Russia

RUSSIA. - In its now long historical-political evolution this name has taken on quite different meanings.

The general public uses it as a rule as a synonym for the U.S.S.R. (v.), but this is an improper usage: the Soviet Constitution places, at least in law, the Russian element, which with its numerical and political predominance had claimed for itself a position of privilege in the tsarist State, on an equal footing with all the other ethnic elements that flow into the new federal construction. The R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), which of this constitutes the most conspicuous unit in every respect, is also sometimes indicated by the name R., as opposed to the other 15 units, but this too is an unofficial and improper usage (the R.S.F.S.R. embraces, in Asia, many territories that there is no reason to call Russian), just as it is improper to equate R. with the whole of those administrative units that have most of their territory to the west of the traditional limits between Asia and Europe (first of all because those units take no account whatever of such limits, and secondly because territories that are not Russian would also be included in them).

It is therefore preferable to preserve for the name R. its traditional value, that is, in the final analysis, a historical-geographical value. R. is the European territory inhabited predominantly and politically organized by the Russian peoples and which has remained the vital nucleus of the Soviet State.

Giuseppe Caraci

I. CIVIL HISTORY

Russia, almost from the first moments in which it emerges from the mists of prehistory, presents itself at one and the same time as Europe's outermost bulwark against the nomadic hordes of Asia and as an organism antagonistic to the European state formations that border it on the west. Hence, often, a duality of interests and aspirations, of dreams and realities.

Rurik, the first Russian sovereign, is in a certain sense the equivalent of Romulus for the Latins. The dawn of Russian history is, as among other peoples, illuminated by the light of legend (which would later become a source of poetry): the legend mingled with reality is, in this case, the "calling of the dukes," that is, the sending of Russian ambassadors to Varangian princes, so that these might come to reign and calm internal discord. The first dukes indeed began the unification of the Russian tribes and the struggle against the barbarian tribes of the steppe: they had their seat first at Novgorod and then at Kiev, which quickly became a notable commercial and military center. Toward Byzantium led a very important river route: the Dnieper. The guerrilla warfare and the expeditions against Byzantium, no less than commercial relations with the Byzantine world, were sources of wealth for Russia. Gradually Christianity nevertheless filtered from Byzantium toward the Russian lands and, with the conversion to Christianity of Prince Vladimir (988), the Russian people emerged from the opaque and anonymous indeterminacy of the primitive tribes. The aggressions of the nomadic peoples of the steppe had moments of greater or lesser intensity: particularly threatening was the invasion of the vigorous horde of the Polovtsy (mid-11th century), from which cities such as Kiev, Chernigov and Pereyaslavl suffered. Russian historians have emphasized how the campaigns of 1095 (and of the following years) against the Polovtsy coincided more or less with the First Crusade: Vladimir Monomakh, tireless in fighting the tribes of the steppe, would in short have played, on the historical plane, the same part as Godfrey of Bouillon. The attacks of the Asian tribes and the fratricidal struggles of the princes nevertheless greatly weakened the "Russian land" and led to the full decline of Kiev. More serious and more harsh was, in the course of the 13th century, the invasion of the Tatars. Having subjugated Russia, the Tatars transformed it into a province of their Empire: the Russian people nevertheless kept their princes, who were transformed into vassals of the conquerors, obliged to "assist" the Tatars in various ways and, above all, to pay regular tributes.

Among the various Russian duchies, meanwhile, the Duchy of Moscow continued to develop more and more, favored by its central geographical position and by the prudent and astute policy of its dukes; Ivan I Kalita (1348-41) obtained, during his reign, from the Tatar khan the right to collect all the tributes that the Russians owed to the victors: this

"privilege" proved very advantageous; as the dukes of Moscow tended to transform themselves into the sole sovereigns of Russia (albeit under the formal domination of the Tatars) and as Moscow appeared a safe and tranquil center, the Russian clergy — accustomed according to Byzantine tradition to side with a firm authority — did not stint its moral support for the Duchy (v. MOSCA, patriarchate of). While Genghis Khan was advancing with his hordes from Asia, the western Russian territories meanwhile entered into conflict with the Teutonic Order, with the Swedes and with the Lithuanians (Mindaugas and above all Gediminas, who died in 1341, created the Lithuanian monarchy, with its center at Vilnius). The struggle, in broad outline, was already clearly taking shape for the Russians on two fronts.

In 1380 the Tatars suffered a defeat at Kulikovo at the hands of the Russians, led by Prince Dmitry Donskoy. It was not yet the liberation of Russia, because the Tatars recovered, but it was the prelude to liberation. The total emancipation from the Tatars was then a consequence of the unifying policy of the sovereigns of Moscow.

Even more notable successes and aggrandizements of the principality of Moscow come to coincide, on the European plane, with the era of the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks and with the Turkish invasion of Hungary and along the frontiers of Venetian Dalmatia. Russia's position (it is already permissible to use this term) emerges strengthened by it, and from the most diverse parts of Europe hopeful eyes turn toward Moscow. With the marriage between Ivan III and Zoe (Sofia), daughter of Thomas Palaiologos, brother of Constantine XI, defender of Constantinople, there was born in a certain sense the myth of Moscow as the "third Rome," which, colored with a national element, would have further developments in the following centuries and finally its fullest flowering in the political and literary thought of the "Slavophiles." The wars against the Tatars, the Lithuanians, etc., had meanwhile transformed Russia into a kind of fortress, with very scant limits for individual freedom. Under Ivan III the subjection of the subjects to the State (that is, to the sovereign) became increasingly delineated.

These aspects — on the one hand of despotism and on the other of military power — appear in full light under Ivan IV, called the Terrible (although the Russian term groznyj perhaps means more exactly "the mighty," "the severe"). Ivan's reign (who was to be the first tsar) runs from 1533 to 1584; from childhood he was accustomed to seeing around him scenes of cruelty and servility: he was indeed cruel and ruthless, though never exempt from a dramatic, intimate desire for purification and from a sincere devotion to the State. He reorganized the civil and military administration of the State, conquered Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia, anticipated Peter the Great in the desire to "open a window" onto the Baltic, to bring Russia out of the "Asiatic period" of its history. The Russians occupied Narva and Dorpat, advancing as far as Riga: the reaction of Sweden and Poland, however, meant that the successes the initial successes of Ivan were practically nullified. Having become ever more suspicious in the course of the years, ever more jealous of his position as autocrat, he resolved to crush, on the domestic plane, the class of the boyars, from which he feared manifestations of anti-state selfishness and betrayals. Relying on a special bodyguard, the repression carried out by Ivan the Terrible was among the most ruthless and barbaric.

At Ivan's death, the internal Russian situation had become very grave, especially because of the struggle between the oprichniki (the tsar's bodyguard), who wanted to maintain their positions, and the remnants of the old class of the boyars (nobles) who sought to regain the upper hand. The Tsar left two sons, Demetrius, aged two, and Theodore, a weak and indeed childish temperament, though of age. The "true sovereign" became Boris Godunov, brother of the wife of the semi-demented Tsar. Godunov managed skillfully to exploit for Russia the dissensions among his enemies, built fortifications in the steppe against Tatar incursions, and finally obtained the establishment of the patriarchate in Moscow. The official recognitions of his successes were soon overshadowed by grave suspicions directed at him concerning the sudden death (1591) in the city of Uglich of the little Demetrius. An inquiry by the boyar Shuisky established that the child, during an attack of epilepsy, had fallen upon a knife: nevertheless people continued to whisper that Boris Godunov had had the child killed, in order to open for himself the way to the throne. Godunov subsequently had the skill to have himself long entreated before accepting the throne; yet this was not enough to silence the insinuations directed at him. A grave famine that tormented Russia from 1601 to 1603 aggravated the situation and created in the country a state of more or less latent brigandage. In that period there spread, evidently by design, the rumor that the little Demetrius had not died. A "false Demetrius," strong in the halo deriving to him — in the eyes of those who believed in him — from his descent from the dynasty of Rurik (later concretely supported by Poland and by bands of Cossacks and fugitive serfs), presented himself menacingly before Godunov, whose sudden death (1605) nevertheless removed every obstacle to the triumph of the able adversary. The "false Demetrius" reigned only eleven months (1605-1606), disappointing Poland in various hopes it had placed in him and at the same time offending the Muscovites by his primitive manners and his disregard of Russian traditions. The soul of the plot against him was that same Basil Shuisky who had conducted the inquiry at Uglich (and who subsequently became tsar). Meanwhile anarchy blazed up in ever more tragic forms throughout the country (these are the so-called "times of troubles"), while Poles and Swedes sought to profit from such a situation. The rebellion in the country and the struggle of tendencies and of persons within the nobility were calmed only with the election as tsar of the very young Michael Romanov (1613), with whom there ascended the throne a family that was to reign in Russia until the Revolution of 1917.

From the moment of the election of Michael Romanov the position of Russia again went on strengthening on the international plane, while ever new elements of technique and (in part) of European civilization penetrated, albeit slowly, into the country. Nevertheless Russia did not remain free of internal disorders. The most serious uprising was without doubt, during the reign of Tsar Alexis, the one led by Stenka Razin (1670-72), a figure later romantically exalted in popular songs. Relying on Cossacks, peasants, fugitive serfs and, in part, on alien ethnic groups, Razin succeeded in dominating for a certain time the regions of the middle and lower Volga.

