspapers and journals, and supporting their performances—might indicate to the average citizen that those in power appreciated the same kind of music that he or she liked. This could be a simple yet effective means of shoring up popular support for the regime and its other policies. It stands in contrast to the failed policies of the years of “cultural revolution” of the first Five-Year Plan, in which a resentful audience of folk music lovers (and amateur performers) found their music reviled in the press and even banned from radio.4 There was yet another compelling reason for the new focus on folk music: Stalin himself loved it. This was not advanced publicly as a reason for the change in policy, as it would not be appropriate to further the “objective” truth about the importance of folk music with so subjective an argument—although Stalin’s fondness for Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian folksongs was well known.5 However, officials made the point clear in private. In 1936, Platon Kerzhentsev, the highest-placed arts official in the nation, told choir directors, “Comrade Stalin himself sang in a choir, loves singing very much, and considers the propagandizing of folk song an extraordinarily important element in all our work in the area of art, in the area of culture, because folk song is that kind of art which is most of the masses [massovym].”6 Andrei Zhdanov, who played a leading role in Soviet cultural policy in the 1930s and ’40s, was also a folk song aficionado. In 1944 he admitted to knowing over six hundred Russian folk songs, and even offered song texts that he had collected to folk choir director

2

 Citing several sources, David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 1–2, puts the figure at 40 percent.

3

  See ibid., 158–89, for an excellent description of how these values and traditions clashed with “official” culture. See also Susannah Lockwood Smith, “Soviet Arts Policy, Folk Music, and National Identity: The Piatnitskii State Russian Folk Choir, 1927–1945” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1997), 71–76, 143–44. 4

  Sheila Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978) first associated the phrase “cultural revolution” with the first Five-Year Plan period. For a more recent discussion of the concept, see Michael David-Fox, “What is Cultural Revolution?” Russian Review 58 (1999): 181–201. For a discussion of the fate of folk music during this period, and an example of audience resistance, see Smith, “Soviet Arts Policy,” 59–84.

5

  Juri Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, trans. Nicholas Wreden (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1951), 298, 208.

6

  Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI) f. 962, op. 3, d. 92, l. 5. Kerzhentsev was president of the Committee on Arts Affairs.

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Petr Kaz´min.7 The Soviet arts world was littered with corpses, both figuratively and sometimes literally, of those whose creations did not appeal to Stalin’s (and, to a lesser extent, Zhdanov’s) taste. Thus, there were practical considerations, as well as a plausible theoretical foundation, behind the turn to folk music in the 1930s. There were two levels of official encouragement of folk music. On one, theorists attempted to raise the profile of folk music by drawing the attention of music professionals to it, by insisting that it be the basis of all Soviet composed music, and by professionalizing its performance. Although the vast majority of choral circles that performed folk music were amateur groups, a few prominent folk choirs became fully professional in the 1930s, setting an example for amateur choirs and giving the genre recognition as a legitimate form of art. On another level, policy makers supported the spread of mass musical participation by helping to organize and providing structural support for amateur choirs that would sing a repertoire of folk music, and by insisting that music professionals assist amateur groups. Both levels of encouragement required that music professionals devote serious attention to folk music genres, whether this involved finding and using folk material in academic and lighter compositions, performing more traditional folk—or even better, new “Soviet folk”—music, or writing and publishing articles that theorized the function of folk music in Soviet society. In private, directors of choirs, composers, musical activists, and others received instructions from the state arts authority (Komitet po delam Iskusstv or KDI), to perform more folk songs and compose more music based on folk song.8 In public, the existence of a folk base to Soviet music and the importance of folk music to Soviet society were repeated like a mantra constantly in the music press throughout the 1930s. What did this mean for folk music in the Soviet Union? Above all, it meant that there was an increase in the attention paid by officials and others to the humble performers of folk song—in most cases people participating in amateur choral circles, who sang together for their own enjoyment. They usually sang a repertoire of the traditional old songs, because these were the songs they knew and loved. These circles had a long history, and until the late 1920s had generally been “below the field of vision” of party cultural workers.9 Now such circles were liable to attract the attention of officials who wished to support efforts at mass music-making. Olympiads were one means of official support. These were festivals designed to showcase amateur performing groups by bringing them to the capital for performances and drawing 7

  P. M. Kaz´min, S pesnei: Stranitsy iz dnevnika (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1970), 254–56. At Zhdanov’s request, Kaz´min presented him with two copies of a recently published collection of 200 songs. Several days later one of the copies was returned to Kaz´min, with a warm inscription and Zhdanov’s own emendations to four songs, and the text of a fifth. 8

  For example, see Kerzhentsev’s remarks in 1937 concerning the repertoire of state musical collectives. See RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 285, ll. 3–4. 9

  N. Vol´kovich and L. Shamina, eds., Khorovaia samodeiatel´nost´ Rossiiskoi Federatsii: Khronika, dokumenty, materialy 1917–1940 (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1989), 176; see also their excerpts from a 1930 conference comparing the relative neglect of arts work in the countryside to such work in the cities (59–60).

540 Susannah Lockwood Smith

national attention to their efforts.10 This support, both tangible (in the form of prize money) and intangible (brief national prominence for the performing ensembles) did not come without strings: performing ensembles were subject to suggestions by jury members (as well as comments by newspaper reviewers) with regard to repertoire, performing style, and even costuming.11 Directors were well advised to take these suggestions seriously. The most significant change demanded of many folk ensembles—both choirs and orchestras, amateur and professional—was that they learn to read music notation. Many ensembles, such as the Tadjik and Urdmurt folk orchestras, which had a tradition of oral transmission, began reading music during this period; other ensembles were criticized for not doing so.12 Likewise, directors of amateur choirs in clubs publicly encouraged one another to train their singers in sight reading and musical techniques, as well as music history.13 This was a profound change from traditional musical practice, in which music is learned by listening and imitating, not by reading something off a page and translating that information in the brain to musical sounds. This is not to say that traditional oral methods of transmission disappeared in this period, nor that the average person was a stranger to reading music, but that in this period there was noticeable encouragement of extending this kind of musical literacy.14 10

  According to the minutes of planning meetings, the entire point of the 1936 All-Union Choral Olympiad was to propagandize folk music of the Soviet Union’s various nationalities. See RGALI f. 962, op. 5, d. 30, ll. 1–3. Honoring amateur groups by bringing them to the capital had additional meaning, as Soviet power was simultaneously centralized and personalized in Stalin and Moscow. See James von Geldern, “The Centre and the Periphery: Cultural and Social Geography in the Mass Culture of the 1930s,” in New Directions in Soviet History, ed. Stephen White (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 62–80. 11

  RGALI f. 962, op. 5, d. 47, ll. 1–79.

12

  A. Livshits, “Muzykal´naia zhizn´ Tadzhikistana,” Sovetskaia muzyka 6, 9 (1938): 59; B. Aleksandrov, “Muzykal´naia zhizn´ Turkmenii,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 8 (1939): 83; and Marian Koval´, “Ansambli pesni, muzyki i tantsa narodov RSFSR,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 9–10 (1939): 127. Koval´, formerly associated with the radical proletarian Russian Association of Proletariat Musicians (RAPM), wrote with approval that the Urdmurt ensemble was engaged in systematic study of music notation; Aleksandrov, son of the composer of the Soviet national anthem and future director of the Red Army Ensemble (founded by his father), criticized the Turkmen folk orchestra for not doing the same.

13

  Vol´kovich and Shamina, Khorovaia samodeiatel´nost´, 67–69; and Genrikh Bruk, “Nastoiashchee i budushchee muzykal´noi samodeiatel´nosti,” Sovetskaia muzyka 9, 1 (1941): 71– 72. 14

  In 1901 the ethnographer Dmitrii K. Zelenin, Novye veianiia v narodnoi poezii (Moscow: Vestnik vospitaniia, 1901), 9, found peasants who, when asked about their songs, consulted songbooks published in Moscow; quoted in Robert A. Rothstein, “Death of the Folk Song?” in Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 116.

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A curious thing was happening at this same time to the word narodnyi. This word can be translated into English as “folk” or “people’s,” as in the collective, cultural concept of “a people” or “nation.” In Russian, narod refers to both a narrow concept of traditional folk, and a broader concept of the mass of people. However, for over a century before the revolution, the term narodnyi had implied “peasant.” The first Russian folklorists, who began collecting, studying, and categorizing songs in the eighteenth century, used the word narodnyi specifically to indicate works known and sung by peasants; songs arising from the everyday culture of the town or city were simply called “Russian.”15 Since the vast majority of people in the Russian Empire at this time were peasants, the association of the people (narod) with the peasant (krest´ianin) was not inappropriate. This association endured to the twentieth century. After the revolution, the term narod achieved a wider meaning in the new people’s state as a referent to the general populace. Its association with the mass of people was reflected in its use for such offices as “People’s Commissar” (narodnyi komissar). Despite this broader characterization of narod in postrevolutionary public discourse, the traditional association of peasants with narodnaia muzyka did not disappear immediately. However, during the 1930s, what was meant by the term narodnaia muzyka did shift away from an implied stress on traditional folklore or peasant roots to the more general sense of “popular” music. Any sort of connection with the masses could give music a narodnyi base. Thus, by the end of the 1930s, narodnaia muzyka referred to a diverse variety of music, including the traditional songs of peasants (village folk), prerevolutionary factory songs (urban folk), chastushki (contemporary four-line verses and tunes originating in both urban and rural areas), and those popular songs by Soviet composers that had some connection with people’s daily life and experience. The most significant change here is the inclusion of popular new works by contemporary songwriters. This reflects a trend in the study of folklore in this period: Dana Prescott Howell has noted that in the second half of the 1930s there was “a reintroduction of the concept of ‘popular’ with regard to folkloric materials.” She sees this as part of an effort to downplay the fact of social differentiation in the Soviet Union and stress the unity of Soviet peoples across the boundaries of nationalities.16 As composed popular songs took their place beside older, traditional peasant songs, both were called narodnaia songs. However, these two kinds of song differed from one another in a significant way. The traditional peasant song usually has a specific local or regional attachment. There is, strictly speaking, no “general Russian folk song” but rather songs from different regions of Russia, each with stylistic at-

15

  F. Rubtsev, “Russkie narodnye khory i psevdonarodnye pesni,” in Stati po muzykal´nomu fol´kloru (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1973), 184. N. A. L´vov first used the term “narodnaia pesnia,” after the German “Volkslieder,” to indicate peasant or folk song in his path-breaking 1790 song collection, Sobranie narodnykh russkikh pesen s ikh golosami. See Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 16. 16

  Dana Prescott Howell, The Development of Soviet Folkloristics (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 366.

542 Susannah Lockwood Smith

tributes of its region.17 In contrast, the composed popular song is created for a mass market. If there is any association with geography it is on the national level. The popular song unites a diverse population through mass culture that is designed to appeal to the largest number of people possible. This inclusiveness serves the purpose described by Howell, to help create a mass Soviet population not divided by its significant ethnic differences. The difference between traditional, local peasant songs and the new conception of folk music must have been obvious to members of the music establishment, some of whom may have wished to continue to distinguish between traditional and new popular songs. If narodnyi now meant “popular,” perhaps another word could be used to indicate “folk.” This impulse was countered at the highest level. When a participant in a 1936 meeting between Kerzhentsev and choir directors referred repeatedly to ensembles performing a repertoire of traditional peasant music as “ethnographic” choirs, Kerzhentsev called this term neudachno (unsuccessful), preferring the general term narodnyi instead.18 In essence, he was arguing against classifying traditional peasant music narrowly with a word that implied a distance between performers and those who might study the music. Rather, he placed the music in a more general and inclusive category, one that implied that this music was inherently shared by all people. It could be as much a part of mass culture as a new song from a hit movie: both were popular, that is, of the people. One might argue that a certain degree of the older definition of “folk” remained in “folk” music through the activities of popular Russian folk choirs that sang a repertoire of village music, such as the Piatnitskii Choir, the Iarkov Choir, the Voronezh Choir, and so on. However, even here there is an interesting development in what “folk” might mean. As narodnyi more frequently was used to indicate “popular,” the peasant implications of that word, at least in the Russian context, disappeared. This reflects a larger change in perceptions of the countryside and the Soviet people during this period. The peasant was the loser in this process. Soviet officials were eager to persuade their nation and the world that Soviet society was modern and industrial. A significant part of Soviet society was still rural, but the official word was that collectivization had, in effect, industrialized the agricultural process. Thus, internal plans for the 1937 exhibition of Soviet agriculture stated that the exhibition must stress that Soviet agriculture was “not agrarian, but [that] of an industrial country.”19 People who raised crops on a collective farm were agricultural workers, not peasants, and 17

  See Theodore Levin’s interview with Russian ethnographer and performer Dmitrii Pokrovskii for a discussion of the significance of regional attachment in folk music, and the meaninglessness of the term “Russian folk music.” Theodore Levin, “Dmitri Pokrovsky and the Russian Folk Music Revival Movement,” in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 24–25. See also Rubtsev, “Russkie narodnye khori,” 184, on the nonexistence of “general” Russian folk song. 18

  RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 94, ll. 10, 25.

19

  RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 50, l. 10.

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indeed there seemed to be no room in a fully industrialized economy for that preindustrial character, the peasant. As Victoria Bonnell has shown, this change was indicated in poster art, in which traditional images of peasants (bearded men and stout, kerchiefed women) were abruptly replaced in early 1930 with pictures of collective farmers who bore iconographic traits of workers.20 The discourse about music was in step with this trend. While in 1930 there was much discussion of “peasant” choirs, by 1936 such musical collectives were referred to as either “folk” or “popular” (narodnyi) or (albeit “unsuccessfully”) “ethnographic” choirs.21 When the nation’s most visible Russian folk choir, the Piatnitskii ensemble, became a professional choir in 1936, one of the conditions of professionalization was that the choir change its name from the Krest´ianskii khor imeni Piatnitskogo (Piatnitskii Peasant Choir) to the Russkii narodnyi khor imeni Piatnitskogo (Piatnitskii Russian Folk Choir). The Soviet Union’s leading choir in this genre could no longer carry the designation “peasant”; its new name indicated its widespread “popular” status. In lieu of traditional peasant music, a new genre was created: new Soviet folk song. Despite constant reference to the importance of folk art in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the older songs began taking second place to new songs about the glories of Soviet life. The best of these, however, were those that could trumpet new Soviet sensibilities while exploiting older sonorities and styles. This was what was meant by giving new songs a folk base. Maksim Gor´kii, in his closing address to the 1934 Writers’ Congress, suggested that contemporary poets would do well to pair new words to old melodies from the Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian—and possibly other—traditions.22 Some composers and folk performers tried their hands at producing entirely new tunes that resembled traditional ones. American folklorist Frank Miller calls this “pseudofolklore,” a genre based on traditional forms, but with very contemporary topics.23 Peasant singers, frequently under the direct guidance of folklorists with an eye toward political expediency, wrote and performed epics in praise 20

  Victoria E. Bonnell, “The Peasant Woman in Stalinist Political Art of the 1930s,” American Historical Review 98, 1 (1993): 55–82, especially 57–60.

21

  “Peasant concerts” disappeared from radio program listings in 1929 (a year before traditional folk music itself was banned from the radio). The term lingered in print media for several years: in 1934 there was a debate in Klub about the value of peasant choirs (reprinted in Vol´kovich and Shamina, Khorovaia samodeiatel´nost´, 178–83), and as late as 1936 the occasional reference to the peasant choir genre surfaced. See D. Vasil´ev-Bulgai, “Pervomaiskaia programma,” Sovetskaia muzyka 4, 7 (1936): 57. However, at the 1936 meeting between Kerzhentsev and choir directors, “peasant” choirs were not even part of the discussion of whether to call such choirs either “folk” or “ethnographic.” 22

  M. Gor´kii, “Zakliuchitel´naia rech´ na pervom vsesoiuznom s˝ezde sovetskikh pisatelei, 1 sentiabria 1934 goda,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 27: 350. Gor´kii’s examples were drawn from his own knowledge of folk tunes, but he allowed that there were probably usable melodies in other traditions of Soviet nationalities. 23

  See Frank J. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 3–24.

544 Susannah Lockwood Smith

of Stalin, Lenin, the new Moscow Metro system, the constitution of 1936, and a host of other topics. One of the most famous of these performers, Marfa Kriukova, used the term noviny (new songs) to differentiate her works from older ones. Folklorists adopted this term as a label for this new Soviet folklore.24 The same process obtained in choral folk song, and many folk choirs moved accordingly: for example, the most prominent local folk choir of the Voronezh area, which had a rich folk song tradition, replaced its old songs with modern folk-style songs “about heroes of the Civil War, about the glorious Red Army.”25 The greatest success story in this genre was the Piatnitskii Choir, which originally achieved fame and wide popularity through its performances of Russian peasant songs in fairly traditional arrangements, but won the highest honor possible, establishment as a State Choir, because of its repertoire of songs about the contemporary Soviet countryside, composed by the choir’s codirector, Vladimir Zakharov.26 Traditional songs by no means disappeared from the public ear, but greater rewards were in store for those soloists and choirs that took up the new songs. The success of the Piatnitskii Choir can be contrasted to the fate of the Iarkov Choir, its main rival as leading Russian folk choir in the capital in the 1920s and ’30s. Petr Iarkov, the director, preferred to take a more purist approach to Russian folk music performance and found himself at greater odds with the arts authorities; after his death in 1945 his choir disbanded. The attention to folk traditions was not limited to Russian traditions, although governmental officials gave these precedence: in a 1937 planning session on repertoire for state-sponsored music collectives, Kerzhentsev stated that one of the top two tasks of state choirs was “the propagandizing of folk song, Russian first of all, and other people’s.”27 The Soviet Union was a land of many ethnic traditions, and a rich array of musical folklore was available for study and public attention. The pages of Sovetskaia muzyka throughout the 1930s were filled with articles about the musical 24

  A. Gumennik and V. Krivonosov, “Marfa Semenovna Kriukova i severnye bylini,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 1 (1939): 50–55; and Miller, Folklore for Stalin, 12. For a short list of typical contemporary folk-song themes, see Georgii Khubov, “Zolotoi vek narodnogo tvorchestva,” Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 10–11 (1937): 32. Felix J. Oinas, “Folklore and Politics in the Soviet Union,” Slavic Review 32, 1 (1973): 49–52, suggests that many of the folklorists who encouraged noviny were on explicit assignment from the government.

25   K. I. Massalitinov, S Russkoi pesnei po zhizni (Voronezh: Tsentral´no-Chernozemnoe knizhnoe izdatel´stvo, 1981), 13. 26

  M. Grinberg, a highly-placed official in the KDI, attributed the Piatnitskii Choir’s great successes in this period, culminating in its establishment as a State Choir in 1940, primarily to Zakharov’s compositions, in particular the 1939 hit “I kto ego znaet.” See M. Grinberg, “Vstrechi i dela,” in Vospominaniia V. G. Zakharova, ed. T. N. Livanova (Moscow: Muzyka, 1967), 208. For a discussion of the process of becoming a state choir, see Susannah Lockwood Smith, “From Peasants to Professionals: The Socialist-Realist Transformation of a Russian Folk Choir,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 3, 3 (2002): 393–425. 27

  RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 285, l. 3. By the late 1930s there was an increase in published materials about Russian folk culture, and a decrease in material about other peoples of the Soviet Union. See Howell, Development of Soviet Folkloristics, 411–12.

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traditions of the ethnic minorities of the Soviet Union. Folk performers from the other republics brought their various instruments to Moscow and also performed on the radio.28 Often such performances were in the context of a dekada (festival) featuring the art of a specific republic or area, such as the 1937 Kazakh, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Uzbek dekady and the 1939 dekada of Kirgiz art.29 Soviet citizens therefore had increased opportunities to learn about the music traditions of their compatriots, although the cross-cultural efforts were not always entirely successful. Kerzhentsev was concerned when a series of 1937 festivals of Soviet music in cities across the nation demonstrated that local tastes remained generally parochial, with Georgian music featured at the Tbilisi dekada, music by Leningrad composers featured at the Leningrad dekada, and so on.30 Thus, the result of new attention and support for folk music was mixed. Folk music was more widely publicized and the music of national minorities played in areas where it may never have been heard before. Traditional performers might find themselves suddenly achieving national fame and prestige. At the same time, in many cases the music itself was politicized, and its performers encouraged to find modern equivalents to traditional songs and to change the way they approached the music itself by using music notation. While folk music received unprecedented official support in this period, to a certain degree traditional song and practice were abandoned and modern popular song took their place. –

—

As discussed above, the turn toward folk music in official policy of the 1930s required that members of the Soviet musical establishment, whether composers, conservatorytrained performers, academics, or critics, devote their attention to folk music. How did the musical establishment deal with this new policy? The first thing to note is that not all of this was entirely new. Russian composers had been integrating folk themes into their music for a century. Soviet composers would continue to do so. There was, however, in this period a broadening of these 28

  An article on the 1939 All-Union Review of Folk Instrument Performers has a full page listing the different kind of instruments featured over the course of the review and where they are from. See V. Beliaev, “Smotr narodnykh muzykantov,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 11 (1939): 96–97. The radio frequently played folk music from all over the Soviet Union. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the revolution, there was a two-week festival featuring singers, storytellers, and instrumentalists representing all peoples of the Soviet Union, most of whom were invited to Moscow for recording; over 25,000 people auditioned for this honor. See Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 10–11 (1937): 155. 29

  Georgii Khubov, “Muzykal´noe iskusstvo Uzbekistana,” Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 6 (1937): 6–14; and V. Krivonosov, “Mastera narodnogo iskusstva,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 6 (1939): 9–18. These dekady were also covered in the national (Pravda) and local (Vecherniaia Moskva) press.

30

  RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 314, l. 14.

546 Susannah Lockwood Smith

efforts among the national minorities of the Soviet Union.31 Russians had their great national operas that arose out of the music of the people—and so should the Uzbeks, the Georgians, and so on. Indeed, there seemed to be an obsession particularly with creating new operas in various national traditions, as well as a continued demand by Sovetskaia muzyka editors and arts officials for a good collective farm opera.32 Young conservatory graduates (frequently Russians) were dispatched in the central Asian republics to spark new national musical movements. Older, established academic composers also tried their hands at writing “national” music of the various Soviet peoples: Reinhold Glière wrote operas using Azerbaijan and Uzbek folk materials, and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov composed works based on the native music of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.33 These were serious efforts to establish and develop “indigenous” national operatic, musical theater, and symphonic traditions, often under the direction of Russian musicians.34 At the same time the number of students from the national republics at the Moscow conservatory increased.35 In some cases, these efforts simply encouraged an already established national tradition. In other cases the result was the development of genres of so-called national music that were at variance with local musical traditions.36 A clear example of this was the development of choral singing where none had existed before, such as among 31

  It is worth noting that even this was nothing new. According to Malcolm Hamrick Brown, Russian composer Aleksandr A. Aliab´ev pioneered the “Asiatic song” genre in the 1830s, with his compositions that borrowed certain pitch and rhythmic elements from Caucasian native music. Nevertheless, his compositions generally reveal “a fundamental dependence on European stylistic norms unqualified by features that might distinguish them from the Western mainstream.” See Brown, “Native Song and National Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music,” in Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 69–70. 32

  See, for example, “Na vysokom pod˝eme: Muzykal´naia kul´tura Strany Sovetov,” Sovet­ skaia muzyka 5, 4 (1937): 13. 33

  Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–1981 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 163, casts doubt upon the “Soviet” nature of Ippolitov-Ivanov’s works, suggesting that they were much more in the line of nineteenth-century exoticism. On Glière, see Richard Anthony Leonard, A History of Russian Music (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 350–51. 34

  On Uzbek theater and opera, see Iakov Grinval´d, “Iskusstvo schastlivogo naroda,” Vecherniaia Moskva, 31 May 1937, 3. This process was still viewed uncritically as recently as the early 1980s. See A. Ziiatly, “Narodno-pesennoe tvorchestvo sovetskogo Azerbaidzhana,” in Narodnaia muzyka SSSR i sovremennost´, ed. I. I. Zemtsovskii (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1982), 136–44.

35

 Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 194–96. According to Jelagin, these students essentially replaced the students of working-class origin who had been promoted in the 1920s. Both groups were admitted in what amounted to affirmative action, and many were not up to conservatory standards.

36

  Ibid., 231–33. Jelagin considered that in the latter cases, the music was generally dreadful.

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the Kirgiz, Chuvash, Iakutsk, Azerbaijani, and Tatar peoples.37 This, on the face of it, is absolutely at odds with the spirit of basing musical life in the Soviet Union on its indigenous folk roots. Rather, it is the grafting of local material onto what, in some cases, was an alien musical form. Orchestral music in the European tradition was still held as the epitome of musical composition and performance. Therefore, folk traditions had to be brought into the sphere of advanced music, by creating “national” operas and other academic, orchestral works. In a sense, this turns the directive on its head: European classical music became the structure for development of an ex post facto “folk” tradition. Of course, before a new national music could be developed, its folk roots had to be explored. The academy turned its attention to the non-Russian republics, and there was an explosion of studies of the music of the various ethnic groups of the Soviet Union. No issue of Sovetskaia muzyka in the late 1930s was complete without a discussion of the folk traditions of one group or another. These articles generally touched on similar points: a description of indigenous music of an area; a discussion of how, in one way or another, people’s musical expression was discouraged by the bourgeoisie or church or both before the revolution; and praise for the new musical vitality now possible in the Soviet era.38 All parts of the nation were covered in these efforts. When the Baltic states were annexed in 1940, Sovetskaia muzyka almost immediately printed a section on the music of the Baltic republics, thus introducing (with remarkable speed) Baltic folk traditions into the Soviet fold. Many of the articles of the section reflect the same themes: a description of the local music and discussion of how music suffered under the previous regime.39 The efforts to develop and publicize the “folk” traditions of the Soviet Union’s many ethnic groups point to a contradiction in social and cultural policy objectives. On the one hand, there was the desire to encourage these various folk traditions in order to demonstrate that the Soviet Union was, indeed, a place where culture arose from people’s genuine traditions and therefore was truly of the masses and not of an elite. On the other hand was the compelling need to unite the diverse nation in a common culture—hence the move toward redefining narodnyi as “popular” and the 37

  Vl. Vlasov and Vl. Fere, “K itogam Vsekirgizskoi olimpiady,” Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 3 (1937): 90; A. Livshits, “O chuvashskoi narodnoi muzyke,” Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 4 (1937): 57–58; V. Beliaev, “Iakutskie narodnye pesni,” Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 9 (1937): 11–13; Georgii Khubov, “Muzykal´naia kul´tura v Azerbaidzhane,” Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 10–11 (1937): 139; and RGALI f. 962, op. 5, d. 47, l. 2.

38

  The examples are numerous. From just 1938–39, see A. Livshits, “Muzyka v sovetskoi Kirgizii,” Sovetskaia muzyka 6, 3 (1938): 75–84; I. Shteinman, “Muzyka v bytu iamal´skikh nentsev,” Sovetskaia muzyka 6, 9 (1938): 53–57; A. Livshits, “Muzykal´naia zhizn´ Tadzhiki­ stana,” Sovetskaia muzyka 6, 9 (1938): 58–63; Biul´-Biul´ Mamedov, “Puti razvitiia muzy­ kal´nogo iskusstva,” Sovetskaia muzyka 6, 10–11 (1938): 64–68; V. Beliaev, “Kirgizskaia narodnaia muzyka,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 6 (1939): 19–23; and A. Livshits, “Muzykal´naia zhizn´ Buriat-Mongolii,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 12 (1939): 91–93. 39

  “Muzyka v pribaltiiskikh respublikakh,” Sovetskaia muzyka 8, 9 (1940): 70–81. The first article in the section was entitled “Our New Friends.”

548 Susannah Lockwood Smith

creation of a non-local mass culture. The first attempt to resolve this contradiction was the call that all cultural activity should be “national in form, socialist in content.” This attempt to base Soviet mass culture on socialist content was not entirely successful, and by the late 1930s older concepts about the supremacy of Russian culture reasserted themselves. Efforts to study and publicize the ethnographic diversity of Soviet life continued, but Russian culture was placed above the rest, a trend that accelerated with World War II. Ironically, scholars now suggest that the Soviet Union faced an intractable problem with national minorities in its waning years in part thanks to the support for further development of separate national identities in each republic.40 The call to base all music on folk traditions played a significant role in another area of Soviet music theory: antiformalist polemic. Formalism was a poorly defined concept which, in the eyes of one contemporary European observer, was clearest as a foil for socialist realism: “thesis and antithesis, white and black, good and evil. Socialist realism is held to be the sole possible principle of Soviet artistic production; formalism is violently opposed as the hateful product of decadent bourgeoisie.”41 The official definition of formalism in music was the separation of musical form from content. This definition is almost impossibly vague; in practice, anything that seemed to owe much to modernist trends in contemporary Western music, such as atonality, was condemned as formalist, although modernism itself was never directly censured.42 In music, socialist realism was equally poorly defined, but the closest that one might come to achieving the goals of socialist realism was to base all music on narodnyi sources. This follows, again, from Gor´kii’s 1934 speech to the writers’ congress. On that occasion Gor´kii laid out the tenets of socialist realism, so the call to pay attention to folklore was closely associated with the socialist realism movement. For writers the requirements of socialist realism were clear: to write about the ideal fulfillment of socialism as if it had already taken place. For musicians, the task was less clear—but Gor´kii pointed the way by highlighting folklore. Drawing on folk music was therefore a safe bet. Equally safe would be equating any music tainted with the term “formalism” with a lack of folk base. Thus, when Dmitrii Shostakovich was faced with public reprimand over his “formalist” music in 1936, he was faulted by Nikolai Cheliapov in a long Sovetskaia muzyka article for not turning to folk song and folk creativity in his work. However, what is meant by folk song is clearly broad: Cheliapov notes here that “deep folk roots lie at the base of the work of Vivaldi, Bach,

40

  See Ronald Suny, “State, Civil Society, and Ethnic Cultural Consolidation in the USSR— Roots of the National Question,” and Victor Zaslavsky, “The Evolution of Separatism in Soviet Society under Gorbachev,” in From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics, ed. Gail W. Lapidus and Zaslavsky, with Philip Goldman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 22–44, 71–97. See also Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 84–126. 41

  Kurt London, The Seven Soviet Arts (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1937), 61.

42

 Schwarz, Music and Musical Life, 128–29.

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Handel, Haydn, etc.”43 Shostakovich’s good friend and colleague, Ivan Sollertinskii, who was even more closely associated at that time with formalism, publicly promised to study Georgian folklore as a way of amending the error of his ways.44 The repeated assertion that Soviet music drew its great strength from its inherent closeness to the people was equally an assertion that contemporary Soviet music was not formalist; indeed, in 1940 composer Dmitrii Kabalevskii suggested at a meeting of the Soviet Composers’ Union that folk music had been helpful in the battle against formalism.45 Folk music therefore was useful to the music establishment. Frequent reference to its prominence in and its healthful effects on Soviet musical culture served to illustrate that Soviet musicians were fulfilling their task and building socialism in their assigned way by developing music with genuine roots in the traditions of all the peoples of the USSR, and by avoiding anti-Socialist trends like formalism. Nevertheless, there still appears to have been some suspicion of the original narodnaia muzyka, traditional folk music. Many influential members of the music academies simply viewed folk music as a lesser art, if an art at all. There is, after all, a difference between developed artistic traditions and folk practice. Anyone can sing—but this does not mean that anyone who sings is an artist. To be considered an artist, one should be trained in the techniques of one’s art, and should have academic knowledge of its historical traditions and standards of production. Folk singing and folk song might be music, but this does not necessarily qualify it for consideration in the music conservatories. Or, it might be studied, but not very well.46 The possibility of prejudice against folk music existed beyond the academy. In 1910, Mitrofan Piatnitskii’s idea to present peasant songs, performed by peasants, on the Moscow concert stage was derided by Moscow musicians, who thought such a performance would not withstand serious criticism.47 They were proven wrong, and Piatnitskii’s choir continued to perform. Nevertheless, in the 1920s when Piatnitskii tried to get professional status for his Russian folk choir, he was denied because authorities at the Union of Arts Workers thought it inappropriate to put semiliterate peasants on the same level as distinguished artists.48 Petr Iarkov had better luck with his folk choir, which achieved professional status in 1925. However, a decade later 43

  N. Cheliapov, “K itogam diskussii na muzykal´nom fronte,” Sovetskaia muzyka 4, 3 (1936): 5–6.

44

 Schwarz, Music and Musical Life, 127. Noting that Stalin was Georgian, Schwarz characterizes this as “flattery so obvious as to be facetious.” 45

  RGALI f. 962, op. 5, d. 410.

46

  Folk choir director and Soviet folk song composer Vladimir Zakharov wrote that although he had studied Russian folk song in the conservatory, he realized immediately when he was faced with a choir that performed real Russian folk songs that his conservatory education had been completely inadequate in this area. See RGALI f. 2628, op. 1, d. 2, l. 2. 47

  V. Paskhalov, “M. E. Piatnitskii i istoriia vozniknoveniia ego khora,” in Sovetskaia muzyka (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1944), 2: 77. 48

  RGALI f. 2001, op. 1, d. 9, l. 9.

550 Susannah Lockwood Smith

state arts workers organizing the 1936 choral olympiad included his choir not among the professional choirs, but among the “mixed” choirs (that is, in a place between professional and amateur).49 As a senior member of the Russian Composer’s Union once explained to me, it is important to remember that “professional” can mean different things. A choir that receives a wage for rehearsing and performing, as Iarkov’s choir did, is certainly professional, but being paid does not necessarily denote that the performer has achieved the mastery of a professional artist.50 As discussed above, traditional forms of folk music were not the only kind of music supported by authorities as music of the narod. Popular songs in general could also fall into this category. Some of these might still claim deep roots in the countryside, such as the new Soviet folk songs about collective farm workers by Vladimir Zakharov. This was not, however, a necessary prerequisite for a narodnaia song: a general connection to the people—the mass audience—could also do. The simplest, if tautological, demonstration that a piece of music had a narodnyi base was that the music spoke to people and was understood and liked by people: that is, that it was popular. Thus, popular songs for a mass audience by composers such as Isaak Dunaevskii and Matvei Blanter could also find a place in the big tent of “people’s” music. Support for these “mass songs” meant honoring such composers as part of the music establishment, particularly in the mid-1930s, when Stalin decreed that “life is getting better” and light genres of music received greater official support and encouragement.51 It meant that popular songs from movies, by composers such as Dunaevskii or Daniil and Dmitrii Pokrass, were awarded the nation’s highest honor, the Stalin Prize,52 an honor also given to concert pieces such as Shostakovich’s piano quintet and the Twenty-First Symphony of Nikolai Miaskovskii. And it also meant that composers of lighter fare, including new folk songs, might rise to positions of authority: Zakharov became secretary of the Composers’ Union in 1948. This indicates that members of the music establishment had to be open to—or at least put up with—a wide variety of genres within an important organization such as the Composers’ Union. The elevation of folk music as a respected genre, and the stubborn persistence of average Soviet citizens in liking various forms of popular music, presented another challenge to music authorities, both in and out of government. There was another trend in Soviet arts that in some ways ran counter to the efforts to give folk traditions the status of art. This was the attempt to raise the cultural attainment of all Soviet citizens. As people of worker or peasant origin were propelled into positions of responsibility (equivalent to middle management) they strove to emulate the cultural values of

49

  RGALI f. 962, op. 5, d. 30, l. 9.

50

  Conversation with Boleslav Isaakovich Rabinovich, 28 June 1999. My thanks to Serge Rogosin for putting me in touch with Rabinovich. 51

  See Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 208–09; also Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 65–80. 52

  Retroactively named the State Prize after Stalin’s death and subsequent discrediting.

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the formerly discredited prerevolutionary class. They wished to appear “cultured.”53 At the same time, Soviet authorities had some stake in presenting a cultured face to the world, as if to demonstrate that everyone in the Soviet Union had access to the best that education had to offer, and as a result all Soviets were discerning individuals with knowledge and appreciation of the world’s classics—and were not a pack of Bolshevik hoodlums or boors. Thus, the state sponsored extensive efforts to improve the musical taste of the general public, with particular promotion of classical and modern academic music. It deemed education especially important, and supported efforts to bring the classics, in performance and lecture, to workers’ clubs; production of movies of opera, so that workers could learn to love them; and concentration on the classical repertoire in children’s radio programming.54 Kerzhentsev stated in 1937 that the second most important objective of state choirs was to perform more folk songs—but the first objective was to acquaint the “musical public and those interested in music” with the “treasure house” of classical choral repertoire.55 This drive to raise the musical culture of the Soviet public could include light music by such popular composers as Dunaevskii and Blanter, as long as this music was deemed of sufficient quality. However, folk music—particularly the older peasant music now also considered “popular”—was somewhat more problematic. Enjoyment of folk music was posited in many cases as a transitional phase: the peasant or worker may start out by liking folk music, but the truly cultured Soviet citizen understands, appreciates, seeks out, and enjoys classical music. To encourage this process, classical works were sometimes performed on traditional folk instruments, so that the peasant might learn to love unfamiliar music, such as works by Bach and Glinka, by hearing it on familiar instruments, such as the accordion.56 Pravda described scenes of 53

  This is a very cursory summary of a complicated process, which has received significant scholarly treatment in the past two decades. See especially Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990); Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Becoming Cultured: Socialist Realism and the Representation of Privilege and Taste,” and “Cultural Orthodoxies under Stalin,” both in The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Nicholas S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1946). 54

  E. Rashkovskaia, “Kontsertno-massovaia rabota Mosfila v klubakh,” Sovetskaia muzyka 2, 9 (1934): 49–50; A. Aleksandrov, “Kul´tura i iskusstvo v plane tret´ei piatiletki,” Sovetskaia muzyka 5, 9 (1937): 64; and L. Siniaver, “Radio dlia detei: Zametki o radioperedachakh,” Sovetskaia muzyka 9, 5 (1941): 82–85. Siniaver’s recommendations for children’s radio programming stress the importance of entertaining children with songs—but despite earlier mention of folk songs as having an important place in the radio repertoire, the songs he specifically recommends for children are those of Schubert, Chaikovskii, and several contemporary Soviet composers. See also Kurt London’s comments on the extent in 1936 of attempts at educating the Soviet radio audience about classical music (Seven Soviet Arts, 300–01).

55

  RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 285, l. 3.

56

  B. Ia., “Vecher narodnykh instrumentov,” Sovetskaia muzyka 4, 7 (1936): 77–78. See also V. Beliaev, “Smotr narodnykh muzykantov,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 11 (1939): 101, for a dis-

552 Susannah Lockwood Smith

Russian collective farmers enthusiastically singing arias by Glinka and performing works of Beethoven and Chopin, and in Sovetskaia muzyka, Aleksandr Livshits could claim that the people in Kirgizia were unable fully to appreciate music—their own included—until they learned the music of composers of genius: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Glinka, Rimskii-Korsakov, Musorgskii, and others.57 In some cases, a folk instrument would be altered in mass production to allow for playing non-indigenous folk music on it, as was recommended in Sovetskaia muzyka for the Chuvash gusli.58 Arts officials continued urging arrangements of classical works for the accordion in the 1940s.59 Lip service was always paid to the support and dissemination of folk music, and particularly to the narodnyi basis of all Soviet music, but the underlying tone was for encouragement of classical music and modern academic music by Soviet composers. Popular music, although in and of itself useful and good, was not the ultimate goal of Soviet musical development. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that one Iur´ev, a member of the Philharmonic organization, wondered how the performance of choirs such as the Piatnitskii ensemble at a 1937 festival of Soviet music would “prepare listeners for Fidelio.”60 Yet not all Soviet listeners were, in reality, interested in Fidelio. And given the increased support for folk genres, and the national prominence given to a wide variety of folk performers, those listeners who wished to avoid Beethoven or opera or both had plenty of opportunity to do so and still attend fine concerts performed by professional ensembles—some with the highest possible designation, such as the State Orchestra of Folk Instruments or the State Folk Dance ensemble. What an earlier generation of music professionals may have appreciated as beautiful or interesting but dismissed as primitive, was now firmly established as an art form with endorsement from the highest level of government. It is difficult to know what Soviet musicians, composers, and musicologists really thought about this trend, given the limitations placed on their free expression cussion of using “mass” and “national” instruments as a means of spreading classical musical culture among the general population. 57   V. Furer, “Narodnoe tvorchestvo,” Pravda, 4 January 1934, 4; and A. Livshits, “Muzyka v sovetskoi Kirgizii,” Sovetskaia muzyka 6, 3 (1938): 76. Other examples include the first Festival of Music in Collective Farms (1939) in which the most successful works presented were “the best works of Soviet composers, Western and Russian classical music,” not folk music. See “Festival´ muzyki v kolkhozakh,” Sovetskaia muzyka 7, 5 (1939): 75–76. 58

  “K voprosu ob organizatsii massovogo proizvodstva natsional´nykh muzykal´nykh instrumentov,” Sovetskaia muzyka 2, 5 (1934): 45–46. 59

  For example, RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 1005, l. 29.

60

  RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 434, l. 54. Despite this official’s grudging admission that the Piatnitskii Choir was one of the high points in the 1937 dekada of Soviet music, which other officials similarly asserted (RGALI f. 962, op. 3, d. 314, ll. 1, 10), press coverage of the next year’s dekada continued to privilege the Soviet “classics” over folk performances. See A. Khachaturian, “Dekada sovetskoi muzyki,” Vecherniaia Moskva, 3 November 1938, 3; and M. Grinberg, “Dekada sovetskoi muzyki,” Pravda, 12 November 1938, 4.

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of anything other than support of state and party initiatives. After emigrating to the United States, one representative was able to comment bitterly. Juri Jelagin, a conservatory-trained violinist who played in classical, theatrical, and jazz venues in 1930s Moscow, had this to say of Soviet music: Everything that is created in the Soviet Union, including music, has a distinctly backward, primitive character; everything bears an unmistakable second-rate stamp of pauperization and degradation of technique. This has come about for a number of reasons: with the elevation of primitive forms of folklore to the highest position in art the technical standards in artistic creativeness have been lowered; the limitations of nationalism have been forced on the arts and the cultural ties with other countries severed; all artistic styles, with the exception of socialistic realism, have been outlawed and destroyed.61 For the music establishment, the turn toward folk music presented a problem: how to carry out the order to give all Soviet music a folk base. The clearest solution to the problem, and the easiest to implement, was to begin studying, publicizing, and using folk materials from as many of the national groups of the Soviet Union as possible. This resulted in a lot of work for the ethnomusicologists, and a revival of some aspects of the nineteenth-century national (and exotic) schools of composition. As the support for folk music met the equally forceful effort to raise the cultural level of the Soviet masses, European academic standards were imposed on folk traditions with hybridized results: a Russian-driven move to create new “national” classical music among all Soviet ethnic groups, and a standardization and professionalization of folk performers. Of equal importance, policies on folk music also supplied a convenient rhetorical device by which to shape Soviet musical development. As the term narodnaia muzyka commonly came to indicate popular music in general, the call to base all Soviet music on it meant making music more comprehensible to the common listener. By Jelagin’s estimation, this ruined Soviet music composition by lowering its creative standard to appeal to the plebian tastes of Stalin and his cronies. The thrust of the new trend in music was democratic: an effort to make Soviet music truly of the people. Despite any good intentions, one can argue that traditional folk music was, to a degree, harmed by this policy. Certain older singing practices were changed by a greater dependence on musical notation. Local folk singing circles increasingly felt the possibly undesired attention of state and Party on their repertoire and ways of learning. Mass production of certain folk instruments changed both the instruments themselves and the music they produced. Finally, and perhaps most bothersome of all for the researcher decades later, widespread use of the word narodnyi to indicate a huge range of popular music ultimately rendered the term so broad as to be nearly meaningless without additional clarification. Some of these changes might have been inevitable, a result of the relentless onward march of industrialization and modernization. In any case, these changes were encouraged by official policy, and 61

 Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, 330. Jelagin was commenting on the events of 1948 and their aftermath, but the reasons he cites for the miserable state of Soviet music date back to the 1930s.

554 Susannah Lockwood Smith

the creation of mass popular music connected (at least in theory) to folk traditions became an objective encouraged at the highest level of government. A new official mass culture was created. The question remains whether the masses, the people whom the new policy on folk music was supposed to favor, were able to embrace this as their native music, and whether the new music could serve for them as local folk music had for earlier generations.

