The Icon and the Axe

cultural change in the Russian victor than in either of the defeated nations. -Poland ancf "Sweden both clung to the forms and ideals of a past age, ' whefeas Russia underwent a far-reaching transformation that pointed toward the future. What had been ajnonolithic, monastic civilization became a multi-national, secular stateT Under Alexis Mikhailovich and his son Peter the Great, Russia in effect adopted the aesthetic and philosophic culture of Poland even while rejecting its Catholic faith, and the administrative and technological culture of Sweden and Holland without either the Lutheran or the Calvinist form of Protestantism.

Symbol of the Polish impact was the incorporation into the expanding Muscovite state in 1667'of the long-lost "mother of Russian cities," the culturally advanced and partially Latinized city of Kiev. The acquisition of Kiev (along with Smolensk, Chernigov, and other cities) inspired the ii nation but upset the tranquillity of Muscovy, marking a return to the forgotten unity of pre-Mongol times and the incorporation of far higher levels of culture and enlightenment.

Symbol of the Swedish impact was the last of the three great centers of Russian culture:Hit. Petersburg, the window which Peter forced open on NorffleTnTiuropeJn the^arly eighteenth century and transformed into the new capital of Russia. Built with ruthless symmetry on the site of an old Swedish fortress and given a Dutch name, Petersburg symbolized the coming to Muscovy of the bleak Baltic ethos of administrative efficiency and military discipline which had dominated much of Germanic Protestantism. The greatest territorial gains at the expense of Poland and Sweden were to follow the acquisition of these key cities by a century in each case -the absorption of eastern Poland and most of the Ukraine occurring in the late eighteenth century and the acquisition of Finland and the Baltic provinces in the early nineteenth. But the decisive. psychological change was. accomplished by the return of Kiev" and the building of St. Petersburg. Bringing these two Westernized cities together with Moscow into one political unit had disturbing cultural effects. The struggle for Eastern Europe had produced profound social dislocations while increasing popular involvement in ideological and spiritual controversy. As the stream of Western influences grew to a flood in the course of the seventeenth century, Russians seemed to thrash about with increasing desperation. Indeed, the entire seventeenth and the early eighteenth century can be viewed as an extension of the Time of Troubles: a perjc^jjiLeonJinuous violence, of increasing^^borrowing from, yet rebelling against, the West. The deep split finally came to the surface in^this last stage of the confrontation between Muscovy "andTETWest

– amp;? III |f^2›-

THE CENTURY OF SCHISM

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The Mid-Seventeenth to the Mid-Eighteenth Century

The profound conflict in the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century between the practical need to master the skill and cleverness (khitrosf) of foreigners and the emotional need to continue the ardent devotion (blagochestie) to the religious traditions of Old Muscovy.

Religious leadership in the national revival that resulted from the political humiliation of the Time of Troubles and continued economic and military dependence on the West. The growth in monastic prestige and wealth and the resultant schism (raskol) between two reforming parties within the Church during the reign of Tsar Alexis (1645-76). The effort of the "black," or celibate, monastic clergy to maintain the centrality of religion in Russian culture through expanding the power of the Patriarch of Moscow, a position first created in 1589; invested with special authority under the patriarchate of Philaret (1619-33), father of Tsar Michael; and raised to theocratic pretensions under Patriarch Nikon (1652-8, formally deposed in 1667). The concurrent campaign of the "white," or married, parish clergy to maintain the centrality of traditional religion through popular evangelism, puritanical exhortation, and fundamentalist adherence to established forms of worship. The mutual destruction of the theocrats led by Nikon and the fundamentalists led by the Archpriest Avvakum (1621-82); condemnation of both by the Church Council of 1667; points of similarity with the earlier conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism in the West, which also led to the exhaustion of both religious approaches and the triumph of the new secular state.