The conventional view of nationalism is that it was a product of mass literacy and the modern state, underpinned by schoolbooks and Tombs of the Unknown Soldier. Recent years have seen challenges to this historiographic consensus at both a general level (e.g. Azar Gat’s Nations), and with respect to specific peoples (Robert Tomb’s recent The English and Their History comes to mind).
Our latest translation of Russian conservative intellectual Egor Kholmogorov is more than just a Russian contribution to this debate. It makes the much more radical argument that not only was Russia not a laggard in the process of nation-building, as European historiography has long claimed, but was at the very forefront of this process for longer than a millennium, from Novgorod’s implicit devotion to the Russian commonweal in the 13th century to Russia’s defense of a “Europe of Fatherlands” against the globalist tide of national annihilation today.
Mammoths and Patriots on the Russian Plain
A Brief History of Russian National Sentiment
by Egor Kholmogorov
Translated by Fluctuarius Argenteus
Original: https://um.plus/2016/04/09/rossiya-rodina-mamontov-i-patriotov/
Sometimes I hear that saying “patriotism as a national idea” is akin to saying that water is wet. However, this argument comes from people with a very superficial understanding of how difficult it is to be patriot given that, unlike a comfortable cosmopolitanism, patriotism is the path of struggle. Also, they fail to realize how important the contribution of Russia and Russian culture is to shaping the very phenomenon of a patriotic consciousness in the modern world. The Russians developed patriotism as a national idea far earlier than most European nations. And it is Russia that keeps its faith in a “Europe of Fatherlands” or a “World of Fatherlands” in today’s age of identity erasure.
“Russia is the Motherland of elephants.” This zinger, coined as a mockery of Russian patriotism [1], is, however, entirely true, with a slight correction: Russia is the Motherland of mammoths. It is thanks to the hunt of those majestic beasts that the first humans on the Russian Plain, then half-concealed by the Great Glacier, created a culture highly developed for its time. Nowadays, archaeologists even speak of a “mammoth hunter civilization.”
Indeed, even nowadays the remains of long-term housing built out of mammoth ivory, exhibited at the museum of Kostenki village, Voronezh Oblast, are no less amazing than some stone ruins from Oriental or European antiquity. Overall, it seems that the mammoth joke is on the jokers.
With the same minor correction, one can claim that Russia is the Motherland of patriotism. Of course, patriotism is a word of Latin roots, also hearkening back to Greek. Of course, the cult of pride for one’s country, its history and its heroes, was developed in Greece and Rome, and new European nations learned this art from the ancients (for example, Old Rus’ via Byzantium).
But there are different kinds of patriotism. “The thrust of the Greek notion of freedom was directed at their closest neighbors: being free meant not being dependent on them”, as noted by Robert Wipper (1859 – 1954), one of our foremost Classical scholars. Only two or three times out of the entirety of Hellenic history the Greeks showed a capacity for working together and for a Pan-Hellenic patriotism, but even 300 Spartans, defending a bottleneck that led to the heart of Greece, believed they were fighting for “Laconic law.” The Greeks saw Hellas not as a common home country but as a common space for competing hometowns, peaceful if possible (at the Olympic Games).
Roman patriotism was more similar to ours. It was a not solely urban but also imperial patriotism, that of a city turned superpower. The history of a city that defended its freedom from foreign invaders and domestic tyrants, vanquished all of its neighbors, and transformed into a worldwide Empire formed the archetype of a patriotic myth for future generations.
The Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg houses a sculpture by Vasily Demut-Malinovsky (1776 – 1846) named The Russian Scaevola. A very Classical-looking Russian peasant with an axe is chopping off his arm bearing a brand of the letter N, meaning “Napoleon.” This patriotic legend was born as an imitation of a celebrated Roman historical myth. A young Roman patrician named Gaius Mucius, nicknamed Scaevola (“Left-Handed”), attempted to assassinate Porsenna, the Etruscan king. When he was caught and subjected to torture, he placed his right hand on a brazier and endured the pain until it became completely charred. Porcenna, terrified by the Roman’s defiant fortitude, sued for peace with his city.
However, it was the city that formed the nucleus of Roman patriotism. If Russia truly were “Muscovy”, if Moscow had been seen as a creator of a new world and not as a unifier of Russian lands, then we could have developed a Roman-styled urban patriotism.
But Russian patriotism existed long before the rise of Moscow, and had at its forefront not the City, but the Land. Russian patriotic consciousness is the oldest national consciousness among European peoples. There is no France yet, only a “Western Frankia.” There is no Germany yet, just the Holy Roman Empire, which would only have the “of the Germanic nation” appended to its name in 1512. England, only recently under the rule of Danish kings and separated into territories of Danelaw and Saxon Law, has fallen under the sway of new conquerors, the haughty Normans marked by both Frankish arrogance and Norse ruthlessness. Meanwhile, a Russian chronicler is already penning the title of his work containing the question: “From whence came the Russian Land?” [2]
150 years before that, Russian envoys already come to Constantinople bearing the words, “We are of Russian kindred”, and they come, as the chronicle puts it, “from the great Russian prince, and all other princes, and all people of the Russian land.” The oldest historical document mentioning the Russians, the Annales Bertiniani from the year 838, already contains this “Russian kindred” formula (id est gentem suam, Rhos vocari dicebant). The chronicler still remembers the differences between Polans, Drevlians, and Vyatichi [3], he knows that Russian princes united Varangians and Slavs, but the unity of this society named “Rus’” seems to him indisputable and beyond all doubt. The first Russian chronicler deliberately constructs the image of Russian history as that of a unified people creating a unified country and subject to a unified authority. The same is discussed by Hilarion of Kiev (11th century) in his Sermon on Law and Grace with regards to Prince Vladimir: “For he was the sole ruler of his land, bringing all neighboring countries under his sway, some of them by peace, and the unruly ones by the sword.”
Those three elements – Land, People, Empire – are, in their unity, the true formula of Russian patriotism, inherited by Russia from the times when Western European peoples had no patriotic consciousness to speak of. Only in 1214, when French king Philip II Augustus crushed the joint forces of the Holy Roman Empire and England near Bouvines, can we discover a semblance of French national pride. Only three decades later, an anonymous Russian scribes writes the Lay of the Ruin of the Russian Land, a haunting patriotic manifesto lamenting the destruction of Rus’ in the flames of the Mongol invasion.
Due to the vagaries of history, the tale of the destruction per se is not extant [4], yet we can still read the preamble, a veritable hymn to old pre-Mongol Rus’ demonstrating the height of its patriotic sentiment. The Lay is a love-letter to the Russian Land, a paean to its beauty and wealth. In my opinion, the text should be learned by heart as a part of school curriculum.
“Oh Russian Land, bright with brightness and adorned with adornments! Many are thy beauties: thou art adorned by many lakes, rivers and wells famed in thy lands, mountains, steep hills, tall oak woods, clean fields, marvellous beasts, diverse birds, countless great cities, marvellous villages, vineries of monasteries, houses of the Lord and redoubtable princes, honest boyars, noblemen aplenty. The Russian Land is filled with everything, oh true Christian faith!”
But it is not just the beauty of nature of Rus’ that he relishes; it is also its might, its dominion over other nations and the prestige of its rulers:
“From here to Hungarians and Poles and Czechs, from Czechs to Yotvingians [5], from Yotvingians to Lithuanians to Germans, from Germans to Karelians, from Karelians to Ustyug [6], where live the pagan Toymichi [7], and beyond the Breathing Sea [8], from the sea to Bulgars, from Bulgars to Burtasians [9], from Burtasians to Cheremis [10], from Cheremis to Mordva [11] – everything did the Lord bring under the sway of Christian people. The pagan lands submitted to the Grand Prince Vsevolod [12], and his father Yuri, prince of Kiev [13], and his grandfather Vladimir Monomakh [14], with whose name the Polovtsy [15] scared their children in their cradles. And Lithuanians dared not crawl out of their swamps, and Hungarians fortified their stone cities with iron gates so that the great Vladimir would not strike at them, and the Germans rejoiced, living far away beyond the Blue Sea [16]”
This common national memory, the idea of the Russian Land as a unity was the force that kept Russia from disintegration and destruction during the years of the Mongol yoke. Serapion, Bishop of Vladimir (? – 1275), lamented that “our majesty is brought to the ground, our beauty is dead, our wealth profits others, our works inherited by pagans, our land is the legacy of outlanders.” This, by the way, is the best answer of a contemporary of the Mongol invasion to those that today would present this incursion from the East as a time of friendship and cooperation.
“We cannot relish our own bread.” This formula of Serapion’s is a precise description of centuries-long Russian woes that intensified in the years of the Horde: we cannot have the joy of relishing our bread, it is either won with blood and tears, or stolen by foreign invaders, or the harvest fails. A simple Russian dream: to relish our own bread.
Nevertheless, that dream required fighting for. The Russians afforded particular reverence to those that would fight for Rus’, like Saint Alexander Nevsky. For Novgorod, he was both protector and hangman when he forced a rich mercantile city untouched by the Mongol invasion to pay the tribute imposed by the Horde. This was done to relieve the burden of other Russian lands, pillaged and impoverished. He chopped heads off, drowned peolpe, gouged eyes out; he should have been remembered as a tyrant. Yet here are the words of a Novgorod chronicler in the First Novgorod Chronicle (oldest recension) regarding the prince’s passing: “Merciful Lord, reveal Thy Countenance to him in the ages to come, for he labored much for the sake of Novgorod and the whole of Russian Land.”
“For the whole of Russian Land”, words written in Novgorod, a city oftentimes presented today as something of an independent state forcefully subjugated by Muscovy. However, in spite of all trade ties to the West, Novgorodians gave priority to a Pan-Russian patriotic sentiment, even judging the prince that had harshly mistreated them from the viewpoint of an integral Russian cause, and not just that of their city.
That is the ideological foundation of the unified Russian state, the great Russia, which appeared not with a delay compared to Western Europe, but with a lead. Dmitry Likhachov (1906 – 1999) noted in his book Russian Culture of the Period of Russian Nation-State Formation (1946): “The origins of national elements of specific cultures are more or less simultaneous everywhere in Europe, but only in Russia do they receive support in the form of a proper Russian nation-state. That is why the national character of 14-15th century culture of Rus’ is more pronounced than in that of England, France, or Germany of the same period. The unity of the Russian language is much stronger than that of French, English, German, Italian national languages. Russian literature is much more subordinate to the theme of state-building than that of other nations…”
I cannot agree with Lev Gumilyov’s (1912 – 1992) statement claiming that “they came to the Kulikovo Field [17] as men of Moscow, Serpukhov, Rostov, Beloozero, Smolensk, Murom, etc., but returned as Russians.” The desire to frame the great battle as a turning point is understandable, but the warriors came to fight, came as Russians already, not only those from from the Vladimir Principality and its vassals, but also from Lithuanian-held Rus’. They realized quite well that the true Pan-Russian cause was that of Moscow and not Lithuania. Simeon the Proud, the uncle of Dmitry Donskoy, the victor of Kulikovo, already claimed the title “of all Russias” [18], and the Byzantine emperor referred to him in his epistles as riks pasis Rossias, “the king of all Russia.” Therefore, the warriors of Kulikovo were already fighting for Russia and just Moscow.
Thanks to Joan of Arc, the French got the idea that Englishmen have no right to claim La Belle France for themselves. The Hundred Years’ War in general played an enormous part in developing national awareness in European peoples. It would suffice to compare two versions of the same chronicle written by the famous Jean Froissart with a difference of several decades and describing the same events. The first version is steeped in chivalric ideas, the second one is inspired by the concept of nationality. Froissart interprets the same act first as conforming to the concept of honor, then as typical of English or French character.
In spite of this dichotomy, it is hard to imagine a 15th or early 16th-century French or English king justifying his claims to a certain territory with a national principle, not defending his own domain but demanding to cede a different one “because Frenchmen live there.” At the same time, barely freed from the yoke of the Horde, Russia begins an irredentist struggle for Russian lands. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Livonia are seen as thieves of “ancestral lands” inherited by Russian princes from their forefather, Prince Vladimir.
The Papal envoys, while attempting to cajole Vasily III into a war with distant Turkey, got the following reply from the boyars: “The Grand Prince wants his ancestral domain, the Russian Land” (at that particular moment this claim also included Kiev). Those demands were invariably followed by lengthy historical justifications of the rights Russian state that would shock European diplomats.“Russian diplomats skilfully used their historical learning and created a complex theory of Muscovite princely power that elevated the prestige of the Russian monarchy… It was a creative political ideology that directed the politics of the Russian state towards the defence of national interests and culture in the complex milieu of European civilisation”, writes Dmitry Likhachov in National Consciousness of Old Rus’.
At that time Europe was engulfed in wars of religion. The battle of Catholics and Protestants almost succeeded in stamping out the sprouts of nascent national consciousness. Only horror and revulsion at the atrocities inflicted by kin and kith speaking the same language keeps national consciousness alive in spite of religious boundaries. European nations mostly grew out of a rejection of religious schism, and this was a positive and unifying side of European nationalism. But it was also marred by a certain Hellenic particularism, all too often national bigotry was directed at closest neighbors and formed a nation based on this hostility. What are the French without hating Englishmen, Germans, or Spaniards?
Russian national awareness evolved in a different way. It was not directed against a neighbor. Even the attitude towards Poland-Lithuania, in spite of incessant hostilities, never developed into an ethnophobia. If Russophobia is an unfortunate fixture of Polish national awareness, the Russian side of the conflict limited itself to “I’ll have my revenge and then forget.” Russian self-awareness was based on a positive patriotism, on love for one’s own land, people, culture, and ruler. The rejection of others expressed itself not in hatred but in a good-natured gibe similar to the manner in which The Lay of the Ruin describes the neighbors of Rus’.
The “foreign” becomes a threat only if it is injurious and harmful to Russian identity. It is menacing not as an external but as an internal threat, as demonstrated by the Time of Troubles. Russia has no difficulty in repelling invaders but wasted much effort on surpassing internal conflict that almost wrecked the state itself. Ivan Timofeev (ca. 1555 – 1631), one of the most acute observers of the Time of Troubles, saw the root of all evil in an obsession with all things foreign that had engulfed Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov. He chastises the first Russian czar for straying from national identity:
“He slew many nobles of his czardom that were loyal to him, others he exiled into lands of heathen faiths, and instead of them he favored those who had come from foreign lands… That is why we are surprised: even people of moderate reason would have understood that one cannot trust one’s enemies forever. And he, a man of such great wisdom, was laid low by his own weak conscience, willingly putting his head into serpent’s jaws. All enemies that came from other lands would have never defeated him if he hadn’t surrendered himself into their hands. Alas! All of his secrets were in the hands of barbarians, and they did what they pleased with him. I will say nothing more – he was a traitor to himself.”
Timofeev reproaches the common folk as well. “Their tongues grew mute and their mouths were shut with bribery; all of our feelings were weakened by fear” is his description of Boris Godunov’s rise to power, the ascendancy of a man who was seen by many as a criminal and a child-murderer. The same complacence in the face of wickedness at the beginning of the Time of Trouble is lambasted by Avraamy Palitsyn (? – ca. 1625), who speaks of “a mad silence of the entire people.”
The restoration of the country begins with a loud patriotic proclamations: the epistles of Patriarch Hermogenes (ca. 1530 – 1612), calling Russia to resist brigands and invaders; the letters of the Nizhny Novgorod volunteer army [19] calling to “stand united against common enemies and Russian brigands that spill our own blood in the country.” Patriotic rhetoric and patriotic awareness were the remedy that nursed Russia back to health in the moment where its statehood was in tatters. The Chronograph (1617)[20] describes the Council of the Land that elected a new dynasty [21] by painting a picture of national unity: “From the borders to the hinterlands of the Russian land the Orthodox people, men both meek and powerful, rich and poor, old and young, were granted the generous gift of life-giving wisdom and illuminated with the light of virtuously minded concord. Even though they came from different lands, they spoke with one voice, even though they were dissimilar as they lived far apart, they were gathered in one council as equals.”
The Time of Troubles and the heroism of Minin and Pozharsky’s resistance army are a damning argument against the popular myth that denies the existence of the Russian nation in that period. On the contrary, Russia, in the depth of its national and patriotic consciousness, was a step or two ahead of even the most progressive of neighbouring countries, where even a century later collusion with foreigners against one’s own nation was not considered dishonorable and considered a legitimate political instrument.
In Russia this was already unthinkable. There, patriotic consciousness was a hallmark of identity, which enabled the reunification of Ukraine, the patriotic heroism of the Great Northern War that required a mighty collective effort of the entire nation to carve out a space among great European powers, the brilliant achievements of Catherine the Great, the majestic victory over Napoleon in 1812. The last war is particularly remarkable: not only ex post facto, but even during the campaign itself it was seen as, and called, a Patriotic War. All gestures and words of the actors in this patriotic drama were made for the cause of the Fatherland.
The Russian propaganda machine left Napoleon no chance to subjugate the Russian people or entrench his dominance. The narcissistic conqueror was opposed not only by soldiers but by artists of rhetoric, from patriotic admiral Alexander Shishkov (1754 – 1841) who wrote the czar’s manifestos to populist propaganda virtuoso Count Fyodor Rostopchin (1763 – 1826) and his broadsides [22]. Without understanding the cultural and symbolic background we can never understand the most important of historical events, from the Battle of Borodino, fought mainly for political reasons, where every Russian officer saw death or injury as the highest honor, to the epic and terrifying fire of Moscow. Russia opposed Napoleon not only with a superior fighting spirit but also with a superior, elaborate patriotic ideology.
Even in Europe, German nationalism was not a predecessor but perhaps a byproduct of Russian patriotic resistance to Napoleon. Russia created a vast network of resistance, inspiring many European minds. Alexander Svechin (1878 – 1938), a prominent military theorist, gives the following description of the German front of Russian propaganda wars:
Russia organized a German Committee under the de facto leadership of Baron Heinrich von und zu Stein, the political head of the German national movement, who consented to leading the Russian propaganda effort. With a brilliant cadre of German patriotic officers that had resigned Prussian service when Prussia had been strongarmed into an alliance with Napoleon, Stein decided to create a German Legion staffed with German deserters and prisoners of war from La Grande Armée. The Legion was intended as a revolutionary challenge to a Germany enslaved by the French and then the core of an armed insurrection within Germany itself.
