Russia

Russia Chapter 14 Formerly the dominant republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia is now an independent country and an influential member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, since the Union's dissolution in December 1991. During the Soviet era, Russia was officially called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Russia is considered the Soviet Union's successor state in diplomatic matters. Most of the area, population, and industrial production of the Soviet Union, then one of the world's two superpowers , lay in Russia. After the breakup of the USSR, Russia's global role was greatly diminished compared to that of the former Soviet Union. In October 2005, the federal statistics agency reported that Russia's population has shrunk by more than half a million people dipping to 143 million.
 * Russia** is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Europe and Asia . With an area of 17,075,200 square kilometers, it is the largest country in the world by land mass, covering almost twice the territory of the next-largest country, Canada . It ranks as the world's eighth largest population . Russia shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from NW to SE): Norway , Finland , Estonia , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Latvia , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Lithuania , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Poland , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Belarus , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Ukraine , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Georgia , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Azerbaijan , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Kazakhstan , <span class="wiki_link_ext">China , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Mongolia and <span class="wiki_link_ext">North Korea . It is also close to the <span class="wiki_link_ext">United States , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Canada , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Armenia , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Iran , <span class="wiki_link_ext">Turkey and <span class="wiki_link_ext">Japan across stretches of water: the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Diomede Islands (one controlled by Russia, the other by the United States) are just 3 <span class="wiki_link_ext">kilometers (1.9 <span class="wiki_link_ext">mi ) apart, and <span class="wiki_link_ext">Kunashir Island (controlled by Russia but <span class="wiki_link_ext">claimed by Japan ) is about 20 kilometers (12 mi) from <span class="wiki_link_ext">Hokkaido.

Ancient Rus
The vast lands of present Russia were home to disunited <span class="wiki_link_ext">tribes who were variously overwhelmed by invading <span class="wiki_link_ext">Goths, <span class="wiki_link_ext">Huns , and <span class="wiki_link_ext">Turkish Avars between the third and sixth centuries <span class="wiki_link_ext">AD. The <span class="wiki_link_ext">Iranian Scythians populated the southern <span class="wiki_link_ext">steppes, and a Turkic people, the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Khazars , ruled the western portion of these lands through the <span class="wiki_link_ext">8th century. They in turn were displaced by a group of Scandinavians, the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Varangians, who established a <span class="wiki_link_ext">capital at the Slavic city of <span class="wiki_link_ext">Novgorod and gradually merged with <span class="wiki_link_ext">Slavic ruling classes. The Slavs constituted the bulk of the population from the <span class="wiki_link_ext">8th century onwards and slowly assimilated both the Scandinavians as well as native <span class="wiki_link_ext">Finno-Ugric tribes, such as the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Merya, the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Muromians and the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Meshchera. The Varangian dynasty lasted several centuries, during which they affiliated with the Byzantine, or <span class="wiki_link_ext">Orthodox church and moved the capital to <span class="wiki_link_ext">Kiev in A.D. 1169. In this era the term "Rhos", or "<span class="wiki_link_ext">Russ ", first came to be applied to the Varangians and later also to the Slavs who peopled the region. In the <span class="wiki_link_ext">10th to <span class="wiki_link_ext">11th centuries this state of <span class="wiki_link_ext">Kievan Rus became the largest in Europe and was quite prosperous, due to diversified trade with both Europe and Asia. Nomadic Turkic people <span class="wiki_link_ext">Kipchaks (//Polovtsi//) conquered southern Russia at the end of 11th century and founded a nomadic state in the steppes along the Black Sea (//Desht-e-Kipchak//). In the 13th century the area suffered from internal disputes and was overrun by eastern <span class="wiki_link_ext">invaders, the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Golden Horde of the non christian <span class="wiki_link_ext">Mongols and Muslim Turkic-speaking nomads who pillaged the Russian <span class="wiki_link_ext">principalities for over three centuries. Also known as the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Tatars, they ruled the southern and central expanses of present-day Russia, while its western zone was largely incorporated into the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Grand Duchy of Lithuania and <span class="wiki_link_ext">Poland. The political dissolution of Kievan Rus divided the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Russian people in the north from the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Belarusians and <span class="wiki_link_ext">Ukrainians in the west. The northern part of Russia together with <span class="wiki_link_ext">Novgorod retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Mongol yoke and was largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Nevertheless it had to fight the Germanic crusaders who attempted to colonize the region. Like in the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Balkans and <span class="wiki_link_ext">Asia Minor long-lasting <span class="wiki_link_ext">nomadic rule retarded the country's economic and social development. Asian <span class="wiki_link_ext">autocratic influences degraded many of the country's democratic institutions and affected its culture and economy in a very negative way. In spite of this, unlike its spiritual leader, the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Byzantine Empire, Russia was able to revive, and organized its own war of reconquest, finally subjugating its enemies and annexing their territories. After the <span class="wiki_link_ext">fall of Constantinople in <span class="wiki_link_ext">1453 Russia remained the only more or less functional <span class="wiki_link_ext">Christian state on the Eastern European frontier, allowing it to claim succession to the legacy of the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Eastern Roman Empire.

