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TREASURES

OF

WORLD ART

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Bulgaria

Photo © Archaeological Museum of Sofia, Bulgaria

Animal art of ancient Thrace

A lion crouches on its prey, a stag, in this detail from a silver plaque wrought by a Thraciancraftsman in the late 4th century B.C. The Thracian metalsmiths of Antiquity produced outstandingminiature hunting scenes as well as depictions of ritual events and animal combat, conveying asense of flowing movement and drama through a masterly use of stylization. Today in theArchaeological Museum of Sofia, this plaque (8.7 cm long) is one of many Thracian treasuresunearthed in Bulgaria.

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page

4 THE FLOWERING OF SLAV CULTURE

by Dmitri Markov

9 THE MAKING OF THE SLAV COMMUNITY

by Vladimir D. Korolyuk

13 MAGIC, MARRIAGE AND MERRY-MAKINGby Aleksandr A. Gura, Olga A. Ternovskaya and Nikita I. Tolstoy

18 HIDDEN SPLENDOURS OF RUSSIAN ART

Photo story

22 TH E SLAVS AN D BYZANTI U M

by Dimitr Angelov and Gennady Litavrin

26 AN ARAB TRAVELLER TO AN ANTIQUE LAND

28 TEA AND SYMPATHY

An intricate network of trade and cultural links with the Orient

by Olzhas O. Suleimenov

32 KIEV

The Mother of Russian Cities

by Yuri Asseyev

41 THE ART OF THE MORAVA SCHOOL

Sensitivity and grace in fifteenth-century Serbiaby Svetozar Radojcic

43 DUBROVNIK

Gateway to the Latin Westby Vuk Vuco

46 WORKMANSHIP IN WOOD

Photo story

54 THE COMMON HERITAGE

A cultural community stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seaby Slavomir Vollman

59 DIALOGUE WITH THE WEST

A fruitful interplay of ideas and talentby Igor F. Belza

64 From Copernicus to Korolev : ,A 500-YEAR JOURNEY INTO SPACE

by Bogdan Suchodolsky

68 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF BYELORUSSIA

by Evgenl M. Sakhuta

70 A PHOENIX RISING FROM THE ASHESSlav literature in the aftermath of war

by Aleksandar Flaker

73 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

74 IN BRIEF

2 TREASURES OF WORLD ART

BULGARIA : Animal art of ancient Thrace

Photo © Aurora Publishers, Leningrad

Cover

This double issue of the Unesco Courier is

entirely devoted to the history of the culturesof the Slav world, whose study forms a majorpart of Unesco's programme in the field ofculture. Cover shows a detail from a

fifteenth-century Russian icon of the Nativity(Pskov School). Following the star withoutstretched, pointing hands, the Three Kingsserve as an introduction to our issue and also

herald other triumphs of Slav art.

The floweringof

Slav culture

Famed for the fanciful carvings ofwarriors, fantastic beasts and masks

that cover its walls, the tiny cathedralof St. George is the pride of the townof Yuryev Polsky, 200 kilometres north¬east of Moscow. Construction of the

cathedral, which was completed in1234, is said to have been personallysupervised by Prince SvyatoslavVsevolodovich. Right, pointed maskover the north portal is thought to bethe likeness of the Prince.

by Dmitri Markov

ALONG with the Latin and the Ger¬

manic peoples, the Slavs form oneof the major ethnic groups of Eu¬

rope. Slavonic languages echo from theaustere shores of the White Sea to the sun¬

bathed Adriatic coast, over the vast expan¬ses that stretch from the Baltic to the Ural

mountains (Europe's frontier with Asia),and further still, in Siberia and the Far East.

Jordanes, the sixth-century historian ofthe Goths, tells us of the Antae (a group ofEastern Slavs), who sacrificed oxen to theirThunder God, Perun, who believed in

rusalki, or stream nymphs, and who wor¬shipped rivers and woodlands.

Byzantine historians are unanimous inrecording the valour, integrity, hospitalityand, above all, the love of freedom of theSlav tribes, to whom, in contrast with therest of Europe at the time, the institution ofslavery was virtually unknown.

This was a time when a page of historywas turning, when the Middle Ages werereplacing Antiquity and when the ancientslave-owning societies were giving way tonew, feudal States. The Slavs played theirpart in this process which affected thewhole of Europe. The kingdom of GreatMoravia, Kievan Russia and the Republic ofDubrovnik, to name only three of the SlavStates, wielded considerable politicalinfluence among their neighbours, not onlybecause of their economic and militarystrength (in 911 A.D. Prince Oleg of Kievcelebrated his victories by nailing his shieldto the gates of Constantinople), but alsobecause of their highly developed, diversi¬fied and original culture.

The name of Great Moravia calls to mind

the unique achievement of two brothersfrom Thessalonica, Cyril and Methodius.The twenty-year adventure of the two

DMITRI MARKOV is a member of the

U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and director ofits Institute of Slav and Balkan Studies in Mos¬

cow. He is president of the Unesco-sponsoredInternational Association for the Study and Dis¬semination of Slav Cultures.

"Apostles of the Slavs" began in 863 A.D.,when the Moravian prince Rostislav sent toConstantinople for missionaries who couldinstruct his people in the Christian faith, in

their own Slavonic tongue. An ancient"Lives of the Saints" tells us that when he

was taking leave of the Byzantine Emperor,Cyril declared: "Teaching without analphabet and without books is like writingupon water", and before they set off ontheir hazardous journey he and his brotherMethodius devised a Slavonic alphabet,thus laying the foundations of Slavonicliterature.

The cultural and educational activities of

Cyril and Methodius had far-reachingeffects in Moravia, Pannonia and the other

West Slav countries. And although theirgreat undertaking met with implacableopposition on the part of the CatholicChurch, which cruelly persecuted the mis¬sionaries, their disciples quickly took up thestruggle in neighbouring Bulgaria. Accessto writing was an epoch-making event forall the Slav peoples, and consequently forthe history of the culture of the world.

The age of Kievan Russia (whose heydaywas at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth

centuries) saw unprecedented advances incity-building, craftsmanship and com¬merce, intense international political acti¬vity, and a corresponding flowering of thearts. Our appreciation of mankind's culturalaccomplishments is in no way complete ifwe neglect the inimitable creations of theKievan age in architecture, literature, paint¬ing and the applied arts, which have givensuch profound aesthetic delight to succes¬sive generations of Slavs and non-Slavsalike.

The perfect moulding and the succinctyet picturesque language of the Slovo oPolku Igoreve, a contemporary epic poem,place it on the same artistic and spirituallevel as the Nibelungenlied and the Chan¬son de Roland. This "Lay of Igor's Cam¬paign" carries in its lines the whisperingsound of the feather-grass of the steppeacross which, in the year 1185, Prince Igor

of Novgorod-Seversky rode out against thePolovtsians; its language echoes the clashof swords and the gasps and groans ofhorsemen locked in mortal conflict. Indeed,the Slovo constitutes an invaluable and elo¬

quent account of distant days, and of thefeelings and thoughts of the people ofmedieval Russia.

Mention of Dubrovnik calls up memoriesof its outstanding role in the developmentof European humanism. Over a period ofseveral centuries, despite constant warfareand the re-shaping of frontiers, the city-republic conserved its independence. Itrivalled mighty Venice in terms of bothcommerce and culture, to such an extent

that a special item was placed on theagenda of the Venetian Senate: "EveryFridaya discussion on ways and meansof crushing Dubrovnikl" (See article page43).

Dubrovnik was a centre of study forfamous mathematicians and poets, histo¬rians and philosophers. Between the fif-_teenth and seventeenth centuries, thecombined labour and talents of architects

and engineers, of anonymous stone¬cutters and masons, produced an ensem¬ble of rare harmony which, in its magnifi¬cent and lavish natural setting, made itseem to be an eighth Wonder of the Worldand a fitting destination, as Bernard Shawsuggested, for those who are looking forheaven on earth.

The fortress of Dubrovnik and its

princely palace are visible symbols of theindependence of Dalmatian humanism,which evolved in keeping with the historicaldevelopment of the country of the SouthSlavs, in intimate contact with the wealthof their national culture and in

accordance with their original life-style.

The Slav peoples contributed in a varietyof ways to the intellectual and spiritual lifeof medieval Europe, and provided much ofthe ideological background to the Euro¬pean anti-feudal and anti-clerical move¬ments which resulted in numerous popular iuprisings. Thus, for example, the Bulgarian I

y sect of the Bogomils laid the foundationsof the dualistic teachings adopted by theCathars, the Albigenses and the Templars.It is worth mentioning here that in Frenchdialects of the Middle Ages, the wordbogre (Bulgar) was synonymous with"heretic".

Protest was inherent, too, in the ser¬

mons preached by the religious reformer,Jan Hus, who was burnt at the stake in141 5 on the orders of the reactionary Coun¬cil of Constance. From his martyr's pyreblazed up the purifying flame of the Refor¬mation which spread throughout Europe.The great Martin Luther humbly called him¬self a Hussite, while the teachings of theBohemian preacher became a foundation-stone of the revolutionary ideology of burg¬hers and peasants alike.

During the Middle Ages, the Slav peo¬ples were to taste the gall of foreignoppression. Poland and Russia, for exam¬ple, found themselves under constant pres¬sure from their east European neighbours,and this obviously affected their own cul¬tural development. Nevertheless, whenmedieval European culture was refreshed

The

Kremlin

down

the

ages

and renewed by the irresistible tide of theRenaissance, the Slavs were able, to theextent that their historical circumstances

permitted, to play an active role in the greatspiritual movement of humanism.

In the space of a few generations, thegreat figures of the Renaissance elaborateda new vision of the world and a new con¬

ception of man himself. Their ideas werereflected in the artistic masterpieces andforward-looking scientific achievements ofthe age. And among the great Renaissancemen were numbered many Slavs.

Pride of place must be acorded to NikolajKopernik, the Polish astronomer Coperni¬cus (1473-1543), who overturned the imageof the world that the Church had sanctified

for more than fifteen hundred years (seeUnesco Courier, April 1973). His revolu¬tionary theory that the planets, in¬cluding the earth, revolve around the sun,enabled the Italian philosopher GiordanoBruno (1548-1600) to extend the frontiers

of the universe still further, and postulatethe existence of countless solar systemssimilar to our own.

There is considerable evidence of the

importance which Copernicus's contempo¬raries attached to his work. As a youngman, Jan Amos Komensky, better knownto us as Comenius, while visiting Heidel¬berg in 1614, came across a copy of Coper¬nicus's treatise De Revolutionibus Coeles-

tium Orbium; without hesitation, he emp¬tied his pockets to pay for the manu¬script, and was consequently obliged tomake the long journey home to Moravia onfoot.

Komensky himself (1592-1670) was an-

other Slav scholar who made a unique con¬tribution to the culture of the new age. Hedevised a complete educational system,and was one of the first to understand that

the transformation of society and itsadvance along the path of historical pro¬gress depended in great measure on the all-round development of man.

Komensky stood at the watershed oftwo great European cultural epochs, theRenaissance and the Enlightenment. It wasthe latter movement which, in its confirma¬tion of the unlimited power of human rea¬son, finally dethroned the scholasticism ofthe Church as the ultimate authority as faras the perception and explanation of the

world was concerned. Built on the founda- 1tions of outstanding scientific achieve-'

Photo © APN, Pans

The Kremlin, or citadel, formed the defensive core of the great medieval cities ofRussia. Pskov, Novgorod, Smolensk and Rostov were all built round Kremlins, whichgenerally contained cathedrals, the palaces of princes and bishops, government officesand an arsenal. The Moscow Kremlin, the most imposing of all, was originally a woodenfortress erected in 1156, but it was enlarged and rebuilt many times. Photos (1) View ofMoscow in the 16th century from a book by the German traveller Adam Olearius. (2) Thefirst known plan of Moscow, published in 1556 in a book by the Austrian ambassadorSigismund Gerberstein. (3) The Palace Square in the heart of the Moscow Kremlin in the17th century. (4) 16th century engraving of the stonemasons of Moscow. The inscriptionreads: "That summer [1367] the Grand Duke Dmitri built Moscow in stone, and from

that time Moscow was built only in stone." (5) The Kremlin in the 18th century, as seenfrom the River Moskva. Copper engraving by the Russian artist Michael Makhaev.

> ments, the Enlightenment threw open thedoors to the further development of thenatural and human sciences.

The brightest star in the brilliant firma¬ment of eighteenth-century Slav sciencewas undoubtedly Mikhail Lomonosov(1711-1765), the great Russian scholar andencyclopaedist, and a truly "universalman". An urbane, yet poetic figure, Lomo¬nosov combined the talents of physicistand chemist, geologist and geographer,historian and philologist. He was a versatileand accomplished naturalist, and rightlyshared with the distinguished Frenchchemist Lavoisier the honour of discover¬

ing the law of conservation of matterand energy.

The age of Enlightenment saw an affir¬mation of the need to place scientificknowledge at the disposal of the public as awhole, and to create a non-clerical, secularsystem of education, and it was not longbefore this principle was put into practice.The "Educational Commission" estab¬

lished in Poland in 1773 was the first

independent European "Ministry of Educa¬tion".

The period between the mid-eighteenthand mid-nineteenth centuries, rightlyknown as "the age of national regenera¬tion", was rich in consequence for thedevelopment of Slav culture. In all spheresof social life, the cultural element expandedat an unprecedented rate. Literature, artand science reflected a nation's greatness,and served as its "visiting-card" as far asother peoples and States were concerned.

The sudden flowering of Slav culturewas conditioned by (and inseparable from)the national liberation movements of the

Slav peoples or, as in the case of Russia, bythe development of progressive social and

political ideas. Thus, the Russian poet offreedom, Alexander Pushkin, echoed the¡deals of the "Decembrist" revolutionaries

(1); the struggle of the Czechs for theirown National Theatre, which was conduc¬

ted under the slogan "By the people for thepeople", was both a consequence and areflection of the upsurge of the nationalmovement; the Bulgarian writers HristoBotev and Ljuben Karavelov participateddirectly in the armed struggle for the inde¬pendence of their country.

Culture was a driving force in the politi¬cal education of peoples, and in makingthem aware of their identity as nations. InMarch 1794, for example, the Poles reactedto the first performance of Cracovians andMountaineers, a musical comedy by Woy-zecfc Boguslavsky, the "father of the Polishtheatre", in much the same way as theFrench Revolutionaries had reacted to

Beaumarchais' Le Manage de Figaro.

Each new decade of the nineteenth cen¬

tury saw an increased contribution by theSlavs to the culture of Europe and of theworld. This was particularly evident in lit¬erature, especially with the works of thegreat Russian authors, Tolstoy, Dos-toevsky and Turgenev, whose impact wasworldwide, while Poland was brilliantlyrepresented by Mickiewicz and Slovatsky,and the Ukraine by Taras Shevchenko. Atthe same time, outstanding Slav compo¬sers like Glinka, Chopin, Tchaikovsky andSmetana set new standards of excellence

in the music not only of their own coun¬tries, but also of the world.

The theatre of the Slav countries under-

(1) The 'Decembrist rising' in Russia, so-called becauseit occurred on 18 December 1825, was an ill-fatedpalace revolution against the Tsarist autocracy.

went remarkable development, as may beseen from a single example that of theMoscow Arts Theatre, founded in 1898 bythe great actor-producers Konstantin Sta¬nislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.

In the twentieth century, the Great Oct¬ober Socialist Revolution in Russia set in

motion a revolutionary process whoseimpact on the development of modern cul¬ture has been felt far beyond the borders ofthe Slav countries. The vitality of the ideaswhich provoked this development was putto a severe test during the struggle of Slavand non-Slav peoples alike against Fas¬cism, a death-dealing movement whichalso resulted in the mindless and pitilessdestruction of cultural monuments thou¬

sands of years old.

Today, Unesco's programme of culturalstudies is making cultural exchange evenmore meaningful. A major component ofthis programme is the study on Slav cul¬tures, which reflects the increasing world¬wide interest in the centuries-old cultures

of the Slavs, and in the economic and cul¬tural achievements of the modern Slav

States.

Unesco has enlisted scholars and intel¬

lectuals and representatives of the massmedia and of educational institutions in

Europe, America and Asia in the implemen¬tation of this project, a natural outcome ofwhich has been awareness of the need for

an international pooling and co-ordinationof efforts in the complex study of Slav cul¬tures, and in the dissemination of know¬ledge about the Slav peoples, the way theylive today and the contribution they havemade, and are making, to the civilization ofthe world.

Dmitri Markov

The Slav cultural tradition, still very much alive today, now incorporates revolutionarymotifs. Known as "October Song", this porcelain dish is one of a series of decorativeobjects produced by Maria Lebedeva in 1919-1920. The words of the "Internationale" arereproduced on the inner rim.

8

Photo © Aurora Publishers. Leninarad

Gold ornamental plaquefrom a horse's trappings, found in aSarmatlan tomb in the Caucasus

region. It was probably made for aSarmatian noble by Greek craftsmenwho have deliberately adopted a"barbarian" style. The two central figures arerepresentations of Dionysius and Athena.

Photo © Progress Publishers, Moscow

The makingof the Slav community

by Vladimir D. Korolyuk

VLADIMIR D. KOROLYUK, Sower historian,

is head of the department of ancient and medi¬eval history at the Institute of Slav and BalkanStudies attached to the U.S.S.R. Academy ofSciences. He is the author of many studies onthe creation of the Slav states, the origins of thepeoples of Eastern Europe and the relations be¬tween Eastern and Central European countriesbetween the 16th and 18th centuries. He con¬

tributed to the Unesco booklet The Slavs and

the East, published in 1965.

HISTORY portrays nomad peoplessuch as the Sarmatians, the Hunsand the Avars as the main driving

force behind the great migrations of bar¬barian peoples which crushed the RomanEmpire, leaving the ruins and ashes fromwhich feudal Europe was later to emerge.

Early written sources abound in graphicdescriptions of the nomads in action: stor¬ming the ramparts of the Roman Empire,besieging cities, subjugating the peoples ofthe Roman provinces or putting them toflight. Most of these accounts relate tosouth-east Europe where nomad hordes

wrought havoc on Roman territory, turningit into pastureland and enslaving part of thelocal population.

Yet the Slav tribes, for the most partfarmers and herdsmen, played a role ofmajor importance in these great migra¬tions, for the economic system of thenomads could not survive without agricul¬ture. When the Avars settled down in the

sixth century they turned to agriculture,:and the toil of Slav farmers (as well as the

blood shed by Slav horsemen recruited intothe mounted hordes) was a decisive factor

in the emergence of the terrible and ruth¬less force known as the Avar Khaganate.

But such States of nomadic origin wereshort-lived. In 622-623, Samo led the Slavs

in a large-scale rebellion against their Avarmasters, and two centuries later, in 803,

the Emperor Charlemagne destroyed theKhaganate and the Avars ceased to exist asa political force.

It was, therefore, pre-eminently as farm¬ers and urbanized craftsmen and traders

that the Slavs first reached the level of eco¬

nomic development attained by the otherEuropean peoples. In eastern Europe,where they had long been established, andin central and south-east Europe wherethey settled after the great invasions, Slavtribes took the road to feudalism. Distinc¬

tive Slav nations and governments beganto appear.

As for the nomadic tribes, some "per- ,¡shed like the Avars" (to quote an ancientRussian proverb), while others, such as theProto-Bulgars, a Turkic people which hademerged from Asia with the invadinghordes, found their destinies linked withthat of the Slavs. The Proto-Bulgars inter¬mingled with the sedentary Slav farmers,while the Hungarian people also absorbedan element of the Slav farming population,adopted their practices, and entered Euro¬pean history as a farming people.

The earliest written sources to give ageneral idea of the areas occupied by theSlavs in the vast expanses of eastern andcentral Europe date from the first centuriesA.D. From then untiï the age of the greatmigrations there is a virtually uninterruptedflow of information, the most interesting ofwhich is found in the works of two sixth-

century historians: the Goth Jordanes andthe Byzantine writer Procopius ofCaesarea.

According to the historians of Antiquity,central and eastern Europe were dividedinto two geographical regions, Germaniaand Sarmatia. Some ancient authors, fol¬

lowed by later Byzantine writers, heldthat the Slavs were from Sarmatia (or

Scythia), but this was contested by theirbetter-informed contemporaries.

The Roman historian Tacitus, writing inthe 1st century A.D., made a sharp distinc¬tion (based partly on economic criteria)between the Slavs and the inhabitants of

Sarmatia. The Venedi, he wrote (using oneof the early names given to the Slavs) wererather "to be classed as Germans, for theybuild houses, carry shields and travel onfoot at great speed, in all these respects dif¬fering from the Sarmatians, who spendtheir lives in waggons or on horseback".

These differences of opinion areseemingly due to the fact that the Slavs

occupied a region straddling Germania andSarmatia, where western and eastern cul¬

tural influences intermingled. The strongresemblances between the Slavonic and

Baltic languages suggest that the Slavsshared this area of forest and forest-

steppe, which stretched southwardsthrough eastern Europe as far as the nor¬thern foothills of the Carpathians, with theBaits (the ancestors of the modern Latviansand Lithuanians).

The historians of the sixth century locat¬ed the land of the Slavs with even greaterprecision and maintained that it covered avast area stretching from the Baltic to theCarpathians, eastwards to the Dnieper, andeven as far as the lower reaches of the Don

and the Sea of Azov.

Twenty years ago, the discovery oftraces of agricultural activity as well as ob¬jects dating from between the seventh andfifth centuries B.C. suggested that theearly Slav settlements were also centres ofcraftsmanship. Since then, discoveries byUkrainian and Polish archaeologists haveprovided a virtually continuous picture ofthe development of the material culture ofthe Slavs from the dawn of the first millen¬

nium A.D. up to the tenth and eleventhcenturies. The fact that the artefacts pro¬duced in this vast territory over such a longperiod bear a strong mutual affinity, over¬riding local variations, points to the exis¬tence of a Slav ethnic community.

Written testimony exists concerning theunity of the Slavs, but refers to them bydifferent names. The most detailed

accounts date from the sixth century andspeak of two main groups, the Antae andthe Sclavini, which are described as mili¬tary and political federations of Slavsgoverned by an elite class and under theoverall leadership of a warrior chieftain orprince.

