by James Millar
The Mongol invasion and conquest made the situation worse. The Mongols enslaved skilled individuals and dispatched them to Karakorum, Sarai, and other corners of the earth. The dozen or so principalities of Rus in 1237 fragmented into fifty, perhaps even one hundred-each enslaving the labor of other principalities. Many of these slaves were shipped to Novgorod, whose famous slave market was at the busy intersection of Slave and High Streets, where professional readers and writers set up their business composing and reading for customers the famous birch-bark letters. Slaves from Novgorod were shipped into the Baltic, to England, to other Atlantic countries, and into the Islamic lands of the Mediterranean.
While the unification of the East Slavic lands by Moscow put an end to the capture of other East Slavs into slavery, Russia was still short of labor, and the appetite for slaves did not decline. In Kievan Rus the Orthodox Church had provided charity, but this diminished with the rise of Moscow. In order for the impoverished to survive, the practice began to develop of those in need selling themselves into what was described as “full slavery.” This was a form of perpetual, lifelong slavery in which offspring were described as hereditary slaves. Most societies could not withstand the tension inherent in enslaving their own people, but this did not seem to bother the Russians. From the outset Russian society had consisted not only of East Slavs, but also the ruling Varangian/Viking element, conquered indigenous Iranians, Finns, and Balts, plus any Turkic, Mongol, or other people who wanted to live in Rus. There were no barriers to intermarriage among these peoples, and the sole distinction came to be (perhaps after 1350, or even the 1650s) those who allegedly were Orthodox Christians and those who were not. Thus the insider-outsider dichotomy was weakly developed, and this perhaps permitted Russians to enslave their own people.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SLAVERY
Russian Slave Life by Sergei Vladimirovich Ivanov. © SUPERSTOCK
In the sixteenth century full slavery came to be replaced by what is best translated as limited service contract slavery (kabalnoye kholopstvo), known elsewhere (in Parthia) as antichresis. It worked as follows: A person in need or who did not desire to control his own life found a person who would buy him. (Two-thirds of the cases involved primarily young males, the other third females.) They agreed on a price; the slave took the money from his buyer and agreed to work for him for a year in lieu of paying the interest on the money. If he did not repay the loan (or a third person-presumably another buyer-did not repay it for him), he defaulted and became a full slave. By the 1590s there were many such slaves. Serfdom was in full development, and the slave had the advantage that he had to pay no taxes, whereas the serf did. Slavery was becoming so popular that the powerful government unilaterally changed the terms of limited service contract slavery: The limitation was changed from the one year of the loan to the life of the person giving the loan. There was a dual expropriation here: The person taking the loan (i.e., selling himself) could no longer pay it off, and the person granting the loan (i.e., buying the slave) could not pass the slave to his heirs. This became the premier form of slavery until the demise of the institution in the 1720s. Two changes were introduced: in the 1620s a maximum price of two rubles, and in the 1630s an increase of the maximum to three rubles. This meant that some would-be slaves could find no buyer because their price was too high, whereas others were forced to sell themselves for less than their “market price” would have been without the price controls. Regardless, slavery introduced a form of dependency such that those who were manumitted almost always resold themselves upon the death of the owner, often to the deceased owner’s heirs. About 10 percent of the entire population were slaves.
Russia was the sole country in the world with a central office (the Slavery Chancellery) in the capital controlling the institution of slavery. All slaves had to be registered. In the 1590s a reregistration of all slaves was required, in which about half of all slaves were limited service contract slaves and the others were of half a dozen other varieties. There were military captives, subject to return
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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SLAVO-GRECO-LATIN ACADEMY
home upon the signing of a peace treaty with the enemy belligerent. There were debt slaves, who had defaulted on a loan which could be “worked off” at the rate of 5 rubles per year by an adult male, 2.50 rubles per year by an adult female, and 2 rubles per year by a child over ten. There were indentured slaves, who agreed to work for a term in exchange for cash, training, and often a promise that the owner would marry them off before the end of the term. Those who married slaves were themselves enslaved, as were those who worked for someone else for over three months. There were hereditary slaves, those born to slaves and their offspring. The very complex practices of the Slavery Chancellery were codified into chapter 20 (119 articles) of the Law Code of 1649.
