But the grandeur and exotic unfamiliarity of court life could hardly have been lost on Olga. Even informal meals would be taken at a golden table, though diners reclined on couches in the old Roman style. The food served was wonderfully different. The cooking - based on olive oil - featured not only familiar fish, meats and fowl, mushrooms, apples and honey, but unfamiliar aubergines, figs and pomegranates, anchovies and calamari. Ingredients were transformed by unfamiliar spices, wine marinades, exotic stuffings and amazing creations of filo pastry. And Olga would have learned to cope with small unfamiliar eating implements made of ivory and precious metal rather than tearing the meats placed before her with her fingers or her teeth. 17
Most impressive of all, though, was the Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Santa Sophia. Inside this splendid pile with its immense dome, built by Justinian four centuries or so before, were mosaic portraits of emperors, saints and archangels attending the figure of Jesus and, high above this, a magisterial depiction of God the Father. Through this huge space, crowded with worshippers, came black-cowled deacons swinging censers of pungent incense. Priests and bishops in richly patterned vestments followed — and then choirs struck up, echoing each other’s ethereal music from all directions. Like so many other newcomers to the experience, even the hard-headed Olga must have wondered for some moments whether she was in heaven or on earth. 18
The chronicles present Olga as a pious candidate for sainthood. Yet, amazed though she must have been by the unimaginable wealth and strange beauty of it all, her actions suggest that she remained a calculating, political woman. To understand the Russians’ conversion one must discount the tales about Olga’s piety and recognize the deeply political nature of her choice. She knew the Byzantine Church had competitors, and she was to use the German Church as a lever to get what she wanted. She well understood the implications conversion would have for Russian princely power. She learned that the Christian Church, administered by the Patriarch of Constantinople (who also received her), worked ‘in symphony’ with the emperor and helped the secular authorities in many ways — as spiritual arm, moral authority, provider of social services, and mobilizer of the Christian populations. She also observed the effectiveness of Christianity in holding the people in thrall.
Olga is reckoned to have become a Christian before going to Constantinople, indeed to have had a priest in her retinue when she went. Nevertheless, she decided to be baptized there again, this time in a more political way, with the Emperor himself serving as her godfather at a carefully orchestrated ceremony which gave her a new name: Helen. Helen had been the mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, so an analogy was suggested: Olga/Helen as mother of a new Russian state. And the memory of Olga was later to suggest a link between ancient Rome and the no less extensive Russian Empire of the future.
However, Olga had gone to Constantinople to negotiate better trading terms, and in this she was evidently disappointed, because shortly after her return to Kiev she sent an embassy to the German king, Otto I, asking him to send her a bishop and priests. She knew very well that, though Christendom was formally united, there were three competing Christian organizations, each with its own traditions, and that the German Church, though under the Pope, was effectively owned by the prince who had power of ecclesiastical appointments. Such power was an attractive option, but Olga used her flirtation with the Germans as a warning to Byzantium. When the Emperor became more accommodating, the German bishop was sent away. 19
Olga’s visit inspired a desire to re-create in her own land some of the wonders she had seen. It also encouraged an expansion of Byzantine missionary activity among the Russians, and established a conduit through which cultural influences began to flow. Byzantine designs and Byzantine artisans penetrated Russia in increasing numbers, and some Russians even began to hanker after literacy — for missionaries had invented an alphabet to represent the sounds that Slavonic-speaking peoples made when they spoke. Invented for the Balkan Slavs, it was to serve the Russians equally well, for, as Constantine VII recorded, all Slavs, whether in the east, west or south, spoke the same language at that time.
