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The Concept of the Ruskaia Zemlia and Medieval National Consciousness from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Centuries*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Charles J. Halperin
Charles J. Halperin*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

Any society sufficiently cohesive to evolve even the most rudimentary political structure will also, as a matter of course, develop a set of shared concepts about the nature of that society and a justification of its political structure. Scholars usually ascribe the word “Ideology” only to a set of values which is highly abstract, rational, and articulated in the form of theoretical treatises, so that in the modern period liberalism or Marxism is considered as an ideology, but this is not entirely warranted. Medieval states frequently expressed their social and political myths through the medium of ceremonial and symbol, hence the considerable attention to artistic evidence given by the great scholar of medieval political theology Ernst Kantorowicz or by his student Michael Cherniavsky, whose field was Medieval Rus',1 Even in medieval western Europe, but overwhelmingly in medieval Rus', much political thought, like our current symbolic respect for the “flag,” was expressed in extremely laconic terms. Phrases, concepts, and titles served in lieu largely of theoretical treatises, and ideologues demonstrated their creativity and originality in the manipulation of these phrases, concepts, and titles, not the elaboration of intellectual definitions of their significance. Such definitions were superfluous to contemporaries who all understood the shared vocabulary of political discourse, what we might call a political culture, but their absence compels the modern-day historian to rely upon his informed imagination to decode such social and political myths in order to establish their intended meanings. This is not to imply that modern political ideologies lack overarching myths. Indeed the very opposite is exactly the case; in Russian history the myth of the “people” (narod) in Populist thought and the myths of the proletariat or (later) the Party in Marxist/Bolshevik writings spring readily to mind. The lack of elaborate theoretical discussions of comparable myths in pre-Petrine history inevitably requires different methods of study from those one can apply to subsequent centuries.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 1980 , pp. 75 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe 

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References

Notes

* An earlier version of this article was presented to the American Historical Association in San Francisco, December 29, 1978.Google Scholar

1. See, for examples, Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957), and Cherniavsky, Michael, Tsar and People (New Haven, 1961).Google Scholar

2. See Michael Cherniavsky's review of Hans Rogger's National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia in the American Historical Review, 66, no. 4 (July 1961), pp. 1041-42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. See Cherniavsky, Michael, Chapter V, “Russia,” in Orest Ranum, ed. National Consciousness, History and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, 1975), pp. 118-43.Google Scholar

4. The only accurate translation of ruskaia zemlia for the Kievan period, both grammatically and substanstively, is “East Slavic Land,” but such literalism is stylistically unattractive. As a compromise I have translated the term, for the sake of consistency, throughout this paper, as the “Rus' Land,” which is at least semantically closer although still gramatically wrong, since “Rus”' is not an adjective.Google Scholar

5. By and large the discussions of the Rus' Land cited below do not distinguish between the concepts of Rus' and ruskaia zamlia; while the terms are obviously organically related, it seems to me that our understanding would be advanced further by analyzing them separately.Google Scholar

6. Likhachev, D.S., “Zadonshchina,” Literaturnaia ucheba, 1941, no. 3, p. 94.Google Scholar

7. Robinson, A.N., “‘Russkaia zamlia’ v ‘Slove o polku Igoreve’,” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury [hereafter TODRL] 31 (1976): 124.Google Scholar

8. Despite the observation of Daniel B. Rowland, “Muscovite Political Attitudes as Reflected in early seventeenth century Tales about the Time of Troubles,” Ph.D., Yale University, p. 187, who cites Nasonov's monograph (see n. 12) but no other studies of the Rus' Land.Google Scholar

9. The primary interest of the present writer is the fate of the Kievan intellectual tradition in Muscovy, hence my neglect of the equally valid and interesting question of the evolution of the concept of the Rus' Land in thirteenth-century Galicia-Volhynia and later Ukraine and Belorussia. Moreover, limitations of space and the fact that some relevant texts are in Latin have also led to the same result.Google Scholar