Slavery had a profound impact on the institution of serfdom which borrowed norms from slavery. Farming slaves were converted into taxpaying serfs in 1679. Household slaves (the vast majority of all slaves) were converted into house serfs by the poll tax in 1721. After 1721 serfdom increasingly took on the appearance of slavery until 1861. See also: BIRCHBARK CHARTERS; EMANCIPATION ACT; EN-SERFMENT; FEUDALISM; GOLDEN HORDE; KIEVAN RUS; LABOR; LAW CODE OF 1649; MUSCOVY SERFDOM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hellie, Richard. (1982). Slavery in Russia., 1450-1725. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hellie, Richard, ed. and tr. (1988). The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Irvine, CA: Charles Schlacks. Patterson, Orlando. (1982). Slavery and Social Death. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
RICHARD HELLIE
SLAVO-GRECO-LATIN ACADEMY
Titled in its first fifty years variously as “Greek School,” “Ancient and Modern Greek School,” “Greco-Slavic School,” “Slavo-Latin School,” and “Greco-Latin School,” the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy was the first formal educational institution in Russian history. Established in 1685, the Academy became the breeding ground for many secular and ecclesiastical collaborators of Tsar Peter I. Its founders and first teachers were the Greek brothers Ioannikios and Sophronios Leichoudes. From its inception, the Academy followed the well-established
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lines of the curriculum and formal structure of contemporary Jesuit colleges. The Leichoudes divided the curriculum into two parts: The first part included grammar, poetics and rhetoric; the second comprised philosophy (including logic) and theology. The grammar classes were divided into three levels: elementary, middle, and higher. The middle and higher levels were themselves divided into sub-levels. Instruction was in Greek and Latin, with an attached school that provided basic literacy in Church Slavonic. The Leichoudes authored their own textbooks, largely adapted from contemporary Jesuit manuals. As in Jesuit colleges, the method of instruction included direct exposure to ancient Greek and Latin literary and philosophical texts, as well as an abundance of practical exercises. Student work included memorization, competitive exercises, declamations, and disputations, as well as parsing and theme writing. On important feast days, students exhibited their skills and knowledge in orations before the Patriarch of Moscow or royal and aristocratic individuals.
Students were both clergy and laymen, and came from various social and ethnic backgrounds, from some of Russia’s top princely scions and members of the Patriarch’s court, down to children of lowly servants in monasteries, and included Greeks and even a baptized Tatar. Several of these students made their careers in important diplomatic, administrative, and ecclesiastical positions during Peter I’s reign.
In 1701 the Academy was reorganized by decree of Tsar Peter I and staffed with Ukrainian and Belorussian teachers educated at the Kiev Mohylan Academy. Until the end of Peter’s reign, the student body betrays a slight “plebeianization”: Fewer members of the top aristocratic families attended classes there. In addition, many more of the students were clergymen. The curriculum retained the same scholastic content, but
the language of instruction now was exclusively Latin.
Reorganized in 1775 under the supervision of Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (in office, 1775-1812), the Academy expanded its curriculum to offer classes in church history, canon law, Greek, and Hebrew. Finally, in 1814, the Academy was transferred to the Trinity St. Sergius Monastery and was restructured into the Moscow Theological Seminary. See also: EDUCATION; LEICHOUDES, IOANNIKIOS AND SOPHRONIOS; PETER I; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SLAVOPHILES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chrissidis, Nikolaos A. (2000). “Creating the New Educated Elite: Learning and Faith in Moscow’s Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy, 1685-1694.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
NIKOLAOS A. CHRISSIDIS
SLAVOPHILES
The origins of Slavophilism can be traced back to the ideas of thinkers such as Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov, Alexander Radishchev, Poshkov, Nikolai Novikov, and Nikolai Karamzin, all of whom contrasted ancient pre-Petrine Russia with the modern post-Petrine embodiment, stressing the uniqueness of Russian traditions, norms, and ideas. Most exponents of this school of thought were of noble birth, and many held government posts, so they were quite familiar with the workings of the tsarist autocracy. They were prominent during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855) and emerged after the Decembrist uprising of 1825 and the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe.