At the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, with the powerful figure of Peter the Great (v.) Russia underwent profound transformations on the domestic plane and presented itself in Europe as a first-rate power. The affirmation, under him, of "life" and of activism, in opposition to "traditions" and to "contemplative attitudes," does not signify, as in the climate of Western humanism and the Renaissance, a recall to the values of classical civilization, but instead sometimes takes concrete form in brutal orgies and in mockery of religion. Of the Western civilization that he wished to introduce into Russia (in the name of his country's future power), Peter felt almost exclusively the technical and material aspects. His grandiose reforms always have something improvised about them. His will to industrialize is identified in good part with a war economy: it is, in any case, the State that orders the creation of factories, in a country of scant capital, without entrepreneurs and with very few buyers (given the predominance of artisan production). Urban centers arise, not through a spontaneous material and spiritual enrichment, but because the State needs administrative nuclei. Schools also arise, from which must come officers, builders of roads and bridges, physicians, officials, engineers, artillerymen. The student, from the moment he begins his studies, begins to "render service" for the State: thus the first characteristic germs of the intelligentsia develop. The new, despotic secular State cuts beards and forbids caftans: at the same time it wishes to open to the most daring and able young men the world of modern technique (which many of these young men will unhesitatingly mistake for civilization). Peter's ferocious repressions against his adversaries do not, however, exclude in the energetic sovereign — creator of the new capital on the marshy shores of the Gulf of Finland — a profound respect for the "public utility" and the interests of the State. Amid warlike vicissitudes not always equally fortunate,

Peter nevertheless achieved grandiose military successes, culminating in the victory of Poltava over Charles XII which practically eliminated Sweden from the ranks of the great powers.

The reforms of Peter the Great presented, moreover, the defect of all reforms imposed violently from above and not gradually matured from the real needs and ideal aspirations of a people (or, at least, of its more cultured and more conscious part). Respect for the interests of the State (and above all for the public money) was often to be succeeded by the caprices and egoisms of despots and of "favorites" mostly of foreign origin. Palace revolutions were the typical index of a climate. Noteworthy, moreover, was the figure of the empress Elizabeth, who threw open the doors to French art, taste and elegances, while emphasizing, on the other hand, her sincere attachment to Russian traditions. With Elizabeth, around the middle of the 18th century, certain characteristic seeds of "enlightened absolutism" came to be affirmed in Russia.

The dominant figure in R. in the second half of the eighteenth century is, however, Catherine II, who had for her State an importance certainly no less than that of Peter the Great. Peter's utilitarianism had created, through war, industry, technology, and the art of war, the "new men": but "progress" had not been conceived by him in a "humanitarian" function. With Catherine II, on the other hand, the climate of encyclopedism, of the Enlightenment, of emancipatory and reformist aspirations penetrates into R. There is a desire to abolish torture and to prevent crimes. New schools arise, physiocratic doctrines spread, Voltaire, Diderot, Beccaria become fashionable in cultured and elegant salons. But a great revolt in the Urals and along the Volga, led by E. Pugachev (a threatening repetition of the earlier rebellion of Razin) convinces the Empress of the "dangerous aspect" of ideas that had seemed so attractive to her in the salons. The Empress thus undergoes a clearly conservative involution, which is further emphasized following the outbreak of the French Revolution. Notable successes were achieved, under her reign, by R. against the Turks. Following the successive partitions of Poland, R. annexed a large part of the territory of that State, further strengthening its position as a great power.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century R. is still little known in the West, but diplomacy increasingly begins to intuit its political importance and military weight. Under the reign of Alexander I, which lasted from 1801 to 1825, R. once again passes through an interesting period of reforms: but many reforms would remain in the project stage, and from the dissatisfaction that this fact produced, the first revolutionary attempt would arise. The year 1812 would be of decisive importance: Napoleon's armies invade R. and Moscow is set on fire so that the invader may find no shelter. After the victory of Russian arms, a new and more "modern" nationalism would begin to develop among the educated classes: Russian patriotism had until then been identified with a religious ("Orthodox") and dynastic sentiment; more and more, under the influence of ideas coming from France and Germany, a great "mission" in the world would be assigned to R. As soon as he ascended the throne, Alexander I sought to give his reign a generically liberal tone: Enlightenment remnants of his education were curiously mixed in him with romantic dreams; ideals of liberty born from the readings of the Greek and Latin classics were interwoven with the habits of a semi-despotic court. Many young officers who had long believed they were "collaborating" with the Tsar in reformist activity and propaganda (especially with regard to the abolition of serfdom), found themselves almost inadvertently becoming conspirators and revolutionaries, as Alexander I gradually moved away from his youthful liberal tendencies. Thus one arrives (Dec. 1825) at the so-called insurrection of the "Decembrists" (from dekabr, which in Russian means December). Among the conspirators two tendencies were broadly taking shape: those who aimed at a constitutional monarchy of a more or less English type, and those who appealed to generically Jacobin ideals, with the insertion of pre-socialist elements. The insurrection was rather easily suppressed, but it was to be the prelude to intense and profound revolutionary movements. The weakness and fantastic abstraction of Alexander I were revealed particularly on the occasion of the rise of the "Holy Alliance" and its developments, not always in keeping with the contradictory dreams of the mystically inclined Emperor.

The reign of Nicholas I (1825-55) begins with the crushing of the Decembrist insurrection. On the one hand the new Emperor wants to fight to the root every revolutionary germ; on the other, with the development in R. of modern capitalism, with the spread of industry and railways, the foundations are laid for inevitable social transformations and future agitations. Under his reign R. seems inaccessible to revolution: on the other hand the Crimean War shows numerous, serious technical and material weaknesses, while political and social agitation, however much kept subdued, spreads ever more, especially toward the end of his reign. The spirit of anti-revolutionary solidarity is stronger in Nicholas I than the immediate voice of the national and state interests of R. (this was seen in relations with Austria in 1849). A man, in a certain sense, all of a piece, he nevertheless did not understand the necessity of beginning in time political reforms and a transformation and redistribution of social relations. The insurrection of the Polish nation (1830-31) and the harsh repression drew against R. profound enmities in the most diverse and opposite sectors of European public opinion (Catholics, liberals and left-wing democrats).

To a grand work of reforms, by contrast, Alexander II wished to dedicate himself, reigning from 1855 to 1881. The unhappy outcome of the Crimean War and the ever more explicit orientation of influential sectors of Russian society made the great reforms no longer postponable. The fundamental work was the emancipation of the peasants (1861).

through the abolition of serfdom. No less important were the judicial reform and the military and school reforms, all of them marked by a "European" and generally democratic spirit. Autocracy was not abolished, but in it there were in a certain sense inserted decidedly liberal impulses and transformations of a social character. The failure of these great reforms is due in part to the hesitations of the Tsar himself, who often stopped at dangerous intermediate solutions: but the chaotic and abrupt rise of a middle class, devoid of traditions, of balance and of culture and dominated, especially in its younger elements, by extremist ideas, did the rest. The great Polish rebellion of 1863 also acted as a brake on democratic reforms, and in practice it led only to new, harsh repressions. During the reign of Alexander II the revolutionary movement (which in the West was known under the rather generic and imprecise term of "nihilism") gained ever more ground in R. Radical ideas of the French eighteenth century were interwoven in "nihilism" with the most advanced materialistic and democratic ideas of the nineteenth century, with very clear foreannouncements in a scholastic and collectivist sense. Not only an art "divorced from life", not only a "spiritualist" philosophy, but art and philosophy themselves were rejected by these young revolutionaries, to whom they appeared a useless "waste of time", in the face of "concrete revolutionary problems" and the questions posed by science. There was also in their ingenuous and generous souls a feeling of shame at enjoying what the "people" could not enjoy.

Political attacks became ever more numerous, and the Tsar Alexander II himself fell victim to an attack in March 1881. His successor Alexander III, who reigned from 1881 to 1894, wished to give Russian domestic policy a more energetic tone, in the hope of eradicating, with a firm stance, the "plague of terrorism". Yet even the regime of Alexander III knew oscillations, between the rigidly authoritarian and anti-liberal policy of Pobedonostsev (Pobedonoscev) and the vague liberalism of Loris-Melikov, who aimed to "isolate" the revolutionaries, with gradual concessions in a constitutional sense to the moderate and reformist currents. Moreover, the further industrialization of the country (especially in certain large centers) and the notable development of the railways contributed to increasing the proletarian masses, instinctively and primitively revolutionary. Broadly speaking, the policy of Alexander III had a decidedly anti-liberal character, in contrast with that of his predecessor: yet, on the plane of foreign policy, Alexander III allied R. with the French Republic, that is, making national interests prevail over the traditional friendship between the Empires of conservative tendency (R., Austria, Germany). The alliance with France meant for R. a guarantee of help against any German and Austrian expansionist ambitions and opened to R. the French financial market.

With Nicholas II, who reigned from 1894 to 1917, the great revolutionary upheavals entered their decisive phase. The new Emperor, although a convinced supporter of autocracy, was a weak man. In the face of revolutionary upheavals, he made concessions, which he then sought to withdraw (wholly or in part), when the moment of extreme danger seemed past. Of all the possible political lines, this was probably the most unfortunate. Corruption and intrigue among the ruling circles had assumed alarming aspects. At court, little by little, servile men and adventurers had established themselves, such as the notorious Rasputin. Yet there was no lack, during his reign, of serious attempts to check the upheavals and to revive the finances: to be mentioned, for example, is the monetary reform linked to the name of the minister Witte and the subsequent attempt at agrarian reform made, with perhaps debatable methods, by Stolypin. The grandiose construction of the Trans-Siberian railway contributed to developing internal emigration. Terrorist attacks against members of the imperial family, governors, exponents of the police, nevertheless followed one another at an impressive rate.