“The Soviet Experiment” and Women: Brief Historical Reflections Norma Noonan

The Soviet experiment, as the seventy-four-year Soviet era may be labeled, tried to make many breakthroughs. Some studies look back on the period as a failed experiment that could not solve the problems endemic to Russia. It was a bold experiment, driven initially by revolutionary intellectuals who had little, if any, practical experience in governance and management. They had dreams and a desire for power. Some leaders were driven by a utopian dream cloaked in Marxism and others by the desire for power. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet leaders used persuasion and force to retain that power. As time passed, the desire to maintain power overwhelmed the earlier dreams and belief in the system.1 The goals were often lofty, but the reality never met expectations. In its final decades, the system seemed to muddle through and made several unsuccessful attempts at reform before it imploded in 1991. In the context of the Soviet system as a failed experiment, I shall endeavor to examine the Soviet approach to what Marxists called “the woman question.” With the exception of a few women in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), Russian Marxists, who were focused on the class struggle and the proletariat, paid little attention to women’s problems before 1917. The Bolshevik faction that eventu­ ally won power had developed its solution to the woman question very early, by attempting to address women’s basic needs as workers and mothers. Nadezhda 1

  When first invited to contribute to this special tribute to Theo Stavrou, I thought long and hard about a topic. I was deeply involved in compiling a complex manuscript on women’s movements in Russia in the past two centuries. I wanted my article for this festschrift to look at some aspect of the topic of women in Russia since work on that theme has engaged me in recent years, but I had no immediate focus in mind. Both Theo and I, although in different disciplines, have been involved in teaching about Russia and the Soviet Union for more years than either of us wants to remember. Initially, I planned to write the essay as reflections on nineteenth-century women’s movements, but then decided instead to focus on a brief retrospective of the Soviet period, often described now as “the Soviet experiment.” See Paul Hollander, Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Hollander’s fascinating analysis of the way commitment and belief in the system gave way to the quest for power and self-indulgence reveals the internal collapse of the USSR because of the loss of faith by the political elite. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 555–59.

556 Norma Noonan

Krupskaia, assisted by V. I. Lenin, developed early Bolshevik policy on the woman question. There was little concern for women as women and for approaches other than revolution to solving women’s concerns.2 The concept of feminism and the women’s movements in the later years of the Russian Empire were dismissed as irrelevant so­ lutions to women’s problems. The Bolsheviks, led by V. I. Lenin, believed that revolution and their new system of governance would eventually eradicate all social problems. The Soviet Union promised women much but in the final analysis delivered relatively little. The Soviet Russian Republic gave women equality under the law in 1918, but equality functioned primarily on paper. The old attitudes remained and were never fully eradicated in the seventy-four years of Soviet rule. In its early years, the system actively urged women to become more fully part of society by joining the workforce and participating in the political life of the nation. Initially, women were encouraged to enter the workplace and give up their drudgery in the home. They were promised that public services would take care of domestic needs, especially food preparation and housework, and childcare would be the responsibility of society, not of parents. These promises proved impossible to fulfill. Public services never came up to expectations. The theoretical concept of women and men as equal partners in the workplace faded into the brutal reality of a society in which everyone had to work in order to survive. The implementation of the socialist concept of child rearing as a responsibility of society was never realized, but resulted in an epidemic of homeless, abandoned children in the 1920s because some parents dumped their unwanted children. As a consequence, the Soviet government decided to assign the upbringing of children to the newly defined socialist family. The socialist family was, more or less, the traditional nuclear family recast in Marxist-Leninist jargon. Working mothers were promised daycare for their children while they worked, but daycare in the 1920s and 1930s was poor. Even decades later, Soviet daycare, however adequate, never substituted for the role of parents. In reality, women entered the workforce but also continued to do the housework and raise the children, in most cases enlarging rather than diminishing their burdens. As the Soviet Union evolved, the status of women ebbed and flowed. In the 1920s, when dreams still had some relevance, women’s stature improved in society, despite the many problems. A number of policies were set in motion to assist women in successfully making their transition into the new society. The initiatives to improve people’s lives ended in the 1930s when all citizens were coerced and propelled into fulfilling the Five-Year Plans, unrealistically ambitious for the system and brutal in their demands on the population. During the frantic 1930s with its plans to increase industrial and agricultural production and develop the country in a relatively short time, people were expected to give up even their few, precious free days to do “volunteer work” as subbotniki. Terror and repression affected all, and revolutionary dreams died during the Purges, along with a majority of the original revolutionaries. For Soviet women, the opportunity to work in the economy became a new form of drudgery adding to their existing burdens. Despite the difficulties of women’s life 2

  See Norma Noonan, “Two Solutions to the Zhenskii vopros in Russia and the USSR: Kollontai and Krupskaya. A Comparison,” Women and Politics 11, 3 (1991): 77–99.



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and the continuing inequality, the myth remained for many years that the USSR had solved the “woman question,” despite visible evidence to the contrary.3 In the 1940s, women defended the home front and at times the military front, in the devastating “Great Fatherland War” (World War II). In the early postwar period, the USSR began reconstruction of its devastated society. The war, and tacitly the Purges, had reduced the number of men in society. Women filled responsible positions but were often reminded that men were a scarce and valuable resource because of their diminished numbers. Women were thus acquiescent about accepting lesser positions and doing more than their fair share because of the shortage of men. Women continued to play their multiple roles in society with no hope of reducing their workload. Many had lost their spouses and fathers. Many faced the prospect of never marrying and never having a child within marriage. Women who wanted to have a child, both a deep need and an expectation among Russians, could find men who would father a child without a familial commitment. The number of single mothers rose, further compounding women’s burdens and responsibilities. Women’s responsibilities at home remained steady and even perhaps expanded over time. With its focus on the military-industrial complex, the USSR wasted little time on developing consumer services and producing labor saving devices that could have eased women’s burdens at home. Furthermore, because of the wartime devastation, many families lived in hastily constructed, crowded communal apartments where they shared basic kitchen and toilet facilities with other families, further making life difficult for women. By the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet women had achieved many successes on paper, but their lives remained complex. The communal apartments had slowly given way to small apartments for individual families, and the more affluent citizens constructed cooperative apartments, but the responsibilities for home and children remained with women. As time passed and revolutionary fervor faded into dry, oft repeated, but seldom heeded phrases, it was clear that Marxist dogma had made little impact on women’s and men’s roles in the family and in the larger society. Even though the Russian Marxists had selectively chosen which parts of Marxism to apply, there had been in the Lenin years a commitment to improving women’s status. By the time the Soviet Union entered its mature period in the 1970s and 1980s, not only had all revolutionary dreams faded, but there was also complacency about the status quo. Life had improved for the majority of people. When contrasted with their grandparents’ lives or with the deprivation of World War II, Soviet citizens lived well. Traditional ideas about men’s and women’s roles seemed to permeate even those aspects of Marxism that had been adopted. Women and men seemed to accept that equality in the work place and in society was an artificial concept to which lip service had to be paid. Researchers increasingly pointed to the impact of the double, and even the triple, burden on Soviet women.4 Although Soviet researchers still faced some constraints, cautious 3

  See P. M. Chirkov, Reshenie zhenskogo voprosa v SSSR (1917–1937 gg.) (Moscow: Mysl´, 1978).

4

  See, for example, Nasha sovremennitsa (Moscow: Znanie, 1989).

558 Norma Noonan

studies pointed out women’s problems without blaming the system. Sometimes fiction was the most useful medium to point out problems. The famous novella A Week Like Any Other depicted the normal life of a Soviet urban woman perhaps better than any scholarly essay could convey.5 With the advent of the Gorbachev era (1985–91), many problems were publicly acknowledged for the first time. In the light of the changing reality, it is not surprising that during Perestroika (1985–91), M. S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet political system, talked about returning women to “their purely womanly mission” of home and family.6 The several pages of his 1987 book, Perestroika, devoted to “Women and the Family” have often been interpreted in the West as a reflection of a desire to return to traditional values and to persuade women to stay at home.7 In reality, this statement can be seen less as a desire to see women leave the workforce and return to their traditional roles as wives and mothers than as an indictment of the Soviet solution to the “woman question.” In his comments, written amidst his larger, although ambiguous, vision for the USSR and the world, Gorbachev essentially admitted that the Soviet approach to the woman question had not worked. Although his statements were open to more than one interpretation, his intention of giving women an option out of the drudgery imposed by the Soviet system is clear. Nonetheless, the Soviet approach to the “woman question” had some merits. Looking back, one can point to many achievements in the Soviet period, including the large number of women in the professions, in responsible managerial positions, and in intellectual life. There was protective legislation setting the conditions for women’s work, although these were often ignored in practice. Some Western authors reject the notion of special protective legislation for women, but in the difficult conditions affecting the Soviet work force, these measures were necessary. In general, Soviet authors tended to focus on the positive aspects of women’s achievements rather than their problems.8 Although present in most occupations, women seldom rose to the top in the professions and rarely held high political positions. Women were well represented through quotas in the local soviets and in the Supreme Soviet, as well as in local government, but were almost invisible in national politics. Women were a majority in selected professions, including medicine and education, where a judgment had been made that women were best suited for the “caring” professions and human services. This value judgment was Russian rather than Marxist, but in virtually every area of social thought Russian values permeated 5

  See Natalia Baranskaya, A Week Like Any Other: Novellas and Stories, trans. Pieta Monks (Seattle: The Seal Press, 1989). 6

  See Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Perestroika (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 117.

7

  It may have been that Gorbachev hoped that if the Soviet economy became more efficient and labor productivity improved, fewer workers would be needed in the workplace, and the remaining workers could get higher wages. In such a context, persuading women to stay at home was a way to reduce the number of workers without increasing unemployment. See ibid., 116–18. 8

  See A. P. Kotelenets, ed., Zhenshchiny strany sovetov (Moscow: Politizdat, 1977).



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Soviet Marxism, transforming it into a distinctly Soviet, and Russian, phenomenon that Marx would have had difficulty recognizing. By the time the USSR collapsed at the end of 1991, the society had not fully addressed the problems of women and their status in society. They had consistently ruled out feminism as incompatible with the system. They had not permitted any independent women’s movement, and the showcase Soviet Women’s Committee (SWC) was a propaganda vehicle intended for the country’s international image, rather than for domestic action. The Soviet approach to the “woman question” was symptomatic of the failed solutions to this and many other problems in society. Experiments were tried and abandoned in the early years. Society survived crises and upheavals, and eventually settled down to a drab but relatively terror-free existence, with occasional reforms, until the final experiments to reform the system helped to hasten its demise. In this sense, the policies designed to address the status of women fit into the larger picture of the failed Soviet experiment.9 Ironically, in the post-Soviet era, life did not become easier for the vast majority of women, and in fact sometimes became even more difficult. Indeed, nostalgia developed for the Soviet safety net and for some of the legal protections the Soviet system afforded women. Despite greater freedom for women to organize and advocate their own causes, life did not improve for women in the new Russia. Selected Bibliography Attwood, Lynn. The New Soviet Man and Woman: Sex-Role Socialization in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Browning, Gena K. Women and Politics in the USSR: Consciousness Raising and Soviet Women’s Groups. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. Buckley, Mary, ed. Perestroika and Soviet Women. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Holland, Barbara, ed. Soviet Sisterhood. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky. Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Noonan, Norma Corigliano, and Carol Nechemias, eds. An Encyclopedia of Russian Women’s Movements. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. Rule, Wilma, and Norma C. Noonan, eds. Russian Women in Politics and Society. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996. 9  Part 2 of An Encyclopedia of the Russian Women’s Movements, ed. Norma Corigliano Noonan and Carol Nechemias (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001) is devoted to the policies and developments of the Soviet era and provides further evidence of attempts to solve the “woman problem.”

Back to the Future: A Modern Revival of Sixteenth-Century Czech Cultural and Political Values Zdeněk V. David

A perennial problem in Czech historiography has involved the relationship between modern Czech political culture, which emerged in the nineteenth century, and the Bohemian Reformation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and how to deal with the awkward 1620–1780 intermezzo of the Counter Reformation. The relevant discussions led to interpretations of continuity or discontinuity in the national development, which was often viewed as a metahistorical process with the nation figuring as a real entity.1 Such hypostatizing notions have been deconstructed and discounted by recent theoreticians of nationalism, who see nationalism as a nineteenth-century creation, or even an invention.2 This study aims at reconsidering the transmission of national self-identification from a distant past by adopting a fresh approach, free of the romantic or metaphysical view of nationality. The continuity, or discontinuity, is not treated as a metahistorical process but as a mundane, garden-variety transmission of texts, which is empirically verifiable. This approach is metaphysically agnostic and ontologically nominalistic. The narrative is based not on the assumption of a national essence or a primordial national character, but simply on an empirical tracking of the suppression and re-emergence of written texts. In an Aristotelian and anti-Pla1

  On the question of cultural transmission from the Bohemian Reformation into modern political culture, a major dispute developed in the Czech intellectual arena, starting in the 1890s. The protagonists were on one side the philosopher and sociologist Thomas G. Masaryk and his school, including historians like Jaroslav Vančura and Kamil Krofta, and on the other side the historian Josef Pekař and his colleagues. See, for instance, Milan Hauner, “The Meaning of Czech History: Masaryk versus Pekař,” in T. G. Masaryk, 1850–1937, 3: Statesman and Cultural Force, ed. Harry Hanak (London: Macmillan, 1989), 24–42; Miloš Havelka, ed., Spor o smysl českých dějin, 1895–1938 (Prague: Torst, 1995), especially 125–63; and Eva Broklová, ed., Sto let Masarykovy České otázky (Prague: Ústav T. G. Masaryka, 1997), 47–65. 2

  Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); and Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For additional literature, see Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991); and Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991). Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 561–98.

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tonic manner, it eschews reification or hypostatization of abstract notions. Perhaps the one overarching, connecting link in the process is the Gutenberg Revolution, the power and effectiveness of the printed word, which spans centuries. With respect to recent Czech historiography, the interpretation offered in this study is countercyclical. In the post-Communist period, the prevalent tendency has been to integrate the Counter Reformation as a positively constructive element into the virtually seamless web of cultural development.3 This study tends to support the opposite view, that the Counter Reformation was an intrusion interrupting an intellectual elite in its search for universal liberal propositions and institutions. As this article seeks to demonstrate, another group of intellectual pacesetters deliberately resumed this search once the blockage was lifted. To substantiate the claim that there was a transmission of political and cultural values over a span of almost two centuries from the Bohemian Reformation to the national revival, it is necessary to consider the mechanism of this transfer: (1) reprinting sixteenth-century classics; (2) reproducing sixteenth-century writings in school and university textbooks; (3) celebrating the Bohemian Reformation in history and literature; and (4) embracing as a political program the historical rights of the pre-1620 Bohemian state. It is possible to argue that the impact of sixteenth-century writings was more significant in the beginning of the nineteenth century than in its own time because of the greater spread of literacy and lower cost of printing, which made literature more widely accessible. To concretize the process of transfer, it may be helpful, although not necessary, to refer to R. G. Collingwood’s theory of re-enactment. The British historian and philosopher argued that in reading sources of the past, the reader thinks the thoughts of the writer.4 The re-enactment, according to Collingwood, brings the past to actuality in the present, and by being re-enactable the past “is not something that has finished happening.” In other words, past thought becomes alive in the present. The reader identifies in thought with the author, and the author’s ideas are resurrected in the intellect of the reader.5 In the context of the Czech national awakening, this would mean that the intellectual paradigms and value 3

  Critical comments on the Counter Reformation are viewed as politically incorrect, if not a sign of bad manners, as one may judge from the furor elicited by Jan Fiala’s Hrozné doby protireformace (Heršpice: Eman, 1997), which, despite its acerbic style and flawed organization, presents an essentially truthful account of the disruptive character of the Counter Reformation in Bohemia. See Tomáš Knoz, review of Jindřich Matyáš Thurn, by Miloš Pojar Časopis Matice Moravské 119 (2000): 306. 4

  R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, rev. ed., ed. Jan van der Dussen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), especially 215–19, 282–302, 441–50. 5

  Quoted in Jan van der Dussen, “Editor’s Introduction,” in ibid., xxxviii. On Collingwood’s theory of re-enactment, see also Christopher Parker, The English Idea of History from Coleridge to Collingwood (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 185–86, 201, 212; Jan W. van der Dussen, History as a Science: The Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), especially 93–109, 312–24; and Rex Martin, Historical Explanation: Re-enactment and Practical Inference (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 58–60.



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systems of the sixteenth-century authors could re-emerge in the minds of the nineteenth-century awakeners. Within the historiographical and methodological parameters just discussed, this study aims at demonstrating that, after a major disruption caused by the Counter Reformation, there was a linkage between the Bohemian Reformation and the Czech national awakening. Like the Italian humanists in the fifteenth century, the Czech awakeners at the turn of the eighteenth century felt that a cultural revival had to be based on the achievements of an earlier age. The Italians looked back to Greco-Roman antiquity for intellectual inspiration, the Bohemians to the Golden Age of the sixteenth century, which was religiously nurtured by the Utraquist Church that represented the mainstream of the Bohemian Reformation.6 There was, however, a paradox in the revival process linked with the Bohemian Reformation. Eventually, the Czech national awakening resurrected the Utraquist sixteenth century in its civic culture, but without its religious dimension. The world which the Bohemian Reformation had created was revived as a secular order, not as a theological system. Two factors help to illuminate this odd outcome. First, the Counter Reformation and the Reformation alike worked, albeit from opposite directions, to destroy the credibility and authenticity of a Christian via media which Utraquism theologically represented. For the Counter Reformation, the mainline Bohemian religion had a deficiency, while for the Evangelical and the Reformed an excess, of traditional orthodoxy. Second, Josephin Catholicism, in the name of which the Counter Reformation was overthrown in Bohemia, initially held out promise for a revival of Utraquism, which—like Josephin Reform Catholicism—was a subspecies of liberal Catholicism. Starting in 1815 and moving full speed ahead (or perhaps backwards) after 1848 toward the authoritarian model, the Re-Tridentization of the Roman Church removed the possibility that the Austrian renewal of Catholicism might provide a surrogate institutional basis for a re-emergence of theological Utraquism. Leapfrogging the Counter Reformation Before examining the mechanism of transmission, it is important to address the question why the Czech national movement turned for inspiration to a relatively distant past. The national revival was not a uniquely Czech or Central European phenomenon, neither was it limited to nations living under the hegemony of an outsider. In Western Europe, for instance, the politically independent Dutch were experiencing a similar breakthrough to a new national consciousness in the 1760s and 1770s, during the Dutch National Enlightenment.7 This intellectual trend turned away from the 6

  The other religious groupings deriving from the Bohemian Reformation were the radical warlike Taborites and the Proto-Protestant Unity of Brethren. I owe the suggestion of the parallel between the Italian Renaissance and the Bohemian National Awakening largely to John W. Brennan, who likewise helped to clarify other ideas and improve their formulation. 7

  Margaret Jacob and Wijnand W. Mijnhardt, eds., The Dutch Republic in the Eighteenth Century: Decline, Enlightenment, and Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).

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previous Enlightenment, which was viewed as cosmopolitan and under the heavy influence of the French. It emphasized the distinctiveness of the Dutch language and cultural values in the spirit of the Herderian national relativization of individual cultures, as well as external cultural boundaries vis-à-vis the Netherlands’ Gallic and Teutonic neighbors. Three main reasons may be cited why the Czech national awakeners, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, to the revival—through reprinting, teaching, and other dissemination—of the Utraquist literature of the sixteenth century. First, on the negative side, the imposed literature of the Counter Reformation appeared irrelevant. Robert Pysent documents fully the condemnation of this legacy, observing that the writers of the national revival dismissed “almost all of Czech literature, except for a few historiographical and émigré works, between 1620 and the last decades of the eighteenth century.”8 The dismissive judgment on Counter Reformation culture was not based simply on advancing secularism, but also on confessional grounds of the more or less imposed reform or liberal Catholicism by Emperor Joseph II, earlier dramatized by the abolition of the Jesuit Order in the Habsburg Empire. The repudiation of Tridentine Catholicism was symbolized by a statement of Wenzl A. Kaunitz, the leading ideologue of Josephism. In a ruling of 21 June 1773, he agreed to barring ex-Jesuits from teaching posts because all history had to be taught “purely from genuine sources and without ideological prejudice.”9 This was the assessment (in 1791) of the Counter Reformation’s intellectual heritage by Josef Dobrovský, the eminent representative of the Catholic Enlightenment in Bohemia: The two Indexes [of Prohibited Books] of Hradec Králové of 1729 and 1749, as well as the 1767 Index of Prague, are telling proofs of the heresy hunters’ lack of wisdom, which exceeds all imagination. They tried for so many years, albeit in vain, to suppress sound human reason in Bohemia. They wanted to compensate for the damage wrought by allowing the publication and distribution of a few dozen booklets about miraculous sacred images. Nevertheless, the larger part of the people did not find them to their taste.10 A generation of priests, following Dobrovský and educated in the spirit of Josephin Enlightenment, believed—against the spirit of the Counter Reformation—in the feasibility of reconciling theology with the advancement of knowledge and modern progress, as well as in a positive tolerance toward other Christian churches.11 This 8

  Robert B. Pysent, “The Baroque Continuum of Czech Literature,” Slavonic and East European Review 62, 3 (1984): 323 n. 5. 9

  Franz A. J. Szabo, Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism, 1753–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 245. 10

  Josef Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči a literatury v redakcích z roku 1791, 1792 a 1818, ed. Benjamin Jedlička (Prague: Melantrich, 1936), 54–55. 11

  Vincenc Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, ed. František Čáda, 2 vols. (Prague: Česká akademie pro vědy slovesnost a umění, 1907–08), 1: 76–79.



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liberal Catholicism likewise adopted a skeptical stance toward asceticism, in particular priestly celibacy, monasticism, and the devotional exercises of Ignatius Loyola.12 A second reason for the Czechs’ turn to a relatively distant past for a cultural regeneration was the relative weakness of the Czech cultural infrastructure, following the national awakening, which impeded a filling of the literary void by an original output of new Czech writings.13 It was one way of dealing with this cultural tabula rasa that the government in Vienna had created within the Habsburg Empire when it discredited and, in a way, proscribed the expressions and products of the Baroque/ Counter Reformation mentality and practice. The Dutch—to return to our earlier counterexample—were not faced with such a sharp discontinuity in culture. The Czech national awakeners, like Dobrovský, Josef Jungmann, Karel Vinařický, and Vincenc Zahradník, all agreed that the revived culture needed the literature of the sixteenth century as its foundation.14 Third, there seemed to be a pre-established harmony between the aspirations of the Utraquist sixteenth century and those of the Enlightenment. Mikuláš Adaukt Voigt (1733–87) saw the acme/pinnacle/highpoint of Czech culture in the sixteenth century, as did František Faustin Procházka (1749–1809) and Ignác Cornova (1740– 1822).15 František M. Pelcl (1734–1801), who in 1792 became the first professor of Czech language and literature at the University of Prague, recalled with reverence the sixteenth century, “when learned men were writing in Czech in all areas of scholarship.”16 However, it was primarily Dobrovský who defined the rationale of further advance through the return to the past. He commended the Utraquist sixteenth century for its augmentation of Czech language and literature and for its spread of humanism and printing as the culmination of Czech intellectual development. According to him, “The entire nation was stimulated to read and summoned to think. The cultivated part thought and wrote freely.”17 The Counter Reformation represented a period of decline with the sad state of the Czech language and the imposition of medieval-like 12

  Jaromír Plch, Antonín Marek (Prague: Melantrich, 1974), 99. In fact, Bishop Josef Hurdálek of Litoměřice may have proposed the introduction of married clergy. See Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 88–89. Some priests seem to have repudiated celibacy de facto, if not de jure. Thus, Marek had three sons. See Plch, Antonín Marek, 100. 13

  Josef Petráň et al., Počátky českého národního obrození: Společnost a kultura v 70. až 90. letech 18. století (P.rague: Academia, 1990), 240. 14

 Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 73–74.

15   Voigt expressed his view in Acta litteraria Bohemia et Moraviae, 2 vols. (1775, 1783), cited by Bedřich Slavík in Od Dobnera k Dobrovskému (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1975), 115, 208–09, 282. Procházka likewise contributed to the Acta, concerning Bohemian humanism (ibid., 114). 16

  F. M. Pelcl, Grundsätze der böhmischen Grammatik, 2nd ed. (Prague: F. Gerzabek, 1792), introduction, 1–2.

17

  “Die ganze Masse der Nation wird zum Lesen gereizt und zum Denken aufgefordert. Der kultivirteste Theil denkt und schreibt frei.” See Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 46; see also 148–49, 152.

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intellectual darkness in Bohemia. In the literature of the Counter Reformation, Dobrovský saw an instrument of obscurantism and superstition. According to him, “the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 crippled and enfeebled the entire Bohemian nation in both body and soul.”18 Hence, sixteenth-century culture and resumption of its ways was the clearly implied direction of/for further progress.19 Similarly, Václav H. Thám enumerated all the sixteenth-century classics as models for emulation in his patriotic lecture of 1803.20 Dobrovský, in turn, inspired others, like Zahradník (1790–1836), to regard the sixteenth-century literature as a model for future development.21 Jungmann shared in celebrating the sixteenth century and deploring the era of the Counter Reformation, noting in no uncertain terms: “The Bohemian nation excelled above all other Europeans in the arts during the beautiful age when it defied the papacy; it never sank so low as when Jesuitism scored a victory over it.”22 In the spirit of Dobrovský and his colleagues in the Bohemian Enlightenment, the restoration of the sixteenth-century tradition was not merely a way of filling a void. On the positive side, the awakeners saw in the sixteenth century the authentic national heritage, hitherto proscribed, but becoming newly accessible with the passing of religious intolerance.23 Also, the age of Enlightenment perceived in the heritage of the Bohemian Reformation a kindred spirit against rigid limits on the freedom of thought and expression.24 Finally, in the spirit of Dobrovský and his colleagues, the return was not a religious one, although they themselves were not rabid secularists, but by and large adherents of liberal Catholicism.25 Eighteenth-century patriotism provided a secular basis for national self-definition, which made possible a separation of the cultural, political, and social aspects from the religious milieu which had originally nourished them. The Enlightenment was not necessarily hostile to religion, but in the Czech case the situation was particularly complicated. A return to the authentic religious ideas of the sixteenth century was made problematic, because both the Counter Reformation and the Reformation had in effect successfully 18

  “Die Schlacht am weiszen Berge 1620 lähmte und entkräftigte die ganze böhmische Nation an Leib und Seele” (ibid., 58, 160, 166); Jan Lehár et al., Česká literatura od počátků k dnešku (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1998), 162; and Slavík, Od Dobnera k Dobrovskému, 264. 19

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 171; and František Kutnar and Jaroslav Marek, Přehledné dějiny českého a slovenského dějepisectví, 2nd ed. (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1997), 164. 20

  Karel Ignác Thám, Über den Karakter der Slawen, dann über den Ursprung, die Schicksale, Volkommenheiten, die Nützlichkeit und Wichtigkeit der bömischen Sprache (Prague: Diesbach, 1803), 14–15.

21

 Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 25.

22

  Josef Jungmann, Zápisky, ed. Radek Lunga (Prague: Budka, 1998), 43.

23

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 167.

24

  This aspect is emphasized in Zdeněk Kalista, Josef Pekař (Prague: Torst, 1994), 171–72.

25

  Concerning Dobrovský’s adherence to Catholic Enlightenment, see Milan Machovec, Josef Dobrovský (Prague: Svobodné slovo, 1964), 90.



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collaborated to erase the collective memory of the specifics of Utraquist theology and ecclesiology.26 Thus, Dobrovský extolled the Utraquist sixteenth century not for its religious beliefs but for its adherence to the political and social values cherished by the Enlightenment, in particular for its religious tolerance and freedom of expression. The subsequent awakeners’ ignorance of Utraquist theology (combined by then with secularist indifference to religion) is illustrated by Jungmann’s virtual equation of Utraquism with Lutheranism.27 A Pre-Established Harmony The elements which made the Utraquist century on a secular level particularly compatible with the century of the Enlightenment may be considered under the rubrics of (1) liberalism, free discussion, and tolerance; (2) language preservation; and (3) plebeianism. The cultural return to the sixteenth century tended to reinforce these values in Czech society. Liberalism, Free Discussion, Tolerance Sixteenth-century Utraquist culture had a peculiar aura of modernity, with its stress on free discussion and civil society. These characteristics were connected with the fifteenth-century Bohemian revolt against the rigidity and authoritarianism of the late medieval Church of Rome.28 The injunction to preach the Word of God freely, raised by Jan Hus, among others, passed into the mainstream of Utraquism through its incorporation into the basic Utraquist creeds, the Four Articles of Prague of 1419 (as Article One), and the Compactata of the Council of Basel (as Article Two).29 It was reinforced by the Test or so-called Judge of Cheb (iudex in Egra compactatus, soudce chebský) of 1432 which had adopted discourse based on Scripture, not by an 26

  Zdeněk V. David, “White Mountain, 1620: An Annihilation or Apotheosis of Utraquism,” paper delivered at the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Sciences/Společnost pro vědy a umění, Twentieth World Congress, Washington, DC, 10 August 2000. 27

  Josef J. Jungmann, Historie literatury české, 2nd ed. (Prague: Řivnáč, 1849), 346. On the incompatibility between Utraquism and Lutheranism, see Zdeněk V. David, “Utraquists, Lutherans, and the Bohemian Confession of 1575,” Church History 68, 2 (1999): 322–31. Jungmann also distanced himself from the Roman Church, even from representatives of liberal Catholicism like Bolzano, Fesl, and Zahradník. See Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 28–29.

28

  For a discussion of liberalism in sixteenth-century Utraquism, see Zdeněk V. David, “Central Europe’s Gentle Voice of Reason: Bílejovský and the Ecclesiology of Utraquism,” Austrian History Yearbook 28 (1997): 33–37; David, “Utraquists, Lutherans, and the Bohemian Confession of 1575,” 331–35; and Josef Hanzal, Od baroka k romantismu: Ke zrození novodobé české kultury (Prague: Academia, 1987), 100. 29

  Rudolf Říčan, ed., Čtyři vyznání (Prague: Komenského Evangelická Fakulta Bohoslovecká, 1951), 39; and Ferdinand Hrejsa, Dějiny křest’anství v Československu, 6 vols. (Prague: Husova československa evangelická fakulta bohoslovecká, 1947–50), 2: 271.

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administrative fiat, as a way of resolving theological disputes. Tolerance was fostered by the Peace of Kutná Hora of 1485, which prohibited accusations of heresy and mutual vilification between the Utraquists and the adherents of the Roman Curia.30 Subsequently, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Utraquists promoted discussion and preserved a non-confrontational, even cordial tone toward Bohemia’s Protestants, especially to the Unity of Brethren31 and the (largely German) Lutherans. Civic virtue was taught by the ideals of antiquity, which the Utraquist townspeople cultivated in the spirit of sixteenth-century humanism and integrated into their writings. This lore included, for instance, Aristotelian realism and the civic patriotism of Plato, as witnessed by Daniel Adam of Veleslavín’s introduction to Kalendář historický in 1578.32 Interest in other wisdom of the ancients, in particular in Seneca and stoicism more generally, were transmitted to the nineteenth-century reading public through the reprinting of sixteenth-century texts.33 The Utraquists’ concern with human rights and representative institutions was reflected in published works on contemporary political theory and political science, such as the translations of Jean Bodin, Georg Lauterbeck, and Hieronymus Weller.34 Dobrovský recognized the liberalism of the Utraquist sixteenth century as a special virtue, and, therefore, considered its culture superior to the earlier phases of the Bohemian Reformation in which he deplored the manifestations of Taborite and other religious radicalism and intolerance.35 He was attracted to the atmosphere of 30

  Thomas A. Fudge, “The Problem of Religious Liberty in Early Modern Bohemia,” Communio Viatorum 38, 1 (1996): 64–87.

31

  The Unity was a relatively small but devout sect which had emerged in 1457. It revived and perpetuated some of the radical tenets of so-called Taboritism, a distinct strand associated with the early Bohemian Reformation. On the Unity and its origins, see Rudolf Říčan, The History of the Unity of Brethren: A Protestant Hussite Church in Bohemia and Moravia, trans. C. Daniel Crews (Bethlehem, PA: Moravian Church in America, 1992); and Murray L. Wagner, Petr Chelčický: A Radical Separatist in Hussite Bohemia (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1983). 32

  Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, Kalendář historický: To jest krátké poznamenání všech dnů jednokaždého měsíce přes celý rok (Prague: Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, 1578), introduction, f. 2a–3a.

33

  Karel J. Erben, ed., Výbor z literatury české, 2: Od počátku XV až do konce XVI. století, Nákladem Českého Museum 58 (Prague: Kronberger and Řivnáč, 1868), 647–62. 34

  Mikuláš Dvorský, Jeronýma Wellera kniha o povinnostech všech úřadův duchovních i světských (1591); Jan Kocín z Kocinétu, Ioannis Bodini Nova distributio iuris universi … explicata a Ioanne Cocino (Prague: J. Negrin, 1581); and Georg Lauterbeck, Politica historica: O vrchnostech a správcích světských knihy patery, trans. Daniel Adam of Veleslavín (Prague: Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, 1584; 2nd ed., Prague: Heirs of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, 1606). 35   Kutnar and Marek, Přehledné dějiny českého a slovenského dějepisectví, 163. In the following generation, Antonín Marek also preferred the moderate spirit of the sixteenth century to Taborite radicalism, which he considered almost as detrimental to Czech national interests as the Counter Reformation. See Jakubec, Antonín Marek, 201.



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sixteenth-century “free thinking and writing,” when the common people, too, were drawn to reading and urged to think for themselves. The introduction of printing made widely available the writings of authors ancient and contemporary, domestic and foreign. For Dobrovský, “it was the beautiful or golden age of Czech literature” (das schöne oder goldene Zeitalter der böhmischen Sprache).36 According to him, Emperor/King Maximilian II instituted a practical religious freedom in 1567 which das Selbstdenken befördert wird (encouraged independent thinking).37 The linking of the national awakening with the liberal culture of a remote past was not uniquely a Czech phenomenon; it has been recently discerned also in the case of the Icelanders.38 Initially in the 1780s, there seemed to be also a consonance between the liberal and tolerant values of Utraquism and the prevailing Josephin ecclesiastical reforms. In particular, Kasper Royko sought to clear Hus of the charge of heresy in his lengthy critical history of the Council of Constance. The book was greeted by Dobrovský, who directed the reformed Catholic seminary in Olomouc (1789–90), as a “thorough and liberal” document in which the Czechs should take pride for saving the honor of their outstanding countryman.39 Dobrovský’s liberalism was seconded by Josef Hurdálek, who served as his counterpart, heading the reformed Catholic seminary in Prague (1785–90). Under the sway of the Catholic Enlightenment, the Roman clergy could participate in the liberal spirit of the national revival with relatively little qualm.40 Subsequently, a divergence developed between the civic culture revived by the awakening and the increasingly rigorous stance of the Roman Church returning to the Tridentine spirit of rigidity and authoritarianism. Thus, the gradual conservative restorations within the Roman Church after the accession of Francis II in 1792 weakened the partial consonance between the civic culture of the awakening and the prevalent official religion of the Habsburg Empire. Nevertheless, even in this period, there still persisted a degree of symbiosis between liberal Catholicism and sixteenth-century Utraquist literature. One island of such symbiosis was the seminary of Litoměřice, where Hurdálek served as bishop (1815–22) and where Dobrovský could 36

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 46; and Jan Mukařovský, ed., Dějiny české literatury, 4 vols. (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd, 1959–95), 2: 114. 37

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 47.

38   For the Icelanders, the “golden age” was placed even further back than in the Czech example (to 930–1262), and the chronological framework may be compared with František Palacký’s theory of the ancient Slavic democracy, in which the Czechs allegedly participated. See Sigríđur Matthíasdóttir, “The Renovation of Native Pasts: A Comparison between Aspects of Icelandic and Czech Nationalist Ideology,” Slavonic and East European Review 78, 4 (2000): 693, 701, 703. 39  Slavík, Od Dobnera k Dobrovskému, 178, and 177–83; Kašpar Royko, Geschichte der grossen allgemeinen Kirchenversammlung zu Kostniz, 5 vols. (Graz, 1781–82; Prague: Widtman, 1784–96). 40

  For a survey of relevant clergy, see Jaroslav Kadlec, Přehled českých církevních dějin, 2 vols. (Prague: Zvon, 1991), 2: 187–90; and Jan Jakubec, Antonín Marek: Jeho život a působení i význam v literatuře české (Prague: Bačkovský, 1896), 202.

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influence the seminarians during his periodic visits to his episcopal friend. For instance, it was there that Zahradník was educated in the (albeit now waning) spirit of Josephin reformism and became a devotee of sixteenth-century Czech writings.41 Dobrovský served as his mentor and supplied him with Utraquist literature, such as Rokycana’s sermons.42 However, the partial congruity between the Utraquist spirit and the Roman Church (on the basis of liberal Catholicism), suffered another severe setback in 1819 with the persecution of Bernard Bolzano in Prague and Josef Fesl in Litoměřice.43 Yet, Zahradník was still able in the 1830s, albeit cautiously, to give a sympathetic assessment of Rokycana’s life, and address a poetic eulogy to John Comenius, a leading figure in the last phase of the Bohemian Reformation.44 Any possibility of a rapport between Utraquism and Rome came to an end after 1848, with Rome’s uncompromising turn to the past, which amounted to a Second Counter Reformation in intent, if not in result. Jan Neruda, the Czech writer and poet, would ruefully reflect in the 1870s on the vanished species of Catholic clergy among the awakeners to whom, according to him, Prague was closer than Rome, and the Crown of Bohemia dearer than the papal tiara.45 The ultimate outcome of this disjunction was that the national awakening revived the Utraquist culture without Utraquism as a religion. This led either to a religious void or to a religious disharmony in Czech intellectual life, depending on the rejection or retention of post-Tridentine Catholicism, which the Counter Reformation had forcibly imposed on Bohemia in the interval between the Utraquist age and the national revival. Some of the divergence, of course, was due not only to the increase in Roman rigidity, but also to the advance of secularism within the second generation of the awakeners. Thus, Jungmann found even the liberal Catholicism of Zahradník distasteful, and moreover suspected some of the Catholic liberals, particularly Bolzano and Fesl, of indifference, if not hostility, to the Czech language.46 Jungmann felt 41

  The significant intellectual influence on him at the theological school of Litoměřice in the early 1810s was Michal Josef Fesl, an associate of the famous Bernard Bolzano, the latter-day apostle of reform Catholicism in Bohemia. Zahradník was inspired by the works of Veleslavín, Koldín, Kocín, and Hájek and saw a model use of Czech language in the writings and translations of the Bohemian Brethren. See Antonín Rybička, “Vzpomínka na Vincence Zahradníka,” Časopis českého muzea 45 (1871): 29; and Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 8–10; on Dobrovský’s visits, see ibid., 1: 98. 42

 Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 100.

43

  Ibid., 12–17, 105–18.

44 45

  Ibid., 57 n. 3.

  Jan Neruda, Národní Listy, 18 February 1877, cited by Jakubec, Antonín Marek, 241.

46

 Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 27–29. For their part, the Catholic liberals, like Dobrovský and Zahradník, felt that Jungmann and his associates were too aggressive in promoting the use of Czech, and might thereby provoke the imperial government to suppress the language entirely; see the correspondence between the two in late 1818 (ibid., 101, 103). On Zahradník’s view of the relationship between faith and reason, see ibid., 82–84.



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sympathy for Antonín Marek, another priest, who was much less deferential to his ecclesiastical superiors, and shared Jungmann’s aversion to Bolzano.47 Language Preservation While the liberalism of the Utraquist century provided a supranational guide for collective behavior, the sixteenth century also offered an example for guarding the specificity of the national community. One might apply to the Czech awakening—somewhat tongue in cheek—the hoary dictum of Marxist-Leninist nationality policy that a culture should be international in content, but national in form. A recurrent theme in the literature of the sixteenth century was praise for the Czech language and the desideratum of using it as a literary medium. Such calls on behalf of the vernacular emerged early in the sixteenth century in the writings of the Utraquist priest Jan Bechyňka, who urged parents to teach children to know and love their native tongue, and to avoid communicating in an alien speech.48 Later in the century the clamor for the rights of the Czech language intensified, for instance in the prefaces in/to Josephus Flavius’s Historie židovská (Jewish Antiquities) by Václav Plácel of Elbing (1592), and Flavius Magnus Cassiodorus’s Historie církevní (Chronicon: Historia tripartita) by Jan Kocín of Kocinet (1594).49 The plea was expressed with particular force in Adam of Veleslavín’s preface to Eusebius of Caesarea’s Historie církevní (Ecclesiastical History), also translated by Kocín. Noting the use of the Czech language in official recordkeeping in Bohemia, Adam praised the edict of the Bohemian king and Holy Roman emperor, Charles IV (1346–78), to the inhabitants of Prague to teach their children Czech, and conduct municipal affairs in that language. He also referred to Hus’s admonition to the Czechs to value their language.50 The famous reformer had in fact drawn a parallel between the situation of the Jews under the Persian Empire and the Czechs under the Holy Roman Empire, with each nation defending its own language against alien encroachments.51 Veleslavín further argued that foreigners lost respect for the Czech language 47

 Plch, Antonín Marek, 100–01; and Jakubec, Antonín Marek, 200–01.

48

  Jan Bechyňka, Děkování z večeře Dorotě Řéhové, cited in Noemi Rejchrtová, “Jan Bechyňka: Kněz a literát,” in Praga Mystica: Z dějin české reformace, Acta reformationem bohemicam illustrantia, ed. Amedeo Molnár (Prague: Kalich, 1984), 3: 8, 23.

49

  Flavius Josephus, Historie židovská: Na knihy čtyři rozdělená, trans. and with an introduction by Václav Plácel z Elbingu (Prague: Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, 1592), f. (*) 2v; and Flavius Magnus Cassiodorus, Historie cyrkevni, trans. Jan Kocín z Kocinetu (Prague: Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, 1594).

50

  Eusebius of Caesarea [Pamphilus], Historie církevní, trans. Jan Kocín z Kocinétu (Prague: Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, 1594), f. A5v. See also Bedřich Spiess, “Jan Kocín z Kocinétu co historik církevní,” Časopis českého muzea 46 (1872): 69–70.

51

  Jan Hus, Výklady [Explications], Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera Omnia 1 (Prague: Academia, 1975), 188–89, referring to Nehemiah, 13: 23–25.

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seeing that the Czechs themselves did not value it. He hoped that the situation could be improved by making available books for solid erudition in the local tongue.52 The noted editor maintained that all significant areas of knowledge should be available in the Czech language and, on this ground, he justified his publication of a translation of Georg Lauterbeck’s voluminous and learned tome of political science and administration, Regentenbuch … allen Regenten und Oberkeiten zu Anrichtung und Besserung erbarer und guter Policey (Leipzig, 1567).53 The national awakeners were, of course, aware of, and valued, this aspect of sixteenth-century political culture. Dobrovský noted with approval the Bohemian Diet’s decree of 1530, which stipulated that proceedings before the zemský soud (court of the land) had to be conducted in Czech, even if the parties were foreigners.54 The Czech language was to serve as a means of extending Habsburg power over the Poles and other Slavs during Rudolf II’s reign. Dobrovský applauded Karel of Žerotín’s admonition to the city fathers of Olomouc in 1610 not to be ashamed of Czech, but use it consistently in their official correspondence.55 He also called attention to the 1615 decree of the Diet which sought to curb the spread of German at the expense of Czech among the nobles.56 Thus, Czech awakeners could find inspiration in sixteenth-century writers as like-minded advocates of the revival, fortification, and preservation of the Bohemian vernacular. Conversely, the sixteenth-century authors had already acted as awakeners warning against the loss of national identity and clamoring for the use of Czech in literature and in public life. In addition, the very existence of advanced literature in the sixteenth century showed that the Czechs had to their credit considerable cultural and intellectual accomplishments which in turn entitled them to a resumption of scholarly and cultural activities in their own language.57 Jungmann emphasized these themes in a lead article, which he provided for the Czech-language scientific journal Krok (Step) in 1821, dwelling especially on his countrymen’s right to make contributions to the common cultural treasury of humanity in their own tongue.58

52

 Eusebius, Historie cyrkevní, f. A5v.

53

  Georg Lauterbeck, Politica historica: O vrchnostech a správcích světských knihy patery, trans. Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, 2nd ed. (Prague: Dědici Daniele Adama z Veleslavína, 1606), f. 6v. 54

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 148.

55

  Ibid., 47–49.

56

  Ibid., 159.

57

  Josef Kočí, České národní obrození (Prague: Svoboda, 1978), 189.

58

  Josef Jungmann in Krok 1 (1821): 7–9, cited in Jaromír Plch, ed., Antologie z české literatury národního obrození (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1978), 190–91.



