The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  The ax flew through the still forest, spinning twice end over end with such force that it split the air with a faint musical whirr. The moment his hand felt its release, he crouched and drew the long knife from his belt.

  The ax that not long before had been used to shape branches into a chair for the boy’s mother struck the savage beast in the left shoulder. It sliced through the bear’s iron-like hide with a tearing thump, sending red blood splattering over its hairy coat.

  The bear shook and growled at the blow, and let out another roar of redoubled fury, fangs now spewing out the saliva of hatred. With a mighty swing of his right paw, he knocked the ax from his chest, sending it bloody and crashing to the ground ten feet away. Wounded but no more weakened than if it had been a feather striking him, in a frenzy of ferocious passion the bear growled forward, now in the full charge of his fierce and wicked nature.

  The youth, watching from the side where he had been attempting a simultaneous approach, realized that his father had failed. At last, through his terror, he found his tongue and screamed in an attempt to divert the animal’s attention. But his weak voice was nothing to the angry bear now thundering with heavy step across the forest floor. He ran toward his father, ax poised to deliver what blow it might. But he was too late.

  The behemoth fell upon the old man with convulsive intensity. He who had tamed a little corner of this fiend’s domain for his family did not have a chance. He was dead with the beast’s first blow.

  The boy watched, his mouth again gone dry, sweat and tears mingling on his tender sixteen-year-old cheeks. If the mighty titan of the forest carried a blood vendetta against the two-legged interlopers, in that instant it was suddenly nothing to that most anguishing of the emotions of humankind which the boy now felt as he watched with horrifying grief as his father was mauled to death. All fear, all panic, all paralyzing horror fled the youth in an instant of blinding passion for revenge. He remembered his ax. He remembered that it was not merely a tool, but also a weapon. He raised it high.

  Reveling in its triumph, the bear slumped down to all fours and gave the dead form a final blow with his enormous hairy fist. Then, unaware of impending danger, he raised his shaggy head with another fierce roar, as if reclaiming his right to rule this land that was as mighty as he.

  The boy did not hesitate. He swung his weapon with all the force his burning love and hatred could muster. But power was not so vital as that his aim be true. His father had failed, and he too would die if he missed.

  He released his ax with purpose, and the faithful blade stayed true. It cut through the air like an arrow, with nearly as much speed. The sharp iron found its target—in the center of the huge black head, imbedding itself between the animal’s huge criminal eyes.

  Stunned and mortally wounded, the bear toppled but was not yet dead. Slowly the youth approached, knowing that if the beast got him in his cruel grip, he would squeeze him to death even as he himself was breathing his last.

  Cautiously he waited. It took more courage to approach his quarry now than during the whole of the previous battle. But he did so, knife now drawn. Slowly the life faded from the bear’s eyes where he was struggling to rise, then fell backward onto his side. Quickly the boy seized the moment, sprang forward, and braving the still trembling arms, with a mighty heave plunged his knife into the heart of the animal.

  He stepped back, unconscious of the blood on his hands and beheld the scene of death, then stepped forward again and withdrew his knife. Hands trembling, he cut the heart out of the animal. Later, his neighbors could come and take their share of the meat, but he had all he wanted.

  When the gruesome task was completed, he bent down and lifted his father into his arms. He nearly crumbled under the man’s weight, but he would not leave him to the mercy of the vile and murderous wood.

  It had been man against bear, and both had spilled their blood into the dark black earth of the forest. Yet from their contest, man also had risen, with the blood of the bear on his hands, and the determination in his breast to fight on, and to conquer this forbidding land.

  It had been but the death of a single bear, and more would take his place in the war against the encroachment of the Slavic intruder. Yet man would multiply faster than the bear, for he had ingenuity on his side and the vision of subduing the forest to make it his home. He would allow the bear to become fit symbol of the nation he would forge, but he would no more let it share the right to rule.

