A history of Russia

the prototype for the cathedral by the same name in the Moscow Kremlin, and that of St. Dmitrii; the Cathedral of St. George in Iuriev Polskii, with its marked native characteristics; and the church of the Intercession of Our Lady on the Nerl river, near Vladimir, which has often been cited as the highest achievement of ancient Russian architecture. Built in 1166-71 and representing a rectangle with three apses and a single cupola, it has attracted unstinting praise for harmony of design and grace of form and decoration.

Other forms of art also flourished in Kievan Russia, especially in connection with the churches. Mosaics and frescoes richly adorned St. Sophia in Kiev and other cathedrals and churches in the land. Icon-painting too came to Russia with Christianity from Byzantium. Although the Byzantine tradition dominated all these branches of art, and although many masters practicing in Russia came from Byzantium or the Balkans, a Russian school began gradually to emerge. It was to have a great future, especially in icon-painting, in which St. Alipii of the Monastery of the Caves and other Kievan pioneers started what has often been considered the most remarkable artistic development in Russian history. Fine Kievan work in illumination and miniatures in general, as well as in different decorative arts, has also come down to our time. By contrast, because of the negative attitude of the Eastern Church, sculpture proper was banned from the churches, the Russians and other Orthodox peoples being limited to miniature and relief sculpture. Reliefs, however, did develop, reaching the high point in the Cathedral of St. Dmitrii in Vladimir, which has more than a thousand relief pieces, and in the cathedral in Iuriev Polskii. Popular entertainment, combining music and elementary theater, was provided by traveling performers, the sko-morokhi, whom the church tried continuously to suppress as immoral and as remnants of paganism.

Education. Concluding Remarks

The scope and level of education in Kievan Russia remain controversial subjects, beclouded by unmeasured praise and excessive blame. On the positive side, it seems obvious that the Kievan culture outlined above could not have developed without an educated layer of society. Moreover, as Kliuchevsky, Chizhevsky, and others have emphasized, Kievan sources, such as the Primary Chronicle and Vladimir Monomakh's Testament, express a very high regard for learning. As to specific information, we have scattered reports of schools in Kiev and other towns, of monasteries fostering learning and the arts, and of princes who knew foreign languages, collected books, patronized scholars, and generally supported education and culture. Beyond that, recent Soviet discoveries centering on Novgorod indicate a considerable spread of literacy among artisans and other broad layers of townspeople, and even to some extent among the peasants in the countryside. Still it would appear that the bulk of the Kievan population, in particular the rural masses, remained illiterate and ignorant.

Even a brief account of Kievan culture indicates the variety of foreign influences which it experienced and their importance for its evolution. First and foremost stands Byzantium, but it should not obscure other significant contributions. The complexity of the Kievan cultural heritage would become even more apparent had we time to discuss, for example, the links between the Kievan and the Iranian epic, the musical scales of the East Slavs and of certain Turkic tribes, or the development of ornamentation in Kiev with its Scythian, Byzantine, and Islamic motifs. In general, these influences stimulated, rather than stifled, native growth - or even made it possible. Kievan Russia had the good fortune of being situated on the crossroads, not the periphery, of culture.

Perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on the destruction of Kievan civilization and the loss of its unique qualities. True, Kievan Russia, like other societies, went down never to reappear. But it left a rich legacy of social and political institutions, of religion, language, and culture that we shall meet again and again as we study the history of the Russians in the long centuries that followed their brilliant debut on the world scene.

Part III: APPANAGE RUSSIA

VII

APPANAGE RUSSIA: INTRODUCTION

The grass bends in sorrow, and the tree is bowed down to earth by woe. For already, brethren, a cheerless season has set in: already our strength has been swallowed up by the wilderness… Victory of the princes over the infidels is gone, for now brother said to brother: 'This is mine, and that is mine also,' and the princes began to say of little things, 'Lo! this is a great matter,' and to forge discord against themselves. And on all sides the infidels were victoriously invading the Russian land.

'the lay of the host of igor' (s. cross's translation)

The Kievan legacy stood the Russians in good stead. It included, as has already been noted, a uniform religion, a common language and literature, and, with numerous regional and local modifications, common arts and culture in general. It embraced a similarly rich heritage in the economic, social, and political fields. While the metropolitan in Kiev headed the Church of the entire realm, the grand prince, also in Kiev, occupied the seat of the temporal power of the state. Both offices outlived by centuries the society which had created them and both remained of major significance in Russian history, in spite of a shift in their locale and competition for preference among different branches of the huge princely clan. In a like manner the concept of one common 'Russian land,' so dear to Kievan writers and preachers, stayed in the Russian consciousness. These bonds of unity proved to be of decisive importance in the age of division and defeat which followed the collapse of the Kievan state, in particular during the dark first hundred years following the Mongol conquest, that is, approximately from the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century. In that period the persistence of these bonds ensured the survival of the Russians as a major people, thus making possible their future historical role. The powerful Moscow state which finally emerged on the east European plain looked, and often was, strikingly different from its Kievan predecessor. Yet, for the historian in any case, Muscovite Russia remains linked to Kievan Russia in many essential, as well as less essential, ways. And it affirmed and treasured at least a part of its Kievan inheritance.

The twin terrors of Kievan Russia, internal division and invasion from abroad, prevailed in the age which followed the collapse of the Kievan state.

The new period has been named after the udel, or appanage, the separate holding of an individual prince. And indeed appanages proliferated at that time. Typically, in his will a ruler would divide his principality among his sons, thus creating with a single act several new political entities. Subdivision followed upon subdivision, destroying the tenuous political unity of the land. As legal historians have emphasized, private law came to the fore at the expense of public law. The political life of the period corresponded to - some would say was determined by - the economic, which was dominated by agriculture and local consumption. Much Kievan trade, and in general a part of the variety and richness of the economy of Kievan Russia, disappeared.

The parceling of Russia in the appanage period combined with population shifts, a political, social, and economic regrouping, and even the emergence of new peoples. These processes began long before the final fall of Kiev, on the whole developing gradually. But their total impact on Russian history may well be considered revolutionary. As the struggle against the inhabitants of the steppe became more exhausting and as the fortunes of Kiev declined, migrants moved from the south to the southwest, the west, the north, and especially the northeast. The final terrible Mongol devastation of Kiev itself and southern Russia only helped to emphasize this development. The areas which gained in relative importance included Galicia and Volynia in the southwest, the Smolensk and Polotsk territories in the west, Novgorod with its huge holdings in the north, as well as the principalities of the northeast, notably Rostov, Suzdal, Vladimir, and eventually Moscow. Population movements led to a colonization of vast lands in the north and northeast of European Russia, although there too the continuity with the Kievan period persisted, for the new expansion radiated from such old Kievan centers as Novgorod, Rostov, and Suzdal.

Of special significance was the linguistic and ethnic differentiation of the Kievan Russians into three peoples: the Great Russians, usually referred to simply as Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Belorussians or White Russians. While certain differences among these groups go far back, the ultimate split was in part caused by the collapse of the Kievan state and the subsequent history of its population, in particular by the fact that southwestern and