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Plebeianism There was also a harmony between the plebeianism of the national awakening and the character of sixteenth-century culture. In Utraquist Bohemia, cultural and scholarly creativity was carried on by the townspeople, and its products reflected primarily their concerns and interests. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Utraquist Church served primarily the urban and rural common folk, while the nobles turned mainly to Lutheranism, with a minority adhering to the Unity or the Roman Curia.59 Starting in the late fifteenth century and extending throughout the rest of the Utraquist period, the urban middle classes established their leadership in the intellectual and literary life of the country.60 Cities and towns, especially Prague, had at their disposal in their chancelleries, schools, and churches impressive arrays of intellectuals, professionals, and experts in law and the various academic disciplines.61 The latter’s sheer numbers outweighed whatever intellectual establishments even the wealthiest of nobles could assemble at their manors. Most telling is, perhaps, the fact that the University of Prague was entirely in the service of the urban intellectual establishment.62 Similarly, the cultural revival of the awakening depended on individuals of urban origin or status.63 The nobles did not directly engage in the cultural and scholarly revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although they may have contributed financially to several publication projects, their view of the awakening seemed to be that it was something outside, or perhaps beneath, their personal con59

  Zdeněk V. David, “The Plebeianization of Utraquism: The Controversy over the Bohemian Confession of 1575,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, 2: Papers from the Eighteenth World Congress of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, Brno 1996, ed. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Main Library, 1998), 131–35, 156–58. 60

  Jaroslav Kolár, Návraty bez konce: Studie k starší české literatuře, ed. Lenka Jiroušková (Brno: Atlantis, 1999), 25, 139–40.

61

  See, for instance, Jiří Pešek, “Kultura českých předbělohorských měst, 1547–1620,” in Česká města v 16.–18. století: Sborník příspěvků z konference v Pardubicích 14. a 15. listopadu 1990, ed. Jaroslav Pánek (Prague: Historický ústav, 1991), 208–09; and Petr Čornej, Rozhled, názory a postoje hisitské inteligence v zrcadle dějepisectví 15. století (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1986), 5–6. Concerning Veleslavín’s particularly significant contribution, see Josef Hejnic, “Daniel Adam of Veleslavín: Zu den gegenseitigen Beziehungen zwischen der tschechischen und lateinischen Literatur im letzten Viertel des 16. Jahrhunderts,” in Studien zum Humanismus in den böhmischen Ländern, ed. Hans-Bernd Harder and Hans Rothe, Schriften des Komitees der Bundesrepublic Deutschland zur Förderung der Slawischen Studien 11 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1988), 270–72. 62

  Michal Svatoš, “Humanismus an der Universität Prag im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert,” in Harder and Rothe, Studien zum Humanismus, 203–05; and Jiří Pešek, “Měšt’anská kultura a vzdělanost v rudolfínské Praze,” Folia Historica Bohemica 5 (1983): 174–76. 63

 Hanzal, Od baroka k romantismu, 32; and review by Pavel Bělina in Folia Historica Bohemica 13 (1990): 503.

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cern or involvement. Except for a few families (Šternberks, Kinskis, Choteks), the nobles focused on their agrarian interests and reduced their scientific and artistic interests to the collection of curiosities.64 The minimal level of nobles’ participation is documented by the fact that an authoritative survey of the 135 most notable awakeners includes only three bluebloods.65 For their part, the awakeners were highly critical of the nobles’ indifference toward the Czech language.66 Karel Havlíček, a member of the awakeners’ culminating generation, would sum up the awakeners’ feelings in an article of 1850. The nobles not only failed to help, but even became a hindrance both in public life and in their private demeanor. He asked: How could the Czech language flourish, if the higher estates did not use it among themselves, when they neither wrote nor read anything in Czech, when they considered and declared the cultivators of the national language as fools and eccentrics?67 According to Havlíček, the aristocrats abdicated their duty of leading the nation, leaving this task to be performed by the patriots-commoners, who then gained the trust of their fellow citizens. Due to the limited means and modest social standing of these people, the national awakening could not but advance slowly. Nevertheless, the lowly patriots reached the goal of assuring the existence and perpetuation of the national culture. In sum, the nation advanced without the assistance of the nobles, and even against their will.68 Earlier in the same year, Havlíček had written that even those aristocrats who opposed royal absolutism felt contempt for the vernacular culture and “publicly advocated the Germanization of Bohemia as an inevitable condition of progress and civilization.”69 A noble worthy of this name could not stand above the nation, much less oppress the inhabitants or assist in their humiliation. Using this criterion, Havlíček journalistically excommunicated the Bohemian aristocracy from Czech society.70 Half a century later, Thomas Masaryk largely agreed with Havlíček, whom he generally admired, in his own 1895 retrospective on the national awakening. While else64

 Hanzal, Od baroka k romantismu, 89; and Bělina, review, 505.

65   František Josef Kinský, Kašpar Šternberk, and Karel Marie Drahotín Villani; see Jiří Fiala, Chronologický přehled dějin české literatury národního obrození (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého, Filozofická fakulta, 1992), 51–54. 66

  Karel Tieftrunk, Dějiny Matice české (Prague: Řivnáč, 1881), 5.

67   “Nynější postavení české šlechty,” Slovan, 26 October 1850, cited in Karel Havlíček, Politické spisy, ed. Zdeněk V. Tobolka, 3 vols. in 5 pts. (Prague: Laichter, 1900–02), 3: 429. 68

  Ibid., 429–30.

69

  “Česká šlechta,” Slovan, 1 June 1850, cited in Havlíček, Politické spisy, 71–72. See also Kočí, České národní obrození, 451. 70

  “Česká šlechta,” Slovan, 1 June 1850, cited in Havlíček, Politické spisy, 3: 72.



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where the nobility eagerly participated in the national culture, in Bohemia the nobles evidently could not make up their minds whether they were foreigners or Czechs.71 Although individual aristocrats provided some monetary support to Czech literary work, there was virtually no creative contribution by the blue bloods to the awakening’s cultural renaissance. The sixteenth century and the national awakening shared three interrelated characteristics: the stress on the cultivation of the vernacular was connected to the plebeian character of Bohemia’s culture; while the nobles could read in Latin or French, the common people needed their literature in Czech;72 and, above all, while the use of the Czech language was emphasized, it was not an aim in itself. It was, rather, to serve primarily as a medium for expressing all-human values, transcending the national community.73 The Shibboleths of Obfuscation Next, it is pertinent to examine the reasons that have obscured the role of the sixteenth century in the retrospective analyses and interpretations of the Czech national awakening. Several factors can be suggested as barriers to a balanced appreciation of this relationship. The images of (1) immorality, (2) literary primitivism, and (3) intellectual limitation militated against the full recognition of the national awakening as a sixteenth-century Renaissance. Question of Ethics Ironically, except for the legacy of the Unity of Brethren, the larger—mostly Utraquist—part of sixteenth-century literature has not received credit in Czech historiography for its seminal, normative role in shaping the Czechs’ political culture. The main reason for this blind spot was the relatively widespread view of the low moral threshold of Czech Utraquism.74 A recent writer has still characterized the 71

  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Česká otázka: Naše nynější krize. Jan Hus, Spisy 6 (Prague: Masarykův ústav, 2000), 76.

72

  Jungmann signaled the cultural divorce between the awakeners and the aristocracy. For all he cared, the nobility might adopt Chaldean as its language of communication. It would not affect the attachment of his colleagues to the Bohemian tongue of the commoners. 73

  If we return to the dispute about the antecedents and character of the Czech national awakening, the transmission of the Utraquist ideals would favor Masaryk over Pekař (see note 1). The main thrust of the national awakening seemed less consonant with Pekař’s image of the celebration of national distinctiveness than with Masaryk’s image of a cultural mobilization to serve the universal ideals of humankind. 74

  Kamil Krofta, “Nový názor na český vývoj náboženský v době předbělohorské,” in Listy z náboženských dějin (Prague: Historický klub, 1936), 381; and Krofta, Nesmrtelný národ: Od Bílé Hory k Palackému (Prague: Laichter, 1940), 344–429.

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period as one of “social and moral laxity and indecisiveness.”75 Although based on misperceptions or unwarranted exaggerations, this jaundiced view tended to cast aspersions on the participants in Czech humanist culture, and to render their rolemodel function less credible. Kamil Krofta has traced this image of Utraquism to nineteenth-century historians, particularly Tomek and Kalousek, who mistakenly assumed that sixteenth-century Utraquism had become synonymous with Lutheranism, and that Luther’s solafideism (salvation by faith alone) fostered immorality.76 This view passed through the prestigious work of Ernst Denis to Thomas Masaryk and his interpretation of the “Czech question.”77 For Masaryk, the Bohemian Reformation ended in a moral morass and chaos in the sixteenth century. In other words, the revered Czech philosopher-statesman adopted the Tomek-Kalousek-Denis line about the morally corrupt Bohemian quasi-Lutheranism.78 It is difficult to understand that as an admirer of Dobrovský Masaryk could entirely overlook the latter’s high esteem for the Utraquist century. This is all the more puzzling given that Masaryk considered Dobrovský one of the key figures through whom the heritage of the Bohemian Reformation was transmitted as an ideal to the Czech political life of the nineteenth century. Curiously, Masaryk seems to be deriving Dobrovský’s humanism from Herder (about whom Dobrovský appears to have known very little)79 rather than from his admiration for the humanitarianism of the Utraquist century, about which he had written voluminous treatises.80 In other words, Dobrovský did not need Herder to teach him about freedom of thought and tolerance; he saw these virtues clearly exemplified in Utraquism. Nevertheless, his preference for the Unity over the Utraquists led Masaryk even further to an assertion that the sober-minded rationalist Dobrovský was proclaiming the ideals of the sectarian zealots, the Bohemian Brethren. Although Dobrovský was not devoid of sympathy for the Brethren as a persecuted minority, he showed no sign of preference for their views over those of the Utraquists.81 In fact, 75

  Zdeněk Rotrekl, Barokní fenomén v součastnosti (Prague: Trost, 1995), 129.

76

  Ot. Josek, Život a dílo Josefa Kalouska (Prague: Nákladem Historického spolku, 1922), 292, cited by Krofta, Nesmrtelný národ, 350–51; and Jaroslav Čechura and Jana Čechurová, eds., Korespondence Josefa Pekaře a Kamila Krofty (Prague: Karolinum, 1999), 87. 77

  Tomáš G. Masaryk, Česká otázka, 6th ed. (Prague: Čin, 1948), 210–11. This dim view of Utraquism led Masaryk to limit the influence of the Bohemian Reformation to the Unity and to Taboritism, disregarding mainline Utraquism as a factor.

78

  Broklová, Sto let Masarykovy České otázky, 54–55.

79

 He did cite in 1806 from Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Menschheit about the peace-loving nature of the Slavs. See Hugh L. Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 218–19. The knowledge of Herder came late (1791), after Dobrovský’s ideas had been formulated, and the reference was not to the character of the Czech revival, but to the context of a wider Slav community. See Machovec, Josef Dobrovský, 139.

80

  Masaryk, Česká otázka: Naše nynější krize, 30.

81

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 421.



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the one image which can compete with Masaryk’s startling suggestion is the recent portrait of Dobrovský as a forger of ancient Russia’s literary monuments.82 Contrary to the Tomek-Kalousek-Denis line, which Masaryk echoed, Dobrovský took a dim view of the Taborites and other left wingers of the Bohemian Reformation (for their fanaticism and intolerance), and appreciated the Brethren for their linguistic skills, not for their religious exclusiveness or moral rigor.83 Question of Aesthetics The other reason for neglecting the legacy of Utraquism and the sixteenth-century culture was the opinion of modernist esthetes of the late nineteenth and twentieth century who, disregarding the didactic political, legal, and social values, looked askance at the intellectual heritage for its alleged lack of literary sophistication, and rejected the reverence shown to it by the national awakeners. Arne Novák in his influential history of Czech literature trivializes the worth of sixteenth-century writings thus: “The real Renaissance spirit rarely penetrates this literature; mere practical considerations prevail. There are very few works reflecting the creative poetic gifts of observation, imagination, or expression.”84 He preferred the baroque esthetic qualities of the Counter Reformation.85 From a somewhat different angle, the eminent historian Pekař joined the ranks of the critics when he saw the cultural thrust of the Bohemian Reformation forsaking the high level of the Romance-Catholic culture for the much lower Germanic-Protestant one. This view attributed much higher achievements to the fourteenth century than those of the two subsequent centuries.86 Curiously, the disdainful attitude toward the literature of the Utraquist era found an echo in Czech historical writing of the Marxist period.87 But voices to the contrary, although apparently less influential, were not entirely silenced. Krofta, albeit Pekař’s disciple, was convinced that the image of the shallow-

82

  Edward L. Keenan, “Was Iaroslav of Halych Really Shooting Sultans in 1185?” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 22 (1998): 313–27.

83

 Slavík, Od Dobnera k Dobrovskému, 280, 282.

84

  Arne Novák, Stručné dějiny literatury české, ed. R. Havel and A. Grund (Olomouc: R. Promburger, 1946), 61, cited by Eduard Petrů, Vzdálené hlasy: Studie o starší české literatuře (Olomouc: Votobia, 1996), 227; for a mild dissent, see also Milan Kopecký, “Tradice a její žánrová modifikace,” in Speculum medii aevi: Zrcadlo středověku, ed. Lenka Jiroušková (Prague: Koniasch Latin Press, 1998), 80–81. Some of the embarrassment over the modest level of Czech culture is also reflected in Hanzal, Od baroka k romantismu.

85

  Rotrekl, Barokní fenomén v součastnosti, 146–47.

86 87

  Čechura and Čechurová, Korespondence Josefa Pekaře a Kamila Krofty, 86.

  For instance, Zdeňka Tichá, Cesta starší české literatury (Prague: Panorama, 1984), 203– 05.

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ness and poverty of sixteenth-century culture, which “has been taught and believed,” was erroneous: I have studied the fruits of this culture from various aspects … and I am convinced that it is the peak of our cultural development, that at that time we, as a nation, lived the fullest and richest life … and that this period is to us today intrinsically much closer than what preceded and what followed…, and I am firmly convinced … that this will be generally recognized, once these matters become better known.88 While the esthetes and some others decried the low level of Czech belles lettres, the defenders called attention to the sociopolitical literature which was inspired by a humanist and humanitarian spirit that represented a worthy Bohemian contribution to the intellectual development of civilization. There were even those brave souls who took up the cudgels for a respectable esthetic status of belles lettres in the Utraquist age. Thus, citing as an example “the fruitful encounter of Czech literature with the work of Giovanni Boccacio,” Jaroslav Kolár has argued that the Bohemians had virtually come to terms with the most advanced currents of contemporary Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.89 Question of Provincialism The third reason for deprecating the intellectual and cultural heritage of the Utraquist era was the a priori assumption of the cultural isolation and consequent mediocrity of Bohemia resulting from the wars of the Bohemian Reformation.90 In fact, although couched in the vernacular idiom, the sixteenth-century Utraquist culture, like the culture of the national awakening, was open to outside influences, tolerant of intellectual diversity, and pursued universal, not provincial, ideals. Bohemian scholars and intellectuals maintained lively contacts with their counterparts at the highest levels of European culture. The scope of educated townsmen’s intellectual interest reached beyond practical knowledge of law, medicine, and technology to the sphere of pure science and scholarship in philosophy, classics, theology, linguistics, and history.91 Erasmus knew what he was talking about when he listed Bohemia among the few countries where the humanities were valued and flourished.92 Utraquist Bohemia, indeed, showed considerable interest in the Christian 88

  Čechura and Čechurová, Korespondence Josefa Pekaře a Kamila Krofty, 87.

89

  Kolár, Návraty bez konce, 119, 121.

90

  See, for instance, Dějiny zemí koruny české, 2 vols. (Prague: Paseka, 1992), 1: 289.

91

  Jiří Pešek, Měšt’anská vzdělanost a kultura v předbělohorských Čechách, 1547–1620 (Prague: Karolinum, 1993), 26–28.

92

  Desiderius Erasmus, The Correspondence, 11 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–92), 6: 174.



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humanism of none other than Erasmus, which coincided with the Utraquist view of Christian life, often in contradiction to current Roman ecclesiology. The translation of his Praise of Folly into Czech as Chvála bláznovství by 1513 was the first in a vernacular language. Two other important works became available in Czech early in the sixteenth century: Enchiridion militis Christiani in 1519 in translation by Oldřich Velenský of Mnichov, and Výklad na Otčenáš (Explanation of the Lord’s Prayer) in 1526 by Jan Mantuan and Jan Pekk in Plzeň. In addition, eight more of Erasmus’s works were published in Czech translations in Bohemia between 1519 and 1595, some in several editions.93 Dobrovský in particular valued the 1542 translation of Erasmus’s paraphrase of St. Matthew’s Gospel.94 A Bohemian humanist, Jan Šlechta of Všehrdy, corresponded with Erasmus and invited him to visit Prague in 1519.95 In 1520, another Czech correspondent, the nobleman Arkleb of Boskovice, assured Erasmus of the popularity of his writings and the great weight his opinions carried in the country.96 The Utraquist author Řehoř Hrubý of Jelení translated works of Erasmus, as well as those of Petrarch97 and the Greek Fathers. His son, Zikmund Hrubý of Jelení, was a friend of Erasmus, whom he assisted in preparing editions of ancient authors in Basel. He worked in the publishing house of Johannes Froben under the name of Gelenius.98 On the level of personal contacts, the breadth of cultural horizons was exemplified by two erudite Utraquist ecclesiastics, Jan Hortensius Zahrádka (1501–57) and Jindřich Dvorský z Helfenberka (1505–82), each of whom held the top administrative office in the Utraquist Church, in 1541 and 1572–81, respectively. Having studied in Padua and Venice in the early 1530s, Hortensius was not only a distinguished theologian (a specialist on St. Paul), but also the outstanding Czech mathematician of his time.99 In the early 1540s, Dvorský had entered into scholarly discourse concerning 93

  Kolár, Návraty bez konce, 120, 141, 175–77. See also Mirjam Bohatcová, “Erasmus Roterdamský v českých tištěných překladech 16.–17. století,” Časopis národního muzea, Řada historická 155 (1986): 37–58.

94   Desiderius Erasmus, Evangelium Ježíše Krista syna Božího podle sepsání Svatého Matouše, trans. Jan Vartovský of Varta (Litomyšl: Ondřej Dušík, 1542); see Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 47. 95

 Erasmus, Correspondence, 6: 321–23; see also 7: 89–95, 119–28.

96

  “For pray take it as certain that, whatever opinion you come to, people in my country will easily and gladly agree with you, and will value what you say far more than if one were to confront them with decrees of the supreme pontiff or any thunderbolt of opposition launched by men.” See Erasmus, Correspondence, 8: 75–76. 97

  Francesco Petrarca, Knihy dvoje o lékařství proti štěstí a neštěstí (Prague: Jan Severýn z Kapí Hory, 1501); see Knihopis českých a slovenských tisků. Vol. 2, in 9 pts., Tisky z let 1501–1800 (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd, 1939–67), no. 7049.

98

  Vladmír Forst et al., ed., Lexikon české literatury: Osobnosti, díla, instituce (Prague: Academia, 1985–2008), vol. 2, pt. 2, 339.

99

  Ottův slovník naučný, 37 vols. (Prague: Otto, 1888–1908), 11: 642–43.

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the Greek and Latin classics with no less a figure than the “praeceptor Germaniae,” Philipp Melanchton himself.100 Bohemian editions of the Bible commanded international respect for their attention to Greek texts in the mid-sixteenth century. Some, like Sixt of Ottersdorf, traveled abroad to learn Greek.101 During the opening years of the seventeenth century, Martin Bacháček, professor of astronomy and rector of the University of Prague, was a respected colleague of such luminaries as Johannes Kepler and Tycho de Brahe.102 This breadth of vision was not the purview of a few select top intellectuals, it applied also at lower levels. Thus, within the regular Utraquist priesthood, Vavřinec Leander Rvačovský of Rvačov gained recognition for his “unusual linguistic, historical, and theological knowledge.”103 The tradition of learned clergy continued into the early decades of the seventeenth century. In his Spis v němž se obsahuje (Treatise … on events preceding the Advent of Christ; 1616), Matauš Pačuda not only cited profusely from the fathers and doctors of the church, but also displayed a working knowledge of Latin and Greek classical authors, such as Homer, Herodotus, Euripides, Plutarch, and Plautus.104 The scope of educated townsmen’s intellectual interest reached beyond practical knowledge of law, medicine, and technology to the sphere of pure science and scholarship in philosophy, classics, theology, linguistics, and history.105 In addition to the charge of cultural isolation, the Utraquists’ relatively open intellectual world, acknowledging the principles of questioning and discussion, created a problem for themselves. So, whereas at the opening of the third millennium the qualities of tolerance and freedom of expression would be considered distinct virtues, in modern historiography the same were paradoxically held against them.106 The Utraquists’ intellectual orientation contributed to the harsh judgments passed on Utraquism by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Czech and other Continental historians, who tended to expect a clear-cut, unambiguous categorization of concepts or phenomena. From the vantage points of Hegelian rationalism, Comtean positivism, or Marxist dialectics, the relatively open-ended intellectual outlook of Utraquist theologians and other intellectuals would appear as something marked by a lack of discipline or rigor, and by intellectual instability and indolence.107 This 100

  Ibid., 8: 275.

101

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 153.

102

  Josef Hanzal, “Martin Bacháček z Nauměřic a městské školy ve středních Čechách před Bílou Horou,” Středočeský sborník historický 10 (1975): 141–42.

103

  Antonín Rybička, “Rvačovský Vavřinec Leander,” Časopis českého musea 45 (1871): 326.

104

  Matauš Pačuda, Spis v němž se obsahuje které věci (z stran lidského pokolení) předešly příchod a narození mesiaše pravého Krista (Prague: Matěj Pardubický, 1616), f. J3v, J4r, J5r.

105

 Pešek, Měšt’anská vzdělanost, 26–28.

106

  Dějiny české literatury, 2: 114.

107

 Hanzal, Od baroka k romantismu, 100. On the stern critique aimed by historians at the Utraquist Church, see David, “The Strange Fate of Czech Utraquism,” 644–52.



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same line of thinking has also led to the criticism of Dobrovský as a person devoid of firm principles for his admiration of the Utraquist century.108 From the present-day viewpoint, the Utraquists’ intellectual openness or latitudinarianism, combined with liberal ecclesiology, is likely to be perceived as a badge of honor rather than one of degradation. In the sixteenth-century context, this outlook was a crucial mark of distinction from the post-Tridentine Roman Church, with its relatively closed intellectual world and institutional authoritarianism. This outlook made the Utraquists resemble the Church of England with its germinating Anglicanism. It also tended to distance them further from the Lutheran and Calvinist denominations, which evolved in the direction of increasing dogmatization as confessionalization progressed during the sixteenth century.109 At the opposite side of the ledger, the Utraquists’ attitude of tolerance did not signify intellectual nihilism or a lack of commitment, as has been charged. Rather it could, and did, coexist with firm adherence to specific religious and ethical principles.110

The Infrastructure of Restoration It was perhaps Pelcl who started in Prague the tradition of printing sixteenth-century Czech literature, by issuing in 1777 Příhody Václava Vratislava z Mitrovic (The Adventures of Václav Vratislav of Mitrovice). He also defined the rationale behind the project in the preface to this edition, (1) praising the standard of sixteenth-century Czech literature and (2) excoriating the executors of the Counter Reformation, especially the Jesuit missionaries, for the work of destruction, exclaiming: “It is a wonder that here and there a Czech book turns up.”111 Similarly, Dobrovský, in 1792, praised the publishers who already in the 1780s, immediately after the abolition of the Index in 1782, began to reprint hitherto proscribed Czech books. He cited as an example Comenius’s Labyrint světa (The Labyrinth of the World), which appeared as early as 1782.112 He also praised the bibliographic work, particularly by František Faustin Procházka, that would identify the Czech-language publications of the Utraquist era as a precondition for restoring them to the awareness of the public.113 Dobrovský him108

  Lehár et al., Česká literatura, 162.

109

  David, “Utraquists, Lutherans, and the Bohemian Confession of 1575,” 331–35.

110

  Zdeněk V. David, “A Cohabitation of Convenience: The Utraquists and the Lutherans under the Letter of Majesty, 1609–1620,” in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, 3: Papers from the Nineteenth World Congress of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, Bratislava 1998, ed. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Main Library, 2000), 185–88. 111

 Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 117.

112

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 167; and Jan Amos Komenský, Labirynt světa a ráj srdce (Prague: Jan Samm, 1782).

113

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 49.

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self contributed to the identification of the corpus of sixteenth-century Czech literature through his own research in the Bohemian bibliography and history of printing, published in his Über Einführung und Verbreitung der Buchdruckerkunst in Böhmen (1782) and several editions of his Geschichte der böhmischen Sprache und Literatur (1791, 1792, 1818). Famous are his exhortations to Bohemian libraries, particularly those in Prague, to prepare and publish catalogs of their collections. Ironically, he found a major aid in the Index Bohemicorum Librorum Prohibitorum by Antonín Koniáš, the third edition of which appeared in 1770.114 He also drew on the work of his Enlightenment predecessors, such as Voigt’s Beiträge zur Buchdruckerkunst in Böhmen (1772), and found his most important successor in Jungmann with his comprehensive Historie literatury české, first published in 1825.115 Characteristic of the transmission of sixteenth-century knowledge was Procházka’s publication program.116 Aware of the Czech public’s eagerness to read and concerned with the scarcity of reading materials, he conceived an ambitious publication project, which would restore in new editions the materials that had perished through the misguided destruction of the Counter Reformation. Launching his project in 1786, he envisioned three series of reprints: (1) histories and chronicles of the Czechs; (2) histories of other nations; (3) treatises on arts and sciences; and (4) non-polemical religious literature. In the first series, he published the Dalimil or Boleslav Chronicle and that of Pulkava; in the second, Oldřich Prefát of Vlkanov’s travelog and Hosius’s Moscow Chronicle; in the third, Kopp’s treatise on health,117 the collection by Jan Češka, Příkladné řeči a užitečná naučení vybraná z knih hlubokých mudrců (Exemplary Speeches and Useful Instructions, Selected from the Books of Wise Men),118 and Erasmus’s O připravení k smrti (Preparation for Death)119 and Enchridion; in the fourth, the Pseudo-Augustinian Samotné rozmlouvání duše (The Soliloquies of 114

  Index Bohemicorum librorum prohibitorum, et corrigendorum (Prague: Joan C. Hraba, 1770); and Josef Dobrovský, O zavedení a rozšíření knihtisku v Čechách (critical ed. in German of Über Einführung und Verbreitung der Buchdruckerkunst in Böhmen, 1782) (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd, 1954), 10–11. The Index is still used for identification of Czech publications; see Bohuslava Brtová, Dodatky ke Knihopisu českých a slovenských tisků (Prague: Základní knihovna ČSAV, 1990), 141. 115

  Dobrovský, O zavedení, 12; and Jungmann, Historie literatury české.

116

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 169.

117

  Johann Kopp of Raumenthal’s books had appeared in Prague in 1536 and 1542. See Knihopis, 4314, 4315.

118

  Jan Češka, Příkladné řeči a užiteãná naučení vybraná z knih hlubokých mudrců (Prague: Jan J. Diesbach, 1786); virtually identical edition, Prague: Kašpar Widtmann, 1786; see Knihopis, nos. 1785–86; originally published Plzeň: Jan Pekk, 1527, then Olomouc: Friedrich Milichtaler, 1572, and Prague: Burian Valda, 1579; see Knihopis, nos. 1782–84; see also Jungmann, Historie literatury české, 143. 119

  Knihopis, 2359; sixteenth-century editions appeared in 1563–64 and 1579. See ibid., 2356–58.



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the Soul). All were published in 1786, except Erasmus’s Enchiridion (1787),120 in the preface of which Procházka defended his publication program against the rearguard of the Counter Reformation, whose champions blamed him for disregarding the indexes of libri prohibiti.121 The choice of Erasmus can be considered particularly significant, inasmuch as the Dutchman’s Catholic humanism served as a bridge between Utraquism and the Josephin Enlightenment. The followers in Procházka’s footsteps were František Jan Tomsa (1753–1814), and Václav Matěj Kramerius (1753–1809) after him.122 An important republisher of sixteenth-century literature was Johan Ferdinand of Schönfeld, who issued reprints of, among others, Perlička dítek božích (A Little Pearl of God’s Children; 1782) by Sixt Palma Močidlanský,123 the Pseudo-Augustinian Samotné rozmlouvání duše (1784),124 Vzdychání nábožná (Pious Sspirations; 1786) by J. A. Komenský, and above all the huge Kronika česká (Bohemian Chronicle; serially, 1819–23), by Václav Hájek of Libočany.125 Schönfeld employed the literary, editorial, and historical skills of Josef Linda (1789–1834).126 Much of the republished literature came from the printing house of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín in the reign of Rudolf II.127 Later, in 1829 and 1835, Zahradník praised the subsequent labors of Václav Hanka (1791–1861) in republishing old Czech texts.128 The national awakening also involved the reestablishment of sixteenth-century grammatical norms for the literary language of the national awakening. Relying on old editions and manuscripts, Fortunát Durich and Faustin Procházka laid the foundation by their republication of the Bible in 1778–80. In inventorying the sources for an authoritative dictionary of the Czech language in 1793, František M. Pelcl characteristically cited not the imprints of the Counter Reformation but the sixteenth-century classics, such as the works of Hájek, Veleslavín, Sixt of Ottersdorf, and Comenius, the translations of Kocín, and texts of parliamentary documents.129 The same view was embraced by Jan Nejedlý, Pelcl’s successor as professor of Czech at the University of Prague, by Václav M. Kramerius, publisher of books for general readers, and, of 120 121

  Knihopis, 2354–55; sixteenth-century editions from 1519 and 1570. See ibid., 2351–52.

  Jireček, Rukovět’, 2: 146–47.

122

 Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 122–23.

123

  Knihopis, 6787; originally published in 1610 and 1619. See ibid., 6772, 6774.

124

  Knihopis, 891; it preceded Procházka’s reprint of 1786 (ibid., 893) by two years. It had been published three times in the sixteenth century (1543, 1583, 1600). See, ibid., nos. 887, 888, 889. 125

  Originally published in 1541. See Knihopis, no. 2867.

126

  Kolár, Návraty bez konce, 290, 294–95.

127

  Mirjam Bohatcová and Josef Hejnic, “O vydavatelské činnosti Veleslavínské tiskárny,” Folia Historica Bohemica 9 (1985): 291–388. 128

  Letters, dated 17 November 1829 and 28 May 1835, in Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 118, 121.

129

 Johanides, František Martin Pelcl, 232.

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course, by Dobrovský. It is true that Jan V. Pól and Maximilian Šimek, the Counter Reformation diehards, had voiced opposition in the 1770s and 80s against the new wave. But their characterization of the old Czech language as “heretical” seemed irrelevant and earned them the aura of mischievous, if not comical, busybodies.130 Voicing a consensus of the awakeners, the first modern Czech journal, Hlasatel český, endorsed in its opening page (1806) the linguistic norms of Adam of Veleslavín, to which Nejedlý, its editor, was entirely devoted.131 The introduction of new words, particularly by Jungmann, exemplified in his translation of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1811), proceeded within sixteenth-century language paradigms, not in violation of them.132 Likewise, writers tended to readopt the style of sixteenth-century Czech, most notably František Palacký in his literary work.133 The Reprinting of Classics To establish the link between Utraquism and the awakening, it is essential to examine the record of republishing the sixteenth-century classics during the period from 1781 to 1881. It was during this period that the Czech political culture was formed. Perhaps the main reasons for reprinting and disseminating sixteenth-century Utraquist literature were (1) the lack of currently produced writings in Czech; and (2) the intellectual or linguistic irrelevance of the literature of the Counter Reformation period.134 We shall note the character and extent of this republication process, except for legal texts and legal literature, which are considered in a separate section. This inventory is not intended to be comprehensive or exhaustive, but rather suggestive of the variety and richness of the reprints. Important, for instance, is the transmission of a quintessential Utraquist text by Josef Dittrich, namely Bílejovský’s Kronyka czeská (1537) (under the title of Kronyka církevní) in 1816.135 Dittrich, an alumnus of the reformed Catholic Seminary in Vienna in the 1780s and professor of church history at the University of Prague since 1803, also prepared in 1822 new editions of two works by Tomáš Bavorovský, an irenic theologian, who advocated a symbiotic relationship between the Catholics and

130   Václav Zelený, Život Josefa Jungmanna (Prague: Matice česká, 1873), 47–49; and Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 167–68. 131

  Zelený, Život Josefa Jungmanna, 65–68.

132

  Ibid., 50.

133

  Vladimír Macura, Znamení zrodu: České národní obrození jako kulturní typ, rev. ed. (Prague: H & H, 1995), 19. 134

  Petráň et al., Počátky českého národního obrození, 240. On the early republication of Czech literary works, see also Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 116–27. 135

  Bohuslav Bílejovský, Kronyka církevní, ed. Josef Skalický [i.e., Dittrich] (Prague: Fetterl z Vilden, 1816).



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the Utraquists.136 Dittrich’s use of Slavonic pseudonyms, Skalský and Klíč, reflected his association with the national awakening. Another example of religious literature was John Chrysostom’s Kniha o napravení padlého (A Book about Correcting the Fallen) translated and provided with an important patriotic preface by Viktorin Kornelius of Všehrdy, originally published in 1495 (2nd ed., 1501), which reappeared in 1820 (Prague: Fetterlová).137 As mentioned, Oldřich Velenský of Mnichov’s Czech translation of Enchiridion militis Christiani by Erasmus, originally published in 1519, and Erasmus’s O připravení k smrti, originally published in 1563–64, were reprinted by Procházka in 1786–87.138 Reviving the religious and didactic literature of the sixteenth century, Veleslavín’s work Čest a nevina pohlaví ženského (1585) with an appended treatise by Kocín, Abeceda pobožné manželky a rozšafné hospodyně, reappeared in 1823.139 The ideas of Veleslavín and Martin Kuthen likewise reentered the minds of Czech readers through the republication of Dvě kroniky o založení země České by Václav R. Kramerius in 1817.140 Procházka reissued in 1786 the chronicles of the so-called Dalimil, and of Příbík Pulkava of Radenín.141 As noted earlier, Kronika česká (1541) by Václav Hájek of Libočany was serially reprinted during 1819–23, by the publishing house of Johan Ferdinand of Schönfeld.142 The playwright Václav K. Klicpera looked in 1828 at Hájek’s chronicle as an inexhaustible source of themes for Czech poetry. The famous Czech poet of the 1830s, Karel Hynek Mácha, praised Hájek’s work as 136

  Tomáš Bavorovský, as Kázání na Evangelium, kteréž se čte v Církvi Boží na den Božího Těla, new ed. partial by Josef Klíč [i.e., Dittrich] (Prague: Fetterlová, 1822), extracted from idem, Postila česká 1557; and Tomáš Bavorovský, Zrcadlo onoho věčného a blahoslaveného života (1561), new ed. by Josef Dittrich (Prague: Fetterlová, 1822). 137

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1039.

138

  Desiderius Erasmus, Ruční knížka o rytíři křest’anském, 2nd ed., ed. František Faustýn Procházka (Prague: Jan J. Diesbach, 1787); and Erasmus, Kniha, v kteréž jednomu každému křest’anskému člověku naučení i napomenutí se dává, jak by se k smrti hotoviti měl (Prague: Jan J. Diesbach, 1786); see also Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 420. 139  Erben,Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1657–58, Jan Kocín z Kocinétu, Abeceda pobožné manželky a rozšafné hospodyně (Prague: Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, 1585); see also Knihopis, no. 4159. 140

  Dvě kroniky o založení země České … Jedna Eneáše Senenského … Druhá Martina Kuthena z Krynsperku (Prague, 1817). Veleslavín’s edition had appeared as Kroniky dvě o založení země České, Eneaše Sylvia a Martina Kuthena (Prague: Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, 1585); see also Milan Kopecký, “Poznámky k vývoji české historické beletrie předobrozenské,” Sborník prací Filozofické Fakulty Brněnské Univerzity D 14 (1967): 63.

141

 Dalimil, Kronika boleslavská o posloupnosti knížat a králů českých (Prague: Jan J. Diesbach, 1786; virtually identical ed., Prague: Kašpar Widtmann, 1786; see Knihopis, no. 1811; originally published, Prague: Daniel Karel z Karlspergka, 1620, see Knihopis, no. 1810); Příbík Pulkava z Radenína, Kronika česká (Prague: Jan J. Diesbach, 1786; virtually identical ed., Prague: Kašpar Widtmann, 1786; see Knihopis, nos. 14.697–98).

142

  Kolár, Návraty bez konce, 289.

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an outstanding piece of Czech belles lettres.143 Prokop Lupáč of Hlaváčov, Historie o císaři Karlovi IV, originally published in 1584, was reissued by Hanka in 1848.144 Kronika Pražská, by Bartoš Písař, written in the 1530s, was published by Karel J. Erben in 1851 (Prague: Kalve). All of Veleslavín’s original works would become available in a collected edition in 1853.145 From the rich geographic and historical literature of non-Bohemian countries, for instance, Matouš Hosius’s translation of Kronika Moskevská by Aleksander Gwagnin (Alessandro Guagnini), published in 1589 (2nd ed., 1602) was reissued as early as 1786 in Prague with an introduction by Faustin Procházka.146 Ladislav Bartolomeides republished in Levoča in 1805 the translation of Flavius Josephus’s Jewish War by Pavel Aquilinas (Vorličný), Flavia Jozefa o válce židovské knihy sedmery, originally published in 1553.147 Another version, based on the edition by Mikuláš Stypacius of 1591, was published again by Kramerius in Prague in 1806.148 Jan Kocín of Kocinét’s translation of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (1594) was newly published under the title Desatery knihy Eusebiovy církevní historie in 1855 in an edition by J. E. Krbec.149 From the favorite genre of travel literature, one of the earliest publications of literature from the sixteenth century, as mentioned earlier, was Příhody Václava Vratislava z Mitrovic, prepared by Pelcl in 1777.150 The volume was published again 143

  Ibid., 187, 283.

144

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1537–38. The original edition appeared as Prokop Lupáč z Hlaváčova, Historie o císaři Karlovi, toho jména čtvrtém (Prague: Jiří Nygrin, 1584); see Knihopis, no. 5060. 145

  Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, Práce původní (Prague: Bedrich Rohlícek, 1853).

146

  Aleksander Gwagnin [Alessandro Guagnini], Vejtah z Kroniky Moskevské … Přidána jest Zikmunda Herbersteina dvojí cesta do Moskvy, trans. Matouš Hosius, intro. František Faustýn Procházka (Prague: Jan Diesbach, 1786; variant: publisher, Kašpar Widtmann, 1786); see Knihopis, nos. 2799–80. The original edition was Aleksander Gwagnin [Alessandro Guagnini], Kronika Moskevská: Wypsání predních zemí, krajin, národuw, knízestwí, mest, zámkuw, rzek i jezer, Welikému Knizeti Mozkewskému poddanych … Též o neslýchaném Tyranství Ivana Vasilovice Knížete Moskevského, kteréž on za paměti naší nad poddanými svými provozoval, trans. Matouš Hosius z Vysokého Mýta (Prague: Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, 1589; 2nd ed., Kronyka Moskevská, Prague: Daniel Adam z Veleslavína, 1602); see Knihopis, nos. 2797–98. Hosius’s version is apparently based on Sarmatiae Europeae descriptio (Cracow: Matthias Wirzbieta, 1578). 147

  Flavius Josephus, Flavia Jozefa o válce židovské knihy sedmery, trans. Pavel Aquilinas [Vorličný] (Prostějov: Jan Günther, 1553; also Knihopis, no. 3627; 2nd ed., Levoča: Bartolomeides, 1805); see Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1481–90. 148

  Krátká historie o válce židovské z knih Josefa Flavia vytažená léta 1595 od Mikuláše Stypacia Strakovského, new ed. (Prague: Kramerius, 1806); see also Knihopis, no. 3626. 149

  Forst et al., Lexikon české literatury, 2: 756.

150

  Václav Vratislav z Mitrovic, Příhody, které on v tureckém hlavním městě viděl (Prague: Jan M. Samm, 1777); see also Knihopis, no. 16.669.



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by Kramerius in 1807.151 It was once again Procházka, who reissued in Prague in 1786 Oldřich Prefát of Vlkanov’s Cesta z Prahy do Benátek (A Journey from Prague to Venice), originally printed in 1563.152 V. M. Kramerius published in 1796 the travelogue Jana Mandyvilly, znamenitého rytíře cesty po světě (The World Travels of John Mandeville, the Illustrious Knight), originally published in Plzeň in 1510.153 Re-printings of popular sixteenth-century belles lettres, Historijí dvanácte o bratru Janu Palečkovi (Twelve Stories about Brother Jan Paleček; 1567; 2nd ed., 1610) appeared several times at the turn of the eighteenth century in various journals.154 In 1790, Kramerius republished Letopisové Trojanští, a book published three times previously (1476, 1487, and 1603).155 František Jan Tomsa published in 1791 Tobolka zlatá (A Golden Purse) of Šimon Lomnický of Budeč; Kramerius published in 1794 Krátké naučení mladému hospodáři (A Brief Instruction for a Young Householder) by the same author.156 Dobrovský, with Antonín Pišely, published a collection of folk sayings and proverbs by Jakub Srnec of Varvažov in 1804 under the title Českých přísloví sbírka (A Collection of Bohemian Proverbs).157 Rada všelikých zvířat (The Counsel from Divers Animals), originally published in Plzeň (1528, Jan Pekk) and Prague (1573[?] and 1578, Melantrich), was republished in Prague in 1815 (Enders) with an introduction by Dobrovský.158 Selections from Vavřinec Leander Rvačovský of Rvačov’s Masopust (The Mardi Gras; Prague: Jiří Melantrich, 1580) were reprinted several times, for instance, Klevetník (A Gossip) and Všetýčka (A Busybody),

151

  Kočí, České národní obrození, 189.

152

  Oldřich Prefát z Vlkanova, Cesta z Prahy do Benátek, a odtud potom po moři až do Palestýny (Prague: Jan J. Diesbach, 1786; virtually identical ed., Prague: Kašpar Widtmann, 1786; see Knihopis, nos. 14.354–55; original ed., Prague: Jan Kozel, 1563; see Knihopis, no. 14.353). 153

  John de Mandeville, Cesta po světě, v kteréž vypisuje rozličné krajiny až města (Prague: Kramerius, 1796); see also Knihopis, no. 5172. The original translation appeared in Plzeň in 1510, and other editions? in 1513, 1576, 1596, and 1600. See Knihopis, nos. 5167–71.

154

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1339.

155

  Letopisové Trojanští (Prague: V. Kramerius, 1790); see Jungmann, Historie literatury české, 66. For the earliest editions, see Knihopis, Dodatky, vol. 1 (Prague: Národní Knihovna, 1994), nos. 14–15. 156

  Šimon Lomnický of Budeč, Tobolka zlatá (Prague: František J. Tomsa, 1791); see Knihopis, no. 4978; for original edition [1615], see Knihopis, no. 4977; and Šimon Lomnický of Budeč, Krátké naučení mladému hospodáři (Prague: V. V. Kramerius, 1794); see Knihopis, no. 4943; for original edition [1597], see Knihopis, no. 4941. 157

  Dějiny české literatury, 2: 116. The original appeared as Jakub Srnec of Varvažov, Dicteria sev proverbia bohemica ad phrasim latinorum accommodata (Prague: Nigrinus, 1582; 2nd ed., Prague: Nigrinus, 1599); see Knihopis, 15.642 and 15.644. 158

 Jungmann, Historie literatury české, 64. For the early editions, see Knihopis, nos. 14.713– 15.