Yet Olga/Helen’s personal commitment to Christianity did not imply the Christianizatio of Russia. The opposition was far too strong for that. Most Rus were addicted to their own gods — gods who represented the forces of nature. Christianity, with its faith in the Son of God, who suffered to save the whole community and was resurrected every year, had undoubted attractions. But it could not easily replace the familiar sprites that had power over woods and streams. And was the Christian god as powerful as, say, Perun, the god of thunder, bringer of rain and of prosperity, by whom Russians swore their most solemn oaths? How could the memory of a crucifixion be as effective as the sacrifice of human beings in propitiating a god? And would these chanting black-garbed foreign priests be as effective as the Rus shamans in their magic clothes sewn with tinkling bells? Whatever their personal preferences, Olga and her successors had to take account of their subjects’ feeling if they were to survive.
The Christian priests who came to Russia were persuasive missionaries. They intoned the liturgy in fine voices, learned the local vernacular, and were able to relate and explain the stories of the Bible, the significance of every feast and fast day, and the merits of every saint in their calendar with reference to powerful and captivating visual aids called icons. Above all, they spread a vision of hell and the prospect of bliss through salvation. They also exploited the advantages of superior technology, bringing bigger, more resounding bells with them, and incense that smelled stronger and more interesting than the shamans’ concoctions. The number of Christian converts increased steadily. Yet, as more Rus became Christians, divisions and conflicts arose.
Resistance to the new religion was fed by interest as well as by affection for the familiar. Christianity threatened the shamans with loss of power and social standing, and also loss of income. Moreover, many members of the ruling elite were themselves pagans or were cautious enough not to alienate the people of their district by challenging their gods. Olga/Helen, though a Christian herself, dared not proclaim Christianity to be the religion of her people. That fateful step was to be taken by her grandson Vladimir some twenty years after Olga’s death. Meanwhile her son Sviatoslav ruled, a determined warrior and a pagan.
It was Sviatoslav who finally eliminated the Khazars, who had for so long controlled the commercial networks of the south. He drove them from their strong-points on the Sea of Azov and then from Itil, their strategic trading centre on the Volga. At the same time he overcame the Volga Bulgar tribes. Then, presumably in return for a favour or in expection of one, he answered a call from the Emperor to campaign against the Bulgars of the Balkans. The experience evidently whetted his ambition to control the delta of the river Danube, so great was its commercial value. There, in the words of an early Russian chronicler, ‘all the good things of the world converge: gold, precious silks, wine and fruit from Byzantium, silver and horses from Bohemia and Hungary, furs, wax, honey and slaves from Russia.’ 20
Indeed, in 971 Sviatoslav decided to establish his capital in the delta. From that point on the Danube seems to have been embedded in the Russians’ collective imagination as a source of fascination. Long afterwards, popular folk songs were to reflect a yearning to possess it. 21 But, though Sviatoslav was at first succesful, he soon ran foul of Byzantine interests. The Emperor John Tzimisces, a former general who had killed his predecessor in a palace coup, found Sviatoslav’s initiative intolerable and resolved to drive him out. Sviatoslav proved to be no match for him in strategy. John led his army in a dramatically fast march which trapped the Russians in the stronghold they called Pereiaslavets on the Danube. Despite frantic resistance, Sviatoslav was forced to concede. The parley that ended the fight occasioned a pen-portrait of him by a Byzantine observer.
According to this, Sviatoslav was a man of medium height, broad shouldered, blue-eyed, bushy-browed and snub-nosed. He had a thick n
eck, long moustachios and a shaven head — except for a lock of hair on one side, the mark of his nobility. In one ear he wore a gold ring set with two pearls and a ruby, and he wore a suit of golden armour. Yet he seemed ‘gloomy and savage’, no doubt because his imperial hopes had been dashed. 22Sviatoslav would not adopt an appropriate mien of humility, however, and this did not please the Emperor, whose agents soon arranged for the Pechenegs to ambush Sviatoslav and kill him. In this way, glittering ambition met a mean and dusty end.