The Antae, despite certain featureswhich distinguished them from the Sclavini(notably their types of pottery and thenature of their fortified settlements in the

sixth century) were undoubtedly kinsmenof the latter in all other respects, andshared the same life-style, appearance andlanguage.

The irruption of the Goths, the Huns andthe Avars into the territory of the Slavsbroke up their unity. But the invaders failedto shatter a way of life based on a commonlanguage and customs, economic activitiesand marriage ties, and this ensured the sur¬vival of the Slav community.

Early historians also show that the Slavswere united by á common mythology. Pro¬copius tells us, for example, that "boththese barbarian tribes [the Antae and theSclavini] lead identical lives and have the

same laws. They recognize one god, theauthor of lightning, the only master of theuniverse, and they bring him sacrifices ofcattle and perform other devotions in hishonour."

The literary sources do not contain,unfortunately, sufficient material for areconstruction of Slav mythology in all itsdetails. But a description of the reformsintroduced by Vladimir, Grand Prince. ofKiev in the tenth century, contains a list ofthe old Slav gods. The supreme deity wasPerun, god of thunder and lightning, who

brought life-giving rain to the crops; he hadaffinities with another deity, Stribog. Chorsand Dazhd-Bog (bog means "god" in theSlavonic languages) were the gods of day¬break and the sun. Volos (or Veles) was the

patron of flocks and herds, livestock-raising and pastoral activities. Mokosh wasthe goddess of fertility, weaving and spin¬ning. Latin chronicles and archaeologicalfinds dating from the eleventh and twelfthcenturies indicate the existence of a similar

patheon of pagan gods on the western Bal-

10

tic coastline and among the group of Slavsknown as the Ljutici.

Traces of many ancient beliefs survive inSlav folklore: vily and beregini, who haun¬ted, woodlands and hills and above all riversand lakes and other watery places; Yarilo, agod of fertility associated with springtime;Kupala, apparently related to the sun; anda host of household and family gods reflec¬ting the patriarchal organization of theSlavs.

Conversion to Christianity broke up thismythological world, although a number ofpagan cults and rituals were incorporatedin the new religious practices, and themedieval ideology of the Christian Slavsstill contained echoes of the beliefs of their

heathen ancestors.

Common beliefs, a common material cul¬ture, linguistic continuity and a tradition ofintermarriage all point to the persistence ofa Slav community.

Pagan PantheonThe Slavs decorated their pagan temples with beautifully carved imagesof their many gods and goddesses. These were generally carved inwood and as a result few of them remain, but some of the rare stone

idols still exist. Left, a typical four-sided, sacred stele (or Svietovit),dating from the 10th century, which was found in the silt of the bed ofthe river Zbruc, in the Ukraine. It is thought to represent "MotherEarth", the protectress and symbol of fertility. Above, a stone statueknown as the "Idol of Shklov".

The map called Peuthger's Tabula (oneof the oldest maps of Europe) offers theonly indication that the Slavs (the Venedi)moved south-westwards in the third

century.

Later, between the fifth and the seventhcenturies, they moved in a great wave intocentral and south-east Europe, and settledin the Balkans, the Dinaric, the Karawan¬ken and Julian Alps, in the Danube basin,and in the land east of the Elbe. Confronta¬

tion with the Slavs resulted in the transfor¬

mation of the slave-owning Eastern RomanEmpire into the medieval feudal State ofByzantium.

But' let us now return to the Antae and

the Sclavini. Jordanes and Procopius tellus that these two peoples played an equallyimportant role in the Slav migration intothe Danube basin and the Balkans. These

two federations of tribes, closely related bylanguage and customs, undoubtedly pos¬sessed a highly developed sense of ethnicidentity. But when, during the concludingstages of the great migration, the Slavssettled in south-east Europe, the Greekname Slaveni (which the Latins translitera¬

ted as Slavi) was extended to include the

whole of the Slav world, while the name

Antae disappeared.

This sudden upsurge of Slav conscious¬ness, which occurred at the turn of thesixth and seventh centuries and was reflec¬

ted in the adoption of a single name, waslargely due to the fact that the Slavs, aftercenturies of confrontation with the Ger¬

mans, the Finns and all the nomadic tribesthat had come storming out of Asia, nowfound themselves face-to-face with the

Eastern Roman Empire, and in doing sobecame more keenly aware of their ownidentity.

The consolidation of the Slav communitywas followed by a complex process inwhich the Slavs separated into three bran¬ches, eastern, southern and western, eachof which evolved according to dif¬ferent historical, geographical and econo¬mic circumstances, absorbing in the pro¬cess the indigenous population of the terri¬tories it had occupied. At the same time,Slav nation-states began to be created.The Slavs were firmly set on the road tofeudalism.

There can be no doubt that the Slavs

who occupied the former Roman provincesof south-east Europe and the lands whichbordered on Byzantium evolved morerapidly than their kinsmen who had remain¬ed closer to the original homeland. It washere that they created the first central and isouth-east European States, Great Moravia I

11

Detail showing the blind arcading and the faience tiles that embellish the tambour supporting thesingle cupola of the late 15th century church of St. George-on-the-hill, at Pskov.

> and the first Bulgarian Kingdom. It was notuntil the tenth and early eleventh centuriesthat the rest of the Slav world

reached the same level of development.

The greatest medieval Slav State wasKievan Russia which, like all the early feu¬dal States, owed all its trappings of royaltyand aristocracy, and its secular and eccle¬siastical "Establishment", to the back-breaking labour of the peasantry.

The former forest regions were clearedand put under the plough, and by the thir¬teenth century, arable farming may be saidto have predominated everywhere. Buthorticulture continued to be important: theSlavs cultivated beans and peas, lentils,poppy-seeds and turnips, as well as carrotsand gherkins, while in the words of an oldRussian folk-song"apple and pear-treesflowered" in their orchards in the spring¬time. The country people supplementedtheir diets by bee-keeping andfishing, by gathering wild berries, rootsand mushrooms.

The development of arable farming withthe use of draught animals implies thatlivestock-raising was also an importantactivity. The Slavs indeed bred oxen andhorses to pull their ploughs, as well as largenumbers of cows and pigs. Goats andsheep were also reared, notably in the pas-turelands of the Carpathians and theBalkans.

But it was not "all work and no play" forthe Slav peasants, and their daily life wasenlivened by three cycles of festiveoccasions one involving rituals and cere¬monies related to cultivation, another con¬nected with the raising of animals, and thethird with the mysteries of marriage andfertility.

The development of Slav cities as cen¬tres of craftsmanship and trade dates fromthe eighth and ninth centuries, but subjec¬tion to Byzantium a century later tempora¬rily slowed down the expansion of SouthSlav towns. Urbanization in ihe countries

of the East and West Slavs continued

throughout the tenth and especially the ele¬venth centuries; their cities were fortified

with ramparts, moats and towers, specialattention being paid to the security of theirgateways.

These fortress-cities were built by theSlavs themselves,' who became metal¬workers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, armour¬

ers, potters, glass-makers, stonemasons,cobblers and shoemakers. The craft of

wood-working was practised by turners,coopers and wheelwrights. The Slavs alsoproved to be accomplished jewellers, whileRussian craftsmanship, especially in theform of steel blades and chain mail, ena¬

melled golden ware and objects carved outof bone, was highly valued in the marketsof East and West alike.

The fortunes of all medieval cities de¬

pended essentially on the creation of localmarkets capable of absorbing the produc¬tion of their craftsmen. The foundation

and expansion of the Slav cities in partic¬ular reflected the acceleration of a trend

which had begun at a considerably earlierdatenamely the separation of crafts¬manship from agriculture. Cities with largepermanent populations of craftsmen andtraders, and with a transient population offoreign merchants, rapidly became flouri¬shing commercial and diplomatic centres.

In the streets of Prague and Wolyn, Kievand Novgorod, ambassadors and mission¬aries rubbed shoulders with merchants

who had come to sell cloth and preciousstones, silverware, jewellery and exoticspices, or to exchange them for slaves orprisoners-of-war, furs or locally-producedgoods.

Busy trade routes ran from the CaspianSea along the Volga to Novgorod and theBaltic, "from the Vikings to the Greeks",and from Kiev to Cracow, Prague toRegensburg. Arabic, Greek, German, Nor¬dic as well as Slavonic languages were allto be heard in the markets, princely pal¬aces and aristocratic mansions of Kiev,Novgorod and Smolensk. The picture wasmuch the same in the cities of the South

Slavs, while in Dalmatia, where the popula¬tion combined Slav and Latin elements,

merchants from Italy were much in evi¬dence.

A cultural tradition took root in the greatSlav cities where its basis existed already inthe form of sagas and songs recounting theexploits of kings and princes, and wherestory-tellers entertained the nobility withbyliny, or epic poems. It was in these cen¬tres that architecture and painting develo¬ped, and especially literature which,throughout the early medieval Slav world,lost no time in putting to use the alphabetinvented in the ninth century by Cyril andMethodius for the transcription of the Sla-,vonic language. The texts inscribed onbirch-bark discovered by Soviet archaeolo¬gists (see page 25), which contain simpleaccounts of everyday affairs, offer outstan¬ding evidence of the cultural level attainedby the society of early Russia,largely as a result of this leap forward inSlavonic letters.

Vladimir D. Korolyuk

12

Magic,marriage

IM

merry-makingbyAleksandr A. Gura,

Olga A. Ternovskaya,and Nikita A. Tolstoy

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FROM time immemorial, the life of the

Slavs has been bound up with agri¬culture, and for this reason, ancient

rites and rituals connected with the seasons

of the farming year figure prominently intheir culture.

One such ceremony, commonly celebra¬ted. until quite recently, was the dozhinka,or harvest festival. This took varying formsamong the different Slav peoples, and maythus serve as an indicator of their separate

yet similar development from a commonorigin.

The rites which accompanied the end ofharvesting comprised a sequence of events,carefully structured in space and time andbased on different combinations of three

distinct ceremonies, each centred on a spe¬cific object. These objects, of which therewere a great number of variants, werefashioned by the reapers out of ears of Lcorn, straw, branches, flowers, thread and fribbon.

©

ALEKSANDR A. GURA, OLGA A. TER¬NOVSKAYA and NIKITA I. TOLSTOY are

members of a research team attached to the

Institute of Slav and Balkan Studies of the

U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Directed byNikita Tolstoy, they are carrying out ethno¬graphic and linguistic research into ancient Slavcultures including marriage customs andother popular traditions.

13

One of these objects, the dozhinochnyvenok, or harvest garland, was a head-dresswoven from flowers, branches, ribbon and

other materials. The end of harvesting wasconsidered as a sort of marriage, and thepreparation of the garland was accompa¬nied by rites reminiscent of the weddingceremony. The garland was worn by thebest and prettiest of the women reaperswho took the role of the bride in these

rituals whose magic, incantatory nature isreflected in an old Byelorussian harvestingsong, with the refrain "The more you kissthe mistress. Master, the more corn willthere be..."

Moreover, the other dramatis personae ofthis rjtual adopted the names of the princi¬pal participants at a wedding, so that theterminology of the latter permeated theharvest ceremony.

The ritual weaving of the garland wascommon in the Ukraine, southern Byelorus¬sia, Slovakia and Poland, but rare amongthe Bulgarians and quite unknown inRussia.

Another ceremonial object was the lastsheaf, or a, symbolic representation in theform of a man of straw. This sheaf differed

from the harvest garland in that it was notan adjunct of a leading human participant inthe ritual, but actually presided over theevents. For this reason, it was often givenanthropomorphic names such as baba(granny), ded (grandpa), kumushka (themerry wife) and nevesta (the bride). Innorth-east Russia this sheaf was even con¬

sidered as the master (khozjain) of thehousehold ; and in Russia as a whole this

word is one of those most commonly usedto denote the guardian spirit of the familyhome.

The ritual involved in the preparation ofthe sheaf was widespread among the WestSlavs and the western group of the SouthSlavs ; it existed also in northern and wes¬

tern Russia and was found in north-east

Byelorussia.

The most important ritual accompanyingthe end of harvest-time among the Slavshad as its focal point a patch of the cropwhich was left uncut. The standing ears,which the East and South Slavs called the

boroda (beard) were fashioned in a specificmanner plaited together, for example,partly broken or knotted in some wayandthen served as the decor for various rites.

The womenfolk turned somersaults; the

young men wriggled under the bent stalks;a girl danced in front of them; they weresprinkled with vodka or water; little piles offlax or stones, or of bread and salt were

placed beside them, and so on. After these

Seasonal

rites

Harvest-time in Poland,

left, was celebrated with

traditional ritual. Wearingan elaborate crown of

wheat and escorted bythe village musicians andthe other villagers, theprettiest of the villagemaidens led the

procession to the villagechurch. After the priesthad blessed the crown,

the procession moved onto the village hall. Therethe mayor placed a cockon top of the crown andit began to peck at theears of corn. If the cock

crowed, this was taken as

a good omen signifying aplentiful harvest. Finally,the procession wound itsway to the house of thelocal squire whodistributed gifts to thoseconsidered to have

worked hardest duringthe harvesting. The dayended in feasting anddancing. Right, inMoravia, Czechoslovakia,

the arrival of spring ismarked by the making ofa "smartka", a figurerepresenting the death ofwinter. In Bulgaria,bottom left, this figure isreplaced by a villagerwearing an elaboratemask.

14

rites, the South Slavs cut or pulled up theboroda; the East Slavs left it standing in thefield.

Traditional Slav weddings were compli¬cated affairs, in which ritual and mythologi¬cal play-acting were interwoven with therecital of poems and with singing, musicand dancing. The relatives, friends andacquaintances of the bride and groom allparticipated in these activities; everyonehad a role to play, and was simultaneouslyan actor and a spectator. The list ofwedding-guests often included professio¬nal match-makers Isvaty), lamenters whocould be relied upon to produce a few tearsat the right moment, a master of ceremo¬nies, sorcerers and soothsayers to protectthe newly-weds from witchcraft, and a jes¬ter to amuse the assembly with his jokesand witticisms.

The first stage in the process of gettingmarried involved the arrival of the match¬

makers at the bride's house, where theyengaged in a conversation full of symbolsand ambiguities with her parents. Theywere travelling merchants, they said, orhunters of martens and foxes; they werelooking for a lost heifer; were there anystray ducks or geese in the vicinity; or didthe family have a young ewe-lamb or a littlewheat for sale? On rare occasions, when

the married couple was to set up home inthe bride's, rather than the bridegroom'shousehold, the match-makers addressed

themselves to the bridegroom's family;sometimes the bride went to offer "her

hand in marriage. All these ceremonialnegotiations ended with an officialbetrothal; the engaged couple began toprepare for the wedding and drew up thelist of guests.

Once betrothed, the status of the fiancée

changed; no longer a spinster, she was notyet a married woman; her former social andfamily ties and relationships had beenloosened, but new ones had not yet takentheir place. In popular belief, she was ex¬posed during this transitional period to thedangerous influence of witchcraft and theevil eye, and for this reason she was ex¬cused from all her normal domestic duties.

Sometimes, for fear of harm, she did noteven leave the house.

In the Russian north, this was the periodwhen the professional weepers entered thescene, some of them rubbing their eyeswith onions for increased effect. Ritual

weeping and wailing continued until theend of the wedding ceremony.

The state of betrothal was also reflected

in details of the clothing, head-dresses andhair styles of the nevesta the future bride.

The eve of the wedding was a specialoccasion among all the Slav peoples. InRussia, this was the moment when the

bride took leave of all her girlhood friends.Ritual bathing was practised by the Rus¬sians and the South Slavs, while in Russia

and sometimes in Byelorussia, Poland andBulgaria, the bride ceremonially let downher hair. The East and West Slavs decorated

a "wedding sapling"; in the westernUkraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Ser¬

bia, the girls plaited garlands; the SouthSlavs and Slovaks prepared a wedding ban¬ner. In Russia (particularly the south), Bye¬lorussia, the Ukraine and Bulgaria, the eveof the great day was the time for baking thewedding bread.

The baking of this svadebny khleb was awell-established tradition among the Slavs.The bread, decorated in a variety of diffe¬rent ways, was offered to the wedding-guests with many ritual gestures andsongs, in which it was compared to the sunand the moon. The bride and groom bowedlow before the round loaf and kissed it;

their parents blessed them with it and itwas used in the "bread and salt" ceremonywhich greeted them after they were pro¬nounced man and wife, as a symbol of Slav"hospitality; and the newly-weds were bom¬barded with handfuls of grain, to wish themhappiness and wealth.

The procession from the bride's house tothe wedding, and to the bridegroom'shouse after the ceremony, was consideredto be a dangerous moment. The East Slavsfrightened each other, for example, withtales of whole wedding parties being trans¬formed by witchcraft into wolves. For this

reason, the guests took particular care to |protect themselves from sorcery. |

15

One

hundred

kisses

"Luboks", or humorous

engravings of scenes from dailylife, became very popular inRussia towards the end of the

18th century. Left, a villagewedding feast is in full swing.The figure in the centre, arelative of the bride, calls on the

bride and groom to "sweetenthe vodka", whereupon thenewlyweds are obliged to kisseach other one hundred times,

while the guests in chorus counteach kiss. The children perchedon the bunk over the stove

seem more interested in stuffingthemselves with handfuls of

nuts. Right, fromCzechoslovakia, an elaborate

wedding cake representingAdam and Eve before the tree of

knowledge.

y The wedding festivities included animportant act: the changing of the bride'shair-style and head-dress to match her newstatus as a married woman.

The newly-weds were seen off by theguests, usually from the groom's house, tothe bridal bedchamber. Oddly enough, thewedding night was generally spent inunheated quarters in a store-room, a barn,or even a cow-shed I

The next day was devoted to fun andgames. Tricks were played on the youngcouple; the match-makers were "pun¬ished"; men dressed up as women and viceversa; the party wandered through the vil¬lage disguised as mummers or gypsies, andso on. Sometimes, as in the Byelorussianregion of Polesie, for example, the guestsre-enacted a parody of the previous day'sceremony, with actors playing the parts ofbride and groom.

The last act of the wedding included aritual visit by the newly-weds to the villagebath-house, a symbolic "testing" of thebride, and visits by the in-laws to eachothers' homes.

To this day, the arrival of summer is cele¬brated in Byelorussian Polesie on 7 July,which corresponds in the new calendar tothe old Slavonic festival of Midsummer Dayand the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Des¬pite centuries of religious persecution, theoccasion remains full of colourful relics '

from pagan times.

On the eve of Ivan Kupala, as the occa¬sion is called, huge bonfires of brushwood,straw, etc. collected by the boys and girtsare lit at twilight on the river banks or onthe little hills of this wooded and marshyregion. The fires are usually grouped inthrees, and are sometime topped by straw"guys" which are either consumed in theflames, or thrown into the river to "drown".

The fires burn until midnight or untildawn. When the flames have died down,

the merry-makers jump over the embers.

beat the ground with fire-brands and gen¬erally amuse themselves. Just before firstlight, they gather piles of grass, and telleach other the legend of the mysteriousflower of the fern which brings goodfortune to anyone who chances to see it.

What looks like just plain mischief by thecountry boys and girls (they block up thechimneys of cottages so that smoke fromthe stoves cannot escape, take gates fromtheir hinges and throw them on to otherpeople's vegetable patches, or pull bucketsand chains out of the wells and drag themnoisily through the village) is, in fact, thesurvival of ancient rites which, like jumpingover the fire or beating the ground with bur¬ning sticks, were connected with exorcism,purification, fertility and so on. Now, how¬ever, they are merely the signs of uninhibit¬ed gaiety, in which the whole populationstays up all night to join in the fun.

On Midsummer Eve in Poland, along thelower reaches of the Bug river, the unmar¬ried girls push little wooden cups withlighted candles and posies of flowers outacross the water. A girl whose cup sinkswill be married during the year; but if thecup floats on, she will remain a spinster. Inthe Ukraine and in Byelorussia, the girlsalso throw garlands of flowers into thewater and tell their fortunes with them.

On Midsummer Eve in Slovakia, the girlsdig holes in the ground with their bare heelsand fill them with sugar or bread. At dawn,they come back to see what has happened:if the sugar and bread are still there, theyare destined to remain old maids; if theyhave disappeared, a death in the family maybe expected. A girl who finds ants in thehole she has dug will marry a good lad; butif it contains a starling, she will have to con¬tent herself with a widower.

According to ancient superstition, wit¬ches were abroad on Midsummer Night,and the Slovaks and the people of Polesietook pains to protect themselves from all

manner of sorcery. To sting the witches(who among other devilments were liableto steal milk from their cows) and drive

them away, they put nettles on theirwindow-sills and strewed them across their

thresholds.

The Slovaks set great store by the magi¬cal properties of grass gathered on Mid¬summer Night, a time when, so they be¬lieved, every blade of grass was silently cry¬ing out "Cut me! Cut me!" Among the

Cribs and nativity plays are important |features of the Christmas festivities. Over jthe years, in Poland, a traditionalspectacle known as "The Herods" hasdeveloped around the nativity story and inparticular the journey of the Three WiseMen. This spectacle, in which theprincipal characters are Herod, Death andthe Devil, is now a colourful feature of

carnivals as well as of the Christmas and

New Year festivities.

16

Serbs, the holiday was known as SvetiJovan Bil'ober (St. John the Grass-cutter).

Similarly, the Bulgarians, on the day theycalled En'ov den (John's Day), gatheredgrass, and protected their cattle and fieldsfrom the evil spirits which threatened theirmilk and harvest, while the young girls toldfortunes to find out who their future hus¬

bands would be. This was the day on

which, according to the Bulgarians, En'o"threw a sheepskin coat over his shoulders,since snow was on the way..."

The Croats and the Slovenes also greetMidsummer Day with bonfires, thus joiningin the celebration which links the Slavs

with the other peoples of Europe. In medi¬eval France, the king himself applied thetorch to "le feu de la Saint-Jean", and Mid¬

summer Night bonfires flickered over Den¬mark, Italy, Scotland and England as well,although they were banned in London in1539.

Where these ancient rituals are still prac¬

tised, the participants are almost alwaysunaware of their initial magical signifi¬cance. But as they make merry in the sun¬light or in the glow of a blazing fire, as theywelcome the flowers and the harvest, and

the rippling fields of summer grass, they arelooking hopefully towards the future. Simi¬larly, the distant forbears of the Slavs rejoi¬ced in all these things, feeling that theywere a part of Nature's forces, as childrenof the forests, the water and the sun.