  The youth who had slain the murderer of his father would live to bear his grief. And he would continue to cut trees and conquer and tame his little corner of the northern forest. From it would spring up a village of forest dwellers, a village that would grow into the city of Novgorod, which would become the foremost of Russian’s independently ruled Principalities of the north.

  From such beginnings, and out of the amalgamation of these Slavic city-state Principalities, an empire would rise, and cause the entire earth to tremble.

  4

  800–1725

  The people spread out, the land was tamed. The bear-hunters and ax-wielders and steppe-roamers settled into communities, then villages, then cities, then Principalities. The Slavs who made this enormous flat Eurasian epicenter their home between the Baltic and the Black seas, the Urals and Carpathian mountains, survived many threats from without, including incursions from the Vikings in the ninth century.

  Religion came to them in the tenth century. Vladimir, Grand Duke of Kiev, found himself visited by representatives of Islam, Judaism, Latin (or Roman) Christianity, and Byzantine (Greek Orthodox) Christianity. Delegations from each sought to win the prince over, but it was the Greeks who made the greatest impression. He sent a deputation of his own to Constantinople. In listening to them later when they reported back, he did not ask which religion was true, but which was more aesthetically appealing. His emissaries considered Moslem worship frenzied and foul, and “beheld no glory” in the ceremonies of the Roman Catholics. But of Byzantine Christianity and its cathedral of Saint Sophia, they said:

  The Greeks led us to the building where they worship their God, and . . . on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.

  And thereafter the Russians found Christianity appealing for its liturgy, its shapes, its paintings, its vestments, its Byzantine architecture, its tradition, not for the rational truth of its message or its theology. They came to believe that concrete beauty rather than abstract theological ideas contained the essence of the Christian message. From the earliest Christian writings in Russia, therefore, physical beauty, embellishments, ornamentation, rich colors, icons, and symbols played a key role. Vladimir brought priests to Kiev, ordered mass baptisms, built many churches and cathedrals which modeled their onion-domed ornate style after Byzantium, founded monasteries, and sent out missionaries to spread what had begun in Kiev into the rest of his domain. Thus was Russia “Christianized” by imperial fiat.

  But whatever consolidation, both of religion and state, Vladimir achieved was utterly undone by the advancing Mongol Horde from the East, which swept ruthlessly across the whole of the land. The gigantic empire thus created by Genghis Khan and his descendants in the thirteenth century stretched from the distant reaches of Siberia all the way to eastern Europe. When the Mongols retreated back to China in the fifteenth century, the Principality of Moscow rose to preeminence, swallowing all of the Great Khan’s domain in his wake. When Ivan the Great rose to power as Moscow’s Grand Prince, he chased the Tatars with his army eastward over the Urals and beyond, insuring Moscow’s power above all the lesser principalities.

  The Byzantine empire of Greek Orthodox Christianity was in decline at this time as well as the Tatar Horde from Mongolia. Not only did Ivan, therefore, take for himself geographic conquests, but spiritual conquests as well. As the Turks of the Ottoman Empire gradual
ly swallowed Byzantium, Ivan viewed Moscow as replacing Constantinople as the new center for the Orthodox faith. Russian Orthodoxy thus rose along with the Russian state, a marriage of religion and politics which would endure until the 20th century.

  With Rome fallen long ago, and Constantinople—which those of the Greek faith had termed the second Rome—now falling, Ivan laid claim to his right of succession as Emperor, both spiritually and politically. Russian Orthodoxy was the clear replacement of both Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy as the Church ordained by God upon the earth.

  Ivan declared Moscow the “Third Rome.” His own title of Grand Duke was no longer sufficient for one in such a mighty role. He therefore took upon himself the title of Emperor or Tsar—meaning Caesar. And when a few years later he added to his title by declaring himself “Sovereign of all the Russias,” the many diverse Russian Principalities were united for the first time into a single nation.