A fine example of propaganda tracts published in Saint Petersburg in October 1812 at the printers of the Senate, financed by an absolute monarch, is the “Brief Catechism of the German Soldier” written by Ernst Moritz Arndt by special commission. It claimed that German soldiers used to have their own emperor, but then they made a pact with Satan and Hell in the guise of Napoleon. People who were once free became slaves and are being sent to far-flung countries to turn free and happy peoples into slaves just as themselves. A German emperor sends a German soldier to war; must he fight? No, says Arndt; the idea of monarchy is subordinate to that of the nation and Fatherland. If the sovereign forces his soldiers to oppress the innocent and violate their rights, if he conspires against the happiness and freedom of his own subjects, if he colludes with the enemies of his own nation, if he allows his population to be robbed, dishonored, and raped, then following the orders of such a sovereign would be an affront to divine law. German honor commands the German soldier to break the sword that German despots force him to raise for the cause of his nation’s enemies, the French. The soldier must remember that the Fatherland and nation are timeless and deathless, while monarchs and all kinds of superiors will stay in the past with their petty ambitions and disgraceful misdeeds…
The success of propaganda among German regiments that defended Napoleon’s operation lines in 1812 was largely instrumental for the Berezina battle plan, an encirclement of the La Grande Armée core that had delved too deep into Moscow.
This fact seems like a veritable mockery of the popular Western “time zones of nationalism” theory formulated by Ernest Gellner. Allegedly, national consciousness in Europe develops from West to East. The further to the West, the more developed the national sentiment, the stronger its civic nature. Conversely, the further you look to the East, the more tardy and ethnocentric the national sentiment there.
As we can see, this is patently untrue. Russian national sentiment is not younger but older than German, or even the French and English. It is the oldest among the modern peoples of Europe, based on an identity of the Russian Land already pronounced in 10-11th centuries. There is no reason for assigning the Russians a more recent birth date. At the same time, the Russian self-awareness is perhaps not the most but the least ethnocentric, sometimes overly so, causing certain inconveniences for the Russians themselves.
The object of this sentiment is not the place of a particular ethnic group among others but the Fatherland, the Russian Land, its beauty and grandeur among other lands.
The Russians were indeed late in realising the ethnic aspect of nationalism, not due to an alleged backwardness, but because they were late in encountering ethnic nationalism directed against them, mostly in the western borderlands of the Russian Empire. A certain part was played by the German nationalism in the Baltic region; having clashed with it, Yuri Samarin (1819 – 1876) formulated his idea of Russians as a nation that needs equal rights within its own empire in his Letters from Riga (1849) [23].
In spite of the “time zone” theory, German nationalism – in the form of a Pan-German, unifying, state-driven national sentiment – was not a predecessor but a product of Russian patriotism that manifested in the anti-Napoleonic struggle. Russia stimulated German nationalism as an opposition to a Pan-European empire, not imitated it. Russia became a protector of identity and national diversity in Europe in spite of all attempts to forge it into some faceless union.
Nowadays, Russian patriotism preserves the same importance. As justly reminded by Vladimir Putin: “For Russia, for a Russian person […] the patriotic sentiment is very important, the sense of national belonging that is now, to their chagrin, being eroded in certain European countries.” In today’s Europe, the eyes of those who seek to preserve their national identity, those who are patriots and nationalists in the best sense of the word, are fixed upon Moscow. Conversely, those who yell the loudest about a “Russian menace” and a “European unity in the face of Russian aggression” are mostly partisans of a complete erasure of European faces and borders, oriented towards the EU Quarter of Brussels and the White House.
As I have attempted to demonstrate, this is really old news. Russia is still the Motherland of patriotism in Europe, and now, in defiance of an artificial denationalisation imposed by Communism, we are returning to our old mission – keeping the flame of nationality in Europe, preserving it as a Europe of Fatherlands and not a public thoroughfare.
Notes
[1] The origins of this memetic phrase are in the so-called Anti-Cosmopolitan campaign enacted in the final years of Stalinism (1948-53); one of its prominent traits was the “discovery” Russian “firsts” in science, invention, the arts, etc.; many of such “discoveries” were based on dubious or outright falsified data. The “Motherland of elephants” joke was born as a parody of this propaganda blitz.
[2] An allusion to the Primary Chronicle, a.k.a. The Tale of Past Years (ca. 1110), Russia’s oldest surviving historical chronicle traditionally attributed to Nestor (ca. 1056 – 1114), a monk of the Kiev Monastery of the Caves. Its first words, often interpreted as the work’s title, are “These are the tales of past years, of where the Russian Land comes from, of who reigned the first in Kiev, and of how the Russian Land came to be.”
[3] Early East Slavic tribal groups.
[4] The anonymous 13th-century work only survives in fragments and quotations, most of them limited to its poetic preamble.
[5] Baltic tribal group.
[6] Modern-day Velikiy Ustyug, a city in the far Russian North.
[7] An obscure Finno-Ugric tribe.
[8] The White Sea or the Arctic Ocean.
[9] A defunct Volga ethnic group of unknown origin.
[10] An ancient name for the Mari ethnic group, in the modern-day Mariy El Republic of Russia.
[11] A Finno-Ugric ethnic group, in the modern-day Mordovia Republic of Russia.
[12] Vsevolod the Big Nest (1154 – 1212), Grand Prince of Vladimir.
[13] Yuri Dolgorukiy (ca. 1099 – 1157), Grand Prince of Suzdal and Kiev, founder of Moscow.
[14] Vladimir Monomakh (1053 – 1125), Grand Prince of Kiev. Famous, among other things, for organizing successful collective Russians expeditions against steppe nomads.
[15] Russian name for Cumans, nomads of Turkic origin.
[16] The Baltic.
[17] The battle of Kulikovo (1380) was fought by a Muscovy-led coalition of Russian principalities and was the first major Russian victory over Mongols in decades.
[18] This traditional English translation of title is something of a misnomer, a more precise one would be “of the whole of Rus’” or “of the united Rus’.”
[19] A popular resistance force organized in 1611 in the Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod by the merchant Kuzma Minin and the nobleman Dmitry Pozharsky with the goal of suppressing roving bands of brigands, expelling Polish invaders, and preventing the complete collapse of the Russian state. It was instrumental in defeating the Polish garrison in Moscow in 1612 and restoring an independent Russian monarchy in 1613.
[20] Compendium of Russian and world history from Biblical events to recent times, including the events of the Time of Troubles.
[21] An irregularly convened assembly of delegates from all estates of Russian feudal society (sometimes including peasantry) that discussed and voted on the affairs of the state, active ca. 1549 – ca. 1683. The Council of 1613 was particularly important for electing a new dynasty (the Romanovs) to take the vacant Russian throne.
[22] As governor of Moscow during the Napoleonic invasion, Rostopchin became famous for the mass printing and distribution of colorful broadsides with grotesque caricatures and easy-to-grasp text, written in a deliberately folksy style, that satirized the enemy and called for a mass popular resistance.
[23] In 1846, as a government inspector, Samarin travelled through what now is Latvia, documenting many facts of abusive and arrogant attitude towards Russia and the Russians by privileged Baltic German nobility amid the tacit or open support of Russian government officials. Drawing from those experiences, he published a pamphlet titled Letters from Riga (1849), considered one of the first Slavophile manifestos and a seminal document of modern Russian nationalism. The publication caused a scandal that led to Samarin’s brief imprisonment and exile for “fomenting anti-government dissent.”
Translator’s Notes
- Several abridgements were made in accordance with the author’s wishes.
- The translator took the liberty of making the text more accesible to readers not possessing an in-depth knowledge of Russian history. All names were rendered in their full form, and mentions of most Russian historical figures come with birth and death years for easier reference.
- Only names, events, etc. that cannot be identified with a quick Google or Wikipedia search were annotated. So were several allusions to historical events known to every educated Russian but obscure in the West.
If people can generally just learn not to step on each other’s toes, maybe the world really would be a better place.
A relatively rare example of the Russian “svidomizm”. Romantic fantasy with a lot of obvious manipulations.
It is possible to find more interesting examples of “true Russian history”
http://imgur.com/a/fWBim
(Russia 10 000 BC – according to some “patriots”)
Please elaborate.
Explore just one example. Kholmogorov writes:
Text of Treaty:
«We are the envoys from the Russian people: Ivar, envoy of Igor’, Great Prince of Rus’, and the general envoys as follows: Vefast representing Svyatoslav, son of Igor’; Isgaut for the Princess Olga; Slothi for Igor’, nephew of Igor’; Oleif for Vladislav; Kanitzar for Predslava; Sigbjorn for Svanhild, wife of Oleif; Freystein for Thorth; Leif for Arfast; Grim for Sverki; Freystein for Haakon, nephew of Igor’; Kari for Stoething; Karlsefni for Thorth; Hegri for Efling; Voist for Voik; Eistr for Amund; Freystein for Bjorn; Yatving for Gunnar; Sigfrid for Halfdan; Kill for Klakki; Steggi for Jotun; Sverki; Hallvarth for Guthi; Frothi for Throand; Munthor for Ut; the merchants Authun, Authulf, Ingivald, Oleif, Frutan, Gamal, Kussi, Heming, Thorfrid, Thorstein, Bruni, Hroald, Gunnfast, Freystein, Ingjald, Thorbjorn, Manni, Hroald, Svein, Styr, Halfdan, Tirr, Askbrand, Visleif, Sveinki Borich: sent by Igor’, Great Prince of Rus’, and from each prince and all the people of the land of Rus’, by whom is ordained the renewal of the former peace and to the establishment of concord between Greeks and Russes for many years to come»
The names of the “envoys from the Russian people” – Scandinavian, becouse the “Russes” of 10th century – association warriors and merchants, mostly of Scandinavian origin ( ” Russes ” unite around himself Slavic and Finnish tribes – through many centuries, this union will become modern Russia).
How Eastern European Vikings of the 10th century can be considered as representatives of the modern Russian nation? Then perhaps the Franks of Clovis is modern French, and the Cherusci of Arminius is a modern German?
And the whole entire text of Kolmogorov consists of such fraud
Stopped taking the article serious at this point.
Interesting piece, even though I don’t find all of its claims persuasive, there does seem to be quite a lot of myth-making and very selective presentation of facts in it.
I assume this part:
refers to Dugin and other Eurasianists? What’s the general view of the Mongol invasion in Russia today?
The ability to assign all of the attributes of a fully formed Russian nation to areas where another nationality (including of upwards of 60,000,000 people worldwide) reside, can only be achieved by using the highest forms of chicanery, including smoke and mirrors. For a more nuanced and balanced treatment of the formations of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples (minus the Svidomite insufferability), I highly recommend Serhii Plokhy’s monumental and groundbreaking work:
‘The Origins of Slavic Nations, Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus’
The whole glorious assemblage can be accessed at this address, free of charge:
http://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/8713/file.pdf
What makes you think so?
Simply that nationalism is a reaction to attacks on community A (defined by ethnicity, religion, race, or social class) by community B (defined likewise). If community A is isolated from community B, then community A will soon start squabbling within itself. Only in the presence of a external threat does community A solidify and emerge as distinct group.
In general, since the bronze age, these concentric circles have been expanding, from small city states to large regional kingdoms, to empires, to gigantic civilizational blocks like Christendom.
In this particular case, I think the ethnogenesis of the Slavic peoples is quite recent (relatively speaking) at around 1,500 years ago. You can read old church slavonic and see that is quite close to proto-slavic. Slavic first split into West Slavic; which is now Polish, Czech and Slovak, and into East Slavic; which is now Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian, and into South Slavic; Serbo-Croat, etc.
The original Russian state was centered on the the Golden Ring of Russian cities, northeast of Moscow. If anyone has any good reading material on the formation of the early Russian state, in Russian or English, please let me know, as I want to know more about this topic. Preferably something with original texts and documents directly referred to and quoted in the text.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Ring
This quite a way from Kiev, where Kievan Rus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27
Most Russian nationalists want to unite the Ukrainians and Belarussians under the Moscow state, but why should they stop there? Poland, Czech Republic, and Yugoslavia are all Slavic peoples as well.
N.B.: Я просто шучу Толя, давайте не будем вызывать у Поляков панику.
Yes.
He elides that Muscovy rose to power as the knut of the mongol khans, collecting the tribute and punishing rebels for them from other russians.
He also forgets to mention that the “russian lands” means everything under the skies, from Warsaw to Kurils, from Finland to Istanbul and Persia.
Left unmentioned is that russian nationalism has created the modern concept of ethnic cleansing when they committed the genocide of the Circassians, a North Caucasian people famous for the beauty of their women (this is from where caucasian as a name for whites comes from, as Circassians were seen as the best example of whites)
Russians are a fun people (in small doses), but Russia is and has always been a miserable place, hell bent on exporting her misery by force to the detriment of the many nations unfortunate to be neighbours with this expansionist country.
Excellent, so these people have Scandinavian names but refer to themselves (a very important detail – it is not used an exonym but a self-apellation) and consider themselves as Russians, and not Varangians, Norsemen, Vikings, or any other name for people of Scandinavian origin used in the early Middle Ages.
How does it contradict the argument of the article that Russians have an identity that developed very early on?
I am at a loss how the fact that the rise of Russia (much like that of any other nation) wasn’t all fluff ponies and cotton candy contradicts the argument of the article. You are basically supporting the proposition that Russians have had a very historically strong national identity.
You are entirely correct in assuming that this is a jab at extreme Eurasianists/Duginists/Gumilevists.
The reception of the Mongol invasion remains mostly traditional (a terrible catastrophe that did lasting historical damage and held Russia back for 200 years), with creeping “politically correct” revisionism of the Mongol yoke as a positive period (mostly to placate Tatars, Kazakhs, etc.) and wild Neo-Eurasianist theories about a “symbiosis” or even an “anti-Western alliance” making their ways into academia and the collective historical subconscious.
As a German reader, what can say on what the author says about Russia’s role in early German nationalism?
“How Eastern European Vikings of the 10th century can be considered as representatives of the
modern Russian nation?”
Easy. Many of them voluntarily assimilated and became part of, among others, the modern Russian nation.
Here are some quotes from a site http://www.ancientmilitary.com
“The ancient Slavs ….. always seemed to be between powerful adversaries; stuck between the warlike Germans and the martially powerful steppe nomads or between the Frankish and Byzantine Empires, the super powers of their day. To the North of the Slavs lived the fierce Scandinavians, a society that produced the mighty Vikings and who conquered many lands. Yet amazingly the Slavs survived, and bewilderingly, they even thrived. Slavic tribes burst forth from their homeland and conquered and settled half of Europe, forever changing the history of the continent and the world. Few of the lands that were slavicized by these ancient warriors were ever taken back by their opponents, and the migration of the Slavs continue to this day.”
“The Slavs expansion of the 5th – 7th centuries reached from the Rhine, to Southern Greece and the Russian steppes. Although experts disagree about how it happened, they all agree that within the short span of 150 years an amazingly uniform culture took over half of Europe. They formed an egalitarian society with Slavic as a common language…….. The independent nature of the Slavic tribes contrast with the dependence of the marauding steppe horsemen on settled populations. Ironically, groups like the Huns who created so much destruction in the empires of their day needed those same empires for supplies and gold to pay their hordes. These nomadic groups only made camps and when they dispersed they left nothing lasting behind, unlike the Slavs who permanently settled and absorbed the local populations.”
“Eventually, during the 8th – 10th centuries the Slavs began to form nations…….The Slavic tribes created many nations throughout Europe and expanding into Asia, leaving a lasting mark on history. The ancient Slavs rose from relative obscurity to becoming one of the great forces of the world primarily due to their expansion from the 6th to 8th centuries AD and their stubborn ability to hold these lands throughout the ages.”
This seems rather objective and seems to explain a lot.
There were once Germans in what is now France who referred to themselves as Franks. France got its name from these people. Does that make them Frenchmen in any sort of modern sense?
Seems exaggerated to me, though there may be some truth to it. The Napoleonic era and the wars of liberation against French oppression certainly were very important for the formation of modern German nationalism, and Russian support may well have played some role in that. On the other hand I don’t think German nationalism can be considered to have come into existence only in the early 19th century, in some form it must be traced back at least to the late middle ages or the early modern era, e.g. German humanists in the early 16th century were very nationalistic, anti-French and began the cult around Tacitus’ Germania as supposed evidence for ancient Germanic virtues.
The preeminent scholar of Mongol(Tartar)/Rus history in the 20th century is undoubtedly Charles Halpern. If you’re really interested in this topic (as you appear to be), then read anything and everything you can written by the man. His ‘Russia and the Golden Horde’ belongs on your library shelf.
I confess that it irks me whenever anybody, including the erudite Halpern, substitutes ‘Russia’ for ‘Rus’, for it’s really a great inaccuracy. Even Halpern, after spending some time really engrossed in Michael Hrushevsky’s monumental ‘History of Ukraine-Rus’, reviewing it quite judicially and yet very complimentary states about himself in the review of the masterpiece about his own guilt here:
http://www.ciuspress.com/catalogue/history/24/History%20of%20Ukraine-Rus‘.%20Volume%201
Thanks for the book recommendation, that seems quite interesting, I’ll look at it. Besides such scholarly discussion, I’m also interested in how the Mongol invasions are judged today in Russia, including at the level of popular culture. iirc from a western point of view the Mongol invasion and its legacy have often been presented as an explanation for the specific development Muscovy later took (“Russian despotism” etc.), I wonder how this thesis is regarded in Russia.
Halpern’s book provides for an in depth historic response to many of your questions regarding the footprint left behind by the Golden Horde. BTW, many people including Ukrainians forget that the Horde’s yoke was broken in the Ukrainians lands some 100 years earlier than in the Muscovy/Vladimir lands, at the battle of Blue Waters in 1362. The fact that Muscovy was under the Mongol yoke for a much longer period, provided more impetus for a different cultural/political milieu developing between these two different areas. By 1654, the two Slavic languages were unintelligible and required official translators during the negotiations between the Hetmanate and representatives of the Moscow court.
I came across this trailer of a new Russian movie about Mongol invasion that is coming out soon. It should answer your question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVvyKiV_Qxg
As for “Russian despotism,” etc., that’s mostly fossilized Polish-Lithuanian propaganda from 500 years ago. Along with the name “Muscovy” itself.