Politics continued in its bloody tradition. Sviatoslav’s three sons, who had been acting as his viceroys in Kiev, Novgorod and Derevliania, fell out with one another, and two of them lost their lives. The survivor was Vladimir, the ruler who brought Russia into the Christian fold and became its founding saint. His image, created by a grateful Church, gives a misleading impression of the man, however. The real Vladimir was visibly his father’s son: a commercial slave-owner who became the proud possessor of several hundred concubines; a ruthless politico, little moved by considerations of brotherly love. With the help of a band of Viking mercenaries he had disposed of his brother Iaropolk of Kiev, who favoured Christianity, and promised to maintain the cause of paganism. Many years were to pass before he recanted, and then only for compelling political reasons.
Vladimir had sent a contingent of warriors to help Emperor Basil II defeat a rebellion, and the grateful Basil had offered his own sister Anna to Vladimir in marriage — an alliance which would confer considerable prestige. No princess born in the purple had ever before been offered in marriage to a foreigner, however useful, however powerful. The price was conversion, but it seemed a price worth paying. Then the Emperor and his entourage began to have second thoughts about the merits of the match. This hitch led Vladimir to launch a campaign against Byzantine holdings in the Crimea. Only when Anna was finally delivered did Vladimir fulfil his side of the bargain.
The statue of Perun the Thunderer and the other idols he had had erected on a hill that dominated Kiev were now pulled down. They were then subjected to a humiliating ritual flogging by twelve men as they were dragged to the river Dnieper and then hurled into it. 23 The entire population of the city is said to have been driven into the river too — to be baptized. Russia now was part of Christendom.
A splendid monument celebrating the conversion still stands in Kiev: the cathedral church now known as St Sophia, though the original foundation had been dedicated to Kiev’s carefully chosen patron saint, Elias. Vladimir’s sponsor, the Emperor Basil, was, after all, a devotee of St Elias. Moreover, the saint was associated with thunder and lightning, which made his cult particularly attractive to worshippers of Perun. 24 The choice was calculated both to ingratiate Russia’s ruler with the great Emperor and to help wean pagan subjects from their addiction to Perun. The pressing need for St Elias eventually passed, however, and so when a new cathedral was built it was dedicated to Santa Sophia, the Holy Wisdom.
It was not Vladimir who built it, however, but his son laroslav the Wise, who lies buried in it still, in a white stone sarcophagus. Begun in 1017 and dedicated in 1037, a year after laroslav inflicted a decisive defeat on the Pechenegs, the cathedral in Kiev has thirteen domes — one for Christ, and one for each of the Apostles. Its impressive massing recalls Justinian’s basilica of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, and Byzantine masons, engineers and artists were undoubtedly involved in its creation, as they were in the cathedral of Santa Sophia which laroslav built in Novgorod. Aspects of the Kiev structure, indeed, recall Novgorod rather than Byzantium, and are said to represent something distinctively Russian in style. 25 The building, on which so many nameless craftsmen lavished their skills, symbolized both Russia’s coming of age as an independent state and its membership of what has been called ‘the Byzantine Commonwealth’ of Christian Orthodoxy. The first priests there had been Greek, but now that more Russians were becoming literate and ordained priests a Russian church hierarchy was being formed. Indeed some of the more able of them were to serve the Grand Prince and help him build an efficient administration for his far-flung realm. The new cathedral symbolized Russia’s membership of Christian civilization, just as it reflected the state’s considerable wealth.
Riurik may be the legendary progenitor of Russia’s ruling house; Vladimir may have brought Russia into Christendom; laroslav the Wise has a good claim to be regarded as a founding father of the Russian state. He issued its first code of laws, and he created a family cult that was to have political as well as spiritual value: the cult of Boris and Gleb. The youngest sons of Vladimir, they had been murdered in 1015 by their older brother, Sviatopolk, in a bid to gain his father’s throne; they were already regarded as saints by many people for having, as they supposed, faced death with Christ-like submissiveness. laroslav now ordained the celebration of their feast day, and arranged for them to be commemorated no fewer than six times a year. 26 In this way the blood of the innocents came to sanctify the men of power related to them, and the Byzantine concept of divinely sanctioned, albeit sinful, rulers set the seal on the ruling family’s authority.
