A history of Russia

? you Teachers of Christendom! Rome fell away long ago and lies prostrate, and the Poles fell in the like ruin with her, being to the end the enemies of the Christian. And among you orthodoxy is of mongrel breed; and no wonder - if by the violence of the Turkish Mahound you have become impotent, and henceforth it is you who should come to us to learn. By the gift of God among us there is autocracy; till the time of Nikon, the apostate, in our Russia under our pious princes and tsars the orthodox faith was pure and undefiled, and in the Church was no sedition.

AVVAKUM (J. HARRISON'S AND H. MIRRLEES's TRANSLATION)

Muscovy appeared strange to foreigners. Visitors from the West, such as Guy de Miege, secretary to the embassy sent to Alexis by Charles II of England, as well as many others, described it as something of a magic world: weird, sumptuous, colorful, unlike anything they had ever seen, and utterly barbarian. The church of St. Basil the Blessed, one might add, continues

to produce a similar impression on many European and American visitors. Foreign emissaries noticed the rich costumes, especially the furs, the striking grey beards, the elaborate court ceremonial, the lavish banquets and the tremendous drinking. They added, however, that the state dinners, with their endless courses, proved deficient in plates and silver and that the wise grey beards as a rule said nothing. Of more importance were the fundamental characteristics of Muscovy that the visitors quickly discovered: the enormous power and authority of the tsar and the extreme centralization which required that even insignificant matters be referred for decision to high officials. Other interesting facts were reported; however, to sum up, what they saw was an intricate, cohesive, and well- organized society, but one which they found uncongenial and very odd. Indeed, we find references to the effect that Turkey stood closer to the West than Muscovy and sincere doubts as to whether the Muscovites were really Christians.

The view of Muscovy as a strange world apart, a view shared by foreign travelers with such diverse later groups as the Slavophiles and certain Polish historians, contains some truth. Muscovite Russia existed in relative isolation by contrast, for example, with Kievan Russia. Moreover, it developed a distinctive culture based on religion and ritualism and assumed a tone of self-righteousness and suspicion toward any outside influence. This peculiar and parochial culture, it must be added, apparently had a great hold on the people. But the case should not be overstated. In reality the main elements of Muscovite culture - religion, language, law, and others - served as links to the outside world. In terms of time, too, Muscovy represented not simply a self-contained culture, but the transition from appanage Russia to the Russian Empire. And, after all, it was the Muscovites themselves, led by Peter the Great, who transformed their country and culture - the fairy land and at times the nightmare of Western travelers - into one of the great states of modern Europe.

Religion and Church. The Schism

Religion occupied a central position in Muscovite Russia and reflected the principal aspects and problems of Muscovite development: the growth and consolidation of the state; ritualism and conservatism; parochialism and the belonging to a larger world; ignorant, self-satisfied pride and the recognition of the need for reform. As already mentioned, the expansion and strengthening of the Muscovite state found a parallel in the evolution of the Church in Muscovy. The Church councils of 1547, 1549, 1551, and 1554 strove to improve ecclesiastical organization and practices and eliminate various abuses. In 1547 twenty-two Russians were canonized, and in 1549 seventeen more. The resulting consolidated national pantheon of saints represented a religious counterpart to the political unification. The

Hundred-Chapter Council of 1551 dealt, as its name indicates, with many matters in the life of the Church. The council of 1554 condemned certain Russian heretics and heresies which had roots either in Protestantism or in the teachings of the non-possessors. None of them, it might be noted, gained popular support.

The rising stature of the Russian Church at a time when many other Orthodox Churches, including the patriarchate of Constantinople itself, fell under the sway of the Moslem Turks increased Muscovite confidence and pride. References to the holy Russian land, to Holy Russia, date from the second half of the sixteenth century. In 1589, as we know, Muscovy obtained its own patriarch. Some later incumbents of this position, such as Hermogen, Philaret, and Nikon, were to play different but major roles in Russian history. The upgrading of numerous Muscovite sees after the establishment of the patriarchate was followed by a further expansion of the Church when Ukraine, which included the ancient metropolitanate of Kiev and several other dioceses, joined Moscow in 1654. It should be added that the Church, especially the monasteries, enjoyed enormous wealth in land and other possessions in spite of the repeated efforts of the government to curb its holdings and particularly to prevent its encroachments on the gentry.