The war against Japan (1904-1905) accelerated the revolutionary rhythm. A great power that stretched from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, R. was led to look toward Asia whenever its expansion in Europe suffered points of arrest. The scanty diplomatic successes obtained by Alexander II after his victories against Turkey in the Balkan Peninsula (Treaty of Berlin, 1878) in fact pushed R. (where vast strata of public opinion felt "disappointed") toward a pronounced expansionism in Central Asia and the Far East. A "small" war with Japan (from which a brilliant success was expected) could moreover appear as a useful diversion against the now chronic political and social upheavals. The disastrous defeat of R. at the hands of Japan was instead, in a short time, to exasperate the revolutionary agitation.

The men who represented the most markedly "autocratic" line did not realize that profound transformations of every kind were necessary, especially on the social plane, to take the wind out of the sails of the revolution. The liberals lived on a plane of semi-legality and did not have at their disposal a mature middle class conscious of the sense of limit: weak and tormented by internal struggles, partly monarchist and partly republican, they sometimes seconded the revolutionary agitation, then abruptly reversing course. Nebulous, weak, demagogic was the path traced by vague and indeterminate currents that sought to reconcile the "Orthodox" religious tradition with "progress". Ever more determined, on the other hand, were the openly anti-monarchist and more or less revolutionary parties. The so-called "Socialist-Revolutionaries" had their adherents in almost all social classes and exercised a strong fascination over students with their clandestine terrorist formations: romantic and eclectic, they tended toward a democratic republic, toward vaguely forty-eight-style formulas (in the European sense of the term), toward a non-Marxist socialism, exalting the "human personality" and sympathizing with the peasants. The Bolsheviks (v. BOLSCEVISMO) were an active, authoritarian minority, centrally organized and, at the crucial moments, generally carried a weight far greater than their numerical contribution. The Mensheviks corresponded, broadly speaking, to European democratic socialism, but they lacked a following because of the absence in R. of skilled and well-paid workers, because of the extremism that, especially among the young, had become almost an instinct, and because of the slowness and contradictoriness of the reforms and governmental measures.

The Minister of the Interior Plehve was assassinated in July 1904, without the event causing any expressions of regret in public opinion: this was a truly symptomatic fact. The whole country was by now shaken by a violent revolutionary fever. Vague hopes that the tsar would grant a Constitution were not realized. On 9 January 1905 there occurred in St. Petersburg a tragic "Bloody Sunday," when the police fired on an imposing crowd that wanted to make its way to the Winter Palace to present a petition to the tsar. The revolution seemed truly to be gaining the upper hand: students and workers showed themselves particularly active. While the peasants (aspiring to become small landowners) burned many manor houses, Moscow and St. Petersburg were shaken by bloody revolutionary agitation and by general strikes. In the Black Sea there was a serious rebellion in the military fleet. Among the workers the first soviets ("councils") were formed. On 17 October 1905 the tsar decided to grant the Russian people a partial constitution (the word "constitution" was nevertheless avoided). The revolutionary wave then subsided somewhat, also through internal exhaustion. There were, indeed, violent counter-revolutionary demonstrations, especially in southwestern Russia, accompanied by excesses against the Jews. The so-called "Black Hundreds" distinguished themselves in the violence.

The first "Duma" (parliament) was dominated by elements of the left and the extreme left: the government therefore decided to dissolve it (July 1906); the second "Duma" met the same fate (June 1907). The third Duma, elected under various pressures, proved more docile. In the country the revolutionary wave could appear to be receding; the world of culture was somewhat distancing itself from the "materialist mystique" and from revolutionary solutions. It was perhaps permissible to think of a gradual "Europeanization" of Russia, albeit amid the ups and downs of further rebellions and repressions.

The outbreak of the First World War was soon to rekindle the flame of revolution. In the summer of 1914 a vigorous patriotic wave spread over Russia, also taking hold among numerous popular elements. After the first victories over the Austrians, the Russian armies nevertheless suffered a resounding series of defeats; vast territories were abandoned to the Germans. Railway communications were insufficient, the army poorly supplied, in the large cities food was scarce; in circles close to the court, proposals for a separate peace with the Central Powers were more or less vaguely aired. Among the diplomats of the "Entente" there were those who hoped for an intensification of the war effort from a democratic revolution. In February 1917 the police proved incapable of suppressing at the outset the agitation of women and workers, caused by the lack of food and by weariness with a war that was dragging on. The agitation soon assumed a threatening character. After the tsar was forced to abdicate, within a few days it was no longer psychologically possible even for the grand duke Michael, brother of the former sovereign, to ascend the throne. Russia, which had not yet known a constitutional regime of the European type, had suddenly become a republic. The "provisional government" immediately found itself facing the greatest difficulties: all the social categories of the country entered into violent agitation, the parties lacked political traditions, the ethnic minorities tended more or less openly to break away from Russia, the army was in full disintegration, practically all effective discipline having been abolished. The leader of the liberals, Milyukov, determined to continue the war alongside the Allies and increasingly suspicious of the extremists, was gradually replaced by the weak and demagogic Kerensky, who also wanted the war to continue alongside the Entente, but was not in a position, with his abstract political formulas, to restore order in the country and at the front

(the individual, belated measures he took against sabotage and treason only momentarily exasperated the extremists, without achieving any effective result). Lenin (v.), leader of the Bolshevik faction, energetic and resolute in his means of struggle and in his aims, an excellent tactician and strategist of politics, had meanwhile returned to Russia, making use of the famous "sealed carriage" placed at his disposal by Germany (which, itself weary of the war, hoped for a military collapse of Russia). Shortly afterward Trotsky (Trotzki [v.]) reached Russia, a brilliant and energetic revolutionary who, after some ideological disagreement, had sided with the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries were divided into "factions" and often displayed marked inferiority complexes before Lenin's party. The weak and impotent regime of Kerensky was swept away, after a few months, by the Bolshevik Revolution (7 November 1917, according to the European calendar). A previous insurrectionary attempt from the right had failed. In vain Kerensky had deluded himself that he had "more than sufficient forces" to stifle the Bolshevik coup. The Bolsheviks, having come to power in very difficult conditions, had to sign the Peace of Brest-Litovsk with imperial Germany. Shortly afterward, civil war flared up throughout the country, with the horrors that a civil war always brings with it. The imperial family was killed in 1918. The peasant masses who had supported the Revolution, in the hope of seizing the land, were more and more irritated by the requisitions. But the so-called "white" armies also lacked unity, and the leaders of the counter-revolutionary forces showed scant diplomatic and propagandistic abilities. The chaos caused by the so-called "war communism" in Soviet Russia was partly mitigated by the NEP ("New Economic Policy"): with a skillful move, in fact, Lenin had given the economy a decisive turn, temporarily admitting certain "capitalist" sectors and a margin for private initiative. On Lenin's death (January 1924), the Georgian Stalin increasingly came to the fore. With the beginning of the "Stalin era," Russia (which after the revolution had become the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics") began a series of great

Moreover, in the West there was the so-called policy of the "popular fronts," also in defense of the "Reds" in Spain. Negotiations subsequently took place between the U.S.S.R., France and England with a view to a common anti-German front. The Western powers, however, had significant hesitations in the face of the Soviet desire to strengthen beforehand, at the risk of Poland and the Baltic States, the U.S.S.R.'s positions in Eastern Europe. Thus in Aug. 1939, on the eve of the German attack on Poland, a German-Soviet agreement was reached, which surprised a large part of world public opinion. In Sept. of the same year Germans and Russians divided Poland between them, while the Soviet press from 1939 to 1941 was particularly polemical toward France and England. The rapprochement between Germany and R., however, did not rest on stable values. In June 1941, Hitler, fearing the persistence of the Russian unknown in the event of a German landing in England, suddenly went over to the offensive against the U.S.S.R. In a few weeks the German armies came close to Leningrad and Moscow, destroying a large part of the Soviet army. The winter, the great distances, the Russian human masses, and the ever more abundant aid from the Anglo-Saxons to the U.S.S.R., however, made the Germans' situation rather difficult; their position worsened further in the course of 1942 and became catastrophic in the two following years. In the spring of 1945 the Russians entered Berlin and Vienna victorious. Following the victory, R. occupied vast regions of central-eastern Europe, everywhere establishing, within a short time, regimes of its liking. A few years later, with the help of skillful military and diplomatic moves, R. succeeded in making the communists triumph in Manchuria. It was the prelude to the communist victory in all of China and to the achievement of a success of the widest scope. Western policy, caught partly by surprise and partly still quite well disposed, initially, toward the U.S.S.R., became ever more rigid.

Thus began the Atlantic Pact, the partial rearmament of Western Europe, and finally, in Asia, the incipient inclusion of Japan in a front of the Pacific nations.

Wolf Giusti

II. RELIGIOUS HISTORY

For the overwhelmingly predominant majority of the Russian population, which belonged to the Russian dissident Church, v. KIEV, metropolis of; MOSCOW, patriarchate of; RASKOL.