Peter Chaadayev’s (1794-1856) ideas in the Philosophical Letter (1836) and other works acted as a catalyst for the emergence of Slavophile ideology. Chaadayev gave special emphasis to the need for Russia to link up with Europe and the Roman Catholic Church. His views on religion, nationality, tradition, and culture stimulated the famous Slavophile-Westerner debate.
Building on Chaadayev’s legacy, the Slavophiles developed three main beliefs: samobytnost (originality), the importance of the Orthodox Church, and a rejection of the ideas of Peter the Great and his followers. In addition, they promoted respect for the rule of law, opposed any restriction on the powers of the tsar, and advocated freedom of the individual in terms of speech, thought, and conduct.
The Slavophiles believed that Russian civilization was unique and superior to Western culture because it was based on such institutions as the Orthodox Church, the village community, or mir, and the ancient popular assembly, the zemsky sobor. They supported the idea of autocracy and opposed political participation, but some also favored the emancipation of serfs and freedom of speech and press. Alexander II’s reforms achieved some of these goals. Over time, however, some Slavophiles became
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
increasingly nationalistic, many ardently supporting Panslavism after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1854-1856). However, these thinkers were not united, except insofar as they were radically opposed to the Westerners, and individually their ideas differed.
CLASSICAL SLAVOPHILISM
The Slavophiles, by and large, can be grouped into three categories: classical, moderate, and radical. Like their opponents, the Westerners, they had a particular view of Russia’s history, language, and culture and hence a certain vision of Russia’s future, especially its relations with the West. Perhaps their greatest concern, from the 1830s onwards, was that Russia might follow the Western road of development. They were vehemently opposed to this, arguing that Russia must return to its own roots and draw upon its own strengths.
Most Slavophiles opposed the reforms introduced by Peter the Great on the grounds that they had destroyed Russian tradition by allowing alien Western ideas (such as the French and German languages) to be imported into Russia. They also maintained that Russia had paid too high a price to become a major European power, namely, moral degradation. Furthermore, the bureaucracy established by Peter the Great was a source of moral corruption, because the Table of Ranks stimulated personal ambition and subordinated the nobility to the bureaucracy. These views were in many ways shaped by the social and political conditions that prevailed during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855).
In general, the Slavophiles saw the Westward swing as a threat to the church, the peasant and village community, and other Russian institutions. Many classical Slavophiles were initially influenced by Nicholas I’s Official Nationality slogan: “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality.” The most important proponent of classical Slavophilism was Ivan Kir-eyevsky (1806-1856), who could read French and German, had traveled in Russia,. and understood the importance of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835). Kireyevsky rejected the main intellectual developments of the time (rationalism, secularism, the industrial revolution, liberalism) and argued that Russia, as a backward young nation, was not in a position to imitate a civilized Europe. He pointed, for example, to the differences in religion (Catholicism versus Orthodox Christianity) and to the fact that Russian society consisted of small peasant communes founded upon common land tenure. Like
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SLAVOPHILES
Kireyevsky, Alexei Khomiakov (1804-1860) also warned against blindly following the West and criticized the impending emancipation of the serfs (1861). He emphasized spiritual freedom (sobornost) and Russia’s unique historical mission. Whereas the West was built upon coercion and slavery, he said, Russia was founded and maintained by consent, freedom, and peace. Yuri A. Samarin (1819-1879) supported Khomiakov’s view, arguing that society, if left to its own devices, would be torn apart by division and conflict because individualism only promoted selfishness and isolation, and thus a strong centralized state and leader were needed to maintain order. This was a clear reference to the danger that Russia would see a rerun of the Revolutions of 1848. As he saw it, chaos would ensue if Russia followed the example of Western liberalism by introducing constitutionalism and a system of checks and balances. Other proponents included the Aksakov brothers, Ivan and Konstantin. Ivan, at the height of his influence in the late 1870s, favored the liberation of the Balkan Slavs, whereas Konstantin advocated the emancipation of the serfs and was a proponent of the village commune (mir). Both wanted to preserve Russian traditions and maintain the ties between the Slavic peoples. In Ivan Aksakov in particular, one sees clear evidence of the emergence of Panslavism, which advocated the political and cultural unity of the Slavic peoples.