  This was no western monarchy of Ivan’s, however. The eastern European blood of the Slavs had long since been mingled with that of the Scandinavians and especially the Mongols and Tatars from the far east. The Russia that was born just after the discovery of America, therefore, was predominantly Oriental in its cultural and political ideology, as it was Byzantine in its religion. And its rulers had learned their lessons well from their Tatar overlords of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Ivan’s grandson, Ivan the Terrible (tsar 1553–1584), carried on in the cruel despotic tradition of the Mongolian dictators, establishing what would be the pattern for Russian authoritarian leadership for centuries. With every successive reign—including those of the Romanov dynasty which first came to power in the early 1600’s—conditions for the people of Russia worsened while the ruthlessness of the tsar and the power and wealth of the church grew. Further and further widened the gulf between the West and the mysterious colossus of empire to the east known as Russia.

  In 1689 everything changed. In that year a giant of a man—with ego and determination and intelligence and cunning to match his nearly seven-foot stature—seventeen-year-old Peter Romanov became tsar of Russia. He was cut of the tsarist tradition—brutal, fierce, violent, temperamental—a passionate barbarian by most standards. However, during the next third of a century he demonstrated himself to be energetic, dynamic, visionary, and intensely hardworking—one of the truly great leaders of history.

  Immediately upon assuming power, he set his eyes westward, intent on bringing Russia forward, both into the modern world of early 18th century Europe, and into the western cultural and political milieu for good. He rebuilt Russia’s military, and brought western technology to her industry. With the force of his unflinching and ruthless will he built the sprawling city of St. Petersburg out of a bog on the Gulf of Finland and made it his capital. Within a generation he had westernized much of Russia’s culture which had been steeped in Oriental customs for centuries.

  By the end of his reign, Russia had seemingly overnight become a major force for the other nations of Europe to reckon with. Its sheer size was daunting enough, but now she had military prowess and ambition to match. It was not a heartening thought among the leaders in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, Hannover, and Warsaw, who had troubles enough with one another. Now suddenly Peter the Great had made Russia a power who could overrun them all!

  5

  1711

  She had always come to this place to give of her devotion. But today only bitterness stirred in her aging breast.

  In the gray dawn of a chilly morning, this humble peasant woman had stolen quietly from the dilapidated wood cottage where she had lived for thirty years with the husband who had given her two stalwart sons. In the tsar’s new city it would hardly have been considered fit abode for the sheltering of two mangy cows, much less a cottage for human dwelling.

  But it was the only home she had. And like women everywhere, she possessed the capacity to make the best of it, and even to find hope in the midst of her impoverishment.

  Until now. On this day, clutching a threadbare wrap around her shivering shoulders, hope was gone out of her life.

  She approached the old country church—solemn, tall, still, and quiet in the growing light of day. Dark clouds hung overhead. There would be rain before the morning was past. The mere sight of the rounded dome above had at one time been enough to fill her heart with pious readiness for the colorful and symbolic mass the priest would administer. But today the sight stirred no such emotions.

  She tried the door. It was locked. No doubt the priest still slept. It was just as well. She had not come today for mass. The icons would remain dark, the priests lips would remain silent, the eyes of the saints inside on the walls would remain blind to this old mother’s deepest hour of need. This morning vigil she would have to carry out in the anguished silence of her own soul, unseen by any human eye.

  Around the side of the building she made her way. Though her remaining steps were few, this was the most difficult part of her journey.

  She had always prayed for Tsar Peter. She had called him the Great One. Her husband had seen him once. She never forgot his description. He was a man, everyone said, who would make the Motherland the greatest power on earth.

  She knew nothing of that. What was power in the world’s eyes? What mattered politics, ships, cities, armies! What mattered greatness . . . when it meant she had to live the rest of her life alone?

  Curse his great city which would be the envy of the world!

  Curse his army which would make the west tremble!

  Curse his navy with its fast new ships!