10. For example, A.V. Soloviev, “Natsional'noe samosoznanie v. russkom proshlom,” in Russkaia kul'tura (Iz Ob'edineniia russkikh organizatsii, “Dnia russkoi kul'tury,” Belgrade, 1925), pp. 25-51; S.A. Bugoslavskii, “Russkaia zemlia v literature Kievskoi Rusi, XI-XIII vv.,” Uchenye zapiski MGU, vyp. 118, Trudy kafedra russkoi literatury, kn. 2, pp. 3-26; D.S. Likhachev, Natsional'noe samosoznanie drevnei Rusi (Moscow and Leningrad, 1945); M.N. Tikhomirov, “Proiskhozhdenie nazvanii ‘Rus’ i ‘Russkaia zemlia’,” Sovetskaia etnografiia, 1947, nos. VI-VII, pp. 60-80; L.V. Cherepnin, “Istoricheskie usloviia formirovaniia russkoi narodnosti do kontsa XV veka,” in Voprosy formirovaniia russkoi narodnosti i natsii (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958), pp. 7-105, one of the more nuanced, and the most theoretical, Soviet discussion relevant to our theme; D.S. Likhachev, Russkie letopisi i ikh kul'turnoistoricheskoe znachenie (Moscow and Leningrad, 1947), especially pp. 35-172, on the Kievan chronicle, and pp. 289-330, on the Troitskaia letopis'; D.S. Likhachev, “Nekotorye voprosy ideologii feodalov v literature XI-XIII vv.,” TODRL 10 (1954): 76-91; Likhachev, Kul'tura Rusi vremeni Andreia Rubleva i Epifaniia Premudrogo (konets XIV-nachalo XV v.) (Moscow and Leningrad, 1962), on the East European Pre-Renaissance. Even the maverick, LB. Grekov, implicitly subscribes to this view of the Rus' Land; see his Vostochnaia Evropa i upadok Zolotoi Ordy (na rubezhe XIV-XV vv.) (Moscow, 1975), pp. 311-487.Google Scholar

11. It is not possible to extend this discussion to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in our present state of knowledge. By the middle of the fifteenth century the concept of the Rus' Land had, I suspect, ceased to evolve, and its later history would consist largely in identifying and tracing the terms which subsequently replaced it, such as russkie tsarstvie or Moskovskoe gosudarstvo.Google Scholar

12. Nasonov, A.N., “Russkaia zemlia” i obrazovanie territorii drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (Moscow, 1951), especially pp. 28–68.Google Scholar

Nasonov was hardly the first to observe this pattern. Cf. Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, Istorila Ukralny-Rusy, 8 vv. (Lviv, 1905, rpt. New York, 1954), I: 190-1, 388, 422, ff, II: 254-6. (Hrushevs'kyi did not distinguish between Rus' and ruskaia zemlia in all cases.) Rather, Nasonov developed systematically and definitively what had only been noticed en passant in previous scholarship.Google Scholar

13. Nasonov's views were accepted by among others, B.A. Rybakov, “Drevnie Rusy,” Sovetskaia arkheologiia, 17 (1953): 33-39; Cherepnin, “Istoricheskie usloviia …,” pp. 20-21, 61-62; Tikhomirov (see note 10), pp. 61-62; and M.I. Artamonov, Istorila khazar (Leningrad, 1962), pp. 289-90. The opponents contend that the broader meaning of all East-Slavdom is older, and include Likhachev in Povest' vremennykh let, 2 vols. ed V.P. Andrianova-Peretts (Moscow and Leningrad, 1950), 2: 204, 239-42, although cf. p. 312, and A.V. Soloviev (see note 10), pp. 29 ff (as well as numerous other works by both scholars). Paszkiewicz idiosyncratically argues that the broader menaing is ecclesiastical, i.e., the Kievan metropolitanate, which has found little if any support among specialists; see his The Origin of Russia (London, 1954), especially pp. 3-25, and The Making of the Russian Nation (London, 1963), pp. 51-55, 74-76, 204 ff.Google Scholar