1. Catholics of the Latin rite

In the 9th century Christianity penetrated into R. also in the form of the Latin rite, but with the conversion of the grand prince St. Vladimir (980-1015) the Byzantine-Slav rite prevailed there.

However, in the great cities such as Kiev and Novgorod, Catholics of the Latin rite continued to live, especially foreign merchants. Later, among the foreign artists, artisans and merchants in the service of the grand princes of Moscow, especially from Ivan III (1462-1505) onward, there were also Latin Catholics, who populated (together with the Protestants) the Moscow suburb known as "Nemeckaja sloboda." Nor were attempts lacking at that time on the part of the Latins to win R. for the Catholic Church. In 1586 the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, while negotiating the truce between Poland and R., had religious disputes with Tsar Ivan IV, but without any success. Likewise the hopes placed in the Pseudo-Demetrius (1605-1606), supported by Poland, failed. In 1658 the Croatian priest George Krizanic (v.) went to Moscow with the same intent, but he ended up being relegated to Siberia (1661-76). In 1702, Tsar Peter I granted freedom of worship, but not of religious propaganda. The Emperor of Austria Leopold I (1657-1705) obtained from the Tsar that two Jesuits might reside in Moscow to provide spiritual assistance to the members of his embassy and to the foreign Catholics scattered throughout R. But the school attached to their church attracted too many of the sons of the Russian nobility, some conversions occurred, and therefore the Jesuits were expelled in 1719. For a certain time the Capuchins and Franciscans replaced them.

With the first partition of Poland (1772), besides the Ruthenians (v.), there were also in R. about 100,000 Latin Catholics belonging to the three dioceses (Vilna, Livonia, Smolensk). Catherine II in 1772 united them into a single diocese with its seat at Mohilev. The auxiliary bishop of Vilna, Stanislaus Siestrzenciewicz-Bolusz, servile and devoted to the Empress, accepted the diocese from her hands with the title of metropolitan. Only in 1783 did the nuncio Lorenzo Litta give the canonical investiture to Siestrzenciewicz. Catherine II prohibited in her domains the publication of the brief [of abolition of the Society of Jesus (1773), which in this way survived in R. With the subsequent partitions of Poland (1793-95), R. acquired other territories inhabited by Latin Catholics, but these had their own hierarchy (v. POLAND). The influence of the Jesuits and of the French Catholic émigrés caused the conversion of certain personalities of Russian high society, e.g., Prince Demetrius Golicyn (1792), the princesses Alexandra (1800) and Catherine (1810) Golicyn, Sofia Svecina (1815). This provoked a reaction, and in 1826 the Jesuits were expelled from R. and the measures against proselytism were tightened. The Concordat concluded in 1847 between Nicholas I (1825-55) and Pius IX did not change the situation; only the new diocese of Tiraspol (1848) was erected for the southern regions of the Empire. Also in the 19th century there were individual conversions to the Latin rite among eminent Russian personalities; some converts even became religious and priests (Vladimir Pecorin, d. 1885; Gregory Suvalov, d. 1859; the Jesuits: Ivan Gagarin, d. 1882, Ivan Martynov, d. 1894, Eugene Balabin, d. 1893, Paul Pierling, d. 1922; laymen: Augustine Golicyn, d. 1875, Natalia Naryškina, d. 1874, etc.). But they had to live and work abroad because of the Russian laws against proselytism, which were abolished only in 1905. But the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 marked the beginning of the new persecution also for the Latin Catholics, who at that time still had in R. about 1,600,000 faithful with 8 bishops, 810 priests and 410 churches. In 1923 Msgr. John Cieplak (v.), administrator of the metropolis of Mohilev, was arrested and tried together with 14 priests. There followed arrests, deportations and exiles of other priests, the closing of churches and the confiscation of ecclesiastical property. Although in 1926 Msgr. Michel D'Herbigny had secretly ordained

4 bishops in R., in 1937 there remained in the Soviet Union only 10 priests and 11 churches open for worship. Today the organization of the Latin Catholic Church in R. is practically annihilated and the scattered faithful are deprived of religious assistance.

The territorial changes that occurred in Eastern Europe after the Second World War (1939-45) brought again within the scope of the Soviet Union about 4,000,000 Latin Catholics. For their fortunes v. ESTONIA; LATVIA; LITHUANIA; POLAND.

Ethnically the Latin Catholics in R. were predominantly of non-Russian origin. The majority came from the western regions of the Russian Empire and were partly deported or exiled into the interior of European and Asiatic R., partly they moved there in search of land or work (Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Baltic Germans). From abroad there immigrated Germans, Czechs, French, etc. Numerically the Catholics of Polish origin prevailed. The practical identification of nationality with the prevailing religion among the Poles and among the Russians was the principal obstacle that prevented the Catholics, although numerous, from exerting an effective influence on the religious life of the properly Russian population.

2. Catholics of the Byzantine-Slav rite

In the 15th century the metropolitan Isidore, who took part in the Council of Florence (v.), attempted to introduce into R. the union with Rome, while preserving the Eastern rite, but without success. The Ruthenian uniate dioceses annexed to R. with the partition of Poland (1772-95) have been suppressed (v. RUTHENIANS). In the 18th-19th centuries individual Russian converts embraced the Latin rite and thereby, in the eyes of Russian public opinion, renounced their own nation.

However, toward the end of the 19th century some Russian intellectuals arrived at union with the Catholic Church by studying the genuine traditions of the Eastern Church and desired, even as Catholics, to preserve the Byzantine-Slav rite, just as it was then practiced by the Russian dissident Church. Among the first were the princess Elizabeth Volkonskaja (d. 1897), the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (v.), the priests Alexis Zierčaninov (d. 1933) and Nicholas Tolstoj (d. 1926). The movement gained other priests and laymen, who formed in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Saratov the first communities of Russian Catholics of the Byzantine-Slav rite. In 1917 the metropolitan of Halič, Szeptický (v.), passing through St. Petersburg on his return from his imprisonment, by virtue of the special powers received from the Holy See, established for R. the Apostolic Exarchate of the Byzantine-Slav rite and appointed as the first exarch the priest Leonidas Fedorov (1879-1935). But the ensuing Bolshevik persecution crushed the development of the Exarchate. In 1923 the exarch Fedorov was arrested and deported, and later died at Vyatka in 1935. The following arrests and secular one, the Pontifical Russian College was opened in Rome in 1929, where Msgr. Alexander Evreinov (b. 1877), ordaining bishop for the Byzantine-Slav rite, also resides. The Russian parishes of the Byzantine-Slav rite, except for the Apostolic Exarchate of Harbin (v.) in Manchuria, still depend on the Latin Ordinaries, though under the high direction of the S. Congregation for the Eastern Church.

Giuseppe Olšr

III. LEGAL CONDITION OF THE CHURCH (up to the Revolution)

The Russian Empire regulated its relations with the Catholic Church on the basis of the "Code of Ecclesiastical Affairs for Foreign Confessions" (Svod zakonov, vol. XI/1 with supplements up to 1916). According to art. 66 of the fundamental law of the State and art. 1 of the Code, foreign confessions are granted full freedom: "The principal and dominant religion in the Russian State is the Orthodox Christian Catholic Eastern one. However, all subjects of the State and foreigners not belonging to this Church and living in the Russian State enjoy everywhere the free exercise of their faith and worship according to their rites."

Nevertheless the Catholic Church in the imperial R. (dioceses: Mohilev with Siberia and Vladivostok, Tiraspol, Minsk, Kamenetz, Zytomir) has always led a life of diaspora. The freedom solemnly recognized was often restricted or suspended by particular provisions. According to art. 13 of the aforementioned Code the Church depended on the Ministry of the Interior. Art. 17 regulated the relations of the hierarchy with the Holy See: "All Christians of the Roman Catholic confession, ecclesiastics and laymen, subjects of the State, in matters relating to their confession, are in contact with the Roman Curia only through the Ministry of the Interior. No bull, letter or instruction may be published in the Empire and in the Grand Duchy of Finland without the permission of H. M. the Emperor, requested by the Ministry of the Interior, after prior verification that these acts contain nothing contrary to the decisions, sacred rights and privileges of the supreme autocratic authority."

The Catholic Church was permitted religious instruction in schools, the establishment of diocesan seminaries and the founding of the Ecclesiastical Academy of Petersburg. Social activity (care of the poor, the sick, assistance to orphans and the elderly, as well as other organizations of comfort and charity) was carried out through confraternities, circles (the Vincentian Circle), religious congregations. For the establishment of such associations, on the basis of the circular of the Ministry of the Interior (1910, no. 1016), the bishop had to obtain the consent of the civil authority. The Church was also recognized in principle the right of property; numerous, however, were in this matter the intrusions of the civil authority. Without special permission it was forbidden: to send sums abroad; to possess movable and immovable property; to accept legacies and donations. The administration of ecclesiastical property was controlled by the episcopal consistories, but also by lay chancelleries.

Giuseppe M. Schweigl

IV. RITE

It is the Byzantine rite according to the use of the Russian Church and its branches.

