The Icon and the Axe

Klibanov and Novitsky and Mr. A. Sakharov. I am grateful for stimulus as well as courtesies to these and others in the USSR, and only hope that the exchange of often differing views in this area will continue and deepen. I also thank Mme Popova and Director Lebedev for enabling me to study in detail (and obtain reproductions from) the rich collections of P. D. Korin and the Tret'iakov Gallery respectively. I owe a real debt to my colleagues in the History Department at Princeton: Joseph Strayer, Cyril Black, and Jerome Blum, who along with R. Tucker, R. Burgi, G. Alef, N. Berberova, and Professors Berlin and Florovsky were good enough to read and comment upon sections of the book. I owe a special debt to Charles Moser for his reading and comments. None of these people should suffer any measure of guilt by association with the emphases and approach, let alone the imperfections of this work.

Among the many others whom I should properly thank, I can mention only my lively-I might even say intelligentnye-students at Harvard and Princeton, and three great, departed teachers who profoundly influenced me and will not be forgotten by any who knew them: Albert M. Friend, Walter P. Hall, and E. Harris Harbison. Finally, I must thank my beloved wife and companion Marjorie, to whom this book is gratefully and affectionately dedicated.

NOTE

For the sake of readability, I have deferred all but the most essential Russian terms to the reference section at the end of the book, and have introduced a few modifications in the usual method of transliterating Russian (principally the use of an initial Ya and Yu and a terminal oy in names, a uniform rendering of all singular adjectives ending in ? or yi as y, and the elimination of terminal soft signs in names like Suzdal and Pestel). I have generally tried to follow familiar usage in determining whether to use the English or transliterated Russian form of a name, but have tended to favor the English version of first names and the transliterated Russian version of last names. Internal soft signs will generally be maintained. Exceptions to general practice in transliteration will be made to conform with accepted English usage in place names (Kharkov, Dnieper), frequently used Russian words (boyar, sobors, Bolshoi Theater), and Russian names rendered differently in English by authors writing themselves in English (Vinogradoff, Gorodetzky).

I.Backgroundi

Kiev3

The Forest16 Axe and Icon 26 Bell and Cannon ?1

II.The Confrontation45

The Muscovite Ideology47

The Coming of the West78 Novgorod 79 "The Latins" 84 "The Germans" 97 The Religious Wars 102

115 121 127

III.The Century of Schism

1.The Split Within

The Theocratic Answer

The Fundamentalist

Answer 135

The Great Change 144

2.The Westward Turn163

New Religious Answers 163

The Sectarian Tra

dition 174

The New World of

St. Petersburg 180

The Defense of Mus

covy 192

IV.The Century of

Aristocratic Culture 207

1. The Troubled Enlight

enment213

The Dilemma of the

Reforming Despot 217

The Fruits of the En lightenment

The Alienation of the Intellectuals

Novikov and Masonry

The Frustration of Po litical Reform

2.The Anti-Enlighten

ment

Catholics Pietists Orthodox The Legacy

3.The "Cursed Ques

tions"

The Flight to Philoso phy

The Meaning of His tory

The Prophetic Role of Art

The Missing Madonna

The "Hamlet Question"

V. On to New Shores

The Turn to Social Thought

The Agony of Populist Art

New Perspectives of the Waning Century Constitutional Liberal ism

Dialectical Material ism Mystical Idealism

VI. The Uncertain Colossus

1.Crescendo

Prometheanism

Sensualism

A pocalypticism

2.The Soviet Era

The Leninist Legacy The Revenge of Muscovy

?1?

475 478 492 504 519 524

532

3.Fresh Ferment

The Reprise of Pasternak New Voices

4.The Irony of Russian

History

Bibliography

References

Index follows page

550

554 564

590 599 627 786

ILLUSTRATIONS

Map : Modern European Russia

Forms of the Virgin

Following page 105 I "Vladimir Mother of God," early twelfth century, Constantinople Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

II "Virgin and Child Rejoicing," mid-sixteenth-century painting from the upper Volga region, probably Kostroma Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

IIIVirgin and Christ from

the central triptych

(deesis) of a sixteenth-

century icon screen

Personal Collection

of P. D. Korin, Moscow

IV"Petersburg, 1918" (pop

ularly known as "Our

Lady of Petersburg") by

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin,

1920

Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

Theme and Variations in Iconography

Following page 199

V"Old Testament Trinity"

by Andrew Rublev,

painted for the Monastery

of St. Sergius and the

Holy Trinity, 1420's

Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

VI A Trinity of the Pskov School, mid-fifteenth century Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

VII The Trinity by Simon Ushakov, 1670 Russian Museum, Leningrad

The New Portraiture

Following page l$g VIII Painting of F. Demidov by D. Levitsky, completed in 1773 Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow

The Evolution of Old Russian Architecture

Following page 261 IX Cathedral of St. Dmitry