Olga Ternovskaya,Aleksandr Gura

and Nikita Tolstoy

17

Colour page

Contrasted images of serenity and suffering in Slav religious art. Left, theSaviour, an icon painted between the 11th and 13th centuries. It wasrepainted several times and this is the first published photo of the iconsince it was restored in 1967-77 by M. Barutsin at the Andrey RublyovMuseum, Moscow. Right, detail of a figure from the majestic high altar inthe Church of St. Mary, Cracow. Carved in limewood and painted, the altarwas executed by the great sculptor Wit Stwosz between 1477 and 1489.

Hidden splendours

of early Russian artMany masterworks by early Russian painters were disfigured by laterartists seeking to "improve" or restore the original. Some were evenrepainted entirely to suit changing tastes and fashions. Many of thesehidden treasures of Russian art have now been restored to their full glorythanks to highly skilled and dedicated work by Soviet specialists.Removing the layers of often crude overpainting as well as age-oldencrustations of grime requires immense patience and skill and, althoughmodern scientific methods are extensively used, the success or failure ofthe operation still hinges on the talent and intuition of the restorer.Restoration work in recent years has highlighted the importance ofregional schools of painting in such localities as Novgorod, Pskov,Vladimir and Tver, and also shown how foreign influences wereassimilated to create a form of iconography that was distinctivelyRussian. Photos 1, 2 and 3 show three stages in the restoration of a 16th-century ¡con of the Apostle Paul. Restored between 1970 and 1973 byI. Gromova, it is now in the Museum of Yaroslavl-Rostov.

iu A

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Photos S. Zimnokh © Figurative Art Publishers, Moscow

18

The astonishing metamorphosisof a 13th-century icon, entitledThe Assembly of the Archangel Michael,which was concealed beneath a mediocre

composition by a later artist.The restoration work was carried out

by Soviet specialist A. Baranova and tooksix years (1962-1969).

A great artist-monkAndrey Rublyov (1370-1430) was one of the great masters of icon-painting of the Moscow school. His ¡cons, in particular his Trinityand his Saviour, rank among the masterpieces of world art. TheSaviour (below right) was discovered in a storeroom of theCathedral of the Dormition at Zvenigorod, near Moscow. Thoughdamaged and incomplete, it exudes the new spirit that Rublyovintroduced into Russian painting. The sensitive and profoundly

expressive image of the risen Christ, with its combination ofdignity, gentleness and compassion, contrasts strongly with thestern severity that characterized the earlier Byzantine conception.The icon is now preserved in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.Below left, 16th-century miniature portraying Rublyov at work ona fresco at the Church of the Saviour at the St. Andronikov

monastery, Moscow.

Colour page

St. Boris and St. Gleb

Now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, this 14th-centuryicon depicts two celebrated figures from early Russianhistory. Boris and Gleb, two younger sons of Vladimir,ruler of Kiev from 980 to 1015, were victims of fierce familyquarrels for the succession, being put to death by theirelder brother Prince Svyatopolk. Their cult waswidespread from the 11th to the 13th century and manychurches were dedicated to them. The icon is borderedwith scenes from their brief lives.

Photo © APN, Pans

The Slavs

and Byzantiumby Dimitr Angelov and Gennady Litavrin

STANDING astride Europe and Asiaand spanning a period of timestretching from classical antiquity

to the Renaissance, the Byzantine Empirelinked different worlds and different ages.This gave a special dimension to the cul¬tural interactions of Byzantine civilizat¬ion with those of neighbouring countriesand peoples interactions which werevast both in range and scale.

Heir to antiquity and the culture of theHellenes and until the twelfth century the

leading power in Europe and the Near East,the Byzantine Empire was the nucleus of avast area in which the Orthodox Church,

the eastern variant of Christianity, was,throughout the medieval period, the domi¬nant form of expression of spiritual life.

The frontiers of Eastern Christendom

were largely established by the early yearsof the eleventh century. By this time theyencompassed huge tracts of south-easternand eastern Europe. In the Near East, innorth Africa and in the western Mediterra¬

nean region, however, Byzantium had lostconsiderable ground, as a result of con¬frontation with the Muslim world (first with

the Arabs and then with the Turks) and

with the Latin West and the Papacy.

Misunderstandings between Rome andConstantinople came to a head with theSchism of 1054, and the rupture becamefinal with the struggles and disputes arisingfrom the crusades. In the lost lands, the

once dominant Byzantine culture disappea¬red with the passage of time and theimplantation of other civilizations.

In the northern regions of Eastern Chris¬tendom matters evolved differently. Here,the population, for the most part Slav, hadprogressively been drawn into the orbit ofByzantium throughout a thousand years ofstable and lasting cultural relations. Onlythe West Slavs (including the Poles, theCzechs, the Slovaks, the Baltic and Pola-

DIMITR ANGELOV is a distinguished Bulga¬rian historian who has been professor of Byzan¬tine history at the university of Sofia since 1949.A corresponding member of the Bulgarian Aca¬demy of Sciences, he is the author of manyworks on Byzantine and Bulgarian history.

GENNADY LITAVRIN is a leading Soviet spe¬cialist on Byzantine history and Russo-Byzantinerelations. He Is one of the authors of a basic

three-volume work "The History of Byzantium"and assistant editor of the Soviet magazineByzantisky Vremennik (The Byzantine Period).

bian Slavs), the Croats and the Slovenes,remained outside the pale of Eastern Chris¬tendom, as the result of political events

during the ninth and tenth centuries,coming instead within the sphere ofinfluence of Western Christian civilization.

Relations between the Slavs and Byzan¬tium were complex. The initiative in es¬tablishing contacts was generally taken bythe Slavs, and early links were strengthen¬ed with the formation of the Slav States.

The first historically recorded contactsdate from the end of the fifth century A.D.during the closing stages of the GreatMigration, which had seen the establish¬ment of Slav peoples over vast areas ofeastern, central and south-eastern Europe.In the seventh century, they arrived in thenorth of the Balkan peninsula, and settledin large numbers in Moesia, Macedonia,lllyria and northern Thrace. Groups ofSlavs also moved into Thessaly, northernGreece, the Péloponnèse and the Aegeanislands.

The aim of Byzantium, as it faced up toits new neighbours, was not to dislodgethem, but to secure control over them, totransform them into Christians and to

absorb them as vassals of the Empire.These contacts and the occupation oflands which had been intensively cultivatedfor ages past and which contained centresof sophisticated urban life had a catalyticeffect on the social development of theSlavs. In a great many cases, they did notoust the original inhabitants but mergedpeaceably with them.

The arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans

was- also a matter of great importance forthe Byzantine Empire. They filled thevacuum left by the devastating campaignsof the Goths, Huns, proto-Bulgars, Avarsand earlier Slav tribes.

The Slavs who settled in the former

Roman province of Moesia found them¬selves in a particularly favourable situation,with all-round natural protection affordedby the Danube, the Black Sea and the Bal¬kan Mountains. It was here, during the lastquarter of the seventh century, that theSlav settlers joined forces with and accep¬ted the temporary leadership of a relativelysmall but militarily well-organized group ofnew arrivals, the proto-Bulgar horde ofKhan Asperuch, and created the first SlavState on Byzantine soil Bulgaria.

Byzantium maintained close and lastingcontacts (at times peaceful and at timeshostile) with this new State and, towards

the middle of the ninth century when inde¬pendent States were founded in the wes¬tern and north-western parts of the Balkanpeninsula, the Empire entered into regularpolitical relations with the Serbs and theCroats; similar relations with the Russiansbegan after the year 860.

Among the instruments of Byzantinepolitics and diplomacy, conversion toChristianity was a powerful and well-triedtool. According to time, place and circum¬stance, it was used as a first step towardsexpansion of the Empire, as a method ofsecuring friendly neutrality, ofstrengthening political influence or ofacquiring allies and vassals. Among thoseBalkan Slavs who had not yet organizedthemselves into States, for example, con¬versions to Christianity served the Empire'spurposes of subjection and assimilation.Missionaries either preceded, or followedin the footsteps of the Byzantine armies.

The civil servants and ecclesiastics of

Byzantium had acquired great experiencein proselytizing and subduing alien neigh¬bours. Unlike the Latin West, they allowednewly converted peoples to worship intheir. own language, particularly when thepolitical possibilities of absorbing them ap¬peared unrealistic.

In 863 A.D., just two years before Bulga¬ria followed the same path, the kingdom ofGreat Moravia became the first Slav State

to accept the Christianity of Byzantium asits official religion. The same period sawthe invention by Constantine (betterknown by his monastic name of Cyril) andMethodius of a Slavonic alphabet. The twobrothers also translated into Slavonic all

the canonical and liturgical literature thatwas required for the normal functioning ofthe Church. They became the leaders of adevoted group of Slav disciples and pupilsand their work launched a revolutionaryprocess in the cultural development of Bul¬garia, Serbia and ancient Russia.

During the last third of the ninth century,and the century that followed, Slavonic let¬ters made triumphant progress in all theSlav countries and became accessible to.

virtually every segment of society. Theprincipal role in spreading literacy amongthe Slavs, and in disseminating the so-called "Old Slavonic" literature belongedto the kingdom of Bulgaria.

Although none of the independentStates which surrounded Byzantium, in¬cluding those created by the Slavs, andwhich accepted Christianity from Constan-

22

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The murals of the church of Boyana, at thefoot of Mount Vitosha to the south of Sofia,

Bulgaria, are ranked among the masterpiecesof 13th century painting. Dating from 1259, theBoyana frescoes herald the introduction of the

new realism that marked the "Palaeologianstyle" of the late 13th and early 14th century.Above, St. Ephraim by the unknown masterpainter of Boyana.

tinople, was actually coerced into doing so,Byzantium adopted a somewhat firmerstand during the Christianization of Bulga¬ria than it had during the conversion ofGreat Moravia.

When, in 865 A.D., Bulgaria adopted theChristian faith, the Byzantines, for politicalreasons, deliberately refrained from pro¬viding the new Church either with clericsof Slav background or with church booksin the Slavonic language, and services hadto be conducted in Greek.

In 893, however, things changed.Shortly after the accession to the Bulgarianthrone of Tsar Symeon (893-927), who wasto become the country's greatest medievalruler, Greek, which had remained the offi¬cial State language, was proscribed. Wor¬ship in the Slavonic language was introd¬uced in the churches, and the Greek

clergy were expelled. Under the inspiringinfluence of the seminaries created at Och-

rida and Preslav by Clement and Naum,two disciples of Cyril and Methodius, thenumber of educated people sharply increa¬sed, and the foundations were laid of anoriginal and, for the period, highly sophisti¬cated spiritual culture which made itself feltin the neighbouring Slav countries, and inSerbia and Russia in. particular.

This was the Golden Age of Bulgarianliterature, reflected in the works of talentedwriters like John the Exarch, Chernorizets"the Courageous", Bishop Constantineand others, whose work was activelyencouraged by Tsar Symeon himself. Theclose similarity between the written lan¬guage and the popular speech of Bulgariawas of no small significance in the develop¬ment of national education, while the same

period also saw a flowering of architecture,painting, mosaics, ceramics, glassware andother applied arts.

The second great leap forward in the cul¬tural development of Bulgaria occurred atthe turn of the twelfth and thirteenth cen¬

turies. During this period, the BulgarianZograph monastery, founded on MountAthos in the twelfth century, played animportant role in strengthening culturalcontacts with Byzantium, Serbia andRussia.

Outstanding developments in Serbianculture, and in literature in particular, datefrom the twelfth century onwards. Serbia'sfirst Golden Age was linked with thecoming to power of the Nemanja dynasty,and in particular with the reign of StephenNemanja ("the first-crowned") and the

23

activities of his brother. Saint Sava, who' founded an important cultural centre, theSerbian monastery of Hilendar on MountAthos, and was also Serbia's first Arch¬bishop.

Relations between Byzantium and Rus¬sia began to develop at a somewhat laterdate. Early Russia, or Rus', as it was called,was situated so far from the frontiers of the

Empire that there was no danger of directByzantine aggression.

Through an alliance with the Pechenegs,Byzantine diplomacy aimed to contain themilitary forays of the Russians and to denythem access to Byzantium's markets. Theattempt failed, and even before they wereunited in a single State, the Russians hadestablished trading relations with Khersonand Byzantium's Crimean colonies. Press¬ing on still farther, the Russian merchantadventurers, part-traders and part-soldiers,reached the Byzantine commercial centreson the southern shores of the Black Sea,and in 860 A.D. their ships dropped anchorbeneath the walls of Constantinople itself.

Whilst gradually yielding ground to Rus¬sia in the economic and political spheres,Byzantium exercised on the young State anincreasingly far-reaching cultural influence.During the decade which followed the ar¬rival of the Russians off Constantinople, anumber of their leaders were converted to

Christianity. At the beginning of the tenthcentury, a Christian church dedicated toSt. N'ya (Elias) existed in Kiev. In themiddle of the same century, Olga, thewidow of Prince Igor, who had become theRussian ruler, was baptized during a visit toConstantinople; and in 989, Prince Vladimiraccepted Christianity as the religion of hiscountry.

Bulgarian experience and the already richstock of Bulgarian literature were of con¬siderable service in the enlightenment ofRussia. Immediately after his conversion,Vladimir turned to Slavonic letters as the

basis for the organization of ecclesiasticalaffairs and State business. It is probablethat the first officials to be entrusted with

this task were trained with the assistance of

"experts" from the South Slav OrthodoxStates.

Less than half a century after conver¬sion, Kievan Russia entered a period of cul¬tural development that was to reach itszenith in the twelfth century. That literacywas widely disseminated is amply borneout by the hundreds of birch-bark docu¬ments discovered by Soviet archaeologistssince the 1950s, containing the accountskept by quite ordinary people of their every¬day affairs. This period saw the construc¬tion of magnificent palaces and churches.Painting and the applied arts flourished,and the splendours of eleventh-centuryKiev, including its Cathedral of St. Sophia

and the Golden Gate, made the city aworthy rival of Constantinople itself.

The influence of Byzantine models wasparticularly apparent in religious and mor¬alistic didactic literature, architecture in

stone and mosaic work, stained glass,icons, monumental painting and book illu¬mination. In all these fields, however, theSlavs began, a century and a half or soafter conversion to Christianity, to developtheir own artistic schools, language andidiom, which reached back into their pre-Christian traditions and pagan art and cul¬ture. The result was a creative re-modellingof Byzantine examples, and their adapta¬tion to local tastes and requirements.

Byzantine influence was less marked asfar as secular literature was concerned.

This was especially true in the case of chro¬nicles, poucheniya (written "admonitions"or testaments generally left by rulers fortheir successors) and accounts of journeys,and of music and singing, the applied arts,ornamentation, festive rituals, clothing andinterior decoration.

When it escaped from the constraints of"official" religious ideology, spiritual lifewas clearly influenced by local traditionsgoing back to farthest antiquity. And eventoday, without knowledge of the living tra¬ditions of the pagan culture of the Slavs itis impossible to begin to understand Ser¬bian heroic songs, the popular festivities ofthe Bulgarians or the epic poems (byliny) ofancient Russia.

Cultural interchange between Byzantiumand Slavdom was conditioned in greatmeasure by the selective approach whichthe latter adopted as far as the Byzantinelegacy was concerned. Indeed, selectivityon both sides reflected the single-mindedpolicies of the rulers of each: Byzantiumrefrained from transmitting matters whichit considered dangerous for neophytes (thelatest acute theological controversies, forexample), while the rulers of the newly-converted countries rejected importationswhich seemed alien and potentially harmful(such as the employment of eunuchs asState officials, or organized horse racingtournaments).

N even more importantreason for selectivity inthe adoption of Byzan¬

tine civilization was the incompatibility ofmany of its aspects with the Slav environ¬ment. The various collections of Byzantinelegal texts which circulated widely through¬out south-east Europe during the thir¬teenth and fourteenth centuries under¬

went, in their Slavonic versions, substan¬tial amendment in the form of abbreviation,addition and modification. Byzantine tem¬poral law had virtually no impact in Russia,whose legislation took the native form ofRusskaya Pravda, a collection of lawswhose origins could be traced back topagan times.

In the Latin West, the period from theninth to the twelfth century saw the forma¬tion of original cultures in all the major

States, despite the levelling influence exer¬cised by a single ideological and ecclesiasti¬cal centre (the Papacy) and a single lan¬guage (Latin) which, although incompre¬hensible to the bulk of their populations,dominated religious life, affairs of State,science and culture.

In the Slav countries of Eastern Christen¬

dom, however, original cultures ripenedmore rapidly for a number of reasons: theirChurches were less dependent on Cons¬tantinople than their Western counterpartswere on Rome, and the language of litera¬ture and of the church was not Greek, but

their own Slavonic language which wascomprehensible to the peoples of Bul¬garia, Serbia and Russia alike.

Half a century to a century after theirconversion to Christianity, these countriesall had their own identifiable culture.

When, after a century and a half (1018 to1185) Byzantium managed to acquire undi¬vided control over the Balkans, to liquidatethe kingdom of Bulgaria and to annex theSerbian principalities, the cultures of thesecountries were sufficiently well-establishedto resist not only assimilation but also anysubstantial degree of transformation. Thehistorical memory of their early indepen¬dence, the persistence of their own literacyand literature, their own customs and life¬styles, and their ethnic self-awarenessserved as banners in the armed struggleto reconquer their freedom, which they re¬gained during the last quarter of thetwelfth century.

The sharpest confrontations in EasternChristendom occurred where Byzantiumwas particularly stubborn in its attempts toconvert the cultural commonwealth it had

created into a hierarchical system of politi¬cal and administrative units under overall

Byzantine direction.

Thus, from as early as the tenth and ele¬venth centuries, the pronounced historical,ethnic and cultural individuality of the Slavswithin the Orthodox sphere of influenceprecluded their assimilation with Byzan¬tium, though, paradoxically, the develop¬ment of this individuality was acceleratedby the acceptance of Christianity fromByzantium.

It is not surprising, therefore, that a deepmutual sympathy grew up between theSouth and East Slavs and the Greek peoplethat was to last for many centuries. Nor is itsurprising that when, with the fall ofByzantium and the South Slav countries,Russia remained the last bastion of Euro¬

pean Orthodox Christianity, the peoplesconquered by the Ottoman Turks shouldlook to Russia for deliverance. And finally,it is not to be wondered at that their hopeswere finally to be fulfilled.

Dimitr Angelovand Gennady Litavrin

24

The making of an alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet was invented in the 9th century by thescholar-missionary brothers St. Cyril and St. Methodius sothat they could instruct the people of Moravia in theChristian faith in their own Slavonic tongue. Use of the 43-letter alphabet spread quickly throughout the West Slavlands, finally reaching Russia in the 10th century. Over theyears the alphabet was gradually modified and during thereign of Peter the Great a simpler version was elaboratedwhich today is used not only by the Slav nations but also bymany non-Slavs including the Aleuts and Eskimos. Thespread of literacy that the new alphabet made possible wasrapid and widespread. A number of letters and documentswritten by ordinary citizens on birch-bark scrolls, found atNovgorod in 1951, indicate that the new literacy was notconfined to an elite class. Photos : (1) A 14th-centurymanuscript shows St. Cyril and St. Methodius, "the apostlesof the Slavs", transcribing the Scriptures and liturgical textsinto the Slavonic language. (2) Detail of a fresco on thefaçade of a 13th-14th century church at the village ofBerenda, in Bulgaria, depicting St. Cyril the Philosopher.

Photo © The Bulgarian Artist, Publishers, Sofia

(3) An 18th-century wood sculpture of St. Clement ofOchrida, a disciple and companion of Cyril and Methodius.(4) This remarkable document shows two letters written onbirch-bark some 750 years ago by a seven-year-old boy fromNovgorod called Onphime. At top, the alphabet followed bydrawings of Onphime and his friends. Below, self-portrait ofOnphime astride a charger with an enemy dead at his feet.

HTiïfïo^p'oTA/ xZOS1 ¿TIT* p- A-

Photo <£) Unesco Courier, Russian Edition Photo © Literature for Children, Publishers, Moscow

25

An Arab traveller

to an Antique land

The longest river in Europe, the Volgarises in the Valdai Hills, north-west of

Moscow, and discharges its watersinto the Caspian Sea 3,690 km to thesouth. Known in ancient times as the

Ra and during the Middle Ages as theItil, the Volga has always been ofimmense importance as a culturaland commercial highway. Today, theVolga and its navigable tributariescarry some two-thirds of all Sovietinland freight. Opposite page, theVolga at sunset. Right, carvedwooden prow of an 18th centuryVolga rivercraft.

26

Ibn-Fadlan was a member of the embassy sent by theArab Caliph Al-Muktadir to the rulers of the Bulgare ofthe Kama and Volga rivers in 921 A.D. He visited Itil, thecapital of the Khazars, and travelled to the capital of theBulgare, Great Bolgar, which stood near the junction ofthe Kama and the Volga. It was in Itil or in Great Bolgar(ruins of which have survived to the present day) that hecame into contact with the Slavs. We present here anextract from "Ibn-Fadlan's Journey to the Volga", anaccount of his travels edited by I.Y. Krachkovsky andpublished in Moscow- Leningrad in 1939.

I saw the Russians, when they came with their goods and est¬ablished themselves on the banks of the river Itil (1). Never

have I seen men of more perfect stature; they are like palmtrees. They are red-haired, and wear neither jackets nor kaftans,but the menfolk wear cloaks, throwing one side over the shoulderso that an arm emerges from beneath. Each of them has a sword, aknife and a pole-axe, and from these they are inseparable. Theirswords are broad and curved like waves; the blades are of Frankish

make. From head to toe they are painted with marks depictingleafy trees, pictures and designs of all sorts. Each of their womenhas pinned to her breast a little box made of iron or copper, or sil¬ver or gold, according to the status and wealth of her husband.Each little box has a ring, to which a knife is attached.

Around their necks they wear chains of gold and silver, for whenthe husband has ten thousand dirhams, he gives his wife a chain;when he has twenty thousand dirhams he gives her two chains; insimilar fashion, he gives her another chain for each ten thousanddirhams, so that she often has many chains around her neck. Theirmost beautiful ornaments are the green beads made out of clay,which are sometimes to be seen on their ships; they try to get holdof these beads at all costs, pay a dirham each for them and threadthem into necklaces for their women...