We need another DOCTOR ZHIVAGO… in the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT3V-jxCmjs
Kholmogorov manipulates the facts, but what you write is an outright lie
Rise of Moscow began in 1301, when the first Moscow Prince Daniil Alexandrovich defeated the Mongol detachment under Pereyaslavl. The princes of Moscow were not “knut of the mongol khans”, it’s just slander
This statement is your (and only your) fiction
The Circassians resettlement was not genocide. The Circassians were given a choice: obey Russia or resettle in the Ottoman Empire. Obedience meant that the Russian government in order to control the Circassians, resettled highlanders from the mountains to the plains of the Kuban. The mountain village was destroyed because in the mountains the Circassians was impossible to control.
In addition, Circassians (if they obey Russia ) have to become subjects to an infidel ruler, to abandon their way of life (an important part of which was hiking to capture slaves)
http://imgur.com/a/jAnua
, to pay taxes (for the Circassians this was tantamount of slave status) and so on.
Besides, were the order of the Sultan (who was also Caliph – the ruler of the faithful) Abdul-Aziz addressed the Circassians: ” Leave your homes, hasten to me immediately, so as not to deserve the wrath of Almighty Allah and the victorious Sultan “. The Turkish government promised the Circassians, who resettled in Turkey all sorts of benefits
As a result most of the Circassians chose resettlement in the Ottoman Empire (that naturally pleased the Russian officials).
Poorly organized relocation to Turkey occurred in ships, overwhelming the ships capacity by far, thus people died of diseases (It was common situation when transporting people on ships in that era. Similarly, thousands of French and English soldiers were dying during transport by sea in the Crimean war. Similarly, dead poor emigrants sailing to America. ). Even worse for the Circassians after arriving in Turkey – the Sultan’s promises proved false, and Circassians in the quarantine camps were massively dying of diseases and starvation (as well as fled back to the Russian Empire). To Turkey has moved about 450 000 Circassians, about 70 000 were left in the Russian Empire (the total number of all Circassians were 500-600 thousand people). Then the Turks settled Circassians in the wrong for their lands (including in the deserts of Arabia), where the Circassians continued to die from disease. How many died could not be assessed, but the majority of the dead died in Turkey and Russia bear for it only indirectly blame
These actions of the Russian government against the Circassians can be considered as analogous of the forced resettlement of the Comanches and Apaches in the reservation. It was a cruel action, but not genocid.
And of course the ethnic cleansing and genocides have happened since the Assyrian Empire, Russia such things definitely did not invent
It is (“friendship and cooperation”) the ideas of Lev Gumilev, clearly pseudoscientific
“Gumilev was more of a poet, like his parents Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, than he was a scholar. …Lev’s histories were often fanciful and, strictly speaking, not very scholarly; he invented people, he invented documents, or transported things magically through time so that they would fit his narrative. … His opponents accused him of complete disregard for the evidence.’ His doctoral thesis Ethnogenesis and the Human Biosphere was …because it was poor scholarship which ‘argued theory into the realms of science fiction.”
There is no “general view “. Probably (among people interested in history), the prevailing view is that the Mongol invasion was devastating, but it also created the conditions for the emergence of a strong Russian state (these ideas were expressed by Karamzin in the early 19th century).
Because “Russes” 9-10 centuries, clearly were not modern Russian. They were not even Slavs. Russian medieval Chronicles clearly write about it
“(in 859) The Varangians from beyond the sea imposed tribute upon the Chuds, the Slavs, the Merians, the Ves’, and the Krivichians. The tributaries of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves. There was no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against another.
(in 862) They said to themselves, “Let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the Law.” They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Russes: these particular Varangians were known as Russes, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans, English, and Gotlanders, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichians, and the Ves’ then said to the people of Rus’, “Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.” They thus selected three brothers, with their kinsfolk, who took with them all the Russes and migrated. On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgorod became known as the land of Rus’“
national myths are a useful thing and that seems like quite a good one
(i’d quibble on being first – i think England was technically first although admittedly it was buried under the Normans soon after so maybe it doesn’t count – although it did briefly re-emerge in the English civil war and after it was suppressed again the remnant managed to escape to America to flourish for a while so i guess i could compromise on oldest continuous identity)
plus a national myth that includes mammoths has got to be good
That is pure fantasy. Principality on the territory of modern Ukraine was under the double yoke (Tatar and Lithuanian), and paid tribute to the Tatars for a long time after 1362. Here “yarlyk” (that is, the confirmation of the right to a fief, in exchange for submission to the Tatar Khan and the payment of tribute) of Khan of the Golden Horde Tokhtamysh to the great Lithuanian Prince (and Polish king) Jagiello in 1392
http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/Dokumenty/Zolotoord/XIV/1380-1400/Tochtamysch/jarlyk_jagajle.phtml
http://www.historical-quest.com/english-articles/1123-the-battle-of-the-blue-waters.html
You’re correct in that a sort of ‘double yoke ‘existed for a time after this important battle. ‘Sort of’ because many of the local Ruthenian princes felt more inclined to share in the rule of the new pagan Lithuanians, then to the more hated foreign Asian masters. This battle preceded the Kulokovo one (but not by 100 years as I mistakenly stated above), and was at least as impacting as the later one in the North, and signaled a momentous change in the fortunes of the Horde within Ukrainian lands.
Then give your definition of the word “nation”. Because the nation of 8-10 centuries (based on the definition of the word modern historians), it is oxymoron
Nationalism based on glorious past is dangerous shit. The recent past (100-200 years, at most) could be relevant I suppose, although it needn’t be romanticized and obsessed-about either. Beyond that, it’s just cultist-style bullshit.
Rus is a term for people of eastern Scandinavian origin used in the middle ages. In the early texts someone getting identified as Rus means that they were recognized as Scandinavians and not Slavs.
In some places Rus still is the term for eastern Scandinavians: in Finnish Sweden has always been the state named after the Rus and in modern usage Rus refers to what others would call ethnic Swedes. Slavs have never been referred to with any Rus-related word.
National and ethnic identities are constantly shifting and you can’t claim that some identity is X years old because some word has been used for X years since words shift meaning and get swapped between groups. “Rus” is a very likely case of a generic Finnic word for Scandinavians or Scandinavian-aligned tribes turning into an eastern Slavic self-appellation through a long historical chain of shifts and swaps.
Rus was also sort of a Finnic self-appellation for Western subgroups of what are now called ethnic Finns but then it included the idea that we’re a group together with what others call Swedes. That ended, ironically enough, when imperial Russia annexed us to impose on us a national identity project where a bunch of people who called themselves Rus-people since the middle ages were told to drop the name and adapt to this “Finn” abomination instead.
“Because “Russes” 9-10 centuries, clearly were not modern Russian. They were not even Slavs. Russian medieval Chronicles clearly write about it”
It could be true.
It is also irrelevant.
They were assimilated, voluntarily, and they became Slavs, just like the term “Ruse” become Slavic, or Russian, if you will.
What is wrong with this?
WHo is talking about panic? Your joke is funnyy because Russia already did try to unite all Slavs, saying that all Slavic nations are rivers which should join within Russian sea. It didn’t work.
I’m not aware of any amalgamation of Finns and Swedes that were known as Rus? I am aware of the fact that in the Finnish language of the time, the ethnonym ‘Ruotsi’ was used to describe a Swede by a Finn. Another perfectly plausible explanation for the term ‘Rus’ was championed by the eminent ‘Russian’ historian George Vernadsky:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CR%5CU%5CRushDA.htm
Can we stop exaggerating all those mythical “powers” of all kinds of contemporary Soviet literature books which became so popular in the West? Moscow-Leningrad’s (and other urban) what they loved to call themselves intelligentsia’s (in reality pretentious ignoramuses) reaction or fascination with all kinds of Samizdat and “dissident” literature didn’t and doesn’t mean a genuine impact. Doctor Zhivago is a decent novel but for anyone even remotely acquainted with the Soviet realities of late 1950s through mid-1980s Doctor Zhivago barely registers on a scale of true interests and concerns of people. Jazz, Rock-n-roll, generally, Western pop and consumer culture played the role on several orders of magnitude more important in discrediting communist idea than all Soviet “dissidents” combined. That is what was in demand universally–from Moscow to Vladivostok. TV, radio and tape decks changed it all.
It becomes ridiculous when one applies the modern meaning to those people before they were assimilated.
Doctor Zhivago barely registers on a scale of true interests and concerns of people. Jazz, Rock-n-roll, generally, Western pop and consumer culture played the role on several orders of magnitude more important in discrediting communist idea than all Soviet “dissidents” combined.
Yeah, Doc Zhivago probably had more impact in the West, especially with Lean’s blockbuster movie.
But I’m not sure Pop Culture’s role was that important. After all, China opened up to Western Culture but the Communist Party is still firmly in control. Also, one could argue that excesses of Western decadence and predatory actions led to rise of nationalist Russia after the 90s.
Also, let’s keep in mind that Pop Culture had a destabilizing effect on the West as well. It is bringing down the white race and Western Civilization with Negromania.
‘Negromania’? You mean rhythm & blues and jazz music? 🙂
Many Russians feel that it was the Beatles that brought down the Soviet Union, more so than Gorbachev and even Pope John Paul 2. This four part documentary is worth watching:
https://youtu.be/9sw6OCDiKLQ
I’m revisiting this great documentary and am on part 2:
It’s not just a pile of BS – it was true. I was a witness to it myself in 1970!
Thanks for the link, looks like it will be an entertaining movie.
Russia is Western, however on the fringe, nation in its foundation, China is not. What resonates in Russia does not necessarily resonate in China. Pop and consumer culture were immense, together with distillation of the best West’s art classics. E.g. Soviet TV versions of Lope de Vega or of Shakespeare, or even Conan Doyle with Russian pair of Sherlock Holmes and Dr.Watson being accepted by British themselves as the best, and the list goes on and on–all that was huge, precisely because the nation was extremely educated and, actually, life in USSR wasn’t that bad–people wanted more.
In 1960s, 70s and 80s it was different and it, actually, had real talents, especially in pop-music. It started to degenerate in earnest by the late 1980s.
Forgot to respond to that. Yes, true and this pattern of the West seeing what it wants to see not what really is continues today with major geopolitical ramifications. But West is not capable of learning anymore. I am sure Western elites all read Solzhenitsyn as a “historian”, I doubt any of them, bar some very few exceptions, finished War and Peace or Road to Calvary. I cannot see neoco0ns doing this–this is like asking devil bathing in holy water.
I tried Zhivago a couple of times (long ago), never could finish. It’s an excruciatingly boring soap opera. It’s amazing how something so paltry can be made (constructed) into an epochal event.
I tried Zhivago a couple of times (long ago), never could finish
Forget the book. Watch the movie, it’s one of the greatest.
“Pop and consumer culture were immense….the nation was extremely educated and, actually, life in USSR wasn’t that bad–people wanted more….In 1960s, 70s and 80s it was different and it, actually, had real talents, especially in pop-music. It started to degenerate in earnest by the late 1980s.”
So, then, according to what you’re saying: The Soviet (and especially Russian) people destroyed their own powerful, secure, respected country (in which life “wasn’t bad” at all) with their own hands and plunged themselves into a decades-long, disastrous downward spiral (which might yet end with their destruction by their enemies), for the sake of trying to “merge and become partners” with the West that was producing this Pop Culture – JUST AS this Pop Culture was already starting to degenerate and was on its way out!
Wow…What MONUMENTAL STUPIDITY. No other nation, in either recent or historical memory, has done anything this monumentally stupid. Couldn’t they have waited a bit more??? It seems to me that, the supposedly “extremely educated” Soviet people were, in fact, not very SMART at all!
I did watch it, long ago. My only memory is that Omar Sharif is (was) a great actor.
“Elites” certainly did. One of them is still around, if you know what I mean. And so are many of the so called “nationalists” who, quoting Alexander Zinovyev, “aimed at communism but hit Russia”(c)–a perfect encapsulation of the events. Truth is, however, that the attempts on “restoration” were made in 1993, and in 1996 when Zyuganov won elections but was forced to “abdicate”. Yes, a national catastrophe ensued with, by different estimates (one such estimate was made last year at Orthodox-Patriotic Forum in Stavropol), total human costs of around 18 million people either dead or not born as a direct result of “reforms”. GULAG Archipelago? Really? In some places depopulation is still startling even today. Then, there is a much more sinister ideological subplot to all this calamity with, effectively, Foreign Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence concepts of undeniably needed reforms clashing. Foreign Intelligence won. Today, Counter-Intelligence stands vindicated and triumphant. Yet, there is a silver lining to this too–a very powerful immunization against demagogues and faux-scholars was achieved.
Apologies for going off-topic, Tolya, but I would just like to ask Andrei something. I would have sent this directly to him if there was a messaging system on Unz.
Dear Andrei, you wrote in a previous comment on another thread that you finished your higher education in Baku in the Caspian High Naval Red Banner Academy of S.M. Kirov (KVVMKU), but I couldn’t find any links about it in Russian or English. Naturally I am very interested as I was born in Baku! I would also like to know more about about your specialization, if it is possible for you to divulge much about it.
“EDUCATION
1980-1985
Caspian High Naval Red Banner Academy of S.M. Kirov (KVVMKU im. Kirova), now defunct, Baku, USSR. Navigational Faculty. Master Of Science, Naval Engineering, Specialist in Gyro-Inertial Navigational Complexes of Naval Strategic Missile Systems (focus on strategic missile submarines of projects 667B-BD, NATO: SSBNs Delta I & II class). Secondary specialty: commanding officer tactical units of naval infantry (marines). Undergraduate degree in Military Sciences.”
Edit: I did find this bit of internet history: https://ok.ru/video/31053253346
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/revisiting-the-icon-and-the-axe-and-its-impact-russian-studies
No problem. Here is a direct link to now defunct academy:
http://www.kvvmku.ru
You can find me in the class of 1985 you can use my call sign белая лошадь (yes, I also was called in English too–White Horse–in fact I had an alternative signature WHorse, with which, accidentally, I signed my Communist Party ID to a rather stunned look on the face of Chief of Political Department, LOL, they had to order another one).
https://ok.ru/video/38293801641
Here is a famous documentary in English. There is a whole number of my class-mates (including among many Azik Guseinov) in this short movie. I don’t know, however, what do you need more precisely, will be happy to answer any of your questions.
What does this mean: “Gyro-Inertial Navigational Complexes of Naval Strategic Missile Systems .”
Any submarine but especially so so called boomers, that is nuclear subs carrying Sea Launched Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, each with MIRV–Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles (in layman’s lingo–warheads)–are a national treasure for nations such as Russia, US or UK since are nuclear deterrents. They go to ocean and disappear on combat patrol being in immediate readiness to launch against any target. In order to do that–submarine and its systems require an incredibly precise knowledge of its position (geographic coordinates) and this information (including the positioning of the platforms in missiles themselves) and an ability to provide it for the on-board computers both on the sub (launch systems) and missile itself. To do so, as early as late 1960s a gyro-inertial navigational complexes had been developed–the reason they are called such is because at that time gyro-stabilized (usually three) platforms were used, with platforms housing accelerators which could (I omit here details of integration of parameters) give every moment an extremely precise position of the submarine even during dead-reckoning. But not only that–other means of (if needed) correction and “updating” missile were also used including very sophisticated Satellite navigation systems (Parus) Doppler logs and optronic systems which allowed to fix own position with minimal to no exposure for submarine. These complexes started to be installed on a strategic missile submarines of the Soviet Navy starting from projects 667B and BD. By 1980s all Soviet nuclear subs carried extremely reliable and precise complexes which allowed to provide all necessary data to on-board weapon systems and CICS (Combat Informational Control Systems). Today many of those functions are done with the use of laser gyroscopes and every modern combat ship and sub in Russia is equipped (I assume the same is the case in US Navy or PLAN) with excellent tactics-navigation suite, which allows to fight the battle (including complex maneuvering) under any conditions. Hope this answers your question.
“No other nation, in either recent or historical memory, has done anything this monumentally stupid.”
I beg to disagree.
What about USA and some other countries transferring most of their manufacturing capabilities abroad?
I think it qualifies as equally, if not more, monumental because with the loss of manufacturing, a nation gradually looses its overall ability to innovate and develop.
Correction: accelerometers. Auto-correct is evil.
A great point, indeed.
But don’t tell this to Mark Zuckerberg or people of whatever will be the next “IT” fad, Assbook? 😉
Polish patriotism is also positive. This is why the country is called “Rzecz Pospolita – Res Publica – Common Wealth”. If russian patriotism is positive and polish negative, then why it was Russia that had a bolshevik revolution? Unless you state that bolsheviks were also patriots, but then the concept of patriotism loses any serious meaning
“Rzecz” (“рiч”) means ‘thing’ in Ukrainian, and I presume it must be the same in Polish. Sounds more like “La Cosa Nostra”.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
By the way I really like reading your posts especially the ones on military technology topics.
Re, Zuckerberg, the wast majority of people are ignorant to the fact that the bedrock of our civilization, the “heat to work” energy transformation cycle (i.e. internal combustion engine and derivatives) is actually a terribly crude and inefficient undertaking that can’t be possibly expected to provide for the needs of the ever more demanding population.
In that respect, I think that our civilization is basically still a 19th century civilization and no amount of “Facebooks” or other “apps” can change that.
Yes, but the meaning of Rus/Ruotsi is an occupation – rowers – not an ethnic designation. All kind of groups were rowing around the Baltic at the time. Rurik could’ve been a Scandinavian, or an Obotrite, or some other kind Western Slav, or even a Celt (there are some who argue for this last exotic theory.) Some sort of a Scandinavian is the way to bet, of course, but likely not a Swede. The chronicler says that the Rus was a whole separate tribe “like the Danes, or the Swedes, or the Friesians, or the English,” and that the the whole tribe came over with Rurik.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who the Rus were. More important is who called them. It was a confederation of five tribes: one Slavic (the most numerous, I think,) one half-Slavic, half-Baltic, and three Finno-Ugric. With the Rus as their military leaders, they formed the nucleus of a new nation. They adopted the name Rus almost immediately, so it came to mean the whole people, not just the original Rurik’s tribe.