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in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.159 Václav Dobřenský’s didactic work Vrtkavé štěstí (Fickle Fortune; 1583) was republished in Prague in 1824 in an edition of Václav R. Štěpán.160 The play Historia o jednom sedlském pacholku a poběhlém židu (Story of a Peasant and a Wandering Jew) by Tobiáš Mouřenín of Litomyšl, originally published in 1604, was reissued at least eleven times for the last time in 1877 (Uherská Skalice: Škarnicl). One of its central themes was used by Tyl in his play Strakonický dudák (The Bagpiper of Strakonice).161 The story of Meluzína (Mélusine), published in 1595, was converted into a play by V. K. Klicpera and published in 1848.162 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the linguistic heritage of the sixteenth century was retrieved most palpably by the reappearance of the thesaurus of the Czech language, based on the work of Daniel Adam of Veleslavín. In 1805, Karel Ignác Thám published the Neuestes ausführliches und vollständiges deutsch-böhmisches synonymisch-phraseologisches National-lexikon oder Wörterbuch (Prague: F. J. Scholl, 1805–07), based on Veleslavín’s Sylva quadrilinguis vocabulorum et phrasium Bohemicae, Latinae, Graecae et Germanicae linguae (Prague: Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, 1598). A second revised edition, also by Thám, appeared in 1814 under the same title (Prague: M. Neureutter, 1814). In line with the restoration of Czech linguistic norms, Dobrovský printed in 1818 Václav Písecký’s letter of 1512 on “The Merits of the Czech Language.”163 The only way to avoid writing the corrupted language inherited from the early eighteenth century, claimed Zahradník, was for the writer to immerse himself in the tongue of the old Czechs. He praised the linguistic work of Jungmann and his associates in restoring the norms of the Golden Age.164

159

  Vavřinec Leander Rvačovský of Rvačov, Klevetník (N.p., late eighteenth or early nineteenth century); and Vavřinec Leander Rvačovský of Rvačov, Všetýčka (N.p., late eighteenth or early nineteenth century); see Knihopis, nos. 15.125 and 15.128. For Vavřinec Leander Rvačovský of Rvačov, Masopust (Prague: Jiří Melantrich, 1580), see Knihopis, no. 15.127. 160

  Václav Dobřenský, Vrtkavé štěstí (Prague: Martin Neureuter, 1824); see Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1586; for original ed. (Prague: Jiří Černý, 1583), see Knihopis, 2005.

161

  Kolár, Návraty bez konce, 14; see also Jungmann, Historie literatury české, 141.

162

  V. K. Klicpera, Česká Melusina: Dramatická národní báchorka v pateru dějství (Prague: Nákl. J.A. Gabriela, 1848); see Meluzína: An Edition of the Sixteenth-Century Czech Version of the Mélusine Romance, ed. S. I. Kanikova and Robert B. Pynsent (London: KLP, 1996), 347. The original appeared as Kronika kratochvílná o ctné a šlechetné Panně Meluzíně (1595), ibid., 1. For a list of other editions, see Jaroslav Kolár, Česká zábavná próza 16. století a t. zv. knížky lidového čtení (Prague: NČSAV, 1960), 68–69. 163

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 409–12.

164

  Rybička, “Vzpomínka na Vincence Zahradníka,” 34–35; Jungmann, Historie literatury české, 359–60; also letter from Zahradník to Hanka, dated 28 May 1835, in Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 121.



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Not only the lexical side, but also syntax should observe the old norms.165 His example and exhortation influenced other Catholic priests.166 According to him, the old Czech could also express philosophical concepts more substantively and concretely than present-day German.167 As a result of the program of reprinting, Czech readers in the period of the national awakening had available to them a large portion of the corpus of literature by which their sixteenth-century ancestors were nourished. The process was aided by cheaper printing and the spread of literacy, especially in the rural areas, under the impact of the Enlightenment era. In particular, the decree of 6 December 1774 stipulated an expansion and systematization of the school system in Bohemia.168 Transmission in Textbooks The second approach to documenting the revival of sixteenth-century values is to look at what nationally conscious Czech students studied and what formed their world outlook. Already the first professor of Czech language and literature at the University of Prague, František M. Pelcl, appointed in 1792, had his students read sixteenth-century authors and parliamentary documents of that period.169 The same was true of his successors Jan Nejedlý (1801–34), who was particularly insistent on the fidelity to sixteenth-century norms of the Czech language, then František Čelakovský (1835–36), Jan Vávra (1836–39), and Jan P. Koubek (1840–54). In the opening decades of the nineteenth century, students depended on the reprinted work or original editions, for instance, Zahradník, who studied among others Veleslavín, Kocín, Koldín, Plácel of Elbing, Sixt of Ottersdorf, Hájek, and Comenius.170 Later, the reintroduction of sixteenth-century modes of thought was facilitated by textbooks that provided relatively easy access to a great variety of authors. Perhaps the most notable transmission belt of literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century was Josef J. Jungmann’s Slovesnost (Literature; 1820).171 There was also Alois V. Šembera’s Dějiny řeči a literatury československé (History of Bo-

165

  He criticized those writers who “use Czech words and correctly decline and inflect them, but bind them together in such a way … that a sort of a third language is created, which is neither German nor Czech.” See Rybička, “Vzpomínka na Vincence Zahradníka,” 33. 166

  In particular, the later bishop of České Budějovice, Jan Jirsík. See ibid., 34.

167

 Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 74.

168

 Jungmann, Historie literatury české, 345.

169

  Dějiny Univerzity Karlovy, 2: 1623–1802 (Prague: Karolinum, 1996), 132.

170

  Rybička, “Vzpomínka na Vincence Zahradníka,” 29; and Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 73.

171

 Josef J. Jungmann, Slovesnost; aneb sbírka příkladů s krátkým pojednáním o slohu (Prague: I. Fetterlová, 1820).

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hemian Slav language and literature; 1858–68).172 The second volume, covering the period from 1409, was issued serially since 1861, so that the treatment of the sixteenth century was available in the early 1860s, although the entire volume was not completed until 1868. Characteristically, the author keynoted the second volume of the textbook with a quote from Sixt of Ottersdorf embracing those values which the Bohemian nineteenth century shared with the sixteenth: free discussion and tolerance.173 Among many others, Josef Kalousek, for instance, provides testimony of the intensive use and deep influence of the two textbooks from the viewpoint of the student youth in the 1850s.174 Another important reader of Czech literature was Výbor z literatury české (Anthology of Czech Literature); volume 1 (1845), Od nejstarších časů až do počátku XV. století (From Earliest Times until the Early Fifteenth Century), was edited by Josef J. Jungmann with František Palacký and others, and volume 2 (1868), Od počátku XV až do konce XVI. století (From the Early Fifteenth to the End of the Sixteenth Centuries), by Karel J. Erben.175 In his introduction to volume 2, Erben justified the focus on the Utraquist period on the merits of its literary attainments, contrasted with the mediocrity and corrupted language of most of the writings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This volume started appearing in installments in 1857, and was completed in 1868. The eleven-year hiatus between the appearance of the first volume (1845) and the resumption of the work on the second (1856) was caused by the revolutionary events of 1848 and their aftermath. According to Erben, the main purpose of the textbook was to provide an inventory of Czech literary achievement and to serve as a basis for further development of literature in the Czech language.176 The Výbor z literatury české contained a rich and varied selection from the writers of the Bohemian Reformation. Already volume 1, published in 1845, excerpted five works of Tomáš of Štítné, Rozmluvy nábožné (Discussions about Religion), Knihy učení křest’anského (Books of Christian Teaching), Řeči sváteční (Holiday Sermons), O sedmi stupních (Seven Steps), and Sv. Augustina samomluvenie (St. Augustine’s Soliloquy).177 Volume 2 contained a plethora of the theological luminaries of the Utraquist Church, beginning with selections of Jan Hus’s Postilla (Homiliary), Dcerka (A Daughter), and Listové ze žaláře (Letters from Prison), and of Jerome of Prague’s List panu Lackovi z Kravař (A Letter to Lord Lacek of Kravaře).178 The textbook also 172

  Alois V. Šembera, Dějiny řeči a literatury československé, 1 (Vienna: n.p., 1858), 2 (Vienna: Nákladem spisovatelovým, 1868).

173

  Ibid., 2: ii.

174

  Otakar Josek, Život a dílo Josefa Kalouska (Prague: Historický spolek, 1922), 33.

175

  Výbor z literatury české, 1: Od nejstarších časů až do počátku XV. století, ed. Josef J. Jungmann et al., and 2: Od počátku XV až do konce XVI. století, ed. Karel J. Erben. 176

  Ibid., 2: v–vii.

177

  Ibid., 1: 635–790.

178

  Ibid., 2: 181–228.



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presented the account of Poggio of Florence to Leonhard of Aretin about the trial and execution of Jerome in 1416 in a translation by Daniel Adam of Veleslavín.179 The revolutionary atmosphere following the death of Hus was captured in the proceedings of the Diets of Prague (September 1415 and November 1423) and of Čáslav (June 1421), as well as in the records of the council meetings of the Old Town of Prague in July 1420, July 1421, February and May 1422, and January 1429.180 Works by other theologians of the fifteenth century included Jan of Příbram’s Život kněží táborských (The Lives of Taborite Priests),181 Prokop of Plzeň’s Veřejné napomenutí Čechům i Moravanům (A Public Admonition to the Bohemians and Moravians),182 and three sections from the works of Peter of Chelčice, including his homiliary (Postilla).183 The two leading figures of fifteenth-century Utraquism are included: Jan Rokycana, the archbishop elect, and the subsequent administrator, Václav Koranda the Younger. Rokycana is represented by a List proti Pikartóm (A Letter against the Pikharts; 1468) and sections of his homiliary (Postilla),184 and Koranda by Poselstvie krále Jiřího do Říma k papeži (An Embassy of King George to the Pope in Rome; 1462).185 The report O sněmu kutnohorském po smrti krále Jiřího (The Diet in Kutná Hora after King George’s Death; 1471) captured the spirit of Utraquist resistance to the crusades elicited by renewed papal anathemas.186 The student reader also contained selections from three prominent fifteenth-century personages who were not professional theologians: Vavřinec of Březová, Jan Žižka,187 and Ctibor Tovačovský of Cimburk, whose Hádání pravdy a lži (A Dispute between Truth and Falsehood; originally written in 1467, published in Prague, 1539) is quoted at considerable length.188 Volume 2 of Výbor z literatury české covered several of the prominent Utraquist intellectuals involved in the Czech urban culture of the sixteenth century. The earliest was Viktorin Kornelius of Všehrdy with the patriotic introduction to his translation of John Chrysostom’s Kniha o napravení padlého (Correction of a Fallen Man).189 Among the historians of the early sixteenth century, the reader covered Mikuláš Konáč of Hodiškov, Bartoš Písař, and Martin Kuthen of Šprinsberk. The sample of Konáč’s writing was taken from his Czech adaptation of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini 179

  Ibid., 1603–14.

180

  Ibid., 365–402.

181

  Ibid., 410–30.

182

  Ibid., 430–38.

183

  Ibid., 605–39.

184

  Ibid., 733–42.

185

  Ibid., 663–714.

186 187

  Ibid., 849–62. The text was also printed in Časopis českého musea, pt. 2 (1847): 186–99.

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 271–82, 571–604.

188 189

  Ibid., 793–804.

  Ibid., 1039–48.

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(Pope Pius II), Historia Bohemica (1510).190 Bartoš was represented by passages from his Kronika pražská (Prague Chronicle; 1530s),191 and Kuthen by his inspirational Kronika o Žižkovi (Žižka Chronicle; 1564).192 Pavel Aquilinas (Vorličný)’s translation of Flavius Josephus’s Jewish War, under the title Flavia Jozefa o válce židovské knihy sedmery (1553), was a fourth notable historical work of the mid-sixteenth century to be included.193 The anthology featured two eminent Utraquist statesmen and authors, Sixt of Ottersdorf and Pavel Kristián of Koldín. Sixt discussed the unsuccessful resistence to Ferdinand I’s Schmalcaldic War in his Knihy památné o nepokojných letech 1546 a 1547 (Memoirs of the Troubled Years, 1546–47).194 The anthology offered an opportunity to the student youth to savor the legal lore of Koldín from the preface of his famous Práva městská království českého (The Municipal Laws of the Bohemian Kingdom; 1579), as well as the section O spravedlnosti a právu (De justicia et jure) from the same work.195 The textbook highlighted and devoted considerable space to the author and printer, Adam of Veleslavín, who, as mentioned earlier, presided over the great Czech literary flowering during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The Výbor credited him with the authorship of more than twenty books in Czech, and with many more Czech publications which he edited, revised, or printed. The presented excerpts included his Život Eneáše Sylvia, a life of Pius II, which he published in his edition of Kroniky dvě o založení země české (Two Chronicles of the Foundation of the Bohemian Land; 1585), containing Pius’s Kronika česká (Bohemian Chronicle) and Kuthen’s Kronika o založení země české (A Chronicle of the Foundation of the Bohemian Land). A specimen of events for 1 January was taken from Adam’s Kalendář historický (A Historical Calendar; 1578; 2nd ed., 1590), which had arranged significant occurrences of Czech and world history by the days of each month.196 Featured were also two other scholars, Prokop Lupáč of Hlaváčov and Jan Kocín of Kocinét, who had been involved in Adam’s publishing projects. Lupáč is introduced through his Historie o císaři Karlovi IV (History of Emperor Charles IV), originally published in 1584,197 and Kocín by an introduction to his translation of Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, Historia církevní Eusebia, published by Adam in 1594.198 Veleslavín also revised and published the Czech translation of Aleksander Gwagnin’s Kronika 190 191

  Ibid., 1189–1204.

  Ibid., 1299–1312.

192

  Ibid., 1511–22.

193

  Flavius Josephus, Flavia Jozefa.

194 195

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1377–94.

  Ibid., 1550–58.

196

  Ibid., 1593–1604, 1615–22.

197

  Ibid., 1537–50.

198

  Ibid., 1657–68.



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Moskevská (The Moscow Chronicle) by Matouš Hosius, which appeared in 1589 (2nd ed., 1602) and is represented in the Výbor.199 Independently of Veleslavín and his associates, the textbooks introduced two authors of the last quarter of the sixteenth century, Václav Dobřenský and Vavřinec Leander Rvačovský of Rvačov. It featured excerpts from Dobřenský’s didactic work, Vrtkavé štěstí (1583). Rvačovský, a notable Utraquist priest, was represented by his entertaining Masopust (1580).200 Exalting the Bohemian Reformation in History and Literature A third way of linking the nineteenth with the sixteenth century was through a historical interpretation, highlighting the period of the Bohemian Reformation and implicitly, if not explicitly, condemning as inappropriate or damaging, unenlightened or benighted, the heritage of the Counter Reformation period.201 Through a deliberate assault on the “darkness” of the Counter Reformation, Josephism had also facilitated the rearmament of the Czech national movement with rehabilitating features of the distinctive past, reflecting the influence of the Bohemian Reformation. The Josephin view of Czech history is documented, for instance, in an official textbook from 1783 written by the first professor of history at the University of Prague, Johann Heinrich Wolf, with the title Geschichte des Konigreichs Boheim. Wolf interprets the events following the Battle of White Mountain as deplorable results of the intolerance of the times. Jan Hus and in a way also the Bohemian Utraquist king, George of Poděbrady (1458–71), were seen as victims of excessive, often ruthless, religious zeal.202 An important protagonist in this field was Pelcl, who stated in his memoirs on 16 January 1781: “Every Czech who reads only Czech books and knows the history of his country is already a bit of a Hussite.”203 In his study Lebensgeschichte des römischen und böhmischen Königs Wenzeslaus (Prague, 1788–89), Pelcl established a correspondence between Hus’s reformist critique and outlook, and the liberal religious and sociopolitical views of the Enlightenment. Hus’s sentencing for heresy by the Council of Constance seemed an unjustified and imprudent act. The Bohemian Enlightenment produced other vindications of the Bohemian Reformation and critical assessments of authoritarian ecclesiology.204 Thus, Augustin Zitte (1750–85) wrote 199

  Ibid., 1567–84; for Veleslavín’s editions, see Knihopis, nos. 2797–98.

200

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1586–92, 1622–38.

201

  For a brief survey, see Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 31–50.

202

  Johann Heinrich Wolf, Geschichte des Konigreichs Boheim zum Gebrauche der Studierenden Jugend in den K. K. Staaten (Vienna: Johann Thomas von Trattner, 1783), 128, 132, 152, 192.

203

  Cited by Josef Johanides, František Martin Pelcl (Prague: Melantrich, 1981), 384; see also Kamil Krofta, K pramenům českých dějin (Prague: Sfinx-Janda, 1948), 53–54.

204

  Kutnar and Marek, Přehledné dějiny českého a slovenského dějepisectví, 156–57.

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about Hus and his precursors in his Lebensbeschreibung des Magisters Johannes Huss von Hussinecz (Prague, 1789, 1790). Kašpar Royko (1744–1819), professor of church history at the University of Prague, displayed a liberal view of the Catholic Enlightenment in his history of the Council of Constance supporting conciliarism and opposing authoritarian tendencies (of the type that Hus criticized) which, according to Royko, still persisted in the church.205 His magnum opus was published in Czech translation by Václav Stach, a theology professor in Olomouc, as Historie velkého sněmu kostnického (A History of the Great Council of Constance; 1785, 1786). Perhaps most to the point for the thesis of this essay, Dobrovský in his Geschichte der böhmischen Sprache und Literatur (Prague, 1792) praised the Bohemian Reformation as coinciding with the flourishing of Bohemian literature, extolled the Utraquist theologians for their discussions of the limits and misuse of ecclesiastical authority, and condemned the Counter Reformation for its cultural vandalism.206 Pelcl produced a new history of Bohemia, Nová kronyka česká (A New Bohemian Chronicle; Prague, 1791), in which he stripped away the ideology of Counter Reformation in the spirit of Wolf’s earlier history.207 Pelcl and Dobrovský paved the way for the emergence of Palacký, whose monumental Dějiny národu českého v âechách a na Moravě (History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia), begun in 1832, made the Bohemian Reformation the center piece and an acme of Czech history, but in the spirit of the national awakening emphasized its tenor of liberalism, rather than its theological characteristics. As late as 1833, Zahradník could write favorably about Jan Rokycana from the standpoint of liberal Catholicism.208 Czech belles lettres of the national awakening cherished historical themes. Once again the scenarios skipped back over the centuries of Counter Reformation to the Utraquist fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Josef Kajetán Tyl typically glorified persons, such as his plays Jan Hus and Žižka z Trocnova, or events, such as his story Dekret kutnohorský (The Decree of Kutná Hora) of the period. The performance of Jan Hus in 1848 aroused unusual enthusiasm within the theater-going public.209 While during the Enlightenment period the Bohemian Reformation could be portrayed positively, during the repressive era of Metternich absolutism positive references to Hus and to the Bohemian Reformation tended to be suppressed by censorship.210 On the other hand, historical texts were relatively immune to the censor’s 205   Kašpar Royko, Geschichte der grossen allgemeinen Kirchenversammlung zu Kostnitz, 4 vols. (Prague: Widtmann, 1780–85). 206   Josef Dobrovský, Geschichte der böhmischen Sprache und Literatur, cited by Josef Pekař, “Masarykova česká folosofie,” in Spor o smysl českých dějin, 1895–1938, ed. Miloš Havelka (Prague: Torst, 1995), 269–70. 207

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 168.

208

 Zahradník, Filosofické spisy, 1: 57 n. 3.

209

  Mojmír Otruba and Miroslav Kačer, Tvůrčí cesta Josefa Kajetána Tyla (Prague: Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury a umění, 1961), 363.

210

  Ibid., 362.



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whims, and the reprinting of sixteenth-century publications could continue even after the shadow of Reaction replaced the era of Enlightenment within the Habsburg Empire. The desire to disseminate prohibited notions probably supplied the incentive to forge alleged historical texts containing ideas that would otherwise be unacceptable to the censor. Thus emerged the poems of the Královédvorský and Zelenohorský manuscripts “discovered” in 1817–18 but actually forged by Hanka and Linda. Ironically, these poetic collections, distinctly patriotic and libertarian, came to constitute the first Czech romanticist works of lasting literary value. Although Dobrovský has not been suspected of involvement in the Czech case, these shenanigans provided some ground for Edward Keenan’s theory of Dobrovský’s authorship of the allegedly twelfth-century Russian epic Slovo o polku Igoreve (The Igor Tale). He indeed had journeyed to Russia in 1792–93.211 Historical Rights of the Bohemian State Yet another (fourth) way of gauging the reintegration of sixteenth-century precepts into the nineteenth-century context of Czech mentality and society is to examine the emphasis, often ridiculed, on the historical rights of the Bohemian state. Bohemian constitutional and municipal law of the sixteenth century once again reflected a highly developed sense of political pragmatism and dedication to civic culture.212 While a tendency to look back at preabsolutist constitutionalism appeared elsewhere in Europe in the early nineteenth century, in Bohemia it was particularly significant because of the abrupt and arbitrary abrogation of the country’s traditional constitution as a consequence of the Battle of the White Mountain. Documents and treatises of Czech sixteenth-century law, both administrative and constitutional, appeared both in new editions and in early nineteenth-century textbooks and readers which, as pointed out earlier, shaped the minds of Czech student youth. Among the publications or republications of sixteenth-century legal texts belonged Viktorin Kornelius of Všehrdy, Z kněh o právích země české (From the Books of Legal Rights in the Bohemian Land; 1515), which was published by Hanka with a preface by Palacký in 1841 (Prague: Matice česká). Excerpts from five parts of this fundamental treatise were also reprinted in Výbor z literatury české (vol. 2, 1868).213 The text of the St. Wenceslaus Day Contract concluded in 1517 by the three estates of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Smlouva všech tří stavů Svatováclavského sněmu, was reprinted in the journal Právník (1861), and also appeared in Výbor z literatury české (vol. 2, 1868).214 As early as 1792–1803, Ignaz Cornova published in seven volumes a German translation of the famous classic by Pavel Stránský, Respublica Boiema 211

  Keenan, “Iaroslav of Halych,” 314–17.

212

  Valentin Urfus, “Český historický stát: Od stavovství k absolutismu,” in VII. Sjezd českých historiků: Praha, 24.–26. září 1993 (Prague: Historický ústav, 1994), 70, 78.

213

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1047–86.

214

  Ibid., 1217–44.

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(first printed by Elzevier in Holland in 1634) as Staat von Böhmen.215 A brief extract, Von den böhmischen Landständen, Landtagen und Landesämtern, had appeared in 1790.216 In addition, Výbor z literatury české (vol. 1, 1845) contained the first 42 of 100 articles of the Řád práva zemského (The Rules of the Law of the Land), describing court procedures and prepared between 1348 and 1355,217 a collection of Czech legal documents from 1380–1402, Nejstarší listiny české (The oldest Bohemian charters),218 as well as Výklad na právo země české (An Exposition of the Laws of the Bohemian Land), prepared for King Wenceslaus IV by Ondřej of Dubá.219 Volume 2 (1868), moving into the fifteenth century, contained the records of the Bohemian Diets of 1415, 1421, and 1423,220 and of the Diet of Kutná Hora in 1471 following the death of King George of Poděbrady.221 As for law literature and documents of the sixteenth century, the Výbor begins with the preface by Matouš of Chlumčany to the Zřízení privilegií koruny a království českého (Privileges of the Crown and the Kingdom of Bohemia), submitted to King Vladislav in 1501. Further, the student anthology covered the articles adopted by the General Diet of the Kingdom of Bohemia held in January 1547,222 and excerpts from the law code of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Práva a zřízení zemská království českého (Constitutional laws and institutions of the Kingdom of Bohemia), adopted by the Diet in 1549 and printed in 1550.223 In the area of local and municipal law, the widely used fifteenth-century text of Ctibor Tovačovský of Cimburk, the so-called Kniha Tovačovská (The Book of Tovačov), written in the 1480s, was published in excerpts in Mährischer Magazin in 1789.224 The entire work was printed in Brno in 1858 in an edition of Karel J. Demuth, and again in Brno by Brandl in 1868. Výbor z literatury české (vol. 2, 1868) also gives lengthy citations from Kniha Tovačovská.225 Incidentally, Koldín’s Práva městská království českého (The Municipal Laws of the Kingdom of Bohemia; 1579) was available at the beginning of the nineteenth century from a relatively recent reprint 215

  Pavel Stránský, Staat von Böhmen, trans., rev., suppl. Ignaz Cornova, 7 vols. (Prague: J. G. Calve, 1792–1803); see Knihopis, no. 15.742. For earlier editions, see Knihopis, nos. 15.739–41. 216

  Pavel Stránský, Von den böhmischen Landständen, Landtagen und Landesämtern (Prague: Calve, 1790); see Knihopis, no. 15.738. 217

  Výbor z literatury české, 1: 609–626. Also reprinted in Archiv český 2 (1842): 76–135.

218

  Výbor z literatury české, 1: 1007–60.

219

  Ibid., 963–1008. Also reprinted in Archiv český.

220

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 379–402.

221

  Ibid., 849–62.

222

  Ibid., 1359–72.

223

  Ibid., 1467–80.

224

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 346.

225

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 803–32.



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(Prague, 1755).226 Concerning local and municipal law, Výbor z literatury české gives samples of the proceedings of Prague city councils in the areas of public and private law between 1418 and 1435. Aside from its attention to the Kniha Tovačovská and samples of Koldín’s Práva městská království českého,227 the textbook also contains the preface to Brikcí of Licko’s Práva městská (The Rights of Towns), originally published in Litomyšl in 1536.228 A Reincarnation of Das schöne oder goldene Zeitalter Thus, a way of assessing the Czech national awakening is to view it as an odyssey from the culture of the Counter Reformation to the culture formatted by sixteenth-century Utraquism. The spirit of Utraquism celebrated its own resurrection through the work and achievements of the nineteenth-century awakeners. It would be the civic culture of Utraquism without its theology. In a special eulogy, Zahradník welcomed the new incarnations in Bohemia of authors like Koldín, Veleslavín, Kocín, and other paragons of sixteenth-century literature and language.229 Although the distinctiveness of the vernacular was emphasized, language was primarily an instrument to advance—in analogy to the Bohemian Reformation and in the spirit of the Enlightenment—universal human values, not to promote and celebrate ethnic peculiarities and oddities.230 The obstacles to assessing fairly the role of the sixteenth century have been duly noted. It may be argued that, leaving aside the aficionados of the Counter Reformation, the aspersions cast by a coalition of effete modernist esthetes on the one hand, and intellectual and moral rigorists on the other, were stimulated by, and in turn reinforced, the unfavorable image of the age in Czech historiography as a civilization doomed to annihilation. Already the traditional label for the historical period, doba předbělohorská (pre–White Mountain era), implied that its significance. or, perhaps, lack thereof, was predetermined (as something ephemeral or transient) by the denouement of the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. This premonition interfered with the evaluation of its long-term role in Bohemia’s political and national culture. It obscured the way in which the Bohemian society of the sixteenth century could be said to have foreshadowed, and in its legacy fostered, the liberal values of the Czech national awakening in its tolerance, constitutional politics, dominance of middle-class culture, 226

  Pavel Kristián of Koldín, Práva městská království českého (Prague: František H. Kyrchner, 1755); see Knihopis, no. 4573. 227

 Erben, Výbor z literatury české, 2: 1549–58.

228

  Ibid., 1315–26; for the original edition, Brikcí z Licka, Práva městská (Litomyšl: Alexandr Plzeňský, 1536), see Knihopis, no. 1348.

229

  See Rybička, “Vzpomínka na Vincence Zahradníka,” 38.

230

  One may speculate that the universalist/universal aspirations of the Bohemians’ nationalism had their historical roots in Czechs’ quasi-integration into the cosmopolitan entities of the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Church (albeit under the Utraquist guise).

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and freedom of thought. Far from being doomed, these values proved imperishable and indestructible. In view of the foregoing, a modest (or perhaps a bold?) suggestion might be in order concerning historical nomenclature. It would involve replacing the vacuous and even demeaning “Pre–White Mountain Era” with a more positive and substantive designation, such as the “Age of Utraquism” (doba podobojí) or, perhaps, even with Dobrovský’s earlier descriptor as the “Golden Age” (das schöne oder goldene Zeitalter).231

231

  Dobrovský, Dějiny české řeči, 46. Analogously, for the subsequent period, the term “Era of the Counter Reformation” might be more expressive than “Post–White Mountain Era.”

The Barents Region: History Resurrected in Post-Soviet Europe Kåre Hauge

History is bunk. —Henry Ford

History This is the story of a project combining the best ingredients (hopefully!) from history, political science, and sociology. It will (again, hopefully!) show that Ford was wrong. A few words of background are necessary to set the framework.1 The geographical area we are dealing with here is what is often referred to as “the High North” of Europe, the area of Scandinavia and (European) Russia that lies at and above the Arctic Circle. This includes the northernmost counties of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and, on the Russian side, the regions (oblasti) of Murmansk and Archangel. This part of Europe did not witness well-defined borders until the first half of the nineteenth century. Even then, the people who lived in the region moved around much as they pleased, paying scant attention to border markers put up by civil servants from the respective distant capitals. This was especially true of the Sami (Lapp) population. By tradition nomads following their reindeer and related across borders, the Sami spoke variations of the same language and considered themselves more or less one nation, no matter the country in which they happened to be staying. The first testimony to trade between Norwegians and peoples of this area is found in a report to King Alfred the Great of England around 800 AD. The so-called Pomor trade started around 1300, and became a permanent operation between northern Norway and Archangel in the eighteenth century.2 It was very important: it was the main provider of grain for northern Norway, which was not able to grow many foodstuffs because of the climate. During the latter part of the nineteenth century and up to 1918, around 350 Russian ships came to northern Norway annually. The trade consisted 1   As this is not a report on a research project, but “participatory history,” there will be no detailed footnoting. After a few footnotes, the interested reader will find a bibliographical note. 2

  From the Russian po more (on the sea).

Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 599–609.

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basically in barter: Norwegians exchanged fish for Russian grain during the summer months (Archangel harbor froze during the winter). A pidgin Norwegian-Russian language evolved, consisting of terms from both languages for the purpose of handling the merchandise in question. The towns in the area accepted each other’s currency. There was regular boat service between towns in northern Norway and Archangel before there were regular services going south along the Norwegian coast. Before the end of the nineteenth century, a number of Norwegians had settled on the islands along the Kola Peninsula, where the climate was harsh but fish plentiful, and where it was possible to make a decent living. Thus, the picture we see at the beginning of the twentieth century is one of exchange and commerce in very many areas. All of this changed when the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917. Finland obtained its independence and a corridor out to the Barents Sea as well. Finland continued to be accessible, but the Soviet border was closed and remained guarded. The European trade with Archangel gradually dried up, and the visits among the Sami population were cut short. The Sami on the Soviet side were “advised” to give up their nomadic way of life and moved out of the immediate border area. By World War II, the Norwegians still living within the northern Soviet Union (including the settlers on the islands along the Kola peninsula), who had not seen the writing on the wall and left, were rounded up by Stalin’s secret police and sent off to labor camps. Most of them perished. After World War II, Finland lost its corridor to the sea, Norway joined NATO, and the border to the Soviet Union was totally sealed (barbed wire, minefields, no-man’s-land). The Iron Curtain did indeed run from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea. Even though a few cultural exchanges did take place across this frontier during the Cold War, things really changed only with perestroika. In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, in 1990 Germany was reunified, and in 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. It then dawned on foreign ministries in the West that a window of opportunity was opening up in relations with the former Soviet Union (FSU), now the Russian Federation. Most foreign ministries have a Policy Planning Staff (PPS; the name may vary). The task of such a unit is to try to plan ahead and suggest adjustments of policy when need be. I am sure that the reader has seen references to firms which have the leadership philosophy that the staff should be composed of individuals with a variety of backgrounds if the team is to be successful. The Norwegian PPS was a small unit, some half dozen people, of whom four of us, a historian, an economist, a liberal arts person, and a politician turned administrator, were doing the basic work on the Barents Region project. The combination must have worked! But foreign ministries have a tendency to follow in previous foot tracks. This is in the nature of things: diplomacy follows certain rules and traditions which are broken only for very good reasons. As for Norway, it is a small country with a great power neighbor. Through forty-five years of Cold War, Norwegians had learned to be careful when approaching the Russian bear. And the country had unsettled issues with its Soviet-Russian neighbor as well, especially the delimitation talks on the continental shelf in the Barents Sea.

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Important changes of policy in a foreign ministry have to start with some politician(s)—diplomats are rather more timid. Our politician was Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg. But foreign ministers are very busy, and the first task is to get their attention and time, especially when we are talking about scenarios that do not seem to imply imminent catastrophes. On the contrary: the difficult and threatening Soviet Union seemed to be turning into recognizable Federal Russia, finally becoming a civilized state and joining the family of nations as a normal member. Was there really a need for dramatic action? The PPS felt there was. This was our chance to get relations with the new Russia off on a less confrontational footing than had been the case during the Cold War. Besides, Russia had to be taken on its own word now that it wanted friendship and cooperation. It had pronounced itself democratic in the Western meaning of the word and needed a chance to prove it. Furthermore, the region in question was by Western standards in bad economic and environmental shape. But we suspected that there would be strong resistance by the apparatchiki—on both sides. If the idea of a new cooperation with the former Soviet Union was to go ahead, the minister(s) had to firmly endorse it. The PPS got one and one-half hours of the minister’s time after normal working hours and presented to him the “Barents Region Cooperation Project.” At the end of the session, the minister said: “Go for it! Use as much time on developing it as you need.” The basis of the orientation with Stoltenberg was a memo of 115 pages worked out by the economist in the PPS. Ministers do not read hundreds of pages if they can avoid it—bureaucrats do. Before long, there was a movement afoot in the ministry, led by some of the heaviest guns in the establishment, to stop the project. The secretary general was a nice man, but he was still cross with me for “telling the Minister before you told me.” He was later reported to have said in the canteen that “the PPS is destroying everything I have worked for during twenty years”—obviously referring to the delimitation talks on the continental shelf which had been going on for about that long. Along with a number of directors general he signed a Prime Minister to Stoltenberg strongly advising him not to follow up on the idea. All the heads of the departments most heavily involved with Russia had signed the PM. It was a formidable opposition. The idea is to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. —NATO joke

The Barents Region Project What was stated in those 115 pages that so aroused the ire of the civil servants? The short answer is that it ran counter to the old NATO saying quoted above: the Barents Project brought the Russians in. The following points will summarize the idea:

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• The general approach was one of cooperation and good neighborliness: also, Norway should do its bit in the reconstruction of the FSU by helping to bring it (back) into the community of nations. But Russia was much too big for Norway alone, even for Scandinavia as a whole. Northwest Russia, as part of a region, was something we might be able to handle. • The way to do this was for Scandinavia and Russia to return to the open borders and active cooperation and trade that characterized the area before the Communist takeover in 1917. In order to obtain this, an active campaign of information on both sides of the former Iron Curtain explaining what used to be and what should be re-established was needed. The name of the sixteenth-century explorer of the area was seen as a unifying element and chosen for that reason.3 • The local administrations on both sides of the former Curtain should become involved along with national capitals. The Barents Project thus foresaw a so-called Regional Council that would be composed of politicians from the elected assemblies of the counties involved. This council would, among other tasks, propose projects of cooperation to the Barents Council below. • The Barents Council,4 which would meet and discuss, on the ministerial level, cooperation in various fields: trade, environment, health, transport and communications, cultural exchanges, Sami questions, etc. This national level would also finance those projects that received the go-ahead on both levels. It was clear that the local level—especially on the Russian side—did not have the financial resources needed to start concrete projects of cooperation. The memo was (on purpose) rather vague on delicate matters where cooperation either did not exist (disarmament) or where contacts were already well-established in other fora, such as fisheries and continental shelf. • The foreign policy element was taken care of by opening up cooperation to all nations able and willing to join. “Confidence building” was part of the idea. If the parties were to get anywhere with, e.g., the environmental pollution in the Kola Peninsula, the resources of more countries other than the Scandinavian ones had to be drawn in. In the end, the European Commission signed up, but the United States, wary of the financial implications, did not but was more than happy to become an observer. Today, well into the twenty-first century, this may not seem such a problematic approach to confidence building across former borders in Northern Europe. After all, 3

  The Dutch navigator Willem Barents (1549–97) tried to discover the Northeast Passage to Asia in the course of three expeditions north of Siberia. He never got to Asia, but (re)discovered Spitzbergen (Svalbard) and gave his name to the Barents Sea. 4

  Both these ideas were inspired by the mechanisms of the European Union: its Councils of Ministers meetings and its approach to reconciliation through cross-border regionalization in continental Europe, for instance in Alsace/Rhineland.

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we have experienced a long period of cooperation with the FSU. Admittedly, certain recent Russian policies are heavily reminiscent of some Soviet reflexes, but such reflexes were undeniably closer to Western minds in 1991 than they are today. To professional diplomats in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, the Barents Cooperation Project was a questionable undertaking at best. First, it extended the realm of foreign relations to include participation by local, municipal bodies.5 Second, as if this were not bad enough it became even more risky because, for the first time, it was to be tried out across the former Iron Curtain. In other words, it was seen as dangerous both because it would involve actors not normally playing in foreign politics (municipal bodies) and because these bodies were to interact with similar bodies on the Russian side (former Communist entities). Since Stoltenberg was also a former diplomat, he knew that there was a limit to how strong an internal opposition even a foreign minister could overrun, if the bureaucratic machine was to work smoothly.6 At the same time his political (and humane!) instincts told him that this approach to post-Communist Russia deserved to be tested. He came up with a compromise: take out those elements that created the most concern within the establishment, the continental shelf and fisheries, and go with the rest. And so it came about that the Barents Region, taking its name from the ocean, “ended up on land,” as the saying in the ministry went. Even if the PPS was given the green light to go ahead, opposition far from died down in the ministry. An idea of this kind cannot be realized without money. A maneuver was attempted high up in the hierarchy to limit the PPS’s budget to what had already been on the books for the year 1992. If this attempt had succeeded, there would never have been any Barents Region Cooperation. But it was rejected. Furthermore, it was decided that the PPS could draw on the allocations involved in two White Papers “On Aid to Eastern Europe.” We could start putting our idea into practice.7 In view of the disputed start of the project, we realized that there would not be too much help to be had from the regular departments of the ministry in working out the project’s details. It was also out of the question that the PPS alone, with its limited staff, could write up detailed memos on the potential for cooperation and interaction with Russia within each of the many fields (see Barents Council above) envisaged as possible fields of cooperation. We looked around for partners. First, we wanted the weight and expertise of the academic community on our side.8 Second, it was necessary to consult the governing bodies of the counties in northern Norway which were heavily involved in the project. Obviously, the attitude of the various political parties 5

  See n. 4 above.

6

  As was written many years later in the staff bulletin of the ministry: outside the PPS only three persons supported the Barents Project. Fortunately for the idea, one of them was the foreign minister. 7

  The White Papers in question put up serious money for assistance and investments in Eastern Europe, some NOK 290 million, or about US $30 million, for the period 1991–93. 8

  This may seem normal to an American reader, but intercourse and exchange between academic and ministerial circles are much less common in Norway than in the United States.

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should be kept in mind. Finally, but crucially, the attitude of the Russian authorities needed to be ascertained—and all of this before anything was made public. We had a meeting with the Fritjof Nansen Institute (FNI), the foreign policy institute in Oslo that traditionally had the best expertise on the northern area. They prepared six reports on various aspects from trade to the environment, concluding that there was serious potential for cooperation in most fields, and that the project as such ought definitely to go ahead. Not only was their contribution essential to make the project a reality, but they also managed to complete all the reports without a single word about what the ministry was up to leaking to the press—a formidable accomplishment in these days of total publicity. Simultaneously, the PPS was also working with the Russian embassy in Oslo. Most of the staff of the embassy had been replaced as a result of perestroika. Beginning with the ambassador, they became very sympathetic toward the Barents Region Project. One counselor was appointed as our contact and we quickly discovered that he was as professional as any diplomat from a Western embassy. Various aspects of the project and their interface with the Russian system were discussed freely with the counselor. What was more, the embassy was able to have direct access to the entourage of Foreign Minister Kozyrev, and responses were quickly received. For Norwegian diplomats used to the indifferent reactions of the Soviet era, this was a revelation—and very promising, although we realized that there was considerable opposition on the Russian side as well. The Labor Party, which was Stoltenberg’s party, dominated the elected bodies in northern Norway. The minister consulted with his colleagues and found that the project would be officially launched at the Annual General Assembly (AGM) of the Labor Party in the county of Troms—one of the three Norwegian counties involved in the project. Stoltenberg gave his speech on 24 April 1992—and the idea was a resounding success in northern Norway. We received another confirmation that the idea of closer contacts with the Russians had always been dear to the heart of the population in northern Norway. But we knew this: all through the Cold War, the closer you got to the Soviet border and the scarier it ought to have been to find the Red Army just around the corner, the more friendly the population was to the Russians. Obviously, both the pre-1917 situation and the favorable World War II experiences were not forgotten. Even though there was some grumbling on the political left because the regional concept was a bit too close for their liking to European Union templates—and on the political right because it was too conciliatory to Russia—Stoltenberg was satisfied that it struck the right balance. Thus, the Barents Region Project never became a party issue in Norwegian foreign politics. Through the Russian embassy, we had cleared representatives of the authorities of Murmansk and Archangel counties to take part in the AGM on 24 April. At that time, there was still no regular communication across the border with the FSU. We managed to get clearance from Russian authorities to fly in a small jet plane to Murmansk airport.9 The agreement with the embassy was that the governors of 9

  It may not be obvious to the reader what a giant step forward this flight represented for intercourse in the North. The Kola Peninsula was heavily militarized (still is) and off limits to

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Murmansk and Archangel would assemble there and we would take them back to the AGM, which we did. A working group of governors’ aides on both sides was established to develop the cooperation between Murmansk and Archangel on the Russian side and the three northernmost counties on the Norwegian side. The seed of the future Barents Region was planted. From then on, it was a matter of following the schedule we had worked out for extending this basic agreement into a future Barents Region that would include Swedish and Finnish counties as well. To make sure the project was followed up on the Russian side, a delegation headed by the PPS went to Archangel and Murmansk, inviting five representatives from each oblast to participate in a senior officials–level “Expert Meeting on Cooperation in the High North.” The conference took place in Kirkenes (close to the Russian border) in the summer of 1992. The Russian participants were to make their way to the border by their own means, and we would take them in hand from that point—room, board, and transport included. At the agreed time—on the dot—they came marching across the border, almost in step. And they had conscientiously prepared all the papers they had been asked for and presented them to the conference. It was also a promising sign when President Boris Yeltsin made a reference to the Barents Region in his speech to the Helsinki OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) conference in June 1992. The PPS commissioned a number of articles and books from the university and institutes in northern Norway that would serve to remind those who needed it of the former intercourse across the border. The Sami institutions were activated and the National Sami Council was given a seat on the Regional Council. Thanks to their international contacts, the isolated Sami communities on the Russian side sprung to new life in the years that followed. The foreign minister took in hand the Swedish and Finnish sides. The Swedes were never a problem, but the Finns were not too happy to begin with. Traditionally, they considered themselves the experts on “how to handle the Russians,” and they had had their own ideas on how to start a cooperation scheme with the Russians in the High North. Now, some people felt, the Norwegians had pulled a fast one on them. But Stoltenberg, with some help from a sauna visit, managed to handle this matter with his Finnish counterpart, and the Finns, too, came on board. The preparations continued in the ministry for a formal Barents Convention to be signed by the countries involved. Which were those countries to be? The four core countries were obvious, but it was quite clear that we wanted as many countries to participate as possible. In the end, all five Scandinavian countries and the European Commission signed, in addition to Russia, while most of the other important Western countries became observers. Stoltenberg invited all his Scandinavian colleagues as well as his Russian counterpart to the signing conference for the Barents Region Convention on 10 January 1993 in Kirkenes. A tremendous snowstorm almost prevented some of the particiforeigners (which it is no more). The plane was the VIP-plane of the government but formally part of the Norwegian Air Force. This was thus the first NATO-flight with Russian consent into the Kola Peninsula ever.

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pants from landing, but they made it. At the last moment, it turned out that Moscow still had problems with allowing the local bodies (oblasti) the kind of international participation, which had also rung alarm bells in the Norwegian foreign ministry. In the end, Kozyrev was able to iron that out, and the Regional Council made it into the Barents Cooperation. The formal international convention establishing the Barents Region was a reality. What the Barents Cooperation Achieved Norway opened a consulate general in Murmansk in 1993. Shortly thereafter, Russia decided to do the same in Kirkenes, but that station survived only a few years because of budget cuts. The Norwegian consulate general is still the only diplomatic station within the Russian part of the Barents Region. Establishing communication in the region was an all-important aspect. A new digital telephone system established by the Norwegian Telephone Company began operation the same year. International telephone calls were now at one’s fingertips. This was pure bliss for anyone who had tried regular civilian telephone communication in Russia. Before long, the Russians agreed to open the (military) road going from the Norwegian border to Murmansk, and another road from northern Finland to Murmansk. Murmansk now enjoyed flights from Norway and Sweden, and summer boat traffic from Norway. A new trajectory for the Norway-Murmansk road was opened some years later, both to make it easier to keep open during the winter and to keep it out of some of the more sensitive military areas. New border control stations have been built both on the Norwegian and Russian sides to expedite travel. Some of these travel routes have proved not to be economically sustainable, but that is what one would have to expect. The general impression is one of an almost overwhelming desire for contact and exchange. The border station at Kirkenes (Storskog), with 15,000 crossings in 1991, saw 81,000 in 1992, 92,000 in 1997, and over 100,000 in 1999. Exchanges in the political, social, and academic fields have multiplied with conferences and meetings of every kind. The authorities, especially intent on creating youth exchanges,10 have supported collaboration programs between many schools in the area. The attraction of the regional cooperation soon became clear. More counties applied to join. This of course had something to do with the fact that central authorities made funds available for the cooperation, but it also testified to a genuine desire for intercourse with other parties in the region. The contracting parties were not all that keen on allowing in newcomers, but in the end another county was taken in from Sweden, Finland, and Russia each. Norway already had three counties and drew the line at that. The worst problem in the Barents Region is probably pollution. Chemical and metallurgical factories of various kinds are bad enough. There are extended patches 10

  In the PPS we wanted to create the “Barents Field Service”—with obvious overtones to the similar American Field Service. I am afraid we never got quite there.

