imaginative creativity), but a devotional image, a true and correct likeness according to the approved prototypes. In architecture, public spaces were dominated by churches, whose basic design- most commonly a cross-in-square or domed cross layout-was Byzantine in origin. As for writing, 90 percent or more of all that was written, copied, and disseminated was ultimately derived from Church Slavonic texts translated from Greek. Over time, cultural production in all these media could of course acquire local features-in the development and composition of the full- height iconosta-sis, for example, or in the elaboration of roof-tiers, the onion-shaped dome, or in the robust styles of native chronicles-and local perceptions of such cultural production could vary widely. Overall, however, the Byzantine links were explicit, and Byzantium remained the acknowledged source of authoritative example and precedent. A Byzantine churchman visiting Rus would thus have found part of the surroundings familiar; but still he would not have felt entirely at home. Outside the explicitly ecclesiastical, the Rus reception of Byzantine culture was more patchy. For example, Byzantium itself maintained a tradition of classical Greek learning, but there is little or no sign of any Rus interest in this before the late seventeenth century. Byzantium possessed a large corpus of written law. Church law (canon law) was in principal accepted by Rus together with Christianity, but in practice could be assimilated only gradually and partially through accommodation to local custom, while Byzantine civil law (derived from Roman law) seems to have made not made an impact. The Rus did not, therefore, accept Byzantine culture as a complete package. The borrowing was partial, selective, and thus in a sense non-Byzantine.
The continuing Rus reception of Byzantine culture in the later Middle Ages is somewhat paradoxical: as the visual elements (e.g., styles of painting and building) became progressively diluted through local developments, so the non-visual elements (e.g., ideas, ideology) were more assiduously adopted into official culture. The Muscovite State of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was more Byzantine in its structures than any of the earlier Rus principalities, in that it was a relatively unitary empire headed by an autocrat supported by a growing administrative bureaucracy. Moreover, since the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, it was self-consciously the only surviving Orthodox empire and thus could be projected as Byzantium’s successor. Emblems of this new status were woven into the fabric of Muscovite self-presentation: in the formal adoption of the title of tsar for the ruler; in the establishment of a patriarchate in place of the old metropolitanate; in the construction of imperial genealogies linking the Muscovite dynasty with Imperial Rome; in tales of the transfer of imperial regalia from Byzantium to ancient Kiev; and in the articulation of the notion that Moscow was-in world-historical terms-the “third Rome.”
Ostensibly the reforms of Peter the Great brought about a decisive break. Peter’s new capital was a radical statement of non-Byzantinism in the physical environment, and Western Europe became the new model for prestigious cultural production, whether in architecture and painting or in writing, printing, performing, and philosophizing. The Church continued to produce icons and profess the
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ancient faith, but it no longer enjoyed its virtual monopoly of the high-status media. However, does this necessarily mean that the Byzantine component of Russian culture disappeared? Perhaps, and perhaps not. The question of the Byzantine legacy in post-Petrine Russia is periodically controversial. Some have regarded Russian Byzantinism as a feature only of the remote past, while others have seen it as pervasive even after Peter (whether in true Russian spirituality or, by contrast, in the long continuation of autocratic, authoritarian theocratic forms of government). Such, once more, are the two poles of a debate that can have no objective resolution, since the terms of reference are more ideological than historical. Yet through such debates Russia’s Byzantine heritage remains very much alive, at least as an issue for discussion, after more than a thousand years. See also: ARCHITECTURE; ORTHODOXY; PETER I
Franklin, Simon. (2002). Byzantium-Rus-Russia: Studies in the Translation of Christian Culture. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Meyendorff, John. (1981). Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Obolensky, Dimitri. (1971). The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1500. London: Weiden-feld and Nicolson. Obolensky, Dimitri. (1994). Byzantium and the Slavs. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Thomson, Francis J. (1999). The Reception of Byzantine Culture in Mediaeval Russia. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
SIMON FRANKLIN
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Cabaret came late to Russia, but once the French, German, and Swiss culture spread eastward in the first decade of the twentieth century, a uniquely Russian form took root, later influencing European cabarets. While Russian theater is internationally renowned-as just the names Chekhov and Stanislavsky confirm-the theatrical presentations in cabarets are less so, despite the brilliance of the poets and performers involved.
The French word cabaret originally meant two things: a plebeian pub or wine-house, and a type of tray that held a variety of different foods or drinks. By its generic meaning a cabaret is an intimate night spot where audiences enjoy alcoholic drinks while listening to singers and stand-up comics. While sophisticates quibble over precise definitions, most will agree on the cabaret’s essential elements. A cabaret is performed usually in a small room where the audience sits around small tables, and where stars and tyros alike face no restrictions on the type of music or genre or combinations thereof, can experiment with avant-garde material never before performed, and can “personally” interact with the audience. The cabaret removes the “fourth wall” between artist and audience, thus heightening the synergy between the two. Ro-dolphe Salis-a failed artist turned tavern keeper- established the first cabaret artistique called Le Chat Noir (The Black Cat) in Paris, where writers, artists, and composers could entertain each other with their latest poems and songs in a Montmartre pub.
Cabarets soon mushroomed across Europe, its Swiss and Austrian varieties influencing Russian artists directly. Russian emigr?s performed, for example, in balalaika bands at the Caf? Voltaire, founded by Hugo Ball in 1916 in Z?rich, Switzerland. The influence of Vienna-based cabarets such as Die Fledermaus (The Bat) is reflected in the name of the first Russia cabaret: “Bat.”
This tiny theater was opened on February 29, 1908, by Nikita Baliev, an actor with the Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT) in tune with the prevailing mood in Russia. In the years following the revolution of 1905, Russian intellectual life shifted from the insulated world of the salon to the zesty world of the cabaret, the balagan (show), and the circus. New political and social concerns compelled the theater to bring art to the masses. Operating perhaps as the alter ego-or, in Freudian terms, the id-of MkhAT, the “Bat” served as a night spot for
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actors to unwind after performances, mocking the seriousness of Stanislavsky’s method. This cabaret originated from the traditional “cabbage parties” (kapustniki) preceding Lent (which in imperial Russia involved a period of forced abstinence both from theatrical diversion as well as voluntary abstinence from meat). Housed in a cellar near Red Square, the “Bat” had by 1915 become the focal point of Moscow night life and remained so until its closure in 1919.
While the format of the Russian cabaret-a confined stage in a small restaurant providing amusement through variety sequences-owed much to Western models, the uniqueness of the shows can be attributed to the individuality of Nikita Baliev and indigenous Russian folk culture. In one show entitled Life’s Metamorphoses, Baliev installed red lamps under the tables that blinked in time with the music. In another show, he asked everyone to sing “Akh, akh, ekh, im!”-to impersonate someone sneezing. As Teffi (pseudonym of Nadezhda Buchinskaya), a composer for the “Bat” recalled, “Everything was the invention of one man-Nikita Baliev. He asserted his individuality so totally that assistants would only hinder him. He was a real sorcerer.”
The Russian cabaret also flourished due to its links with the conventions of the indigenous folk theater-the balagan, the skomorokhi (traveling buffoons), and the narodnoye gulyanie (popular promenading). It incorporated the folk theater’s elements-clowning, quick repartee, the plyaska (Russian dance), and brisk sequence of numbers. Baliev employed key writers and producers, including Leonid Andreyev, Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, Sergei Gorodetsky, Alexei Tolstoy, Vasily Luzhsky, Vsevolod Meyerkhold, Ivan Moskvin, Boris Sadovskoi, and Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik. Famous artists performed at the “Bat,” including Fyodor Chalyapin, Leonid Sobinov, and