And here I thought that nation building was a long drawn out process, but here we see the instantaneous creation of a new ‘nation’ that I presume was the same one that was named ‘Rosija’ that sprung up in Muscovy some 5-6 centuries later? 🙂 Besides, the very capable Harvard historian, Omeljan Pritsak, felt that the ‘Rus’weren’t a ‘nation’ or ethnicity at all, but the name of a mercantile trading group, much like the later one that represented British colonial interests in India, The East India Company.
http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/classes/pritsak.html
In Russian http://statehistory.ru/books/Anton-Gorskiy_Rus-Ot-slavyanskogo-Rasseleniya-do-Moskovskogo-tsarstva/
English http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/dokumente/a/a011458.pdf
Agree in principle. Yes, we still drive internal combustion engines, we still fly air-breathers and we still use chemical rocket engines. Obviously they are much more advanced when compared with even 30 year old technology but we are still well within classic industrial set-up which is framed by computers. Transition to new and real hi-tech (not this IT BS) paradigm will be long and arduous process before we even reach Kardashev’s Type I civilization, granted we survive that long.
As subsequent events showed, Lithuanians as rulers turned out to be much much worse than Tatars
After, in 1359, the Horde is falling apart, and the Golden Horde is in a state of permanent civil war. The power of the Tatars dramatically weakens, equally over the southern Russian principalities and over the North-Eastern Russian principalities. The battle at Blue waters had little effect on these processes
DNA results of the Rurikids point to origins in Sweden. This issue is largely settled.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mozhayski/teksty/ydna.html
“Thanks to this, i.e. Rurikid project, we can now say that Rurik was a historical person who was born on the Roslagen seashore (slightly north of Stockholm, Sweden). However, he was of Finno-Ugrian descent (haplogroup N1c1 (earlier described as N3a)). Although all of well matching N1c1 Rurikid princes are descended from Yaroslav Mudry (978 – 1054), it seems that his ancestors including Rurik (b. ab. 820 – 876) himself, also belonged to this haplogroup. A group of Swedes, whose ancestors lived in or close to Uppsala, and whose genetic haplotypes are very close to these of the Rurikids, seems to be confirming the theory that Rurik, in fact, originated from Sweden.”
I doubt it’s a coincidence that the region of Sweden from which Rurik originates is called Roslagen.
It was a coup de gras, in the Southern Rus lands for the Golden Horde. It was symptomatic of what you describe as the waning of Horde’s strength and unity.
Not initially. The Lithanian period ultimately provided a respite from Horde and other nomadic steppe encroachments. The Ruthenian Orthodox church initially reaped the benefits of its new arrangements, most evident in the establishment of great educational centers of learning in Ukrainian lands, the Mohilev Academy, Ostriv printing house etc; Orthodox church brotherhoods sprouted up all throughout Ukraine where the local petite bourgeoisie built hospitals and churches to help the less fortunate within their society. As the Polish part of the equation took over in dominance of the Commonwealth, and the native Ruthenian gentry class absorbed more of a Polish cultural milieu, then yes, the Commonwealth became less and less attractive to the lower classes.
Rzecz Pospolita is a direct translation of the Latin
term Res Publica (a thing held in common). The
term Res Publica goes back to the days of the Roman
Republic, and was used in Poland because the Polish
-Lithuanian Commonwealth was expressly patterned
after the Roman Republic /not Empire/. The word
‘republic’ has the same etymology.
No, they can’t. They can say his male ancestors were from there.
Still, this is an over- pedantic point.
Not really.
What’s the matter? Wasn’t my reply to melanf detailed enough? Did I miss something? 🙂
Really quite really
The Lithuanians, for the sake of the Polish crown had converted to Catholicism, an act that was a betrayal of the Orthodox population of the Russian principalities (under the Lithuanian rule). Principality on the territory of modern Ukraine and Belarus turned into a Polish colony, the local elite was replaced by the Polish elite and the people turned into bipedal cattle, deprived of their own culture and history. The Polish landlords could to enjoy life, because of this colonial population (which they sincerely despised) . This is variant of the Eastern-European Ireland.
Of course, in the Moscow realm, landlords also squeeze money from the peasants, but peasants fed their own elite. In the “Lithuania” peasants fed the alien, Catholic elite.
Local rulers were mostly the same Rus nobility. There was not much replacement. Much of the native elite converted to Catholicism but maintained their Rus identity.
Did you know that the supreme commander of Rzeczpospolita forces against Muscovy was a Rurikid prince, Konstanty Ostrogski?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstanty_Ostrogski
Khmelyntski’s uprising was in essence a civil war of Ukrainian (Little Russian) peasants and lower nobles against Ukrainian magnates.
Peasants were treated no more badly in Poland-Lithuania than under Moscow – they were treated about equally badly in both places; not much difference. But nobles were treated much better in Rzeczpospolita than under Moscow, and overall level of civilization was much higher. So the claim that “Lithuanians as rulers turned out to be much much worse than Tatars” is nonsense unless you view everything as some sort of strict Orthodox nationalist.
Come to think of it, I don’t recall a Rus town within Poland-Lithuania being treated as was Novgorod by Ivan the Terrible. Etc.
But he was Orthodox, so his rule was much better.
Turned into Catholics and poles (Jeremi Wiśniowiecki – vivid example). They hated and despised their Orthodox ex-countrymen, . It was a foreign, colonial elite.
It was impossible in the middle ages. “Ethnic” identity separating the poles from the “Russian” was religious in nature
Has anyone seen today’s “dramatic” entry of Saakaschvilli into Ukraine?
He was brought in “on the shoulders” of the ultra-patriots as if he is a savior of Ukraine, although the guy is ethnic Georgian, can speak only Russian, did nothing during his term as a governor, is indicted in his country for something, started a war that was lost with loss of 1/4 of Georgian sovereign territory, not to mention the loss of life, and so on.
A cynic, and I sincerely wouldn’t like to be that cynic, would say that history with the “come rule over us” plea repeats itself, this time as a farce, of course.
«In a modern democratic journalism (in Russia) widespread idea that these actions of Ivan IV turned out to be extremely destructive for the country, as sent her on her way, different from that which was moving the developed countries of Western Europe. However, it is expected that the emerging Russia’s “estates society” was to be “estates society” it is of the type that existed in France or in England, and which was characterized by a certain balance of interests between a strong national authority and Autonomous classes, providing the optimum way of development of society. But could emerge “caste society” of this kind in sparsely populated agrarian country with a few cities network, of which the vast majority were not any major centers of Handicrafts and trade? Much more likely that the Russian “estates society” would be close to that type of “estates society” that has developed in the XV—XVI centuries in the countries of Central Europe, where the level of urbanization was much lower than in Western Europe.
For this type of “estates society” was characterized by the omnipotence of the nobility, which, ousted from active participation in the political life of the urban class and sharply limiting the power of the monarch, took directly into the hands of their representatives, many functions of government-oriented public policy for the maintenance of their immediate class interests. In an era when the governments of the countries of Western Europe encouraged the development of craft and industry, the nobles who have mastered the state power in the countries of Central Europe, encouraged the export to their countries for cheap foreign goods, which they spent less money. Such a policy, of course, contributed to a growing backlog of Central European countries to Western Europe. Added to that a sharp limitation of the power of the monarch, of course, excluded the possibility of such treatment of his subjects, as in case of Ivan IV, however, the weakening of the role of the monarch as Supreme arbiter in relations between the classes and the separate groups within the ruling nobility led to the fact that, in practice, he not proved a reliable guarantor of all those rights which the law generously provided members of the nobility. The result is a large and influential magnate could easily deal with any of their smaller neighbors, not fear that he will be responsible.
About this practice Russian people of that time were known, and in their eyes “estates society” of Central European countries is not a role model. In the early seventeenth century, when not a role model. In the early seventeenth century, when during the time of Troubles there was a possibility of development of Russia in the Polish way, a Polish nobleman Samuel Maskevich recorded such statements of his Russian interlocutor: “Your liberty good for you, and are not good for us, because your freedom… it’s anarchy. We know… what you have in Poland, the strongest oppress the weak, the strong could take from weak property and to kill him , and because of your law, weak have to seek justice many years before [the case] will be completed and possibly will not end never. We have… the richest Lord can not do anything to the poorest , because after the first complaints, the tsar will destroy him”. Finally, it should be noted that, by limiting the power of the monarch, the nobility at the same time tried to minimize the public spending, discouraging the expansion apparatus and to increase the army to keep in its hands the income from his own estates. In the future, this policy led to the weakening of the state, his inability to confront emerging in the neighborhood of absolutist monarchies.»
Boris Florea IVAN THE TERRIBLE http://e-libra.ru/read/202805-ivan-groznyj.html
Nice words. But explain to me please – was the serf actually better off under the tsars, than under the Rus nobles in the Commonwealth, or not? Wiki claims ” one of the reasons Catherine II gave for the partition of Poland was the fact that thousands of peasants escaped from Russia to Poland to seek a better fate.”. Is this false? Actual slavery was not abolished in Russia until 1723; in Poland it had disappeared a few centuries earlier.
And again – did any Rus town in the Commonwealth experience what happened to Novgorod under the tsar?
You are saying that Moscow’s rule was “much much better” but there does not appear to be concrete evidence of it. No concrete evidence that the universally oppressed peasants actually lived more poorly or were treated worse in the Commonwealth than in Muscovy. But evidence that nobles lived better in the Commonwealth, and that rule was less brutal (i.e.., no mass destruction of towns, no oprichnina [secret police brutally hounding and killing people]). So on balance – the claim that life was “much much better” under the Tsar doesn’t hold up.
They always retained their identity as Rus lords (gente Rutheni, natione Poloni). Language was irrelevant. Do you believe that those modern Ukrainians who speak Russian have become foreigners because their speech is that of Great Russia rather than Little Russia? Were French-speaking aristocrats foreigners? Moreover, both sides in the conflict between Rus magnates and Rus petty gentry (leading Rus peasants) spoke Polish and Latin.
Nonsense. Adam Kysil, who negotiated on behalf of the Commonwealth with Khmelnytsky, and was a Senator of the Commonwealth, Voivoda of Kiev, and was an Orthodox. In various wars against the Ottomans and Moscow, Orthodox and Catholics fought side by side. Indeed, as I had mentioned, further back – Konstanty Ostrogski, Supreme Commander of Polish-Lithuanian forces in the war against Moscow, was an Orthodox, who built many Orthodox Churches.
Even Jeremi Wisniowecki, despite converting to Catholicism, continued to fund the Orthodox Collegium in Kiev. You are confusing class conflict with ethnic hatred.
Strange to call someone foreign if his family had ruled the same area for centuries. As a Rurikid, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (who was baptized into the Orthodox faith but converted as an adult) was ultimately of Scandinavian origin of course, but by the 17th century these people could hardly be considered foreign. Nor was he “colonial” – like other Rus princes/magnates he was wealthier than most ethnic Poles, and his son even attained the Polish throne. He was a proud native, wanting to hold power over his lands at the expense of petty gentry who actually hoped for help from the king in Poland..
As far as I know, the serf actually better off under the tsars
1) in Poland to economic oppression were added religious oppression
2) In the Polish lands, serfs had to work Socage (compulsory work on the landlord). On the lands of the Russian realm, this practice was not common (instead, the peasants paid the landlord part of their income)
3) the Army of centralized Russian realm was much more effective, and better protected the peasants from the Tatars and other enemies.
But my argument was quite different. In Russian realm the peasants fed their own Russian elite – Russian poet Pushkin, Russian composer Glinka, Russian painter Venetsianov, etc. In the Polish lands the descendants of the proud people of Kievan Rus fed the alien elite – Polish composer Oginski, the Polish poet Nemtsevich etc.
As far as I know, the recruits taken into the Russian army from the “Polish” lands (after Partitions) were shorter then “great-russian” recruits (which apparently was the result of poor nutrition of “Polish” serfs).
Stefan Czarnecki died from a gunshot wound received at the siege of rebellious town Stavishche. Czarnecki ordered to kill all the residents of Stavishche, regardless of gender and age.
!!!
If language and religion don’t matter, the dispute impossible.
Brief summary: in the lands of “Kievan Rus” conquered by the Lithuanians (and then given to the poles), the nobility abandoned their own religion and their own language, and began to consider themselves part of the “natione Poloni”. This nobles oppressed the peasants, who retained their language and their religion
At the same time in the lands of “Kievan Rus” which retained its independence under the rule of Moscow, the nobility completely retained their own religion and language.
Which option should be considered preferable? It’s a matter of taste of course, but to me the second option seems preferable
Serfs were still mostly Orthodox or Uniate (in which case they didn’t feel much of a difference). They were not pogromed or persecuted for being Orthodox. Catholic serfs weren’t treated any better.
Which amounted to the same thing. In Polish lands in the 16th century, for example, serfs were required to work 2 days a week for their landlord. This number progressively increased and ill-treatment of serfs peaked in the 17th century, before reforms of the 18th century improved their lot. By the early 19th century, Russian serfs were required to work 4-6 days per week for their masters.
Also – in many Rus lands, serfdom was lighter than in Poland, in order to attract peasant settlers.
Russia is a larger country and Rus lands in Ukraine were simply closer to the Tatars. But Tatars raided lands under Moscow plenty of times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean%E2%80%93Nogai_raids_into_East_Slavic_lands#List_of_raids
1521: In the summer of 1521 the Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray I led a huge Tatar horde on a major attack on Russia…According to the Ostrog Chronicle Muhammmed Giray “took more than 300,000 captives from Moscow.” Sigismund von Herberstein wrote that the Crimean Khan “took away from Muscovy so many prisoners, it seems unbelievable. For they say that their number exceeded 800,000. He sold part of they to the Turks in the Caffa, others he slaughtered, such as the elderly and the infirm, who could not be sold for a high price and were unfit for labor and difficult to transport. These they gave to the young men like rabbits to hunting dogs for their first military practice. [I suspect the number is exaggerated]
1571: Moscow burned; more than 30 cities looted, about 60,000 captives
1592: In spring 80,000 Crimeans under Feti Giray and Bakht Giray went to Tula, Mikhailov, Dedilov, Venyov, Kashira and Ryazan and “took such a multitude of prisoners that the old people do not remember such wars.” Using speed and surprise, the Tatars ravaged the regions close to the border and took many prisoners.
Etc.
From the perspective of the peasant – did it matter if a Russian lord forced him to work 4 days a week, forced his daughter to be a concubine, etc. or if a Polish lord did this?
The Commonwealth ceased to exist at the time Pushkin and Glinka were writing. However, the Kiev Academy was probably the intellectual center of the Rus lands when it was part of the Commonwealth The Commonwealth produced the first printed Orthodox Church Slavonic Bible (in Lviv).
Page 93 has a list of recruit heights. There isn’t much difference between enserfed Polish and Russian areas. The shortest recruits were from the Urals. Earlier page lists height of recruits ethnicity 1801-1861; Poles and Russians were the same height.
Stavishche was a small town whose residents were slaughtered after their Cossacks had first slaughtered the Polish soldiers stationed there, after the town had earlier been spared.
Novgorod was a major and historical city, the third largest under Moscow. The brutality it and the surrounding region experienced was incredible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Novgorod#Ivan_in_Novgorod
So – things were “much much better” for Rus people under the Tsar?
People are native whatever language or religion they choose.
Catholic religion is universal. There were German Catholics, French Catholics, and Rus Catholics.
As for language – like later educated Russian nobles who spoke French, these Rus nobles spoke Polish and Latin among themselves, Rusyn to their servants. This did not mean they ceased to consider themselves to be Rus or natives of their own lands.
I quoted the entire phrase. Why do you write a half-truth? Gente Rutheni, natione Poloni. Rus people of the Polish nation. “Polish” was not understood in those times as in the 20th century.
There was a time when they spoke Tatar, according to Vernadsky. And eventually they moved on to French.
You wrote, Lithuanians as rulers turned out to be much much worse than Tatars.
Rus people lived about as miserably if they were peasants, no matter who ruled over them. But Rus nobles and townspeople had better lives, were less oppressed, and enjoyed more rights than did their peers under the Tatars’ and the Tsars. So overall the statement “Lithuanians as rulers turned out to be much much worse than Tatars” is false.
Nah. A bunch of politicians trying to replace Poroshenko organized a farcical show – precisely because Saakashvili got no chance to compete against them.
Found some info on Russian vs. Polish serfdom.
Pg. 18. The book described several ways in which Russian serfdom was harsher (earlier in the 18th century Poland implemented some reforms):
Polish serfs were actually tied to the land, while Russian ones could be sent away to Siberia, rented out, or given away (not in the source, but I recall some factories being operated by serfs)/
According to the Commonwealth laws, serf work obligation was calculated based on size of land plots, Russian on number of peasants. So as land plots decreased, peasants were forced to give more to the lord on less land per peasant, leaving less for themselves.
In Russia peasants could not complain against their lords.
Switch to Russian rule meant increase in compulsory work by peasants.
In the discussion there are two issues
1) I would argue that “Western Russian” land, because of the Lithuanian conquest had become a Polish colony, and the population forcibly deprived of their own culture and history, and turned into a source of income for foreign (Polish) elite. You dispute that claim
2) the Question about where peasants lived in the West Russian lands under the rule of Poland, or in the “Moscow” lands.
It’s two separate issues, not related to each other. I will answer your statements on the first issue (which was my point), and then we can discuss on the second question (the question is interesting but not directly associated with the first or questions).
Claim rests on the false premise that a Rus prince becomes a “foreigner” if his first language is no longer a Rus speech or if he is no longer Orthodox. As for “colony” – these Rus princes benefited themselves, not Warsaw, and indeed one of them even became Polish king. They pursued policies of self-enrichment and power-grabbing that actually led to the instability and ultimately destruction of the entire Commonwealth. They also made their lands the intellectual center of Rus world, rather than send everything to Warsaw (compare to what happened in these lands under Moscow and St. Petersburg – they became a cultural desert). This therefore could not be considered a colonial relationship with Warsaw (btw Ukrainian nationalists also like the false idea of the colonial occupation). As for “own culture and history” – there was their own fusion of Rus and Western culture. Cossack baroque architecture is an example. England having a French-speaking elite for centuries was somewhat analogous in this respect.
Evidence shows that peasants lived poorly in both places.
You forgot a third point – persecution and mistreatment by the government of the population was worse under Tatars and Moscow than within the Commonwealth. The Moscow Asiatic despot, on a whim (and not in the context of a war in which the townspeople fought against him, as in the example you cited), slaughtered much of the inhabitants, and the entire elite, of a major and historical Rus city and its environs. Rus people in the Commonwealth didn’t have to worry about such random peace-time atrocities.