Various twelfth- and thirteenth-century chronicle entries use the concept of the Rus' Land in intriguing ways, often open to different interpretations. On the entry s.a. 1206 that Novgorod has seniority in the Rus' Land (Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei, vol. 1, Lavrent'evskaia letopis' [Moscow, 1962], column 422) (Hereafter P.S.R.L.) see Iu.A. Limonov, Letopisanie Vladimiro-suzdal'skoi Rusi (Leningrad, 1967), pp. 135-36, and A.E. Presniakov, Obrazovanie velikorusskogo gosudarstva (Petrograd, 1918), pp. 41-42. Cf. the entry s.a. 1216 (P.S.R.L., 1, column 495): the whole Rus' Land (vsia ruskaia zemlia) (includes) the Galichskaia, Kievskaia, Smolenskaia, Chernigovskaia, Novgorodskaia and Riazanskaia Lands; some of these terms are otherwise unattested, and there are striking omissions, e.g., the Suzdalian Land! Each term should be investigated. I would not always agree with the explications of some entries in Likhachev, “Nekotorye voprosy …,” pp. 84-85.Google Scholar

14. Povest' vremennykh let, 1: 9, 17, 18, 82, 90-96, 126, 164-65, 170-71, 174-75. A full analysis of the references to the Rus' Land in the Povest', correlated with textological schemas of the text such as Shakhmatov's, might prove very revealing.Google Scholar

15. Pamiatniki russkogo prava, 1 (Moscow, 1952): 79. Cf. Commentary, p. 94.Google Scholar

16. Shchapov, Ia.N., ed. Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy XI-XV vv. (Moscow, 1976), pp. 15, 18, and subsequent variants. Curiously but probably insignificantly, the Rus' Land does not appear in the Church Statute of Iaroslav.Google Scholar

17. Cherniavsky, Michael, Tsar and People, Chapter 1. Stephen Maczko, “Boris and Gleb: Saintly Princes or Princely Saints?” Russian History 2, no. 1 (1975), pp. 68–80, has identified a pagan level of the cult of Boris and Gleb in the earliest expressions of their martyrdom, which is consistent with my own suggestion about the paganism of the Rus' Land both before and after Vladimir's conversion to Christianity: see Charles J. Halperin, “The Concept of the Russian Land from the Ninth to the Fourteenth Century,” Russian History, 2 no. 1 (1975), pp. 29-38. This aspect of the concept of the Rus' Land is peripheral to the theme of the present article.Google Scholar

18. See Index, Das Paterikon des Kiever Höhlenklosters, ed. Abramovich, D. and Tschižewskij, D. (Munich, 1964), s.v. Ruskaia zemlia.Google Scholar

19. Müller, Ludolf, Die Werke des Metropoliten Ilarion (Munich, 1964), pp. 70–71. The usually cited passage is that the Kievan princes reign not in an unknown or poor land (zemle), but in the rus'ke; I am not entirely convinced that this inverted and bifurcated construction is a reference to the Rus' Land.Google Scholar

20. Cherniavsky (see note 3), p. 119 and Robinson (see note 7), pp. 123-36.Google Scholar

21. This is implicit in the recent studies of Ellen S. Hurwitz, “Andrej Bogoliubskij: Policies and Ideologies,” Ph.D., Columbia University, 1972, and “Andrei Bogoliubskii: An Image of the Prince,” Russian History 2, no. 1 (1975), pp. 39-52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Halperin, , “Concept of the Russian Land …,” p. 33.Google Scholar

25. Despite Azbelev, S.N., “Skazanie o pomoshchi novgorodtsev Dmitriiu Donskomu,” Russkii fol'klor 13 (1972): 77–102.Google Scholar

26. Halperin, Charles J., “The Russian Land and the Russian Tsar: The Emergence of Muscovite Ideology, 1380-1408,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 23 (1976): 9–22.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., pp. 44–48.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., pp. 48–52 Google Scholar

29. Ibid., pp. 52–53.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., pp. 53–57.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 70.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., pp. 69–78.Google Scholar

33. Cherniavsky, Michael, “The Reception of the Council of Florence in Moscow,” Church History, 24, no. 4 (Dec. 1955): 347-59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Halperin, Charles J., “Tverian Political Though in the Fifteenth Century,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 18, no. 3 (July-Sept. 1977), pp. 267-73.Google Scholar

35. L'vov, A.S., Leksika “Povesti vremennykh let” (Moscow, 1975), pp. 179–182.Google Scholar

36. For examples Nasonov, A.N., ed. Novgorodskaia pervaia letopis' starshego i mladshego izvodov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1950), pp. 33 s.a. 1169; 89 s.a. 1270, and 374 s.a. 1376.Google Scholar