With the missionary priests who had been moving into Russia came books — Bibles, psalters, compilations of civil as well as canon law — and literacy. These introduced elements of a distinct political philosophy which was to infuse Russian political life down the generations. The views of the great law-giver Justinian on the divine origin of political authority and relations between state and Church lay at its foundation: ‘God’s greatest gifts to men …’he wrote, ‘are the priesthood and state authority (imperium). The former serves the divine interest, the latter controls and cares for human interests.’ A legitimate ruler was given by ‘Christ, our God, who directs this great vessel of the present world … [as] a wise priest and pious tsar, a true leader giving the right words in judgement, guarding the truth for eternity … If anybody should upbraid … a pious prince without justification may he be punished. If a cleric he may be deposed, if a layman excommunicated.’ The ruler was appointed by God, and represented Christ on earth. He carried out priestly functions, promoted the Church’s interests, and supervised the clergy. Many such ideas, promoting symbiosis of Church and state, concludes one expert, ‘were merged into the political structure of the State of Kiev, and … became the basis for Russia’s further evolution’. 27
More than that, Russian rulers sought legitimation by presenting themselves ceremonially in the manner of Byzantine emperors, as well as by virtue of their Christianity. Ilarion, whom Iaroslav had appointed metropolitan of Kiev in 1051, made the connection in a treatise on law and grace which contains a remarkable paeon of praise for Vladimir and by implication for his son Iaroslav: ‘You are similar to Constantine the Great, you are equally wise, and you love God as much, and therefore you equally deserve respect from his servants [the Church] … Let us praise … our leader and instructor, the great khagan of our land, Vladimir.’ 28
Iaroslav not only ordered the compilation of Russia’s first code of law (Russkaia pravda), he issued his own coinage (presenting an image of himself enthroned in majesty) rather than continuing to use imported currency like Byzantine drachmas or oriental dirhams, and he was recognized as the peer of most other European rulers. Iaroslav had married a daughter of the King of Sweden; his son Vsevolod married into the Byzantine imperial family; his daughters married the kings of France, Hungary and Norway Magnus the Good, the future king of Denmark, was raised at his court; so was Harald Hardrada, who had been a mercenary commander in Russia and Byzantium, and was to be Harold Godwinson’s challenger for the crown of England in 1066. 29
The wealth, power and influence that Russia enjoyed in the time of Iaroslav held out every prospect of an even greater future. Russia’s territory was immense, its population had burgeoned, its commerce thrived, its ruler had European stature. Almost every augury pointed to a brilliant future. And yet this first Russian Empire was to shrivel and collapse within 200 years, and laroslav bears some responsibility for it. There was a fla
w in the succession system which was serious enough to undermine the state, and laroslav was aware of it.
The fatal flaw was the ‘apanage’ system, the practice by which an estate was divided between one’s offspring. The eldest might get more than his brothers, but the others also inherited portions. This was the custom of the Slavs as it was of the Irish - princes and peasants alike. It seemed to carry some advantages in Russia, where both commercial and political success depended on unitary control of the immense river system from Novgorod in the north to Kiev in the south and from Polotsk in the west to Tmutorakhan (present-day Taman) in the east. Family interdependence implied trust, while also providing sufficient devolution of authority to facilitate effective regional control. Even the practice laroslav initiated of lateral succession, from brother to brother, rather than vertical succession, from father to son, had the advantage of entrusting the most important cities with their hinterlands to the most senior, and therefore most experienced, members of the ruler’s immediate family. However, as time passed and the family tree ramified, it became increasing difficult to determine the right pecking order, and the succession eventually became the object of almost perpetual dispute and feuding. 30 Common blood does not necessarily imply harmony. Family members can fall out, especially when power is at stake.
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