Discuss the main question (on other points I will write the answer later, in order to debate is not drowned in minor matters)
In the middle ages, “Russian Catholics” could not exist. Ruthenian nobility converted to Catholicism lost their language, their culture, their history and became Polish. Likewise, the Greeks and Serbs converted to Islam became the Ottoman Turks.
«Gente Rutheni, natione Poloni» (all these Ogiński, Vishnevetski and other) became poles without any reservations.. They despised and hated their Orthodox ex-compatriots, and sought to destroy them by forcing assimilation.
For example, S. M. Plokhy in book, “The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus” (I guess from this book you quoted «Gente Rutheni, natione Poloni»?) writes
«The Orthodox Ruthenian nobility, which was otherwise part of the political class of the Commonwealth and generally shared the way of life and ideals of the noble estate, was often prepared to abandon its ancestral religion when faced with discrimination
on religious grounds. In 1673, the Orthodox of the Commonwealth were prohibited from acquiring noble status. In 1717 and 1733, religious dissenters (i.e Orthodox) were banned from participating in Diets. Under these circumstances, the Orthodox nobles preferred to join the dominant Roman Catholic Church. They bypassed the Uniate “purgatory,” leaving the non-noble segments of the Ruthenian community to suffer there. .. The identity of the Ruthenian nobility of the period has yet to be studied in depth, but it is clear that in the eighteen century most of its members joined the Polish Lithuanian “nation” not only in political but also in religious, linguistic, and cultural terms ….being true members of the new Polish nation.
Ruthenian burghers also could not avoid discrimination on the part of the Polish-Lithuanian state and society. In 1699 Orthodox burghers were prohibited from holding council offices in the royal towns…. The royal decree of 1572 that granted the Lviv Ruthenians equal rights with Polish Catholics was largely ignored by the city council, which argued that the decree contravened the city’s rights and privileges. The conversion of the Lviv Orthodox community to the Union in1709… changed nothing. Religion (or, rather, rite) continued to bar the Lviv Ruthenians from civic office. The Ruthenians continued to be called a “nation” (natio) in royal privileges and civic decrees, a designation that usually set them apart from the Polish Catholic majority and, in their opinion, implied discrimination. In 1749 the Ruthenian members of the (now Uniate) brotherhood complained that the city council, in denying them the right to hold civic office, was “alienating itself from us, calling us a ‘nation’ and not incorporated persons equal to itself.” Ironically, the discrimination of which the Lviv Ruthenian community complained (it included nobles as well as burghers) helped preserve a strong sense of distinct Ruthenian identity – the same identity that Ruthenian nobles who did not belong to religious brotherhoods were losing at an alarming rate. …Among the major factors that contributed to the Polonization of the Ruthenian elites was the decline in the use of the Ruthenian language. In 1696, when the Commonwealth Diet adopted a resolution making the use of Polish obligatory in jurisprudence and administration, the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania submitted a proposal to the Diet to introduce Polish instead of Ruthenian as the language of the local courts. The proposal was one of a number of petitions intended to extend the rights possessed by the nobility of the Kingdom of Poland to their peersin the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Thus the equalization of noble rights in the Commonwealth went hand in hand with linguistic and cultural Polonization… By the end of the seventeenth century, the higher and elementary education of the children of Ruthenian nobles and burghers was largely in the hands of the Jesuits….. While Orthodox Ruthenians were not barred from attending Jesuit-run colleges, they had difficulty in maintaining their religion while enrolled there. That was certainly the case at Lviv University, where in the late seventeenth century the Orthodox were allowed to take only one year of philosophy and barred from other courses unless they converted to the Union. In 1725 Orthodox students were denied housing at the university. Similar practices were adopted in other educational institutions of the region. By the mid-eighteenth century… the Jesuits began teaching Polish history in their colleges. They were not only educating young Ruthenians but also turning them into political, religious, and cultural Poles…the Ruthenian language was squeezed out of the public sphere….
Roman Catholicism was closely linked not only to Polish identity bu talso to the nobiliary stratum,since it was often Polish or Polonized nobles who encouraged the conversion of their Ruthenian subjects to Catholicism–a process that the latter regarded as a transformation from Ruthenian to Polish identity.“Andri Basiiin Ostriv,”reported a Uniate priest in 1763, “who was taken to the lord’s household, turned from a Ruthenian into a Pole at the instigation of people from the lord’s household. Ilko Pekara in Chernytsia turned from a Ruthenian into a Pole at the lord’s command.”…
These processes (carried out with the direct approval and support of all these Ogiński, and Vishnevetski) are called ethnocide. For the existence of a separate people (with their culture and history), this is the worst option (only worse option – the direct extremination).
So Yes – Lithuanians as rulers turned out to be much much much much worse than Tatars.
I now understand where your confusion comes from.
Your extensive quote from Plokhy is correct but describes a specific time, from the veryend of the 17th century until the Partitoions of the 1770s. This was when the Commonwealth was broken up and in decline – after the Khmelnytsky uprising when much of the Rus lands in Ukraine ceased being part of the Commonwealth* and a rump area, more dominated by Poland, remained. It is not characteristic of the overall position of the Rus within the Commonwealth. JUdging the situation of Rus people within the Commonwealth based on events from 1670s-1770s like judging all of Ukraine’s experience under Moscow’s rule, by Stalin times, and concluding that the relationship was largely genocidal in nature.
This is what you claim, yet the facts contradict this claim. The Polish-speaking, Catholic Rus princes described themselves as Gente Rutheni, natione Poloni. They themselves continued to support Rus cultural projects – as I noted, even the infamous Jeremi Wiśniowiecki was funding the Kiev Academy, the world’s premier Orthodox educational institution. Wisniowecki was also a major patron of Orthodox monasteries. The famous Mhar Monastery in Poltava region continues to venerate the memory of its sponsor Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (despite being under the Moscow Patriarch!).
Here is an interesting and more objective treatment of Wiśniowiecki:
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/jeremi-wisniowiecki-hero-or-antihero
The attempt at mass assimilation occurred in the 1700s but this was no longer close to being the Middle Ages.
Something else you forgot to mention – the pro-Orthodox Ukrainian elite was also Polish-speaking. Polish was the language of command of Khmelytsky’s forces, and Polish printing presses flourished in Kiev and Chernihiv during the time of the autonomous Hetmanate. The principal languages of instruction of the famous Orthodox Kiev Academy were Polish and Latin.
False. See above. Supporting Orthodox monasteries and educational institutions is hardly “despising.” The last Commonwealth governor of Kiev was an Orthodox nobleman, Adam Kysil. Hrehory Chodkiewicz, a previous Orthodox Rus governor of Kiev, built many Orthodox churches and monasteries. The Supreme Commander of Poland-Lithuania’s army in the war against Moscow was an Orthodox magnate, prince Konstanty Ostrogski. Within the Commonwealth, Kiev became the Orthodox world’s intellectual center. Within the Commonwealth, the first printed Orthodox Bible appeared.
For most of the Commonwealth’s history, the Rus were active and equal participants.
After Moscow annexed Rus areas from the Commonwealth, it gained a class of highly educated and capable Orthodox Rus people who reformed, built up and strengthened the Russian state. The historian Vernadsky wrote that the acquisition of Kiev was no less important than the creation of St. Petersburg with respect to Russia’s modernization and growth as a great power. So ironically, the Commonwealth (and rule by Lithuanians rather than Tatars in these lands) played an important role in Moscow’s power, also.
When Russia got these lands they were overwhelmingly Little Russian speaking. By the 1950s they were about half Russian-speaking. Ethnocide?
I thought of a typical example – the Kosinsky uprisings. Cosasacks and minor nobles such as Kosinsky fought against Rus magnates and their private armies. Both main antagonists were Rus Orthodox – the petty nobleman Kosinsky on the one hand, and his enemy prince Ostrogski (governor of Kiev) on the other hand. The anti-Cossack, pro-Commonwealth Rus Prince Ostrogski founded an Orthodox academy and funded the first Orthodox printed Bible. Was this Commonwealth patriot a Polish colonial engaging in ethnocide according to you?
(Poland itself was largely on the sidelines in this conflict.)
This was the same pattern as during the Khmelytski uprising, except unlike Ostrogksi who was Orthodox, the Rus prince Wiśniowiecki converted to Catholicism after having toured western Europe (though as I pointed out in my post the latter still continued to fund Orthodox institutions).
Good point, however, the tide was definitely turning against the very few Ostrogskis left (even his own son converted to Catholocism!) within the Commonwealth. Also, I’m not sure that Konstantyn Ostrogski should merit the appellation of ‘anti-cossack’ (a little too strong?), at least not according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CO%5CS%5COstrozkyKostiantynVasyl.htm
He was quite the individual, and was even hailed by later Polish historians as the second Hannibal for his brilliant military exploits including significant victories against the Muscovites at Orsha and the Tatars at Wisnowiec.
Encyclopedia of Ukraine is a good source but it is not completely objective, taking for granted a Ukrainian nationalist narrative.
Compare their description of Jeremi Wisniowiecki – which matches that of the Russian nationalist (?) poster:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CW%5CI%5CWiKLniowieckiJeremi.htm
And then consider the information from this article, that I had posted earlier:
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/jeremi-wisniowiecki-hero-or-antihero
The actual picture is different. The latter is probably more realistic, taking into account the 17th century rather than applying a 20th century nationalistic lens when viewing these events and people.
I wasn’t questioning how the source site characterizes Wisniowiecki, but it’s depiction of Konstantyn Ostrogski. Besides, the entry was written by Liubomyr Vinar, an excellent historian, not noted as an unobjective nationalist type. I don’t think that pointing out the great contributions of Ostrogski, generally, as a great contributor to early Ukrainian culture and society is any way far off the mark:
I’m not qualified to weigh in on Ostrogsky’s relationship with the Ukrainian cossacks, but only point out that it appears that others perhaps take a more balanced view of the man in this regards, and seem to find a more nuanced perspective.
Sorry to find out that Liubomyr Wynar passed away earlier this year. For a more complete biography of this scholar’s life and accomplishments, read here:
http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/lubomyr-wynar-scholar-founder-of-the-journal-ukrainian-historian/
I don’t disagree. The point was that Ostrogski was both a Rus patriot and a Commonwealth loyalist, willing to crush Cossacks who rose against the Commonwealth. These terms were not mutually exclusive, contrary to the myth that the Commonwealth was some sort of anti-Rus colonial power. Rus culture flourished within the Commonwealth, attaining a higher cultural level than under the Tsars’ rule.
The Khmelnytsky uprising (which was preceded by 5 or 6 failed uprisings) was the consequence (not the cause ) of the religious oppression of the Orthodox population. However, regardless of what was cause and what the consequence – undoubted fact is the sad result of Lithuanian invasion. Ruthenian Orthodox population was legally deprived of rights, and turned into inferior people (subordinate to the Polish “Sahib”), as well as subjected to forced conversion in Catholicism and Polonization
(forced assimilation is ethnocide).
All this is done with the full approval of converted to Catholicism nobility – without their ыгззщке, legal acts (“Orthodox of the Commonwealth were prohibited from acquiring noble status…. Orthodox of the Commonwealth were banned from participating in Diets”) could not appear. So these people in general are despised and hated their Orthodox ex-countrymen, and dreamed about their disappearance. Obviously it was nuances (for example Ostrogski), but the laws clearly show the “General line”
Possible historical events could go differently, be more successful for Western Russian lands. However, in our reality, the Lithuanian conquest in the end had a very bad result.
Here’s a summation of the Ukrainian experience within it’s Lithuanian and later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth periods. We’re talking about a long period of history that was far from static:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/History.asp#Topic_8
Wrong. As we have seen from prior examples, earlier uprisings involved Orthodox Rus magnates crushing previous uprisings. Even in the Khmelytskly uprising, the main enemy of Khmelytsky, while a convert to Catholicism himself, was also a builder and sponsor of Orthodox churches and monasteries. In fact, while Khmelnytsky’s troops looted Orthodox monasteries, the convert Wisniowiecki protected them. Who was the governor of Kiev whom Khmelytsky drove out? An Orthodox Rus, Adam Kysil.
Let me repeat: the main enemy of the Cossacks during the Kosinsky uprising was also the main sponsor of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
These contradictions are too serious and widespread to ignore or dismiss. They are not mere “nuance.”
Therefore, the primary cause of these conflicts was not religion, but class. It’s the common thread in all these uprisings. Rus Magnates, generally Rus princes such as Ostrogsky or Wisniowiecki (both Orthodox or Catholic) expanded their powers at the expense of both peasants and the lesser nobility, who were supposed to be legal equals. The peasants and lesser nobles resented this expansion of power and rebelled.
Religion played a secondary role – sure, Wisniowiecki’s conversion was a good propaganda tool, but this wouldn’t explain the previous uprisings, nor all of those Orthodox fighting on the side of the Commonwealth.
BTW there were also uprisings against the Tsars (Bulavin, Pugachev) – so as you see, no anti-Orthodox religious oppression was necessary for an uprising.
As a result of Lithuanian invasion, Rus lands that had been invaded became the intellectual center of the Orthodox world. The Orthodox (noble) population enjoyed rights that their brothers in despotic Moscow did not have. The first printed Orthodox Bible was created within the Commonwealth, by a refugee from Moscow, who was financed by a Commonwealth loyalist. The best Orthodox schools were created within the Commonwealth. Orthodox monasteries flourished. Etc.
Which ones? Not Ostrogsky, the Commonwealth loyalist who was also the main supporter of Orthodoxy. Not Kysyl, the Orthodox governor of Kiev and member of the Commonwealth’s Senate who represnted the Commonwealth against Khmelytsky. Not Wisniowiecki, who financed and supported Orthodox monasteries and protected them from being looted by Khmelnytsky’s Cossack rebels.
And why “ex-countrymen?” Wisniowiecki was the head of the organization of Rus magnates, kniazhata starozhytni. He was a Rus prince. You think that because he converted to Catholicism at age 20 after being enthralled by western Europe he was no longer a Rus prince?
The laws you described were all from events following the uprising (the consequences of the Rus magnates losing to the Rus lesser nobles and peasants), and reflect the loss of many Rus lands and the threat of further Moscow expansion, not some sort of “general line.”
Decent summary, but not free of Ukrainian nationalist contamination – “Thus the union gave Poland control over a large part of Ukrainian territory, where it proceeded to subjugate and exploit the indigenous population.”
The “subjugation and exploitation” was mostly the initiative of the of native Rus princes, not of Poles. Moroever, the phenomenon was rather universal. At the same time, in Muscovy, peasants and lesser nobles were also being increasingly dominated and subjugated – in the case of nobles, with epic brutality.
and now: ukro-polish naz-srach, please.
Most of whom that had forsaken their own language and religion in favor of a foreign, imperial one. Doing so made life at the court easier and more profitable in the long run, intermarriage within prominent Polish noble families another avenue to acceptance within Polish society. Wisnowiecky was considered a ‘patriot’ by his Polish noble peers, not so by 99.99% of his Ukrainian countrymen. He did indeed play a duplicitous political game of offering some support to a few Orthodox churches and monasteries as you point out, however his motives for doing so didn’t seem to be genuinely out of respect for the religion of his ancestors, but one of expediency and a nod to the status quo of the areas that he controlled. His own conversion to Roman Catholocism was an affront to the status and place of his famous Orthodox cleric uncle, Petro Mohyla, and his ‘support’ of these few Orthodox churches was most likely some form of personal penance for what was considered a great betrayal by his Orthodox subjects. In a time when religion was often a real marker in the national debate, Wisnowiecky’s desire to rise up the social latter prompted his conversion and solidified his station within his social class.
Is it really empty ‘nationalist history’ to point out that during this early modern period, Ukraine’s chances to evolve as a nation state were seriously hampered because it had lost its own native upper classes to foreign interests?
The process of increase in power followed by rebellion began before conversion to Catholicism, however. And the same process occurred in Muscovy, where the elite were not converting. Therefore, the main process was economic and involving class stratification rather than national, contrary to modern nationalist historians who project national struggles backwards.
Plenty of Rus Orthodox fought alongside Wisnowiecki (while more registered Cossacks switched sides far from all did). The Khmelytski uprising was Rus Orthodox + Poles + German mercenaries vs. Rus Orthodox + Tatars.
How do you know what his motives were?
Although he personally converted to Catholicism, after having studied in western Europe and having been impressed by the high level of culture he found there, there is no evidence that he was some sort of Catholic zealot. He continued to support Orthodox institutions and allied with Orthodox in supporting a Protestant candidate for the Polish throne. As the Den article states, it is likely that he was simply opposed to rebellion and illegality, as well as alliance with heathen Tatars.
Also – you seem to minimize his support for Orthodox churches and monasteries. He spent lavishly on them – as well as on the Kiev Academy, whose students continued to express gratitude for his help.
Wisnowiecki was indeed brutal to the rebels he could find, and their bitter enemy (as had been the Orthodox magnate Ostrogski, who tortured to death emissaries from Zaporizhia). But he also protected Orthodox monasteries form looting by Cossacks. Plokhy mentions that Cossacks were even slaughtering Orthodox monks. And the Cossacks unleashed the Tatars upon Ukraine – during the uprising estimated 200,000 Rus people were captured and sent into slavery.
You don’t think that people have the right to personally choose their faith? Wisnowiecki was raised in part by his Catholic uncle. His conversion coincided after a trip not to Poland but to Western Europe (Italy). It may have been like the conversion of Volodymyr of Kiev – who was dazzled by the Greek faith and chose it (but unlike Volodymyr, who then forced the foreign Greek faith upon the Slavs he ruled, Wisnowiecki continued to support the Orthodox). It doesn’t look like a purely calculated political move.
Anyways, a perspective different from yours:
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/day-after-day/pilgrimage-stepan-bandera-and-jeremi-wisniowiecki
But, in reality, he was a Ukrainian prince, for the term “Ruthenian” was interpreted at the time almost as the term “Ukrainian” is now. Jeremi was a Ruthenian voivode for some time. That voivodeship embraced the territory of what is now Galicia. He also made a sizable contribution to defending the Ukrainian lands from the Tatars and developing economic entities on the Ukrainian Left Bank. Although converted to Catholicism, Jeremi cared about Orthodox monasteries, sponsored Orthodox Church publications, and helped his relative, Kyiv Metropolitan Petro Mohyla.