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of desert land around several of the cities in the Kola Peninsula, which were the industrial glories of the Soviet period. The health record of these cities is alarming, with up to 50 percent of the newborns have some kind of birth defect. But the nuclear potential for pollution is worse. There are around two hundred nuclear reactors, most of them in obsolete submarines waiting to be decommissioned and very few of them secured. The nuclear power station in Kola is beyond its sell-by date. There are inadequate facilities for treating radioactive waste. So the Scandinavian, European, and American governments have become involved in various schemes for cleaning up. It is a laborious process. The Russian capacity for interagency quarrel, administrative chaos, and legislative contradictions is the same in the Barents Region as elsewhere in the FSU. There are regular attempts to make various gifts from other countries, whether food packs for the civilian population or safety equipment for power stations, subject to “customs duties.” It has taken months and years to straighten out such problems. There is the usual discussion between local and central authorities. Not the least, there is the Northern Fleet, a state within the state, which sometimes chooses to disregard civilian authorities and ignore outside pressure. Put succinctly by a member of the local administration in Murmansk: “We have basically two problems up here: one is Moscow, and the other is the Fleet.” Looking back at the Barents Region Cooperation Project, I am reminded of a 1994 meeting in Murmansk, where two officers from the Northern Fleet were present. Reproached by another Russian participant for not being very active in the discussion, one of them retorted: “Don’t be so impatient. A year ago we wouldn’t even have been here.” It is easy to fall into the trap of becoming impatient with the Russians in the region. Trade has not developed to the extent hoped for, fisheries cooperation has had its ups and downs, and cleaning up radioactive waste is far from finished. After almost forty years of negotiations, however, the continental shelf delimitation talks were finally concluded in 2010. One would like to think that almost twenty years of established post-Communist cooperation played its role in arriving at an agreement. A general summing-up could be that the Barents Cooperation Project has been a success in “low politics” (people-to-people contacts) while it has had heavier going in “high politics” (with the possible exception of the continental shelf agreement). Border crossings are now running at around 200,000 a year, both at the Norwegian and Finnish border. This is a formidable increase since Soviet times. There is even a thirty-kilometer zone on both sides of the border where no visa is required. And there is a permanent Barents Secretariat in Kirkenes that handles a number of concrete exchange schemes for the region. The strategic value of the Kola Peninsula to Russia remains unchanged. In spite of this, nowhere else in Europe (and in Asia, to my knowledge) is there this kind of local cooperation with the Russians across the former Iron Curtain. As such it remains a unique experiment, and one made possible by the willed resurrection of history.

608 K åre Hauge History may sleep for a long time. —Proverb

Bibliographical Note Most of the literature on the Barents Region is, naturally, in Norwegian. This note will deal with what is available in English and therefore accessible to a wider public. In our days of Google and Wikipedia, most information is but a mouse-click away. Info on the Barents Region is no exception. There are a number of web sites that will come up for the entry “Barents Region.” The web pages of the Barents Region Secretariat in Kirkenes can be recommended: https://barents.no/ and http://barentsobserver.com/en. Defying our dependence on digital news, a small publishing company in Norway, Pax, just recently put out a major encyclopedic work (two volumes, close to 1,200 pages, a number of authors) on the Barents Region, from the earliest times: The Barents Region—A Transnational History of Sub-Arctic Northern Europe (Oslo: Pax, 2015) and Encyclopedia of the Barents Region (Oslo: Pax, 2016). Belonging to the very foundation of the project are the six reports prepared by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute for the PPS, as we have seen. Some of these have been translated into English: Olav F. Stokke, The Barents Region: Concept and Dynamics, RSN Report, no. 3 (Oslo: RSN Report, 1992); Rune Castberg and Olav S. Stokke, The Barents Region: Environmental Problems in Murmansk and Archangel Counties, RSN Report, no. 4 (Oslo: RSN Report, 1992); and Arild Moe, RSN Report, no. 6 (Oslo: RSN Report, 1992). However, the best place to start for an overview is the master’s thesis in political science on the Barents Region presented at the University of Oslo by John Mikal Kvistad. There is an abridged version in English: The Barents Spirit: A Bridge-Building Project in the Wake of the Cold War (Oslo: IFS, 1995). Kvistad interviewed a number of officials in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his work, including this author. It is the most detailed account of the creation of the region and its implications for Norwegian foreign policy. Third, the main study in English is Olav S. Stokke and Ola Tunander, eds., The Barents Region: Cooperation in Arctic Europe (London: Sage Publications, 1994), with a number of articles on most aspects of the project. Security and economics are dealt with in Jan A. Dellenbrant and Mats-Olov Olsson, eds., The Barents Region: Security and Economic Development in the European North (Umeå: Cerum, 1994). Security is more specifically dealt with in the proceedings from a conference in Stockholm: Olof Palme International Center, Common Security in Northern Europe after the Cold War: The Baltic Sea Region and the Barents Sea Region (Stockholm: Olof Palme International Center, 1994). As in this last collection, it is quite a common approach to discuss the Barents Region together with similar projects like the Baltic Sea Region and the Black Sea Region: Erik Hansen et al., Cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region, the Barents Region

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and the Black Sea Region (Oslo: FAFO, 1997); and Jakub Godzimirsky, Russian Security Policy Objectives in the Baltic Sea and the Barents Area (Oslo: DNAK, 1998). The Finns have also been active, both official institutions and researchers: Pertti Joenniemi, Barents: The Barents Euro-Arctic Region (Helsinki: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1996); as implied by the title, it was always Finnish policy to hook the Barents Region on to their greater European policy, especially after Finland’s joining the European Union in 1994; Tero Lausala and Leila Valkonen, Economic Geography and Structure of the Russian Territories of the Barents Region (Rovaniemi: Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, 1999); Lassi Heininen and Richard Langlais, eds., Europe’s Northern Dimension: The BEAR [Barents Euro-Arctic Region] Meets the South (Rovaniemi: University of Lapland Press, 1997); Pauli Jumppanen et al., Economic Geography and Structure of the Russian Part of the Barents Region (Helsinki: Finnish Barents Group, 1995); and Susanna Seppänen, The Barents Region: An Emerging Market (Helsinki: Statistics Finland, 1995). As for the European Community/Union aspect of the project, see S. Randa, “The Barents Region in an EC Context,” Center for European Studies, NMS Working Paper (Oslo: Center for European Studies, 1993); and Håken R. Nilson, Europeanization of the Barents Region: Organizational Possibilities for a Regional Environmental Cooperation (Tampere: Peace Research Institute, 1994). The Northern Sea route to Japan was a secondary consideration of the project: Henning Simonsen, Proceedings from the Northern Sea Route Expert Meeting, October 13–14, 1992, in Tromsø, Norway (Oslo: Fridtjof Nansen Institute, 1993). Finally, two publications indicating that the Barents Region is well established: Geir Flikke, ed., The Barents Region Revisited (Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 1998); and Utenriksdepartementet Norge, The Barents Region: Cooperation and Visions for the Future (Oslo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1999).

BG: Conversations with Boris Grebenshchikov Nick Hayes

From the 1970s, when an underground Russian rock-and-roll counterculture first took shape, through the more permissive 1980s, when Gorbachev’s perestroika dared to admit in public that, yes, Russia did rock and roll, the icon of the Russian rock scene was Boris Grebenshchikov, the romantic lead vocal behind the musical and artistic ensemble Akvarium.1 In the 1987 Assa (directed by Sergei Solov´ev), the young counterculture hero, “Bananan,” played by “Afrika” (Sergei Bugaev), a member of Akvarium, says to his nemesis, a Soviet-era mafia type, “Anyone who doesn’t know Boris Grebenshchikov is an idiot.” This was certainly the case of the Russians I knew. The Western press had already branded him as the “Russian Bob Dylan.” By the mid1980s, the streets of Leningrad were whispering rumors of major recording contracts in the West for “BG,” his most common nickname. Rolling Stone wrote him into a feature story. He was about to be, or so it seemed, the next “it” guy. I first met him at his old flat in St. Petersburg in the early spring of 1987. Inside the flat, BG sat at a table slowly turning the pages of a copy of Penthouse. He closed it and flipped it onto a magazine stack, a cluster of blue exiles in Russia from the empires of Bob Guccione and Hugh Heffner. A beautifully beguiling friend played the role of his devadasi fluttering around the apartment like a Bollywood extra in a Hindu dance routine. “Is this your first time in Russia, Nick?” he asked. I replied that I had visited Russia more times than I could remember. “Oh, I have been in Russia only twice,” he replied, “and unfortunately, the first time lasted thirty-six years.” For the next decade, my trips to Russia always included a visit and conversation with BG. A few ended up in magazine and newspaper articles or reports back to public television or radio. One ended in a scene at a clandestine rock club in St. Petersburg in 1992 when police broke up the party and sent everyone to run and take cover in the streets and a few to an overnight at the police station. By the late 1990s, however, my writing had taken me away from Russia and my friendship with BG lapsed. We did not meet again until January 2010. I had come to St. Petersburg for research on my book in progress, “Looking for Leningrad: My Soviet Life.” In our 1

  “BG: Conversations with Boris Grebenshchikov” is an excerpt from my current book in progress, “Looking for Leningrad: My Soviet Life.” An earlier version of the essay was presented to the annual meeting of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 20 November 2015, Philadelphia, PA. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 611–14.

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earlier contact, we communicated and made arrangements by rumor. Now, BG texted a reply to my text message and invited me to his studio for a long conversation. With a little help from an iphone’s GPS, I found the place. BG was late. I waited in the hallway. Although mutual friends had told me of his health problems—a heart attack, chronic cardiac problems—I was unprepared for what age had done to the onetime heart-throb of bohemian Russia. The old warehouse elevator brought him to our floor. At first, I did not recognize the heavy, aged, wheezing, and cautiously stepping man who walked out of the elevator and lumbered his way up one flight of stairs. The smile was unmistakable. “Nick, I’m sorry,” he began, “I’m late. My cardiologist insisted that I come into the clinic. It was unscheduled.” We sat in a small room near the recording studio. A survivor of another era, a console shortwave radio in the room reminded me of a time when international communication was not so easy as today. His remarks on the stairway had opened the door to a rather personal exchange. I expressed my concern and sympathy for his health problems, which until then I knew only by rumor. I shared with him that the doctors tell me that my expiration date was apparently going to be much earlier than I had thought. A consciousness of death crept into our conversation. The thought prompted us to make good use of our time together. Speaking of his current music, BG made it clear that he had no part in the attempts to revive the days of “tusovka” rock of the 1980s. “It’s an obscene word,” he commented. “Besides,” he added, “I don’t do second-hand jokes.” What was Russian rock is no more. “Russian rock is dead,” he said bluntly, “but I’m not dead yet.”2 Looking back to his part in the heady days of rock a generation ago, BG said, “Rock and roll was our way of cutting through the bullshit.” Pointing to a laptop computer in the room, he added, “Young people today have other ways.” “I have never been political,” he stated in reply to my comments on political protests and opposition activities in St. Petersburg. As for the art protest movement Voina (“War,” which, not incidentally, is the group that produced Pussy Riot a few years later), BG dismissed them as lacking in talent and exploiting pornography to draw attention to themselves. Despite his disavowal of any political involvement, he has few friends in high places. “Yes, I guess I am flattered,” he admitted, “that the Russian president (Medvedev) has long liked my music and still does.” During the afternoon of my visit, not coincidentally, BG received a telephone call from the office of President Sergei Medvedev. The Russian president was offering his assistance in arrangements for BG’s forthcoming concert in London. What about his followers in Russia and the West who see in his music since the Russian Album (1991) a Russian voice? I asked. “I don’t know that there is or that there should be a Russian voice in music,” he replied. He distanced himself from any revival of Russian nationalism in culture. This should be for Russians a time of self-reflection. “Russia should sit under a tree and reflect for about a thousand years,” he said, “before she comes forward to suggest an idea or direction for the world.” 2

  BG had used the line in his concerts. See Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 171.



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Grebenshchikov always complained that his critics, whether pro or con, never understood his music. Although he admired both, BG in the 1970s and 1980s was never a Russian Lou Reed or Bob Dylan. In the 1990s, he was not the bard of a lost Russian national voice. Looking back today on the last decade of BG’s work, it is clear that one thing he is not. He disavows a sentimental retrospective on the heady days of Akvarium in the 1980s. He is not a retro-tusovik stuck in the past, the 1970s and 1980s, the heroic days of the Russian counterculture. Others from his generation are. Public approval and acceptance is not healthy for rock and roll. The transition in the early 1990s from the Soviet system to the new Russia did not go well for Akvarium or for most Russian rock artists. In 1993, “Afrika” approached me with a project. Akvarium had just published the complete texts of its songs accompanied by photographs covering the group from 1973 to 1993.3 “Afrika” hoped I could help in finding a translator and American publisher for the volume. Flipping over the pages, two things struck me. First of all, the mood of the images was nostalgic, a fond sense of an era that was already gone. Secondly, the publication was rather academic. The publication reminded me of an anecdote from twentieth-century American literature. In 1943, Edmund Wilson, who for decades had been the dean of American literary critics and the voice of his generation of the 1920s, had accepted an invitation from his undergraduate alma mater, Princeton, to a program in his honor. Princeton was celebrating a project to bring together a complete bibliography of Edmund Wilson’s work. Then, fifty-something, Wilson was bemused and ambiguous. He reflected on the irony of a writer becoming the object of a bibliography. It was a sure sign that his movement and literary generation were over as a vital creative force and were now merely the subject of academic scholarship.4 The Akvarium publication, I feared, was a sign that BG and the ensemble were now at best “retro,” their era receding into the past and the history books. For the last decade, BG has drawn on something else. Edward Said in one of his last publications described the creativity of the “late style artist.”5 Too often, we assume that an artist in late life, conscious of his or her mortality, finds a sense of reconciliation, resolution, or serenity. Instead, Said argues that stronger creative force often appears in “artistic lateness not as harmony and resolution, but as intransigence, difficulty and contradiction.” The late style artist severs ties to familiar routines and audiences and emphatically seeks a new aesthetic. Russian rock is dead, BG had said, but he is not. A late style artist, the premonition of death has crept into BG’s art. Since 2008, his project Aquarium International has departed from virtually all his previous genres and experimented with the fusion of international instruments, voices, and melodies. The apolitical BG in March 2014

3

  14: Polnyi sbornik tekstov pesen “Akvariuma” i BG (Moscow: Experience, 1993).

4

  Edmund Wilson, Thoughts on Being Bibliographed (New York: Noonday, 1950), 105–20.

5

  Edward Said, “Thoughts on Late Style,” London Review of Books, 5 August 2004, 3–7.

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produced and aired on You Tube a song of protest against the war in Ukraine, “Love in Time of War”… And I reach out with my hands, my hands, But it is all the same as putting out fire with napalm. Hand in hand, the abyss—I know this madness by heart.6 Late style art. Think of BG today as the voice that Shakespeare gave to Prospero in the final scenes of The Tempest: …But this rough magic I here abjure, and when I have required Some heavenly music—which even now I do— To work mine end upon their senses, that This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book. (The Tempest, Act V: 50–57) The Tempest was Shakespeare’s last play. We want to hear and see in Prospero Shakespeare’s own voice. In Prospero’s final monologue, Shakespeare’s hero still has the power of enchantment over his audience and has not yet given up his “staff,” the magic wand of his art. He will break the staff and bring the play and Shakespeare’s career to an end. But not yet. Today, Boris Grebenshchikov’s new music draws its creativity from a sense of the imminence of the end. But he has not yet broken the wand of his art. To twist a line from another late style artist closer to home, BG is still doing it his way.

6

  Boris Grebenshchikov, “Liubov´ vo vremia voiny,” posted by Sergei Chaparin on 4 March 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZBBgJvyFfg (accessed 24 April 2016).

Rethinking American Perspectives on Southeastern Europe John R. Lampe

The start of a new century was an important time to address the American perspective on Southeastern Europe. The end of the twentieth century witnessed more doubt than confidence about the US capacity to sustain a constructive presence across the peninsula. The NATO intervention of 1999 in Kosovo lasted longer and disrupted the region more than expected. Although the Milošević regime finally fell in Serbia, the rule of law was slow to be established in Kosovo itself. A more promising international presence than in Kosovo continued in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The final results of both enterprises have remained uncertain, casting shadows over a Southeastern Europe that is now best defined as extending from Slovenia to Turkey. Their uncertainty has compounded the political problems of economic transition facing Croatia and Macedonia as well as Serbia, and the still comparable struggles of Bulgaria and Romania as well as Albania. These regional travails have also hindered the badly needed rapprochement, if not reconciliation, between Greece and Turkey. Indeed, the fate of this large region has been called into sufficient question to make it a matter of concern to the national interest of Hungary and Austria, even Germany and Italy. The national interest of the United States also demands that attention be paid to the future of Southeastern Europe if “a Europe whole and free” is not to become an empty slogan of the 1990s. To proceed wisely into the future, we must bear past American attention to the region clearly in mind. Let me examine its evolution as a historian rather than a policy-maker, as an observer of the long-term rather than a participant in the short-term. If my title speaks of rethinking the American perspective on the region, I must argue that there is indeed a history of previous thinking. I say rethinking rather than “imagining” or “inventing” an understanding of the region. I decline to use the participles with which the neo-Marxist perspectives on nationalism of Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm have endowed so many titles in postmodernist historiography. I avoid saying “imagining” or “inventing” for the American perspective in part because they both suggest a one-sided Western manipulation of the “other’s” image. Immigrants from the region to the United States as well as the region’s own representation and scholarship have made the American perspective more than a one-way “discourse.” I also avoid “imagining” or “inventing” because the more historically appropriate phrases for American attention to the region are Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 615–24.

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“lack of attention” or “concentrating on one country.” The neglect may be unconscious or conscious, as articulated by Patrick Buchanan’s neo-isolationist argument that placed Bosnia and Kosovo among the “ridiculous little places around the world” in which the United States should simply avoid involvement. In order to return to where the mainstream of American public and academic understanding of Southeastern Europe now stands, let us review the turning points in that understanding across the twentieth century. That review is best divided into two parts—the postwar decades up to 1989 and the lengthening period since the collapse of Communist regimes across what Americans took the lead in calling “Eastern Europe.” I pay more attention to the period before 1989, in part because the majority of American policy makers and academics formed their initial impressions of the region during the longue durée of the Cold War. That is significantly the case for two major figures who have straddled policy and scholarship—Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger. Their views remain relevant in the present period of rethinking, Brzezinski favoring American engagement in the region from Bosnia forward and Kissinger wary of commitment, especially if made in humanitarian haste. We nonetheless begin with lack of attention. At the turn of the last century, there was precious little official involvement or academic interest coming from the United States. The region then consisted of several newly independent states wedged between Ottoman and Habsburg borderlands but known collectively as the Balkans. After the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the United States had indeed established diplomatic relations with the newly independent states but did not see fit to go beyond appointing a single minister with virtually no staff to be a diplomatic representative to all of them. There was a consular and commercial convention with Serbia in 1881 that would be celebrated as starting the “centenary of Yugoslav-American relations” in 1981. But before World War I, it did not lead to remotely significant trade between the United States and Serbia, any more than did a US protest to Romania’s government in 1879 secure rights to citizenship for that large Jewish minority. Nor do we find scholarly interest in the region among American universities. Their numbers were indeed growing to include a number of public institutions after the Civil War and to initiate graduate study on the German model from the 1870s. But history departments concentrated on the American or West European experience, and the separate study of ethnography then spreading through Central Europe was simply absent. Perhaps ethnography would have stumbled too quickly on racial issues whose complexity or mere existence American scholars wished to avoid. We should also take note of the limited American connection or sympathy with the two surrounding empires. They were far away, lacking in commercial interest, and burdened, as citizens of the young republic saw it, with an outmoded form of government headed by rulers that nobody had elected and an aristocracy empowered by distant heredity. US diplomatic relations with Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were further constrained by the very limited number and nature of representatives dispatched by what were then separate consular/commercial and diplomatic services. No ambassadors were appointed anywhere until 1894, in part to avoid the requirement that any ambassador to Great Britain kneel before the monarch in presenting his credentials at the Court of St. James. US historians, moreover, paid what

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attention they did across the Atlantic to a short list of subjects—the English tradition of civil liberties, bad relations with Britain and good relations with France during and after the American Revolutionary War, and the liberal German ideals born in the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848 and brought to the United States by Carl Schurz and other 48ers. We should acknowledge in addition the lack of sympathy for empires as a form of government in general, let alone understanding them as a framework for offering a diverse set of autonomous corporate rather than individual rights to minority groups. These corporate rights were sufficient for Michael Walzer to list the multinational empire as the first of his five “regimes of toleration” in his insightful essays.1 But after the next two on his list, international and confederal regimes, come the two that characterize the United States—a nation-state and an immigrant society. In both of them, it has been the individual’s rights as a citizen that have provided toleration for minorities. And also individual rights that have been used to deny citizens their due. Recall the Jim Crow laws passed by Southern legislatures in the United States during the 1880s to deny the right to vote to African-Americans on the basis of individual inability to pass arbitrary tests on literacy and state government that their educational opportunities gave them no chance to pass. One American connection to Southeastern Europe was however in place by the turn of the last century, a connection that might be considered a forerunner of perhaps the most successful American connection of the 1990s—nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. Around 1900, these were not secular but religious organizations, or at least they started that way. Protestant missionaries had begun to come to the Muslim and also Christian Orthodox peoples of the Ottoman Balkans by the early decades of the nineteenth century. Soon abandoning their original emphasis on religious conversion, they concentrated instead on education. The original site of Robert College in Constantinople was already in operation by 1863. And, as Maria Todorova notes in her invaluable pre-1914 chapters in Imagining the Balkans, there were some 25,000 students in 426 Protestant-sponsored schools across the region by 1900.2 In the last prewar decade, moreover, they emphasized John Dewey’s new rationale for a more practical and democratic, less classical and elitist curriculum that was emerging in the United States at that time. And then came wartime, the first two of five wars involving the United States in Southeastern Europe, yes, but raising the question every time about whether the American involvement was a primary concern, whether it involved the illusive “national interest.” Before moving to World War II, the Cold War, and the wars of Yugoslav dissolution, we must begin with the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 and World War I, a six-year period of continuous conflict for Southeastern Europe. For the Balkan Wars, Todorova’s volume emphasizes the importance of the 1913 report from the new Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (established in 1910 as the first of the modern NGOs, if you will, and one still active). She correctly identifies its con­ 1

  Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

2

  Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 104.

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demnation of ethnic cleansing and civilian brutalization by all the victorious armies of the independent Balkan states as the first hard evidence for American usage of “Balkan” during the 1990s, not just as a pejorative synonym for irrational political division but also for the “ancient ethnic hatreds” that prompted war crimes against the adversary’s civilians. We may however doubt whether the report was influential in the United States at the time of its publication, coming from a commission of nine that included only one American. The greater immediate consequence of the Balkan Wars was the return of recent immigrants from the independent Balkan states to serve in their respective armies, a return aided rather than hindered by US policy. World War I was far more fateful than the Balkan Wars for the American perspective. It was seen as a European rather than a specifically Balkan mess that the Americans had come in to clean up (and then leave as quickly as they had come). But interwar American historians were soon attracted to British revision of Germany’s war guilt and informed by the speedy German publication of its diplomatic dispatches. It was from this perspective that the road back to the Habsburg archduke’s assassination in Sarajevo as the cause of the war seemed to lead further to Belgrade. Was Serbia not the sort of renegade and uncivilized Balkan state that readers of the Carnegie Report would recognize? Austrian historians advanced a thesis of official Serbian responsibility for the assassination that persisted into the 1990s. In 1928, the respected American historian Sidney B. Fay authored a persuasive analysis in The Origins of the World War from just this perspective.3 His two volumes of diplomatic history drew heavily on German and Austrian documents. Still conspicuous by its absence from interwar American scholarship, however, were specialists and programs on Southeast Europe itself. Much of the prewar immigration from the region had remained or returned, but they had no measurable academic presence throughout the interwar period. Russian, Polish, and, to some extent, Austrian or Hungarian immigrant scholars made their presence felt at several universities. The University of Wisconsin launched a fledgling program in area studies, but we find little coordinated activity elsewhere. As World War I was ending and then again as World War II was threatening, official American interests did direct some specific attention to Southeastern Europe. The two approaches came forward at different times in 1918 from President Wilson and his advisors on the region, primarily two law professors, Archibald Cary Coolidge of Harvard and Charles Seymour of Yale. These two approaches first charted the paths that US policy makers would later explore during the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution during the 1990s. Into the summer of 1918, the first path followed from a strict interpretation of two points in Wilson’s famous 14 Points of that January. While the “independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states” should be restored (Point 11), “the peoples of Austria-Hungary … should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development” (Point 10). What did Wilson mean by “autonomous development”? I submit that he had some sort of American-style federation in mind. As demonstrated by Magda Adam, that is exactly what Charles Seymour proposed in May 1918, complete with a map for six federal 3

  Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War (New York: Macmillan, 1928).

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states that would add “Jugoslavia” (Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina), Transylvania, Bohemia, and “Poland Ruthenia” (Galicia) to Austria (including Istria and the Tyrol) and Hungary (including Slovakia and the entire Banat).4 Then, as the war was ending with the proclamation of an independent Hungary and a much larger Yugoslavia centered on Serbia, Wilson and his advisors turned onto a second path. The president barely sketched that path with his cryptic reference to national self-determination as the basis on which to secure “a democratic peace.” But for one newly created state in Southeastern Europe, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Seymour took the lead in sketching out another federal structure. And when Irish and Zionist representatives raised the issue of self-determination for Ireland and Palestine, Wilson and his advisors backed away from the notion of new states on demand more quickly than is sometimes appreciated.5 The American disposition to apply its own federal experience to this multiethnic first Yugoslavia may be seen again in the one enduring scholarly study of its experience during the 1920s. This is The Balkan Pivot, coauthored by the renowned historian of the American economy, Charles Beard, and George Radin.6 They focused on several statements from the new kingdom’s political leadership espousing a desire to proceed on federal lines and then proceeded themselves to find no basis in what was being done or even discussed that followed the US or Swiss examples. The issue of minority rights within any of the new or enlarged states ratified by the peace treaties meanwhile attracted little American attention. The treaties that the League of Nations sought from all of these states were after all intended to guarantee group rights, including use of a separate language. These were rights not dissimilar to those offered in the best of Habsburg and Ottoman times but quite different from the individual rights that were synonymous with freedom and democracy to (and for) white Americans. The official American retreat from the region persisted through the interwar years until the late 1930s, after a brief military intervention in 1921 to prevent an Italian naval attack on the Yugoslav kingdom’s Dalmatian coast. During the course of the 1930s, however, American trade and especially direct investment in Yugoslavia and Romania had become important enough to prompt the upgrading of commercial reporting and diplomatic representation. More significantly for the future, the Nazi set of bilateral clearing agreements negotiated with all the states of the region had raised the specter of a closed trading bloc that was anathema to the Roosevelt administration. It was not ready of course to abandon the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 that had raised already protectionist US duties on imports even higher. But some ground for the US commitment to low tariff as well as free trade that would emerge with Republican support after World War II had been laid. So was the groundwork 4

  Magda Adam, The Little Entente and Europe, 1920–1929 (Budapest: Akademiei Klado, 1993), 21. 5

 See Arthur Walworth, Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 462–84. 6

  Charles Beard and George Radin, The Balkan Pivot (New York: Macmillan, 1929).

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for high-level diplomatic attention to Yugoslavia. With the dispatch of the respected Arthur Bliss Lane to Belgrade as American ambassador in the late 1930s, the United States first recognized the position that would reemerge after the Tito-Stalin split— that Yugoslavia was indeed the pivotal country in the region. The designation of the region itself as Southeastern Europe ironically suffered during the 1930s, as Maria Todorova points out, by the Nazi use of the term in general and especially in connection with plans for Grossraum Wirtschaft that would incorporate it into an autarkic bloc to serve the German economy. The interwar Western disposition to rely on the by now pejorative designation of the region as the Balkans thus received further encouragement even before the early 1940s bloodied the peninsula with civil war as well as Hitler’s war. The Cold War would however count for more in shaping the American perspective on Southeastern Europe than World War II. The region was after all a British responsibility throughout the war. Toward the end, US supplies to Tito’s partisans became important but received little Communist credit, especially after an ill-conducted mission to rescue US fliers sheltered by rival Chetniks. In 1944, Anglo-American bombing raids on Belgrade, Sofia, and Bucharest went ahead for reasons related to cutting Nazi lines of communication rather than to the region. But as soon as the war was over, official American interest first in “Eastern Europe” and soon afterwards in Greece and Turkey became intense, far greater than it had ever been before. Both the Truman administration and the US representatives who were on the ground as part of Allied Control Commissions in Bulgaria and Romania balked at accepting Churchill’s percentages agreement with Stalin. It had given the Russians an upper hand there in return for a British advantage in Greece. US confrontations with Yugoslavia went even further, especially when Tito supported the Communist side in the Greek civil war that re-erupted in 1946. This renewed warfare created a threat to a noncommunist Greece that British aid alone could no longer contain. Hence the Truman Doctrine in 1947, declaring support for Greece and Turkey in moralistic terms that confronted the entire Soviet bloc. Then Yugoslavia went from being the bloc’s most aggressive member to its first defector in 1948. The frame of official American reference for the next fifty years was now set. First aid and then large and able diplomatic representation went to Yugoslavia, pulling it into the Fulbright and other scholarly exchanges by the 1960s and connecting it to the World Bank and other sources of international credit. Trade, direct US investment, and military cooperation seemed initially promising but never amounted to much. Still, the Belgrade embassy became the State Department’s prize assignment in all of Eastern Europe, as may be seen from the prior service there of the last four American ambassadors to Yugoslavia. And persisting from 1950 to 1990, and echoing Wilson’s Point 11, was the cardinal principle of US policy toward Yugoslavia—to support its unity, independence, and territorial integrity. Relations with the rest of the region were disparate, none at all with Albania and, at least for the 1950s, none with Bulgaria. They resumed with Bulgaria in 1960 but led to few commercial or cultural contacts until the 1980s; even then, political relations remained minimal. Romania’s rebuff of Soviet economic plans by the mid-1960s and objection to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 led to the ill-fated US as-

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sumption that Romania would follow the Yugoslav road internally as well as in foreign policy. During the 1970s, high-profile ambassadors beginning with Harry Barnes and flourishing cultural and scholarly exchange made it seem that the Ceausescu regime might be an example to the rest of Eastern Europe, rather than the cautionary tale that it turned out to be by the 1980s. Relations with Greece, the one country in the region with an influential domestic constituency in the United States, and Turkey, the more valuable of the two as a military ally in the Cold War, became embroiled by the 1960s in their dispute over Cyprus. And they stayed embroiled through the 1990s. My point in this brief review of official perspectives from 1948 to 1989 is that no two countries in the region, let alone any larger grouping, fit together in American policy. The division of offices and hence assignments in the State Department did not help. Yugoslavia’s diplomatic representatives won their case for separation from Eastern Europe, which kept Bulgaria and Romania together with Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Greece and Turkey were attached to the Middle East. Now, since 1994, Greece and Turkey have become Southeastern Europe and the rest of the region with the exception of Romania, South Central Europe. Romanian representations won it designation as North Central Europe. Meanwhile, in academia, Southeastern Europe more conventionally defined was receiving just as much attention but with almost as much disparity. More dissertations were written and more scholarly books were published on Yugoslavia than on all the other countries combined. Albania was virtually ignored. Officially supported programs for language study and graduate research in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union began in the 1960s and quickly escaped any sort of political monitoring. But none of them applied to noncommunist Greece. The largely American-born students passing through these programs were often trained by the largely immigrant first generation of postwar US specialists. Their expertise in language and knowledge from their native areas included some political biases, but they typically sought to stand above them. Those who did not, typically tied to communities of recently arrived immigrants from the region that saw scholarship as a platform for political pressure, did not find places at the American research universities that were training the successor generation of regional specialists. Nor did pressure groups of immigrants from any area of the former Yugoslavia have the national political influence that they sought or their adversaries assumed. Still, a wider regional perspective was not easy to acquire for a successor generation of scholars who typically learned one language, and perhaps Russian as well, and did their dissertation research in one country. An Austrian and a Hungarian immigrant scholar, the geographer George Hoffman of the University of Texas and the historian Peter Sugar of the University of Washington, pushed their own scholarship and their students to study Southeastern Europe as a whole. So has my initial mentor in Balkan history, Theofanis Stavrou of the University of Minnesota. Special recognition is due his subsequent broadening of the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook that he launched in 1985 to be a journal responsible for the entire region. And in all of this scholarship, while the region has more often been described as the Balkans (minus Turkey, by the way), the pejorative use that moved Todorova to write her book is rarely if ever found. Instead, national self-assertion was respected, up to but not

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including the right of secession. Much of this work emphasized the pursuit of political and economic modernization, as defined by the originally Bulgarian political scientist Cyril Black of Princeton University. It sometimes judged communist efforts by a standard that now seems too generous, and seemed too generous to Black at the time. “Now” began with the 1990s. For Southeastern Europe, the first years meant the collapse of communist regimes in Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania, followed shortly by the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. At the same time, the advancing pace of European integration merged with the American disposition to see the same process of political and economic transition as imminent in every former communist country. Together they created the official US expectation that transition and integration would follow quickly. Never mind the absence of any assistance remotely resembling the Marshall Plan of the late 1940s in Western Europe. When it did not follow in a Southeastern Europe also facing warfare in the former Yugoslavia, in what had been the region’s largest economy, and when the now Central European countries to the north did in fact turn the corner on their respective transitions, the region invited pejorative or remedial attention. The pejorative attention focused on the former Yugoslavia in general and on Serbia in particular. The “ancient ethnic hatreds” misidentified as the major source of misdeeds by Robert Kaplan’s widely read Balkan Ghosts provided a handy political excuse to revive the tradition of minimal attention.7 Better not to get involved, as President Clinton and then secretary of state Warren Christopher concluded in backing away from the Vance-Owen plan for a confederal Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993. For those seeking remedial action from the international community, the first official thought was to let the Europeans intervene. When that failed to do so effectively, the second thought was to choose sides with the successor states and their allies such as Albania and to a lesser extent Bulgaria. Strongly in the second vanguard were the then ambassador to the United Nations, Madeline Albright, and also her doctoral mentor, the former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. For them, the earlier experience of confrontation with the Soviet Union over their birthplaces, Czechoslovakia and Poland respectively, seemed to resonate. Whatever the case, they demanded that Serbia be faced down by force. Yet, most Congressional advocates of facing Serbia down by “lift and strike” (lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian government in Sarajevo and carry out NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serb forces) saw the policy primarily as a guarantee that no US ground troops would be required. But because of the threat that lift and strike would have posed to the isolated units of UNPROFOR troops from NATO allies scattered across Serb-held territory, and hence to the alliance itself, it was never implemented. For further details and path to the Dayton Agreement, I leave you to consult the superb volume by Steven Burg and Paul Shoup.8 I do however wish to date the current American concern with the region as a whole, the first such sustained concern in our experience, from the arrival of Richard Holbrooke in the 7

  Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993).

8

  Steven Burg and Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999).

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State Department to address the Bosnian war in 1994. His first act was to call back the American ambassadors from all of Southeastern Europe and discuss a regional strategy. He also reached out to an academic community that had previously been neglected and then weighed its wider set of views. Some years and NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo have now passed since the Dayton Agreement established an essentially confederal framework for keeping Bosnia-Herzegovina together. Neither the American academic community nor the NGO sector, nor the Clinton administration nor the Congress, turned away from the former Yugoslavia. But there was an official turn to look at the successor states and Southeastern Europe as a single entity. Not so in academia, where the concentration on the war zone in the former Yugoslavia persists. The bibliography to the revised and updated second edition of my Yugoslavia as History lists forty books published since the first edition in 1996, twenty for the new chapter on 1991–99 alone.9 Most are from the younger generation of American and German scholars already experienced in the region before 1991 and also drawing on the often first-class Yugoslav scholarship from the 1980s, especially in sociology. Among the NGOs, the attention to the wider region is much better. Witness the activities of the Open Society Institute and the Bertelsmann Foundation, the respective American and German leaders. The Clinton administration and the Congress at least came to recognize the dangers of choosing sides too precipitously, first in Albania and Croatia under leaders since departed, and now in Kosovo. At the same time, that same administration abandoned arbitrary short-term limits for a Bosnian commitment and prepared to stay a longer course. In the process, USAID, the World Bank, and various other international agencies in Sarajevo, with the unfortunate exception of the EU’s PHARE program, learned to work quickly and constructively together. Their efforts suggested that among Michael Walzer’s five regimes for toleration, some combination of the international and the confederal may be possible. For Southeast Europe as a whole, the American perspective still seems divided, except on the agreed reluctance to commit ground troops to combat. That division extends from the Congress into academia. For the latter, it divides along the original lines that led Wilson and his advisors first to the side of multiethnic connection and then to national self-determination. Senior Balkan historian Gale Stokes and Philip Roeder, a younger political scientist, have argued independently for reemphasizing the central role of national self-determination in creating any stable and democratic regime. In “Containing Nationalism,” Stokes suggested remapping the Balkans in order to create “compact, ethnically homogeneous states for the major Balkan peoples.”10 This would mean, he admitted, a large Albanian state and a small Bosnian Muslim one, with the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina going to Croatia and Serbia. As for remaining ethnic minorities, and for other border changes in the region, he did not 9

  John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 10

  Gale Stokes, “Containing Nationalism: Solutions in the Balkans,” Problems of Post-Communism 46, 4 (1999): 3–10.

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say. Roeder went further and maintained that this is indeed the proper way to proceed across all of the former Eastern Europe, in an essay titled “Incomplete National Revolutions” in the Slavic Review, a special issue on ten years after 1989 that he edited.11 He called for “erring in the direction of national self-determination when this can be achieved as easily as denying it.” He cited the Bosnian Serbs as a Balkan candidate, although not specifying whether they should have a separate state or be allowed to merge with Serbia. I side with the one-time federalists, now better seen as confederalists with international support. Not just Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia—and, I venture to say, Albania—would be better off if that confederal and international combination continued in Bosnia and even got a chance in Kosovo. That was surely the thrust of official US support for the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe as proclaimed in July 1999. It extended beyond Bosnia and Kosovo to pursue the proper connection of Southeastern Europe to the rest of the Continent. Its primary advocates, the European Commission and the World Bank, rightly assumed that this could never take place without the closer interconnection of all the states of Southeastern Europe. This was not to expect their trade with each other to rise much above the limited historical levels of about 10 percent, or to project some sort of political federation or even confederation. But it was to recognize that one set of constructive regional connections would lead to more. In the apt words of an observer on the eve of the First World War, Never was a lesson clearer and more brutal. United, the peoples of the Balkan peninsula, oppressed for so long, worked miracles that a mighty but divided Europe could not even conceive.… Disunited, they were forced to come to a standstill and to exhaust themselves further in their effort to begin again, an effort infinitely prolonged … there is no salvation, no way out either for small states or for great countries except by union and conciliation. I quote from the introduction by Paul d’Estournelles de Constant to the 1913 Carnegie report on the Balkan Wars.12

11

  Philip Roeder, “Peoples and States after 1989: The Political Costs of Incomplete National Revolutions” in “Ten Years after 1989: What Have We Learned?,” ed. Roeder, special issue, Slavic Review 58, 4 (1999): 854–82. 12

  International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect, with an introduction by George Kennan (Washington, DC: The Carnegie Endowment, 1993), 19.

Epilegomena

Writings of the Eighteenth-Century Archbishops of Canterbury Stanford Lehmberg†

It is difficult for a historian working outside the fields of Greek and Russian history to know what to offer in appreciation of the distinguished scholarship and teaching of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Because of his keenness on church history, it may be that a study of religion in England will prove of interest to him and his friends. This modest contribution will discuss the writings of the archbishops of Canterbury, the heads of the Church of England, during the eighteenth century. It is in a way complementary to my earlier accounts of the writings of clergy who held positions in the cathedrals of England and Wales during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1 There were eight archbishops of Canterbury during the years from 1700 to 1799. Three of these, Thomas Tenison (in office 1698–1715), William Wake (1716–37), and Thomas Secker (1758–68), were men of considerable stature who produced important theological works, sermons, or popular religious tracts. The remaining archbishops, John Potter (1737–47), Thomas Herring (1747–57), Matthew Hutton (1757–58), Frederick Cornwallis (1768–83), and John Moore (1783–1805), are now largely forgotten, but they too published works, primarily sermons, that were favorably received in their own time.2Lehmberg, “Writings of English Cathedral Clergy (1600–1700): 1

 Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Reformation of Cathedrals: Cathedrals in English Society, 1485–1603 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 241–48; Lehmberg, Cathedrals under Siege: Cathedrals in English Society, 1600–1770 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 111–38; and Lehmberg, “Writings of English Cathedral Clergy (1600– 1700): Devotional Literature and Sermons,” Anglican Theological Review 75, 1 (Winter 1993): 63–82; Lehmberg, “Writings of English Cathedral Clergy (1600–1700): Poetry, Polemic, Theology, History, and Science,” Anglican Theological Review 75, 2 (Spring 1993): 188–217. The present essay is based in part on a list of writings of clergy associated with Canterbury Cathedral in the eighteenth century compiled by my former research assistant Dr. Glen Bowman, whose work I am glad to acknowledge. 2

  Bibliographical information for writings before 1700 is taken from D. G. Wing, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641–1700, 3 vols. (New York: Index Society, 1945–51). Since there is no comparable source for the eighteenth century, we have used the Eureka search of the Research Libraries Group. For general studies of the church during this period, see Norman Sykes, Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: The University Press, 1934); E. G. Rupp, Religion in England, 1688–1791 (Oxford: Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 627–39.

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It may be a sign of the decline of the church as the century progressed that the first two archbishops of the period, Tenison and Wake, were the finest scholars and most influential politicians. Tenison’s career spanned the reigns of Charles II (1660– 85) and his Roman Catholic brother James II (1685–88), the Glorious Revolution of 1689, and the age of the later Stuarts, William and Mary (1689–1702) and Queen Anne (1702–14). Because of the unsettled state of the church when he was at Cambridge—Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans still controlled the government—he originally intended to study physics rather than religion, but just before the Restoration of the monarchy he was privately ordained, and in 1665 he became vicar of St. Andrew’s Church in Cambridge. He was one of the chaplains to Charles II, who in 1680 presented him to the rectory of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, one of the most important of the London churches. From 1686 to 1689 he was also minister at St. James’s, Piccadilly, another fashionable parish. In 1691, on the suggestion of Queen Anne, he was named bishop of Lincoln, a post he held until he was promoted to Canterbury in 1698. Tenison’s early writings deal with theological controversies. His first book, The Creed of Mr. Hobbes examined: In a feigned conference between him and a student in divinity (1670), took issue with the religion of reason proposed by that great political thinker. John Tillotson argued that such views were little better than atheism. He attacked somewhat similar Socinian beliefs, especially the denial of Christ’s divinity, in a Discourse concerning a guide in matters of faith, which was published anonymously as part of a volume called The Difference betwixt the Protestant and Socinian methods (1687).3 Turning his attention to the Catholics, he then took on the Jesuit Andrew Poulton, whose doctrines were refuted in A true and full account of a conference held about religion, between Dr. Tho. Tenison and A. Pulton one of the masters in the Savoy (1687). When Poulton defended himself, Tenison replied with a second tract, Mr. Pulton considered in his sincerity, reasonings, authoritives: or a just answer to what he hath hitherto published. Other anti-Catholic writings of this period included Of idolatry (1678); A discourse concerning a guide in matters of faith: in respect, specially, to the Romish pretence of the necessity of such a one as is infallible (1683); and A friendly debate between a Catholick and a Protestant: concerning the doctrine of transubstantiation (1683). The expulsion of James II and the Glorious Revolution are reflected in Popery not founded on scripture, An answer to the letter of a Roman Catholic souldier, and A continuation of the present state of controversy, between the Church of England, and the Church of Rome, being a full account of the books that have been of late written on both sides, all of which appeared in 1688.

