townsmen as fugitive serfs, especially when they married.
If one thinks in terms of victimization, the primary “victim” of the Law Code of 1649 (after the serfs) was the Orthodox Church. As mentioned, much of its urban property was secularized. Its capacity to engage in trade and manufacturing was compromised. The state laid down provisions for protecting the church in chapter 1, but this in and of itself states which party is superior and limits the “harmony” (from the Byzantine Greek Epanogoge) of the two. Chapter 12 discusses the head of the church, the patriarch, thus obviously making him subordinate to the state. Worst of all for the church was chapter 13, which created the Monastery Chancellery, a state office which in theory ran all of the church except the patriarchate. This measure especially secularized much of the church, and though it was repealed on Alexei’s death in 1676, it was revitalized with a vengeance by Peter the Great’s creation of the Holy Synod in 1721, when all of the church became a department of the state. The Ulozhenie also forbade the church from acquiring additional landed property, the culmination of a process which had begun with the confiscation of all of Novgorod’s church property after its annexation by Moscow in 1478.
The Law Code of 1649 is a comprehensive document, the product of an activist, interventionist, maximalist state that believed it could control many aspects of Russian life and the economy (especially the primary factors, land and labor). Chapters 2 and 3 protected the tsar and regulated life at his court. The longest chapter, 10, is quite detailed on procedure. The major forms of landholding, service lands (pomestye) and hereditary estate lands, are discussed in chapters 16 and 17, respectively. Slavery is the subject of the code’s second longest chapter, 20. Criminal law is covered in two chapLAY OF IGOR’S CAMPAIGN ters, 21 (mostly of Russian origin) and 22 (mostly of Lithuanian and Byzantine origin), which were combined in the 1669 Felony Statute and represented the peak of barbarous punishments in Russia. Other subjects covered are forgers and counterfeiters (chapters 4 and 5), travel abroad (typically forbidden, chapter 6), military service (chapter 7), the redemption of Russians from foreign military captivity (chapter 8), various travel fees (chapter 9) and seal fees (chapter 18), the oath (chapter 14), and the issue of reopening resolved cases (chapter 15). Codes as comprehensive and activist as this one did not appear in Austria, Prussia, or France until more than a century later. See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; ASSEMBLY OF THE LAND; KORMCHAYA KNIGA; MOROZOV, BORIS IVANOVICH; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM; SUDEBNIK OF 1497; SUDEBNIK OF 1550; SUDEBNIK OF 1589
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hellie, Richard. (1965). “Muscovite Law and Society: The Ulozhenie of 1649 as a Reflection of the Political and Social Development of Russia since the Sudebnik of 1589.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. Hellie, Richard. (1979). “The Stratification of Muscovite Society: The Townsmen.” Russian History 6(2): 119-175. Hellie, Richard. (1988-1991). “Early Modern Russian Law: The Ulozhenie of 1649.” Russian History 2(4): 115-224. Hellie, Richard. (1989-1990). “Patterns of Instability in Russian and Soviet History.” Chicago Review of International Affairs, 1(3):3 -34; 2(1):3-15. Hellie, Richard. (1992). “Russian Law from Oleg to Peter the Great.” Foreword to The Laws of Rus’: Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries, tr. and ed. Daniel H. Kaiser. Salt Lake City, UT: Charles Schlacks. Hellie, Richard, ed. and tr. (1967, 1970). Muscovite Society: Readings for Introduction to Russian Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago. Hellie, Richard, ed. and tr. (1988). The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Irvine, CA: Charles Schlacks.
RICHARD HELLIE
A twelfth-century literary masterpiece, the Lay of Igor’s Campaign was probably composed soon after the unsuccessful 1185 campaign of Prince Igor of Novgorod-Seversk and his brother Vsevolod of Kursk against the Cumans (Polovtsians) of the steppe. The Lay (Slovo o polku Igoreve), by an anonymous author, minimizes narrative of facts (which were presumably fresh in the minds of the audience, and which are known to scholars from the Hypatian Chronicle and others) and instead evokes the heroic spirit of the time and the need for unity among the princes. Hence its title, Slovo, meaning a speech or discourse, not a story and not verse (the English translation “Lay” is misleading).
