ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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home upon the signing of a peace treaty with the enemy belligerent. There were debt slaves, who had defaulted on a loan which could be “worked off” at the rate of 5 rubles per year by an adult male, 2.50 rubles per year by an adult female, and 2 rubles per year by a child over ten. There were indentured slaves, who agreed to work for a term in exchange for cash, training, and often a promise that the owner would marry them off before the end of the term. Those who married slaves were themselves enslaved, as were those who worked for someone else for over three months. There were hereditary slaves, those born to slaves and their offspring. The very complex practices of the Slavery Chancellery were codified into chapter 20 (119 articles) of the Law Code of 1649.
Slavery had a profound impact on the institution of serfdom which borrowed norms from slavery. Farming slaves were converted into taxpaying serfs in 1679. Household slaves (the vast majority of all slaves) were converted into house serfs by the poll tax in 1721. After 1721 serfdom increasingly took on the appearance of slavery until 1861. See also: BIRCHBARK CHARTERS; EMANCIPATION ACT; EN-SERFMENT; FEUDALISM; GOLDEN HORDE; KIEVAN RUS; LABOR; LAW CODE OF 1649; MUSCOVY SERFDOM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hellie, Richard. (1982). Slavery in Russia., 1450-1725. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hellie, Richard, ed. and tr. (1988). The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Irvine, CA: Charles Schlacks. Patterson, Orlando. (1982). Slavery and Social Death. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Titled in its first fifty years variously as “Greek School,” “Ancient and Modern Greek School,” “Greco-Slavic School,” “Slavo-Latin School,” and “Greco-Latin School,” the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy was the first formal educational institution in Russian history. Established in 1685, the Academy became the breeding ground for many secular and ecclesiastical collaborators of Tsar Peter I. Its founders and first teachers were the Greek brothers Ioannikios and Sophronios Leichoudes. From its inception, the Academy followed the well-established
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lines of the curriculum and formal structure of contemporary Jesuit colleges. The Leichoudes divided the curriculum into two parts: The first part included grammar, poetics and rhetoric; the second comprised philosophy (including logic) and theology. The grammar classes were divided into three levels: elementary, middle, and higher. The middle and higher levels were themselves divided into sub-levels. Instruction was in Greek and Latin, with an attached school that provided basic literacy in Church Slavonic. The Leichoudes authored their own textbooks, largely adapted from contemporary Jesuit manuals. As in Jesuit colleges, the method of instruction included direct exposure to ancient Greek and Latin literary and philosophical texts, as well as an abundance of practical exercises. Student work included memorization, competitive exercises, declamations, and disputations, as well as parsing and theme writing. On important feast days, students exhibited their skills and knowledge in orations before the Patriarch of Moscow or royal and aristocratic individuals.
Students were both clergy and laymen, and came from various social and ethnic backgrounds, from some of Russia’s top princely scions and members of the Patriarch’s court, down to children of lowly servants in monasteries, and included Greeks and even a baptized Tatar. Several of these students made their careers in important diplomatic, administrative, and ecclesiastical positions during Peter I’s reign.
In 1701 the Academy was reorganized by decree of Tsar Peter I and staffed with Ukrainian and Belorussian teachers educated at the Kiev Mohylan Academy. Until the end of Peter’s reign, the student body betrays a slight “plebeianization”: Fewer members of the top aristocratic families attended classes there. In addition, many more of the students were clergymen. The curriculum retained the same scholastic content, but the language of instruction now was exclusively Latin.
Reorganized in 1775 under the supervision of Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (in office, 1775-1812), the Academy expanded its curriculum to offer classes in church history, canon law, Greek, and Hebrew. Finally, in 1814, the Academy was transferred to the Trinity St. Sergius Monastery and was restructured into the Moscow Theological Seminary. See also: EDUCATION; LEICHOUDES, IOANNIKIOS AND SOPHRONIOS; PETER I; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Chrissidis, Nikolaos A. (2000). “Creating the New Educated Elite: Learning and Faith in Moscow’s Slavo- Greco-Latin Academy, 1685-1694.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
The origins of Slavophilism can be traced back to the ideas of thinkers such as Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov, Alexander Radishchev, Poshkov, Nikolai Novikov, and Nikolai Karamzin, all of whom contrasted ancient pre-Petrine Russia with the modern post-Petrine embodiment, stressing the uniqueness of Russian traditions, norms, and ideas. Most exponents of this school of thought were of noble birth, and many held government posts, so they were quite familiar with the workings of the tsarist autocracy. They were prominent during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855) and emerged after the Decembrist uprising of 1825 and the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe.
Peter Chaadayev’s (1794-1856) ideas in the Philosophical Letter (1836) and other works acted as a catalyst for the emergence of Slavophile ideology. Chaadayev gave special emphasis to the need for Russia to link up with Europe and the Roman Catholic Church. His views on religion, nationality, tradition, and culture stimulated the famous Slavophile-Westerner debate.
Building on Chaadayev’s legacy, the Slavophiles developed three main beliefs: samobytnost (originality), the importance of the Orthodox Church, and a rejection of the ideas of Peter the Great and his followers. In addition, they promoted respect for the rule of law, opposed any restriction on the powers of the tsar, and advocated freedom of the individual in terms of speech, thought, and conduct.
The Slavophiles believed that Russian civilization was unique and superior to Western culture because it was based on such institutions as the Orthodox Church, the village community, or mir, and the ancient popular assembly, the zemsky sobor. They supported the idea of autocracy and opposed political participation, but some also favored the emancipation of serfs and freedom of speech and press. Alexander II’s reforms achieved some of these goals. Over time, however, some Slavophiles became
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
increasingly nationalistic, many ardently supporting Panslavism after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1854-1856). However, these thinkers were not united, except insofar as they were radically opposed to the Westerners, and individually their ideas differed.
The Slavophiles, by and large, can be grouped into three categories: classical, moderate, and radical. Like their opponents, the Westerners, they had a particular view of Russia’s history, language, and culture and hence a certain vision of Russia’s future, especially its relations with the West. Perhaps their greatest concern, from the 1830s onwards, was that Russia might follow the Western road of development. They were vehemently opposed to this, arguing that Russia must return to its own roots and draw upon its own strengths.
Most Slavophiles opposed the reforms introduced by Peter the Great on the grounds that they had destroyed Russian tradition by allowing alien Western ideas (such as the French and German languages) to be imported into Russia. They also maintained that Russia had paid too high a price to become a major European power, namely, moral degradation. Furthermore, the bureaucracy established by Peter the Great was a source of moral corruption, because the Table of Ranks stimulated personal ambition and subordinated the nobility to the bureaucracy. These views were in many ways shaped by the social and political conditions that prevailed during the reign of Nicholas I