They come from their country and drop anchor in the Itil, whichis a mighty river, and set up large wooden houses on its banks; andthey gather together, ten or twenty, more or less in each house.

(1) The River Volga

Each of them has his own bench, on which he sits... to do hisbargaining...

When their ships come to the anchorage, everyone comesashore with bread, meat, milk, onions and some kind of fiery bev¬erage. He goes up to a tall pillar which bears a face on it, resem¬bling a human face; and around it there are smaller images set in acircle; and behind these images there are tall pillars stuck into theground. He goes up to the biggest image, prostrates himself infront of it, and says: "0 Lord! I have travelled a great distance...and with me I have so many head of cattle, so many sable furs, somany skins..." and so on, until he has enumerated all the goodsthat he has brought for trade. Then he says: "And this gift, I havebrought for you", and places what he has brought before the pil¬lar, saying: "I beg you to send me a buyer who has dinars anddirhams, and who will buy from me all that I wish to sell him, andwho will not contradict me in what I say to him." And then he goesaway. And if the selling is difficult and lasts a long time, he comesback again with a gift, and yet again. And if his wishes still remainunfulfilled, then he brings a gift to one of the smaller images, andseeks its intercession, saying: "This is for the wife of our God, andhis daughters", and from each of the ¡mages without exception hesolicits intercession... Often the selling is easy for him, and whenhe sells his goods, he says: "My god has answered my prayer, andI must thank him for that." So he takes a certain number of cattle

and sheep and slaughters them, and distributes part of the meatamong the poor ; the rest he takes and throws down before thebig image and the little ¡mages surrounding it, and hangs the headsof the cattle and sheep on the pillars stuck into the ground. Andafter nightfall, the dogs come and eat the meat, and he who madethe offering says, "My god has deigned to eat my offering".

27

Tea

and

sympathyAn intricate network

of trade and cultural

links with the Orient

by Olzhas O. Suleimenov

Right, 17th-century drawing of aMongolian horseman. Slavtravellers brought back manynovelties from the Orient

including tea, the abacus andginseng. Photo from The Slavs and the East © Unesco

THE earliest contacts between the

Slavs and the peoples of the East areshrouded in a mystery which we can

only attempt to pierce by fitting together ajigsaw of fragmentary evidence: scatteredallusions by Latin writers, the testimony offolklore, and linguistic and archaeologicaldata.

It is not until the sixth century A.D. thatthe picture becomes clearer. From thattime and later, writings have survivedwhich, disjointed and incomplete thoughthey are, shed much light on the age whenthe Slavs began to be known in Byzantiumand when, through the Greeks, the wordSlav began to be heard in the Orient.

Later chroniclers recorded the traditions

OLZHAS O. SULEIMENOV is a leading poet ofSoviet Kazakhstan who writes in both the Rus-'

sian and Kazakh languages. The author of tenvolumes of poetry and a number of studies onTurkic and Slavic cultures, he is one ofa team of

Unesco consultants engaged in the preparationof a History of Civilizations in Central Asia.

of this early period, along with informationculled from pre-lslamic annals. By theeighth and ninth centuries Arab authorswere calling the Don "the river of theSlavs" and the Black Sea "the Russian

Sea".

Some Arab geographers of the earlyMiddle Ages gave the word Slav so broad ameaning that they applied it to peoples ofGermanic origin. This was no simple "mis¬take" on their part; the confusion arosebecause the Slavs and the eastern mer¬

chants followed such a vast and intricate

network of trade-routes and because the

Slavs played such a prominent role in therelations between East and West.

Trade between the countries of the Arab

Caliphate and those of eastern Europe andthe Baltic seaboard began to expand in theeighth century. Right from the start muchof this commerce flowed along the Volgaon the boats of eastern merchants who

plied northwards through the rich tradingcentres of Itil (near present-day Astrakhan)and Bolgar, which lay south of the con-

28

Photo from Illustrated History ol the U.S.S.R. © APN, Moscow

A distant ancestor of the

rouble, this silver "grivna" orten-kopeck piece was used in9th-century Kiev as both anornamental weight and a coin.

Photo © APN, Moscow

Overlooking Red Square,Moscow, the 16th-centuryCathedral of St. Basil the

Blessed strikingly illustrateshow Eastern styles wereincorporated into Russianarchitecture. Built under Tsar

Ivan the Terrible to

commemorate the conquest ofKazan and Astrakhan, the

cathedral is actually a complexof nine churches, the central

one being topped by atraditional Russian "tent-

shaped" roof.

fluence of the Volga and the River Kama.

These merchants were attracted by thelegendary riches of the northern lands, andchiefly by their furs: silver fox, sable, mar¬ten, ermine, beaver and the pelts of otheranimals. Such treasures were highly prizedin Baghdad, Bokhara, Khorezm and Cairo.Poets sang their praises, and kings, emirsand potentates strove to outdo each otherwith magnificent gifts from the distantnorthlands. They also imported wax, honeyand slaves from eastern Europe.

In return, the Slav countries received thehandiwork of eastern craftsmen, in particu¬lar silver coins. Throughout the vast area inwhich the East and West Slavs were set¬

tled, hoards of silver coins of the eighth tothe tenth centuries are still often dis¬

covered, evidence of intense commercialactivity. Torgovye gosti ("trading guests")from Slav lands were familiar figures invarious towns of the Caliphate. Their boatssailed down the Volga and the Don to theCaspian and the Black Seas, and from

there they transported their wares by camelto Baghdad.

The growth of trade between the Cali¬phate and the Slav countries whetted theappetite of Arab scholars for informationabout their northern neighbours. Arab geo¬graphers and historians writing betweenthe eighth and the tenth centuries discussthe origin of the Slavs, their relations withother peoples, their churches and their reli¬gion, the life and customs of the differenttribes, and the first Slav States.

As for the Slavs, they obtained theirknowledge of the East both from eyewit¬ness accounts and from written sources.

Russian, Polish and Czech annals (such asthe Polish chronicle of Gallus Anonymusand the Czech chronicle of Cosmas of

Prague), compiled in the eleventh andtwelfth centuries, contained informationabout the civilizations of the East: Egypt,Assyria, Media and Iran. The early twelfth-century Russian text known as the RussianPrimary Chronicle speaks of the trade route

along the Volga to the Caspian and thenceto Khorezm. Many references to theancient and medieval peoples of the Eastare contained in the historical work of

the fifteenth-century Polish author JanDlugosz.

The Pechenegs and later the Polovt-sians, fierce Turkic nomad tribes who lived

to the north of Slav territory, often becamepolitical enemies of the Slavs but did nothinder the development of cultural con¬tacts. They allowed Slav merchants to passthrough their territories, and sometimeseven served as middlemen.

Indeed, an important feature of modernstudies of the cultural relations between

the Slavs and the East is the current re¬

appraisal of the role of the Turkic peoples,who served as intermediaries in the lastingcontacts which the Slavs established with

the vast and variegated cultural regionknown as "the East".

These Turkic peoples, both nomadic and isettled, were the closest eastern neigh- I

29

Ivory head (above) recently unearthed atVergina (Greece) is thought to depictAlexander the Great as a young man. Inthe Middle Ages the story of his epicexpedition became part of Slav folklore.

, bours of the Slavs; and whereas relationsbetween the Slavs and the Arabs, Iran and

the Far East were largely confined to trade,the Slav-Turkic relationship was closer andmore enduring. It is impossible to examinethe subject of Slav culture, economics andpolitical organization without taking intoaccount this "Turkic factor". (1)

Total harmony has never reigned duringthe creation and development of civiliza¬tions. It was often armour-clad and sword

in hand, rather than with caravans of

goods, that the people of one country setoff towards their neighbours. Contactsometimes turned into tragic confronta¬tion. And this was the case of the East

Slavs at the beginning of the thirteenthcentury, when the nomad hordes led by theMongolian Khagan Batu (the grandson ofGenghis Khan) swept westwards out of thesteppes to invade their lands.

Kievan Russia and many other indepen¬dent Russian principalities collapsed underthis onslaught. By their struggle againstthe Tartar yoke, the East Slavs hinderedthe nomads' westward drive, but their own

culture was thereby condemned to developfor the next three hundred years or sounder foreign domination. Their strugglefor liberation contributed to the unification

of Russia, the establishment of a central¬ized Russian State, and the appearanceand development of new forms of culture.Throughout all this period, however, con¬tacts between the Slavs and the East were-

maintained.

After their adoption of Christianity, Rus¬sians began to travel to the East on pil¬grimages to the Holy Land. Pilgrims' talesof Constantinople, the Byzantine Empireand Palestine appear in Russian chroniclesfrom the twelfth century onwards. As earlyas the eleventh century, the Russians had aspecial quarter in Constantinople wheretheir merchants lived. Colonies of Russian

monks were established in the monasteries

of Constantinople. Some of these monkstranslated books by Greek authors and alsotranscribed works by South Slav writersand sent them to Moscow.

From ancient times, India had capturedthe imagination of the Slavs. The fantasy-embroidered story of Alexander the Great'sjourney to the East, to a land known as"Aleksandrija", was familiar to both Eastand West Slavs. Information about this

strana chudes ("wonderland") first

reached the Slavs indirectly, throughCentral Asia, Transcaucasia and Iran.

The first Russian traveller to see India

with his own eyes was Afanasi Nikitin, amerchant of Tver, who visited it between

1466 and 1472. He described his journey ina book entitled "Travels Beyond ThreeSeas". In contrast with many travellers,Nikitin was able to mingle with the Indians,and to acquire a sound knowledge of thecountry and its customs.

In the sixteenth century, when the age ofgreat geographical discoveries began, and

Men are transformed into fabulous beasts

in this illustration from a 16th-centuryByelorussian version of the Alexanderromance.

(1) The Turkic peoples: a number of tribes and peopleswho in the sixth century A.D. founded an empirestretching from Mongolia and the northern frontier ofChina to the Black Sea.

Europe was fascinated by news of theincalculable riches of India and China, the

Slavs were a major link in the expandingcommercial and cultural relations between

western Europe and the East. At the begin¬ning of the century, the Musco¬vite ambassador in Rome, Gerasimov,launched a project for the discovery of anorthern sea route to China. Tsar Ivan the

Terrible, who was interested in the East,promised a substantial reward to anyonewho reached China by the northern seas;and it was only in the second half of theseventeenth century that efforts to do sowere abandoned, when it was found thatChina could not be reached by sea, "be¬cause of great ice, frost and darkness".

The widening and steadily strengtheningpattern of relations between the Slavs andthe eastern peoples, and the mutual in¬terest which grew up between them, led tothe establishment and development of con¬tacts between and an intermingling of theirdifferent cultures. The eastern nomadic

tribes, for example, were strongly influencedby their encounters with the settled Slavs,whose sedentary way of life they graduallybegan to adopt.

Not infrequently, however, culturalinfluences arrived via intermediary peoples,absorbing in the process elements of manydifferent cultures. It was by no meansalways a matter of simply borrowing fromalien cultures; creative receptiveness andmodification were more often the rule.

Tillers of the soil from time immemorial,

the Slavs took a keen interest in the agricul¬tural practices of the eastern peoples. Itwas thanks to Byzantium and the Arabsthat rice came to Europe from the distantcountries of the East; in Russia it wasknown as "Saracen millet". As early as theseventeenth century. Tsar Aleksei Mikhai-lovich had a special garden laid out close toMoscow, where plants from the East weregrown on an experimental basis. Russianambassadors always endeavoured to bringback new types of plants from easternlands, and more than one envoy to Chinawas instructed to procure "tea bushes".

Rare animals, including lions, tigers,camels and elephants, were also broughtback from the East to the Slav countries.

Camels arrived in Poland as early as thetenth century; Prince Mieszko I sent one asa gift to the German Emperor. In the six¬teenth century the Shah of Iran presented anumber of elephants to Ivan the Terrible,and in 1741 fourteen of them arrived simul¬

taneously in Saint Petersburg. A special"elephant court" was built for these exoticanimals, who were looked after by Indiankeepers. News of these fantastic creaturesfrom beyond the seas spread by word ofmouth through the towns and villages ofRussia, and, transformed in appearance bypopular imagination, they began to figurein the wood carvings with which the pea¬sants decorated their houses.

Articles made by Oriental craftsmenwere imported into the Slav countries,while Slav craftsmanship was highly es¬teemed in the East. It was no coincidence

that experienced master craftsmen of Slavorigin were to be found at the courts ofmany eastern potentates. In the thirteenthcentury there was a whole colony of Rus-

30

sians in Karakorum, the Mongol capital.One of them, a skilled goldsmith namedKosma, built a throne for Khan Koyuk, andfashioned the great seal of state whoseimprint is preserved on a letter from theKhan to the Pope.

Cultural relations with the countries of

the East also influenced the daily life of theSlav peoples. It was in Mongolia that theRussians first came across tea, at a recep¬tion given by Altyn-Khan in 1616. The Rus¬sian ambassadors were treated to milk with

melted butter, "with leaves of some kind in

it". They at first declined to accept tea as agift for the Russian Tsar, but finally agreed.Tea thus came to Russia considerably ear¬lier than to Holland and England, and for along time afterwards it remained the mainRussian import from China.

The habit of drinking tea, together withits Chinese name, chai, became wide¬

spread during the eighteenth century inRussia, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, Syriaand Egypt. The vessel which, in its nativeland, China, was used for mulling wine wasadapted for infusing tea, while water wasboiled in a Russian invention, the samovar.Many eastern peoples became acquaintedwith the samovar of Russia, which provedextremely popular in Central Asia, Turkey,

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Elephantsand envoysShown here are two of the

many lively and picturesqueworks of art which record the

relations between the Slav

countries and the East. Left, a

Japanese artist's impression ofthe famous Russian traveller and

diplomat Nikolai Rezanov, wholed a mission to Japan in 1804.Every detail of his uniform iscarefully described. Rareanimals such as lions, tigers andelephants were sometimes sentas gifts to Slav rulers by easternpotentates. When the firstelephant seen in Moscowarrived from Persia in the early18th century, the event wascommemorated by a popularwoodcut (above).

Iran and the Arab countries. In Kashmir, ithas even kept its Russian name.

The Europeans, the Slavs among them,learned much about science, includingmathematics, from the eastern peoples.The numerals still employed today are cal¬led "Arabic" (although they really origin¬ated in India). For their part, the Slavs tooka keen scientific interest in the East. Peter

the Great with his own hand corrected an

inaccurate map of the Caspian Sea andCentral Asia.

During the seventeenth century, YuriKrzanic, a Croatian living in Russia, com¬piled descriptions of Serbia, Mongolia andChina. Returning in 1680 to his native land,he presented his History of Siberia to thePolish king, Jan Sobieski, thereby makingan important contribution to knowledge ofthe Far East among the West Slavs.

The age-old lore of eastern folk-medicinewas highly regarded by the Slavs, who inturn played a major role in the introductionof western medical science in the East. In

the mid-nineteenth century, Russian doc¬tors founded the first hospital in Japan.The first doctor in Mongolia, Pavel Shas-tin, was a Russian. His methods of treat¬

ment made such an impression on the^Mongolians that for a long time the words F

31

vrach (doctor) and shastin were synony¬mous.

These long-standing relations with theEast left their imprint on the Slavonic lan¬guages. Historically and genetically theSlavs belong to the Indo-European peo¬ples, and for this reason their languagespreserve certain features which relate themto the Indo-European languages. More¬over, all Slav languages contain large num¬bers of borrowed words and grammaticalfeatures of eastern (and particularly Turkic)origin, while a whole series of Slav wordshave, as it were, "gone East".

Generations of descendants of ancient

eastern peoples have remained in the landsof the West Slavs. At the beginning of thiscentury, a Polish Orientalist visited onesuch group, the Karaims, and came acrossan old glossary of Polovtsian words in thehouse of a Karaim family. To his great as¬tonishment, the seven-year-old daughterof the house explained the text to him as heread it aloud. From generation to genera¬tion, this family had handed down a lan¬guage which had ceased to be spokenmany centuries earlier.

Slavonic architecture came under a

strong eastern influence. In its early days,the Byzantine tradition had a powerfulimpact, while somewhat later Muslimarchitecture, introduced by the Turks, leftits mark on the buildings of the SouthSlavs. Eastern influences are less pro¬nounced in the architecture of the West

Slav countries, in Poland and Czechoslova¬kia, although here too monuments of eas¬tern type may be found side by side withold Gothic churches. Monuments built byArmenian architects have survived in the

Ukraine and in Poland.

After the union of the Khanates of Kazan

and Astrakhan with Russia, eastern motifsbecame more prominent in Russian archi¬tecture. The famous Pokrovsky Church(Cathedral of Saint Basil the Blessed),

situated on Red Square in Moscow, wasbuilt in the national Russian Shater (or

tent) style of ecclesiastical architecture,but also incorporates a number of easternelements.

Traces of eastern influences may also befound in ancient Russian folklore: several

tales (bylinyj contain echoes of Turkicepics. Many of them refer to heroes withTurkic names, and the events they describereflect the history of the relations betweenvarious branches of the Turkic peoples.

The intermingling of Slav and easterncultures was not only a source of mutualenrichment, but also made a substantialcontribution to world civilization as a

whole. Today, the launching of an Indiansatellite by a Soviet rocket or the practiceof ancient Tibetan medicine on the shores

of the Baltic occasion no more surprisethan the appearance of a turbanned Indianon the streets of Prague or of a fair-skinnedEuropean amid the hubbub of an easternbazaar.

Any major culture is the product of con¬tact and intermingling with many others,great and small. History has shown thatcreative borrowing is an essential factor incultural development and that attempts atcultural isolationism lead inevitably toimpoverishment.

Olzhas O. Suleimenov

This 11th-century bas-reliefsculpture on slate depictsCybele, Mother of theGods, reclining on a chariotdrawn by lions. It wasdiscovered in Kiev's

Pecherskaya LavraMonastery, Russia's oldestmonastic establishment,whose monks lived in cells

hollowed out of cliffs

overlooking the RiverDnieper. Mythologicalmotifs from Antiquity,especially Hercules andCybele, often figure inKievan 11th-century art.

KIEVThe mother

of Russian cities

by Yuri Asseyev

YURI ASSEYEV, Sower architect and profes¬sor of the history of architecture, is assistant tothe rector of the Kiev Institute of Art.

32

THE heyday of the ancient RussianState, whose territory stretchedfrom the White Sea to the Black Sea

and from the Carpathians to the steppelandof the Volga, began in the tenth centurywith the unification of the East Slav tribes

around Kiev. It lasted until the fourth

decade of the twelfth century, when thedevelopment of feudalism led to a processof fragmentation. During these centuriesthe most outstanding masterpieces ofancient Russian art and architecture were

created.

The roots of Kievan art were threefold.

The first ran backwards in time, towardsthe rich cultural heritage of the East Slavsthemselves. The second grew out of theliving conditions and the demands of theState in ancient Russia. The third stretched

beyond the frontiers of Russia itselftowards the accumulated experience ofother countries and above all of Byzantium,the custodian of the great cultural tradi¬tions of Antiquity.

The golden age of ancient Russian artwas eulogized in oral epics and in writtenworks alike, and nowhere more so than inthe cycle of poems (byliny) which com¬memorate the exploits of the Kievan war¬riors llya of Murom, Dobrynya Nikitichand Alyosha Popovich. Conserved in the

popular memory over the centuries, thesepoems transmit a message of pride andadmiration inspired by the grandeur andpower of the Kievan State.

The same sense of belonging to a greatand illustrious country permeates the Dis¬course on Law and Grace composed in themid-eleventh century by Hilarión, theMetropolitan of Kiev. Praising the princesof Russia, he writes, "Not in some miser¬able and unknown country did they rule,but in the Russian land, whose name isknown and whose voice is heard in the

four corners of the universe".

The adoption of Christianity in 989 A.D.brought Russia into closer contact with theChristian world, and above all with the

world of Orthodox Christianity. By then theRussians had a written language, and theywere able to practise the new religion intheir native tongue. This was a powerfulstimulus to the development of originalfeatures in their art.

Patriotism was an important componentof the ancient Russian sense of beauty, andhad a strong influence on lyrical poetry.Indeed, love for the homeland and thenatural environment is a leitmotif which

runs through ancient Russian art, particu¬larly the epic poems. It echoes through theRussian chronicles; it lies at the heart of the

famous Lay of Igor's Campaign; and itfinds expression in the Tale of the Ruin ofthe Russian Land, whose author proclaims:"0 Russian land, how radiantly bright andbeautifully adorned you are! Many and sur¬prising are your charms: your lakes, yourrivers and your sacred springs, your steepmountains and your lofty hills, your thick,leafy forests and your lovely fields, yourmonastery gardens and your churches..."

The building of cities, fortresses andcastles was an extremely important activitywhich provided Russian architects with awealth of opportunities for developing andperfecting their skills. The early cities,whose buildings, naturally enough in acountry of forests, were for the most partmade of wood, usually consisted of a forti¬fied nucleus (the detinets) whose precinctscontained the palaces of princes, noblesand their retinues. Around this central area

lay the outer city, whose ramparts shelter¬ed the bulk of the population. At the edgeof the city were the districts where thecraftsmen and tradesmen lived. During theeleventh and twelfth centuries, the popula¬tions of Kiev, Novgorod, Smolensk, Cher¬nigov, Vladimir Volynsky and other majorRussian cities numbered tens of thou¬

sands, which made them among the most kdensely populated centres of Europe. t

33

m§gfo¡

f¡r,tiWith their ornately constructed and

high-towered wooden palaces, their manywooden and stone-built churches and

monasteries, the Russian cities were animpressive sight to the merchants fromGermany and Central Asia, from Italy andthe Arab Caliphate, from Scandinavia andByzantium, who made their way towardstheir crowded market-places. These visi¬tors, together with the Russian merchantsthemselves, who travelled from theirhomes in Kiev, Novgorod and Smolensk onlong journeys overseas, brought to Russiaa great variety of goods and articles offoreign make, which served as models andas inspiration for the local craftsmen.

The tenth century saw a sharp rise inRussian standards of craftsmanship and inthe output of Russian craftsmen. In Kievalone sixty different crafts were practised.Jewellery made in this city was particularlyprized, and won praise from the Byzantinepoet Tzetzes and from Theophilus ofPaderborn, a tenth-century German authorwho wrote a voluminous treatise on the

jeweller's craft.