37. Cited in Halperin, “Tverian Political Thought …,” pp. 272-73, no. 22. The issue raised therein of the Muscovite Land should be supplemented by the reference s.a. 1461 in P.S.R.L., vol. 25, Moskovskii letopisnii svod kontsa XV veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1949), p. 277, perhaps equating the moskovskaia and russkaia zemli (or including the former with other “lands” within the latter).Google Scholar

38. P.S.R.L., 25: 284 ff.Google Scholar

39. Only Cherniavsky is exempt, since he accepts the Rus' Land as Christian (see note 17) but denies true national consciousness until the seventeenth century, Cherniavsky, “Russia,” passim.Google Scholar

40. P.S.R.L., 1, column 345.Google Scholar

41. Ironically, Novgorod's autonomy from inclusion in the Rus' Land is clearest during the Kievan period when its ecclesiastical dependence on Kiev was strongest; there is more evidence of Novgorodian affiliation with the Rus' Land when her archbishop was resisting Muscovite ecclesiastical influence via the metropolitan in Vladimir during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Google Scholar

42. Might not this line of reasoning explain Kliuchevskii's distorted image of Andrei Bogoliubskii as a narrow-minded petty votchinnik, even if he were a separatist? See Kliuchevskii, V.O., Kurs russkoi istorii, 1 (Moscow, 1956), Lektsiia 12, pp. 190–205 and 18, pp. 316-34.Google Scholar

43. Bogoliubskii's ideology was constructed out of Kievan building blocks, if only to neutralize Kiev's status, e.g., a translatio of the Icon of the Virgin and its protection from Kiev (originally from Constantinople, of course) to Vladimir-on-the-Kliazma. But given the geographic malleability of the concept of the Rus' Land, it is a mystery why Bogoliubskii attempted to create counter myths, such as the Suzdalian Land, rather than to translate the term to the Northeast, as the Muscovites later succeeded in doing.Google Scholar

44. For a discussion of this problem see my “Kiev and Moscow: An Aspect of Early Muscovite Thought,” paper presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies Convention, Columbus, Ohio, October 13, 1978, and forthcoming in Russian History.Google Scholar

45. See the index to P.S.R.L., 25:443, s. v. russkaia zemlia.Google Scholar

46. This begs the enormously complicated and not definitively resolved methodological and conceptual problems of the social origins of the byliny, i.e., elite or folk.Google Scholar

47. Cherniavsky, Michael, “Holy Russia: A Study in the History of an Idea,” American Historical Review 63, no. 3 (April, 1958), pp. 617-37, and as Chapter IV in his Tsar and People.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. While the emotional attachments of the “folk” to a particular territory and its features, e.g., Mother Volga, need not be denied, most often no political identity is assigned to that geographic zone, hence the impossibility of interpreting such data as political, let alone national, consciousness.Google Scholar

49. Angelov, Dimitar, “Patriotism in Medieval Bulgaria (9th-14th centuries),” Bulgarian Historical Review 4, no. 2 (1976), pp. 22–45, is a nuanced exposition of a related problem which is slightly more sophisticated but still consistent with Soviet scholarship on the problem of the Rus' Land. Angelov proposes to evaluate the patriotism of the masses on the basis of behavior, i.e., heroic defense vs. foreign invaders; however, discriminating between patriotism and self-defense is not easy, and since such activity is in any event inarticulate, the ideological object of whatever patriotism is present, cannot be identified.Google Scholar

50. Seeman, K.D., ed., Abt Daniil, Wallfahrtsbericht—Khozhenie Igumena Daniila (Munich, 1970), p. 1, and cited passage, p. 128.Google Scholar

51. Khozhenie za tri moria Afanasiia Nikitina 1466-1472 goda (Moscow and Leningrad, 1948), passim both text and accompanying articles and commentary. I am accepting here, with some trepidation, the translation of a key passage—the Rus' Land is just, except for its boyare—from the original “Turkic”; see text, p. 25, and commentary, pp. 188-89, n. 282.Google Scholar

52. It is possible that greater ethnic connotations were attached to the concept of Rus' rather than the Rus' Land.Google Scholar

53. On the object of loyalty of the Muscovite service classes, see Veselovskii, S.N., Issledovaniia po istorii klassa sluzhilikh zamlevladel'tsev (Moscow, 1969), pp. 474-75.Google Scholar