Muscovy
While still nominally under the domain of the Mongols, the <span class="wiki_link_ext">duchy of Moscow began to assert its influence, and eventually tossed off the control of the invaders late in the 14th century. The Russian state was controlled by the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Crimean Khanate which were successors of the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Golden Horde. Russians captured by nomads were sold on Crimean slave markets. In 1571 the Crimean khan Devlet-Girei, with a horde of 120 thousand horsemen, devastated Moscow. Annually thousands of Russians became victims of attacks by nomads. Tens of thousands of soldiers protected the southern borderland - a heavy burden for the state which slowed its social and economic development. In the beginning of the 16th century the Russian state set the national goal to return all Russian territories lost as a result of the Mongolian invasion and to protect the borderland against attacks of <span class="wiki_link_ext">hordes. The noblemen, receiving a manor from the sovereign, were obliged to serve in the army. The manor system became a basis for the nobiliary horse army. <span class="wiki_link_ext">Ivan the Great first took the title "grand duke of all the Russias", following his marriage to <span class="wiki_link_ext">Sophia Paleologue, a Byzantine Princess (niece of the last Byzantine Emperor) in 1469, and consolidated surrounding areas under Moscow's dominion. In 1547, his grandson <span class="wiki_link_ext">Ivan the Terrible was officially crowned the first <span class="wiki_link_ext">Tsar (from the Roman <span class="wiki_link_ext">//Caesar//, also written Czar) of Russia at the age of sixteen. At the end of the 16th century Russian <span class="wiki_link_ext">Cossacks established the first settlements in Western Siberia. In the middle of the 17th century there were Russian settlements in Eastern Siberia, on <span class="wiki_link_ext">Chukotka, along the river <span class="wiki_link_ext">Amur , on the Pacific coast.

Imperial Russia
In 1648 the Cossack <span class="wiki_link_ext">Semyon Dezhnev discovered the <span class="wiki_link_ext">strait between America and Asia. The greater and more expansive <span class="wiki_link_ext">Russian Empire was born. Muscovite control of the nascent nation continued after the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Polish intervention 1605-1612 under the subsequent <span class="wiki_link_ext">Romanov dynasty, beginning with Tsar <span class="wiki_link_ext">Michael Romanov in 1613. <span class="wiki_link_ext">Peter the Great, who ruled from 1689 to 1725, succeeded in bringing ideas and culture from Western Europe to a severely underdeveloped Russia. <span class="wiki_link_ext">Catherine the Great, ruling from 1762 to 1796, enhanced this effort, establishing Russia not just as an Asian power, but on an equal footing with Britain, France, and Germany in Europe. She enlarged the Russian empire by the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Partitions of Poland. Russia had now taken territories with the ethnic Belarus and Ukrainian population, earlier parts of the medieval Kievan Rus'. As a result of the victorious Russian-Turkish wars, Russia's borders expanded to the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Black Sea and Russia set its goal on the protection of Balkan Christians against a Turkish yoke. In 1783 Russia and the Georgian Kingdom (which was almost totally devastated by Persian and Turkish invasions) signed the <span class="wiki_link_ext">treaty of Georgievsk according to which Georgia received the protection of Russia. After <span class="wiki_link_ext">Peter the Great, Russia emerged as a major European power. Examples of its post-Peter European involvement include the <span class="wiki_link_ext">War of Polish Succession and the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Seven Years' War. In 1812, having gathered nearly half a million soldiers from France, as well as from all of its conquered states in Europe, <span class="wiki_link_ext">Napoleon invaded Russia and, after a series of initial successes was forced to retreat back to Europe. Almost 90% of the invading forces died as a result of on-going battles with the Russian army, guerillas and winter weather. In 1813 the Russian army and its allies, the Austrians and Prussians, defeated the French armies at the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Battle of Leipzig. Russia was defeated in the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Crimean War, <span class="wiki_link_ext">1853 -<span class="wiki_link_ext">56 , to an Ottoman Empire backed by Britain and France. Tsar <span class="wiki_link_ext">Alexander II (<span class="wiki_link_ext">1855 -<span class="wiki_link_ext">81 ) issued a decree abolishing serfdom in <span class="wiki_link_ext">1861. Russia won the <span class="wiki_link_ext">War of 1877-1878, forcing the Ottoman Empire to recognize the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and autonomy of Bulgaria. Unrest among peasants and suppression of the growing liberal <span class="wiki_link_ext">Intelligentsia were <span class="wiki_link_ext">continuing problems however, and on the eve of <span class="wiki_link_ext">World War I, the position of Tsar <span class="wiki_link_ext">Nicholas II and his dynasty appeared precarious. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I and the deterioration of the economy the war caused led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the Romanovs. At the close of this <span class="wiki_link_ext">Russian Revolution of 1917, a <span class="wiki_link_ext">Marxist political faction called the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Bolsheviks seized power in <span class="wiki_link_ext">Petrograd and <span class="wiki_link_ext">Moscow under the leadership of <span class="wiki_link_ext">Vladimir Lenin. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Communist Party. A bloody <span class="wiki_link_ext">civil war ensued, pitting the Bolsheviks' <span class="wiki_link_ext">Red Army against a loose confederation of anti-socialist <span class="wiki_link_ext">monarchist and <span class="wiki_link_ext">bourgeois forces known as the <span class="wiki_link_ext">White Army. The Red Army triumphed, and the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Soviet Union was formed in 1922. ** Icons ** The word "icon" derives from the Greek "eikon" and means an image, any image or representation, but "in the more restricted sense in which it is generally understood, it means a holy image to which special veneration is given". Even though the word "icon" applies to all kinds of religious images -- those painted on wooden panels (icons proper), on walls (frescoes), those fashioned from small glass tesserae (mosaics) or carved in stone, metal or ivory -- we associate it most often with paintings on wood. The first Christian images appeared around the third century. That could be an indication that for the first two hundred years of its existence, the new religion, probably affected by its Jewish roots and the Second Commandment, //"Thou shall not make unto thee any graven images"// (Exodus 20:4), objected to representational sacred art, particularly to any representation of the Deity. When Christians finally turned to art to aid them in promoting the religion, they found many convertible examples in the earlier art of mystery religions and in the pagan art of the Roman Empire. Naturally, they incorporated various elements from a number of sources: from Hellenic art they borrowed gracefulness and clarity of composition; from the Roman art they took the hierarchical placement of figures and symmetry of design; from Syrian art they took dynamic movements and energy of the represented characters; and from Egyptian funeral portraits they borrowed large almond-shaped eyes, long and thin noses, and small mouths. By the time Christianity became the official religion of the Byzantine Empire (313), the iconography was developing vigorously and the basic compositional schemes were well established. Even though the representations of holy figures and holy events increased in number, they kept arousing suspicions of traditionalists who inflexibly obeyed the Second Commandment and feared that any deviation from it can lead to heresy or idol worship. Such fears were, at least partially, justified. Not only the average uneducated believer, but often the churchmen themselves could not understand how the three hypostases of God are the One and only God, and how can the divine and human nature of Christ be reconciled. In 726, the Emperor Leo III and a group of overzealous "puritans" or traditionalists, arguing that misinterpretation of religious images often leads to heresy, banned all pictorial representations and began a systematic destruction of holy images, known as the period of iconoclasm (cf. the scene of whitewashing the images from the //Khludov Psalter//). Referring to the decrees of the Fourth Ecumenical Synod (Council) in Chalcedon (451) which defined that in Christ the two natures, human and divine, are united //without confusion and without separation//, the iconoclasts rejected the images of Christ because for them they were simply material images which either confused or separated the two natures of Christ. Such confusion or separation, in the iconoclasts' opinion, was tantamount to the heresies of Nestorianism, Arianism or Monophysitism. To fight the iconoclasts, the iconodules (the defenders or lovers of icons) had to find powerful spokesmen who would come up with convincing formulations to prove that icons were not worshipped but venerated and that such veneration was not idolatry. The iconodules based their defense of icons on the Doctrine of the Incarnation and on the Dogma of the Two Natures of Christ. St. John of Damascus (675-749) and St. Theodore of Studios (759-826) wrote extensive treatises explaining the reasons for and the importance of icon veneration. The Damascene argued that //"it is not divine beauty which is given form and shape, but the human form which is rendered by the painter's brush. Therefore, if the Son of God became man and appeared in man's nature, why should his image not be made?"