MODERATE AND RADICAL SLAVOPHILISM
Classical Slavophilism eventually gave way to two other variants of the doctrine. The moderate wing of the Slavophile movement is associated with Mikhail P. Pogodin (1800-1875) and Fyodor I. Tyutchev (1808-1873). Pogodin, a historian and publisher whose conservative journal The Muscovite (1841-1856) defended the policies of Nicholas I, was professor of Russian history at Moscow University (1835-1844) and wrote a history of Russia (7 vols., 1846-1857) and a study of the origins of Russia (3 vols., 1871). Tyutchev was a lyric poet and essayist who spent most of his life (1822-1844) abroad in the diplomatic service and later wrote poetry of a nationalist and Panslavist orientation.
The radical wing of slavophilism was epitomized by Nikolai Y. Danilevsky (1828-1855). As outlined in his Russia and Europe (1869), Danilevsky’s aim was to unite all the countries and peoples who spoke Slavic languages on the grounds that they possessed common cultural, economic, and political goals. Whereas in the seventeenth century such
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aims only received limited government support, Panslavism became stronger than ever in the post-Napoleonic period and especially after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War. From the mid-nineteenth century onward, as Prussia tried to assimilate the Slavs, the Slavophiles called for solidarity against foreign oppression, and with this goal in mind many advocated the establishment of a federation. This was necessary, in Danilevsky’s view, in order to protect all Slavs from European expansion in the east. The Russian government in the 1870s used these ideas to justify russification and an increasingly expansionist policy. All in all, with the advance of Russian liberalism and constitutionalism at the end of the nineteenth century, the Panslav-ists tried to distance themselves from the c
lassical and moderate Slavophiles.
THE SLAVOPHILE LEGACY
The demise of Slavophilism in the nineteenth century was primarily due to the widespread divisions between those favoring conservative reform and those advocating a more extremist Panslavism. Like the populists, many Slavophiles argued that Nicholas I was incapable of reform, as shown by his repressive reign, and thus a more nationalist stance was needed.
Between the Russian Revolution and the rise of Josef Stalin, this ideology was largely rejected by the Soviet regime, but following the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Panslavism was revived, and it became very prominent during World War II. In the late Soviet period and especially in the post-communist era, the Slavophile ideology was once again promoted by Vladimir Zhirinovsky and other nationalists who sought to put Russia first and to protect it against a hostile West. Many neo-Slavophiles wished to see the restoration of the USSR and the Soviet Empire, and a return to Orthodoxy. Thus the legacy of the Slavophiles remains important and influential in contemporary Russia. See also: MIR; NATIONALISM IN TSARIST EMPIRE; NATION AND NATIONALITY; PANSLAVISM; NICHOLAS I; PETER I; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH; RUSSIFICATION; TABLE OF RANKS; WESTERNIZERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Devlin, Judith. (1999). Slavophiles and Commissars: Enemies of Democracy in Modern Russia. London: Macmil-lan. Walicki, Andrei. (1975). The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century
