Aleksandr Gorianin
From the manuscript Book of the Coronation of Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, 1672
Let’s begin with an assertion: the debate about where Russia is a part of the West or part of the East is entirely academic. During the “Moscow” period of their history, Russians became a completely distinctive nation precisely due to its certain degree of (self-)isolation. But insofar as this game breaks out every so often, let’s look into the essence of the matter.
When Rus adopted Christianity in 988, our country became a spiritual heir to the “Greek Kingdom,” which its own residents (who were primarily Greek) called the Roman Empire, or unofficially simply Rome (Romania in Greek). To prevent it being confused with the “first” Rome, European historians of the modern age affixed to this state the artificial name Byzantium.
For Russians, Byzantium carries entirely positive associations: the homeland of Orthodox Christianity, Russia’s “godmother,” the two-headed eagle, the Codex Justinianus, the Nomocanon, the shield hanging on the gates of Tsargrad, Cyrill and Methodius, the first bishops and metropolitans in Old Rus, Greek erudition, the tsaritsa Zoe Palaiologina, and so forth. For the West, however, all the major traits of Russia’s social and church organization, as well as the structure of its government and society, are a very negatively marked “Byzantine inheritance.”
Of course, Byzantium is at the root of this negativity. The writer and diplomat F.V. Shelov-Kovediaev explains the West’s motivation in this: “Behind it is the memory of the associations that the glamour of Byzantine culture caused among semi-literate German and Latin sovereigns, and also the unrepented sin of robbing the wealth of Constantinople and leaving it unaided in the face of the Turkish onslaught.” This memory and this sin have colored the historical and political evaluations for centuries, and Russia has come under their shadow. The insulted cannot be forgiven.
One of the first Russians to take up these negative myths was the well-known philosopher Pyotr Chaadaev. “Subservient to our cruel fate, we turned to the poor Byzantium hated by these (Western European) nations for the moral code that was to provide the foundation for our upbringing.”
Some time after Byzantium fell, it passed along its reputation of being a strange, scheming, awful, inscrutable Eastern country to Russia (with certain obvious modifications). The word “Eastern” may be the most important one in this list. This is why Russia is often referred to as “most likely belonging to the East.” The people who say this aren’t talking about outer appearances but have in mind a certain metaphysical meaning.
The question has occasionally been asked: “Didn’t the Mongol Golden Horde exert a powerful influence on the Russian manner of governing?” For a long time, it was customary to respond to this in the affirmative, but (as it often happens) more in-depth study has show that the traditional answer isn’t based on facts. Today, this question has been studied sufficiently, and the answer to it goes like this: “Thoughtless proclamations to the effect that Russia’s mode of governance descended from the Golden Horde cannot withstand scholarly criticism and should be discarded. Muscovy was first and foremost an Orthodox Christian realm, the heir to Kiev and Vladimir, not to Sarai” (Charles Halperin. Russia and the Golden Horde. — Bloomington, 1985).
Let’s hear from one more historian, Alexander Yanov: “Moscow came out from under the [Mongol] yoke as a country that was more advanced in many respects than its western neighbors. This ‘heir to the Golden Horde’ was the first country in Europe to put on its agenda the central question of the late Middle Ages: reformation of the church… The Grand Duke of Moscow, just like the monarchs of Denmark, Sweden, and England, defended the heretic reformers: they all needed to seize land from the monasteries. But in contrast to the monarchs of the West, Ivan III didn’t persecute those who opposed this! Tolerance flourished in his kingdom.”
If the principalities of Rus had really assimilated the traditions of the Golden Horde, we would have the right to search for traces of the Great Yasser, Genghis Khan’s primary codex of laws (which was surprisingly tolerant in some respects), in Russian political practice and everyday life after the 13th century. For better or worse, no such traces are evident. Yet, there do appear new editions of Russkaya Pravda legal code, which, from the very first, resembled the “barbarian codes” of Germany. And the “sublegislative” rules of life—such as the Domostroy (a nonbinding, instructive work)—are similar to the collections of rules that circulated in the Kingdom of the Franks.