// The Studite defended the icons on the basis of the ideas of identity and necessity: //"Man himself is created after the image and likeness of God; therefore there is something divine in the art of making images. . . As perfect man Christ not only can but must be represented and worshipped in images: let this be denied and Christ's economy of the salvation is virtually destroyed."// The iconoclasts, by rejecting all representations of God, failed to take full account of the Incarnation. They fell into a kind of dualism. Regarding matter as defilement, they wanted a religion freed from all contact with what is material, for they thought that what is spiritual must be non-material. But if we allow no place to Christ's humanity, to his body, we betray the Incarnation and we forget that our body and our soul must be saved and transfigured. Thus, Iconoclasm was not only a controversy about religious art, but about the Incarnation and the salvation of the entire material cosmos. The Empress Irene suspended the iconoclastic persecutions in 780. However, the attacks on the icons were renewed by Leo the Armenian in 815. Only in 843, during the reign of the Empress Theodora, the iconoclasts were defeated for good; the day of their defeat is celebrated each year on the first Sunday after Lent as Triumph of Orthodoxy. After the triumph of the icon lovers, iconography developed at an unprecedented speed. By the end of the tenth century most iconographic formulae had been firmly established and had been exported to other Orthodox countries (Bulgaria, Serbia, and a little later, <span class="wiki_link_ext">Russia ), where they were further developed and elaborated by regional schools. **Understanding Icons** Icon painting appeared not as art for art's sake, but for the Church. Thus, its content was determined directly by the needs and the purposes of the Church. These purposes were not material but spiritual. The content of icon painting was interwoven with the life, the evolution, and the whole tradition of the Church, so much so that knowledge of this tradition will be incomplete without a knowledge and understanding of icon painting. The faith of the Church in the reality beyond this world, that is, in the truth of the spiritual world, defined from the beginning the content and character of icon painting. The Church was primarily interested in the beauty of this spiritual world and, with the means it possessed; it tried to interpret that world. The Church's transcendental content was not the physically beautiful or the naturally good; for this reason it did not try to depict the natural good and beauty. The purpose and the ideal of Byzantine icon painting was the expression of the category of holiness, which was not made to appeal to the senses by being physically beautiful. In Christian Orthodox art the beautiful is not determined by the natural form of the objects, but by its sublime content, that is, by its power to serve the ideals of the faith. According to St. John Chrysostom, //"Thus, we say that each vessel, animal, and plant is good, not because of its form or color, but because of the service it renders."// Byzantine icon painting did not copy nature nor seek the form or the color as an end, but taking such technical and artistic elements as were necessary for the believers to become familiar with its spirit, succeeded, through an exceptional abstraction, in rendering the more sublime meanings of Orthodoxy. These basic ideas of Orthodox icon painting are the main obstacles to our appreciation of icons. When we look at icons, we are struck by their apparent simplicity, by their overemphasized flatness, unreal colors, lack of perspective, and strange proportions. At that moment we should stop and remind ourselves that we are applying to icon painting those aesthetic criteria which allow us to enjoy the works of the Italian masters of the Renaissance. As viewers, we apply the familiar criteria to an unfamiliar artistic expression. A similar misunderstanding occurs when, used to "realistic" representations which shaped our artistic sensitivity, we look for the first time at abstract paintings by Picasso, <span class="wiki_link_ext">Kandinsky, or Pollock. We are conditioned by the art of the Renaissance to appreciate the architectural details rendered in mathematical linear perspective, to admire the beauty of the human body, the lush landscapes stretching far towards the horizon, and the still lives with lights, shadows, and three-dimensional shapes so real that we can almost pick a glass from a table or an apple from a platter. In a word, we are used to see on the surface of a canvas or panel something familiar, easily recognizable, something which we can adequately analyze by using familiar categories of perspective, color scheme, point of view, light and shadow, and volume. Unfortunately, we cannot use this kind of analysis on icon painting because, in contrast to the art of the Renaissance, icon painting is not illusionist, that is, it