Yes, he was an enemy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. But could it have been otherwise if this Cossack hetman’s people had defiled the prince’s estate? Besides, Khmelnytsky brought the Tatars to the Ukrainian land, and they fought against Jarema. It is also questionable that the Battle of Berestechko was an encounter between the Ukrainian and Polish armies and that this battle was an illustrious victory of the Polish arms. The Tatars, who made up a major part of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s army, harbored no warm feelings towards the Ukrainians and plundered our land. They went to war for the sake of loot. Conversely, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s army comprised a lot of Ukrainians. After all, Jeremi Wisniowiecki, who secured the victory of the royal troops, was not and did not consider himself Polish. The so-called uprising headed by Khmelnytsky resembled a civil war in many respects.
Swine reacts to pearls.
Pearls? Don’t sell yourself short. Those are real diamonds, you dumped there.
Any in with the Navigator factory in Saratov. There was a whole complex of optoelectronic industries making guidance systems there. In the 1990’s, I sold devices made in Saratov to the Indians pace program for remote sensing of fishing fleets and weather. I shipped them via the UK. Two lots of export control tests. 65 different documents in multiple,we copies.
It all depends n which monk wrote it down 200 years later. Like Vladimir’s baptism on Roman I!perusal territory in Crimea. And so he was a Prince not a king.
There is (very) slight evidence for medieval brythons (Welsh near as not) heading to Byzantium and then North during the Saxon invasion English Saxons did so later after the Norman invasion.. There is real evidence for one of the figures that became King Arthur commanding amgroup of Alan’s on Hadrian’s wall in the UK. Celts not impossible.
Didn’t Khlemnitski (I see so many spellings), sell peasants by the tens of thousands to his Tartar allies to finance the war? Cossacks and peasants did not love each other.
The driver was climate change. 1650 was the low point of the Little Ice Age. The English Civil War, the 30 Years war and the K rebellion all took place in this context. Unfortunately, most history is written from a nationalist perspective and international similarities are not part of the narrative or explanation. The use of muskets as weapons might have been a factor too. Archers were skilled professionals with years of training. Musketeers could be trained in weeks. Easier to go to war.
I think that’s a myth. He did, however, bring his Tatar allies into Ukraine, and they did a lot of slave-raiding and plundering while there. His nemesis Jeremi Wiśniowiecki had been a Tatar-fighter who kept the Tatars out of Ukraine; Khmelnytsky’s alliance with the Tatars probably further pushed Wiśniowiecki’s buttons.
Something funny?
Bottom-feeding Proglodyte scum vs garbage can.
https://twitter.com/Lauren_Southern/status/908568020951302150
As loathsome as these scum are, they were encouraged and allowed to run riot by the globalist elites.
She’s good.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/RnicJAVaUYZS/
Ironic, isn’t it? The truth is that you are 100% correct. It is what happened on all levels. Perestrika was totally uncalled for as there was no existential crisis, just problems of growth and issues which arise from time to time with every growing organism. Life indeed not only was not bad but was consistently improving. Probably not as fast as people wanted but anyway. I will not go deep into what I think of intellectual level of the top leadership that failed to see the gap between ideological rigidity and changing times and mood and failed to act accordingly. Generally speaking Soviet people wanted it all and now . Both security and all social things provided by state which were a lot and would cost an arm and leg in the west and western consumption. Results is here for all to see. People of the former is have got neither. I always loved Pushkin fairy tales. This case is straight from ” old fisherman and Golden fish” with former Soviet people being proverbal old woman from this tale. Another irony would be that we’re soviet leadership and people calm, patient and consistent the West would go busy, as the fall of the eastern block was what saved the west providing necessary resources which had been all used up by 2000’s hence we see what,’ s going on now. Going bust eventually.
One more thing that should not be forgotten that Soviet people and leadership and so called elites were ready to betray sacrifice by previous and still alive generations and history to get that material stuff. Smereing and rewriting of own history is continuing. I see nothing good until it is over. One who does not respect oneself does not deserve respect from others. As Roman topic was touched in the article, it is hard to imagine Romans to smere own history or themseves and own heroes like Soviet people did. Even losers of the battle of cannae were accepted with open arms and thanked for not disparing on republic.
Andrei, you mentioned intelligence. Is this really beyond speculations as a fact? As gorbachob or some other members of the top leadership recruited? For me frankly it makes no sense. It is like Emperor giving up the crown to peddle mjles or pizza in this case. For me it always looked like fools more dangerous than enemy proverb. I had second thoughts after reading Yakovlev. Due to your contacts you might have information others do not.
When an author says “there are different kinds of patriotism” that always sets alarm bells ringing in my head. He’s going to claim that what everybody regards as patriotism isn’t “real” patriotism and that “real” patriotism is something that nobody but himself regards as patriotism but which conveniently supports his pre-ordained conclusion. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the word “Kiev” appears seven times in the article! Clearly, what the author is seeking to do is to deny the existence of the Ukrainian people and, by extension, deny their right to a sovereign nation-state. The pseudo-historical discourse is just an elaborate pretext for making that, essentially racist, argument and no time needs to be wasted on it. The maps of Muscovy, Kievan Rus and the Khanate of Crimea in Wikipedia put rather a different light on things. Indeed, by the author’s reasoning, Russia has absolutely no claim to Crimea! In any event, I don’t see the relevance of things that happened centuries to present-day European politics. Today, there’s an ethnic group that call themselves Russians, an ethnic group that call themselves Ukrainians, an ethnic group that call themselves Belarusians and there’s an ethnic group that call themselves Poles and, in accordance with the principal of the sovereign nation-state, which is the fundamental building block of the modern European political order, none of those groups can claim the right to subjugate any of the others and what might or might not have happened centuries ago is wholly irrelevant to that. The contrast is between the modern, 21st century concept of the sovereign nation-state and Putin’s attempt to resurrect the pre-1789 concept of “spheres of influence”. Incidentally, that author torpedoes his own argument by reminding us that the name “France” comes from the Franks, a Germanic people. By the author’s logic, therefore, Germany should be entitled to annex France! The French might not agree! Finally, one might wonder why a mere translator feels the need to conceal his real identity.
“dangerous” yes and probably all the more so when rooted in a distant past because then pretty well mythical but unfalsifiable and proof against mere fact. But there sre surely exceptions in the sense that traditions and distinctive habits of mind which can be traced back 500 years and more clearly shape behaviour today.
Amongst modern people the Japanese stand out. And a lot of tribal cultures enjoyed continuity going back for many centuries at least until well into the 20th century, did they not?
The pseudo-historical discourse is just an elaborate pretext for making that, essentially racist, argument and no time needs to be wasted on it. The maps of Muscovy, Kievan Rus and the Khanate of Crimea in Wikipedia put rather a different light on things. Indeed, by the author’s reasoning, Russia has absolutely no claim to Crimea! In any event, I don’t see the relevance of things that happened centuries to present-day European politics.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
Music was good, no doubt. We got beaten in that department. I suspect that neither Russian language nor background could lead to this kind of music. Russian, good Russian music is basically a soul music not rythmical but flowing.it what basically was since 30’s till 70’s. For me it was just a music but for many a window into alternative reality.
“One more thing that should not be forgotten that Soviet people and leadership and so called elites were ready to betray sacrifice by previous and still alive generations and history to get that material stuff. Smereing and rewriting of own history is continuing.”
Exactly! And I think the real question here is: WHY?? WHY, and HOW, could a nation which was literally on top of the world in the second half of the 20th century, which was one of the two global superpowers and had EVERYTHING going for it, put on such an incredible dunce cap and act with such suicidal, monumental idiocy, destroying itself and turning into a literal disaster zone in the space of just a few years? This needs to be analyzed thoroughly, and in an objective (not ideological or demagogic) manner – something that still has not been done properly, in my opinion. Unless the people of Russia can come to grips with, and overcome, this cognitive/emotional defect in their national psyche – a defect which still persists today, in a form nearly as bad as in late Soviet times – their future will not be very bright either.
P.S.: You really need to improve your English writing skills a little bit more, my friend.
“Nationalism based on glorious past is dangerous shit”
No, it is not. At worst it is potentially dangerous, just as gasoline is potentially dangerous.
At best, and I suspect in most normal times, nationalism is but the love of one’s community, one’s language, one’s land, one’s cultural heritage, and one’s inner sense of being. Not only is it not dangerous, it is much to be lauded. Its lack is what we see in today’s globalized world. “Stop being Russian, (or Chinese or German or Japanese or whatever)” in order that you may embrace your new identity as a global citizen, or as a gay, or anything else from the globalist’s assortment of identities. Now that is what I call truly dangerous shit.
We do not have enough information with a lot of speculations available online. However my guess would be wrong people in wrong places, people without merit and of limited mental capacity and with major character flaws at the very pinacle of power, lack of checks and balances and too much power vested in general Secretary position and peculiarities of national character. It was also inconsivable for say Roman patricians or high placed plebean nobels to admire all things Greek to the point of prostituting oneself due to Greeks superiority in all things material, phylosophical and scientific. They enjoyed the fruit but despised contemporary greeks.
Is it true? I seem to (vaguely) remember seeing some youtube animation of the Japanese history, with 3 different ethnic groups invading and dominating each other, back and forth. Or something like that.
Like what? Name one ethnic tradition you follow that can be traced back 500 years?
How about an educated middle class young woman explaining just after her uncle had come in, gone first briefly to pay respect to ancestors at the Buddhist shrine in an alcove of the dining room, then with the greatestest warmth and joviality of demeanour approached his brother bowing sevefal times, that the Shinto shrine on top of a cupboard in the kitchen was something she would honour (how often she didn’t say) by a clasp of het hands and bowing of her head? Then there is the apparent underlying attitude that only Japanese belong to the same species which is consistent with their total rejection of multiculturalism and zero quota for refugees. The young lady in question met a charismatic foreigner when on holiday abroad and married him which her family and friends all seem to adapt to happily but that may have been behaviour mediated by long tradition too.
I don’t think Japan had been invaded for over 1000 years before 1945 so I think those three different ethnic groups had much influence in the ĺast 500 years.
As for Australian Aborigines – and other hunter gatherer people without a written language, the 500 years would be only a small part of the continuous rituals for living in a substantially unchanging environment.
This discussion between Sergey and Parbes reminds me of the claims of Soviet KGB defector Bezmenov.
If I remember right, he claimed that the Soviet Bolsheviks through their intelligence agencies such as the KGB were deliberately trying to destroy the culture and morality of the West to weaken and destroy it.
How ironic, if true, that the success of those efforts boomeranged back onto the Soviet Union with those corrupted Western values then infecting and corrupting the Soviet Union.
Japan’s pretty unique. No one else has managed to keep an single bloodline on the monarchy for that long, even if it is for show.
My hypotheses is following for whole Eastern block – first some commonalities
both were multinational empires with overwhelming majority of Slavic nations, elites were western oriented, often towards germany (even Rumania was still huge Slavic element until 19. century)
first part of 20. century there was battle agains german domination, finalized by 2. war.
contrary to official propaganda of socialistic internationalism all countries where in fact nationalistic – especially after 2. war
socialy conservative, nationalistic with aim of social justice
then came anti conservative revolution in whole Europe in sixties together with new musical style
Slavic nations being European always were open and accepted other cultures embraced new style and anti conservative movement (I recall it from 70.-80. everybody had kind of enough old tranditional Slavic music)
students and young generation in West must end revolt and adjust to system, and to survive in fact betray their ideals, of anti-system anti-conservative revolution (from their anti system values – kept only part and became nowadays liberals..
on contrary at East you did not need to cooperate with system that much, so there was plenty of young people with long hairs – symbol of independence in Easter countries, unless they were openly anti-system, they could live decently in internal exile and be free,
due to minimum incentive >> small differences in wages they were not that easily corrupted by system, so continue to be in opposition to system – which was socially conservative but were egalitarian
due to iron wall many believed and find out what is in movies from West to be attractive, on other hand Eastern movies and tv was more boring (translate closer – in fact – to real life) in comparison to western production, but they did make judgment by eastern standards applying them on western production…
changes in Eastern block were initially going for many to make system even more free and less socially rigid and outcome we know..
I agree with Zinovjev very unique coincidence of different factors..
But in whole in Central and Eastern block, as it is usual in Slavic countries over whole history, when crisis is coming people are going back to roots and Nationalism is again back even in different forms across Poland, Hungary, Balkan, even in Ukraine…
Question is as usually who will be uniting factor? Russia, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Czechia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Baltic countries, Germans ?? That is question. All of them already had that role in past history..
I forgot, my apology goes for Slovakia – their turn is now;-) They are Central (Central Europe), closer idealy in middle of Poland, Czechia, Ukraine, – not far from Russia many of share ancestors wish Hungary, mentality exactly in middle of all;-)
I’m not really familiar with Japan, never been there; sounds like they did manage to preserve their ‘civilization’ (as Dugin would call it). Still, even there, looking back further than 200 years probably amounts to creating myths and legends.
Anyway, Japan is an island, a bunch of islands in the middle of nowhere. In Europe, middle east, north Africa – cultural far-removed past is just completely meaningless, imo. Too much migration, mixing and matching, wars, genocides, god knows what.
I once talked to a guy in mountain Adjaria, which used to be occupied and assimilated by either Muslim Turks or Christian Georgians, changing every few decades. In the end, he said, they learned to build churches that could easily pass for mosques when Turks come. Same with the rituals, dialects, and so on. That’s an extreme case, of course, but it kinda demonstrates the general idea.
Never heard of him. However values that we were learning since early age by any means were far superior and more human than what was and especially goes under values nowdays. The problem is that the path of virtue is always far harder to follow than the path of sin and egoism.add to this dumb policies by later Soviet government and here we go. Soviet people only saw the glossy part never seeing the ugly underwear of the west and even when told truth they did not believe until they learned it first hand. I was among those who never bought into western values and cherished ours. I advice to watch Soviet era cartoons and movies to see for yourself sort of values that were considered laudable.
Let’s compare. In the 16th century Tsardom of Russia is no serfdom. In Poland/Lithuania serfdom legalized. In the 17th century in Tsardom of Russia introduced serfdom, but it is relatively soft, serfdom almost absent. In Poland/Lithuania is booming corvee system – Polish serfs sometimes were required to work 6 days per week for their masters.
In the 18th century serfdom in Russia was strengthened (at the same time, the percentage of serfs in the General population decreases and the percentage of free peasants is growing). In the southern regions of Russia (in the landlords estates) dominated a system of corvee (in corvee estates lived about 45% of serfs of “Great Russia”, while in the West Russian lands almost all the landlord estates used corvee). To 1770 corvee in Russia usually was 2 days a week. 5 apr. 1797 in Russia was issued the Manifesto of three-day corvee prohibiting landlords used the serfs more than 3 days per week in their fields
In Poland was legalized:
«A tendency of increase in Socage (Corvee) was universal.
In Poland Corvee was first insignificant; according to the statutes of 1519 and 1529. serfs were required to work 1 day per week in the wheat fields of the landowner, that is 52 days a year. But by 1550 Corvee was increased to three days a week, and by 1600, up to six days per week .»
Fernand Braudel Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. III
In addition it is necessary to take into account the relative number of serfs. In 1858, within the boundaries of Muscovy, serfs accounted for 36% of the population (free peasants 45%). In the Ruthenian lands of the serfs and the percentage was higher (50-60%). Of course, the proportion of serfs has varied over time (in Russia it decreased from the time of Peter the Great), but I think in General, the percentage of free peasantry in “Great Russia” was higher than in Western Russian lands.
That is, in General, in the Western Russian lands, serfdom was more severe. Of course you can find minor points on which the Polish serfs had the advantage (and it is possible to find minor points on which the Russian serfs had the advantage). But the situation as a whole is determined by the system of Corvee, which in Poland was much more brutal.
1 point refers to “lesser factors.” Landlords could send peasants to Siberia, to trade them separately from the land, but these phenomena existed in homeopathic doses. At the same time, the peasants could escape from their landlords at any time, the process tacitly legitimized by the Tsar power (and severely constrained the landlords).
2 point is nonsense
In Poland Commonwealth according to the statutes of 1600 serfs were required to work six days per week. That is legalized oppression of the peasant was almost unlimited
3 point – an outright lie. Russian peasants could appeal to the court against their landlords (as in 1797, the peasants Komolowski estat around St. Petersburg have won a court case against their landlord)
4 point in all probability is also an outright lie, but in any case this is out of the topic.
Slovakia – their turn is now;-)
Didn’t the idea that peace could be had by rotating the political top dog slot among different ethnicities in the Balkans suffer a massive failure a few years ago?
My only memory
I see your major problem now. You have a faulty memory.
Slovakia – their turn is now;-)
It was obviously not serious proposition. I do not see any political will, figure or aim there. Just if you look back in history other Slavic nations already had their share in history.
For what I already mentioned you can add that Slovaks are Catholic nation, yet they have in their Coat of arms Byzantine Cross..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Slovakia
All surviving documents (Chronicles, wills, letters, religious literature) written in Russian. And please give the exact quote Vernadsky.
It is a myth. French, in any age owned a small minority of nobles.
And most importantly, Pushkin (unlike most nobles) knew French, but wrote poems in the Russian language. Michał Kleofas Ogiński knew a Polish, and wrote in Polish. See the difference?
Not sure if it will be interest, – but lot of is encoded in language itself.
For information about Slavic languages I would recommend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Jakobson
The Kernel of Comparative Slavic Literature
and prof. Zaliznijak for Russian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nuiw73EY50
a lot of interesting you can find out about his research of Novgorod Gramotas..
Of course, but in General, Moscow militarily were stronger. If you count all the wars with Poland/Lithuania: Russian realm 10 wars won and 3 lost.
According to this, in General, the Moscow government is better
defended his subjects from the enemy
In Novgorod, Ivan executed approximately 1,500 people. Czarnecki in some Stavishche probably destroyed more. And all victims of the Polish punitive expeditions to the “Ukraine”, several orders of magnitude more
The number executed doesn’t include the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands who were killed when they were driven into the forest in winter, during the “pogrom” upon the merchant district, etc.
Stavishche was destroyed during a war. It can be compared to the Russian destruction of Mazepa’s capital. Novgorod was massacred during peace-time, at the whim of the despot. Under Moscow, Rus people could be expected to be massacred just for no reason, if their despot felt like doing so.