1. Extent

The Russian rite had an initial period in common with the Ruthenian rite, which may be called the Kievan period. It lasted until the metropolitan went to settle in Moscow, after 1300, and the princes of that Grand Duchy gained the upper hand in Russia. Certain uses began to differ from those of the southern regions; but toward the end of the 17th century, when Kiev entered politically and ecclesiastically into the orbit of Moscow and its patriarch, the rite of Moscow began to impose itself also on Kiev. At the same time its liturgical books were copied by the Serbs living in Turkey or sent to those exiled in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the third partition of Poland it was imposed on the Ruthenians of White Russia, where the union with Rome was extinguished (1839 and 1875). Since the Russians today occupy Galicia as well, where they have abolished the Catholic hierarchy of the Ruthenians, it is likely that they have imported or are imposing their rite there as in the whole region as far as the Bug.

2. Internal development

As far as is known, the first Typicon introduced at Kiev was that of the Studite patriarch Alexius of Constantinople. The Studite Typicon was observed also in the Monastery of the Caves at Kiev; at the same time or shortly afterward the influence began to be felt of the Slavic versions of liturgical books already made by the Bulgarians and the Serbs, but toward 1400 the metropolitan Cyprian strove to return to the use of the Greeks of that time, introducing the Diataxis of Philotheos (patriarch of Constantinople, 1354-55, 1364-76) and following the Typicon of St. Sabas, translated by the hegumen Athanasius in 1401. The cult of the Russian saints, a new Serbian influence after the fall of Constantinople (1453), and the lack of a central authority allowed many liturgical diversities which the Synod known under the name of Stoglav (1551) could not remove.

That diversity was still more evident when the liturgical books were given to the press in various cities: Kraków, Vilnius, Ostrog, Moscow. But with the advent of the Romanovs and under the impulse of the patriarch Philaret (1619-1633) the true reform began, which had its culmination in the so imprudent effort of the patriarch Nikon (1562-1667), which was followed by the great schism of the Raskol, that is, of the Old Ritualists. The reform took as its model the contemporary Greek books; it was favored by the patriarch of Jerusalem, Paisius, and elaborated by Andrew the Greek (Sukhanov), aided by some monks native to Kiev. In the following years the Russian rite, through the work of the Kievans, underwent a certain Latin influence; for example, the Trebnik of Moscow (1677) admitted the indicative formula of absolution and in the Marriage service the questions on the free consent of the spouses; the Typicon of Moscow (1682) prescribes that whoever celebrates the holy liturgy bow at the words of Christ. After a partial reaction the evolution of the Russian rite came to a halt. Even the books printed at Kiev had to submit to the censorship of Moscow, and the Holy Synod continued with great diligence to publish liturgical books in numerous editions, often very beautiful, sometimes luxurious.

Alfonso Raes

V. LITERATURE

The beginning, in R., of a script and of a literature coincides with the acceptance of Christianity by Prince Vladimir (988). From that moment the Russian people participates, albeit in particular circumstances and ways, in the life of Europe, of a Europe that for centuries would identify itself more or less with Byzantium, over a vast territory that is geographically the continuation of Asia, always open to the invasion of barbarian and primitive tribes. Christianity brought with it religious books: these were written in the Slavic-Macedonian dialect used by Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius, a dialect that was subsequently called Old Bulgarian or Church Slavonic. The Church Slavonic language penetrated into R., influencing the spoken language and in turn undergoing its influence. Russian vernacular and Church Slavonic fully fused into something harmonious – that is, the modern Russian literary language – only toward the end of the 18th century and even more so at the beginning of the 19th, through the work of great writers such as Karamzin, Krylov and Pushkin. The first written documents of Russian literature are to be considered the translations of sacred books. To be remembered first of all is the Gospel of Ostromir, the work of the deacon Grigorij (1056-57). The lives of the saints are contained in the so-called Čet's Minej and in the Pateriki. Also to be remembered, among other texts, is the Instruction to his sons of Prince Vladimir Monomakh, who reigned in Kiev from 1113 to 1125, an instruction permeated with moral and religious precepts. In the vast Russian plain, covered with forests and steppes, beaten by winds and snowstorms, the monasteries long represented the only cultural centers worthy of note: it was in fact the monks who zealously gathered the most notable events of the "Russian land," collecting them into chronicles (a tenacious and meticulous work that was to withstand, in part, wars, cataclysms and the invasions of Asiatic tribes, a work of civilization that enthused Pushkin in the incipient 19th century, when Russian literature, rapidly surpassing the models of European Romanticism, fully established itself with original values among the great literatures). Particularly important is the Chronicle of Nestor, so called from its probable 11th-century author.

In the first rank among the literary documents of this epoch is the Song of Igor's Campaign, discovered in 1795, at a time of lively interest in folklore and in the climate of the Middle Ages (in the burning of Moscow in 1812 the manuscript was nevertheless lost). The song refers to a historical event, that is, to a battle fought between Russians and the primitive tribe of the Polovcy (1183), and is characterized by moments of high epic quality and authentic lyricism. The discovery of this "song" aroused some suspicions from its very appearance, and indeed reference was made to Ossian; the French Slavist A. Mazon has recently taken up and developed the old doubts, reaching the conclusion that the Song of Igor's Campaign is nothing but a Romantic reworking of the so-called Zadoničina (a poem somewhat later than the Song and of more modest artistic value). Russian criticism, on the other hand, today maintains its absolute authenticity.

The domination of the Tatars was undoubtedly a misfortune for Russian culture. Once national life had recovered after the defeat of the Tatars, and culture had shifted from Kiev toward the north, in the political climate of Muscovy a close fusion took shape between state power and religious power: the Stoglav, or Book of the Hundred Chapters, was precisely the protocol of a Council (1551) willed by Ivan the Terrible in order to decide as arbiter on controversial questions of ecclesiastical discipline. In the Domostroj, a work dealing with the organization of the house and the family, was mirrored the harsh, rigid and authoritarian climate characterizing the Muscovy of that time. Nevertheless, amid such images of primitive life and tyranny, one senses an accent of delicacy and humanity in the Life of Juliana Lazarevskaja, written by her son, Georgij Osorgin.

The rise and spread of religious sects was bound to be reflected also in literature, both through more or less "scientific" books by sectarians, sometimes recalling the divinatory art and astrology, and through the work of Gennadij, archbishop of Novgorod, loyal to Moscow. Particularly worthy of note is the Autobiography of the "protopope" Avvakum, a vigorous preacher, who narrates not without a certain artistic effectiveness his imprisonment and the persecutions suffered by his sectarians. From the imitation of foreign models and from simple translations, moreover, there is a tendency to pass ever more to compositions presenting original characteristics. Alongside sacred subjects, secular subjects are noted in increasing measure.

The picture, albeit brief and synthetic, of the most ancient Russian literature would not, however, be complete if no mention were made of oral literature, handed down for several centuries from generation to generation. The ancient byline, songs of an epic character, can, in broad outline, be connected to the centers of Kiev and Novgorod. The bogatyri (heroes) of Kiev are above all faithful warriors in the service of a patriotic ideal; those of Novgorod (a city of flourishing commerce) are especially attracted by riches. This poetry, rich in local color and epic vigor, refers to very ancient figures of heroes with pagan features and to well-known legendary personages: Ilja Muromec, Dobrynja Nikitič and Alëša Popovič (denoting influences of Christianity).

The milieu of Kiev, in the early Middle Ages, had willingly accepted the first wave of Christian and Byzantine civilization: in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries a wave of Western civilization reached Muscovite R. through Kiev. Simeon Polockij (1629-80) was the most distinguished champion of a predominantly Latinizing culture.

Meanwhile, with the accession to the throne of Peter the Great, the old R. had been profoundly shaken, at least on its surface, by a utilitarian and technicist revolution. Ivan Posoškov (1652-1726), an intelligent amateur economist, expresses in his treatise On Poverty and Wealth many characteristic aspirations of the epoch. V. N. Tatiščev (1686-1750), author of a Russian History and of the Dialogue on the Usefulness of the Sciences and of Schools, expresses in a somewhat naive manner his rationalist and utilitarian tendencies. The transfer of the capital from Moscow to the new metropolis St. Petersburg seems to synthesize the predominant taste for modernity and for Europeanism.

A "modern" Russian literature really begins only with the penetration of French classicism (whether directly or through Germany). The enlightened and skeptical eighteenth century brought to R. French tastes, fashions and elegances, a sympathy for the "lights," cosmopolitan tendencies, humanitarianism; but as a result of Russia's ever-increasing power and of the first pre-Romantic stirrings, the late eighteenth century also brought a greater awareness of Russia's material and spiritual strength, a desire for originality, vague aspirations that would mature in the following century. Here we limit ourselves to recalling A. Kantemir (1709-44), author of a satire entitled To the Despisers of Science, echoing the reforming spirit of Peter the Great; M. V. Lomonosov (b. between 1708 and 1715, d. 1765), a truly encyclopedic scholar and scientist of world renown; D. I. Fonvizin (1745-92), author of two successful comedies, The Brigadier and The Minor, characteristically expressing the contrast between the old and the new generation; V. V. Kapnist (1757-1823), author of The Slander. Catherine II had also written comedies with moralizing intent. The lively, somewhat superficial but intelligent empress had fostered the development of journalism and of schools: but in her conservative period she had harshly repressed those journalists and writers who, like N. I. Novikov (1744-1816) and A. N. Radishchev (1749-1802), characteristically expressed the "French" ideas of the eighteenth century and protested against the harshness of serfdom.