Foreign visitors to Kiev exclaimed thatnowhere else had they seen such beautifulthings, and this is not surprising if we takeas a single example the small piece ofjewellery, preserved to this day, consistingof no less than 5,000 soldered ringlets 0.06cm in diameter, in the centre of each ofwhich is a tiny precious stone measuring0.04 cm. On a surface measuring eightsquare centimetres, the jeweller fixed 120golden flowers on thread-like gilded stems.

The first mention of the use of stone for

the construction of a palace dates from 945A.D., but this material only began to bewidely used for building at the end of thetenth century. Even at this early stage,specifically Russian architectural tech¬niques and forms appeared, as distinctfrom those employed in Byzantium. Oneoriginal feature of Russian churches is theonion-shaped cupola, which in the opinionof many specialists was inspired by the hel¬mets of the Russian warriors.

The most precious treasure of KievanRussia is the Cathedral of Saint Sophia.According to the oldest surviving manus¬cript, the Russian Primary Chronicle, it wasfounded in 1037 on the site where, a yearearlier, Yaroslav the Wise had finally routedthe Pecheneg nomads. Beneath later addi¬tions and the reconstruction carried out

during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, the cathedral has to a remark¬able extent conserved its original outline.

With its majestic and harmonious archi¬tecture, Saint Sophia is a brilliant symbolof Russia's new-found unity under theauthority of the Kievan prince, as well as amemorial to victory over the nomads.Particularly outstanding are the frescoesdecorating the staircases which lead toupper galleries in two of the towers. Theydepict scenes of princely entertainment:wrestling matches, horse-races, hunting,bird-snaring, dancing, music-making andother activities. Beneath the galleries areportraits of the family of Yaroslav the Wise,including his daughters Anne, Elizabethand Anastasia, whom he married to thekings of France, Norway and Hungary.

teî»!ïîvWri

NVlYlfîÇîLpîJtïtÏYÎYiTiW'jfJiIiJ/fïvrfît ! t it it itiLc;I.'tiTjt»ti\>ititititlfcfSN^WfîtîWr

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l*&

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ILLUMINATED MINIATURE of St. Mark from a page of the OstromirGospel, a masterpiece of Kievan art. Copied in 1056-1057, this Slavonicmanuscript was lost for centuries and accidentally rediscovered in the18th century in the wardrobe of Catherine the Great. It is now preservedin the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library, Leningrad.

LUXURIANT FRESCOES AND MOSAICS cover the columns, walls and

vaulted ceilings of the 11th-century cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev.Predominantly Byzantine in their symbolism, execution andarrangement, they portray Apostles, Saints and martyrs and depictepisodes from the Old and New Testaments. Right, detail of frescoillustrating the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth, the mother ofJohn the Baptist.

Some 2,000 square metres of eleventh-century frescoes have been uncoveredfrom beneath later inscriptions and res¬tored, and these constitute only a fractionof the original decoration.

The mosaics covering the pillars, vaul¬ting and walls of the luminous central areaof the cathedral are equally striking, andthe representation of the Eucharist and theChurch Fathers in the central apse is amasterpiece of composition. Among theportraits of the Church Fathers, those ofSaint Lawrence, Saint Gregory Palmyrasand Saint John Chrysostom are executedwith supreme artistry.

Approximately 650 square metres ofmosaic have been preserved in the cathe¬dral. In the opinion of Soviet specialist Vic¬tor N. Lazarev, they are the work of at leasteight master craftsmen. The artistsemployed a wealth of colour, 177 differenttones in all, including 34 shades of green,23 shades of yellow and nine shades ofgrey.

Another celebrated architectural monu¬

ment of Kievan Russia is the Cathedral of

the Transfiguration in Chernigov, whichwas founded, according to the chronicles,around 1035-1036.

In the middle of the eleventh century, thedevelopment of feudalism in Kievan Russiastrengthened the self-confidence of indivi

dual regions, and the establishment of newcentres opened a fresh chapter in the his¬tory of Russian art and architecture. Theseparatist tendencies of different princesweakened the hold of Kiev, while theinfluence of the Church grew stronger andmonasteries sprang up all over the land.

Kiev, however, was still the Russiancapital, and the main source of cultural andartistic inspiration, much of which origina¬ted in the Pecherskaya Lavra Monastery.

The Church of Saint Michael with the

Golden Roof, founded between 1107 and1113, contained magnificent mosaics andfrescoes, its main apse being decoratedwith a mosaic of the Eucharist, like those ofSaint Sophia and the Church of theAssumption in the Pecherskaya Lavra. Butthis large-scale composition is quite diffe¬rent from the Saint Sophia Eucharist. Thefigures are portrayed with far greater free¬dom of expression,, more attention is paidto the delineation of their psychology, thecolours are bright and intense. The indivi¬dual heads are more diversified and their

expressions and gestures are more anima¬ted. These features, together with the ins¬criptions which accompany the portraits,suggest that the mosaic was produced bylocal masters. Some specialists believe thatone of them was the legendary Russianicon-painter Alipi.

34

The life and work of Alipi are described indetail in the Pechersk Paterik, a collectionof writings on the religious and culturalactivities of the Pecherskaya Lavra. Accor¬ding to the Paterik, Alipi "was not concer¬ned with growing rich". He painstakinglycollected old icons by other masters andrestored them, while his own works wereso beautiful that the Kievans believed that

the angels had a hand in their production.The power of healing was attributed to thepaints he used.

Many archaeological discoveries and lit¬erary sources attest to the Russian attach¬ment to pagan works of sculpture. Thisattachment probably explains why PrinceVladimir brought back ancient statues fromKhersonesus in the Crimea to decorate the

central square of Kiev.

Sculpture was associated with paganismand the Byzantine Church disapproved ofthis medium being used to depict religiousthemes: the sculptures in Saint Sophia inKiev and in the Cathedral of the Transfig¬uration in Chernigov are purely ornamental.

Another major centre of Kievan architec¬ture was Novgorod. Three of its earlytwelfth-century churches and monasterieshave survived in good order up to the pre¬sent day: the Cathedral of Saint Nicholasthe Wonderworker (1113) and the Monas¬

teries of Saint Anthony (1117) and Saint

George (1119). Their cupolas, surmountedby a cross and supported by six piers,reflect the influence of the Church of the

Assumption at the Pecherskaya Lavra.

At the same time, Novgorod's ownCathedral of Saint Sophia established anew tradition of powerful forms and aus¬tere stone and brick façades, in structureswith three or five cupola-topped towers. Aparticularly splendid example of this style isthe Cathedral of the Monastery of SaintGeorge.

The surviving fragments of the frescoesof the Monastery of Saint Anthony, datingfrom 1125, are Romanesque in character,but are executed in a particularly energeticand free-handed manner that prefiguressome of the features of later Novgorodpainting.

Legend has it that Anthony of Rome, thefounder of the monastery, arrived in Nov¬gorod after sailing across the Mediterra¬nean and Baltic Seas on a millstone.

Meanwhile, some fishermen of Novgorodhauled up a barrel full of precious objects,which Anthony himself had thrown over¬board at the beginning of his voyage. Itwas on these riches that the monasterywas constructed.

Fantastic though it may be, this typicallymedieval legend contains a grain of truth:those of Anthony's possessions which

have survived are of authentically Europeanorigin, and both literary and archaeologicalevidence show that the city of Novgorodenjoyed very close contacts with the West.

No trace has survived of Russian easel

paintings from the late tenth and the earlyeleventh centuries, although the chroniclesmention the icons which decorated the

early churches. During the eleventh andearly twelfth centuries, a great number oficons were imported into Russia fromByzantium. One of the most famous ofthem, "Our Lady of Vladimir", had a stronginfluence on the development of Russianicon painting.

Icons from Russia found their way toneighbouring countries, where they wereheld in high esteem; a notable example isPoland's celebrated Virgin otCzestokhova.

The production of illuminated booksreached heights of perfection in KievanRussia. Books had long been prized, care¬fully preserved and richly decorated in Rus¬sia. In the words of an eleventh-centurychronicler, they were "rivers that quenchthe thirst of the universe, sources of wis¬dom whose depths are unfathomable".

The oldest surviving Russian book, theOstromir Gospel, was written in 1056-1057by the deacon Grigori, for Ostromir theposadnik (mayor) of Novgorod. It is dec- iorated with a profusion of illuminated I

35

FOCAL POINT of Kiev's cultural, social

and religious life was the cathedral of St.Sophia (dedicated in 1037), built by PrinceYaroslav the Wise as part of plans toemulate the splendours of Byzantium.Little of the ancient edifice, whose 13

cupolas symbolized Christ and thedisciples, has survived, and theextensively-restored exterior (above,eastern façade) is largely baroque. Aunique feature of St. Sophia is its cycle ofsecular frescoes depicting spectaclessimilar to those presented at Christmas tothe Emperor at Constantinople. Over 130merry-makers are shown juggling,disguised as fantastic animals, dancing,making music and hunting (below).

initials, head-pieces and miniature portraits' of the evangelists.

Interesting portraits of members of thefamily of Prince Yaropolk Izyaslavovich areto be found in the so-called Codex of Ger¬

trude (also known as the "Psalter of Trier")

which was compiled between 1078 and1087 and is today preserved in Italy (at Civi-dale in Lombardy). Written in Latin at thecommand of Egbert, Archibishop of Trier,it came a century later into the hands ofPrincess Gertrude of Poland, the wife ofPrince Izyaslav of Kiev, son of Yaroslav theWise. While in her possession, the manu¬script was further decorated with a numberof miniatures, including portraits of Ger¬trude's son Yaropolk and his wife Irina.

From about 1130 onwards, ancient Rus¬sia entered a stage of "feudal disintegra¬tion". If an all-Russian tradition persisted,the different principalities created their owncultural and artistic centres, where local

trends and tastes were intermingled withmore general features of artistic develop¬ment at that time. In the words of Acade¬

mician Boris A. Rybakov, twelfth-centuryRussia was a co-author of the many formsof the Romanesque style.

By the fourth decade of the century, thetypically Kievan tradition of building with amixture of stbne and brick had been aban¬

doned, and Russian architects began toturn to locally available materials. In theDnieper region and in Volynya, brick wasused. In Galicia and Vladimir-Suzdal,

limestone was at hand, and the façades ofbuildings are decorated with carvings inwhite stone. This feature finds masterful

expression in the Church of Saint Dimitri atVladimir (1194-1197) and in the Church ofthe Intercession built in 1165 at the mouth

of the River Nerl.

The greatest masterpieces of Russianicon painting in the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies are those of Saint Dmitri, fromthe town of Dmitrov near Moscow, the Vir¬gin of the Pecherskaya Lavra, and the Vir¬gin of the Novgorod Dormition, all ofwhich are now in the Tretyakov Gallery inMoscow.

If Russian art branched out in different

directions as each feudal principality asser¬ted its independence, its tap-root conti¬nued to draw strength from the originalsource Kiev. And herein lies the signifi¬cance of the art of Kievan Russia, as the artof a united ancient Russian people fromwhich the art and architecture of the Rus¬

sians, the Ukrainians and the Byelorussianswould later develop.

Yuri Asseyev

Colour Pages

OPPOSITE PAGE

The Entry into Jerusalem, a late 15th orearly 16th-century icon of theNovgorod school. Icons of this periodare often referred to as "mixed school"

icons because they combine thevigorous naturalistic style of Novgorodwith the elegance and spirituality ofthe Moscow school. Jerusalem is

depicted with the towers and walls ofNovgorod (top right). Christ looks backat a group of his disciples, whilst thepeople come out to welcome him,carpeting his path with their cloaksand with palm-tree branches.

Photo Bob Saler © Rapho, Paris

CENTRE DOUBLE PAGE

In the Moscow school of icon-painting,three great names stand out:Theophanes the Greek, AndreyRublyov (see page 21) and Dionysius(1440-1508). Dionysius carried on theRublyov tradition but his art wasperhaps more luminous as well asmore decorative and ornamental. This

icon, attributed to Dionysius, camefrom the Cathedral of the Dormition in'

the Moscow Kremlin and today ispreserved in the Tretyakov Gallery.Dating from about 1483, it portrays theMetropolitan Alexis holding the Biblein his left hand. The ¡con is bordered

with scenes from Alexis' life.

Photo Bob Saler © Rapho, Paris

Photo ® U.S. S R. Academy of Art, Leningrad

36

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UNI

.¡Y

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-

Ñt V

.'v ^.y ^>c

,

\ -1

Photos © Miodrag Djordjevic, Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library, Leningrad

The Morava school of painting marked thegolden age of Serbian art towards the closeof the Middle Ages. Frescoes, ¡cons andminiatures all demonstrate how artists of the

Morava school succeeded in portraying vivid,living personalities within the framework ofstylized forms. The four miniatures (across

both pages, above) by the master-painterRadoslav come from a New Testament datingfrom 1429, now in the Saltykov-ShchedrinPublic Library, Leningrad. The miniaturesdepict the four evangelists listening to thewords of God as whispered to them by theSpirit of Holy Wisdom. The symbolsattributed to each evangelist can be seenin the top corner of each painting.From left to right: St. Luke, with a bull; St.Mark, with a lion; St. Matthew, with anangel; and St. John, with an eagle.

The art

of the Morava School

Sensitivity and gracein fifteenth-century Serbia

by Svetozar Radojcic

Left, detail from a 14th-century fresco knownas "The Saracens", from the Church of St.Archangel, at Lesnovo, Macedonia,Yugoslavia. The relationships between theSaracens, the name by which the Muslimswere sometimes known in the West, and theSouth Slavs were often turbulent.

Photo © Yugoslav Cultural Centre, Paris

ANCIENT Serbian art began to flour¬ish towards the end of the twelfth

century, but went into decline

SVETOZAR RADOJCIC is a noted Yugoslavart historian who has carried out importantresearch into the art of medieval Serbia. He is

professor of the history of art at Be/gradeUniversity.

after 1459, when Turkish invaders occupiedthe fortress-town of Smederevo, the capi¬tal of the Serbian Tsars. Nevertheless, thisnational art survived, under the Ottoman

yoke, until the first decades of the eight¬eenth century. When the Turks finallyretreated from the Danube basin, Serbian .artists were ready to make their contribu-

41

tion to the late Baroque period of central' and western Europe.

Against the background of the turbulenthistory of the eastern Mediterraneanregion, the Balkan peninsula and theDanube basin, Serbian art, which hadformed an integral element of Byzantineculture, followed its own path of deve¬lopment.

When the great Serbian Empire crum¬bled after the disastrous battle of the

Maritza, in 1371, and the extinction of theNemanja dynasty, the princely families ofthe Lazareviói and the Brakovici struggledto retain their hold in the narrow territorythat stretched from the belt of land bet¬

ween the Danube and the Sava in the north

to the two Moravas in the south (these two

tributaries, which flow northward from theMacedonian border to meet in a single river

that joins the Danube east of Belgrade,should not be confused with the Morava of

Czechoslovakia, from which the vastregion of Moravia takes its name).

It was here that the Serbian "despotate"(a term borrowed from the Byzantine hi¬erarchy of government, and in no sensepejorative) had a short-lived existence bet¬ween 1402 and 1459, as the last outpost offree Christianity in the Islam-dominatedBalkans. In the struggle between the Chris¬tians and the Ottomans, this little Serbia ofthe south became the refuge of countlessemigrants from Byzantium, Mount Athos,Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania.

The roads leading to the despotate werecrowded with refugees: princes chasedfrom their principalities, bishops deprivedof their bishoprics, monks without monas¬teries and seigneurs who had lost their fiefsand castles. In their train followed a motleyretinue of writers, architects, painters,musicians and singers the whole constel¬lation of artists that surrounded the rich

and powerful figures of the day.

TEPHEN Lazarevió,son of Prince Lazar

who fell in battle in

1389 at Kosovo- Polje,where the Turks finallyestablished their supre¬

macy over the Serbs, was a typical repre¬sentative of his age. Bearing the title of"despot", conferred on him by the Byzan¬tine Emperor, liegeman of the king of Hun¬gary, vassal of the Sultan and commander-in-chief of his own army, warrior andpatron of letters and himself a poet, heattracted scores of writers to his court at

Belgrade. Sycophantic . contemporaries called him "the new Ptolemy". Hewas the founder of the Resava school (so-

called after the monastery that stood closeto the river of that name). This was not

merely a school of copyists, as has some¬times been slightingly suggested, but, as itwas referred to at the time, of"translators".

Contemporaneous with the Resavaschool, and created under the same aus¬pices, was a still more significant school. It

has sometimes been said that art is the pro¬

duct of peaceful and happy times; the ,Morava school, as it is called by historiansof Serbian art, which served as a nursery ofsensitivity and grace during a dark, doom-laden period, provides ample evidence thatnothing could be further from the truth.

From the twelfth century onwards, thequest for the aesthetic followed two pathswith artists seeking both outward and innerbeauty. These two contrasting and un¬evenly balanced trends, the point andcounterpoint of which are most apparent inarchitecture, reached their apogee duringthe years of the despotate.

The churches of the Morava school,

whose inner volumes were perfectly plan¬ned, and whose façades were covered withsumptuous decoration, were suited both tothe routine of daily offices and to the occa¬sional splendour of great ceremonies. Theirfloor plan took the form of rectangles withsemi-circular ends, above which soared thegreat conches of the apses and the crownsof their domes. Their whole structure was

adapted to the requirements of a complexliturgy involving numerous clergy, twochoirs, and the spectacular processionsdepicted in contemporary frescoes. All thedifferent sections, passages and partitionswere functional and acoustically perfect.

The vocal music which completed thebeauty of these churches has only recentlybeen re-discovered. In fact it was not until

after the Second World War that Serbian

manuscripts dating from the turn of thefourteenth-fifteenth centuries and contain¬

ing musical notations were deciphered andtheir notes transcribed. Two of the proces¬

sions which appear frequently in ancientpaintings the "Grand entrance" and the"Communion of the Apostles" can nowbe accompanied not only by the words,which were already known, but also by theauthentic musical background which givesto the gestures of the depicted characters astrange, unfathomable, almost unearthlyrhythm, a music which inspires in its list¬eners the sentiment of unshaken and un-shakeable belief.

The earliest frescoes, painted in the mid-fourteenth century, portrayed the unusualfigures of the "chapel-masters" in theirrichly decorated robes and strange, white,three-cornered hats. Now we not onlyknow their names Stefan, Isaija andJoakim but also the music they com¬

posed.

The beauty of these hallowed, music-haunted places was enriched by a newstyle of wall painting, in frescoes whichcapture the same subtle and musical deli¬cacy of tone and from which powerful andsevere brush-strokes are entirely absent.The human portraits they contain are styl¬ized, plastic, almost sculptural; like themusic, the figures seem unearthly.

From this point onwards, the painters ofthe Morava school abandoned the tech¬

niques employed for earlier frescoes infavour of the more subtle approach used

for painting on wood. Attitudes and move¬ments are captured and, as it were, frozenfor all time; yet the gestures remain gentleand harmonious. In the paintings of theSerbian despotate, scenes from Christ's lifeon earth are favourite themes: warrior-

saints, monks, bishops and preachers alikeare represented as "celestial men and ter¬restrial angels", glowing with outwardbeauty and inner perfection, inhabitants ofa universe whose only dimensions werepictural, literary and musical.

This art is a faithful reflection of the

mysticism of Eastern Christianity. There issomething dramatic in the artistic expres¬sion of the wonder provoked by revelation.The sanctuary of the church, the "holy ofholies", is hidden behind a partition towhich icons are attached, the iconostasis

which, like the scenae irons of ancienttheatres, contains three doors draped withrich fabrics. At certain specific moments inthe rituals, these curtains are raised. Thelarger churches were decorated with richpolychrome stone facings: broad ornamen-<tal bands, arcades and large, rose-shapeddesigns, and figures executed in low relief,especially around the windows. There wasa great variety of decorative motifs: scroll¬work, angels, mythical animals and enig¬matic shapes, among which, at the Kaleniómonastery, for example, stood the centaurChiron, who taught music to the Greekhero Achilles.

HE ancient dichotomyof outer and inner

beauty is a recurrentfeature of works of the

Morava school, reveal¬ed in its architecture, its frescoes, itsicons, its rich brocades, its jewellery andabove all its miniature paintings. Invariablythe ornamentation expressed an outerbeauty behind which transcendent, mys¬terious, barely perceptible values lay con¬cealed.

This grandiose vision of a perfect world,evoked during an age of utmost peril, exer¬cised a profound attraction on the survi¬vors of Christian Byzantium; for themystics and intellectuals who, during thefifteenth century, wandered between Italyand the distant Russian steppes, it had thevalue of a prophecy.

The merit of this fifteenth-century art,

which emerged from a Serbia whose fron¬tiers had been so reduced, which was both

lordly and monastic and which was theproduct of luxury and asceticism alike, wasthat it reconciled the outer with the inner

beauty. European art was at a crossroads:while the West turned its back on medieval

thought and art, the East continued tocling to them tenaciously, adopting a scep¬tical attitude both towards matter, nature

and the power of human reason, andtowards the spirituality of antiquity fromwhich, nevertheless, it derived its art anart in which form alone resembled reality,yet was itself a symbol and an allegory. Thefigures of the writers embraced by theMuses in the miniatures of the master

painter Radoslav are perhaps the finestexamples of this complex, traditionalist cul¬ture, which found its most perfect expres¬sion in the art of painting.

Svetozar Radojcic

42

DUBROVNIKGateway to the Latin West

by Vuk Vuco

Photos Nenad Gattin © University Press Liber, Zagreb

Ever since medieval times when Slav and Latin settlements merged to form a single city on apromontory jutting out into the Adriatic, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia (Croatia) has formed a link between Eastand West. Although the port was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake in 1667, vestiges of theancient walls and bastions that once guarded its seaward approaches (above right) have survived toframe the modern port (aerial view above left).

THE seventh decade of the seven¬

teenth century was an unhappyone for Europe. Throughout the

1660s waves of disasters and afflictions of

all kinds swept the continent, from Londonto the shores of Asia Minor, from Sicily toScandinavia. Wars and epidemics wererampant, and claimed hundreds of thou¬sands of victims.