Vernadsky, George. (1970). The Mongols and Russia. A History of Russia, Vol. III. New Haven: Yale University Press pp. 382-385
“By 1450 the Tatar (Turkish) language had become fashionable at the court of Grand Duke Vasili II of Moscow, which was strongly resented by many of his opponents. Vasili II was accused of excessive love of the Tatars “and their speech”
Vernadsky also states that many Russian noblemen adopted Tatar surnames (for example, a member of the Veliamanov family adopted the Turkic name “Aksak” and his descendents were the Aksakovs).
First you wrote, correctly, ” Polish serfs sometimes were required to work 6 days per week for their masters”
Then you switched to “In Poland Commonwealth according to the statutes of 1600 serfs were required to work six days per week. ”
I’m inclined to trust published academic sources (I provided them) vs. inconsistent claims by internet people.
Also, your claim that serfdom was “almost absent” in 17th century Russia is..strange.
I don’t have time to check your numbers. Parts of Russia such as the North are not amenable to serfdom; other parts such as Siberia or the far east were settled later. A useful comparison would be of lands suitable for agriculture ruled by Moscow vs. part of the Commonwealth. Was serfdom lighter in Oryol vs. Poltava?
Moscow won the war against Germany but suffered 20+ million deaths. Winning a war doesn’t necessarily mean – people have been kept safe.
Do you have evidence that the number of victims of Tatar slave raids was lower or even different in Moscow-ruled lands vs. within the Commonwealth? Winning more wars vs. the Commonwealth isn’t evidence for that.
It was a typo. Right “In the 17th century in Tsardom of Russia introduced serfdom, but it is relatively soft, corvee almost absent..”.
WTF
It’s been a thousand fucking years and you still can’t decide who the fuck is a Russian and who is not. Give the rest of the world a fucking break.
I’m not sure why you are focused on corvee (number of days obligated to work). Russian serfdom also included turning over a % of what was made..which also amounted to some % of time worked.
BTW, and issue you ignored was the fact that within the Commonwealth serfdom was much lighter in many Rus lands than it was in Poland itself; Polish serfs were in a much worse position than were most Rus serfs:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CS%5CE%5CSerfdom.htm
In the 16th and 17th centuries there were three distinct serfdom belts in Ukrainian territories. In Western Ukraine, where the filvarky were most developed, the peasants were exploited intensely and had the smallest allotments. In the middle belt, encompassing eastern Podilia and the northwestern Kyiv region, mixed (alodial and conditional) land tenure lasted longer, and the transition to filvarok farming was slower. The large landowners there were usually content to receive payment in kind, and the peasants were not completely or uniformly deprived of the right to own land. In the third belt, covering the lands along the Dnieper River and the Boh River in southwestern Ukraine, serfdom was difficult to impose: because of the proximity of the steppes and the constant danger of Tatar attack, the population was too mobile. North of the defensive line of castles many estates in the second and third belts offered 15-, 20-, or 30-year waivers from corvée or other obligations in order to attract and hold settlers.
Because this is the main difference. In Russia majority of serfs paid money rent or natural rent, while in Poland the majority of serfs were subject of corvee. For this reason serfdom in Poland was much more severe than in Russia (with corvee 4-5 days a week, serfdom becomes like a “moderate” plantation slavery)
Fernand Braudel – very, very, very respected historian (and no doubt trust published academic sources) The source I provided – Fernand Braudel Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. III Chapter CAPITALISM AND the SECONDARY ENSLAVEMENT
In all other publications that I found, it is stated about the same. Here’s an article in the Polish Wikipedia (I really don’t like Wikipedia, but academic articles in Polish is beyond me).
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa%C5%84szczyzna_w_Polsce
A brief summary “in the 17-18th century, almost all of a peasant’s time (in Poland) could have been requested by the lord, in extreme cases requiring a peasant to labor corvee eight man-days a week”
.
Everything in the world has its own reasons. I agree that more opressing (in General) serfdom in Poland/Lithuania were due to geographical and climatic factors.
In all that discussion it looks that nobody can see the mammoth (obscured as it is by the smoke produced by the fiery discussions about the percentage of ‘white’ DNA in the make-up of Russians) in the room of Russian’s state history: The Christian Roman Empire (improperly called Byzance) and its Church.
The Russian ‘nation’ was born in the waters of St. Vladimir’s Baptism. By this act his realm became part of the ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’, of the ‘family of Orthodox princes’ and remained as such ever since. Actually Vladimir and his successors became faithful ‘vassals’ of the Empire and defenssors of the Orthodox Church against external and internal foes.
After the fall of Tsargrad, Russia remained the only free part of the ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’ and of the Orthodox Church and continued to defend it. The Empire was not ‘translated’ to Russia (as the myth of the ‘Third Rome’ claims) but remained there by default. Even so, the rulers of Muscovy did not plainly took the title of Emperor, but that more ambiguous of Czar (the Caesar/καῖσαρ was an inferior title in the Byzantine hierarchy, bestowed on the sons of the Emperors), until Peter the Great.
In matters of the Church, the Russian Church remained solidly on the grounds of ecumenic (‘Greek’) Orthodoxy, rejecting the protestantizing nationalistic tendencies of the ‘old believers’ as it did with the catholicizing tendencies of the Council of Florence. In any case it was the Church which ensured the unity of the ‘Russian lands’ and its people, which explains the attempts to anihilate it in the past and the continuous vicious attacks to which is subject today.
But paying by % if what is made also amounts to a certain number of days per week. If landlord is owed 50% of what is produced, that means working for him 3-4 days per week. What is the difference?
Also, keep in mind that we are discussing the circumstances of Rus people. Ethnic Polish peasants were treated much worse than were Rus peasants, overall, due to geographical and historical circumstances. You did not address this part of my post:
http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CS%5CE%5CSerfdom.htm
In the 16th and 17th centuries there were three distinct serfdom belts in Ukrainian territories. In Western Ukraine, where the filvarky were most developed, the peasants were exploited intensely and had the smallest allotments. In the middle belt, encompassing eastern Podilia and the northwestern Kyiv region, mixed (alodial and conditional) land tenure lasted longer, and the transition to filvarok farming was slower. The large landowners there were usually content to receive payment in kind, and the peasants were not completely or uniformly deprived of the right to own land. In the third belt, covering the lands along the Dnieper River and the Boh River in southwestern Ukraine, serfdom was difficult to impose: because of the proximity of the steppes and the constant danger of Tatar attack, the population was too mobile. North of the defensive line of castles many estates in the second and third belts offered 15-, 20-, or 30-year waivers from corvée or other obligations in order to attract and hold settlers.
It seems that only peasants in Galicia were treated as poorly as were those in Poland; most Rus peasants were not.
The difference – a much greater degree of freedom. The rent which a serf paid to the landlord is a tax. After paying the taxes the peasant generally had the freedom to live as he wants. But corvee is almost slavery. The fact that corvee is heavier than the rent – there was no doubt in the 17-18 centuries .
And Ethnic Rus peasants in Polish Kingdom were treated much worse than were treated Ethnic Rus peasants in Moscow Tsardom, overall, due to geographical and historical circumstances.
The same applies to the Moscow Tsardom. There were different “belts” of different types of serfs and free peasants, etc. It doesn’t change the fact that in any age of the existence of the Polish Commonwealth, serfdom in West Russian lands (under the poles) was more severe than in the Moscow Tsardom. Perhaps the system corvee in the West Russian lands were less severe than in the true Poland. However, the system corvee in the West Russian lands were predominant
Link is not working. However the name “encyclopediaofukraine” itself causes extreme skepticism.
Ie many nobles knew the Tatar language as a foreign language. Tatar language never was the native language of Russian aristocrats .
It depends on the size of the tax. In Canada, taxes for physicians are going to go up to 45%. So almost half the year, physicians are just working for the government (of course they make enough the rest of the year to live very well).
Peasants in Russia weren’t allowed free movement after the tax, other than during a specific time of year, and this was abolished.
Not at all. The details of serfdom in Rus lands show that:
“In the middle belt, encompassing eastern Podilia and the northwestern Kyiv region, mixed (alodial and conditional) land tenure lasted longer, and the transition to filvarok farming was slower. The large landowners there were usually content to receive payment in kind, and the peasants were not completely or uniformly deprived of the right to own land. In the third belt, covering the lands along the Dnieper River and the Boh River in southwestern Ukraine, serfdom was difficult to impose: because of the proximity of the steppes and the constant danger of Tatar attack, the population was too mobile. North of the defensive line of castles many estates in the second and third belts offered 15-, 20-, or 30-year waivers from corvée or other obligations in order to attract and hold settlers.”
That’s rather light, as light as in Russia.
Would “Russian Encyclopedia” cause as much skepticism?
It’s published by the University of Toronto.
This is the bibliography for the article about serfdom:
Lazarevskii, A. ‘Malorossiskie pospolitye krest’iane (1643–1783),’ Zapiski Chernigovskago gubernskago statisticheskago komiteta, 1 (1866)
Trifil’ev, E. Ocherki iz istorii krepostnogo prava v Rossii (Kharkiv 1904)
Franko, I. Panshchyna ta ïï skasuvanie 1848 r. v Halychyni (Lviv 1913)
Miakotin, V. Ocherki siotsial’noi istorii Ukrainy XVII–XVIII st., 3 vols (Prague 1924)
Slabchenko, M. Materiialy do ekonomicho-sotsial’noï istoriï Ukraïny XIX st., 2 vols (Odesa 1925–7)
Hejnosz, W. Zagadnienie niewoli na Rusi Czerwonej pod koniec średniowiecza w świetle stosunków prawnych Polski krajów sąsiednich (Lviv 1933)
Hurzhii, I. Rozklad feodal’no-kriposnyts’koï systemy v sil’s’komu hospodarstvi Ukraïny pershoï polovyny XIX st. (Kyiv 1954)
Blum, J. Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton 1961)
Rozdolski, R. Stosunki poddáncze w dawnej Galicji, 2 vols (Warsaw 1962)
Kolchin, P. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Cambridge, Mass 1987)
yeah.
My skepticism increased. However I would like to see the arguments on the issues of the discussion.
Which ones, specifically?
On my computer this link ( encyclopediaofukraine) does not work . Write what is in this publication you consider noteworthy
Serfdom in Ukrainian lands:
Serfdom. A form of peasant servitude and dependence on the upper landowning classes that was characteristic of the feudal system and existed in different parts of Europe from the medieval period to the 19th century. The degree of subservience and the prevalence of the serf-lord relation differed with time and country according to natural, economic, social, and political conditions. In Ukraine serfdom developed first in the territories ruled by Poland. Under the Polish system of serfdom the peasants were bound by law to their plots of land, which were owned by the lord. The amount of obligatory labor (corvée) owed by the peasant to the lord depended on the size and quality of the peasant’s plot, but the amount of labor effectively exacted was often arbitrary. The Russian system of serfdom, which was established in most Ukrainian territories under Russian rule at the end of the 18th century, was based on the principle that the lord owned the peasant under his control. He could dispose of his serfs as he wished: he could even separate them from their land. The amount of labor owed by the peasants and the size of their allotments depended on the number of adult males in their families.
Medieval period. In Kyivan Rus’, the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania the larger households of the princes and boyars usually produced enough to meet only their own needs, and the work was done mostly by slaves or by semifree nepokhozhi peasants of different types (zakupy, izhoi, siabry, etc). The bulk of the peasants lived on their own land and paid tribute in kind or money to the ruling prince. The free pokhozhi peasants sometimes had to provide unpaid labor for the construction of fortifications and roads and in emergencies were called to bear arms in a levy en masse.
Under Polish rule. As Polish rule spread throughout Ukraine in the second half of the 15th and in the 16th centuries, the position of the peasantry in Ukrainian territories changed radically. In Poland alodial land ownership was already an established privilege of the ruling class. The nobility had been exempted from any form of conditional (feudal) land tenure, and the peasants had been deprived of their former rights to land. The Polish magnates and nobles extended their serf system to Western Ukraine and, after the Union of Lublin in 1569, to Right-Bank Ukraine as well. To equalize the obligations of the different categories of peasant, the voloka land reform was introduced in 1557 in Ukrainian territories and was implemented gradually over the next century. Polish nobles set up filvarky on the better lands and began to specialize in grain farming for export (see Filvarok). The nobles’ diets of 1496, 1505, 1519, and 1520 issued decrees tying the peasants ever more closely to the land, depriving them of the right to move, subjecting them completely to the nobles’ courts, and increasing their obligations to the nobles. Finally, the amount of labor owed by the serfs and all other matters affecting them were left to the decision of the nobles, their tenants, or their stewards. A uniform system of serf obligations and relations was maintained on the royal estates, where serfs received better treatment than on the private estates of the nobility.
The obligations imposed on the serfs rose steeply in cases where a tenant, not the landowner, managed the estate. Although the plots of the serfs gradually shrank, their obligations were not lowered. In 1566, 58 percent of the peasant farms in Galicia consisted of more than a half field (pivlan). By 1648 only 38 percent were of that size, by 1665 only 16 percent, and by 1765 only 11 percent. At the end of the 16th century the typical serf allotment was a half field. Almost 41 percent of the serf plots were of that size, and 24 percent were a quarter field. Either allotment called for draft corvée with ox or horse. The larger plots required corvée with a pair of draft animals and were therefore known as parovi (pair). The smaller ones were called poiedynky (single). Depending on the period and the locality, the amount of corvée varied from three to six days per week by one or more members of a household. The poorer serfs, such as the horodnyky and komornyky (see Horodnyk and Komornyk), with smaller or no field allotments, provided one to six days of pedestrian corvée per week. The weekly corvée quota, other seasonal or special forms of labor, and additional dues in kind or cash varied with the territory and even the estate, as did the size of the allotments. In the 1620s, corvée on magnate estates in Volhynia came to four to six days per week per voloka (16.8 ha) of land, but some lords demanded labor every day of the week, including holidays. Farther eastward the serf plots became larger, the corvée became smaller, and the bond to the plot grew weaker. In the 16th and 17th centuries there were three distinct serfdom belts in Ukrainian territories. In Western Ukraine, where the filvarky were most developed, the peasants were exploited intensely and had the smallest allotments. In the middle belt, encompassing eastern Podilia and the northwestern Kyiv region, mixed (alodial and conditional) land tenure lasted longer, and the transition to filvarok farming was slower. The large landowners there were usually content to receive payment in kind, and the peasants were not completely or uniformly deprived of the right to own land. In the third belt, covering the lands along the Dnieper River and the Boh River in southwestern Ukraine, serfdom was difficult to impose: because of the proximity of the steppes and the constant danger of Tatar attack, the population was too mobile. North of the defensive line of castles many estates in the second and third belts offered 15-, 20-, or 30-year waivers from corvée or other obligations in order to attract and hold settlers.
The Hetman period. As the serfs became increasingly exploited in the western and middle belt, and as the corvée waivers expired or were foreshortened by the landowners, the peasants fled to the territories under Cossack control and joined Cossack uprisings. Those conditions contributed to the Cossack-Polish War. The peasantry participated in the war on a mass scale. Some of the peasant combatants joined the Cossack ranks and along with new Cossacks from the other estates demanded open access to land and other Cossack privileges. Former serfs who failed to gain admission to the Cossack estate first took possession of free lands in the liberated territories. But in their universals Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his successors called upon former serfs to return in certain cases to the service of the monasteries and the nobles who recognized the Cossack state. Generally, peasant obligations in the Hetman state during the second half of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century were light. The serf-lord relation and the corvée depended on the kind of village and on its owner. A large number of pospolyti, who performed corvée for the state, could own property. The Cossack starshyna, who received rank estates, demanded labor from their subjects. Many peasants from Western Ukraine and Right-Bank Ukraine, which were retained by Poland, fled to the Hetman state or to Slobidska Ukraine. Most of them settled as landless peasants on the estates of the Cossack starshyna or monasteries. According to the 1729–30 census of the Hetman state only 35 percent of the peasant farmers were subject to private landowners and not all of those were required to perform corvée. Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s universal in 1701 prohibited more than two days’ corvée per week. Gradually the peasants in Hetman Ukraine lost the right to dispose of their land and, eventually, their freedom as well. In the 1740s the pospolyti could still move from one landowner to another but had to leave their property (land and inventory) behind. The Cossack officers and monasteries made every effort to attach the peasants to the land, and the process was reinforced by the Russian government, which was interested in extending the imperial serf system to Ukraine.
In Right-Bank Ukraine, particularly in Volhynia, Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s uprising in 1648 brought no basic changes in the position of the peasantry. During the 18th century the filvarok system was restored, and the corvée demands on the serfs increased.
Under Russian rule. By the decree of 3 May 1783 Catherine II introduced the Russian serf system in the territory of the former Hetman state, and in 1785 the Cossack starshyna received the rights of the Russian nobility. After the Second and Third partitions of Poland the Russian serf system was extended to Right-Bank Ukraine. According to official estimates made in 1858, 60 percent of the serfs belonged to landowners, and 40 percent lived on state or appanage lands. Of the landowners’ serfs only 1.2 percent paid quitrent, and the rest did corvée. State peasants usually paid quitrent. During the first half of the 19th century the land allotted to peasants diminished to the advantage of the filvarky, corvée increased, and the number of landless peasants rose sharply. Corvée and the poll tax rose on average to between four and six labor days per week. The norm (urochna) system of labor was widely adopted. Many peasants, known as misiachnyky, lost their land and worked only on the lord’s demesne for a monthly ration of products. Others became household serfs, who worked and lived in the lord’s manor. The landowners increased corvée to cover the state-imposed poll tax and tax arrears. In a separate manifesto in 1797 the Russian government proposed that the landowners limit their demands on the peasants to a three-day corvée. In 1819 it clarified some aspects of the serf-lord relationship. Those and other manifestos were largely ignored by the landowners. In 1847–8 the government issued the so-called Inventory Regulations for Right-Bank Ukraine, which diminished the personal dependence of the peasants on their masters, lowered the corvée and regulated it according to the household allotments, prohibited the transfer of corvée from one week to another, abolished certain payments, and prohibited the conversion of ordinary serfs into household serfs. Infringement of the regulations was punishable by military court, yet the position of the serfs hardly changed.
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Does this seem accurate according to you?