The great split or schism in the seventeenth century - raskol in Russian - revealed serious weaknesses in the apparently mighty and monolithic Muscovite Church. Over a long period of time, errors in translation from the Greek and other mistakes had crept into some Muscovite religious texts and rituals. Tsar Michael had already established a commission to study the matter and make the necessary corrections. Some visiting Orthodox dignitaries also urged reform. But in the face of general ignorance, inertia, and opposition little was done until Nikon became patriarch in 1652. The new head of the Church proceeded to act in his usual determined manner which before long became a drastic manner. The reign of Tsar Alexis was witnessing a religious and moral revival in the Church, an effort to improve the performance of the clergy and to attach a higher spiritual tone and greater decorum to various ecclesiastical functions. Yet, once Nikon introduced the issue of corrections, many leaders of this revival, such as Stephen Vonifatiev, Ivan Neronov, and the celebrated Archpriest Avvakum, or Habakkuk, turned against him. In 1653 they accused him of heresy.

To defeat the opposition, the patriarch proceeded to obtain the highest possible authority and support for his reforms: in 1654 a Russian Church council endorsed the verification of all religious texts; next, in response to inquiries from the Russian Church, the patriarch of Constantinople called a council that added its sanction to Nikon's reforms; a monk was sent to bring five hundred religious texts from Mount Athos and the Orthodox East, while many others arrived from the patriarchs of Antioch and Alex-

andria; a committee of learned Kievan monks and Greeks was set up to do the collating and correcting; another Russian Church council in 1656 also supported Nikon's undertaking. Nikon widened the scope of the reform to include the ritual in addition to texts, introducing in particular the sign of the cross in the Greek manner with three rather than two fingers. But the patriarch's opponents refused to accept all the high authorities brought to bear against them and stood simply on the Muscovite precedent - to keep everything as their fathers and grandfathers had it. They found encouragement in Nikon's break with the tsar in 1658 and in the ineffectiveness of the cleric who replaced him at the head of the Church. To settle matters once and for all, a Russian Church council was held in 1666 and another Church council, attended by the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, who also represented those of Constantinople and Jerusalem, convened later that year and continued in 1667, in Moscow. This great council, which deposed Nikon for his bid for supreme political power, considered the issue of his reforms, listened to the dissenters, and in the end completely endorsed the changes. The opponents had to submit or defy the Church openly.

It is remarkable that, although no dogmatic or doctrinal differences were involved, priests and laymen in considerable numbers refused to obey ecclesiastical authorities, even though the latter received the full support of the state. The raskol began in earnest. The Old Believers or Old Ritualists - starovery or staroobriadtsy - rejected the new sign of the cross, the corrected spelling of the name of Jesus, the tripling instead of the doubling of the 'Hallelujah,' and other similar emendations, and hence rejected the Church. Persecution of the Old Believers was soon widespread. Awakum himself - whose stunning autobiography represents the greatest document of Old Belief and one of the great documents of human faith - perished at the stake in 1682. The Solovetskii Monastery in the far north had to be captured by a siege that lasted from 1668 to 1676. Apocalyptic views prevailed among the early Old Believers, who saw in the Church reform the end of the world, and in Nikon the Antichrist. It has been estimated that between 1672 and 1691 over twenty thousand of them burned themselves alive in thirty-seven known communal conflagrations.

Yet, surprisingly, the Old Belief survived. Reorganized in the eighteenth century by a number of able leaders, especially by the Denisov brothers, Andrew and Simeon, it claimed the allegiance of millions of Russians up to the Revolution of 1917 and after. It exists today. With no canonical foundation and no independent theology to speak of, the Old Belief divided again and again, but it never disappeared. The main cleavage came to be between the