Though the text was heavily influenced by East Slavic folklore, it is nonetheless a sophisticated literary work. Its rhythmical prose approaches poetry in the density of its imagery and the beauty of its sound patterns. The images are taken mainly from nature and Slavic mythology. A solar eclipse, the calls of birds of omen, and creatures of myth (the Div) foreshadow Igor’s defeat on the third day of battle. Trees and grass droop in sorrow for human disaster.
The technique is that of mosaic, of sparkling pieces juxtaposed to create a brilliant whole. Scenes and speeches shift with hardly any explicit transitions. To understand the message requires paying strict attention to juxtaposition. For example, the magic of Vseslav followed immediately by the magic of Yaroslavna and the apparent sorcery of Igor.
Very few Christian motifs appear; those that do are primarily toward the close. Instead, there are the frequent mentions of pagan gods and pre-Christian mythology. Even so, the Lay should not be considered a neo- pagan work; rather its bard seems to use this imagery to create an aura of olden times, the time of the grandfathers and their bard, Boyan. The principle of two historical levels, repeatedly invoked, serve the purpose of creating the necessary epic distance impossible for recent events by themselves, and also sets up a central theme: The princes of today should emulate the great deeds of their forefathers while avoiding the mistakes. Extolling Igor and his companions as heroes, the bard, mostly through the central speech of Grand Prince Svyatoslav, also calls for replacing their drive for personal glory with a new ethic of common defense.
The Lay was first published in 1800, reportedly from a sole surviving North Russian copy of the fifteenth or sixteenth century acquired by Count Alexei Musin-Pushkin. The supposed loss of the manuscript in the fire of Moscow in 1812 has made it possible for some skeptics over the years
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to challenge the work’s authenticity, speculating that it was a fabrication of the sixteenth century (Alexander Zimin) or even the 1790s (Andr?ea Ma-zon). Up to a point, this has been a classic confrontation of historians and philologists, each group claiming priority for its own method and viewpoint. Much depends on how one views its relationship with Zadonshchina, which clearly bears some genetic connection to it, almost certainly as a later imitation of the Lay.
Despite the unproven doubts and suspicions of a few, the Slovo o polku Igoreve, in its language, imagery, style, and themes, is perfectly compatible with the late twelfth century, as was demonstrated by leading scholars such as Roman Jakobson, Dmitry Likhachev, Varvara Adrianova-Peretts, and many others. It remains one of the masterpieces of all East Slavic literature. See also: FOLKLORE; ZADONSHCHINA
Zenkovsky, Serge A., tr. and ed. (1974). Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, 2nd ed. rev. New York: Dutton.
NORMAN W. INGHAM
The Lazarev Institute (Lazarevskii institut vos-tochnykh iazykov) was founded in Moscow in 1815 by the wealthy Armenian Lazarev (Lazarian) family primarily as a school for their children. In 1827 the school was named the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages (Oriental in the nineteenth-century sense, including the Middle East and Northern Africa) by the State and placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Education. For the next twenty years the Lazarev Institute functioned as a special gymnasium that offered language courses in Armenian, Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, in addition to its regular curriculum in Russian. The student body was composed mostly of Armenian and Russian boys aged ten to fourteen. In 1844 there were 105 students: seventy-three Armenians, thirty Russians, and two others. In 1848 the Institute was upgraded to a lyceum and offered classes in the aforementioned languages for the upper grades. The Institute trained teachers for Armenian schools, Armenian priests, and, most importantly, Russian civil servants and interpreters. The government, responding to the importance of the Institute’s role in preparing men to administer the diverse peoples of the Caucasus, funded and expanded the program. Many Armenian professionals and Russian scholars specializing in Transcaucasia received their education at the Lazarev Institute. In 1851 Armenians, Georgians, and even a few Muslims from Transcaucasia