At this time one proud European city onthe Adriatic enjoyed the blessings of peaceand prosperity in such abundance that its

VUK VUCO, Yugoslav poet and novelist, is alsoa critic specializing in the dramatic arts. Hisnovel Les Voleurs de Feu (The Fire Robbers) has

been published in France by Seuil publishers,Paris. He is currently editor-in-chief of Danas, amagazine for Yugoslavs living in France.

citizens might have been forgiven forthinking that the kindly waters of their seawould protect them forever. This city, oneof the most beautiful in seventeenth-

century Europe, had a banner which borethe inscription Libertas freedom. Its namewas Dubrovnik.

On 6 April 1667, the Wednesday of HolyWeek, a cloudless day dawned overDubrovnik. A calm, unruffled sea stretched

beneath an azure sky. By 8 o'clock thatmorning the sky was still clear and thewaves lapped gently against the city fortifi¬cations. A group of notables strolled out¬side the palace, waiting for the bell to sum¬mon them to the Great Council, which metat Eastertide to pardon convicted criminals.In the palace chapel a religious ceremonyattended by the ruler and by Dubrovnik'shighest dignitaries was drawing to a close, iThe bishop was intoning a prayer of grati- |

43

tude for the peace and plenty that prevailed

in the tiny republic and expressing his hopethat they would long continue.

At that moment the earth began to trem¬ble. Within a matter of seconds, amid a

crescendo of noise, the entire city wastransformed by an earthquake into a massof rubble. Palaces, monuments, churches,fortifications the pride of Dubrovnikwhich had been lovingly and painstakinglycreated over the centuries, all collapsedlike a house of cards.

The ruler of Dubrovnik, his retinue and

the highest servants of State perished inthe cataclysm along with three-quarters ofthe city's population. On the nearby islandof Lopud, which was also hit by the earth¬quake no more than 400 of the 14,000¡slanders survived.

Misfortunes never come singly. Theearthquake was followed by a fire and atidal wave. Then came an army of looterswho for weeks on end pillaged the ruinsand robbed the dead. The enemies of

Dubrovnik, who until then had never daredto attack the mighty fortress, flocked byland and sea to the stricken and defence¬

less city.

Several times in its history Dubrovnik hasrisen from the ashes of disaster. Barely two

centuries before the earthquake of 1667 thecity had experienced and survived anotherterrible earthquake followed by an epi¬demic of plague which decimated thepopulation. But neither natural catastro¬phes nor the vicissitudes of history couldwipe this remarkable city from the map.

Many cities in the modern world pridethemselves on their cosmopolitanism andboast that they provide a favourable settingfor the intermingling of different cultures.Few can rival Dubrovnik as a cross-roads

where the cultural heritage of the East andWest' have met and been mutually en¬riched. For Dubrovnik is remarkable not

only for its vitality and its resilience in theface of ordeals, but as a gem which hasbeen polished for centuries in the ebb andflow of East and West.

At the time of the great invasion of Dal-matia by the Avaro-Slavs, around 614A.D., the settlement of Epidaurus (present-day Cavtat) was sacked and razed to theground. Tradition has it that the survivorsof this massacre went on to found a new

colony, Ragusium, two hours' marchnorthwards along the rocky coast.

Close by this settlement, whose name isderived from a Latin word meaning escarp¬ment, was the Slav forest colony ofDubrovnik (dubrova in Serbo-Croat means

"woody"). The initial antagonism betweenthe two populations slowly disappeared,and the two colonies merged into a singlecity. By the beginning of the 13th century"Ragusium-Dubrovnik" had become asingle community where different ethnicgroups, cultures and religions developed aspirit of coexistence which still survivestoday.

In the course of its long history, Dubrov¬nik has transformed its handicaps intoadvantages: it has turned poverty intowealth, calmed the warlike, and reooncileddifferent religions and opposing economicforces. All this it has achieved by obeyingwhenever possible an ancient local proverbaccording to which "A bad quarrel isalways better than a good war".

Right from the start Dubrovnik's econo¬mic life was based on seafaring and trade.In the.ninth century sailors plied eastwardsas far as the Black Sea and northwards as

far as England, whence they set out oneven longer voyages in the Atlantic. By thebeginning of the thirteenth century its fleetwas so large that the tiny republic began tochallenge Venice for mastery of the seas.Through a combination of diplomatic andmaritime skills, Dubrovnik had become agreat seaport by the 14th century.

Dubrovnik rapidly became the maintrading centre of the Balkan Peninsula, andits operations extended as far as Italy andother Mediterranean countries. Nor was

the shift of maritime trade from the Medi¬

terranean to the Atlantic a major drawbackto the city's economic fortunes ; indeed itwas in the sixteenth century and the firsthalf of the seventeenth century that

Dubrovnik achieved the very height of itsprosperity.

To preserve its freedom, the city alwayshad to pay a high price to the Venetians,the Byzantines, the Turks and the Slavkingdoms in the north. The Serb kingdomscast particularly covetous eyes on the tinyindependent state, attracted by the wealthit had garnered from the four corners of theearth but above all because it was an

incomparable outlet to the sea. And yet thesea receded before them like a mirage asthey advanced, for all their efforts to wageopen war against Dubrovnik ended infailure. Powerful protectors Slav Tsarsand Latin Kings alike rushed to aid therepublic whenever danger threatened.

After two perilous centuries, a ruler whounderstood the true importance of Dubrov¬nik came to the Serbian throne in the per¬son of Tsar Dusan. An able statesman and

a prodigious expansionist, Dusan decidedto withdraw the sword of aggression andextend the hand of friendship. Like theother Slav rulers, indeed like all the Slavs,he was mesmerized by Dubrovnik. Butparadoxically, for he was after all a Serb,he felt that the city should be treated as aprecious relic. In 1346, shortly after hiscoronation as Tsar, he set out for Dubrov¬nik on a peace mission.

The meeting between Dusan and thepatricians of Dubrovnik beneath the gildedbeams of the Great Council Chamber

44

Customs house, mint and granary, the16th-century Sponza Palace (above left)played a central role in Dubrovnik'seconomy. In niche beneath the roof isstatue of St. Vlaho (St. Blasius), the

city's patron saint. The early 16th-century artist Nikola Bozidarevicportrayed St. Vlaho holding a model ofDubrovnik in painting (above) whichforms part of a triptych in the city'sDominican church.

marked a turning point in the history of theSerbian state and of the entire Slav world.

It opened up a new channel of communica¬tion along which different traditions couldflow and be exchanged. This fruitfulalliance with Dubrovnik, a child of Westerncivilization, would open for the Slavs agateway to European culture.

Medieval chronicles recount how certain

Serbian dignitaries persistently urgedDusan to attack and conquer Dubrovnikand how he categorically refused, prefer¬ring instead to confirm the city's centuries-old freedoms and to shower lavish gifts onits churches and monasteries. Rather than

trample on the banner of St. Vlaho, protec¬tor of the city, he would send young Slavsto Dubrovnik for their education. Contem¬

porary writers report him as saying: "I res¬pect the Senate of Dubrovnik for its signalvirtues. Through its Latin erudition, itswealth and its trade, Dubrovnik is a fittingmodel for the edification and the prosper¬ity of my reign; this fine city will be thetrading centre of all the territories of myrealm."

In more recent centuries Dubrovnik also

had to pay a high price for its freedom.When it came under Napoleon's domina¬tion in 1806, and two years later ceased toexist as a free republic, the city fathersfomented a plot without parallel in history.

As a gesture of protest and as a means ofensuring that no descendants of theirsshould ever bé subjected to foreign rule,the families of Dubrovnik vowed not to

procreate until they were free once more.From that moment until the liberation of

the city in 1815 no child was born to thenobility of Dubrovnik.

In a long history stretching over twelvecenturies, Dubrovnik has never spared anyeffort to preserve its freedom. This passionfor independence may be partly due to thefact that the city's geographical positionmakes it a point at which world cul¬tural trends and influences converge. Butthis is only part of the story. Dubrovnik hassucceeded in resisting threats and dangersfrom East and West because of its links

with what is today Croatia, a hinterlandfrom which it has drawn linguistic and cul¬tural sustenance. The Renaissance saw a

great flowering of Croatian literature inDubrovnik whose lasting achievements inpoetry and the dramatic arts are just asimportant as the city's architectural master¬pieces. By drawing life from the Croatianartistic genius, Dubrovnik brought Croatiainto the great movement which was theRenaissance in the West.

Travellers of the past penned ecstaticdescriptions of their first glimpse ofDubrovnik from the sea. "An enchantingpicture opens out before your eyes", wroteone of them. "The islands are deployed likeships right as far as the port of Dubrovnik.Your boat glides over the calm sea- androunds the lighthouse; it is as if you wereentering wonderland..."

Today the spell is still unbroken. Themodern traveller is transported into thepast as he approaches Dubrovnik's marbleand granite monuments eternally caressedby the sun.

The city's long main street, the Stradun,runs along a valley which was formely amarshy channel dividing the Latin settle¬ment from the Slav colony. Seven hundredyears ago the channel was filled in andbecame a thoroughfare along which Latinsand Slavs would live together forever.

The people of Dubrovnik remain proudof their city and its cosmopolitan traditions.Walk along the Stradun today, especially inthe summer months, and you will heardozens of different languages being spo¬ken. With its beautiful palaces, fountainsand churches, Dubrovnik has remainedfaithful to its past. Each summer its musicand drama festivals attract great perfor¬mers from all over the world, furtherevidence that the cosmopolitan spirit stilllives on. The Slavs in our time the

Yugoslavs have preserved this gatewayto the Mediterranean. This city on theshores of a sea which cradled more than

one civilization, continues to be a focus forthe exchange of traditions. Here where thehistory of Europe began it continues to bemade and enriched.

Vuk Vuco

45

The Nikolo-Karelsky monastery, built in the 16th century on theshores of the White Sea (where the town of Severodvinsk now

stands) was fortified in 1692 with the addition of a wooden

octagonal tower (right), a stockade and watchtowers. In 1932part of this outstanding example of Russian fort architecture wastransported to the Kolomenskoye Museum in Moscow.Eighteenth-century wooden carving of the sun (below) onceadorned the mast of a Russian river-boat. Opposite page, a sirinor bird-woman. Her wings protectively unfolded, this guardianspirit of the household kept watch over the window of an isba(log hut) of ancient Russia. Unesco, in collaboration with theInternational Association for the Study and Dissemination of SlavCultures, is currently preparing an illustrated book on the historyof Slav wooden architecture and sculpture. Specialists fromByelorussia, Bulgaria, Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, theUkraine and Yugoslavia are participating in the project, headedby Professor Andrej Ryszkiewicz of Poland.

Workmanshipin wood

AMONG the tools and instruments of daily life in the coun¬tryside of old Russia, the distaff, not surprisingly, held aprominent place; for many months of the year it was the

country woman's constant companion.

Bridegrooms gave distaffs and spinning-benches as wedding-presents to their brides, and for this reason, their carved decora¬tions frequently depicted scenes related to the marriage ceremony:the journey of the groom to the bride's house, the couple's firstencounter, their rendezvous and walks together. A brand-newspinning-bench distinguished the newly-married woman from her wfriends when they spent the long autumn and winter evenings f

47

L together, while particularly beautiful specimens were handeddown by the womenfolk from generation to generation.

In the Kalinin region of the U.S.S.R., archaeologists have disco¬vered a perfectly preserved distaff dating from the second millen¬nium B.C., which closely resembles nineteenth-century models inshape.

Both the form and the decoration of the distaff enable us to

identify its place of origin. Thus, the craftsmen of the Vologod-skaya region preferred ornamentation in the form of large-scalegeometrical figures circles, triangles or zigzag lines.

The painters of Mezen, using simple brush-strokes of black on abrown background, sketched galloping horses and deer andsoaring flights of birds; those of the Lake Onega region preferredto portray luxurious flowers and bouquets in a setting of brilliantlycontrasting colours. The distaffs painted by the descendants of theancient Novgorodians, the village painters of the basin of theSevernaya Dvina, are highly distinctive; their decoration is a verita¬ble pageant of colours, with a variety of themes depicting fantastic 'animals and birds, as well as exotic plants.

Wood was used not only for the construction of dwellings andoutbuildings, but also for sacred images, churches, boats anddomestic furniture. Master wood-carvers produced kitchen uten¬sils and children's toys, together with decorations for their isbas(cottages) and the mastheads of their boats.

One of the most curious and widely distributed examples ofdomestic wood-carving in the Volga region is the bereginya,whose name indicates that its purpose was to protect (oberegat)the person or object with which it was connected. It would appearthat such images, in their earliest form, were in the shape ofrusa/ki, or water-nymphs, and were part of the carved decorationof boats; indeed, objects of this type are still known askorabel'naya rez'ba, or "boat-carvings". Their origins lie in the dis¬tant ages when people invoked the protection of a benevolentdeity against evil spirits as they set off on journeys by water. Far¬ther north protection was provided by the okh/upen', a huge larchlog which was fixed to the roof of the cottage. The roots were left

The wooden figurine (top) is a household spirit ordomovoi (from the Russian word dorn, meaning house).Carved by a 14th-century craftsman, it was discoveredduring excavations at Novgorod (U.S.S.R). Above,"Original Sin", detail from a baroque iconostasis (theicon-adorned screen which separates the sanctuaryfrom the nave in eastern Christian churches ofBy7antine tradition) in the church of St. Marina in

Plovdiv (Bulgaria). Right, sculpture evoking fertilityis by a modern Bulgarian artist, Anton Doncev.

48

attached and shaped into a somewhat fanciful outline of a horse, aduck or a deer.

Originally revered as sacred animals, these objects acquired overthe ages such perfect form that long after people had forgottentheir function as protective symbols, they continued to be incorpo¬rated as essential decorative features of wooden buildings. In theRussian North, villages containing huts decorated in this mannermay still be found today, whilst in some places the okhlupni fromold buildings are incorporated in new constructions.

The bird of paradise, or Sirin, was another decorative element ofpeasant houses, and carried across the centuries the echoes of the

old pagan beliefs of the northern countryfolk. Another creature offairy-tale and myth'was the lion, which clasped in its jaws the endof its own long tail. If its head was at times more like that of a dogthan a lion, we must remember that the old village wood-carvershad never seen such exotic animals, and had to rely on their ownimagination in portraying them.

Door frames and window frames also reflected the

wood-carver's concern to decorate the ¡spa, and resembled the oldRussian napkins with lacy fringes which were traditionally used todecorate icons or portraits.

Popular imagination also found quaint expression in the bee¬hives carved out of tree-trunks, in the form, for example, of a bearwhose paw concealed the opening from which the honey wasdrawn, or decorated in relief with the figure of a woman whoseeyes and mouth served as entrances for the bees.

Hollow vessels in the shape of ducks were carved from treeroots to hold alcoholic beverages. In northern villages, carvedwooden "birds of goodness" were hung beneath the rafters ofhuts, over the large table with benches along the wall which servedto receive guests in the "prettiest" corner of the hut. In the risingcloud of warm steam from the samovar, the "bird of goodness"rotated smoothly and solemnly as if surveying the cottage, inwhich dead wood had sprung to new life under the village crafts¬man's hand.

A dobraya (literally "she who is good") orbird of goodness. Such small masterpieces ofthe woodcarver's art were found in homes

throughout the Slav world. Suspended fromthe rafters, they gyrated slowly in the heatrising from the samovar.

A traditional wedding present frombridegroom to bride, the distaff wasboth a symbol of domestic life and anindispensable piece of householdequipment. Slav craftsmen excelled atfashioning highly elaborate distaffs andspinning-benches adorned with carvings,giltwork, polychrome decoration andpokerwork depicting scenes related tomarriage and the home. The founding ofa home and a family is evoked in 19th-century example (above): husband andwife bring together trunk and branchesto form a fruitful family tree.

A bear serves as the handle of this wooden utensil

from Byelorussia, once used for "ironing" linen.

49

Photo © APN, Moscow

An open-air museum of religiousand secular architecture has been

established on Kiji, one of the manyislands that dot Lake Onega inKarelia. Photo shows some of the

22 cupolas surmounting the Churchof the Transfiguration, the mostremarkable edifice on the island.

Not a single nail was used by theanonymous carpenters who builtthe church in 1714.

50

Fretwork patterns on the wall of an isba(cottage) at Vologda, some 300 km fromMoscow, evoke the lace fringes ofnapkins traditionally used to decorateicons.

Some country churches, such as thislittle 19th-century chapel in Poland,were simple wooden structures toppedby a cupola and a bell-tower.

Below, the Church of St. Paraskeva

(who was the personification of GoodFriday) in the village of Alexandrovkais a typical example of eighteenthcentury religious architecture insouthern Ukraine.

Left, wooden windmill

constructed at the

beginning of the 20thcentury in the Kharkovregion of the Ukraine hasbeen transported to theMuseum of Popular Art andTraditions at Kiev

(U.S.S.R). Below, anatomyof the interior of a windmill

near Mogilev inByelorussia.

î

51

Hives of goodhumourExamples of wooden bee-hives which Slavcraftsmen carved to represent animal andhuman forms which were by turnshumorous, dramatic and caricatural. The

bees came and went through the holespierced in the chest of the Russian bear,through the poignantly dilated eyes of theByelorussian woman and through thenavel of the bearded Polish hermit whose

skull cap could be lifted when it was timeto extract the honey. Other hives take theform of a Slovak couple, a pipe-smokingpatriarch from Yugoslavia, and twobetrothed lovers from Poland.

Poland Poland

Russia

Byelorussia Czechoslovakia

Yugoslavia

52

Three expressive pieces of religious sculpture in wood from threeparts of the Slav world. Right, King David, prophet, poet andmusician, as depicted by an 18th-century sculptor of Smolensk inRussia. Below, portrait of the Apostle Peter sculpted by a 19th-century village craftsman from Gorodishche in the Brest-Litovsk

region of Byelorussia. Below right, St. John of Nepomuk, anecclesiastic of 14th-century Bohemia who died rather than betraythe secrets of the confessional. He is here depicted by a 19th-century Polish wood-carver from the Limanova region.

53

The Bohemian religious reformerJan Hus (1369-1415) and Martin

Luther (1483-1546), the leader ofthe Protestant Reformation in

Germany, pictured (symbolicallybut anachronistically) servingcommunion together in a 16th-century woodcut by the greatGerman artist Lucas Cranach.

THE COMMON HERITAGE

A cultural community stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea

by Slavomir Vollman

TIE non-Slav peoples became awareof the existence of the Slavs as an

entity during the first eight centu¬ries A.D., recognizing the relative unifor¬mity of their spoken language and of theircultural, social and ethnic characteristics.Indeed, they painted colourful pictures of

SLAVOMIR VOLLMAN, Czech specialist incomparative Slavic literature, is deputy directorof the Institute of Czech and World Literature of

the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences andhead of the Institute's department of Slavic andComparative Literature. Vice-President of theInternational Association for the Study and Dis¬semination of Slav Cultures, he is deputy editorof Slavia (Review of Slavic Philology) and amember of the International Committee of

Slavists. He taught at the University of Californiaat Los Angeles in 1968-69 and is currently amember of the department of Czech and Slovakliterature at Charles University, Prague.

this group of Indo-European tribes at a timewhen the Slavs themselves, who hadspread out in a massive and powerfulmovement of expansion over a vast areastretching from the west bank of the Elbeto the Volga, from Rügen on the Baltic tothe Péloponnèse and from northern Italy toSyria, had neither a written language norany of the other means of communicationwith each other to sustain their self-

awareness and their sense of unity.

The ancient Slavs undoubtedly referredto themselves as Slovene, and this was the

name given to them by Latin, Greek andGerman writers, from the sixth-century his¬torians Pseudo-Caesarius, Procopius andJordanes onwards. The earliest Arab tra¬vellers who came into contact with the

Slavs as they stepped on to the pages ofwritten history agreed with these authorsthat they were tall, shapely and fair-haired.

The "national identity" of the Slavspreoccupied all those who wrote aboutthem. The Byzantine historian Procopiussaid that "they are not subjected to theauthority of a single leader, but have livedfrom ancient times under a democracy;

consequently, everything involving theirwelfare, whether for good or ill, is referredto the people". Other sources mentiontheir warlike character and virile courage.In the early Middle Ages, when the Slavsbegan to behave in a manner that wasalready common in the "civilized" (i.e.Latin) West, their adversaries complainedthat they were cruel and ferocious.

Thus, from a very early date, the non-Slav world had its preconceived notionsabout "Slav unity", "Slav character" andeven about the "Slav soul", notions thatwere full of contradictions and frequentflights of fantasy, that blended fact with

54

fiction and formed part of a complex "East-West" mythology.

At times the Slavs adopted the charact¬eristics attributed to them by foreigners,when these coincided with their own feel¬

ings and experiences. Consciousness oftheir common origin and linguistic affinity,and awareness that they shared the samehistorical destiny are reflected in their ear¬liest written literature, and appear in diffe¬rent forms throughout the whole of theirhistory. At the same time, however, therebegan in the early Middle Ages the processof formation, transformation and "crystalli¬zation" of individual Slav peoples withoutwhich their subsequent interrelationshipsin the cultural, political and other fieldscould not have developed. This contradic¬tory process, of integration on the onehand and differentiation on the other, wasto leave a profound imprint on the develop¬ment of their cultural relations from the"ninth to the nineteenth century, when itbecame a subject of scientific study.

In 1826, in the Hungarian city of Buda,Pavel Jozef Safarik published the firstserious attempt to present an overall viewof the development of Slav culture, underthe title Geschichte der Slawischen Spra¬che und Literatur nach allen Mundarten

(History of Slav Literature and Language inall its Dialects). The theme and conceptionof this work, its language and its place anddate of publication, together with the per¬sonality of the author himself, constitute astriking example of relations between theSlavs and the social and historical circum¬

stances in which these relations evolved.

Safarik has a rightful place in the historyboth of Czech and of Slovak culture and

literature. A Slovak by birth, and in hisyouth a poet in that language, he became ateacher in the Serbian high school at NoviSad, capital of one of the provinces of theHapsburg Empire. He was also a Czechscholar, and did not altogether favour themovement for the creation of a specificSlovak literary language, which reflectedthe nationalist aspirations of Slovakia at thetime and which led to a rupture in the oldCzech-Slovak linguistic and cultural com¬munity.