Clarendon Press, 1986); and J. R. H. Moorman, A History of the Church in England (London: A. and C. Black, 1953). I was privileged to study with Professor Sykes at Cambridge University in the 1950s. 3

  The Socinians took their name from the Italian humanists Lelio (1525–62) and Fausto Sozzini (1539–1604). Anti-trinitarians who were especially influential in Poland, the Socinians rejected orthodox Christology, although they were willing to honor Christ and invoke his name in prayer. See H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-century England (London: Oxford University Press, 1951).

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Political controversies engaged Tenison as well. In 1683 he advocated closer ties between Anglicans and dissenters in An argument for union, taken from the true interest of those dissenters, who profess, and call themselves Protestants. He opposed James II’s revival of the Ecclesiastical Commission in a discourse delivered before the clergy meeting in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey and published in 1689. Shortly before his death, he joined in denouncing the Jacobite uprising of 1715 in A Declaration of the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, and the Bishops in and near London, testifying their aborrence of the present Rebellion. This pointed out the danger to the church which would ensue from the accession of a popish prince like the Old Pretender. Tenison was a close friend of the diarist John Evelyn, who called him “one of the most profitable preachers in the church of England, being also of a most holy conversation, very learned and ingenious. The pains he takes and care of his parish”—this was in 1683, before he became a bishop—“will, I fear, wear him out, which would be an inexpressible loss.”4 At least nine of Tenison’s sermons were published during his lifetime. A number of these had been preached at court. These included Concerning doing good to posterity (delivered at Whitehall in 1690); Concerning the folly of atheism and Concerning the wandring of the mind in God’s service (both preached before the Queen at Whitehall, 1691); Concerning holy resolution (before the King at Kensington, 1694); and Concerning the celestial body of a Christian, after the resurrection (Easter 1694). In June 1689 he preached a fast-day sermon Against self-love before the House of Commons, “imploring the blessing of God upon their Majesties forces.” He ministered to both Queen Mary and King William on their deathbeds and preached a funeral sermon for Queen Mary which was severely criticized by the non-juror Thomas Ken.5 In 1702 he crowned Queen Anne in Westminster Abbey, but the new ruler did not favor Tenison as William and Mary had done, perhaps because he was known to support the Hanoverian succession. He took active measures to secure the accession of George I and, in one of his last public acts, presided at George’s coronation in 1714. One of the founders of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Tenison unsuccessfully urged the appointment of bishops to serve the established church in the American colonies. He also supported societies for the reform of manners and preached before at least one of the annual gatherings of the sons of the clergy. He was often regarded (by James II and Jonathan Swift, for instance) as being dull,6 and according to Edward Calamy he was “more honoured and respected by the

4

  John Evelyn, Diary, under 21 March 1683. The best edition is that by E. S. de Beer, The Diary of John Evelyn, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955).

5

  A believer in the divine right of kings, Ken was never able to accept the diversion of the monarchy to William and Mary or swear the oath of loyalty to them. 6

  Jonathan Swift said he opposed all levity among the clergy, including the game of whist (quoted in Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter DNB], life of Tenison).

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dissenters than by many of the established church.”7 Dying without direct heirs, he left most of his estate to charity. The greatest churchman of the century was without question William Wake.8 Born into a family of Dorset gentry in 1657, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. When only twenty-five years old, he went to Paris as the chaplain to Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, an old Christ Church man who had been appointed ambassador to the French court. Here, Wake became fascinated by the situation of the Gallican church. The Catholic Church in France had long considered itself to be largely independent of the papacy. In 1682, the year in which Wake went to Paris, the French clergy issued a declaration of four articles which included statements that the power of rulers is entirely independent from the power of the church and that in matters of religion a church council is superior to the Pope. This suggested to Wake that the Gallican church was in many ways similar to the Church of England, and he devoted substantial efforts to seeking some sort of union between the two establishments. He continued to discuss the matter with leading Gallican clerics, primarily doctors of the Sorbonne, for a number of years. In 1718 he engaged in a serious correspondence with Louis Ellies Du Pin, a French ecclesiastical historian who ardently desired union. For a time, it appeared that they were in general agreement and might compromise their differences, but after Du Pin’s death in 1719 the negotiations were dropped. Because of later ecumenical concerns, these letters have proved of continuing interest and have received at least two recent twentieth-century editions.9 Wake had expressed his goal in a sermon preached before William and Mary at Hampton Court in 1689 when he asked, [W]ho would not wish to see those days, when a general Reformation and true Zeal, and a perfect Charity passing through all the World, we should All be united in the same Faith, the same Worship, the same Communion and Fellowship with one another?10 He was also interested in closer ties with churches in Germany and Switzerland.

7

  Edmund Calamy, Abridgement of Mr. Baxter’s History of his life and times, together with a particular account of the ministers ejected after the restauration, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: J. Lawrence, 1713), 2: 334. Calamy was himself a non-conformist who spent much of his life compiling this biographical dictionary of dissenters forced out of the established church following the Restoration. 8

  Wake is the subject of a magisterial biography by Norman Sykes: William Wake, 2 vols. (Cambridge: The University Press, 1957).

9

  Jacques Gres-Gayer, ed., Paris-Cantorbery 1717–1720: Le dossier d’un premier oecumenisme (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989); and Leonard Adams, ed., William Wake’s Gallican Correspondence and Related Documents, 1716–1731, 7 vols. (New York: P. Lang, 1988–93). The correspondence is analyzed in Sykes, Wake, 1: 252–314.

10

  Quoted in Rupp, Religion in England, 77.

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Several related French projects interested Wake. He lamented the case of French ministers who had fled to Germany because of persecution in France, translating their letters and preaching on their plight.11 He entered into an extended controversy with the French bishop J. B. Bossuet of Meaux, publishing An exposition of the doctrine of the Church of England which refuted Bossuet’s Exposition of the doctrine of the Catholic church in 1686 and A second defence of the Exposition of the doctrine of the Church of England: Against the new exception of Monsieur de Meaux in 1687. Both works proved popular and ran through several editions. Smaller pieces of anti-Catholic writing by Wake included a refutation of the doctrine of transubstantiation (1687) and A brief history of the several plots contrived and rebellions raised by the papists: Against the lives and dignities of sovereign princes since the Reformation (1689, 1692). A collection of several discourses against popery, made up of nine tracts by Wake, was published in 1688. It included a discussion of purgatory and prayers for the dead. Together with Lord Preston, Wake returned to England in 1685. Following the Glorious Revolution, he entered on a career in which he served as chaplain to William and Mary, preacher of Gray’s Inn (one of the Inns of Court and a center of the legal profession, 1688), canon of Oxford (1689), rector of the London St. James’s Church, Westminster (1693), and dean of Exeter (1703). He particularly valued his work at St. James’s; his decade as a highly successful parochial minister seems to have been the happiest time of his life, and when he left he told his people that he did not think “there was ever any Christian church in any age that came nearer to perfection than you do.”12 He was appointed bishop of Lincoln in 1705 and promoted to Canterbury in 1716. It was inevitable that the holder of such episcopal posts should become involved in political issues. Wake argued against the repeal of the Test Act, which excluded non-Anglicans from political offices,13 published A Vindication of the Realm, and Church of England, from the charge of perjury, rebellion, & schism, unjustly laid upon them by the non-jurors,14 and opposed the attempt of the Tories to reinstitute meetings of Convocation. This assembly of clergy, important in the medieval and Tudor periods, had been in abeyance since 1664, but in the 1690s a number of high churchmen led by Francis Atterbury began to argue for its revival. Wake responded with a treatise on The authority of Christian princes over their ecclesiastical synods,

11   A Letter of several French Ministers fled into Germany upon the account of the Persecution in France to such of their brethren in England as approved the King’s Declaration touching Liberty of Conscience: Translated from the Original in French, trans. William Wake (London: n.p., 1688); and The Case of the exiled Vaudois and French Protestants stated, and their relief recommended to all good Christians, especially to those of the reformed religion (London: R. Sare, 1699). 12

  Quoted in Sykes, Wake, 1: 58.

13

  A discourse concerning the nature of idolatry (1688). This was a reply to a tract by Bishop Samuel Parker.

14

  Second ed. (1717).

632 Stanford Lehmberg

printed in 1697;15 despite its learning it was difficult reading and failed to gain support. The Convocation of Canterbury did meet in 1701. Wake’s views appeared to be vindicated when the Convocations (in J. R. H. Moorman’s words) “became centres of storm and controversy, the Canterbury Convocation being little more than a cockpit in which a group of discontended clergy sparred with the House of Bishops.”16 In 1703 Wake published a larger study, The state of the Church and Clergy of England in their councils, synods, convocations, conventions, and other Publick Assemblies, historically deduced, a work which was more than a topical polemic. This is often considered to be his most important piece of historical and theological writing. It certainly confirmed his involvement in politics, as he became the darling of the Whigs and the bête noire of the Tories. In the end, his party won out; Convocation met only once after 1717 and remained inactive for a century and a quarter.17 Wake was also involved in the prosecution of Dr. Henry Sacheverell, an eloquent but quarrelsome fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, who espoused increasingly violent high church and Tory principles in a number of sermons preached at Oxford and in London. It was his Guy Fawkes’ Day sermon, delivered at St. Paul’s on 5 November 1709, that, as Daniel Defoe said, raised “the bloody flag and banner of defiance.”18 The outraged Whigs brought Sacheverell to trial before the House of Lords, the Commons also attending the court specially set up in Westminster Hall in 1710. As bishop of Lincoln, Wake denounced Sacheverell in a speech that was widely circulated.19 As expected, Sacheverell was found guilty, but his punishment was minor (burning the sermon and a three-year moratorium on ecclesiastical advancement) and he became a popular hero, as common people demonstrated with bells and bonfires. In 1714, Queen Anne, who shared some of his views, rewarded him with the rich living of St. Andrew’s, Holborn. Of greater lasting value is Wake’s edition of The genuine epistles of the apostolic fathers. A major work of biblical scholarship, this “compleat collection of the most primitive antiquity for about CL years after Christ” includes translations of the writings of St. Barnabas, St. Ignatius, St. Clement, St. Polycarp, and the Shepherd of Hermas, together with eyewitness accounts of the martyrdoms of Ignatius and Polycarp. First printed in 1693, it went through several early editions, the third being published in 1719. The quality of its scholarship is suggested by the fact that it was reissued in 1820, 1832, 1860, and 1909, sometimes in volumes including additional works by the early fathers.

15

 Wing, Short-Title Catalogue, W230.

16

  Moorman, History of the Church in England, 271.

17

  On the controversy over Convocation, see Sykes, Wake, 1: 80–156.

18

  Rupp, Religion in England, 65; on the whole episode, see Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr. Sacheverell (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973).

19

  The Bishop of Lincoln’s and Bishop of Norwich’s speeches in the House of Lords, March the 17th, at the opening of the second article of the impeachment against Dr. Sacheverell (1710).

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Wake was well known as a preacher. His earliest sermon to be printed was delivered at the ambassador’s chapel in Paris on 30 January 1685.20 The date was often commemorated as the anniversary of the execution of Charles in 1649. Upon his return to England, Wake preached at what was described as the “reviving of the general meetings of the gentlemen and others of the county of Dorset” held at St. Mary-leBow in London on 2 December 1690.21 In 1694, while at Gray’s Inn, he preached “Of our obligation to put our trust in God, rather than in men,” on the occasion of the death of Queen Mary.22 Sermons commemorating Guy Fawkes’ Day continued to be preached throughout the earlier years of the century. Often, these offered an opportunity for refuting Catholic doctrines or denouncing Catholic plots. Wake’s sermon preached for the House of Lords at Westminster Abbey on 5 November 1705, immediately after he first took his seat in the Upper House, made reference to the dual anniversary of the gunpowder treason of 1605 and the landing of William III at Torbay in 1688. In 1708 Wake was asked to preach for the Lords on the anniversary of Charles I’s martyrdom, and in 1716, shortly after the accession of George I, he delivered another commemorative sermon before the king at St. James’s Chapel. He had already been asked to preach for the new monarch on 1 August 1715, celebrating the first anniversary of his accession. Earlier, Wake had preached before the House of Commons gathered at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, on 5 June 1689, a fast day for the Glorious Revolution.23 While at St. James’s Church, he delivered an oration of public thanksgiving for the preservation of William III during his war with France (1696)24 and a notable sermon on “The false prophets try’d by their fruits” (1699).25 Upon leaving the parish in 1706, he published a farewell sermon, but he returned in 1710 to preach on “The danger and mischief of a misguided zeal.” As royal chaplain, he preached before William and Mary on 10 May 1690, and before the queen on 10 May 1691;26 in 1690 he was asked to preach for the mayor and aldermen of London at St. Sepulchre’s Church on the Wednesday of Easter week. He returned to St. Sepulchre’s in June 1715 to preach at an anniversary meeting of children educated in charity schools. A volume of Wake’s Sermons and discourses on several occasions was published in 1690,27 with later editions in 1716 and 1722. As this suggests, Wake’s activity as a preacher dates mainly to the period before his appointment as bishop, and his belief in the importance of preaching is almost certainly one of the reasons he rejected several 20

 Wing, Short-Title Catalogue, W262.

21

  Ibid., W267.

22

  Ibid., W251.

23

  Ibid., W263.

24

  Ibid., W270.

25

  Ibid., W246.

26 27

  Ibid., W266, W268.

  Ibid., W271.

634 Stanford Lehmberg

offers of episcopal office before accepting Lincoln. His comments on preaching are interesting: in his autobiography, he wrote that while in France he made a point of speaking without a text, but in later years he came to realize that it was very unequal, as my health, my rest, nay the very weather, favoured me. A thousand accidents distracted my mind and influenced the performance. I usually (when in a good disposition especially) preached over long; and sometimes, though I bless God not often, in my heat of preaching dropped such expressions as caused me some trouble after. Thus he resolved to write out his sermons in full, taking care in composing them. This meant that they were ready to print, as the demand for them grew, and that they could be repeated subsequently, if occasion so directed.28 A final, small category of Wake’s writings includes several popular tracts, of which the most important was The principles of the Christian religion explained (a commentary on the catechism, 1700). Actually a significant work dealing with no fewer than 594 questions of faith, it ran through several editions and was translated into French and German. Wake also published A practical discourse concerning swearing (1696), A letter from a country clergyman to his brother in the neighbourhood, touching some reproaches cast upon the bishops (1702), and a moving Preparation for death: Being a letter sent to a young gentlewoman in France, in a dangerous distemper of which she died (1687).29 As bishop of Lincoln, he conducted three visitations of the diocese (1706, 1709, and 1712); his interrogatories and articles were published and continued to be used widely as models of their kind. Once at Canterbury, Wake was less active. Plagued by ill health and political opposition, he virtually withdrew from public activities for the last six years of his life. The jibe that he did nothing but attend two dinners a week and sign dispensations was unfair, but contained an element of truth.30 Wake was succeeded by John Potter. Educated at Oxford, Potter originally established himself as a classical scholar. In 1694, when he was barely twenty, he published a volume of notes and variant readings of Plutarch’s treatise Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat. This was followed by a two-volume study of the antiquities of Greece, Archaeologia graeca, which appeared in 1697–98. A major work, this went through a number of editions and was translated into German. A commentary on Lycophron’s Alexandra was also published in 1697, and a two-volume edition of the works of Clement of Alexandria was issued at Oxford in 1715. An original Discourse of church government, wherein the rights of the church and the supremacy of Christian princes are vindicated and adjusted, first published in 1707, received a second edition in 1711 and a third in 1724. It was included in Potter’s collected theological

28

  Quoted in Sykes, Wake, 1: 53–54.

29

 Wing, Short-Title Catalogue, W253.

30

 Sykes, Wake, 2: 149.

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635

works, issued at Oxford in 1753–54, together with Praelectiones habitae in schola theologiae apud Oxonienses. Potter’s earliest venture into ecclesiastical politics came in 1704, when he was made domestic chaplain to Archbishop Tenison. Despite his humble background— his father was a linen draper in Wakefield, Yorkshire—Potter rose through the patronage of the duke of Marlborough, who approved his unusual combination of Whig politics and high church theology. He was named Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford in 1707, bishop of Oxford in 1715, and archbishop of Canterbury in 1737. Queen Caroline is said to have been responsible for this last appointment. On 1 August 1715, the anniversary of George I’s accession, he preached before the House of Lords, and on 11 October 1727, he delivered the sermon at the coronation of George II. His only other published sermon appears to have been that preached for the Assizes at Taunton in March 1712. As bishop of Oxford, he issued visitation articles and charges to the clergy in 1716 and 1719. A charge promulgated in 1720 aroused opposition and drew Potter’s response, A defence of the late charge. Upon becoming archbishop, he sent a circular letter, later published, to the bishops of his province. The slender publications of Thomas Herring, archbishop from 1747 to 1757, consisted primarily of sermons preached on the ceremonial occasions we have noted earlier. In 1738, he spoke at the anniversary meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at St. Mary-le-Bow. Two years later, he preached for the mayor, aldermen, and governors of the London hospitals on the Monday in Easter week. A sermon commemorating Charles I’s martyrdom was offered before the House of Lords in 1740, and an annual sermon for the governors of the London infirmary was delivered in March 1747. More important than these, or at least more controversial, was the sermon preached in York Minster on 22 September 1745, at the time of the Jacobite rising in Scotland. This led to a “grand meeting of the County of York” held at York castle and the formation of an association to support and defend King George against the forces of the Pretender. Despite some opposition, this group successfully raised £40,000; Herring’s role helped pave the way for his advancement from York to Canterbury. Herring’s sermons were collected and published by his friend William Duncombe in 1763. Letters from Herring to Duncombe dating from 1727 to 1757 were published in 1777. Additional correspondence with such men as Philip Doddridge, Thomas Birch, Nathaniel Forster, and John James Majendie reveals his personality more fully than his sermons. Herring was not interested in theological niceties but concerned himself almost exclusively with the practical side of religion and the extension of toleration. He claimed that he had confirmed more than thirty thousand people during his initial progress through the Yorkshire.31 Like Wake, he was ill during most of his years as primate and made little impact at Canterbury; he never fully recovered from a fever which attacked him in 1753 and died (it was said of dropsy) in 1757. Publications of the later archbishops continued to consist almost entirely of sermons. Matthew Hutton, who followed Herring in 1757 only to die in 1758, had earlier been a chaplain to George II, bishop of the Welsh diocese of Bangor (1743–47), and 31

  Cited in Herring’s life in the DNB.

636 Stanford Lehmberg

archbishop of York (1747–57). He was a descendant of the Matthew Hutton who had been bishop of Durham and archbishop of York during the reign of Elizabeth I. All of the younger Hutton’s published sermons were preached during the 1740s. The earliest was delivered before the House of Commons on 30 January 1741, commemorating the death of Charles I. He memorialized this anniversary again before the House of Lords gathered in Westminster Abbey in 1744. Most of his surviving sermons reflect his concern for education and poor relief. In 1744 he preached before the mayor and aldermen of London and the governors of the several hospitals in the City on the Monday of Easter week (a customary date), reporting on the great number of poor children maintained during the previous year, and he spoke at the yearly meeting of the children educated in charity schools. In 1745 he was the preacher for the anniversary meeting of the Society promoting English Protestant Working-Schools in Ireland. Similar addresses were delivered in 1746 at the anniversary meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (21 February), the gathering of the governors of the London Infirmary (20 March), and the House of Lords (11 June). His only other publication was a circular letter to the bishops in the province of Canterbury issued just before his death. A much more important figure was Thomas Secker, archbishop during the decade from 1758 to 1768.32 His father was a pious dissenter who held a small estate in Nottinghamshire. Secker himself was educated at dissenting academies and for a time, while under the influence of Isaac Watts, intended to enter the dissenting ministry. When he abandoned this plan, he studied medicine both in London and in Paris. He was granted the M.D. by the University of Leyden, having submitted a thesis, De Medicina Statica, which was published in 1721. After returning to England, he was ordained to the Anglican priesthood in 1723 by William Talbot, bishop of Durham and father of one of Secker’s close friends, by then deceased. He was given a doctorate in canon law by Oxford, having been judged unqualified for the D.D. He became a chaplain to George II and Queen Caroline in 1732, rector of St. James’s, Westminster, the church that Wake had served, in 1733, bishop of Bristol in 1734, bishop of Oxford in 1737, dean of St. Paul’s (an office he held concurrently with his poor bishopric) in 1750, and archbishop of Canterbury in 1758. While at Oxford he became a good friend of Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, whose residence at Blenheim was nearby. George II had been impressed with Secker’s sermon on the death of Queen Caroline and asked Secker to attempt reconciliation between the king and his estranged son. When this failed, Secker was for a time out of favor with the monarch, but the disaffection eventually blew over, and Secker was subsequently supported by George III, whom he baptized, confirmed, crowned, and married. A typical eighteenth-century cleric in his distrust of “enthusiasm,” he advocated rationality, enlightenment, toleration, and charity. Like Wake, he favored granting the episcopacy to the church in America, 32

  In the absence of a good biography of Secker, one may turn to the article in the DNB; Norman Sykes, From Sheldon to Secker: Aspects of English Church History 1660–1768 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1959); and The Autobiography of Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. John S. Macauley and R. W. Greaves (Lawrence: University of Kansas Libraries, 1988).

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637

then an unpopular proposal, and he supported repeal of anti-Jewish legislation. Despite his limited academic study of theology, his learning was considerable; he read Hebrew and wrote elegant Latin. Even Horace Walpole, who disliked him personally, admitted that he was “incredibly popular in his parish” of St. James’s.33 Secker’s sermons may not rank among the finest in the history of the English church but, according to contemporaries, they were preached by a man of commanding presence with a fine voice and style of delivery. More than 140 of them were printed.34 Many were prepared for ceremonial occasions such as we have noted earlier. The earliest sermon to be published was preached at Oxford University in July 1733, on what was known as Act Sunday. Secker preached for the mayor, aldermen, and governors of the London hospitals on Easter Monday in 1738; for the House of Lords, commemorating the Restoration of the monarchy, on 29 May 1739; for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) in February 1741; for the children educated in London charity schools in May 1743; for the governors of the London hospital in February 1754; and for the society promoting English Protestant Working-schools in Ireland on 27 April 1757. At St. James’s, he delivered a fast-day sermon “on the occasion of the present war with Spain” in February 1741, and a denunciation of the Jacobite Rebellion in October 1745. In his case, as in others we have noted, most of his sermons published separately were written before his promotion to Canterbury, but several collections did appear while he was archbishop. In 1758, Nine sermons preached in the parish of St. James, Westminster, on occasion of the late war and rebellion were published in London.35 Fourteen more, “preached on several occasions,” appeared in 1766 with a second edition in 1771. Shortly after Secker’s death, his friend and domestic chaplain Beilby Porteus, later bishop of London, published seven volumes of Sermons on several subjects, together with a short life of Secker (1770). Five sermons against popery were printed in Dublin in 1772, with six sermons on the liturgy of the Church of England appearing (again in Dublin) in 1773.36 Secker did not involve himself in academic issues and left no works of theoretical theology. His most important piece of popular writing was his Lectures on the catechism of the Church of England; with a discourse on confirmation. Like his collected sermons, this was edited by Porteus and another of Secker’s chaplains, George Stinton. Originally printed in 1769, it went through at least fourteen editions in London, two in Dublin, and two in America;37 it was translated into Welsh in a volume printed at Shrewsbury in 1778. A number of short tracts by Secker were published in 33

  Quoted in DNB, 172.

34

  According to Rupp, Religion in England, 513–14, England was a “nation of sermon addicts” and sermons were “a staple of edifying reading” during this period. 35

  These ran through a fourth edition in 1795.

36

  The sermons against popery were reprinted in Vermont by the American Antiquarian Society in 1827. A shortened form of them had been prepared and published by Porteus for his use in the diocese of Chester in 1781. 37

  The second American edition was published in Columbus, Ohio, in 1843.

638 Stanford Lehmberg

Dublin under the auspices of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. These included On the relative duties between parents and children, and between masters and servants (1787); Against evil-speaking, lying, rash vows, swearing, cursing, and perjury (also 1787); and Of the Lord’s supper (1788). Four discourses on self-examination, on lying, on patience, and on contentment were also printed in Dublin.38 Secker’s remaining publications consisted of visitation charges and articles. His charge to the clergy of the diocese of Oxford was issued in 1738 and reprinted the following year. After becoming archbishop of Canterbury he sent Articles of visitation and inquiry to the ministers, church wardens, and sidesmen of every parish in the diocese in 1758. There were also fresh charges for a subsequent visitation in 1762, reprinted by Porteus and Stinton in a number of editions issued in London and Dublin. Secker was unusually efficient in compiling a lengthy Speculum or digest of the returns submitted to him as part of his primary visitation of the diocese and peculiars of Canterbury during the summers of 1758 to 1761. These have recently been published by the Church of England Record Society and are of considerable interest for students of local history.39 Frederick Cornwallis, archbishop from 1768 until his death in 1783, was the seventh son of Charles, fourth lord Cornwallis. That his twin brother Edward became a general illustrates the fact that younger sons of the aristocracy often found careers in the church or the military establishment. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was a fellow of Christ’s College, dean of Windsor, and prebendary of Lincoln before advancing to the episcopate. He was named bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1749 and dean of St. Paul’s in 1766. Soon after Secker’s death he was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. Although less learned than many of his predecessors, it was said that no one was more beloved at Cambridge; Hasted, the contemporary historian of Kent, wrote that “he gives great satisfaction to everybody [at Canterbury]; his affability and courteous behaviour are much taken notice of, as very different from his predecessors.”40 His publications consisted almost entirely of sermons, preached before he became archbishop on the occasions generally graced by senior clergy: the commemoration of Charles I’s martyrdom before the House of Lords, 1751; the annual sermon for the president and governors of London Hospital, 1752; the anniversary sermon for the SPG in 1756; and the address at the yearly meeting of children educated in charity schools, 1762. As archbishop he sent a letter advocating religious tolerance to the archbishops, bishops, and clergy of France in 1776; it was published in London as Le cri de la tolerance. After Cornwallis’ death, the archbishopric was offered to Robert Lowth, bishop of London, and Richard Hurd, bishop of Worcester, both of whom turned it down. In the end John Moore was translated from the Welsh see of Bangor to fill the vacancy. Notably less aristocratic than his predecessor—his father was said to be a butcher at 38

  Published in 1777, they ran to sixty pages.

39

  The Speculum of Archbishop Thomas Secker, ed. Jeremy Gregory (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1995).

40

  Quoted in DNB, life of Cornwallis, 241.

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639

Gloucester but was more likely a grazier and member of the minor gentry—he had earlier been a prebendary of Durham, canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and dean of Canterbury (1771–75). His slender publications, again predating his appointment as archbishop, consist of three sermons, two preached before the House of Lords (30 January 1777 and 21 February 1781, a fast day) and one offered to the SPG (15 February 1782).41 The careers of Cornwallis and Moore seem to validate Moorman’s judgment that “as the eighteenth century advanced, the number of outstanding men in the church grew less.”42 The most significant works were the theological treatises and popular tracts written by Tenison and Wake, John Potter’s Archaeologia graeca, Wake’s study of Convocation, and his Gallican correspondence. Sermons were clearly the writings most likely to be published, but here, too, it should be noted that most were delivered on routine ceremonial occasions before groups of prominent persons; they were a far cry from the popular preaching of Wesley and Whitefield or the moving hymns of Isaac Watts. If one compares the works of our eighteenth-century archbishops with the writings of cathedral clergy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it becomes clear that there was less interest in serious theology, which accounted for a tenth of the publications of the seventeenth century and a quarter of the writings of the sixteenth, and that there was less academic writing in fields like history and geography. Interest in liturgy and in poetry also virtually disappeared. If we can accept the publications of the archbishops of Canterbury as a valid sample of the work of the cathedral clergy, we may conclude that although a number of the eighteenth-century writings still repay reading, they do not match the quantity or quality of those from earlier or later periods.

41

  It may be of interest that Moore’s first wife was a daughter of Robert Wright, chief justice of South Carolina. See Moore’s life in DNB, 365. 42

  Moorman, History of the Church in England, 281.

Carlism and Nationalism Stanley G. Payne

No other political force in modern Spain—not even anarchism—seems so uniquely Spanish, as Carlism. The Carlists were staunch defenders of tradition and of españolismo generally, which might be considered basic ingredients of a Spanish nationalism, and indeed Carlists have thus been sometimes considered the most extreme of Spanish nationalists. Yet Carlists very rarely called themselves nationalists and, though the modern term “nation” did enter their vocabulary during the middle of the nineteenth century, self-references to “nationalism” were normally absent from their discourse. Carlists constantly invoked the defense of the patria—ultimately the leitmotiv of Carlist doctrine—and an implicit distinction between patriotism and nationalism would seem to lie at the heart of Carlist political thought. This is of course related to the debate over the relationship between tradition, essence, and nationalism in contemporary studies of nationalism. If modern nationalism does not rest on deeper, premodern historical and cultural roots,1 then those such as Benedict Anderson who understand nationalism to be primarily a product of modernity and the modernist politico-cultural imagination would presumably be correct.2 It might then be inferred that Carlism was reluctant to embrace the terminology of nationalism because the latter would have been viewed as a modernist heresy of españolismo. Tradition is always something of a problem for nationalists, who are faced with the issue of how they are to interpret, reinvent, and make use of tradition, and similarly it is probably a mistake to try to divide interpretations of nationalism too rigidly into opposing camps, for most of the modernists readily agree that there is a relationship between tradition and nationalism, even if fanciful and fictive. In the 1

  Anthony Smith, it may be remembered, does emphasize the premodern institutional and cultural roots of nationalism in his Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Martin Robertson & Co., 1979) and The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). This is also developed by Josep R. Llobera, The God of Modernity: The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe (Oxford: Berg, 1994); and in more historical terms by John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). 2

  There is a tendency in all the “modernist” and “modernizationist” theories to discount any significant traditional basis for nationalism, as evidenced by such contrasting theorists as Ernest Gellner and Liah Greenfeld. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 641–55.

642 Stanley G. Payne

case of Spain, as in most others, there was always the problem of which tradition, or which aspects and institutions of tradition, were to be accepted as national and/or españolista. The first Spanish system of the Trastámaras and Habsburgs was after two centuries replaced by the reformed system of the Bourbons, even though it retained key institutions of the former. This produced a situation in which the institutions of the reformist and rationalist eighteenth century are those which, mutatis mutandis, have been embraced by Catholic and anti-rationalist traditionalists, though this was not done without criticism of the decay of tradition even in the eighteenth century and proposals for rectification. Traditionalists in the lands of the former Crown of Aragon, particularly, would refer to the institutional structure which existed prior to 1716. The affirmation of Spanish tradition in general first developed during the eighteenth century itself, in opposition to incipient changes and the criticism of modern rationalist thought. This first took the form of vigorous endorsement of the old order of Spanish institutions and culture,3 and secondly, during the latter part of the century, incorporated the further rationale and new discourse of foreign traditionalists, primarily French, which denounced the Enlightenment critique.4 It should be further noted that this was also the time of the first modern studies and eulogies of the remaining structures of traditional particularism in Spain, in the cases of the Basque provinces and of Navarre. The first major panegyrist of Basque institutions, the Guipuzcoan Jesuit Manuel de Larramendi, was also a staunch defender of españolismo, the Spanish monarchy, and of Spanish institutions in general, considering them the finest and most Catholic in the world.5 Larramendi and other Basque writers denounced the Valencian polymath and moderate decentralist reformer Gregorio Mayans Síscar, and by the close of the century Basques had gained a reputation as among the most extreme partisans of the traditionalist position. If we follow the most common interpretation, we find the concept of “la nación española”—smaller than the empire but larger than Castile, including all the peninsular territories as well as the Balearics and Canaries—emerging during the course of the eighteenth century.6 In 1732 the Real Academia’s Diccionario de la Lengua defined nación as “la colección de los habitadores en alguna Provincia, País o Reino” 3

  See Francisco Puy, El pensamiento tradicional en la España del siglo XVIII (1700–1760) (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1966). 4

  Aspects of this have been studied in Javier Herrero, Los orígenes del pensamiento reaccionario español (Madrid: Editorial Cuadernos para el Diálogo, 1988). 5

  Manuel de Larramendi, Autobiografía y otros escritos (San Sebastián: Sociedad Guipuzcoana de Ediciones y publicaciones, 1973); Larramendi, Corografía o Descripción general de la Muy Noble y Muy Leal Provincia de Guipuzcoa (San Sebastián: Sociedad Guipuzcoana de Ediciones y Publicaciones, 1969); and Larramendi, Sobre los fueros de Guipuzcoa (San Sebastián: Sociedad Guipuzcoana de Ediciones y Publicaciones, 1983).

6

 Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, La sociedad española en el siglo XVIII (Madrid: Instituto Balmeo de Sociología, Departamento de Historia Social, 1955), 41–43; and José Antonio Maravall, “El sentimiento de nación en el siglo XVIII: La obra de Forner,” La Torre (Puerto Rico) 15, 57 (1967): 25–55, the latter cited in Javier Fernández Sebastián, La génesis del fuerismo:



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(the collectivity of inhabitants in a given province, country or kingdom), but the application to Spain remained incipient, and the alternate traditional usages of the term might refer to other entities smaller than Spain. Without the slightest intention of invoking any new political change, Larramendi had referred to Guipuzcoa as a “nacioncita” and the Basque writer Manuel de Aguirre in 1780 used the term “naciones vascas” in defense of the foral (provincial) privileges of the three Basque provinces.7 The invocation of the “nación española” first became standard with the liberal reformers of the Cortes de Cádiz, and a common interpretation credits the doceañistas with having developed the first project of a modern Spanish nationalism, involving the transformation of the state into a new centralized civic structure of common representation and participation for a common Spanish citizenry. The traditional term for the homeland in Castilian had of course been patria, and the terms patria and nación were used interchangeably by the Cádiz liberals. Conversely, the term nacionalismo will rarely be found, and will remain rare throughout the nineteenth century, probably because the builders of the liberal nation in Spain were internally focused and not directed in terms of chauvinism or ethnocentrism against the external world. La nación figured most prominently of all in the language of the Exaltados of 1821–23, probably because their more radical liberalism involved a somewhat more extreme form of modern nation building. Nineteenth-century liberalism nonetheless came to be dominated by the Moderates, repressing any Jacobin pattern of a radical and totally centralized nation. Traditionalist spokesmen at Cádiz sometimes followed what was becoming standard usage in speaking of “la nación” and “la nación española,” but the neologism had come to have more specific political overtones and in the future would generally be avoided by traditionalists. In the years that followed they would regard the language of “la nación” as modernist and afrancesado, devoted to the destruction of traditional institutions, “national sovereignty” being an innovative and radical concept as opposed to “royal sovereignty.” Thus, traditionalists came to employ almost exclusively the terminology of “patria” and “patriótico,” as consistent with past usages and opposed to modernist heresies.8 By the time that Carlism took full form in the 1830s, it was devoted simply to the defense of those institutions and cultural practices which currently existed, or at least had existed prior to 1833. Within only a few years this became concretized in the slogan “Dios, Patria y Rey” (God, Fatherland and King) to which might later be appended the term Fueros (provincial rights). “Nation,” by contrast, was the modern-

Prensa e ideas políticas en la crisis del Antiguo Régimen (Pais Vasco, 1750–1840) (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España, 1991), 213. 7

  This speech has been published among the Cartas y discursos del Militar Ingenuo al “Correo de los ciegos,” ed. Antonio de Elorza (San Sebastián: Patronato José María Quadrado, 1973), 253–66. 8

  This difference in terminology has best been studied in the work by Fernández Sebastián cited above.

644 Stanley G. Payne

ist discourse of liberalism, and Carlism was opposed to this concept of “nation” and, hence, of modern nationalism.9 During the middle third of the century liberalism became more fully established and hesitantly sometimes even tried to elaborate a sort of nationalist project, though this remained feeble in practice. Carlism, by contrast, could no longer simply stand for the defense of the existing order, since the latter had to an increasing extent disappeared. By the 1860s, Carlism was much more in the position of liberalism thirty years earlier, now advancing a new project of its own against the newly established order. It had to develop its own ideology more fully, and thus a new Carlist ideologue such as Magín Ferrer would propose a more elaborate new framework, with a reformed Cortes based on a more innovative corporatist structure, in a decentralized royalist system which would also feature a regional Cortes in each major region. With the beginning of the Catholic revival, Carlism was also reinforced by the spokesmen and publicists of “Neo-Catholicism,” by the end of the 1860s incorporating such figures as Juan Aparisi Guijarro and Cándido Nocedal.10 Thus, in the rebellion against the democratic monarchy (and subsequently the anticlerical Federal Republic), which began in 1872, the ideological appeal of Carlism had incorporated further characteristics. This made much more use of the term nacional—though not nacionalista—as it emphasized as much or even more than in the past that Carlism was the ultimate in españolismo. In 1873 the Asturian Rosas hailed it as “el glorioso movimiento nacional,”11 while three years later the Catalan Alier y Sala declared that Carlists were the only real Spaniards.12 Other Catalan Carlists insisted that Carlism was the only truly Spanish national movement, just as the Vizcayan Jesuit Goiriena defined it as the all-out struggle against foreignism.13 By the 1860s and ’70s Carlism had begun to define a broader Spanish neotraditionalist project, a new “nacionalidad” based on “la idea católica.” National talent had to be fostered and cultivated in order to rid Spain of destructive foreign influences, 9   The literature on Carlism is massive, but normally ignores the issue of Spanish “nationalism” per se. The best exposition of Carlist thought is Alexandra Wilhelmsen, La formación del pensamiento político del Carlismo (1810–1875) (Madrid: Actas, 1995); and the most recent one-volume general history, that of Gabriel Alférez, Historia del Carlismo (Madrid: Editorial Actas, 1995). Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza, La primera guerra carlista (Madrid: Actas, 1992), supersedes preceding accounts of the first and most important of the liberal/traditionalist civil wars, but see also Las guerras carlistas, ed. Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza (Madrid: Editorial Actas, 1993). 10

  Begoña Uriguen, Orígenes y evolución de la derecha española: El Neo-Catolicismo (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos, C.S.I.C., 1986).

11

  La Reconquista (16 January 1873), quoted in Vicente Garmendia, “Carlismo y nacionalismo(s) en la época de la última guerra carlista,” in Bullón de Mendoza, Las guerras carlistas, 104. 12 13

  In the pamphlet El partido carlista y la revolución española, cited in ibid., 103.

  Antonio Pirala, Historia contemporánea: Anales desde 1843 hasta la conclusión de la última guerra civil, 6 vols. (Madrid: F. Gonzalez Rojas, 1876–79), 4: 205.



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which meant not merely a strong new protective tariff for the protection and development of the national economy, but attention to the more modern forms of culture as well, the Almanaque Carlista of 1871 calling for the creation of a national opera in Madrid to overcome the spell of the French and Italian schools. Carlism was not merely strongly imperialist in the standard Spanish sense of preserving the Antilles and the Philippines, but expansionist as well. It now encouraged the direct recovery of Gibraltar and military conquest in northwest Africa, as well as the restoration of hegemony over Portugal, which one Guipuzcoan Carlist termed in 1873 “esa nación liliputiense que ha sido y debe ser una provincia española” (that Lilliputian nation that has been and ought to be a Spanish province).14 At one point the Carlist leadership offered the liberal government a truce in the civil war until the Cubans had been defeated. For Carlos VII, the new pretender, the significance of Carlism extended well beyond Spain itself, for Carlism bore a mission for Europe and indeed for the entire world. Admittedly, such rhetoric became overblown, and Carlos VII particularly concentrated on the role of Carlism in Latin Europe. He became a strong advocate of the concept of “la raza latina,” which he believed should recover the dominant role in Europe. Don Carlos was less impressed by nineteenth-century ideas of nationalism per se than by the newer concepts of racial development and struggle that were emerging in the second half of the century, writing in his diary that “ha pasado el tiempo feudal; se acaban las naciones y de las razas es el porvenir” (the feudal era is over, the nations are finished and the future belongs to the races).15 But Carlism was locked in constant struggle with the liberal system and had little opportunity to advance such grander ambitions. Its concept of Spain was indeed more traditional, not in the eighteenth-century, but in the sixteenth-century sense, in which Spain led a broader Christendom and a broader empire. Though Carlism strongly emphasized the ethnically Spanish, its sense of Spain transcended that of the ethnic nation per se. Mere national Spain was held to be the project of liberalism, whose fatal flaw was to concentrate on a reductionist and centralized concept of a foreshortened national Spain dominated by a Madrid gripped by destructive foreign doctrines of the modern liberal and centralized nation-state, tyrannical, godless, and not truly Spanish. In this sense, Carlism was opposed to modern nineteenth-century “Madrid projects,” whence flowed all of Spain’s ills. It was quintessentially an anti-Madrid movement in the modern sense, absolutely opposed to all modern, centralized, Jacobin nationalism, and this made it impossible to embrace any direct form of modern nationalism. True Spanish government was monarchist, foralist, and the realm of decentralized, concrete liberties. Spain was no statist monolith on the French pattern, but the land of decentralized, regional, and foralist institutional freedom. Carlism mirrored Federal Republicanism in the sense that it held absolutely to a pluralist concept of a national Spain. Well after mid-century, when Spanish coins had ceased to use 14

  Quoted in Garmendia, “Carlismo y nacionalismo(s),” 105.

15

  Diario y memorias de Carlos VII, quoted in ibid., 106.

646 Stanley G. Payne

the monarchist inscription of “Rex Hispaniorum,” Carlos VII would still call himself “Rey de las Españas.” Foralism and the defense of regional liberties had been part of the Carlist creed from the very beginning. At the start of the First Carlist War, little was made of this issue per se even in the Basque provinces and in Navarre, for it was simply understood that foralism formed part of the traditional system. As the first war had continued and Carlism became politically more self-conscious, foralism was increasingly made an official and strongly emphasized part of the political program.16 The foralist banner became even more prominent in the final war of 1872–76, as a particular appeal was made in the Basque provinces on the basis of Carlism’s staunch defense of foral institutions. Basque Carlists raised the banner of foralism to, if possible, even a higher level than before, and embraced all the myths of Basque history and institutions that had been developed since the sixteenth century, exaggerating the “perfection” of Basque institutions and the complete “liberty” which allegedly obtained under the traditional Basque systems. At that time, of course, the only real “Basque party” were the Carlists, and Basque Carlists eagerly sacralized Basque institutions, while accusing Madrid of “aggression” and “invasion” of the Basque Country in its prosecution of the current civil war, sometimes claiming that the goal of the central government was to “destroy” the Basque provinces. This particularist rhetoric had reached the point of occasionally threatening a declaration of Basque “independence” even during the final Basque phase of the First Carlist War in 1838–39, and such flourishes reappeared from time to time in the final conflict. It was alleged in 1870 that Basque Carlists sought to make of the three provinces “una nacionalidad casi independiente” (an almost independent nationality)17 and D. Alfonso Carlos, younger brother of the Pretender, at one point even obliquely raised the question of separatism. Between 1873 and 1876 the embryonic Carlist state18 was in fact little more than a sort of Basque state, and it was very easy for the majority of Basques who supported Carlism to see the civil war in its major phase as essentially a war of Spain against the Basque provinces and Navarre. The extreme terms and rhetoric of the last Carlist war thus played an important role in preparing the way for the birth of Basque nationalism a decade later, though this was far from the actual intentions of Carlos VII and the main Carlist leaders.19 16

  The most objective discussion of this issue will probably be found in John F. Coverdale, The Basque Phase of Spain’s First Carlist War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

17

  Quoted in Garmendia, “Carlismo y nacionalismo(s),” 108.

18

  The principal study of the state in the final war is Julio Montero Díaz, El Estado carlista: Principios teóricos y práctica política (1872–1876) (Madrid: Aportes XIX, 1992).

19

  The main treatment is Vicente Garmendia, La ideología carlista (1868–1876): En los orígenes del nacionalismo vasco (Zarautz: Diputación Foral de Guipúzcoa, 1985). See also José Extramiana, Historia de las Guerras carlistas (San Sebastián: Haranburu, 1979–80), vol. 2; and Extramiana, “Originalidad y papel del carlismo vasco en la España del siglo XIX,” in Estudios de historia contemporánea del País Vasco, ed. J. C. Jiménez de Aberásturi (San Sebastián: Haranburu, 1982), 27–50.