The eighteenth century, which had seen the military triumphs of R. and the first affirmations of a modern literature, was in a certain sense to join the nineteenth century – the great "golden age" of R. – in the names of Derzhavin, Karamzin and Krylov. G. R. Derzhavin (1743-1816), descended from an ancient Tatar family, vigorous and rough in his artistic expression, achieved European fame with the philosophical odes God and The Waterfall. N. M. Karamzin (1766-1826) is the typical exponent of "sentimentalism" in Russian literature, an echo of English literary tastes and French humanitarian attitudes. Worth recalling in this regard are his Letters of a Russian Traveler and tales such as Poor Liza and Natalia the Boyar's Daughter. But the historicist and "national" climate of the incipient nineteenth century (after Napoleon's invasion and the great Russian recovery) drew Karamzin away from his eighteenth-century youthful ideals: he would in fact become the author of the monumental History of the Russian State, inspired by a monarchical spirit and a vigorous national sentiment. I. A. Krylov (1768-1844) is the author of famous fables that are still read today as when they were written: his "talking animals" have an unmistakable Russian accent, and his vocabulary draws on a lively and very rich popular language, always employed at the right moment and restrained by good taste.

The tradition of "sentimentalism" merges with new and more vivid Romantic accents in the poetry of V. A. Zhukovsky (1783-1852), known above all for his reworking of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and for a poem entitled The Bard in the Russian Camp.

Classicism, in turn, finds fresh and new accents in the poetry of K. N. Batyushkov (1787-1855), to whom the elegy The Dying Tasso especially brought fame. Dramatically felicitous touches and an impatience with the crude and backward environment of R. are found in the comedy Woe from Wit by A. S. Griboyedov (1795-1829).

Russian literature was to establish itself among the great European literatures with the work of Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837). His harmonious nature was able to fuse the brisk lightness of the eighteenth century with the more tormented, more philosophical, more "national" taste of incipient Romanticism. European influences were thus joined artistically and in a most original way to the discovery and revelation of the Russian soul, of the Russian landscape, of the naive and profound voice of folk song. Yielding only apparently to the "sentimental" predilections of the broad public, he instead created a new type of art. With Pushkin, R. had found not only its universal poet but also its great national poet: and this not only because in Boris Godunov he had sung the struggles, the sufferings and the glories of past centuries, but also because in the Tales of Belkin, in Eugene Onegin and in the lyrics he had awakened to life values that seemed to slumber in the country's age-old torpor. K. F. Ryleyev (1795-1825), a poet who took part in the revolutionary activity of the "Decembrists," sought to impress upon his verses an ideal of civic spirit and liberty. E. A. Boratynsky (1800-44) occupies artistically a notable place beside Pushkin; of Boratynsky one recalls the poems The Last Death and The Last Poet: the latter a disconsolate vision of a "future world" in which science and technology would kill poetry. A. V. Koltsov (1808-42) exalted the countryside and the hard labor of the Russian peasants, at times creating a happy harmony of typically folkloric elements and a vivid and original poetic sensibility. Pushkin's only true emulator, however, was Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814-41), who died like Pushkin in a duel, but still too young to be able fully to develop the extraordinary gifts of his genius. Although at times succumbing to Byronism, that is, to the inferior Romantic fashion, he was able in The Novice, in A Hero of Our Time, as well as in part of his lyric poetry to find vivid, original, tormented accents, overcoming the schemes and formulas of a conventional Romanticism and the very skeptical cynicism then in vogue among young intellectuals. In one of his fragments (Princess Ligovskaya) he perhaps vaguely foreshadows Dostoevsky.

With Lermontov an era of Russian literature came to a close that one does not hesitate to call, in a certain sense, aristocratic and noble, both because of the noble origin of its representatives and because of the tone of its creation. New forces of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois origin appear in literature. Romanticism, a vague idealism and an even vaguer liberalism were succeeded by democratic tendencies and tastes; on the philosophical plane positivism asserted itself, soon overwhelmed by the more combative and revolutionary materialism, which in R. would tend to erect itself into a dogma, with a passionate accent perhaps not entirely wrongly called "ascetic."

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-52) is still extraneous to this seething of political and social passions, but one of his last writings (Prvni from E. Lo Gatto, the work of Italian genius abroad. The artists in R., H. Rome 1852. Inv. 91.
RUSSIA - Autograph designs by B. Rastrelli for the Winter Palace in Leningrad (1750-60).

selections from the correspondence with friends) was already destined to unleash the most heated protests of the "young generation." Through his multifaceted literary work, Gogol already offers the starting point for certain youthful masterpieces of Dostoevsky (reference is made above all to the Gogol of stories such as The Nose and The Overcoat): on the other hand, in Dead Souls he presents a powerful, fascinating and anguished picture of Russia, which finds in a certain sense its equivalent, in bitter ironic form, in The Government Inspector, a work in which some wished to see only a cheerful mockery of corrupt customs.

V. V. Belinsky (1811-48) is the head of the new critical school, for which literature has above all the task of fighting for social and rational ideals: from an incipient idealist position, he soon passed to rationalism and to a socialist or at least pre-socialist attitude. In Belinsky's work there is no lack of acute literary intuitions: in sometimes more naive forms, however, the rationalist and materialist tendencies manifest themselves in the critics Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, who had notable importance in the formation of revolutionary thought. Great poets who kept themselves, on the whole, outside any content-based approach with a social background (which had increasingly become fashionable) were F. I. Tyutchev (1803-73), A. A. Fet-Shenshin (1820-92), A. N. Maykov (1821-97), J. Polonsky (1820-98), A. K. Tolstoy (1817-75). Especially Tyutchev and Fet occupy a place of the first rank in Russian poetry: having remained rather misunderstood in their time, they were later "rediscovered" at the dawn of the twentieth century by the great Symbolist poets. In the poetry of N. A. Nekrasov (1821-77), on the other hand, a marked social tendency is reflected, harking back to certain ideals of Belinsky, which does not exclude moments of the most refined poetry: it is enough to think of the short poem Vlas, a rigorous narrative of a sinner who, to atone for his sins, travels across Russia, collecting alms that are to serve for the construction of a church.

In opposition to the "Westernizing" currents, from which the materialists and revolutionaries had gradually arisen, there had also been developing in literature the "Slavophile" current, inspired by the cult of Russian and Slavic traditions, with a predilection for folklorism (v. above,

I. history). Among the principal exponents of the Slavophile orientation are remembered the brothers Ivan and Peter Kireevsky, J. Khomyakov, the brothers Constantine and Ivan Aksakov, as well as J. Samarin.

In tracing the further development of Russian literature in its period of greatest splendor, one must necessarily limit oneself to the very greatest. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-83) is without doubt considered the most Westernizing among the great Russian writers: yet his Memoirs of a Hunter bear the unmistakable fragrance of the Russian soil in all its most delicate shadings; typically Russian traits are found also in the characters of numerous of his novels and stories (e.g., in A Nest of Gentlefolk). The somewhat journalistic desire to be always abreast of the state of mind of Russian youth and of its ideologies was perhaps at times harmful to him, as in Fathers and Sons and Virgin Soil, tales that are otherwise of very lively documentary interest. Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov (1812-91) introduced into literature the lazy and "old-fashioned" world of his native Simbirsk on the Volga. His Oblomov, a powerful depiction of the old R., sleepy and irresolute — in the century of incipient democratization and of nihilism — belongs to the principal literary masterpieces of the nineteenth century. Like all the great "realists" (to use an expression dear to Russian criticism), Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886) was, with his "theater of manners," more properly a transformer of reality. In his theater there lives with robust and intense life the rude, opaque and traditionalist world of Russian merchants. One limits oneself to recalling, among his most famous comedies, The Storm, The Forest, One Gets Along with One's Own.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (v.) was not only a discoverer of the most shadowy abysses of the human soul, but, like all supreme geniuses, was at the same time a classic, for his aptitude for representing overwhelming passions from different points of view and for his limpid art that shuns literary and artificial sufferings. From the delicate pages of Poor Folk, of White Nights, from the overcoming of Gogol and Hoffmann celebrated in The Double, to the great masterpieces (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov) one can note in Dostoevsky's work a harmonious evolution, rich nevertheless in surprises and continual renewals. Dostoevsky had the capacity to resolve in art an agitated and powerful world of passions and ideas, in the epoch of the incipient Revolution (still predominantly limited to minds). His love (at times not devoid of messianic and Pan-Slavist touches) for R. is identified with a tormented but intensely lived Christianity. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (v.) is the creator, with War and Peace, of one of the greatest masterpieces of modern epic; celebrated throughout the world for the novel Anna Karenina, he is a great artist also in Resurrection (in which one feels the heaviness caused by an ideological content) and of very lively interest also in his polemical and at times paradoxical moments. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-1889) was perhaps the greatest of the Russian satirists: certain of his writings can appear as vast pictures of Russian society of his time. G. I. Uspensky (1840-1902) described with predominantly naturalistic accents a world of the petty bourgeoisie. A. F. Pisemsky (1820-1881) can in a certain way be remembered, albeit in a minor key, alongside Turgenev. N. S. Leskov (1831-1895) was an original and vigorous writer who concerned himself above all with the life of the Russian clergy, but also gave a vivid picture of Russian society before and after the great reforms of Alexander II. Rather opposed in an epoch of literary realism, he was fully appreciated in the incipient 20th century.

