Russian Literature

I

Introduction

Russian Literature, literature of the Great Russian branch of the Eastern Slavs, written in Russian. Russian literature belongs within the mainstream of European letters, although it has original sources and powerful traditions that are distinctively its own. At various times, it borrowed its forms and its themes from cultural centres extending beyond Russian borders, but these periods of dependency came to an end when Russian writers learned to fashion the borrowed material to their own special and original ends. At other times, for political and military reasons, Russia was shut off, or shut itself off, from the cultural movements of Europe. These periods were, for the most part, ones of stagnation, followed by efforts to resume full contributing membership in the European literary world.

II

Early Period

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance and early modern times, the Russians developed their own literary traditions in isolation from Western Europe.

A

Kiev Period

(10th-13th century). The impetus to literary expression in Russia may be traced to the 9th-century Byzantine scholars and missionaries St Cyril and St Methodius, who wrote down and codified a Macedonian Slavic dialect later called Old Church Slavonic. The first great epoch of Russian civilization began in 988 when Vladimir I the Great, Grand Duke of Kiev, accepted Orthodox Christianity and opened Russia directly to the rich heritage of Byzantine culture. In the 250 years that followed, Kiev became a great city famed for its learned monasteries and for its Byzantine-style churches. Old Church Slavonic was introduced as a literary language. Byzantine works in Greek of religious and semireligious nature, such as Orthodox liturgies, sermons, lives of the saints, and collections of maxims, were translated into Old Church Slavonic. It continued for centuries to serve as the vehicle for literature.

Russian writers, usually monks or churchmen, mastered these imported forms and produced a native literature. The best works of the residue that has been preserved include the graceful and subtle sermon Slovo o zakone i blagodati (The Discourse on Law and Grace), composed about 1050 by the churchman Ilarion, and the celebrated Povest vremennykh let (The Primary Russian Chronicle), probably written by a monk, which purports to be the full historical record of the Eastern Slavic peoples from the time of their mythical origins to 1110, the date of the last entry. In addition to routine historical annals, important events such as Vladimir's conversion to Christianity are told in a lively narrative style. One of the most extraordinary works of this period is Slovo o polku Igoreve (The Lay of Igor's Host, c. 1185), a moving epic in which the anonymous author appealed for the unity of the Slavic peoples against invading Asian nomads.

B

Muscovite Period

(mid-13th-17th century). Kiev was sacked by Tatars from the east early in the 13th century, and by 1240 most of Russia had been occupied by the Golden Horde. Tatar domination lasted two centuries, a period in which Russian culture stagnated and decayed. Moscow became the new capital of Russia after the Tatars were expelled in the 15th century. When the Byzantine Empire fell (1453) to the Ottoman Turks, Russia, by a tragic irony of history, lost contact with the original source of all its cultural values at the very moment when it was able to reassert its political autonomy. Thus, during the first flush of the Renaissance the new Russian state found itself confronted by the Latin-based civilization of Western Christendom, deprived of cultural vitality by the long Tatar occupation, and cut off by the Turks from the Byzantine civilization that had first nourished Russian culture. A work that gives the most striking depiction of this period is the autobiography of the churchman Avvakum, The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum (1672-1675; trans. 1924).