In General as far as I can tell, quite accurate
But I don’t see that in this text contradicts my claims.
1)In the 16th century in Russia serfdom does not exist, “Ukraine” serfdom exists
2)In the 17th century in Russia serfdom exists, but Corvée (as a system for continuous labor) is virtually nonexistent. “Ukraine” (under Polish rule) a significant portion of peasants subject to Corvée (“In the 1620s, corvée on magnate estates in Volhynia came to four to six days per week per voloka (16.8 ha) of land, but some lords demanded labor every day of the week, including holidays”).
3)In the 18th century in “Russia” a smaller part of serfs subject to Corvée, the majority of serfs pays the rent. In “Ukraine” (under Polish rule) Corvée prevails, nearly all the serfs working Corvée
That is, in any age of the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, serfdom in the Polish “Ukraine” and “Belarus” in General was more rigid, than in “Russia”.
However the reasons for this were geographical and climatic, so that the poles in this case I don’t blame
Of course in Poland (unfortunately for the poles) could not exist “Asian despots” such as Ivan IV or Henry VIII Tudor. However, the lack of a Royal terror, successfully compensated by the aristocratic terror.
For example, Prince Andrei Kurbsky fled from the Russian state to Poland, where he obtained possession of the land. In his possessions (and near them) Kurbsky killed, kidnapped, robbed people, tortured people in dungeons of his castle, etc.
The Central government (the representatives of which were the same thugs as Kurbsky) was powerless to stop Kurbsky.
“in the absence of the monarch all property disputes were to decide local court. …. Therefore, under the Kovel again and again shots were fired, blood was spilled. In August of 1575 between Kurbsky and the Governor of Bratslav, Prince Andrei Ivanovich Vyshnevetsky, start a real war. On August 7 Kurbsky estate was attacked by a detachment, consisting of servants, retinue nobles and peasants under the command of Vishnevetsky. Villages Paryduby and Sealice was captured and cattle belonged to the peasants stolen. Kurbsky servants, sent to intercede for the peasants were beaten, and several of them – the Yakima Nevzorov, Elisha, Lesnevich, perhaps someone else – killed. Vishnevetsky also abducted four citizens of Kovel, whose fate was unknown.
August 8 a squad of servants of Kurbsky attacked the estate of Vyshnevetsky, dispersed farmers, collecting compressed bread . Servants Kurbsky took 266 16 stacks and sheaves of corn. Many of the defenders (serfs of Vyshnevetsky) there were wounded ”
Alexander Filyushkin. «Prince Kurbsky»
As emphasized by the biographer of Prince Kurbsky, his life was the normal life of the Polish landlord.
For this Russian nobles rightly believed that «your freedom… it’s anarchy. We know… what you have in Poland, the strongest oppress the weak, the strong could take from weak property and to kill him , and because of your law, weak have to seek justice many years before [the case] will be completed and possibly will never end.»
Isn’t the incident you describe much milder than the slaughter in Novgorod? It looks like the number killed was no more than double digits.
Good. So Encyclopedia of Ukraine is a decent source.
The article was only about Ukrainian lands.
Serfdom in Russia existed long before the 16th century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia#Thirteenth_to_fifteenth_centuries
Only in 1597 were serfs banned from ever moving. But they were restricted from doing so more than hundred years earlier.
Volhynia was the furthest west of Rus lands. As the article described, serfdom in many of the Rus lands within the Commonwealth was much milder. In some areas near the frontier, peasants had zero obligations for 15-30 years, and then the obligations were light. In most of central Ukraine – “The large landowners there were usually content to receive payment in kind, and the peasants were not completely or uniformly deprived of the right to own land.”
So in most Rus lands within the Commonwealth of the 17th century, the situation of the peasants was not worse than under Moscow. It may even have been better. Only in Volynia and Galicia it was worse (and in Poland, though were comparing Rus peoples, not Poles).
In the 18th century much of Ukraine that had been part of the Commonwealth had become part of the Hetman State (under Russia, basically fully autonomous until 1709 and then partially autonomous until Catherine II abolished this autonomy).
If this area had not been part of the Commonwealth in the first place it would not have been a Hetmanate later.
Serfdom was much much lighter in the ex-Commonwealth Hetman State than under Moscow. And it became very bad after Catherine eliminated autonomy there.
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So to summarize, for Rus people who were in Ukraine (Commonwealth) vs. under Moscow:
Rus “high” culture seemed to better flourish in the Commonwealth. First printed Orthodox Slavonic Bible was in Lviv, by a refugee who had to flee Moscow. Kiev Academy was in the 17th century the intellectual center of the Orthodox world. This influence continued for a few decades after the region was annexed by Russia. The first five or so heads of the Holy Synod were all from the former Commonwealth lands. As were first “Russian” philosopher Skovoroda, first significant “Russian” composers Dmytro Bortniansky and Maxim Berezovsky, Gogol, etc. All products of the Commonwealth. Vernadsky claimed that taking Kiev which had developed under the Commonwealth was as important as St. Petersburg for Russia’s modernization/westernization.
Peasants lived worse in the far west under the Commonwealth than under Moscow, but better in central Ukrainian lands than under Moscow.
I suppose one can argue either way if people lived on balance a little better in one place vs. the other, but the statement that things were “much much worse” for Rus people within the Commonwealth seems to be false.
Of course. However, the massacre of Novgorod – the only such event. But unpunished robberies and murders by the Polish landlords was the norm of everyday life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As a result from everyday anarchy perished more people than any tyranny.
The funny thing is that Kurbsky is hailed as a sort of liberal, almost ‘human rights defender’ against the ‘Asiatic despotism of the Moscow paranoic tyrant’. The “first Russian political émigré”, Kurbsky is best remembered for a series of vitriolic letters he exchanged with the Tsar between 1564 and 1579, denouncing the tsar for a number of pathologically cruel crimes, the worst being “Ivan’s slide towards absolutism” (Alex Navalny, Masha Gessen&Co avant la lettre!).
The truth is naturally more prosaic and sordid, of course (and I let the Wikipedia to tell it to you):
“During the Livonian War, Kurbsky led the Russian troops against the fortress of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia), and was victorious. After Ivan failed to renew his commission, Kurbsky defected to Lithuania on April 30, 1564, citing impending repressions ( Wikipedia suggests falsely that it was by the not existing yet Oprichnina*-the KGB of the time) as his reason. Later the same year he led a Polish-Lithuanian army against Russia and devastated the region of Velikie Luki. As a reward, Sigismund II August, king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, gave him the town of Kovel in Volhynia (Ukraine), where he lived peacefully, defending his Orthodox subjects from Polish encroachments. Kurbsky thus became the first Russian political émigré… Tsar Ivan began to suspect that other aristocrats were also ready to betray him.
A dramatized account of his life, in which he is depicted as the second most powerful aristocrat in Russia, only after the Tsar, who is constantly put under pressure by boyars that want to make him revolt against the imperial authority at Moscow, can be found in the epic work of Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible”.
*Oprichnina was created specifically to deal with widespread high-treason after the defection of Kurbsky (in January 1565). It operated only for seven years, being disbanded in 1572 when simply it outlived its usefulness.
Ivan the Terrible was also massacring some people in Pskov and Moscow, though not as many as in Novgorod. And Novgorod was a huge event – it would be like if Kiev was massacred. Many people (streltsi) were massacred by Peter the Great as well.
Moreover, there were periods of lawlessness in Moscow-ruled territories too. Mass killings and robberies occurred during the Time of Troubles; the chaos resulted in a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people. I’m not sure that regular people were less safe in the Commonwealth as in Moscow.
To 1597 in the Russian state peasants could legitimately get away from the landlord – then serfdom did not exist. In The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth:
«The nobles’ diets of 1496, 1505, 1519, and 1520 issued decrees tying the peasants ever more closely to the land, depriving them of the right to move, subjecting them completely to the nobles’ courts, and increasing their obligations to the nobles.»
I.e. the status of peasants in the Russian state in the 16th century was definitely better.
“In the far west under the Commonwealth” has existed almost in form of plantation slavery in central “Ukrainian” lands corvee system alternated with the rent in the 17th century. in the Russian state in the 17th century was definitely better.
That is the freedom of the serfs conquered in a violent uprising against Poland (and the subordination of ” Hetman State ” to the Russian Tsar) is the achievement of Poland? Great logic
rights and safety in the conditions when the norm is criminal anarchy?
«nobleman Kelemet came to Vladimir for litigation. He stayed in the house of citizen Vasily, and settled with his companions to rest, which, however, was short-lived… in the yard there are servants of the Prince Bulygi, with which Kelemet… has animosity. … Servant of Bulygi broke into the room … in fight Kelemet died, his four companions were maimed and injured. Death Kelemet body described as follows: “…almost the whole head chopped up, and on his left hand two middle fingers, between the thumb and the little finger severed, and his right leg wound through the bullet riddled”. Over the mortally wounded Kelemet was caught red-handed by the Prince Bulyga with a bloody cutlass in his hand. The attackers, according to eyewitnesses, gave their actions some demonstrative: so, Prince Dmitry Bulygi personally cut off (from dead Kelemet) finger with a precious ring. Property was looted»
Filyushkin
In Commonwealth it was the norm
For this Lithuanian nobles wanted to make Ivan IV the Polish king, in order to put order in the country.
It’s quite funny. All four named (philosopher Skovoroda, composers Dmytro Bortniansky and Maxim Berezovsky, Gogol) are from the “Russian” Ukraine, created their works (for musicians libretto) in Russian. Three of the four are closely connected with St. Petersburg.
Easy to compare – “Ukrainian” gentleman Gogol (who lived in St. Petersburg), created in Russian language “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka”. The same works on the Polish language does not exist and could not exist.
Rus “high” culture seemed to flourish only in the land under the rule of St. Petersburg. Commonwealth for Rus “high” culture was worse than leprosy
All came from former Commonwealth territory. With the exception of Gogol they came from the Hetmanate, which as an autonomous entity within the Russian Empire preserved Commonwealth traditions (including widespread use of Polish language). Gogol, of mixed Cossack Rus officer and Polish noble descent, who spoke Polish, was a typical product of the Commonwealth.
In that case, Explain how first printed Orthodox books were from the Commonwealth, how the intellectual center of the Orthodox world was from within the Commonwealth, and how as even Vernadsky admits Russia’s modernization was heavily indebted to the lands of the former Commonwealth.
They were allowed to move once a year, under not necessarily favorable conditions. And if all landlords offered about the same terms, this right was largely meaningless. And even it was taken away after 1597.
You forgot: in the third zone there was no obligation at all for 15-30 years, in order to attract settlement.
Remember we are discussing the circumstances of the Rus people, not the Polish people. While some of the Rus peasants were indeed treated as badly as Poles, most were not.
Just as American rights are a product of English tradition, so the culture of the Hetman State was the product of the Commonwealth traditions. Is this hard to understand?
Do you have evidence that there was actually less crime or brutality in Moscow than in the Commonwealth? On the contrary, Moscow was full of crime, raiding and robbery. The type of government didn’t matter. “From the mid 16th century robbery and brigandage were endemic on the few major highways of Muscovy’s huge Empire..spontaneous violence was common ”
Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia, Cambridge University Press, pg.9.
Albert Schlichting, a German who visited Russia in the 16th century: “This was the way [Ivan] treated one of his clerks a year ago. He seized the man’s wife and her maid and held them a
long time. Both were raped and hanged in front of the husband’s home, where they remained until Ivan had them cut down”
Giles Fletcher, 16th century English merchant:
“The whole countrie is filled with rapine and murder. They make no account of the life of a man. You shall have a man robbed sometime in the very streats of their townes, if hee goeth late in the evening, and yet no man to come forth out of his doores to rescue him, though hee heare him crie out, I will not speake of the strangeness of the murders and other cruelties committed among them, that would scaresly bee believed to be done among men, specially such as professe themselves Christians.
The number of their vagrant and begging poore is almost infinite, that are so pinched with famine and extreame neede, as that they begge after a violent and desperate manner, with ” give mee and cut mee, give mee and kill mee,” and such like phrases. Whereby it may bee gheassed what they are towardes strangers, that are so unnaturall and cruell towardes their owne.”
So don’t pretend that life was more violent in the Commonwealth because the Commonwealth was not ruled by a cruel Asiatic despot. Violence and murder was very widespread in Muscovy also, probably no less so than in the Commonwealth.
So in the Commonwealth you had legal rights and safety for the nobility plus crime, in Moscow you have a brutal despotism with no such safety for the nobility, plus crime.
Which was better?
After a hundred years under the rule of the Russian tsars, the “Russian” half of “Ukraine” are produced great talents: philosopher Skovoroda, composers Dmytro Bortniansky and Maxim Berezovsky, Gogol (you can add artists Levitsky and Borovikovsky and poet Gnedich). The other half of “Ukraine” these hundred years was under Polish rule. This “Polish” half of Ukraine in the cultural plan was a barren wasteland.
By the way, how do you explain the emergence of great talents (e.g. Lomonosov, Tatischev, Karamzin, Pushkin) in the “true” Russia of that era? It is also an achievement of the poles?
That’s great, but has nothing to do with high culture. All these good beginnings, under the power of Poland has brought no harvest .
Because Vernadsky was Ukrainian origin? .
Correction: it was after 100 years of local rule, under the legal, cultural and historical framework inherited from the Commonwealth.
Local rule was abolished in 1764.
Education:
Visitors from abroad commented on the high level of literacy, even among commoners, in the Hetmanate. There was a higher number of elementary schools per population in the Hetmanate than in either neighboring Muscovy or Poland. In the 1740s, of 1,099 settlements within seven regimental districts, as many as 866 had primary schools.[23] The German visitor to the Hetmanate, writing in 1720, commented on how the son of Hetman Danylo Apostol, who had never left Ukraine, was fluent in the Latin, Italian, French, German, Polish and Russian languages [24] Under Mazepa, the Kiev collegium was transformed into an academy and attracted some of the leading scholars of the Orthodox world.[25] It was the largest educational institution in lands ruled by Moscow.[26] Mazepa established another collegium in Chernihiv. These schools largely used the Polish and Latin languages and provided a classic western education to their students.[26] Many of those trained in Kiev – such as Feofan Prokopovich – would later move to Moscow, so that Ivan Mazepa’s patronage not only raised the level of culture in Ukraine but also in Moscow itself.[25] A musical academy was established in 1737 in the Hetmanate’s then-capital of Hlukhiv. Among its graduates were Maksym Berezovsky (the first composer from the Russian Empire to be recognized in Europe) and Dmitry Bortniansky.
This is clearly a legacy of the Commonwealth.
Guess what happened when this legacy was dismantled by Moscow? Ukraine was reduced to a backwater.
Lomonosov studied at the Kiev Academy.
Rather, in 1722. Elizabeth restored the “Hetmanat”, but it was rather fiction.
“Russian” half of “Ukraine” (both “Autonomous” part, and part under the direct authority of the tsars) are produced great talents, and “true” Russia synchronously are produced great talents. But Commonwealth (under the authority of which was half of “Ukraine” and the whole “Belarus” – millions of “Rus” people) produced nothing.
That is, the success of the “Russian” “Ukraine”, was caused by the fact that this half was liberated from the poles.
Began a national-romantic tales. In Russia among “Slavophiles” have large popularity of similar fables, about the highest level of education in pre-Petrine Russia. Of course this is nonsense (in both cases for “Ukraine” and “Russia”).
All the success of “Ukraine” in the sphere of high culture achieved in period when this (Commonwealth) legacy was dismantled by Moscow. (actually St. Petersburg). For example Gogol was born in 1809
from Wikipedia beloved by your
“After three years in Moscow he was sent to Kiev to study for one year at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He quickly became dissatisfied with the education he was receiving there, and returned to Moscow several months ahead of schedule, resuming his studies there. In 1736, Lomonosov was awarded a scholarship to St. Petersburg Academy.”
Not really. The reforms limited the Hetmanate’s foreign policy and made the Hetman dependent on Moscow but did not dismantle local policies. It maintained its schools, legal system, education system, etc.
The Autonomous part of Ukraine had, perhaps, 1/5 of Russia’s population. Yet its cultural output was comparable to that of Russia. That tells us a lot about the legacy of the Commonwealth.
The Autonomous part included the main Rus-inhabited towns (principally, Kiev). The areas in the Commonwealth were heavily depopulated (towns and villages destroyed) during the Cossack wars. There wasn’t much of a population left to create a high culture, and what was left was rural. The Commonwealth government gave 15-20 year breaks from corvee just to attract settlement to this region.
I don’t know much about Belarus. Here is one of my relatives (in the 1700s a Greek Catholic branch of this family settled in Galicia and mixed with local Rus nobles):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walenty_Wa%C5%84kowicz
I don’t know about Russian Slavophile claims. Maybe they were nonsense. We are not discussing those. Which of these specific claims was nonsense:
There was a higher number of elementary schools per population in the Hetmanate than in either neighboring Muscovy or Poland. In the 1740s, of 1,099 settlements within seven regimental districts, as many as 866 had primary schools.[23]
The German visitor to the Hetmanate, writing in 1720, commented on how the son of Hetman Danylo Apostol, who had never left Ukraine, was fluent in the Latin, Italian, French, German, Polish and Russian languages [24]
Under Mazepa, the Kiev collegium was transformed into an academy and attracted some of the leading scholars of the Orthodox world.[25] It was the largest educational institution in lands ruled by Moscow.[26] Mazepa established another collegium in Chernihiv. These schools largely used the Polish and Latin languages and provided a classic western education to their students.[26]
Many of those trained in Kiev – such as Feofan Prokopovich – would later move to Moscow, so that Ivan Mazepa’s patronage not only raised the level of culture in Ukraine but also in Moscow itself.[25]
A musical academy was established in 1737 in the Hetmanate’s then-capital of Hlukhiv. Among its graduates were Maksym Berezovsky (the first composer from the Russian Empire to be recognized in Europe) and Dmitry Bortniansky.
See above.
The erosion from being a place with a high cultural level to a backwater was not instant. What had taken centuries to achieve did not disappear overnight, but it did disappear. By the late 1800s it was mostly gone. Gogol was from a mixed Cossack officer and Polish noble family, with a family tradition of writing plays, who moved easily in the circles of Polish exiles in Paris and who was viewed as a foreigner by his Russian contemporaries in St. Petersburg. His talent was a legacy of the Commonwealth.