A fine writer, inclined to Tolstoyanism and to "populism," was V. G. Korolenko (1853-1921), known especially for Makar's Dream. To Korolenko can in some way be approximated A. I. Ertel (1855-1908). V. M. Garshin (1855-88) revealed himself, even in his brief life, a notable artist: a nervous illness led him to suicide, and morbid traits are revealed moreover also in his delicate and fine stories, in which realistic touches tend to assume a symbolic meaning. S. J. Nadson (1862-87) devoted all his brief life to poetry: from his first and rather vague enthusiasms with a social background he then passed to notes foreshadowing decadent and crepuscular tastes: his great fame was rather ephemeral.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) was perhaps the last great representative of the "golden century" of Russian literature: his friends and admirers, carrying him to the grave, vaguely sensed that with his funeral an epoch was coming to a close. His "scientific" and positivistic background leads him to experiences different and even opposite to those of Zolaesque art: his is a tragic positivism. He is the creator of the "drama of states of mind," of unmistakable gray atmospheres risked by "mirages." One recalls here, only in passing, his admirable short stories, as well as the principal dramatic works The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard. Maxim Gorky, pseudonym of A. M. Peshkov (1868-1936), became famous with his youthful works inspired by the life of Russian vagabonds. He oscillated in a certain way between a revolutionary socialism (not devoid of romantic and individualistic traits) and Bolshevism, to end as a classic of Soviet literature. A. I. Kuprin (1870-1938), known for his works of broad scope The Pit and The Duel, is nevertheless not exempt from certain characteristic defects of a crudely realist and naturalist tradition. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, having become famous for his masterpieces The Village and Dry Valley, is a writer of aristocratic refinement and endowed with a keen spirit of observation. Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev, who found in Italy something like a second homeland, revealed himself an original writer especially in his short stories. A dramatic figure and humanly interesting was L. N. Andreev (1871-1919). In his person and in his work is reflected the drama of the Russian intelligentsia: an exalter of the Revolution, so long as it seemed to him an anarchic rebellion against every oppression and tyranny (The Red Laugh; The Governor; The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men), he then hurled the most violent anathema against the Revolution, when it appeared to him as tyranny, as the negation of a great Russian literary tradition of which he had been, despite certain innovative aspects of his art, one of the last notable epigones.

In the first years of the 20th century Russian poetry had a grandiose spiritualist and symbolist flowering. The whole of culture tended to free itself from old formulas; to realism, naturalism, positivism were opposed vaguely idealist tendencies, while religious values were reaffirmed, now as a return to Russo-Byzantine traditions, now as a cultivated and refined religiosity, eclectic and equivocal. A precursor of the symbolist generation can in various respects be considered Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky (1866-1941), a soul profoundly tormented by religious problems, author of novels that had wide echo, such as Julian the Apostate and Leonardo da Vinci, etc., weighed down perhaps by the too rigid and schematic "parts" that the author assigns to his characters.

In a climate of relative freedom, the new Russian lyric poetry opened up to the free flight of the imagination. Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Verhaeren experienced in R. the moment of their triumph. In the "artificial," refined and splendid Petersburg, on the margins of the steppe and on the brink of revolution, there flourished a taste for sumptuous spectacles and for "hothouse flowers," for everything that could appear exotic and extravagant. A century after the great European Romanticism, a new Romanticism developed in R.: ancient aspirations of poets and mystics indeed blossomed anew in the songs to the "most beautiful lady" of Blok, against the "Dostoevskian" and hallucinated backdrop of the canals of the Neva. In the footsteps of Novalis, the new poetry tended to fuse the lyrical element with the religious one (with vague pretensions to prophecy). Tastes and images of Pre-Raphaelite art blossomed anew in new, unexpected modulations.

K. D. Balmont wished to be, with his ostentatiously solar and sonorous songs, the "priest of beauty"; and if today part of his poetry appears prematurely aged, he retains the merit of having been an indefatigable translator (as has at other times been the case with second-rate poets). V. J. Bryusov was, among the young men of the very early twentieth century, perhaps the most cultured and the most indefatigable seeker of new forms. V. S. Solovyov (Solovjov) was a poet and philosopher and marks in a certain sense the link between Dostoevsky and the greatest of the Russian Symbolist poets: Blok. Of Solovyov, who knew how to express in the most delicate nuances of his poetry the tormented and complex themes of his philosophical thought, Three Meetings, Ex oriente lux and Pamongolism are remembered. V. I. Ivanov, in whose famous "tower" men of letters and thinkers gathered, was led by the vortices of the Revolution to Rome, on a path at once artistic and spiritual: a figure of truly exceptional proportions, he was a poet, philosopher and philologist. A. Bely (pseudonym of B. N. Bugaev), a poet of mystical tendencies, expressed in the years of the Revolution, together with Blok (of the last period) and the thinker Ivanov-Razumnik, a curious "Scythian" messianism, in which "Orthodox" and Slavophile motifs converged with Bolshevik revolutionary themes. The greatest, the purest and the most virginal of these poets of the early Russian twentieth century was without doubt Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok (1886-1941), of whom, among other lyric collections, The Verses of the Most Beautiful Lady are remembered. His long poems The Twelve and The Scythians enjoyed wide fame for their extravagant content at once mystical and revolutionary, for a classist and nationalist ideology, and finally for the attractive balance of ancient and almost archaic reminiscences and avant-garde audacities.

Since it is impossible to cite all the names worthy of note, we recall the great poetess A. A. Akhmatova, whose poetry, pervaded with delicate amorous notes, often assumes the tone of confession and whose expressive modernity finds a control and a brake in her innate classical taste, in her simplicity, in her unmistakably feminine tone; one should also remember N. S. Gumilev, shot by the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the Revolution, a vagabond temperament, a poet of complex and interesting avant-garde, S. M. Gorodetsky, V. F. Khodasevich, M. A. Kuzmin, as well as F. Sologub (1863-1927), pseudonym of F. K. Teternikov, known above all as a narrator, especially for his novel The Petty Demon. Then one should remember a notable poet: O. E. Mandelstam, who, having started from Symbolism, underwent interesting developments, and V. V. Khlebnikov, who introduced Futurism into R.

Soviet literature at first accentuated avant-garde and in particular Futurist tendencies. The politico-social revolution and the artistic revolution had indeed sprung, at least in certain of their characteristic aspects, from a common materialist ground, from the exaltation of factories and of the masses in movement, in a word from "stracità." But very soon, through the influence of Lenin, who did not appreciate hermeticism (inaccessible according to him to the working masses) and even more through the effect of an evolution (in the name of which ancient glories in the military and political field were revalued), there was a return to the revaluation of many classics (interpreted, however, rigidly according to the directives of the party) and to the resurgence in all fields of "realism." Not only in literature, but also in painting, in architecture, etc., the avant-garde was by now defeated. More and more Soviet literature came to develop as an example — in a certain sense — of "managed literature." The function of criticism was, at a literary congress of 1933, officially identified with the task of determining whether the writer conformed to the new political directives. Zhdanov's directives came more and more to represent, for writers, the directive to follow faithfully the directives of the party. The Soviet regime framed literary production among the other "productions," assigning determined tasks and subjects to writers: an attitude certainly entirely new in the history of modern literatures, but flowing logically from the premises of Marxism-Leninism.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was the greatest exponent of Russian Futurism (of him the poem 150,000,000 is cited): not devoid of strokes of genius, he nevertheless remains at times overwhelmed by a certain sonority, through which he manifested himself as a popularizer of the party's slogans. A truly great poet — even if uneven — was Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925). A poet in the years of the revolutionary storm, of famine, of civil war. Yesenin's poetry oscillates between idyllic, rural, almost folkloric echoes, and a tormented search for new forms and artificial paradises in the nightclubs of the metropolis. Among the principal Soviet writers are Boris Pilnyak, L. Seifullina, V. Ivanov, E. Zamyatin, N. Nikitin, Lunts, Babel, Leonov, Gladkov, M. Zoshchenko (later violently criticized for "deviationism"), the aristocrat A. N. Tolstoy (1883-1945), first an opponent of communism and then returned to the U.S.S.R., an uneven and sometimes interesting writer, I. Ehrenburg, oscillating in his youth between an anarchoid attitude and mystical-religious evasions, later become in a certain sense the office of the "Stalin era." In all these writers and in others, perhaps less known abroad, there is something ephemeral and polemical, but there are also moments of authentic art: it suffices, for example, to recall The Cavalry Army of the already cited I. Babel. A novelist of great talent revealed himself in J. K. Olesha, in his happy balance of constructive capacity and modern sensibility. A notable poet has proved to be Boris Pasternak, a happy translator of Goethe, Verlaine and Rilke: although he made his debut on Futurist-leaning positions, he was later inspired by a world of memories, of states of mind, of Romantic echoes. A writer of broad scope and epic coloring has proved to be — despite a certain prolixity — M. Sholokhov, the author of The Quiet Don. Nor can one forget, among several others, the names of Fadeyev and of Simonov.

Even in emigration a literary and cultural life was created, amid no small difficulties, but in the course of the decades, the writers already mature around 1917 gradually died out, while many young people were absorbed — as was obvious — by the new environments in which they had been born or had been developing.

VI. ART

From its earliest beginnings, art in R. took on a predominantly religious character and coincided with the official introduction of Christianity in 988. Together with the first priests, architects, painters and mosaicists arrived from Byzantium.

The first outpost of Byzantinism toward R. was the city of Chersonesus Taurica, whose Cathedral seems to have been reproduced in the famous St. Sophia of Kiev. Byzantine art also penetrated into R. through Armenia and Georgia, by way of the Volga and its tributaries, as far as Vladimir and Suzdal. This second, indirect source of penetration gave rise to variations in the original Byzantine style that made certain churches of Kiev, Ternigov, Novgorod and Vladimir resemble the basilica of Ani in Armenia and that of Mokvi in Georgia.

