NATASHA

end. Vereshchagin travelled first to India, where he felt, as he wrote to tell Stasov, 'that something draws me ever farther to the East'. Then he trekked through the Himalayas, pointing out in sketches which he sent back to his friend 'the architectural similarities between Tibet and ancient Rus'.¹³⁷ Stasov was forbidden to display these sketches in the public library of St Petersburg (even though he was its chief librarian).¹³⁸ Under pressure from the right-wing press, a warrant for the arrest of the exiled painter was despatched to the border with Mongolia.¹³⁹ The warrant was issued from the very building where Vereshchagin's paintings were displayed, until they were purchased by Tretiakov (no academy would accept them). Banned for twenty

years from his native land, Vereshchagin spent the remainder of his life in western Europe, where his paintings were acclaimed. But he always longed to return to the East, and he finally did so in 1904, when Admiral Makarov invited him to join the fleet as an artist during the war against Japan. He was killed three months later on the Petropav-lovsk when a bomb explosion sank the ship, drowning all on board.

In Russia's educated circles the military conquest of the Central Asian steppe produced two opposing reactions. The first was the sort of imperialist attitude which Vereshchagin's paintings had done so much to offend. It was based on a sense of racial superiority to the Asiatic tribes, and at the same time a fear of those same tribes, a fear of being swamped by the 'yellow peril' which reached fever pitch in the war against Japan. The second reaction was no less imperialist but it justified the empire's eastern mission on the questionable grounds that Russia's cultural homeland was on the Eurasian steppe. By marching into Asia, the Russians were returning to their ancient home. This rationale was first advanced in 1840 by the orientalist Grigoriev. 'Who is closer to Asia than we are?' Grigoriev had asked. 'Which of the European races retained more of the Asian element than the Slavic races did, the last of the great European peoples to leave their ancient homeland in Asia?' It was 'Providence that had called upon the Russians to reclaim the Asian steppe'; and because of 'our close relations with the Asiatic world', this was to be a peaceful process of 'reunion with our primeval brothers', rather than the subjugation of a foreign race.¹⁴⁰ During the campaign in Central Asia the same thesis was advanced. The Slavs were returning to their 'prehistoric home', argued Colonel Veniukov, a geographer in Kaufman's army, for 'our ancestors had lived by the Indus and the Oxus before they were displaced by the Mongol hordes'. Veniukov maintained that Central Asia should be settled by the Russians. The Russian settlers should be encouraged to intermarry with the Muslim tribes to regenerate the 'Turanian' race that had once lived on the Eurasian steppe. In this way the empire would expand on the 'Russian principle' of 'peaceful evolution and assimilation' rather than by conquest and by racial segregation, as in the empires of the European states.¹⁴¹

The idea that Russia had a cultural and historic claim in Asia became a founding myth of the empire. During the construction of the

FOLKLORE FANTASIES. The Rite of Spring (1913): the original score by Igor Stravinsky. Below: Viktor Vasnetsov: set design for Mamontov's production of Rumsky-Korsakov's opera The Snow Maiden (Abramtsevo, 1881). Vasnetsov's designs, with their folk-like use of colour, became a visual model for the Ballets Russes and primitivist painters such as Goncharova, Malevich and Chagall.

SCYTHIAN RUSSI A. The Rite of Spring was conceived by Nikolai Roerich

as the re-enactment of an ancient ('Scythian') ritual of human sacrifice. A trained

archaeologist, Roerich designed the sets and costumes of The Rite of Spring. These were

reproduced by the Joffrey Ballet for its revival of the original ballet in 1987 (above).

The rhythm of the music and the choreography emphasized the dancers' weight and

immobility, a sense conveyed by Roerich in his many paintings of Scythian Russia.

Below: Roerich: The Idols (1901).

Roerich: costume designs for The Snow Maiden (Chicago, 1921). A disciple

ofStasov, Roerich believed in the Asiatic origins of Russian folk culture, as

suggested hereby the heavy jewellery and the Tatar-like headgear.

PAGAN RUSSIA. Vastly Kandinsky: Motley Life (1907). Ostensibly a Russian-Christian scene, the painting is filled with pagan symbols from the Komi region, which Kandinsky had explored as an anthropologist. Below: Kandinsky: All Saints II (1911) tells the story of the confrontation between St Stephan and the Komi shaman Pam. Like

Pam (seen escaping persecution in a boat) the two saints (standing on the rock) wear sorcerer's caps but they also have halos to symbolize the fusion of the Christian and the

pagan traditions.

THE ARTIST

AS SHAMAN. Left: Kandinsky: Oval No. 2 (1925). The oval shapes and hieroglyphia of Kandinsky's abstract paintings were largely copied from the symbols he had seen on the drums of Siberian shamans. A hooked curve and line symbolized a horse, circles symbolized the sun and moon, while beaks and eyes were meant to represent the birdlike headdress worn by many shamans for their dance rituals (below).

RUSSIA AND THE ASIATIC STEPPE. Isaak Levitan:

Vladimirka (1892). This was the road on which Russia's convicts travelled

to their penal exile in Siberia. Below: Vasily Vereshchagin: Surprise Attack

(1871). An official war artist with Russia's army on the Turkestan

campaign, Vereshchagin's canvases were perceived as an attack on the

savage Russian violence against the Asian tribes.

HORSES AND APOCALYPSE. Prom Pushkin's Bronze Horseman, the

horse became the great poetic metaphor of Russia's destiny and a symbol of apocalypse, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin: Bathing the Red Horse (1912), a work strongly influenced by the Russian icon tradition. Below: Kazimir Malevich: Red Cavalry (1930).

Nathan Altman: Portrait of Anna Akhmatova (1914).

Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s, Prince Ukhtomsky, the press baron and adviser to the young Tsar Nicholas