does not try to convince the viewer that the world depicted on the panel is real, but, on the contrary, tries to make sure by all the means it possesses, that the represented is unreal, ideal, dematerialized. We cannot diminish the achievements of Byzantine and Russian artists by assuming that they did not know how to paint better. They simply consciously and purposely employed a completely different convention of painting, a completely different artistic language. To be able to appreciate the spiritual depth of icon painting we must learn at least the basic "grammar" of this language. · Icon painting strikes us by the frontality of the figures. This frontality brings the figures in direct relationship with the viewer and gives the fullest expression to the faces. · The faces of the saints have large, almond-shaped eyes, enlarged ears, long thin noses, and small mouths. Icon painters attempt to indicate that each sensory organ, having received the Divine Grace, was sanctified and had ceased to be the usual sensory organ of a biological man. · Icon painting deliberately disregards the principle of natural perspective in order to avoid at any cost the illusion of three-dimensionality. Instead, it gives the impression of complete flatness and the lack of perspective. However, icon painting does use a perspective, called by scholars either reversed or inverted, just to indicate that this perspective is different than the illusionist perspective of the Italian masters. Inverted perspective depends on multiple points of view. But these multiple points of view are placed in front of the painting, not behind it, which results in background objects often being larger than the foreground ones and in distortions in shapes of some of the objects. · In addition to the inverted perspective, icon painting uses the so-called psychological perspective which is based on the principle that the most important figure in the composition should be the largest and centrally placed. The viewer's attention is drawn to what is central and larger rather than to what is marginal and small. · When icon painters depict an event which took place inside, in an interior, they place all the participants in the event outside, indicating in the background the walls of the house, church, palace, or city. This allows them to "uncover" the very essence of the event and give due to the participants instead of having to deal with various interior elements which could obscure the meaning of the events happening inside. · Since icon painting is not realistic, it shows no natural source of light and does not represent shadows. The only light in icons is the inner light of sacred figures and the divine light of Christ. · Icon painting has the ability to represent several moments of the same action (story) on one panel. In the scene of the Nativity we can see not only the birth itself, but also the arrival of the Magi, the shepherds spreading the good news, Joseph being tempted by the devil, and even the servant women washing the baby. Some scholars call this the "continuous style." · Other features of icons which help us in understanding their meaning are simplicity, clarity, measure or restraint, grace, symmetry or balance, appropriateness, and symbolic colors. [A.B.] Parsunas A //parsuna// (derived from the Latin word //persona//) is a type of portrait painting that developed in Russia in the late sixteenth century. It appeared, in a sense, as a transition between traditional icon painting and the more Westernized, "realistic" portrait. Characterized by an inexperienced naturalism, and yet retaining the one-dimensional style of icons, parsunas were created as memorials of contemporary secular figures. The appearance of parsunas coincided with the decline of traditional icon painting and was followed by a more complete acceptance of Western European style during the <span class="wiki_link_ext">eighteenth century. Some of the best-known surviving parsunas (shown above in the order they are listed) are those of Ivan the Terrible (late 16th century), his son, Fiodor Ioannovich (late 16th century), and Prince Mikhail Vasilievich Skopin-Shuiskii (17th century).

Questions


 * 1) Describe the early history of ancient Rus. What was their religion? How did they come together as a people? Who conquered them?
 * 2) How did Moscow come to be the most important city?
 * 3) How did the Russians manage to enlarge their empire through the centuries? Who were some of the key leaders of the Russians?
 * 4) How/why did the monarchy fall in the early 20th century?
 * 5) What is an icon? What are they created on?
 * 6) Why did early Christians avoid the use of icons?
 * 7) Why did they eventually embrace them?
 * 8) How did other cultures shape what icons looked like?
 * 9) Who are the iconoclasts? Who are the iconodules? Why did their views come into conflict? How was this conflict resolved?
 * 10) How can we appreciate the icons when they are simplified and not very realistic?
 * 11) Describe icons. What did they look like?
 * 12) What is a parsuna? How is it different from an icon?