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Politics and ideology played a more prominent role in Carlism during the 1870s than in the 1830s, religion on the one hand and decentralization and fueros on the other being major themes. Conversely, the Pretender himself, though a much more charismatic and effective leader than his grandfather, was rather less the center of the movement ideologically than in the earlier war. Though Carlist leaders were sincere in their stress on decentralization, there was no interest in encouraging the most extreme statements of Basque Carlist foralism, which were normally not echoed by the top leadership. After the final defeat in 1876, followed by the loss of most fuero privileges soon afterward, Carlist political groups in the Basque Country advanced the slogan “Jaungoikua eta Foruak” (God and the fueros), emblematic of the two most salient aspects of the Carlist creed. They won the Spanish Cortes elections of 1880 in the three provinces, despite the restoration of liberal caciquismo (boss-rule), returning twenty-eight deputies to twenty-two for the liberals, but in the years that followed were unable to sustain this position. Those Basque Carlists whose primary concern was foralism later joined other groups, while those Basques who remained Carlist in the later years of the century ceased to give foralism the same prominence. Though Carlism would in general remain foralist to the end, Basques still loyal to the traditionalist banner invoked foralism only in conjunction with the other Carlist principles, and largely ceased to participate in the accelerated folklorist activities and protonationalist politics of the last part of the century.20 When Arana Goiri founded the Basque Nationalist Party in 1895, he would regard Carlists as among his primary foes, precisely because there was so much overlap ideologically between Carlism and the highly clerical, culturally conservative nationalists, and because both forces competed primarily for the support of the same social sectors: the rural population and the urban- and smalltown lower-middle classes. Arana Goiri was unable to improve on the basic Basque Carlist slogan, but changed the wording to differentiate Basque nationalism, invoking “Jaungoikua eta Lagi-Zarra” (God and the old laws), in place of “God and the fueros.” As Carlism weakened and shrank in the last years of the century, it confronted two other major formulations of españolismo: the dominant one was the quasi-nationalism of the elitist liberalism and imperialism of the Restoration, as defined and led by Cánovas del Castillo, and the other the sense of Catholic Spain that was parallel to but not synonymous with Carlism, stemming from the Catholic revival and, among others, from the writings of the polymath Menéndez Pelayo. Canovite españolismo by the 1890s was founded almost exclusively on the status quo, bolstered by official A leading non-Carlist Moderado foralist such as the Alavese Ramón Ortiz y Zárate had by 1870 begun to make quite a different kind of proposal for federation of the three provinces. The most extreme position, however, was taken by the heterodox sometime Carlist Juan de Tellitu Antuñano, who moved from advocating the creation of an autonomous super-region of the three provinces and Navarre to proposing in 1873 the creation of an “Estado independiente vasco-navarro.” His letters are quoted in Mikel Urquijo Goitia, Liberales y carlistas: Revolución y fueros vascos en el preludio de la última guerra carlista (Bilbao: Servicio Editorial, Universidad del País Vasco, 1994), 361–62. 20

  See Javier Real Cuesta, El carlismo vasco, 1876–1900 (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1985).

648 Stanley G. Payne

religiosity, and in some respects found itself in a situation analogous to that of the original D. Carlos and his followers in 1830.21 Right-wing Catholic españolismo was a diffuse sentiment, on the other hand, that might take several different forms. On the one hand, it overlapped with Carlism, and on the other, with the right wing of Canovism. Alternately, it might take an apolitical pietist form or even prefer a new kind of right-wing Catholicism more modern and flexible than Carlism but more conservative yet than Canovism. Carlism’s prospects were further dimmed by the schism between orthodox Carlists and Integrists (ultra-Catholics) in 1885, followed by the second schism during World War I between the orthodox jaimistas (followers of Don Jaime, the next Pretender) and the ultra elements, who rallied around Juan Vázquez de Mella y Fanjul. The latter became the leading ideologue in the movement, playing an active role from 1889 on. For Vázquez de Mella, the Spanish nation was a “federación histórica,” for “la Nación primero y el Estado central después han sido la resultante de la unión de varias regiones que antes eran independientes” (first the nation and then the central state have resulted from the union of various regions that were formerly independent).22 He was not reluctant to refer to the Spanish nation and the “central state,” though never in a centralist way. Spain was an organic and indissoluble union, but formed of regions which possessed their own “subsidiary” sovereignty, which must be protected and never abridged by the sovereignty of the crown and the Spanish state. Subsidiary sovereignty was based on the federation of municipalities, districts (comarcas), and regions, paralleled by other natural institutions such as guilds, schools, and universities, which also possessed “subsidiarity” of their own. Beyond royal sovereignty and secondary subsidiarity lay the highest sovereignty, which pertained to God. He insisted, like Aparisi, that there was nothing “absolutist” about Carlism, whose ruler possessed no right to modify any of the prerogatives of the regions without their consent. Spain indeed exerted a “national will,” but this was based on the traditions created by many successive generations of Spaniards, who had developed the traditional constitution of Spain. The emergence of Vázquez de Mella coincided with the last generation of oldstyle Carlism, from 1897 to 1907, during which the last small military partidas formed, and were as quickly abandoned. In 1898, as during the last civil war, the Carlists stood staunchly for the integrity of the empire, and even temporarily offered their support to the Regency, even as they also vainly conspired to replace the Restoration monarchy in the event of disaster. By this time Basque Carlists had even begun to cooperate with the oligarchic liberals (themselves increasingly españolista) in the Basque provinces, in the face of the Basque nationalists. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Carlists still refused to embrace a Spanish nationalism per se, for nationalism remained a radical cause, a typical mod21

  The best treatment of the concept of nation and nationalism in Cánovas is Carlos Dardé, “Cánovas y el nacionalismo liberal español,” in Nación y Estado en la España liberal, ed. Guillermo Gortázar (Madrid: Editorial Noesis, 1994), 209–38. 22

  Juan Vázquez de Melia, Discursos parlamentarios (Madrid: Junta de Homenaje a Mella, 1928), 1, 40.



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ernist heresy that ignored true, historically founded subsidiarity. Carlist economics encouraged if anything a tariff even steeper than the duties which already existed— one of the highest in the world—but Carlism was uncomfortable with modern, largescale capital. Together with corporative regulation, it continued to support the restoration of the communal properties confiscated by liberalism in earlier decades. If Carlism had played a crucial role in the pre-development of Basque nationalism, the same might be said to a lesser degree of its role in the genesis of Catalanism.23 The Catalan movement soon proved more powerful, and in 1907 Catalan Carlists participated fully in the Solidarity movement of regionalists and republicans. The Carlist leader Miguel Junyent was one of the governing triumvirate of the Catalan Solidarity coalition, which swept the parliamentary elections of 1907, breaking forever the dominance of the Spanish oligarchic liberal parties in Catalonia. Carlists, as usual, were not the ultimate beneficiaries, for the hegemony of the all-Spanish parties was replaced by that of the Catalanists, whose own liberal regionalism was ultimately unacceptable to Carlists. Even so, as late as 1919 young Carlist activists might occasionally be found joining forces with radical Catalanists in street demonstrations and affrays against centralist españolistas in Barcelona. As Carlism split in three between Integrists, moderate jaimistas, and more doctrinaire mellistas (followers of Vázquez de Mella), unity of action or even of doctrine had disappeared. The most unique Carlist offshoot in the years after World War I was the Sindicatos Libres of Barcelona. This non-leftist trade union movement was initially organized at a Carlist center in the Catalan capital but was never officially allied with Carlism, though it was always friendly toward Carlism and many of its original leaders and militants were of Carlist background. The Sindicatos Libres were formed in opposition to anarcho-syndicalist domination of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in Catalonia. Contrary to the propaganda of their enemies, the Libres were never merely a scab or yellow union, but represented a worker force determined to preserve Catholic and other values challenged by the anarchists.24 The Libres reflected the ambivalence toward Catalanism of the region’s Carlists, who by the beginning of 1920 were “dividing into españolista and Catalanist currents.”25 Their stand in favor of genuine worker economic interests in 1921 attracted the Joventut Nacionalista Obrera, a group of dependientes or commercial employees organized by the Lliga Regionalista, the main Catalanist political group. They “quit that party and joined the Libres, complaining that right-wing Catalanists were still

23   Among the most recent work on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Catalan Carlism, see Jordi Canal, ed., El Carlisme: Sis estudis fonamentals (Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Estudis Històrics, 1993); Josep Ma. Solé i Sabaté, ed., El Carlisme com a conflicte (Barcelona: Columna, 1993); and Solé i Sabaté, ed., Literatura, cultura i carlisme (Barcelona: Columna, 1995). 24

  The key study of the Libres is Colin M. Winston, Workers and the Right in Spain, 1900– 1936 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). 25

  Ibid., 161.

650 Stanley G. Payne

preaching Christian resignation as the remedy for all social ills.”26 The Libres in fact rejected any direct political cooperation with Catalan nationalists, proclaiming nationalism in general to be “the greatest religious and civil heresy of the twentieth century,” “deleterious to the cause of both proletarian and Catholic internationalism,” an anti-Christian innovation of “despots” and “Nietzschean supermen.”27 The establishment of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship created a new challenge in 1923, though one that was initially embraced by many Carlists. Within two years, however, Don Jaime publicly broke with the dictatorship, declaring that a system of centralized authoritarianism could never be accepted by Carlists. When his followers began to engage in a certain amount of opposition activity in 1927, they were vigorously repressed by the regime. Conversely, the mellistas and the Sindicatos Libres directly collaborated with the dictatorship, the latter becoming, after the Socialist UGT, the second most important labor force to participate in the regime’s system of labor arbitration. Reorganized into a Confederación Nacional de Sindicatos Libres (CNSL) in December 1923, the Libres released a “Fundamental Declaration” which declared their opposition to statism and centralization, and their affirmation of corporatism and obrerismo (workerism)28 At this point, however, the Libres began to move decisively toward a form of españolismo, their core leadership in Barcelona proclaiming the Hispanic identity of Catalonia and decrying the radical turn taken by political Catalanism in 1922. They defined themselves as “the sole worker organization of autochthonous seny or ‘common sense,’ corresponding to the old racial spirit of Catalonia.”29 Under the dictatorship the Libres swelled briefly to their peak membership of 200,000, and increasingly championed Spanish unity. The initial outspoken leader of a pro-Fascist orientation, Augusto Lagunas Alemany (the Libres’ Secretario de enlace from 1922 to 1924), espoused a position of revolutionary national syndicalism, but proved emotionally unstable and soon dropped out of the movement altogether.30 By the latter part of the decade, however, a significant sector of the movement began to adopt this orientation, speaking of permanently eliminating the domination of the liberal system and of unregulated capitalism through a populist, cross-class national syndicalism. The more radical sector of the Libres insisted that they were not opposed to the purely economic principles of socialism and communism, but to the latter’s rejection of Catholicism and Spanish cultural values. Between 1929 and 1931 they adopted more and more of the trappings of fascism, affirming charismatic leadership, virilism, youth, and violence in terms similar to Italian Fascism.31 This in turn cre26 27

 Ibid.

  Ibid., 160.

28

  Ibid., 258–64.

29

  Ibid., 243.

30 31

  Ibid., 161–62.

  On 1 April 1931, one of their organs insisted: “We love violence for the love we have for life” (ibid., 281).



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ated a contradiction with the Libres own Catholic religious and cultural values which they could not resolve. With the coming of the Second Republic, the CNSL virtually collapsed, and was severely repressed by the FAI-CNT (Federación Anarquista Ibérica-CNT). The remnants of the Libres then aligned themselves with the monarchist radical right (Renovación Española) and the military organization of the Unidad Militar de Emergencias (UME) making a clear choice for right-wing corporatism and in opposition to the genuine Spanish fascism which emerged in 1933 with the organization of Falange Española. The Libres, in turn, were scathingly denounced as mere right-wing, yellow syndicates by José Antonio Primo de Rivera and other Falangists. They tended to follow the orientation of José Calvo Sotelo and added to the earlier “national syndicalism” (the standard labor principle of their Falangist rival) terms such as “totalitarian corporatism” and “totalitarian syndicalism,”32 which in turn added to the cognitive dissonance of the movement, but by this time it had ceased to have any importance. Just as the introduction of a democratic monarchy followed by an anticlerical Federal Republic had stimulated Carlism in the 1870s, the establishment of the anticlerical Second Republic in 1931 revived a movement which many had considered moribund. Not merely did Carlism gain new vigor, but it was fully reunified for the first time in nearly half a century when jaimistas, mellistas, and Integrists joined forces to form the Comunión Tradicionalista in January 1932. The new political situation was much more complex than in the past, not merely because the introduction of effective democratic suffrage resulted in the emergence of numerous competing forces, but also because the Carlists no longer held a monopoly of the anti-liberal right, as had been the case for a century. By the following year, the largest single political party in Spain was the Catholic Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA), a largely anti-Republican but nonetheless not officially monarchist party which stood for the introduction of a corporatist regime, rather like the nascent Estado Novo of Salazar in Portugal. Supporters of the exiled Alfonso XIII also moved sharply to the right, and by 1932 the main sector had abandoned the parliamentary-type monarchy which had governed Spain for a century in favor of “neotraditional” monarchy, an authoritarian and corporative system. Thus, the alfonsinos claimed that they had basically accepted the historic doctrines of Carlism, and urged the latter to join them in unified support of the “neotraditional” restoration of the exiled king.33 This shift to the right by alfonsino monarchists was welcomed, but failed to convince the vast majority of Carlists. Attempted dynastic reunification quickly broke down as each branch once more claimed primacy. Carlists had no high opinion of D. Alfonso and claimed that his nominal conversion could not necessarily be trusted, while purists doubted that alfonsino neotraditionalism fully embraced Carlism, questioning its postliberal, centralized authoritarianism. 32

  Ibid., 312–22.

33

  The principal study of the neotraditional viraje of the alfonsino monarchists is Julio Gil Pecharromán, Conservadores subversivos: La derecha autoritaria alfonsina (1913–1936) (Madrid: Eudema, 1994).

652 Stanley G. Payne

By this point the strongest Carlist base lay in Navarre, where Navarrese, together with Basque, Carlists temporarily joined forces with the Basque nationalists of the three provinces in 1931–32 to defend beleaguered Catholic interests and create a new system of Basque-Navarrese autonomy. This limited alliance broke down in 1932 when it became clear that the Republican regime would not permit a conservative and Catholic system of autonomy and the Basque nationalists demonstrated their willingness to work with Madrid under the liberal democratic Republican system. As early as 1918, it had become noticeable that the interests of Basque nationalists and Navarrese Carlists did not really coincide on the autonomy issue, and this had led to the emergence of what would later be called el navarrismo político. Navarrese Carlism was strongly autonomist but also politically españolista to the extent of ultimately embracing a rightist and traditionalist Spanish nationalism.34 By October 1932 the Navarrese Carlist Junta had decided to support an autonomy statute for Navarre alone, though subsequent conditions made it very hard to pursue this goal, which soon became secondary to overriding Carlist concerns.35 At this point the main leadership of the Comunión Tradicionalista lay in the hands of the relatively pragmatic and possibilist Conde de Rodezno and the former jaimistas of Navarre, together with their allies in other parts of the country. They formed a beneficial alliance with the alfonsino monarchists for the parliamentary elections of 1933, and in March 1934 a small delegation of Carlist and alfonsino leaders signed an agreement in Rome by which the Italian government pledged financial aid, military equipment, and training facilities to support a monarchist overthrow of the Republic.36 Practical opportunity for such a blow was lacking, however, while any agreement with the alfonsinos was far from complete. The more intransigent former mellistas and Integrists were increasingly critical of the tendency of the pragmatic Rodezno leadership to ally with the alfonsino right. The neotraditionalists had clearly adopted the banner of a right-wing Spanish nationalism, but their new emphases made them only slightly more palatable to hard-core Carlists than the liberal quasinationalists of the past century. In mid-April 1934, D. Alfonso Carlos awarded power to the intransigents, appointing the latter’s leading figure, a forty-year-old lawyer from Se34

  Martin Blinkhorn, the chief student of Carlism under the Republic, concluded that in the case of the Navarrese Carlists “over the years it became clear that clericalism, monarchism and a broad social conservatism were the principal ingredients of what was actually a particular form of Spanish nationalism.” See Carlism and Crisis in Spain 1931–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 35. 35

  On the relations of Navarrese Carlism with Basque nationalism, see Stanley Payne, “Navarrismo y españolismo en la política navarra bajo la Segunda República,” Principe de Viana 166–67 (1982): 895–905; and Payne, “Navarra y el nacionalismo vasco en perspectiva histórica,” Principe de Viana 171 (1984): 101–13. 36

  The most thorough account of Mussolini’s policy toward the Carlists and other Spanish political forces will be found in Ismael Saz, Mussolini contra la II República: Hostilidad, conspiraciones, intervención (1931–1936) (Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, Institució Valenciana d’Estudis i Investigació, 1986).



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ville, Manuel Fal Conde, secretary general of the Comunión, a status raised to that of Jefe-Delegado within Spain at the close of the following year. For the new Carlist leadership, neither a modernizing radical right in the form of alfonsino neotraditionalism nor the extremist fascist nationalism of the nascent Falange could become more than circumstantial allies. The semiclandestine training of thousands of new Requeté militia volunteers in Navarre and elsewhere made the Carlists extremely desirable civilian auxiliaries, as General Emilio Mola developed his military conspiracy to overthrow the government during the spring of 1936. Fal Conde, however, remained obdurate, refusing to commit Carlists to a politically pluralist revolt, however nationalist in rhetoric, that did not have as its principal goal the installation of a Carlist monarchy. As conditions deteriorated and Spanish affairs became increasingly tense and violent, Rodezno and other Navarrese leaders took the initiative in breaking the impasse, negotiating a compromise more on the terms of Mola than of Fal Conde. The new successor to the dynasty, François-Xavier de Bourbon-Parme, nephew by marriage of Alfonso Carlos and after the sudden death of the latter the acting regent of Carlism, accepted this agreement, though Fal Conde sought to the very last to improve its terms.37 In the Civil War which followed, the supporters of the military rebels soon became known as “los Nacionales,” though the precise political character of what was called “Nationalist Spain” for several months remained in doubt. Fal Conde and his collaborators formed their own Junta Nacional Carlista, which during the first six months of the conflict sought to build what Javier Tusell has termed a “Carlist Proto-State.”38 General Franco esteemed both Carlist doctrine and Carlist military valor, but after he became generalisimo and chief of state on 1 October 1936, he found Fal Conde’s initiatives increasingly intrusive, exiling him from the Nationalist Zone early in December. The two largest and most active politico-military forces on the Nationalist side were the Carlists and the Falangists, and in the early months of 1937 it became increasingly clear that Franco would not tolerate for much longer the de facto political pluralism within his territory. Despite their deep differences, Carlists and Falangists found some common ground in their mutual militancy and in certain common principles of antiliberal and antileftist nationalism. Nonetheless, mutual negotiations between the traditionalists and the much larger Falangist organization failed, and this left the initiative to Franco, who in April 1937 merged the two groups into his new state party, the Falange Española Tradicionalista (FET). Nearly all Carlists accepted 37

  The most complete account by a participant is Antonio Lizarza Iribarren, Memorias de la conspiración (Pamplona: Editorial Gómez, 1969). See also Francisco Javier de Lizarza Inda, “La conspiración antirrepublicana de 1936: El general Mola y la Comunión Tradicionalista,” in Bullón de Mendoza, Las guerras carlistas, 259–76; Jaime del Burgo, Conspiración y guerra civil (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1970); and Tomás Echeverría, Como se preparó el alzamiento: El general Mola y los carlistas (Madrid: n.p., 1985). 38

  Javier Tusell, Franco en la guerra civil (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 1992), 46–49. This is the best single political history of the Nationalist zone, as well as of Carlist politics during the Civil War.

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this forced marriage in violation of their basic principles, out of deep patriotic dedication to the war effort, but many had increasing misgivings. It soon became clear that there was very little Carlist about the new partido único, for the FET adopted the fascist program of the original Falange as its own, and veteran Falangists dominated most of the positions of leadership. Carlist figures were awarded control of the party leadership only in Navarre and a few other provinces. Rodezno became minister of justice in Franco’s first regular government, formed in January 1938, where he worked effectively to eliminate the Republic’s anticlerical legislation, but became disgusted with his collaborators in the new regime. As he bluntly complained to Franco in a personal conversation of 1938, “My general, Traditionalist doctrine is not that of fascism.”39 The Civil War of 1936–39 was the first which the Carlists won militarily, but they came increasingly to feel that they had lost the peace and any opportunity for political leadership. Both the prince-regent and the Jefe-Delegado had been expelled from the Nationalist zone by Franco, and Falangists dominated the FET. When Carlist leaders complained to Franco, he blandly replied that they and the Falangists should simply work out their differences. The sense of alienation was most pronounced among the top leaders, particularly the regent D. Javier (as this Franco-Belgian aristocrat had been known since 1936) and Fal Conde. In 1939 the former, appalled by the increasingly fascist orientation of Franco’s political, economic, and diplomatic policies, conferred with an official of the British Foreign Office to express his sharp disagreement. The Carlist leaders believed that Franco had betrayed the genuine tradition of Spain and its national interests. Don Javier would have preferred a pro-British orientation in both diplomatic and economic affairs, but drew little sympathy from his British interlocutor, who was inclined to dismiss the Carlists, as he put it, as “medieval reactionaries.”40 A large number—though far from all—Carlists felt increasingly oppressed by a new and more radical form of Spanish nationalism, whose content they believed was in fact much more central European than Spanish. The high point of Carlist dissidence during the Franco regime occurred between 1940 and 1942, as Carlists, other rightists, and many army officers challenged the increasingly prominent role of the Falange. This conflict culminated in a lengthy series of street incidents during the spring and summer of 1942, climaxed by the “Begoña affair,” in which Falangists threw two hand grenades into a crowd of participants in a Carlist religious service in a suburb of Bilbao. The anti-Falangist cause was championed by Lt. Gen. José Enrique Varela, since 1939 minister of the army and the only important Carlist in the cabinet. Though Varela was forced out, the radically fascist sector of the FET was checked, and steadily waned further with the course of World War II. The Spanish dictatorship drew somewhat nearer Carlism with the political metamorphosis of the regime initiated by Franco in 1945. Its semi-fascist structure was theoretically transformed into a system of Catholic corporatism, supposedly based on 39

  Quoted in ibid., 298.

40

  See the references in ibid., 359–60.



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the “subsidiary” institutions of Catholic society a little along the lines of the doctrine of Vázquez de Mella. Franco even wrote an enthusiastic prologue to a new edition of El Estado nuevo, the most sophisticated summum of Carlist ideology ever written, first published by Víctor Pradera in 1935. Most Carlists rallied to the regime amid the international ostracism which followed World War II, and their ranks were also divided by the effort of one sector to promote one surviving member of the dynasty as “Carlos VIII.” Since 1936 the direct male line was at an end, but regime leaders sought to exploit the transitory candidacy of a Carlist pretender of uncertain legitimacy to lessen pressure from the main sector of non-Carlist monarchists. But the form of monarchist succession established by Franco was the very opposite of traditional legitimism, and the authoritarianism of his regime introduced only limited features of the Carlist program. Though Carlist Navarre and Alava enjoyed limited autonomy, this regime was the most centralized and for long the most despotic in Spanish history. Though Carlism was in some respects the most españolista movement in modern history and came to develop by the late nineteenth and twentieth century its own form of a nationalist project, it was largely at odds with all the primary forms of modern Spanish nationalism. All forms of liberal nationalism, from the most moderate to the most radical, were anathema, and modernist rightist centralism was not attractive, either. The entente with Falangism was only briefly accepted because of extreme national emergency. Nationalism is a typical form of political modernity which has normally tended toward juridical and political leveling, and a new centralized structure of leadership. It has taken a variety of different forms, but because of these inherent features none was really acceptable to Carlism. The traditionalist movement had more than a little influence in modern Spain, but its principles precluded acceptance of any of the standard forms of nationalism, and its own strength and appeal were too limited for it to replace the dominant forces. Without Carlism modern Spain would probably have been rather less Catholic, and would have been institutionally and politically less conservative, but the movement’s role was that of resistance, without the capacity to effect a project of modern transformation of the kind which usually lies at the heart of nationalism itself.

Islands as a State of Mind: A Circuitous Reconnaissance Tom Clayton

Islands of the mind are my subject.1 Or I am theirs. A state of mind is a little world where recollection, recognition, and reverie rule. There is no such place in workaday reality, but out of it are worlds of such a kind, island upon island among them, all of a permanence and stability set by their conceivers and description. Islands as an imaginative state constitute in themselves “a particular form of polity” (OED 28a) governing the mind while it reflects (upon) them, reversing or at least modifying the relationship of Andrew Marvell’s “Garden,” where the mind creates “Far other Worlds, and other Seas; / Annihilating all that’s made / To a green thought in a green shade.” Even there, the mastermind is half mastered by the matter of its contemplation, creative as well as reflective. The island holds a special place in all creation made of astronomers’ island universes as they strive to find our way to outer reaches, while closer in, the first island we encounter sews a seed, takes root, and bears fruit when our eyes come to see, recognize, appreciate, and value others as many as may be, and still more of such islands as the mind’s eye by its own mode of invention brings to make whole archipelagoes—Cycladic, Dodecanese, Sporadic—everywhere where islands are convoked, concatenate, concert: the South Pacific, Lake Saganaga, or the Mississippi, say. It takes a real island to make one realize what an island is. The British Isles don’t feel like islands from any point within, even on the coast, because they are too big. If an island were limited to 3200–3600 square miles, perhaps (the range from Crete to Cyprus), anything larger, including the British Isles, would be a continent—or pair of continents connected by the Isthmus of Hadrian. But a continent is much larger, by definition: how else could it be a continent? So, by definition, Australia is a continent because it is such a very large island, far bigger than Tasmania, definitely an 1

  This reconnaissance began in London in August 2000 and ended in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Easter Sunday 2001, with some revisions thereafter, an “island” in time that has since closed over it in rising and moving on to present and future. We are not who we were then, but I have no doubt that Theo will recognize the Tom and Theo that were at the time by contrast with who we are now and will be hereafter. I am indebted to Elizabeth Belfiore—my long-time friend and colleague in Classical Studies and the Classical Civilization Program, and a friend also of Theo—for a reading of this essay before submission that left it less vulnerable for her corrections but much as it was by her indulgence. Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 657–74.

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island—of 26,250 square miles. And then there is the peninsula, the paen(e) insula, or near-island; an island except as connected at one end to a larger body of land, whatever that might be; if not just a larger island, then a continent at some distance and level of abstraction. We speak of peninsulas as being connected not to continents, however, but to the mainland, a relative term we can readily make sense of, “A large continuous extent of land, including the greater part of a country or territory and excluding outlying islands, peninsulas, etc.” (OED 1a). Everyone knows an island when he sees one, and islands are everywhere to be seen, ubiquitous. A desert island is the ultimate escape, the place of confinement, where salt tears swell the sea, and Desert-Island Discs are heard, provided one has thought to fetch along a player. Survivors’ Island today, can Temptation’s be far behind, or II (this time no island)? An island is a hill or a mountain with a high water level, immobile. Except, of course, for Delos, the floating island, so long as it was. At highest tides and lowest, islands are no more they occupy the isthmus of a middle and conceptual space. King Kong’s island, the ultimate Lonely Planet off-the-beaten-tracker. Oasis, the island where camels come to harbor. St. Lucia, home of Omeros. John Donne’s “No man Is an Island” (Meditation 17) is the best known and most paraphrased utterance in English about islands. One of the most popular turns of late is “no island is an island,” a globalizing projection. For example, Heidi Brown, “No Island Is An Island” in Forbes Global (7 August 2000): “Ten years ago it would have been unthinkable to run your marketing operations from the U.K., farm out your R&D to India, and raise your capital in the U.S.—all while living in luxury in New York and on a sun-drenched Mediterranean island. But that’s just what Roys Poyiadjis and Lycourgos Kyprianou, two entrepreneurs from Cyprus, have achieved. And they’ve made a pile of money in the process.”2 In the Warwick University Caribbean Studies Series, there is No Island Is an Island: Selected Speeches of Sir Shridath Ramphal, “Many of the speeches” which, “delivered between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, reflect Ramphal’s concern for Caribbean unity, a concern which dates back to the short-lived Federation of the West Indies (1958–62).”3 His Excellency Carlston Boucher’s No Island Is an Island “describes the importance of tourism in making the economies of small island states outward looking. Small island developing states must orientate their national development policies outwards to the rest of the world. This is an imperative, not an option.”4 And in “No Island Is an Island” in the Weekend Express (14 January 2001), the author begins, “‘No man is an island.’ First uttered by a great quotation in the last

2

  www.forbes.com/global/2000/0807/0315064a.htm (www.forbes.com – search “no island is an island”) (accessed 18 May 2016).

3

  www.macmillan-caribbean.com/books/noisland.htm (accessed 18 May 2016).

4

  www.ourplanet.com/imgversn/101/boucher.htm (accessed 18 May 2016).



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century [sic, a bit late: Donne, 1624].”5 Finally, No Island Is an Island: Four Glances at English Literature in a World Perspective, by Carlo Ginzburg.6 Not so soon to be repeated, “In the New Physics, No Quark Is an Island,” the conceptual complement more or less of island universes.7 Or is “No man Is an Island” about No-man (οὕτις), that non-entity feigned by Odysseus to cover his escape with confusion? And asking, after murdering the framed murderers of the king whom he himself had murdered, “Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, / Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man”—he might as well have said “Macbeth,” the growing no-man. Donne knew something of islands, having lived all of his life on one and seen another few, as on his ventures at sea to Cádiz with the earl of Essex in 1596, and with Sir Walter Raleigh to the Azores in 1597 (“The Storm” and “The Calm” document poetically the titular events). He also knew something of man, and preached and versed it all his life, leaving a canon worthy of a secular sainthood as fit for poets as for his lovers in “The Canonization.” Actually, Donne’s memorable phrase runs rather deeper than its paraphrases, as may be seen with its context: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. The bell is the passing bell, which “rings at the hour of departure, to obtain prayers for the passing soul.” To begin to think about islands is to be overwhelmed by thought, because there are so many of them in physical space, even before one turns to the world of analogy and figure, or vice versa. Islands are resorts for all but the residents, who have to leave for theirs. For other islands? Peninsulas? Mainlands? Continents? Planets? A mote to trouble the mind’s eye, except for those who have to leave wherever it is for wherever else there must be. Then it becomes a beam indeed, whether by island-hopping, country, or whole continent. Home is where the heart is, and wherever it goes, it always stays where it was, and is. What is less accessible than an island for all but the inhabitants? Which is doubtless what doubly made an island home in the first place, with ever such a megalo-moat. The universe itself is islands and whirlpools—lately with new and vasty deeps on the bare surface of which the island stars and galaxies in archipelagoes are scattered—in varying relations, whatever the magnitude down to the smallest and up 5

  www.is.lk/spot/sp0527/clip4.html (accessed 18 May 2016).

6

  Carlo Ginzburg, No Island Is an Island: Four Glances at English Literature in a World Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

7

  New York Times, 20 March 2001, D4.

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to the largest, upon neither of which we can safely pronounce for the day, let alone much longer. And our solar system is like a mobile constellation of Cyclades around Delos—the sun, but long before, the earth and still so in some poetry as the spiritual and imaginative center, Ptolemaic without a vengeance. If a man were an island, he should be sufficient unto himself alone. But seldom is so. And how many islands are without their peers or subjects, like Delos and its Cyclades? Cyprus comes to mind. Very curious but absolutely true: just as I reached the “mind” of the previous sentence, I inadvertently struck a combination of keys that blackened the screen of this new superlaptop at the desk in room 316 of my place of resort in London WC1N 2AB where I look up from the laptop out of the window at the heights of oaks that block all of the urban view but flickers of Guilford Street with its endless daytime din of cars, lorries, motor scooters, motorbikes, bicycles, foot-powered scooters, feet, beating their way as fast as they can to destinations near or far or nowhere. “The dogs bark, but the caravan passes” (actually, dogs in London almost never bark, being exceedingly well-mannered). And a patch of Coram’s Fields lies unhurried by children playing at their own pace on track or green or sand or court. The island of Coram’s Fields would mock the traffic of Guilford Street but for its being so far removed in spirit, indifferent to the busyness all around, including mine, islanded and island in my own remove and free to see green and think in colors or black and white here as almost nowhere else, except on an(other) island. And at my age I have loved a few. In the absence of airborne warfare, the defensive strength of an island comes from a moat of the first magnitude, as noted. Add a homogeneous population and a few fortifications on the seaside like Othello’s castle in Famagusta, and the inhabitants are safe as houses, up to a point. And so long as the inhabitants are not divided. When they are, the danger from within exceeds the danger from without, and mistrust and fear become as pervasive as security was without a house divided. The perfect imaginary instance of a land more fearful within than the sea without is King Kong’s—but only in one direction. Islands raise consciousness, not only but certainly of islands. No one on or of an island knows his place as other than his home surrounded by water, like one in a moated grange or Maidstone Castle, the more protected and the more himself as free of grasping mainlands bent to peninsulize. This is not to imply ignorance otherwise than all men share it of themselves and the place they know their own. No authority on islands I, but a friend to them now for love of a few. The islands I first saw and knew were those in lakes and rivers in Minnesconsin, and my favorite was the sand bar, which was we knew for the sole purpose of giving us pleasure in a property ours alone for the time we held it—to swim to and from, and take the sun and be the lovers on. The Mississippi near Winona in my years twelve–sixteen abounded in such summer sandbars, and I miss them never to be recovered as I miss the bluffs along the river valley that I can still see and visit and climb, and the golden dark-eyed girl Bea G. now gone forever. Never more the seasons and careless intimacy of half a century gone down the river and out to sea.



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Those were the magic islands youth makes such and its own: as one matures, they are made over to memory and geologize into partly knowable places, no more wholly known possessions, any more than time past is ever less than so. One met many a literary island in one’s youth, the isles of Greece among the first through children’s storytellers’ tales of the Odyssey and the Iliad. Among the islands of the mind floating into view of the horizon-stretching world of post-World War II America is a raft of films made abroad (“foreign”) including one made for my metaphor, Tight Little Island, a witty but unnecessary retitling of the apter original, Whisky Galore!, since there was indeed “whisky galore,” owing to the miraculous shipwreck of a vessel bearing a wartime-drought-slaking cargo of Scotch, which the natives liberated, libated, bibulated, and sequestered everywhere: the very taps in kitchen sinks ran whisky, deorum fontes. Wonderfully amusing and whimsical film that was also a tacit introduction to “multiculturalism” in the form of frugal, resourceful, and high good-natured Scots far remote from Chicago, where I saw it in 1950, whom I longed to meet and in due course did—though not on the real island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides where it was filmed. Keith Younie of Moffat, Dumfriesshire, and I hitchhiked to Rome from Wadham College, Oxford, for Easter—tomorrow as I write in 2001—in 1955. The first time I saw the White Cliffs on the south coast of this sceptered isle was earlier, 1947, when the troop ship carrying a thousand American Boy Scouts to the first World Jamboree near Moisson, France, had to sail on without stopping, because the British could not guarantee adequate food for this lot—a sobering lesson for young Americans scarcely inconvenienced enough to know there had been a war—were it not for relatives, neighbors, and friends in “the service”—not a few of whom never came back, like my paternal-Aunt Dorothy’s only child and son, “Junior,” shot down over France early in the war while piloting a B17 called “Madam Pisonya,” or “Madam [unprintable]” as the papers of the day said. As soon as we landed in the Netherlands we saw the after-war in many places, and what appeared to us to be little more than the beginning of the process of rebuilding. About the White Cliffs I very well knew from the morale-building wartime song White Cliffs of Dover, which figured prominently in the equally patriotic wartime film Mrs. Miniver. As a charter member of the first talkie-film generation who came to theater relatively late in life (twenties), from the age of three or four I saw seldom less than a film a week; and from ten or so at least two films and as many as I had access to, not seldom by the necessary expedient of backdooring—in Viroqua, Wisconsin, which rejoiced in two cinemas in the pre-television 1940s that gave us our visual news as well as previews, cartoon, and main feature(s). In short, my island-consciousness was raised unawares and my appetite whetted for further acquaintance—or so it is easy to say in retrospect. The world is awash or frozen up with islands in every kind of measure, some grown so great as to be continents—Antarctica, Australia—or pairs of continents— North and South America—or multiples, except for Africa, of the remaining four substantially on its own. But what does it matter? “Continents” are as arbitrary and expedient as they need to be for coherent geographical discourse.

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The Tempest, the last play of Shakespeare’s sole authorship (1610–11; he died in 1616), is set as well as played on an island. There, Prospero, the sometime Duke of Milan—and subsequent mage with supernatural powers exercised in many applications to make him a kind of demigod and several sorts of archetype—finds a neglected vocation to statesmanship and rule that balances doing with the learning that he once had treasured above all else and consequently lost his dukedom to his usurping brother Antonio, to whom he had delegated authority. Prospero’s account has the ring as much of testament as Will in a play that sounds very like a farewell to his art and the stage that no amount of rationalizing skepticism can refute. The speech is expository for the theater audience, informative for his fifteen-year-old daughter Miranda (“O you wonder,” says Ferdinand Adamwise intuiting her name from her person as he falls in love at first sight with her Eve), didactic as well as powerfully expressed for all who hear or read. [My brother,] he whom next thyself Of all the world I lov’d, and to him put The manage of my state as at that time Through all the signorie it was the first, And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed In dignity, and for the liberal arts Without a parallel; those being all my study, The government I cast upon my brother, And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle— Dost thou attend me? Mir. Sir, most heedfully. Pros. Being once perfected how to grant suits, How to deny them, who t’ advance, and who To trash for overtopping, new created The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang’d ‘em, Or else new form’d ‘em; having both the key Of officer and office, set all hearts i’ th’ state To what tune pleas’d his ear, that now he was The ivy which had hid my princely trunk, And suck’d my verdure out on’t. Thou attend’st not! Mir. O, good sir, I do. Pros. I pray thee mark me. I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness and the bettering of my mind With that which, but by being so retir’d, O’er-priz’d all popular rate, in my false brother



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Awak’d an evil nature, and my trust, Like a good parent, did beget of him A falsehood in its contrary, as great As my trust was, which had indeed no limit, A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded, Not only with what my revenue yielded, But what my power might else exact—like one Who having into truth, by telling of it, Made such a sinner of his memory To credit his own lie—he did believe He was indeed the Duke, out o’ th’ substitution, And executing th’ outward face of royalty With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing— Dost thou hear? Mir. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness. (1.2.68–105) Miranda’s dutiful answers (this last one wry) mark the difference between late and early Shakespeare in the way of lengthy exposition, as in The Comedy of Errors (1594; Shakespeare was born in 1564), where Egeon goes on to explain his presence in Ephesus for sixty-five lines (1.1.31–95). And yet the speaking fits the character and context in both places, and the differences are merely relative. The Tempest itself is an island in the canon, like no other play including the Late Romances it ended—being most closely akin to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), in a 1980s production of which the “fairies” were changed to (The Tempest’s) “spirits,” lest Shakespeare’s green-world term give anachronistic offense to hypothetical members of the audience. The plot and some central concerns are handily summed up near the end by the kindly old Milanese courtier Gonzalo: Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue [Miranda’s male descendants-to-be] Should become kings of Naples? O, rejoice Beyond a common joy, and set it down With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis, And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife Where he himself was lost; Prospero, his dukedom In a poor isle; and all of us, ourselves, When no man was his own. (5.1.204–12) The Tempest is Shakespeare’s roar-shock text par excellence. It makes much of the special properties of his island in diction and action, above all in an astonishing first scene that leaves no predictable action to follow, since in a tempest a ship sinks

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with all hands aboard and nothing else whatever in sight—until the second scene opens with Prospero and his daughter Miranda surveying the sea-site from their very different perspectives. We learn at once that there was more to this than met the eye, but we could not discern it without context and assistance: the tragedy of a single chain of events may be a comedy seen in the dark, the inception of a miracle in larger perspective. Mir. If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky it seems would pour down stinking pitch, But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek, Dashes the fire out. O! I have suffered With those that I saw suffer. A brave vessel (Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her) Dash’d all to pieces! O, the cry did knock Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish’d. Had I been any God of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere It should the good ship so have swallow’d, and The fraughting souls within her. Pros. Be collected, No more amazement. Tell your piteous heart There’s no harm done. (1.2.1–16) Everyone knows that all the world’s a stage, or at least that someone said so (Shakespeare and Jacques in As You Like It 2.7.139). Prospero says in the Epilogue (last line before the Epilogue: “Please you [audience] draw near”), Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which is most faint. Now ‘tis true, I must be here confin’d by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell, But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands. Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,



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And my ending is despair, Unless I be reliev’d by prayer, Which pierces so, that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free. Prospero is and is not still Prospero,8 since now the actor directly addresses an audience previously invisible by convention—but hardly in fact: exhibitionistic lords could be seated on the stage itself at the private, candle-lit Blackfriars; and the public Globe would have a pit full of persons in daylight like its descendant facsimile on Bankside in the Liberty of the Clink now. The audience was bound to be in some degree a part or periphery of the action, but the convention stands, notwithstanding. The physical “island” of Shakespeare’s Globe stage was actually a peninsula, like any other thrust stage, theater-in-the-round offering the obvious modern “island” counterpart as the orchestra of the Greek theater, though not in the round, would have done in classical antiquity. The “bare island” is both the island of the fiction and the island of the Globe’s thrust stage, a metaphorical island. The world that is a stage is also the world as island, on which the actor of Prospero now appeals for applause while at the same time Prospero himself extends the sense and kindred feelings of the play by the particular terms that Shakespeare used to express the request for applause, the lowest common denominator of the epilogue as a genre (Roman: Plaudite). Terms of theological force and spiritual significance resonate throughout,9 but the sentiments are primary and akin to those expressed by Miranda in the opening lines of 1.2: “O! I have suffered / With those that I saw suffer,” a dramatic expression in effect of the Golden Rule applied—familiarity with which can no longer be counted on from persons under forty or so: “do unto others as you would have others do unto you”; or in older usage, “whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12); this is or was the Golden Law (as early as 1674), Principle (1741), then Rule (1807). What “Prospero” says compounds this sense and emphasis but goes further, to the absolute of divine mercy itself, which human generosity and forgiveness reflect. His deliverance from “this bare island” depends upon the charity, the caritas, of his audience; and the essence is reciprocity between performers on and performers off the stage, each with his role to play as such. It is noteworthy that the theme is ex8

  As I wrote, Vanessa Redgrave was playing Prospero at Shakespeare’s Globe (2000), where the year before Mark Rylance had played Cleopatra (1999). The trend has continued with variations and may be seen on DVD with Helen Mirren playing “Prospera” in an adaptation (2010) receiving some of the worst possible ratings by both critics (30/100%) and viewers (28/100%). See http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tempest/ (accessed 18 May 2016). 9

  And much has been made of them, sometimes in connection with the continuing dispute about whether Shakespeare was Roman Catholic or Anglican, and to what extent. By practice, at least, he was a conforming Anglican, but that, as many insist, is hardly the end of the matter. The Anglican Church then as now countenanced a range of possibilities. One thing is clear, that Shakespeare was no puritan, in the senses of his place and day.