  Curse his new palaces!

  Curse every inch of his huge being!

  Pray for Tsar Peter! She would offer no more prayers on his behalf though she live to a hundred! Even in the shadow of the church itself, she would curse him, and pray that his should be tormented in hell!

  Why had he needed an old man? What could her husband possibly have done that a younger man could not have done better? But like hundreds of other peasants in the surrounding countryside, he had been given orders to report to the site of the new city, under penalty of death if he did not. Within a week he was gone. Her two sons had been taken away only a year earlier, one to a state mine, the other to Peter’s shipyards. Suddenly she found herself desolate and alone.

  Neither of her sons she ever saw again. One managed to get word to her that he had escaped and joined a band of renegade Cossacks in the south. The other returned home a year ago, in the crude box which lay in the earth under the stone marker she now approached.

  She had not seen her husband for nearly five years. Then he had returned one day, looking fifteen years older, gaunt and worn. Most worrisome of all was the hacking tubercular cough which ground away at his throat and lungs night and day. Her heart sank with a woman’s worst fear the moment she beheld his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. It was small consolation that, he said, many of the workers had died in the first two years from swamp infections. He was one of the fortunate ones, he said with a pale smile.

  Saint Petersburg, they called it. She could not even laugh at the irony of the name.

  The three crumpled flowers she carried in her hand were hardly fit tribute to one who had given his life for such a worthless cause. But they were all she had.

  Slowly she approached the fresh mound of dirt which lay alongside the grave of her eldest son. She stopped, crossed herself, first on her forehead, then along her chest. She tried to mumble a few silent words, but could scarcely recall the simplest prayer from the Domostroi.

  Another moment she stood, lips trembling yet in mute heartbreak. Then all at once a renewed sense of emptiness overpowered and filled her breast.

  Unconsciously the flowers fell from her hand. Her knees lost their strength, and she dropped to the freshly overturned ground.

  With her tears moistening the very soil under which her husband of thirty-five years now lay cold and silent, she pressed her face to the earth and wept bitterly.

 
; 6

  1762–1852

  Whatever apprehensions the nations of the West may have harbored during Peter’s time about the growing strength and international prominence of their neighbor to the east, these fears were heightened all the more during the thirty-four year reign of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), who took a powerful hold on the military Peter had established.

  Whereas Peter had looked westward to advance Russian’s culture, economy, and political outlook, Catherine now looked west and south with the purely aggressive aim of expanding Russia’s borders. She made military conquest her aim. Now indeed were the fears of the rest of Europe justified, and Poland and the crumbling Ottoman Empire were the first victims to fall prey to her territorial thirsts. Russia’s suspicion from without and fear of encirclement were indeed paranoias bred early into the national consciousness, as was the militaristic means of attempting to combat it.

  From within the ranks of her own came one of Catherine’s most valiant and legendary allies against Russia’s European enemies. They were known as “adventurers,” or Cossacks.

  Their ancestors had been Ukrainian serfs, who, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the late 16th century, had fled from the abject servitude imposed upon them, and with others of their kind had migrated eastward to the border steppes in the valley of the Don river. These vagabond farmers pioneered communities independent of the tsar’s rule, eventually colonizing large regions, settling villages and towns. They were a fierce and independent lot from the beginning, defying the serfdom and authority of Ivan and the early Romanovs, and forging for themselves an identity of free-spirited ferocity. If the tsar remained a latter-day portraiture of the Mongol Khans who had ruled this land for two centuries, then the Cossacks in like manner gave vivid representation to those yet earlier fiery barbarous Vikings, whose blood had also infused the peoples of these regions. Stormy and fervent fighters and conquerors they indeed were, Vikings at heart. Yet the sleek wicked ships with which their ancestors plundered the northern coastlines, the Cossacks exchanged for the mighty wingless Pegasus, on whose backs they could roam and subdue the southern plains of the Ukraine and Russia.