Like any other country, Rus, or Russia, absorbed a lot from its neighbors—there are no exceptions to this rule. The councils of princes and boyars apparently came from the Varangians. The influence of Byzantium extended far beyond the spiritual and legislative realms—thus, court ceremonies were simply copied from Constantinople on the order of Zoe Palaiologina. The Golden Horde left behind the system of post houses and (in part) the system of tax collection. Certain things came from Western Europe: Italian architects built the walls and towers of the Kremlin and much in the way of material came through Poland (and later through the Muscovite German settlement, through Arkhangelsk and Kiev). There can be no doubting the Eastern influences on Rus. It suffices to look at Russian armor and military equipment, the hundred of Russian words taken from Eastern languages (primarily Turkish), and even the tall hats of Russian boyars, which were adopted from Khwarezm. At the same time, there were no direct borrowings from the upper cultures of the East. Dmitry Likhachov reminds us: “All of the Eastern plots present in ancient Russian literature came to us from the South through Greek intermediaries or from the West. Cultural ties with the East were extremely limited, and only beginning in the 16th century do Eastern motifs appear in our decorations.” This is all sufficiently well known.
But something else is evident: from the very first stages of Moscow’s rise all the way until the reforms of Peter the Great, Russia’s social development proceeded with any noticeable influence from the West or the East. The means of state-building and rule, the methods of taking control of vast spaces, the practices for coexistence among ethnic groups and religions, the mechanisms of feedback and settling differences between the rulers and ruled, the development of a legislative and justice system—all this belongs in the ranks of our own, “homegrown” inventions, which were in many ways born of a constant and conspicuous deficit of people (a difficult unknown to the East or the West). Many terms and concepts from political life reflect our distinctive heritage, and whatever traits they may have in common with someone or something else are of a typological character. The historical stages of class governance, absolutism, and centralization, which Russia passed through during its “Muscovite” period, did not result from following anyone’s example, be it Europe or Asia; instead, they are the fruits of the nation’s growth, which was on par with other familiar historical models.
It is very important to note that there is not even a hint of Western (or Eastern) influence on the Russian traditions of elective representation during this period. These traditions have been thoroughly investigated in the examples of the Assemblies of Land and county governance. In his book Assemblies of the Land During the 16th and 17th Centuries the academic L.V. Cherepnin enumerates 57 assemblies in chronological order, allowing that there may have been even more of them and remaining undecided about one of the two assemblies of 1682 and the assembly of 1698. At these assembles, the main legislative documents for Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries were ratified, highly important decisions of war and peace were made, and tsars were elected. The assemblies had the right of legislative initiative and decided questions regarding taxation, the church’s constitution, internal affairs, trade, and manufacturing. The laws of 1550 and the legal code of 1649 weren’t just approved by the assemblies, as one might think—the assemblies spent many months on codifying them. The Assembly of 1649 lasted for almost half-a-year because the plan for the legal code was approved one article at a time and 80 new articles were added to it on the bases of recommendations made by the elected representatives. The Assembly of 1682 abolished the mestnichestvo system of seniority.
There existed a system of elections that wasn’t “borrowed” from anyone—complete with electoral districts, an institute of delegates, and elector mandates. Every city was considered an electoral district along with the surrounding county. Elections took place in the form of electoral committees. The electors were the full-fledged taxpayers and people in state service. There was a protocol of the assembly protocol, which was approved by all participants and served as a document for authenticating the elected official when he arrived at the Assembly. The local authorities didn’t have the right to interfere in the elections. Remarkably, there was no property requirement for the elected leaders. During the Time of Troubles, it was the Assembly who on several occasions took upon itself the sovereign power in the country. After the Time of Troubles, the assemblies worked to build a new state.
In the 17th century, the organs representing the estates in practically all of continental Europe—the Cortes, the Landtag, Reichstag, États Généraux, Sejm, and other similar institutions—were swept away by burgeoning absolutism. The very same thing occurred in Russia, though this was not in emulation of the European example. The convocation of the assemblies did not become a procedure prescribed by law, but remained a custom, and the long period that several hundred electors spent in Moscow, during times of transition, already started to make the government nervous during the reign of Tsar Alexis. (The electors were resolute and often discontented people.) Conflicting opinions were even less welcome for Peter the Great, whose reforms were radical and unpopular among the common people.
The historian and commentator Nikita Sokolov suggests “returning to active social memory…healthy ideas about the ‘spirit of the Russian people,’ which for the entirety of its long history has shared the basic goals of the Europe-wide cultural movement.” One small amendment: yes, it shared these goals, but it did so “convergently,” not knowing anything for centuries about any “Europe-wide movement.”