In general, the fundamental principles of Byzantine architecture were adopted for churches: the cube form with one dome and four piers, the result of the union of the basilical form with the central one; the internal partitioning, too, was inspired by that of Byzantine churches, with only a few variations introduced. The wall decorations logically followed the architectural arrangement, adapting the iconographic subjects to the purpose of the various spaces. At the top of the dome Christ was depicted, the eternal Judge, with severe eyes and harsh, ascetic features, and the Most Holy Trinity with the choir of archangels and Evangelists. In the apse the Virgin dominated, of gigantic proportions; below, the Eucharist was depicted in the form of the Communion of the Apostles. In the central nave the principal events of the Old and New Testaments were depicted; on the western wall facing the sanctuary, grand and terrifying, the Last Judgment. These elements took concrete form in R. in the 11th and 12th centuries in the churches of Kiev, Ternigov, Kanev, Oster, Pereyaslavl and Vladimir Volynsky, in which Byzantinism was shaped through the forms of Oriental art, assimilating Persian ornament and with variations inherent in the powerful individuality of the Russian people.

In the year 989 Vladimir founded the oldest church of Kiev, the church of the "Tithe," and Yaroslav the Wise built the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev in 1037. Izyaslav built the Petersky monastery in 1073 and subsequently the church of St. Michael and those of St. Cyril and St. Alexis. Of these the most famous is that of St. Sophia, on a rectangular plan, surmounted by 13 domes, surrounded by external galleries. The church approached the Justinian basilica only in its general scheme, deriving its clustered piers and blind arcades from the cathedrals of Chersonesus, Armenia and Georgia. In the first half of the 17th century St. Sophia underwent restorations that changed its entire external and internal appearance. In the wall decorations the Byzantine artists were inspired by Byzantine canons. The mosaics of St. Sophia, though preserved only in part, constitute a true artistic treasure. In Ternigov, too, religious monuments of the grand-ducal period are preserved, among them the church of the Transfiguration.

In the dark period determined by the Mongol invasion, which stifled the brilliant civilization of Kiev and Ternigov, and even before the new star of Moscow rose, the cities of Novgorod and Pskov had a notable development in R., becoming in the 13th-16th centuries true outposts of Russian culture. In Novgorod too, which also had commercial relations with the centers of the Baltic Sea and particularly with the famous commercial Hanseatic League, the first artistic manifestations occurred with religious monuments; the churches arose severe and simple, and the Byzantine influence there was tempered by the demands of the climate, by local traditions and tastes, as well as by the contact with the art of the Western countries, particularly with Romanesque art. The architects of Novgorod found themselves faced with the problem of roofing with wooden beams and adopted the same solution as their Western colleagues, that is, roofing with barrel vaults and clustered piers; the outer walls were divided by lesenes and blind arcades and adorned with elegant corbel arches. The churches of Novgorod and Pskov showed a tendency toward the Gothic only around the 15th century. The oldest church of Novgorod is the cathedral of St. Sophia (1045-52). The work of Byzantine masters, it was noted for its three bronze doors, of which the "Korsunskaja" is the work of a master of Magdeburg, as appears from the inscriptions. Many local master-architects also distinguished themselves, among them Peter, Mironets and others. There is also mention of an Andrea Romano who is said to have erected the church of the Nativity of the Virgin.

The architecture of Novgorod reached its greatest development in the 14th century, with the erection of the famous churches of St. Theodore (1360) and of the Transfiguration (1374), frescoed by the Byzantine master known as Theophanes the Greek. Pskov introduced certain variations: the widespread construction of covered galleries around the central body of the church, and the greater organic unity and heaviness of form.

Architectural development was accompanied by a true revival of painting and decorative art. Russian paintings presented for centuries the stylistic and iconographic characteristics of Byzantine art; only later did they draw from the fertile source of Italian art, that is, on the occasion of the Fourth Crusade, when Europeans reached southern R. Italian art spread into R. through Dalmatia, Serbia and Poland, particularly in the 16th century. Theophanes the Greek created in Novgorod a vast school of painting from which emerged a star of Russian religious painting: Andrei Rublev, who influenced the north of Russia and also the art of Vladimir-Suzdal. The frescoes of the monastery of Ferapont (1500), executed by the master Dionysius and his sons, evoke, with their rich iconographic cycle, the distinguished works of the Italian trecentisti and especially those of Giotto, of Duccio Boninsegna and of Simone Martini. At the end of the 16th century, Muscovite art dethroned the painting school of Novgorod, becoming at the same time its heir.

The first religious buildings arose in Moscow as early as the end of the 14th century and were perfected during the reign of Ivan III (1462-1505), who sought to restore homogeneity to the religious edifices and supervised those of a civil character. His marriage to Zoë Palaiologina, educated in Rome under the protection of Pope Sixtus IV, gave occasion for the summoning to Moscow of Italian architects and artists. They adorned the city with splendid architectural monuments, the finest of the period between the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, among them the famous Kremlin. However, the Italian artists had to bend their genius to the demands of the patrons, that in the construction of churches the prototype of the cathedral of Vladimir be followed, with a rectangular plan, with many apses and surmounted by five or more domes. Under this inspiration, in fact, Ridolfo Fioravanti, nicknamed in R. "Aristotle", built in Moscow (between 1475 and 1479) the famous cathedral of the Assumption, introducing into it, however, important innovations in the portals and in the external decorations and lavishing everywhere the rich Italian ornament. It was the Italian masters who taught the Russians to know bricks, to prepare lime and to make use of iron beams in binding the walls together. The use of bricks intensified the taste for ornament. Alvisio Novi, called the "master of walls", in building in Moscow the cathedral of the archangel Michael fully introduced the artistic tendency of the Renaissance. He also built the famous "Terem" Palace, which served as the residence of the prince. The churches built in wood, in the most varied architectural types, nevertheless always remained a characteristic of Russian sacred art.

With regard to painting, Muscovite art inherited the tradition of the school of Novgorod; later it sought new elements and created the so-called "Stroganov style", from the name of the great patrons of northern origin. There formed a kind of "workshop" of artists and craftsmen, which set itself the goal of attaining richness of detail and ornamentation. The formal side became exclusive. The power and strength proper to the primitive paintings of Novgorod and Pskov disappeared, as did the unity and organic wholeness of the whole; the illustrative and narrative content prevailed. Later the government wished directly to regulate its manifestations, entrusting the clergy with compiling the technical manuals, obliging the artists to observe the relevant canons.

While the national religious painting of Moscow was in full decline and before the rise of Peter the Great, who left Western culture free to penetrate into R., there was a brief but brilliant interlude of replenishment of Russian national art, at Rostov and at Yaroslavl. From 1620 onward, as many as forty stone churches were built at Yaroslavl, which formed a group of their own, while still preserving the usual rectangular plan. However, their dimensions increased, the interior was made more cheerful by the greater luminosity obtained, as in the primitive early Christian basilicas, with wide windows and with the rich flowering of frescoes in the naves and in the apses. Artistic production took on a collective character. The painters worked in teams, directed by master builders obliged to adhere to the canons prescribed by the ecclesiastical authorities. One of the sources of inspiration of the painters of Yaroslavl were the collections of German and Dutch prints, which yielded to Russian painting the Western iconographic elements. Among the churches that arose at Yaroslavl, those that stood out were that of the prophet Elijah (1647-50), that of St. John Chrysostom in Korovniki (1649-54), that of St. John the Baptist of Tolchkovo (1671-81). Near Yaroslavl, at Romanov Borisoglebsk, the church of the Resurrection was erected, a powerful example of Byzantinism with reminiscences of Western Romanesque in its galleries around the central body of the building, in the corbel arches and in the decoration of a geometric character.

Rostov, from the beginning of the 13th century, enjoyed the fame of a Russian Montecassino, for the grandeur of its churches, of its monasteries and for the richness of its libraries. Having lost its political independence in the 14th century, it nevertheless remained a cultural and religious hearth of the whole of north-eastern R.; its bishops had the power of true sovereigns. The famous metropolitan Jona Sisoith, who governed Rostov for almost forty years (1652-90), gave great impulse in every field, including that of the fine arts; he had the Kremlin of Rostov built, a monastic fortress and a testimony to the times in which religious authority was also invested with civil powers. Of the five churches inside the Kremlin, all flanked by two lateral towers, the oldest is that of the Resurrection (1670), richly adorned on the outside with majolicas and bricks laid edgewise. The church of St. John the Evangelist gives an example of greater maturity in technique. In the church of the Savior the interior fresco decoration predominates, inspired by subjects from sacred history; these frescoes are enclosed within the floral ornament of Eastern origin. The golden period of Rostov was short-lived; the reforms of Peter the Great deprived Rostov of many of its resources, and, in 1788, the transfer of the metropolitan's see to Yaroslavl was the beginning of the decline. The art of Yaroslavl and of Rostov worthily closed the truly national period of Russian religious art. Foreign influence, already strong in Moscow after 1650, became powerful with the founding of the new capital, Petersburg, which marked the new era and the rise of new problems for an art of a predominantly secular character. - See plates LXXXIX-XCII.

Maria Krasceninnicowa Gibellino