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pressed in terms that are strikingly at once similar and different in the Epilogue to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In performance such profundities are usually muted, but they cannot be suppressed so long as the language expresses them. So, as Prospero leaves—or will leave—his island to return to the scene of his most intensive study and once-neglected duty to resume his role and authority as Duke of Milan, Shakespeare left the “bare island” of the Globe to resume his life as a prominent citizen of Stratford, where he may in fact have been for much of the time long before he came to write The Tempest; he may have been resident there once again as early as 1600—three years after he had bought New Place, the grand and second-best house in Stratford, the very best house for the ever-enigmatic, syntactically ambiguous “second best bed” he specifically left to his wife in his will. Myths, archetypes, and transformations abound in The Tempest as a “most majestic vision, and / Harmonious charmingly,” as Ferdinand says of Prospero’s wedding masque in act 4. They include self-revelation and psychological and ethical, even spiritual, rebirth or renewal. And this is a strangely mystical as well as eminently performable and audience-pleasing play—unless it is misplayed, frequently in the past thirty years as the obverse of itself with Prospero as the abusive patriarch and colonizer, and Caliban as the colonized and oppressed native whose attempt to rape Miranda is treated as healthy natural instinct suppressed by colonialist force—a view not unlike the freshmen’s I first taught the play to in undergraduate-all-male Yale in 1961. If this play was not by Shakespeare’s design his farewell to the stage as sole or primary playwright—and it may well not have been—it is hard to imagine what a better and more apt would be if he had designed it. He had a hand in two or three subsequent plays, written after his certain retirement to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in collaboration with John Fletcher: Henry VIII, 1612; The Two Noble Kinsmen, 1613–14; and possibly a lost Cardenio, 1612–13, based on Cervantes, which first appeared in English translation in 1612—and wouldn’t one give a very great plenty to recover this? Neither surviving play is anything like The Tempest, which is unique and a nonpareil, a source of enlightenment, invigoration, and delight for any who read it with an open mind. Shakespeare probably should have left well enough alone, for one kind of posterity’s sake, because at a performance of Henry VIII in 1613 a discharge of cannon set fire to the thatched roof and the first Globe burned to the ground. The Tempest is a uniquely marvelous, not to say miraculous, dramatic and poetic expression of the island as a state of mind, one that, visited, will not be soon forgotten. Or ever really left: time past is contained in time present, as time present was implicit in time past. In Minnesconsin we have our own majestical isles, or islets, Isle Royale (843 square miles) in northwest Lake Superior; Madeline Island, largest of the Apostles south by Bayfield, off Wisconsin’s north coast (42 square miles). These have a mystique like all others, Royale for its non-human denizens, Madeline for its human: resident Ojibwe were visited there by French explorers at about the same time the Pilgrims were landing at Plymouth Rock; and, nearer the present connection, the late Regents Professor William A. McDonald, the classical archaeologist, was a part-time resident for years, when he was not at the University of Minnesota or excavating at



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Messene in Greece. Grampa Tony’s Pizza Restaurant—in time past a rarity of its kind—in St. Paul originated on the Island. Islands are so much a part of the popular culture of the West that they come to mind and use at the rise of a thought and the drop of a word, as a metaphor or a fact, without special bidding: today’s—then, now yesterday’s—Temptation Island, the “reality-based” seduction drama doubtfully suggested by the Sirens, is nevertheless reminiscent of them and their isle’s flowery meadow.10 Failure all around, this time around. Such islands were the first I knew, as a boy in village Wisconsin through tales from the Iliad and Odyssey. These I longed to know better and even see, and they prepared me for other islands I should have to wait for and sometimes failed to think of as islands. The mythical and historical isles of Greece were our first, and both captivate the imagination still, Delos afloat until, when Leto came, it came to be anchored on the capitals of four pillars springing from the earth below (Pindar fr.). To Byron and Don Juan those were “The isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece! / Where burning Sappho loved and sung, / Where grew the arts of war and peace, / Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!” A far hue and cry from King Kong’s island, about as scary a place as one could hope to see as a child—but one could, especially if one was born only a month before King Kong sprang fully haired from the imagination of Marien C. Cooper (story) and James Creelman the writer, and the equally inspired direction of Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Cooper may have contributed as much as any to the survival if not the classic status of this film by what he took out, “a clip … in which four sailors, after Kong shook them off a log bridge, fall into a ravine where they are eaten alive by giant spiders because, when previewed in January 1933, audience members either left in terror or talked about the ghastly scene during the entire movie.”11 He told Faye Wray that she was “going to have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.” Those were the days of innocence in horror on the screen: not much gore, much more for imagination’s realizing. Islands have circumferent and the widest horizons—after unconnected continents (Australia and Antarctica, if continents, and, more or less, Africa). Often they confer them on their inhabitants, especially those with capacity who wander and see those horizons from all directions inside and out. Odysseus is—he never was, or was he? He always is, in any case—the archetype of the kind, πολύτροπος, many-wayed (Odyssey 1.1). The most evident wandering is physical, geographic, from here to there and there, where measures may be taken, military and otherwise. Napoleon of Corsica comes to mind, and then of Elba, with the non-French palindrome, “able was I ere I saw Elba.” As soon as one begins to think of islands and their islanders, waves of recognition and recollection wash up and roll over the consciousness, and distances shrink to the point of observation: ubiquity is either a divine attribute or a function of imagination, which like love “makes one little room an everywhere” (Donne, “The 10

  Odyssey 1. Sirens survive from at least as early, in art, as eighth-century BCE bronze attachments to cauldrons.

11

  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0178260/bio (accessed 18 May 2016).

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Good Morrow”). If real and imaginary men and women of might and main make the matter of epic wanderings, none would have its memory and record were it not for historians, biographers, and ultimately poets, ποιηταί, makers, as Aristotle insisted makers not of verses but of plots, imitations—μιμήσεις—enacted by actors, agents, πράττοντες. A treatise on medicine or physics in verse—there are few to none such today—is not a poem but a work of medicine or physics. We may have lost something in the cultural evolution that did away with verse as a medium of argument and demonstration. At least the value of poetry for physicians (even) may be seen in Margaret Edson’s W;t (sic, 1999). Homer was an islander of Chios—if he was of that place, and if there was a Homer. If there was not, he had to be invented, for no lesser poet could have written the Iliad and the Odyssey—except as member of a committee of creating rhapsodes never since convoked, perhaps the nearest being those who rendered the King James/ Authorized Version of the English Bible in 1611—who themselves borrowed much from sixteenth-century translations. Everyone knows an island when he sees one, so long as he can see it is an island—by what measures? No problem aside from impressions, there it is in the great Oxford English Dictionary, “1. a. A piece of land completely surrounded by water.”12 Island was “[f]ormerly used less definitely, including a peninsula, or a place insulated at high water or during floods, or begirt by marshes”; and also, “b. In Biblical lang., after the corresp. Heb. word, applied to the lands across the sea, the coasts of the Mediterranean: cf. isle n. 1 b.” Islands are victims—or beneficiaries—of etymology as well—and as much—as of geology (island has also been used as a verb). Is a continent an island? “Formerly”—again—“two continents were reckoned, the Old and the New; the former comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa, which form one continuous mass of land; the latter, North and South America, forming another. (These two continents are strictly islands, distinguished only by their extent.)”13 So “islands” and “continents” evolved linguistically as well as geologically: islands and continents are what we make them, or what they become by the lapses and inattention of casual usage. In the absence of an académie americaine, an unthinkable anomaly, usage is practically determined by television, the Internet, one’s peers, and descriptive dictionaries that are prescriptive only politically. At present islands are by far the smaller, perhaps to be known as such by the maximum distance from the surrounding body of water at any point. If water can be seen at all 360°, it is an island—and a small one. Or a tall one. Even in the villages of Minnesconsin as a youth I must have encountered an island or so for real, if only in the creek of Sidie Hollow near Viroqua, before the ones I seem to remember best and as first, but which of the two I came to first I cannot 12

  “This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1900)” (OED online, 14 May 2016).

13

  “5. a. One of the main continuous bodies of land on the earth’s surface.… Now it is usual to reckon four or five continents, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, North and South; the great island of Australia is sometimes reckoned as another, and geographers have speculated on the existence of an Antarctic Continent.”



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recall, whether Huck Finn’s Jackson’s Island or Telemachus’s and Odysseus’s Ithaca. I have never visited either, but the images of both are so vivid and familiar that they are often present to the corner of my eye and permanent residents of my recollection. And I count among friends in Greece the host and hostess of Ithaca’s taverna (c. 1987–), the Koutsouvelis of Patras, whose summer home was so much a place of social resort for neighbors and visitors that it comfortably became a taverna, a Greek pub, as a public house is every inch a taverna. And who could forget that fateful first meeting on Jackson’s Island when the late Huckleberry Finn, reports of whose death had been much exaggerated, “says: ‘Hello, Jim!’ and skipped out” of hiding, frightening Jim as much as he would any who knew him to be dead. Jim “bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says: ‘Doan’ hurt me—don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I awluz liked dead people, en done all I could for ’em. You go en git in de river agin, whah you b’longs, en doan’ do nuffn to Ole Jim, ’at ’uz awluz yo’ fren’ ” (chap. 8). A stereotype, as some have said, but Jim is every inch as much a man and friend as he is black and frightened as who wouldn’t be and ingenious as plenty of whites wouldn’t be? Jim is not a stereotype made and marred by mocking, he is a man made normal, dialectally individual, and highly imaginative by Twain. It was a white and milky way from those earlier experiences of place and deed, when I was read to, to the cosmic sort of “island” of Shakespeare and Cleopatra’s various manufacture (1606), when, to Dolabella, us, and the cosmos, she says she dreamt there was an Emperor Antony. O, such another sleep, that I might see But such another man! Dol. If it might please ye— Cleo. His face was as the heav’ns, and therein stuck A sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted The little O, th’ earth. Dol. Most sovereign creature— Cleo. His legs bestrid the ocean, his rear’d arm Crested the world, his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, There was no winter in’t; an autumn it was That grew the more by reaping. His delights Were dolphin-like, they show’d his back above The element they liv’d in. In his livery

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Walk’d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were As plates dropp’d from his pocket.… (Antony and Cleopatra 5.2.76–92) Cleopatra’s speech here—it is not quite finished—is a monologue, a virtual soliloquy, made before, not to, Dolabella, who guards her for Caesar, whose desire and design is to lead her in triumph in Rome as a trophy. It is a masterpiece of anamorphic motivation—or in plainer terms mixed motives and multiple expression: Shakespeare writes—partly from sheer artistry and vision, but by design—to express Cleopatra speaking to herself, as deeply moved by recollecting Antony; and for Dolabella, to move him to inform her very complex speech-act. Thus it ranges all the way from a stunning piece of verbal collage and panegyrical catasterism to down-home mesmerism, depending upon the perspective taken on the speech. Editors and critics are strangely diffident about its deliberately manipulative dimension, but Shakespeare was not, as Dolabella’s fessing shows. They are also prone to see Antony and Cleopatra as fading and failing if not mocked and satirized in their play; but demi-deities are not diminished and belittled but made so by language that can only monumentalize and inanimate, like so very much lavished on Antony and Cleopatra in this play, which makes them both far larger than life and Antony with Cleopatra’s verbal art a constellation, by contrast with that which diminutes Caesar to his moral and anthropic measure. As Cleopatra had earlier said, “My desolation does begin to make / A better life. ‘Tis paltry to be Caesar; / Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave, / A minister of her will” (5.2.1–4); she goes on to demonstrate herself a match and surrogate for Fortune. Art may readily do what history hadn’t time for. When Cleopatra concludes her epic reverie, the dialogue continues, Dol. Hear me, good madam: Your loss is as yourself, great; and you bear it As answering to the weight. Would I might never O’ertake pursu’d success, but I do feel, By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites My very heart at root. Cleo. I thank you, sir. Know you what Caesar means to do with me? Dol. I am loath to tell you what I would you knew. Cleo. Nay, pray you, sir. Dol. Though he be honorable— Cleo. He’ll lead me then in triumph?



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Dol. Madam, he will, I know’t. (Ant. 5.2.99–109, italics added) “I thank you, sir” is gracious with a tacit hint of self-congratulation in thanking Dolabella for admiring her performance, in effect; Dolabella under her spell, she abruptly asks the crucial question that will lead to her knowing what to do to make “great Caesar ass unpolicied” (5.2.307), as she shortly after does. And what has all this ado to do with islands? As much as is needed to show the magnetic power of a shimmering image in a larger picture that demands attention when it comes so near “realms and islands … / As plates dropp’d from his pocket” as a man Orion-sized. Islands of the mind metamorphose imperceptibly into islands of the heart, as though that were all along their natural design and end. Such are the places and spaces where reflection comes to repose in absence, and there in person one engages all that is with all one’s observation and senses to the fullest as time permits. Islands of the mind are legion, an ever-expanding archipelago for contemplating anytime, anywhere. Those of one’s geographic life on foot are finite as such but islands of the mind thereafter and infinite in possibility like those on which foot has never trodden, or has trodden symbolically, as on “this bare island” of Shakespeare’s identifying so. An occasional visitor can only guess at the depth of special feeling of those whose growing-up experience was island-based, the more so when the main islands of one’s own youth were no larger than those of the Mississippi. But sometimes a little island may become a continent for its comforts and all the dry land one could pray for. Among the fragments one shores against one’s ruins is bound to be the memorial residue of islands passed on the way to the vale of the isle of Avalon or the like. For me comes nearest that Avalon an islet in the middle of long Lake Saganaga off the end of the Gunflint Trail in far northern Minnesota.14 I was not far past the halfway point of the allotted biblical span of threescore and ten but for a while felt far past it. Roger Hargreaves, an Englishman and bosom mate from Wadham, who had never canoed before except occasionally on gentle waters, and I, who had not canoed seriously in twenty years, beginning a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota bound eventually for the Quetico Park of Ontario, decided on the spur of the moment to abandon our original itinerary eastward to Northern Lights Lake and on such a spectacularly fair day go with the east-wind west, straight down the middle of the main channel of “the deepest and largest lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with a maximum depth of 280 ft (85 m) and surface area of 13,832 acres,”15 and a shore length of 194 miles. It is a big lake. How were we to know what a sudden tempest, brewing out of sight, had in store for us in the area well named Thunder Bay? We learned soon enough and all too well 14

  The name is “Probably derived from Sagaiganan, the Ojibwe for ‘inland lakes.’” Or, according to another authority, Saganaga, “lake of many islands” (289, officially). Sounds like plausible guesswork in both cases, though either or both could be right (or wrong?). 15

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganaga_Lake (accessed 18 May 2016).

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when the storm broke over us at mid-lake in sheets blown almost horizontal. Five– ten minutes’ crazed paddling, Roger impressive in the bow, I straining at the stern, brought us to the islet that deserves for us forevermore the epithet Blessed, small as it was with sides at about a 50° angle but a cake-walk to the danse macabre we thought we were on the way to. We lashed the canoe to a rock and struggled up with our gear weighing like anchors, and reached the top, 25–30 feet up, to see a rabbit inspecting us quizzically and the sun break through receding showers in rainbows. Allelulia! For me a quintessentially blissful island-deliverance. It seems that most of my close calls have come in the way of death by water, some unbidden, some as a consummation to be wished. Sometimes one knows with Keats what it means to be “half in love with easeful death” (“Ode to a Nightingale”). All of my islands have come to be mine by different kinds of chance, two of them Greek, Crete and the Island of Aphrodite; and two not, the British Isles and the island of The Tempest, partly as synecdoche of Shakespeare. Crete my late wife Ruth and I visited, to see the Minoan antiquities and more, in May 1986, during the last term of my second of three sabbatical leaves. Much about Crete affected me, two or three moments lingering indelibly and coming to mind catalyzed by a glance at a shiny aqua-colored earthenware vase we bought in Chania, or on their own at any tranquil moment. Two I shared with Ruth, watching her befriend a goat on a road-stop in the mountains not far from Kissou Kambos, and eating grilled octopus at a candle-lit, harbor-inlet table at a taverna in Rethymno where we also had some of the finest home-distilled Raki we experienced in Crete. For me a defining moment for then and for all came while Ruth was sensibly resting during the height of the midafternoon heat as I stood alone, sweating in the sun on a hill above Iraklion where Nikos Kazantzakis is buried and I experienced an epiphany. It is not in the nature of an epiphany, for me at least, to say what kind of thing it was, but it came by slow degrees as I gazed now at Cretan distances, now out to sea, now at the intense-purple bougainvillea in the otherwise barren garden, now and again at Kazantzakis’ tombstone. The sun cast the shadow of the slender wooden cross upon the stone, first obscuring, then revealing, the laconic inscription from Kazantzakis’ Odyssey: Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα I hope for nothing Δε φοβούμαι τίποτα I fear nothing Είμαι λέφτερος I am free The natural paradox of mingled sun and shadow, sign of faith and word of independence, moved me deeply at the time and marked me forever since. No more of that, but some of my chiaroscuro reflections owe themselves to that experience—Aegean sunstroke, perhaps, or the phantom bite of a mad dog or Englishman. All along I have of course been thinking of Cyprus and of Theo, to whom I owe my bonding with the Island, a kind of celibate love affair renewed by visiting trysts over the 1990s. As one of the University of Cyprus’s founding fathers, he proposed me for membership on a committee of five to select members of the faculty of the Department of Foreign Languages (notably English! the other members were two Brits and two Greeks, one of them Cypriot) aborning in 1990 along with the Univer-



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sity itself, which is now well established and growing from strength to strength. He must have done this partly if not mainly out of kindness after Ruth died on the day after Christmas 1989 and left me numb and devastated. Not three weeks earlier, it is most pleasant to recall, when we were returning to St. Paul from a visit to her mother in Hayward, east of Albert Lea, Ruth was helping me prepare for my final exam in Modern Greek (in Theo and Soterios’ night course). Driving west on U.S. 90 to connect with 35 north, we went thirty miles further west, past 35, because we were both concentrating on my reviewing at the expense of attention to the road signs, before we discovered, laughing, how far off we were and why, almost to Blue Earth—out of which I drove a pea truck for Green Giant in the summer of ’52, just months before I fell in love with her at first sight in the Varsity Inn across University Avenue from Folwell Hall. What was coming down another road she knew but I did not, until hours before the end of thirty-six years together. For my first visit I was quartered in the Hotel Philoxenia (“Hospitality”) up in the hills some way from the center of Nikosia but not far from the University’s temporary quarters. One evening, after a long meeting, I set out on foot for the Philoxenia, eventually getting well and truly lost in almost total darkness in residential hills but hesitant to knock on doors of lighted houses to ask my way. When a young woman came out of her house and walked toward her car, I threw caution to the winds and spoke to her from a distance—feeling like Odysseus hailing Nausikaa—expecting her to flee to house or car, while raising an outcry all the way and bringing the wrath of Cyprus down on me for sundry heinous crimes I must have been bent on committing. Instead, she approached me with fearless warmth. When I explained my plight, she said she was going to pick up her husband and would drop me off at the Philoxenia—all this in excellent English—as she did. An early lesson in Southern Cypriot bilingualism, hospitality, and trust that I marveled at until I recognized it as the norm—with less bilingualism in the villages, but not a jot less of the rest. Theo I remember well in all his roles official and personal, most vividly on those social occasions when the committee was entertained by the Interim Committee of which he was an indispensable member or at other such events, including one in a Nikosia taverna when after all the food and drink I found myself promoted into dancing à la grecque with the hostess. Mirth in abundance and invariable good nature with seriousness of purpose were his qualities everywhere I saw him, and I clearly see us together, now, having a late dinner (even by Greek measures) in a restaurant in the almost deserted Laiki Yitonia and on a talking, walking tour he gave me of the intramural city. Faces and places, and goings to and fro, come back to me constantly and fill my consciousness with affectionate reminiscences of otherwhere all over the Island, North as well as South, from the Zephyros in Larnaka (grilled octopus matched nowhere else but in Rethymno) to the jewel of Kyrenia in the North, and the Baths of Aphrodite in the west to Salamis in the east, I found everywhere much to love and wonder at—not least and with more than passing regret why the Island still remains divided. To go from prosperous twenty-first-century South to a North living if not lost in an earlier time, however, forced a painful awareness of differences not easily reconciled, differences of religion, ideology, and culture exacerbated by political, ethnic, and military factors of enormous complexity. Some mixing of Greek and Turkish

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Cypriots there is, according to the Rough Guide, but surreptitious and fraught with unwelcome consequences if detected. My last visit drove home the sadness of the separation that extends even to what in 2000 were the only two remaining bi-ethnic villages on the Island, both in the South: Potamia near Nikosia; and Pyla, in the buffer zone, where my friend Jay Halio guest-teaching at the University of Cyprus nearly had his innocent camera confiscated by a UN soldier. And we seemed to cross a far greater distance than across the village square when we walked from the Petros Trohos Taverna to the Turkish coffee house not a hundred yards away but a world apart. All along I have been reflecting on islands and everything else from the perspective of Cyprus, not as a Cypriot looks but as one intermittently transplanted—or temporarily trans-spirited—there, where one’s sense and senses can be wholly taken up and redirected by diversity of persons and ever-fresh experience. I never landed without the thrill of expectation I felt when I landed there first in 1990, last in 2000. Never was the expectation not fulfilled by more than I expected, and something of the Island has stayed with me and grown, uncultivated, of its own nature, that compels me to care what happens to it and its inhabitants east and west, and North and South, past, passing, or to come, in Yeats’s phrase, aptly from “Sailing to Byzantium.”

Pilgrimage, Connection, Community Theophilus C. Prousis

I first presented these comments at the 44th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (New Orleans, November 2012), as part of a roundtable discussion that honored Theofanis G. Stavrou’s fifty years of service to Mediterranean, Slavic, and Eastern Orthodox Studies. With a few alterations and updates, these words stand as an appropriate conclusion to this volume of essays exploring the main topical interests—Eastern Orthodox Church history, Modern Greek literature, Russian history and culture, the history of Cyprus, and several other areas—in the truly outstanding scholarly career of Theo Stavrou. We all thank Theofanis for his profound and permanent impact on our professional development in the field he founded and nurtured: Greek-Slavic relations in modern times, a natural extension of his passion for Slavic, Mediterranean, and Eastern Orthodox studies. He has shaped our intellectual transformation, encouraged our scholarly projects, and remained our dear friend over the decades. We have all benefited enormously from his guidance, commitment, and inspiration—and from his unique vision that created a dynamic, exciting, and challenging program of study. All of us, in different ways, have used our scholarship to bridge diverse regions and issues, to locate points of contact and interaction across cultural frontiers, and to honor his enduring influence. And it was fitting that we got to celebrate his wonderful career at a conference that highlighted “Boundary, Barrier, and Border Crossing.” He has, after all, practiced this throughout his life. His achievements as an exemplary teaching and publishing scholar have been remarkable and far-reaching. He has received honors and awards, including a Fulbright, from various institutions such as the Ford Foundation, IREX, the Smithsonian, the Academy of Athens, the University of Athens, the University of Minnesota, Indiana University, and the Greek Ministry of Culture. Thus far, he has supervised the publication of twenty-seven volumes in the Nostos series on Modern Greek History and Culture, thirty-one volumes of the international scholarly journal Modern Greek Studies Yearbook: A Publication of Mediterranean, Slavic, and Eastern Orthodox Studies, and twenty monographs in the Minnesota Mediterranean and East European Monograph series. He has directed the Modern Greek Studies Program at the University of Minnesota, under whose auspices he initiated the annual Celebration of Modern Greek Letters and the Annual James W. Cunningham Memorial Lecture on Eastern Orthodox History and Culture. And when did he find the time to beThresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 675–79.

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come one of the founders of the University of Cyprus? Since 1964, he has served as executive director of SPAN (Student Project for Amity among Nations), a program that contributed immensely to the globalization of the curriculum at the University of Minnesota, and he currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis. He has delivered countless lectures on the history of modern Russia and the Near East, the intellectual and cultural history of modern Greece, the history and culture of Eastern Orthodoxy, and Modern Greek writers to thousands, probably tens of thousands of students. He has organized superb symposia and conferences on such topics as “Russia under the Last Tsar,” “Russian Orthodoxy under the Old Regime,” “Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” and “The Mediterranean and Its Seas.” Lastly, he has mentored and supervised to completion approximately fifty Ph.D. dissertations, many of them published as monographs or as articles in scholarly journals. By any measure, this is a staggering and impressive array of accomplishments. So many aspects of his impact stand out among his former students. His lectures made Russian history and culture come alive with dramatic force and energy, introducing us to the likes of Chichikov, Bazarov, and Stavrogin, and he assigned map exercises based on the shifting frontiers of the Russian Empire. His courses touched on virtually every poem by Cavafy and Seferis; and nearly every work by Kazantzakis, including The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, 33,333 lines of verse picking up the story where Homer left off. Several generations of students met in his office cloister every week to discuss this classic and Kazantzakis’s insightful travel account of Russia during her momentous upheaval in the 1920s. But more was to come: Professor Stavrou brought engaging speakers to campus and made sure his students spent time with them. For most of us, his direction aroused curiosity to probe the interactions between the various peoples who resided, traded, and traveled in the Greek or Orthodox East, that expansive domain encompassing Eastern Orthodox lands and communities from the Neva to the Nile. He advised the imperative of investigating these intersections through primary sources left by observers, especially those eyewitnesses who conveyed their experiences in a lively, interesting, and generally reliable manner. His enthusiasm, dedication, and relentless confidence in our success have enriched us all. We all emerged from Theofanis’s “Overcoat,” spun from the trinity of pilgrimage, connection, and community. Pilgrimage, because he has journeyed tirelessly across the spacious terrain of the Eastern Orthodox world, firmly convinced that travel offered limitless horizons of learning and that all students must figure out their own distinct paths. He traversed intellectual boundaries and academic disciplines, promoting and disseminating knowledge in multiple settings. He asserted that pilgrimage to sacred shrines in the Greek East represented “the most visible expression of Orthodox religious behavior,” and he emphasized the importance of pilgrimage and travel reports as “an underutilized source” for excavating the history of Russian ties with the lands and seas of the Levant.1 He certainly prompted our own pilgrimages, not just to Mount Athos, Cyprus, 1

  Theofanis G. Stavrou, “Russia and the Mediterranean in Modern Times,” 2: 400. This essay, summarizing the conference presentations of an international group of scholars, appears in the



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and Sergiev Posad but to the archives and libraries of Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Britain, and other lands. Connection, because he connected the Greek and Slavic worlds with his ideas, lectures, publications, and conferences. He linked, to name just a few, Russia and the Levant, the Russian and Ottoman Empires, Dostoevsky and Kazantzakis, Mayakovsky and Ritsos, Papadiamantis and Solzhenitsyn. He connected seemingly disparate regions of the globe; bridged the social sciences and humanities; and brought together scholars and students from North America, Western and Central Europe, Greece, and Russia. Indeed, with today’s fashion of “cross-cultural,” “transnational,” and “comparative” history, he must feel perfectly at home, because cross-cultural and transnational connections have characterized his approach to the study of GreekSlavic relations for decades. Community, because he has underscored the channels of Greek-Slavic contact and interaction, the interplay of encounters and exchanges that generates a sense of community between the Greek and Russian wings of the Orthodox realm. Indeed, if he did not actually coin the phrase “Orthodox commonwealth,” after Dimitri Obolensky’s innovative notion of a Byzantine commonwealth for the Byzantine era, he undoubtedly did the most to endorse and popularize this thought-provoking concept. It perfectly describes the community of shared interests and challenges that define the Greek-Slavic arena from the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople to the outbreak of World War I. Equally crucial, he has fostered a worldwide community of scholarship, a network of researchers, teachers, specialists, and students centered in Minneapolis and extending outward to other parts of North America, to Britain and Greece, and to Russia. One of his most important accomplishments, the Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, definitely epitomizes this global community of learning. Since its founding in 1986, the Yearbook has provided an international forum for established scholars and new voices, offering an extraordinary variety of articles, essays, translations, archival descriptions, and reviews. His pathfinding role in creating the 1995 Moscow Exhibit on Russian Travelers in the Greek World, and his leadership in organizing the 2005 Athens Conference on Russia and the Mediterranean, further attest to the international community of scholarship which he has stimulated. In all these ways, the trinity of connection, pilgrimage, and community has framed and guided his students’ teaching and scholarly careers in Slavic, Eastern Orthodox, and Mediterranean studies. Thanks to Theofanis’s guidance and supervision, scholarship on a broad spectrum of Greek-Slavic history and culture found a home at Minnesota. The Minnesota Project, as we like to call it, focusing on the multifaceted relations between the Orthodox East and Russia, inspired and trained five cycles of graduate students to explore these rich and varied links, part of a two-way process of communication and published proceedings of the First International Conference on Russia and the Mediterranean. See Olga Katsiardi-Hering et al., eds., Ρωσία και Μεσόγειος, Πρακτικά Α΄ Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου (Αθήνα, 19–22 Μαΐου 2005) [Russia and the Mediterranean. Proceedings of the First International Conference, Athens, 19–22 May 2005], 2 vols. (Athens: National and Kapodistrian University, 2011).

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collaboration between the Greek and Slavic worlds. Just a sampling of these topics affirms his central place in a field he has designed and shaped for well over half a century. Greek enlightened churchmen traveled to Muscovy and imperial Russia, contributing to Eastern Orthodox culture and education. Russian-Ottoman wars and treaties forged opportunities for Russian-Greek cooperation in naval, military, and commercial endeavors. Greek merchant centers flourished in Odessa and New Russia, while Greek émigrés served in the diplomatic corps and other areas of tsarist officialdom. Russian travelers and pilgrims crisscrossed the Greek East, drawn to the holy shrines of Mount Athos, Constantinople, and Palestine, while Russia’s government and public launched enterprises of religious, educational, and cultural philanthropy in the Near East. With the help of Greek educators and translators, classical and Byzantine studies flourished in late tsarist Russia. And Russia’s state and society responded to Balkan stirrings for liberty and autonomy, most notably the Greek War of Independence, and involved themselves in the intricate but messy realities of Balkan nation-state building. Fault lines in the Orthodox commonwealth, such as the disruptive forces of ethnic nationalism, secular modernity, and ecclesiastical rivalry, also attracted scholarly attention and research. All of these themes in Greek-Slavic affairs not only opened new perspectives in Russian history and culture but also redefined the Eastern Question, Europe’s dilemma over what to do with the receding or regressing Ottoman Empire. By underlining the religious, cultural, and commercial dimensions of the Eastern Question, he encouraged students to widen their views beyond the confines of diplomatic, naval, and military history. The contours of our Eastern Question today, a more complex and dynamic subject because of his efforts, include not just great power rivalries, treaties, and conflicts but also mentalities, perceptions, and images. The teaching and research activities of all those who profited from the Minnesota Project testify to the long-term success of Theofanis’s initiatives. Current and future prospects for scholarship in the Greek-Slavic field he pioneered look promising indeed. The resurgence of Orthodoxy in Russia has encouraged a younger generation of talented historians to conduct research on Russian religious and cultural ties with Greece, Palestine, and other parts of the Near East. Travel across the Orthodox commonwealth has become more common, as has broader participation in international conferences. A wealth of newly available archival and manuscript documents on philanthropy, diplomacy, pilgrimage, piracy, commerce, education, and culture awaits researchers poised to make their own discoveries. The Universities of Athens and Minnesota have inaugurated an exchange program, a result of their longstanding partnership in promoting research on Hellenism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Greek-Slavic relations. And we can continue to celebrate his unstinting service to Mediterranean, Slavic, and Eastern Orthodox studies with the publication of his Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts, a joint endeavor coauthored with Bryn Geffert.2 This attractive and engaging volume is no doubt a fitting tribute to Theofanis Stavrou’s lifetime of contributions and achievements. The 2

  Bryn Geffert and Theofanis G. Stavrou, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).



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field is thus thriving, resonating with his lasting imprint and epic spirit. And it was fitting that we got to celebrate his wonderful career at a conference that highlighted “Boundary, Barrier, and Border Crossing.” He has, after all, practiced crossing/crisscrossing throughout his life.

Notes on Contributors

Josef L. Altholz was Professor of History at the University of Minnesota from 1959 to 2002. He specialized in the history of the British Isles, chiefly religious, in modern times, and Irish history. His books include The Liberal Catholic Movement in England (1962), The Churches in the Nineteenth Century (1967), The Religious Press in Britain, 1760–1900 (1989), and Anatomy of a Controversy (1994). He also edited Selected Documents in Irish History (2000), and coedited with Damian McElrath The Correspondence of Lord Acton and Richard Simpson, 3 vols. (1971–75). Achilles Avraamides (b. 1934, Arsos Limassol, Cyprus) is Professor Emeritus, Department of History, at Iowa State University. A faculty member from 1965 until his retirement in 2000, he taught ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman history. His special interest is the history of ideas, and his research focuses on Hellenistic Cyprus, Christian heresies, and Plotinus and Neoplatonism. Heather Bailey is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she teaches courses in modern European and Russian history. Her research concerns Franco-Russian intellectual, religious, and cultural relations— themes she explored in her book Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renan’s “Life of Jesus” in Russia (2008). Stephen K. Batalden is Professor Emeritus of History and founding Director of the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Arizona State University. A frequent exchange scholar to Russia and southeastern Europe, he is a specialist in the field of religious and cultural history. His most recent monograph, Russian Bible Wars (2013), won the 2014 Reginald Zelnik Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Marjorie W. Bingham taught at St. Louis Park Senior High School and Hamline University. She has contributed to thirteen books on international women’s history. Her other books include An Age of Empires, 1200–1750 (2006) and Silla Korea and the Silk Road: Golden Age, Golden Threads (2006). Michael Bitter is Professor of History at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, where he teaches European and world history. His research focuses on Anglo-Russian relations and interactions during the 1730s. He has written on several aspects of Russia, the Russian court, and St. Petersburg during this period. He is currently working on a Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Lucien J. Frary, ed. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2017, 681–87.

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history of the diplomatic mission of George, Lord Forbes, to St. Petersburg as envoy and minister plenipotentiary of George II of Great Britain. Gregory Bruess is Associate Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Associate Professor of History at the University of Northern Iowa. His published work consists of articles and a monograph, Religion, Identity and Empire: A Greek Archbishop in the Russia of Catherine the Great (1997). G. William Carlson was Professor Emeritus of History and Political Science at Bethel University. He served as editor of the Baptist Piety Clarion and published numerous articles on Baptist General Conference history, Swedish Pietism, Christianity in the United States, religion in the Soviet Union, and comparative evangelical political thought. He coauthored with Diana Magnuson Persevere Läsare and Clarion: Celebrating Bethel’s 125th Anniversary (1997). Tom Clayton, Regents Professor of English Language and Literature, Emeritus, at the University of Minnesota, was sometime chair of the Classical Civilization Program in the College of Liberal Arts. He has published extensively on Shakespeare and other literary subjects, especially the poetry of England in the early seventeenth century, one of the most creative periods in English literary history. Not unrepresentative titles and subjects include: “Aristotle on the Shakespearean Film; or Damn Thee William, Thou Art Translated” (1974) and “Symmetreciprocity, etc., in The Tempest” (2012). David Connolly, born in Sheffield, England, spent all his adult and professional life in Greece, where he taught translation at the undergraduate and post-graduate level at a number of university institutions in Greece. His last position was Professor of Translation Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has written extensively on the theory and practice of literary translation and on Greek literature in general and has published over forty books of translations featuring works by major Greek poets and novelists. His translations have received awards in Greece, the UK, and the USA. Van Coufoudakis is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Dean Emeritus of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University-Purdue University. Following his retirement from the Indiana University system he became Rector of the University of Nicosia, the first private university in the Republic of Cyprus. From 2012 through the end of October of 2014 he served as President of the Hellenic Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency, an independent agency of the Government of Greece. He is the author of three books, the coeditor of four books, and the author of some 100 book chapters and articles in refereed academic journals published in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus. James Cracraft is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has published several volumes on Peter the Great’s cultural revolution, which are summarized in a book for students and general readers, The Revolution of Peter the

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Great (2003). His most recent book is Two Shining Souls: Jane Addams, Leo Tolstoy, and the Quest for Global Peace (2012). Zdeněk V. David is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he served as librarian from 1974 to 2002. His major publications include The Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526–1918 (with Robert A. Kann) (1984), and Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (2003). Currently he is completing a manuscript on Thomas G. Masaryk, a Scholar and a Statesman: Philosophical Background of His Political Views. K eith P. Dyrud, an independent scholar, has edited and contributed to The Other Catholics (1978). He is the author of The Quest for the Rusyn Soul: The Politics of Religion and Culture in Eastern Europe and in America, 1890–World War I (1992) and the coeditor with Grace Dyrud of the posthumous publication of James W. Cunningham, The Gates of Hell: The Great Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church 1917–1918 (2002). Thomas A. Emmert is Professor Emeritus of History at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota. A specialist in medieval Balkan history, his major publications include Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389 (1990), Kosovo: Legacy of a Medieval Battle (1991), coedited with Wayne S. Vucinich, and Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative (2012), coedited with Charles Ingrao. Lucien J. Frary is Associate Professor of History at Rider University. He is the author of Russia and the Making of Modern Greek Identity, 1821–1844 (2015) and coeditor with Mara Kozelsky of Russian-Ottoman Borderlands: The Eastern Question Reconsidered (2014). His current project is about the culture of cosmopolitan aristocrats and the making of Russian foreign policy in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Bryn Geffert is the Librarian of the College at Amherst College and Lecturer in the Department of History. He is the author of Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism (2010), and coauthor with Theofanis G. Stavrou of Eastern Orthodox Christianity: The Essential Texts (2016). David Goldfrank is Professor of History and Director of Medieval Studies at Georgetown University, where he has been on the faculty since 1970. His works include The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky (1983, rev. ed. 2000), The Origins of the Crimean War (1993), and A History of Russia: People, Legends, Events, Forces, coauthored with Catherine Evtuhov, Lindsey Hughes, and Richard Stites (2003). His most recent book is Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings (2008).

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K risti A. Groberg is Associate Professor of Art History at North Dakota State University, where she received the Outstanding Research Award in 2009. She has published in Alexandria, ARTMargins, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Explorations, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, Modern Judaism, Russian Review, Slavic Review, Theosophical History, and Women: East-West. She coedited with Avraham Greenbaum, A Missionary for History: Essays in Honor of Simon Dubnov (1998). At present her research focuses on the study of sacred space. Catherine Guisan is Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Un sens à l’Europe: Gagner la Paix (1950–2003) (2003) and A Political Theory of Identity in European Integration: Memory and Policies (2011). She has taught in five European universities and was a Fulbright scholar in Russia, 2013. Elizabeth A. Harry has taught world history at the University of St. Thomas for many years. Her publications include articles on Russian, Soviet, and world history. Her monograph on the early Soviet state, from which the present essay is taken, is forthcoming from the Minnesota Mediterranean and East European Monograph series, published by the Modern Greek Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. Evanthis Hatzivassiliou is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Athens. He is the author of Britain and the International Status of Cyprus, 1955–59 (1997), The Cyprus Question, 1878–1960: The Constitutional Aspect (2002), Greece and the Cold War: Frontline State, 1952–1967 (2006), and NATO and Western Perceptions of the Soviet Bloc: Alliance Analysis and Reporting (2014). K åre Hauge, ambassador (ret.), resides in Oslo, Norway, Ph.D. thesis on “Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai; the Scandinavian Period,” University of Minnesota, 1971. Nick Hayes is a professor, author, and commentator for the media. He is currently working on his next book, “Looking for Leningrad: My Soviet Life,” a collection of his memoirs, personal essays, and profiles of figures in Soviet and post-Soviet life from the late 1970s to the present. He is a Professor of History and holds the University Chair in Critical Thinking at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University in Minnesota. Timothy J. Johnson is Curator of Special Collections and Rare Books, and the E. W. McDiarmid Curator of the Sherlock Holmes Collections, at the University of Minnesota. His publications include chapters in the following volumes: Amicus Dei: Essays on Faith and Friendship (1992), Swedish American Life in Chicago: Cultural and Urban Aspects of an Immigrant People (1992), Managing the Mystery Collection: From Creation to Consumption (2006), Cabinet of Curiosities: Mark Dion and the University as Installation (2006).

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Kostas K azazis taught linguistics at the University of Chicago for thirty-five years. His course list included “Afrikaans for Linguists,” “Albanian,” “Ancient Greek,” “Estonian,” “History of the English Language,” “Italian,” “Modern Greek,” and “Rumanian.” He studied political science at the University of Lausanne. In 1959, he completed an M.A. in political science, from the University of Kansas, with “An Inquiry into the Problem of American Recognition of the Soviet Government.” He began formal training in linguistics at Indiana University, where he earned a Ph.D. with a dissertation on “Some Balkan Constructions Corresponding to the Western European Infinitive.” On the day he died he was studying Japanese. John R. Lampe is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Maryland and a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His books include Balkans into Southeastern Europe, 1914–2014 (2nd ed., 2014) and Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (2nd ed., 2000). He coauthored with Marvin Jackson From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations (1982), which won the first annual Wayne S. Vucinich Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Stanford Lehmberg taught British History at the University of Texas at Austin from 1956 to 1969, when he moved to the University of Minnesota. His books include The Reformation Parliament, 1529–1536 (1970), The Reformation of Cathedrals: Cathedrals in English Society, 1485–1603 (1988), The Peoples of the British Isles, from Prehistoric Times to 1688 (1991), and Cathedrals under Siege: Cathedrals in English Society, 1600–1700 (1996). Peter Mackridge is Professor Emeritus of Modern Greek at the University of Oxford. His books include The Modern Greek Language (1985), Dionysios Solomos (1989), and Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766–1976 (2009). He has cowritten two grammars of Modern Greek and coedited Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (1997) and Contemporary Greek Fiction in a United Europe: From Local History to the Global Individual (2004). He has translated The History of Western Philosophy in 100 Haiku by Haris Vlavianos (2015) as well as stories by Vizyenos, Papadiamandis, and Yorgos Ioannou. Donald E. Martin has taught Classical languages and literatures for forty years at Rockford University and has translated several works by George Theotokas and Georges Philippou-Pierides. John A. Mazis is Professor of History at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of The Greeks of Odessa: Diaspora Leadership in Late Imperial Russia (2004) and A Man for All Seasons: The Uncompromising Life of Ion Dragoumis (2015).

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Aaron N. Michaelson completed his Ph.D. dissertation in history titled “The Russian Orthodox Missionary Society, 1870–1917: A Study of Religious and Educational Enterprise” (1999) at the University of Minnesota. Matthew Lee Miller is Associate Professor of History at the University of Northwestern in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900–1940 (2013). His most recent publications are “The American YMCA and Russian Politics: Critics and Supporters of Socialism, 1900–1940,” in William Benton Whisenhunt and Norman E. Saul, eds., New Perspectives on Russian-American Relations (2015) and “Eastern Christianity in the Twin Cities: The Churches of Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1989– 2014,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 30/31 (2014/2015). K arl F. Morrison is Gotthold Lessing Professor of History and Poetics, Emeritus, at Rutgers University. He has published studies on Western medieval intellectual history and wider-ranging, interdisciplinary investigations on such subjects as conversion, the art of interpretation (hermeneutics), and empathy. J. K im Munholland is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Origins of Contemporary Europe, 1890–1914 (1970) and Rock of Contention: Free French and Americans at War in New Caledonia (2005). His essays include “The French Army and Intervention in Southern Russia, 1918–1919,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 22, 1 (1981) and “The French Colonial Mind and the Challenge of Islam: The Case of Ernest Psichari,” in Martin Thomas, ed., The French Colonial Mind (2009). Norma Noonan is Professor Emerita of Political Science and Leadership Studies at Augsburg College. She is the coeditor and coauthor of Russian Women in Politics and Society (1996), Encyclopedia of Russian Women’s Movements (2001), Emerging Powers in Comparative Perspective: The Political and Economic Rise of the BRIC Countries (2013), and Challenge and Change: Global Threats and the State in 21stCentury International Politics (2016). Thomas S. Noonan was an American historian, Slavicist, and anthropologist who specialized in early Russia history and Eurasian nomad cultures. Educated at Indiana University, Noonan was, for many years, a Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He was the author of dozens of books and articles and one of the leading authorities on the development of the Kievan Rus´ and the Khazar Khaganate. Stanley G. Payne is Hilldale-Jaume Vicens Vives Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of some twenty books on Spanish and modern European history, most recently (with Jesus Palacios) Franco: A Personal and Political Biography (2014), Niceto Alcala-Zamora y el fracaso de la Republica conservadora (2016), and El camino al dieciocho de julio (2016).

Notes on Contributors

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Theophilus C. Prousis is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. His books include Russian Society and the Greek Revolution (1994), Russian-Ottoman Relations in the Levant: The Dashkov Archive (2002), British Consular Reports from the Ottoman Levant in an Age of Upheaval, 1815–1830 (2008), and Lord Strangford at the Sublime Porte: The Eastern Crisis, 3 vols. (2010– 14), a multivolume collection of British embassy documents from Constantinople in the early 1820s. He is currently completing the last volume of the Strangford quartet. John L. Scherer taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of Iowa, the University of South Florida, and the College of Visual Arts of St. Paul, MN. He published widely as an independent scholar on Soviet and Russian history and in recent years he wrote on terrorism. His last published piece was a book called China and the World: 200 Country Reports (2011), available on Kindle. Susannah Lockwood Smith is Managing Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota, a position she has held since the Institute was established in 2005. She is the author of “From Peasants to Professionals: The Socialist-Realist Transformation of a Russian Folk Choir,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 3, 3 (2002). She is also featured on the recordings Sayuk: Together in Harmony (Indonesian Performing Arts Association of Minnesota, 2007) and The Face of the Deep (Book of Sand, Mouthbreaker Records, 2014). Carol Urness is Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota, where she was the Curator of the James Ford Bell Library. Her academic specialty is Russian expansion across Siberia to America. Her most recent book in history is The Journal of Midshipman Chaplin: A Record of Bering’s First Kamchatka Expedition, with Peter Ulf Møller, Tatiana Fedorova, and Viktor Sedov (2010). Peter Weisensel is Professor Emeritus of History at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. He has worked extensively on Russian connections with the Levant. His publications include Russian Travelers to the Christian East from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Century (1985), an annotated bibliography, coauthored with Theofanis G. Stavrou, and Prelude to the Great Reforms: Avraam Sergeevich Norov and Imperial Russia in Transition (1995). Currently his research focuses on the theme “Central Asia through Russian Eyes.”