In actual fact, during the “Muscovite” period of their history, Russians—due precisely to a certain degree of (self-)isolation—established themselves as an entirely distinctive nation, one which was commensurate to its geography and could not be (nor did it need to be) a part of the East or West.
But why didn’t it know anything about it? Muscovite Rus was thoroughly immunized against external models after Byzantium was seized by the Turks. Now without a higher intellectual authority, Rus was increasingly confirmed in the conviction that the Muscovite Grand Prince was the only Orthodox ruler in the entire universe, and that meant that the whole universe—the true universe that wasn’t stricken with lawlessness (the very interesting word they used to indicate all non-believers)—was now contained in the borders of Muscovite Rus. Everything beyond its borders was a wasteland of infidels or (what was worse) heretics. That is, Rus—Holy Rus—was greater than all others. And if it was greater than all others, what model of social and church organization could it emulate? Only the Kingdom of God. From this reconstruction, rational thought comes to the conclusion that Russia for a good quarter of a millennium (between the fall of Constantinople and the end of the 18th century) kept sitting in the Middle Ages or that it smugly stewed in its own juices at a remove from the world. Such explanations are nothing but an attempt to explain human anatomy by studying the anatomy of a penguin.
In actual fact, during the “Muscovite” period of their history, Russians—due precisely to a certain degree of (self-) isolation—established themselves as an entirely distinctive nation, one which was commensurate to its geography and could not be (nor did it need to be) a part of the East or West. The massive outer borrowings that took place beginning in the 18th century, primarily taken from the West, couldn’t change the essence it had acquired once and for all.
When the works of the estimable Eurasianist émigrés were republished about 25 years ago, a number of commentators endeavored to prove (evidently out of a desire to do something nice for our homeland) that Russia was a “civilizational bridge” between East and West, a “membranous partition,” “synthesizing principle,” “meeting place of cultures,” or even a “uniting center” (the full quote: “Russia was historically and remains a uniting center between Europe and Asia”—we will compassionately refrain from naming the author). The idea of Russia’s spiritual kinship with the East and suppositions about this “civilizational bridge” have no foundation. Historically, Europe has dealt with the East directly—from the time of the Greco-Persian wars, the campaigns of Alexander the Great, and so forth. Then, the East came to the West in the form of the Arab conquest of Spain, Portugal, and Sicily. Next came the Crusades, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Portuguese voyages to India and China, European colonies in Asia, and so forth.
Rus/Russia has its own entirely separate history of relationships, trade, associations, wars, and exchanges with the East: with the Holy Land (the first Russian monastery appeared in Jerusalem back in 1169), Persia, Turkey, Khwarezm, Bukhara, and Samarkand. From the late 17th century up until the First World War, Russia and Europe continually competed in Persia, Turkey, China, and even in Ethiopia. The peak manifestations of this competition were the Crimean War and the “Great Game” in Turkestan, Afghanistan, Dzungaria, and Tibet.
Where did this wrong idea of a “historical bridge” come from? There are two reasons for it. The first is that since 1552 Russia has included several Muslim peoples, for whom Russia provided a bridge to Western culture. Several of these groups are building their own independent states today, but Russia still maintains this function to a certain extent, insofar as the elites of these countries still speak Russian. We will continue to have special relationships with these countries for the foreseeable future (let’s hope they are as good as possible).
The second reason is that people remember how Russia (primarily as the USSR) took upon itself the role of defending and even representing the interests of certain Eastern countries: Mongolia (beginning in 1911), Afghanistan (1918), Turkey (1919-1923), China (1949-1963), India (1954-1964), Arab countries (especially during the Suez crisis in 1956 and then in 1967 and 1973), Vietnam, and Laos. In other words, Russia may not have been a uniting center (if anything, it played a divisive role), but it did at least truly start to fulfill the function of mediator and guardian.
Without having anything against the East or the West, one cannot escape the conclusion: it isn’t possible to attach Russia to the East. Anyone who has been in China, India, Bangladesh, the Arab nations, Nepal, Afghanistan, Iran, or Southeast Asia will have to admit that Russia is completely unlike these countries.
Maybe we would happy to be the Anti-Europe, but that isn’t happening. Russia has become too embedded in Europe, and Europe is too embedded in Russia.
