marking the Ukrainian national movement’s evolution from the cultural stage to a political one. See also: NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS An eighteenth-century carved bone and wood panel with the Cyrillic alphabet. © MASSIMO LISTRI/CORBIS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Luckyj, George S. N. (1991). Young Ukraine: The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Kiev, 1845- 1847. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Russian and other Slavic languages are written using the Cyrillic alphabet. The letter system has been attributed to Cyril and Methodius, two brothers from Greek Macedonia working as Orthodox missionaries in the ninth century. Cyril invented the Glagolitic (from the word glagoliti, “to speak”) script to represent the sounds they heard spoken among the Slavic peoples. By adapting church rituals to the local tongue, the Orthodox Church became nationalized and more accessible to the masses. Visually, Glagolitic appears symbolic or runic. Later St. Clement of Ohrid, a Bulgarian archbishop who studied under Cyril and Methodius, created a new system based on letters of the Greek alphabet and named his system “Cyrillic,” in honor of the early missionary.
Russian leaders have standardized and streamlined the alphabet on several occasions. In 1710, Peter the Great created a “civil script,” a new typeface that eliminated “redundant” letters. Part of Peter’s campaign to expand printing and literacy, the civil script was designated for all non-church publications. The Bolsheviks made their own orthographic revisions, dropping four letters completely to simplify spelling. As non-Russian lands were incorporated into the Soviet Union, the Communist Party decreed that all non-Russian languages had to be rendered using the Cyrillic alphabet. Following the collapse of the USSR, most successor states seized the opportunity to restore their traditional Latin or Arabic script as a celebration of their national heritage.
CZARTORYSKI, ADAM JERZY
Transliteration is the process of converting letters from one alphabet to another alphabet system. There are several widely used systems for transliterating Russian into English, including the Library of Congress system, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names system, and the informally named “linguistic system.” Each system offers its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of ease of pronunciation and linguistic accuracy.
This Encyclopedia uses the U.S. Board of Geographic Names system, which is more accessible for non- Russian speakers. For example, it renders the name of the first post-communist president as “Boris Yeltsin,” not “Boris El’tsin.” The composer of the Nutcracker Suite and the 1812 Overture becomes “Peter Tchaikovsky,” not “Piotr Chaikovskii.” See also: BYZANTIUM, INFLUENCE OF; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; PETER I
Gerhart, Genevra. (1974). The Russian’s World: Life and Language. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Hughes, Lindsey. (1988). Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
ANN E. ROBERTSON
(c. 1130-1182), twelfth-century church writer, bishop.
The facts of Cyril’s (Kirill’s) life and career are disputable, since contemporary sources for both are lacking. Customarily, it is asserted that he was born to a wealthy family in Turov, northwest of Kiev, about 1130 and died not later than 1182; that he was a monk who rose to be bishop of Turov in the late 1160s; and that he wrote letters to Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky about a rival bishop. Cyril’s brief Prolog (Synaxarion) life (translation in Simon Franklin’s Sermons and Rhetoric of Kievan Rus’), written probably long after his death, is the only “authority” for most of these claims, although it is vague and gives no dates. Whether all of the works attributed to him were his, and whether he was ever in fact a bishop (the texts usually call him simply the “unworthy” or “sinful monk Cyril”) are matters of speculation and scholarly convention.
Tradition credits more extant writings to Cyril of Turov than to any other named person thought to have lived in the Kievan period. They include sermons, parables, and edifying stories. The corpus of texts attributed to Cyril was critically studied and edited in the 1950s by the late philologist Igor Petrovich Yeremin. Simon Franklin considers the “stable core” of the oeuvre to consist of three stories and eight sermons, while various other writings have frequently been added.
The eight sermons, which no doubt are Cyril’s most admired works today, form a cycle for the Easter season stretching from Palm Sunday to the Sunday before Pentecost. Like the famous Sermon on Law and Grace of Hilarion, they are heavily dependent on Byzantine Greek sources and, of course, incorporate many Biblical quotations and paraphrases. The original accomplishment of Cyril was to express all this in a fluent and vigorous Church Slavonic language that makes it fresh and living. Cyril’s style is elaborate and rich in poetic tropes, particularly metaphors. A familiar example is his extended comparison of the resurrection with the coming of spring in the world of nature, where (in the manner of Hilarion) he quickly resolves the metaphors and reveals explicitly the higher meaning for salvation history.
Another typical feature of Cyril’s sermons is the extensive use of dramatic dialogue, very welcome in a church literature otherwise devoid of liturgical drama. Thus the speech of Joseph of Ari-mathaea (with his repeated plea, “Give me body of Christ”) and others in the Sermon for Low Sunday both instruct and convey deep emotion. See also: HILARION; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Franklin, Simon, tr. and intro. (1991). Sermons and Rhetoric of Kievan Rus’. Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, Vol. 5. Cambridge, MA: Distributed by the Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University.
(1770-1861), Polish statesman, diplomat, and soldier.
Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was the scion of an aristocratic Polish family, the son of Prince Adam Kazimierz and Izabella (nee Fleming) Czartoryski.
He fought in the Polish army during the war of the second partition in 1793, after which his father’s estates were confiscated by the Russians. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage his property, Czartoryski’s father sent Adam and his brother Constantine to the Court of St. Petersburg. Summoning all his courage, Czartoryski befriended the grandson of Empress Catherine II, the Grand Duke Alexander, in the spring of 1796. Hoping that Alexander would soon be tsar, Czartoryski filled his friend’s head with ideas about Polish freedom. When Alexander became emperor in 1801, after the murder of his father Paul, he appointed Czartoryski as Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Now one of Tsar Alexander’s trusted advisors, Czartoryski intervened on behalf of the Poles whenever he could, repeatedly advocating the restoration of Poland to its 1772 boundaries, a Russian-English alliance, and the diplomatic recognition of Napoleonic France as a method of deterrence. Deeming Austria and Prussia to be Russia’s main enemies, Czartoryski resigned in protest when the tsar formed an alliance with Prussia. He nevertheless continued to champion Polish independence after Napoleon’s unsuccessful war with Russia, attending the Congress of Vienna (1814) and pleading with British and French statesmen. On May 3, 1815, the Congress of Vienna did establish the so-called Congress Kingdom of Poland, a small state united with Russia but possessing its own army and local self-government. Cruelly, however, Alexander appointed Adam’s brother Constantine as commander-in- chief of the Polish army and shunted Adam aside, never to be called again to government service.
Czartoryski participated in the Polish insurrection of 1830 and 1831, and briefly headed a provisional Polish government. However, the Russians crushed the rebellion, and Czartoryski was sentenced to death. Fleeing to Paris, he set up a political forum for Polish ?migr?s from the H?tel Lambert, where he resided. Only among the Hungarians, in armed revolt against the Habsburg empire in 1848, did the H?tel Lambert group find, and give, support. Many Poles joined the Hungarian army as officers and soldiers. Nevertheless, the Hotel’s influence also faded, along with Czartoryski’s dream of Polish independence in his lifetime. See also: ALEXANDER I; POLAND
BIBLIOGRAPHY