Safarik was neither an exception in hisage, nor in Slav cultural history as a whole.Cultural relations between the Slavs have

always been influenced to an importantextent by the action of such bilingual fig¬ures who wrote in two languages. TheGreek brothers Cyril and Methodius who,according to their biographers, were fluentspeakers of the Slavonic tongue, used theirknowledge of the dialect spoken by theSlav population of their native Thessalo-nica to lay the foundations of the first Sla¬vonic written language, created in GreatMoravia; they were also the authors of theearliest Slav literature which their Moravian

disciples carried with them to the lands ofthe South Slavs, who participated enthu¬siastically in this further development. Intheir turn, and right up to the sixteenthcentury, hundreds of South Slavs settled inRussia, and contributed to the literary andcultural development of the East Slavs. Thelate tenth-century Archbishop of Prague,Voytech (Saint Adalbert), was a Czechwho became one of the patron saints of

Poland; the writer and humanist BartolemyPaprocky, born in Poland, earned a nichefor himself in the history of Czech culture.These are only two among many examplesof the dual attachments which character¬

ized Czech-Polish cultural relations from

the early Middle Ages to the Renaissanceand beyond.

In the seventeenth century, this traditionwas continued by Jan Amos Komensky(Comenius), leader of the old Protestantchurch of the Moravian and Bohemian

Brethren, who were expelled from theirhomeland by the agents of the Counter-Reformation and who settled in the Polish

city of Leszno.

As an example of Ukrainian-Serbian"biliteral" relations, we may mention Ema-nuil Kozaóinski: graduate of a seminary inKiev, he became the founder of the Slav-Serbian theatre during the first half of theeighteenth century.

In addition to these and other well-

known figures whose names have comedown to us through history, there were, ofcourse, a great number of anonymousintermediaries who took advantage of thesimilarity of language and the relative easeof assimilation in Slav countries other than

their own. These included an uninterruptedflow of jesters, jugglers, singers and other"Wandering players", humble people forthe most part, who, long before the Slavnations emerged as modern States andlong before Safarik, contributed to whatthe latter's friend the Czech-speaking Slo¬vak poet Jan Kollar (another example ofCzech-Slovak dual attachment) called the

Vzaimnost or "togetherness" of the .Slavs.

It is also worth noting that Safarik's His¬tory was published in the Hungarian capi¬tal, which was at the time an importantcentre not only of Hungarian nationalism,but also of the movement for national

resurgence of the Slavs. Besides Buda,other non-Slav cities where cultural reía- l

tions between the Slavs themselves deve- 1

The great Czecheducational reformer and

Protestant leader John

Comenius was born in

eastern Moravia in 1592.

Forced into exile by thepersecution of the CatholicEmperor Ferdinand II, hesettled at Leszno, Poland, in

1628. His fame spread withthe publication of treatisesadvocating full-timeschooling and newteaching methods and hewas invited to England,Sweden and Hungary toadvise on educational

matters. In 1652, Leszno

was occupied anddestroyed, but Comeniusescaped to Amsterdamwhere he remained until his

death in 1670. Photos: (1)Comenius, detail of an

engraving by David Logganwhich formed the title pageof a collection of his

writings on educationentitled "Didáctica OperaOmnia". (2) Comenius

advocated separate schoolsadapted to meet therequirements of thedifferent stages of a child'sdevelopment. (3) Engravingat the head of a chapter ofhis "Orbis Sensualium

Pictus" (The Visible World

in Pictures), the forerunnerof the illustrated school

book, depicts the variousbranches of man's

intellectual activity.

55

> loped included Vienna, Leipzig, Dresden,Cluj in Romania, Venice and, later, Istam-bul and Paris.

These relations, moreover, rapidly ac¬quired a European dimension, and becamean integral component of cultural ex¬change and development throughout theworld. Safarik, whose mastery of his nativelanguage was outstanding, deliberatelywrote his History in German so that itmight be of greater service in Slav and non-Slav cultural circles alike, and to the

younger generation in particular.

The fact that translations and adapta¬tions of Safarik's work were published inwestern Europe and America reflect itsgreat relevance to the issues of the time.The concepts of a "world literature"enounced a year later by Goethe had thesame objective: to set the creativity of hispeople in a universal cultural context at atime when, following the French Revolu¬tion and the establishment of the modern

nations as fully-fledged actors on the stageof human affairs, the world was entering anew phase of development.

The movement which led to the emanci¬

pation of the Slavs, to their formation, self-determination or resurgence as nationsfreed from the feudalists "prison-houses"of the Ottoman, Tsarist and Hapsburgempires, and to their mutual collaboration,found support in the ideas of the Germanphilosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, whopredicted a glorious future for the Slavs.But the feeling of affinity of the Slav peo¬ples, their conviction of the significance oftheir own languages and cultures, in¬cluding popular Slav culture, and aware-

Founded by St. John ofRila in the early 10thcentury, the Monastery ofRila stands on the

southern slopes of theRila Mountain in south¬

western Bulgaria. Theimposing medieval toweris all that is left of the

buildings erected in 1335by the feudal overlordPrince Hreljo. Over thecenturies the monasterywas destroyed and rebuiltseveral times. Most of the

present buildings wereerected in the first half of

the 19th century,following a disastrous firein 1833, and constitute a

fine example of thearchitecture of the

"National Revival" periodin Bulgaria. Throughoutits chequered history, themonastery has maintainedits high reputation as animportant centre ofEuropean culture.

ness of the necessity to co-operate witheach other in the struggle for national andsocial freedom, were founded on a thou¬sand years of experience. Had not theSaxon historian Widikund written of the

Slavs, as early as 967 A.D. that there wasno suffering they would not bear for thesake of their beloved liberty (omnem mise-riam carae libertatis postponendes)...

This steadfast attachment to freedom

was growing from strength to strength atprecisely the moment when Herder wasascribing a "dove-like" nature to the Slavs.And if Kollar, during the difficult period ofthe Holy Alliance, spoke of the Slav cul¬tural community as being as harmless as "agentle ewe-lamb in the life of the peoples",he probably did not share Herder's point ofview. After all, the advocates of Vzaimnostwere also freedom-fighters, and the strug¬gle for liberty which had begun with thepeasant risings of the eighteenth centurybore clear signs of mutual collaborationbetween the Slavs.

Poles are known to have participated inthe storm of revolt that swept over east andsouth-east Russia in 1773 under the lead¬

ership of the Cossack Emel'yan Pugachev.Pushkin's reference to this fact after the

suppression of the Decembrist Revolt inRussia in 1825 and the Polish Rising in1830-1831 (two of the most importantrebellions against the same Tsarist tyranny)was highly apposite; his words concealallusions to the clandestine democratic

movements which existed at the time in

Russia, the Ukraine and Poland, and whichwere preparing programmes for the libera¬tion of the Slavs. One of these movements

was even called the Obshchestvo soyedi-

nennykh slavyan (the Society of UnitedSlavs).

If the ideas and example of the FrenchRevolution conserved their significanceduring the period of triumph of the Euro¬pean anciens régimes, it should be pointedout that in the Slav countries the seeds of

freedom fell on soil already prepared byearlier generations. Already in 1775 seventhousand Czech peasants in the easternpart of the country had risen in armedrevolt, with a rallying-cry of "Freedom orDeath!" thus anticipating later events inFrance.

In 1824, as punishment for havingbelonged to a secret society of students inVilno, the young Polish poet Adam Mickie¬wicz was exiled to Russia. The Tsarist

authorities hoped thus to neutralize thismilitant member of the Polish national libe¬

ration movement and, if possible, to con¬vert him to the imperial reason of theRomanovs. In fact, this short-sighted acton the part of the tyrants facilitated hiscontacts with the Decembrist rebels and all

who shared their views, and created theconditions for the friendly intimacy andcreative collaboration that characterized

the association between the two greatest

Slav poets of their ageAdam Mickiewiczand Alexander Pushkin.

Pushkin and Mickiewicz undoubtedlyreinforced each other's views concerning

the importance of the poetry of the peoplein the new and genuinely national literaturethat they were creating. This is reflected inthe former's Songs of the South Slavs, andin Mickiewicz's Forefather's Eve and Pan

Tadeusz.

Interest in folklore, its collection, and there-working of popular themes had begunduring the second half of the fifteenth cen¬tury, when the Hungarian poet Janus Pan-nonius creatively transposed into Latinverse the picturesqueness of Croatian

CONTINUED PAGE 72

Colour page

Slav art has many facots, from portraits ofcossacks and courtiers to the churchman's

cap fashioned with masterly precision. Thecossack, a favourite theme in Ukrainian art,

is here depicted by an anonymous 19thcentury painter. He is playing a bandore, astringed instrument still used in the Orientand in some Slav countries. Top left, detail ofthe coffer ceiling of the Deputies' Hall in theWawel Castle, Cracow (Poland). The Castle,

whose origins go back to the early MiddleAges, was rebuilt between 1507 and 1536 byItalian and Polish craftsmen whose

collaboration resulted in a highly originalblend of Polish and Italian art. Carved bylocal Polish artists, the wooden heads in each

panel of the ceiling form a gallery of symbolicstudies and realistic portraits of courtpersonalities. Top right, a gilded mitreproduced by Muscovite jewellers in 1685. Itwas given to the Metropolitan of Kiev,Gedeon Sviatopolk, by Tsars Ivan V and PeterI (then ruling jointly) and the Tsarina Sophia.

56

m otiraè miß untgaHumen nue um

Dialoguewith the West

A fruitful interplay of ideas and talent

by Igor F. Belza

IGOR F. BELZA, Soviet musicologist, com¬poser and specialist on Slav cultures, teaches atthe Institute of Slav and Balkan Studies of the

U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. Editor-in-chiefof the Moscow review Readings in Dante, he isthe author of many articles on Slav cultures.

THE Curies, Polish scientist MariaSklodowska and her French

husband Pierre Curie, who played amajor role in the discovery of radioactivityat the turn of the century, constituteperhaps the most striking, and romantic,example of the interplay of scientific andcultural ideas between the Slavs and the

West. Yet this "marriage of minds" bet¬ween Slav scientists and artists and their

Western counterparts had begun longbefore. During the eighteenth century,Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765) in Russiaand Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) in

France each discovered independently the Ilaw of conservation of mass. W

The Sorbs, or Wends, of Lusatia (Lausitz) are the descendants of a Slavic people whosettled in the 9th century in the Elbe valley between present day Dresden and Cottbus inthe German Democratic Republic. Some 100,000 Sorbs still live in this area, maintainingtheir cultural and linguistic traditions. Below, Sorbian women in traditional costume.

Opposite page

One of the most important of the Slavmanuscripts that remain from theMiddle Bulgarian period (13th to 14thcentury) is the Tsar Ivan Aleksandur

Gospel (or London Gospel), copied bythe monk Simeon, in 1356, for the"Tsar of all the Bulgars and theGreeks", and now preserved in theBritish Museum. The miniature

reproduced here (top half of page)portrays the Last Judgement. Theartist has included a portrait of TsarIvan Aleksandur who is seen standingbeside the Virgin Mary at the bottomleft of the miniature. Bottom right ofpage, a pastoral scene from the Liber

Viaticus, a 14th-century manuscriptnow in the National Museum of

Prague. Bottom left, Satan dressed asa monk; a miniature from the Codex of

Jena, a ferociously satirical illuminatedmanuscript dating from the end of the15th century in which Hussitereformers attacked the hierarchy of theChurch.

© '

59

Voltaire by PushkinPushkin wrote of Voltaire that his everyline was a precious gift to posterity. Likethe children of most aristocratic families

of the day, Pushkin learned to speak andread French at an early age.

Pushkin by PushkinOne of over sixty self-portraits by thegreat Russian poet, this sketch showshow Pushkin visualized himself in old age,which, ironically, he was never to attain.

60

'He sang of love,to love subjected'(Eugene Onegin)

"He was the beginning of all beginnings",wrote Dostoevsky of Alexander Pushkin,the first in a line of towering figures inRussian literature. His was a brief but

tumultuous life. "I have to spend muchtime in society," he wrote. "My wife is awoman of fashion, and it all requires

money; but I can only acquire moneythrough work, and work means solitude."Below, a painting of his wife Natalya. Itwas in defending her honour that, in 1837,he was mortally wounded in a duel.

Mickiewicz by PushkinGenerally considered the greatest poet ofPoland, Mickiewicz met Pushkin inMoscow in 1826. Both these greatRomantic writers were strongly influencedby the English poet Byron.

h The same intermingling of Slav and Wes¬tern names is found in the history of philo¬sophy. Among the contemporaries of RenéDescartes, the father of rationalist philo¬sophy, were the "Polish Brethren", hun¬dreds of whose works (especially those ofSimon Budny and Wolcogen) were pub¬lished in Amsterdam in 1656 under the gen¬eral title Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum.

The work of these writers was of greatimportance to the seventeenth-centuryDutch philosopher Spinoza .(especially inthe elaboration of his Ethics) and also

influenced the English philosopher JohnLocke, whose studies in their turn con¬

tributed to the development of Frenchmaterialist philosophy.

Mickiewicz by DelacroixMickiewicz settled in Paris in 1832 and

later taught Slavonic literature at theCollège de France. His friendship withChopin drew him into the coterie thatformed around George Sand and whichincluded Delacroix.

Another contemporary of the PolishBrethren was the great Czech educationistand "teacher of the people", Jan AmosKomensky (Comenius), whose Didacticswas well known in both Slav and Western

countries. He believed that the principles ofhumanism should be assimilated at an earlyage, and devised a harmonious, all-embracing system of education. Echoes ofhis teachings can be found in the ideas andmethods of the famous Swiss educational

reformer Pestalozzi.

Investigation of the cultural history ofthe Slav peoples has drawn attention to anumber of remarkable figures who werehalf-hidden in the shadows of the ages.One example is the educationist Gyorgi-Franciszek Skorina, Byelorussia's first prin¬ter, who acquired wide learning during histravels in the West. Another is the

eighteenth-century Ukrainian Grigori Sko¬voroda, poet and self-styled "wanderingphilosopher". The names of Skorina andSkovoroda are today inscribed in the his¬tory of European humanism.

Slav thinkers (including historians, wri-

line... played some pieces by Chopin.Nothing banal, perfect composition! Whatcould be more complete? He resemblesMozart more than anyone else. LikeMozart's, his themes occur so sponta¬neously, one might have thought of themoneself."

Later he compared Chopin to Dante, andportrayed him as "the greatest of poets"("altissimo poeta"), both in his decorationof the ceiling of the library of the Senate inParis, and in a drawing inscribed "CherChopin" which was probably made shortlyafter his friend's death.

There is an undeniable similarity betweenthe ideas and aspirations of the two mas¬ters. Many of Delacroix's paintings, inclu¬ding Dante and Virgil Crossing the Styx,.The Massacre at Chios, Liberty Guiding thePeople, and Greece Expiring on the Ruinsof Missolonghi, reflect a romantic percep¬tion of nature and a violent denunciation of

evil and injustice.

In Chopin's sonatas, his ballades, hisfantasias and many of his preludes and stu¬dies, Delacroix heard not only a Dantesque

Chopinby DelacroixDelacroix was a fervent

admirer as well as an

intimate friend of Chopin.In this sketch, made

probably just after thePolish composer's death,he depicts Chopin in theguise of Dante, the"altissimo poeta". Thesketch bears Delacroix's

touching inscription"Cher Chopin" (dearChopin).

V

ters and artists, as well as philosophers)have always been profoundly attracted bymoral and ethical issues, and it is in thisfield that the West has been most receptiveto the artistic and intellectual values cre¬

ated by the Slavs. Nowhere is this morestrikingly revealed than in the creative rela¬tionship and warm friendship that unitedthe French painter Delacroix and the Polishmusician Chopin. Delacroix met many wri¬ters, artists and musicians during his lifeand was on close terms with a number of

them. None, however, impressed him morethan Chopin. During the composer's lastyears, Delacroix frequently visited "thisgreat man who is dying". A few monthsafter Chopin's death, he wrote in his Jour-naf for 13 February 1850: "Princess Marcel-

"outcry of anger", but also an incessantcall to combat.

Masterpieces of Western literature havehad a great influence on Slav writers. Wri¬ting of the summits of literary achievement,Pushkin set the works of Goethe on the

same high level as those of Dante, Shakes¬peare and Milton. The Faustian theme of apassionate search for the absolute on earthhas received highly original treatment in theworks of some Slav writers. In one curious

example, Mikhail Bulgakov's posthumouslypublished novel The Master and Margue¬rite, the Faust theme is actually turnedupside down, thus prompting one critic todub it an "Anti-Faust".

The names of Gustave Flaubert and Ivan r

61

FJr^í'q*

All

the world's

a stageSt. Petersburg became aworld centre of ballet in the

19th century and producedsome of the greatest balletdancers of all time,

including Anna Pavlova andVaslav Nijinsky. Thetradition is maintained

today by the worldrenowned Kirov Ballet.

Left, extracts from the

score of Stravinsky's "TheRite of Spring" withnotations of the

choreography created byNijinsky for SergeyDiaghilev's Ballet Russes.They were sketched in 1913by the French painter andstage designer ValentineHugo.

t mM *» '111

> Turgenev are in many ways symbolic of thecreative union and mutual enrichment ofWestern and Slav literature. Turgenev'stranslation of Flaubert's Légende de SaintJulien l'Hospitalier is an outstanding exam¬ple of the truth of Stendhal's dictum thataffection for a writer's work is a prerequi¬site to successful translation.

Hundreds of characters from the

"human comedy" throng the pages ofGogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Chek¬hov. Despite the specifically Russian

aspects of their experiences, feelings andtragedies, they form part of the heritage ofall mankind, along with the angry protestsand satirical denunciations of social injus¬tice, which reach the heights of intensity inGogol's Dead Souls and The GovernmentInspector.

"I am sending you a morsel of contra¬band", wrote the Austrian Ambassador toRussia, Count Finkelmon, to Pushkin. Thecontraband in question was a new novel byBalzac, whose works had been banned by

Tsar Nicholas I. And in 1850, the Czecheducator Vaclav Bendl warmly observed inthe Journal of the Czech Museum that the

name of Pushkin had become a symbol ofall who refused subjection.

In a conversation with the author of this

article, a group of English specialists oncedeclared that Chekhov's dramatic works

marked the most significant developmentin the history of world theatre sinceShakespeare. Their view was that the Rus¬sian dramatist had invented the "non-star"

principle by breaking with the traditionwhereby one central figure overshadows allthe others. The judicious choice of a "star"to play Hamlet was enough, they said, toguarantee a successful performance of theplay. But neither in The Cherry Orchard,nor in The Three Sisters, nor even in 77?e

Seagull is there such a central figure in thegenerally accepted sense of the term; whatis developed is a system of interrelatedcharacters.

There is no need to dwell on the recogni¬tion which the classics of Russian andPolish literature have attained in the West,

nor on the reception accorded in the Slavcountries to Italian, French, English, Ger¬man, Spanish and Scandinavian master-,pieces. It is worth mentioning, however,that it was not merely the artistic power of

Above, Olga Knipper Chekhova in the roleof Pernelle in Molière's "Tartuffe". She

was a member of the company of theAcademic Art Theatre of Moscow and

married the great Russian author AntonChekhov in 1901 after appearing in severalof his plays.

Left, Shakespeare as seen through theeyes of the great Russian director GeorgeiTovstonogov. Actresses of the GorkyDrama Theatre, Leningrad, in a scenefrom "Henry IV, Part 1".

62

the great Slav writers that attracted thegreat masters of Western literature, but

also the languages in which they wrote. Inhis eulogy of Pushkin, Prosper Mériméeobserved that no European language, withthe exception of Latin, could render thebeauty and laconic expressiveness of theRussian writer's poem Anchar ("The UpasTree"). To make his point, he went on totranslate part of the poem into the lan¬guage of Virgil.

, In music, the cultural links between the

Slavs and the West, which became particu¬larly solid and varied, were established atan early date.

The works of Glinka, Borodin, Mus¬sorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov,Skriabin, Chopin, Szymanowski, Smetana,Dvorak and Janacek are all part of theestablished repertory of world music.

Both Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov treat¬ed Spanish themes, while the latter turnedto Ancient Rome for a scene in his operaSevilla. Szymanowski portrayed medievalSicily, while Dvorak included themes inspi¬red by Longfellow's Hiawatha in his NinthSymphony ("From the New World").Rachmaninov and Moszkowski were both

inspired by the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.

It should also be said that Bach, and toan even greater extent the four great Vien¬nese composers Haydn, Mozart, Beetho¬ven and Schubert introduced "Slavisms"

into their works. Beethoven's three "Razu-

movsky Quartets", commissioned by andnamed after the Russian Ambassador in

Vienna, contain the melodies of popularRussian songs. Haydn, who was born inthe Croatian village of Trstnik (re-baptisedRohrau by the Hapsburg authorities), andwho may well have spoken Croatian as hismother tongue in childhood, thoughthighly of the popular music of the Slavpeoples. Mozart and other Viennese com¬posers followed his example, and theirworks contain creative adaptations of thebeautiful and profoundly emotional songsand dances of the Czech, Slovak, Polish,Ukrainian and other Slav populations of the"patchwork monarchy" of the Hapsburgs.

A picturesque example of this interplayof influences is to be found in the "pastoralintermezzo" which Tchaikovsky incorpora¬ted in his opera The Queen of Spades. Thecomposer, who wished to give a Mozartianflavour to this section, borrowed a theme

from one of Mozart's piano concertos. ButMozart himself had taken this theme from

the gentle melody of a traditional Czechfolk-song, Mela jsem holoubka ("I had adove").

The attraction of Slav music in the West

has persisted up to modern times. Theworld is familiar with the brilliant orchestra¬

tion of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibi¬tion, created by Ravel who, like his oldercontemporary Debussy, warmly admiredthe five Russian composers (Balakirev,Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov) who were known as "the mightyhandful". This admiration was, andremains, mutual, as may be seen from therecent publication in Moscow of a multi-volume edition of the works of Debussyand Ravel, and of studies of these greatcomposers by Russian musicologists.

Igor F. Belza

An amusing example of theRussian popular engravingsknown as "lubok", this late17th-century woodcut is asatirical attack on Peter the

Great (1672-1725) by theRaskolnik! (Old Believers) whowere fiercely opposed to his far-reaching reforms which affectedevery field of national life. He isdepicted as "the Cat of Kazan".The neatly groomed whiskersare a jibe at the Tsar's ownmoustachios

Peter the Great's

'Window on the West'Leningrad, the U.S.S.R.'s second city, lies on theBaltic at the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland.

Founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as a "window onthe west", it was named St. Petersburg and becameRussia's capital from 1712 to 1918. Famed for itswide boulevards, its palaces and public buildings,the city is threaded by many branches of the Nevadelta and has countless bridges, most of themcrossing canals such as the Winter Canal (above).

The State Hermitage Museum, one ofsome 50 museums in Leningrad, is worldfamous for its masterpieces. Founded in1764 by the Empress Catherine II as aprivate gallery for the art she hadamassed, it was first opened to the publicin 1852. The Hermitage has rich collectionsof Oriental art, notably that of the CentralAsian steppes, as well as masterpieces ofwest European painting since the MiddleAges and fine collections of drawings,coins and medals. Above, visitors throng

the entrance to the Hermitage.

As part of his aims to westernize Russianinstitutions and customs, Peter decreedthat beards should be shorn. Old Believers

and merchants who insisted on keepingtheir beards had to pay a special tax. Thislubok showing a barber cutting off thebeard of an Old-Believer merchant may

have been printed with the Tsar'spermission.

63

These two spheres side by side evokesteps in the conquest of space from theMiddle Ages to the present day. CopperArab astrolabe (right) dating from 1054was still being used at the JagiellonianUniversity (Poland) when Copernicus wasa student there in the late 15th century.Opposite page: the historic link-up of aSoviet Soyuz-19 and a U.S. Apollospacecraft on 17 July 1975 is depicted inthis mock-up on permanent display inMoscow. (See Unesco Courier, Jan. 1978).

From Copernicus to Korolev

A 500-year journeyinto space

by Bogdan Suchodolsky

A cosmonaut circles the Earth in a

spacecraft. At a given moment, hesteps out of his seemingly fragile

vessel and walks among the stars. Suchimages come easily to the modern mind,now that space travel has become a fact.But before Man took his first "walk" in

space, another long and arduous journeyof discovery was necessary, during whichthinkers puzzled out the laws of the uni¬verse and technologists created the meanswhereby the age-old dream of space travelcould come true.

To conquer the force of gravity, Man hadfirst to understand the world around him

and to multiply his own strength. For cen¬turies scientists in many countries grappledwith the problem, interweaving hopes andaspirations, and philosophical and poeticreveries, with mathematical calculations.

Poland set off on this road to understan-

BOGDAN SUCHODOLSKY, Polish philoso¬pher and historian of science, is a member of thePraesidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences.He is the author of several works on trends

in philosophy and on educational matters. Hisarticle incorporates material prepared by thePolish scientist Prof. W. Voisé.

64

Photo I. Gavrilov © APN, moscow

ding during the Middle Ages and theRenaissance. In the thirteenth century, thephilosopher Witelo developed a theory onthe nature of material reality, the principlesof mathematical reasoning, the analysis ofnatural phenomena (especially humanphysiology and psychology) and astro¬nomy. His treatise on perspective, which isthe only part of his great work to have sur¬vived, was transcribed many times duringthe Middle Ages, and often reprintedduring the sixteenth century. Witelo's stu¬dies on the properties of light, used by the

' German astronomer Johannes Kepler in hisown research at the turn of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, were a mixture

of metaphysical speculation and physicalscience. What he called lumen divinum (or

"divine light") was, he believed, theoriginal form of existence of nature,and of man as capable of perceiving it.

Another Pole, Nicolas Copernicus, tooka decisive step along the road to the stars.His daring heliocentric theory set the Sunat the centre of the universe and at the

source of life. This theory is sometimesmistakenly reduced to the idea that the

Earth is spinning through the universe. Butif Copernicus "set the Earth in Motion", healso and this was the most importantthing "stopped the Sun in its tracks." Henot only rejected the traditional belief thatthe Earth was the centre of the universe,

but spoke out against the school ofthought according to which, and on thebasis of evidence produced by the senses,it was the Sun, and not the Earth, thatmoved.

Copernicus had many disciples, in hisown country as well as elsewhere. In hiswell-equipped private observatory, JanHelvelius (1611-1687) carried out manycomplicated astronomical . observations,

and his Selenography (1647), a descriptionof the Moon's surface, illustrated withsplendid maps, made him famous through¬out Europe. This treatise broke newground, and combined the expression ofmankind's nostalgic affection for Earth'ssilvery satellite with detailed descriptionsbased on meticulous research.

While Helvelius was devoting his atten¬tion to deciphering the Moon's secrets,another man, the engineer Kazimezh

Semenovich, was examining the possibili¬ties of actually getting there. His treatise onballistics (1650) was translated into manylanguages, and astonishingly enough con¬tains proposals for a multi-stage rocket.

Helvelius's astronomical calculations and

Semenovich's intuitive technical conject¬ures were to be brought together in a singlefield of research and aspiration.

One of the leading popularizers of Coper-nicus's teaching was Bishop John Wilkins,the author of Mathematical! Magick (1648)and of a number of other works, and a

founding member of the Royal Society inEngland. Drawing inspiration from thePolish astronomer's ideas, Wilkins posed aproblem raised by the discovery of otherworlds: the problem of interplanetaryflight.

Although he wrote that a winged con¬struction, of some kind appeared to offerthe best means of effecting such journeys,he himself, on the basis of his study of Gali¬leo's mechanics in particular, favoured thesolution of a "flying chariot".

Another self-confessed disciple off

65

Lomonosov (1711-1765), the great Russianscientist and encyclopaedist, a member ofthe Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciencesand the founder of Moscow University. Hisresearch in chemistry and physics openedthe way to the corpuscular theory of mat¬ter, while his philosophy, which was indirect opposition both to the rationalism ofDescartes and the empiricism of Locke,was an attempt to unseat the mechanisticconception of the world.

Substantial progress was made in thisdirection during the century that followed.The "Copernicus of geometry", as the dis¬tinguished Russian mathematician NikolaiLobachevsky (1792-1856) was called, wasone of the creators of non-Euclidian geo¬

metry. His system played an important rolein the development of modern science.

Not long after this began the career ofKonstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), thePolish-born Russian scientist who was the

founder of modern astronautics. His work

entitled "The exploration of cosmic spacewith the aid of jet-propelled engines",published in 1903, set out for the first timea theory of controlled flight under both gra¬vitational and non-gravitational conditions,and paved the way for the use of rocketsfor interplanetary travel. In 1929, Tsiol¬kovsky published a second, equally innova¬tory work, "Cosmic rocket ships", whichlaid the foundations for the first interplane¬

tary flights.

Tsiolkovsky's activity brought to a close

The great Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) "set theearth in motion" and "stopped the sun in its tracks" by disproving theaccepted theory, formulated in Antiquity by Ptolemy, that the earthwas the motionless centre of the universe. His theory of a heliocentricsystem in which the earth was a moving planet laid the foundations forlater developments in astronomy. Above, Copernicus as depicted in a17th-century engraving by Edme de Boulonois of Brussels.

Reachingfor the stars

Copernicus was the French poet Cyrano deBergerac (1619-1655) among whose workswas a science fiction novel, published pos¬thumously, entitled "The States and Em¬pires of the Sun". In this fantastic tale, thenarrator describes how, after a scientificdiscussion with his friends, he returned

home disillusioned with reading dry-as-dust learned treatises and determined to

find out for himself whether the Earth was

actually spinning through space, and whe¬ther life existed in distant worlds. Inspiredby an original idea, he tied around himself anumber of flasks filled with dew, believingthat the dew would be transformed into

steam by the sun's rays, and would carryhim into the upper layers of the atmos¬phere.

This section of the novel, like many

others, contains hypotheses whose fallacyhas long since been demonstrated; but thisin no way detracts from the work's signifi¬cance. We should forgive Cyrano for hiserrorsafter all, he lived in an age whenthe theory of gravity was still in itsinfancy and by acknowledging the exis¬tence of innumerable other worlds, he

struck a blow against conservatism ofthought.

In the Slav countries, another step onthe road to the stars took place during the

eighteenth century. In western Europeduring this period progress in the naturalsciences was developing through the appli¬cation of empirical and rationalisticmethods in certain specific fields. Amongthe Slavs, however, these methods wereutilized not only for piecemeal research,but also in an endeavour to create an inter¬

disciplinary synthesis, through which theuniverse might be explained as a dynamicentity. This was a complex vision of things,the accuracy of which could only be par¬tially established at the time and which"consisted for the most part of bold hypo¬theses which would only be verified in sub¬sequent centuries.

Two outstanding personalities should bementioned at this point. The first wasRoudjer Boskovich (1711-1787), a Croatianphilosopher and scientist, whose workreflected the theories of both Newton and

Leibniz and contained the seeds of future

theories of relativity and non-Euclidian geo¬metry. Boskovich attempted to construct amathematical model of matter based on

dynamic rather than mechanistic concepts,and prepared a draft outline of a philo¬sophy of the universe which differed con¬siderably from that which was generallyaccepted at the time.

The second great figure was Mikhail

66

the long "pre-space" era and turned a newpage which would be inscribed with thestory of Man's final realization of hisancient dreams. The real conquest of spacebegan in our century, as a result of furtheradvances in the natural sciences, in tech¬nology and more especially in mathe¬matics and astronautics.

A large group of Russian scientists wor¬ked on these subjects during the early yearsof the century. Nikolai Zhukovsky (1847-1921), known as "the father of Russianaviation", created in Moscow the firstEuropean Institute of Aerodynamics, anddevoted much attention to the develop¬ment of techniques of rocketry. Theyounger generation of scientists, techni¬cians and pilots followed in the steps oftheir elders; S.P. Korolev (1906-1966) was

a particularly outstanding Soviet scientist,whose work contributed to the creation of

the huge rockets used for launching thefirst artificial satellites, the first flightstowards the Moon, Venus and Mars, and

the first journeys of the cosmonauts inouter space.

The activities of Korolev, the construc¬

tion of the first sputniks, the first spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin and Aleksei Leonov'sfamous walk among the stars marked thefinal stages of a journey that had lasted forfive centuries, and had led from an intuitive

and theoretical understanding of the struc¬ture of the universe to the opening of itsvery doors.

Bogdan Suchodolsky

Mankind has always dreamed of achieving mastery of space. Below left,illustration from The States and Empires of the Sun (1662), a science fictionnovel by the French author Cyrano de Bergerac, a student of Copernicanastronomy. The gravity-defying hero is clad in a space suit equipped withflasks containing dew which, he hopes, will be turned into steam by solarheat and propel him to the upper atmosphere. The dream became reality in1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel in space. Medal(below) was issued in the U.S.S.R. to commemorate his exploit.

"He was in himself our first

university," wrote Pushkin ofthe Russian polymath MikhailLomonosov (1711-1765). A poetand linguistic reformer as wellas a scientist whose research

ranged from studies on metals

and gases to astronomy andgeology, in 1755 Lomonosovhelped to found MoscowUniversity, which is namedafter him. Left, portrait ofLomonosov by an unknownartist.

"The Astral System ofCopernicus" is the theme of a

stained glass window designedfor Cracow's "House of

Physicians" by StanislawWyspianski (1869-1907), anoutstanding figure in modernPolish art. Below, detail of the

cartoon design for thiscomposition, showingApollo, symbol of the sun.

Photo Stanislaw Lopatka © National Museum, Cracow

67

HUH, C5-d£H. £ÍKE W£UP£H Hjí3U

MbTCM ibO«i>RTHhffi ZSilOALHEtîhMOïfifcHM MPMKHH H3hIK5

¿OrîTOl'o ^HfilJIM^CKOPHHOfoiiscadfiHáro riv/trf ikmoijw . sors kotth

Byelorussia's first printed bookThe work of the scholar and printer Gyorgi-Franciszek Skorina is a milestone inthe history of Byelorussia's language and culture. Born at Polotsk in 1490, heobtained the degree of "bachelor of the seven liberal arts" at Cracow and thenset off on a journey across Europe, staying in German towns, at PragueUniversity and in Padua where he was made a doctor of medicine. During hisyears of wandering and study he conceived the great plan of publishing a Biblein his mother tongue, Byelorussian. "God sent me this language," he wrote, "1vow it shall become a language of books." Patiently and obstinately he raisedmoney for his venture and recruited illustrators and engravers. Between 1517and 1519 he translated and published 22 parts of the Bible, followed a few yearslater by the Acts of the Apostles. Exquisitely printed and illustrated, the SkorinaBible is widely considered to be one of the world's most beautiful books.Above, engraving showing Samson fighting a lion. Below, an episode fromExodus when the Lord commanded Moses to make a tabernacle: "And thou

shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold... And thou shalt make two cherubims ofgold, of beaten gold shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat."

Photos © Engravings ol Franciszek Skorina, Belarusi Publishers, Minsk

ARTS

AND

CRAFTS

OF

BYELO¬

RUSSIA

by Evgeni M. Sakhuta

68

"Put me in the mud and I shall become

a prince," says the grain of rye in anold Byelorussian proverb. According totradition, the first seeds sown when

the winter snows have melted are

taken from the last sheaf harvested the

previous autumn. The straw from thesheaf is laid out on the ground in theform of a cross, "so that Christ won't

get his feet wet when he comes tobless the earth". Below, the first-fruits

of the harvest are ceremonially knottedaround the farmer's waist.

Byelorussian artists createoutstandingly beautiful works of artout of plaited straw. Left, detail of theremarkable "Tsars' Gate" in an 18th-

century country church in the Pinskregion. Although made of straw itglows with all the majesty of gold leaf.

POPULAR decorative art holds a pro¬minent and colourful place in Byelo¬russian culture. It is a highly original

art, for although the objects made by Bye¬lorussian craftsmen have much in common

with those produced by their neighbours inRussia, the Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland,they have also been profoundly marked bythe special circumstances of Byelorussia'ssocial, political and cultural development aswell as by the natural environment.

Only rarely has this art been created byorganized groups of professional artistsand craftsmen. For the most part it hasbeen produced in a domestic setting. As aconsequence it remained rooted in traditionuntil the early years of this century.

Working in wood, the most widely usedmaterial, Byelorussian craftsmen producedhighly expressive forms of decoration,,especially in the large objects such as mor-^

EVGENI M. SAKHUTA is a Byelorussian arthistorian on the staff of the Institute for the

Study of Art, Ethnography and Folklore at¬tached to the Byelorussian S.S.R. Academyof Sciences. He is the author of many pub¬lished works on the popular arts of Byelorussia.

69

tars, canoes, beehives and tubs which theyhollowed out of tree trunks and boughs.Smaller vessels were often embellished

with animal motifs, salt-cellars being car¬ved in the form of ducks, and bucket hand¬

les being shaped to resemble the head of ahorse or bird, a rooster's tail'feathers or acock's-comb.

Geometric patterns were incised onutensils used by women, such as distaffs(in the Brest-Litovsk region) and tsurki(sticks between 30 and 40 cm long to whichsheaves were attached) which are found in

central Polesie.

Pottery is one of the most ancient popu¬lar crafts of Byelorussia, and a number ofold-established pottery-making centres aresituated near the cities of Pinsk, Vitebskand Minsk. Pots, basins, zbanki (pitchers)sparishi (twin vases), sloiki (jars) and othercontainers were all made out of clay. Somepottery towns specialized in producingblack-glazed pottery which looked as if itwere made of cast iron. This is a curious

survival from prehistoric times, since Bye¬lorussian pottery of this type has hardlychanged either in shape or decoration sincethe Iron Age.

Other potters were renowned for theirskill in making earthenware in the form ofbears, lions and rams, also producinghighly distinctive figurines of cockerels,ducklings, horsemen, ewes and dolls.

Along with wood-carving and pottery-making, weaving was one of the mostwidely practised crafts in Byelorussia,where countrywomen had little choice butto learn the art of the loom. Napkins,towels and abrussy (table-cloths) werewoven in two or three colours arranged toform checkwork, diamond-shaped, hexa¬gonal and other patterns. The regionaround Grodno specialized in rainbow-striped drapery which is today found inmany parts of Poland. Geometrical pat¬terns in white, black and red were the most

common features of dress design.

The plaiting of objects out of birch-bark,willow wands, roots and straw is anotherancient Byelorussian craft. Articles fash¬ioned out of straw are particularly distinc¬tive, as well as large wickerwork householdutensils which derive their beauty fromtheir sculptural form and from the rhythmicalternation of brown stripes of willow orhazel on a background of golden straw.

But the aesthetic potential of straw, awidely available material in Byelorussia, isbest seen in decorative objects, in toys andin coffers decorated with raised wicker-

work ornamentation in the form of dia¬

monds. A masterpiece of Byelorussiancraftsmanship in straw is the eighteenth-century "Tsar's Gate" in a little countrychurch at Vabulich-Lemeshevich in the

Pinsk region. Although made from thehumblest of materials it glows with all themajesty of gold leaf.

The skills of Byelorussian village paintersfound their widest expression in the de¬corated coffers and chests which, from the

second half of the nineteenth centuryonwards, were increasingly used in dailylife and figured prominently in the marriageceremony. Owing to the great demand forsuch objects, it was inevitable that they

should eventually be produced in studiosby artists specializing in this form ofdecoration.

Since popular art was primarily utilitarianin character, it was bound to be affected bysocial and economic changes. Thus manydomestic crafts declined in the second half

of the nineteenth century and some (suchas the hand-printing of textiles) died outaltogether.

The radical transformation of rural life

during the early Soviet period, and theimproved standards of living which theworkers began to enjoy, led to a temporarydepreciation of many traditional utilitarianarticles and reduced the people's relianceon home-made utensils, furniture, clothingand tools.

Concern for the preservation of popularhandicrafts and the quest for new waysand means of promoting popular art led theSoviet Government to adopt in 1919 adecree "on assistance to domestic

industry". Exhibitions of works by crafts¬men and artists were organized, the prob¬lem was widely discussed in the press, andregional museums began to assemble theircollections. Craft centres were open¬ed to encourage the development and pre¬servation of popular art.

In Byelorussia, and in the Soviet Unionas a vyhole, popular arts and crafts aremainly produced by groups of craftsmenand artists in craft centres. As a result of

their work, decorative objects of popularart, especially those made of plaited straw,are now becoming more widely familiar notonly in Byelorussia but also abroad.

There hqs been a revival of traditionalpottery-making, and weaving has taken ona new lease of life. The traditional two- or

three-tone range of colours has beenextended, and modern weavers are pro¬ducing complicated multi-coloured pat¬terns based on plant motifs.

The majority of modern Byelorussianwood-carvers today are creating small-scale objects inspired by traditional themesfrom history, folklore and everyday life, andare trying to revive the manufacture oftraditional wooden utensils. Wood-carvingfor purposes of architectural decorationis enjoying widespread popularity.

Considerable attention is now being paidto the revival, conservation and develop¬ment of popular arts and crafts. Whereas inthe past national traditions and creative ori¬ginality were handed down spontaneouslyfrom generation to generation, often withinthe same family, this task has now beenassumed by professional artists, art histo¬rians and the staff of popular arts andcrafts centres. A museum of popular arthas recently been opened at Raubichi, nearMinsk, and a museum of ancient crafts anddomestic industries at Zaslavl. As well as

displaying the traditional heritage, theseinstitutions will help to train the Byelorus¬sian craftsmen of tomorrow.

Evgenl M. Sakhuta

A

PHOENIX

RISING

FROM

THE

ASHES

by Aleksandar Fiaker

THE Second World War inflicted incal¬

culable losses on Slav cultures.

Monuments of rare magnificence,such as the National Museum in Belgradewith its priceless manuscripts and earlyprinted books, crumbled under the impactof enemy bombs. The Nazis systematicallyplundered museums, carrying off theirarchives. Whole cities, Leningrad, Kiev,Minsk, Warsaw and many others, were vir¬tually erased from the map.

All Slav intellectuals, including writers,were subjected to ruthless persecution.Here are just a few names from the long listof victims of this terror : Vladislav Vancura,

a leading figure in the avant-garde of Czechliterature, executed in 1942; a whole groupof Croatian writers and critics, includingAugust Cesarec, shot in 1941; Ivan GoranKovacic, the Croatian poet and essayist,short-story writer and translator of Shelley,Keats and Rimbaud, savagely murdered in1943; the Bulgarian poet Nikola JonkovVapcarov, shot in Sofia in 1942, who,before his death, addressed a moving andlyrical appeal to his wife and to the entireBulgarian people.

Among those who fell in the ranks of theYugoslav National Liberation Army werethe Slovenian poets Karel Destovnik-Kajuhand Miran Jare, the Croatian prose-writerHasan Kikic, from Bosnia, the Serbian lit¬erary critic Milos Savkovic, the famousMacedonian poet Koco Racin, and manyothers.

Yugoslavia alone lost at least 75 of hermost talented writers, not to mentioncountless promising young poets whoperished at the front or among the Parti¬sans, while their Polish contemporarieswere dying in concentration camps or inthe flames of the Warsaw Rising andyoung Russians of the same generationwere giving their lives in the struggleagainst the aggressor.

The war left indelible scars on the cul-

ALEKSANDAR FLAKER, prominent Croatian-Yugoslav scholar in Slavic and comparative lit¬erature, is Vice-President of the InternationalAssociation for the Study and Dissemination ofSlav Cultures.

70

The Second World War left profound scarson the Slav world. This image ofdesolation, one of a series of Indian ink

drawings entitled "It must never happenagain", is by the Soviet artist BorisProrokov, who lost both legs during thewar. Many Slav writers and artists died inthe struggle against Nazi barbarity.

Detail of a fresco of the Virgin Mary in thechurch of St. Nicholas, Novgorod. Used asa target by occupying forces in theSecond World War, it evokes the fate of

many works of art destroyed during theNazi invasion.

71

tures of all the European countries. But thistime of wholesale destruction, culturalannihilation and massacre on an unprece¬dented scale was also a period in whichfresh literary and artistic values made theirappeal anee, in which the foundations of amore fitting human existence were re¬modelled, and in which new horizonswere opened for future relations betweenindividuals, peoples and States. Thus,from the ashes of this hour of destruction

arose, phoenix-like, a new literature and anew art, dedicated to the struggle towardsthe light and against the black forcesof modern barbarism.

If, as the Soviet novelist Leonid Leonovputs it, culture is "mankind's memory", itis easy to understand why the red stain oftheir martyrdom remains imprinted on the

cultures of peoples who endured such suf¬fering during the 1940s, a dark age in Euro¬pean and world history, and yet who,among the ruins, laid the foundations of anew life.

Echoes from that wartime period are stillheard in modern Polish literature, from the

tragic evocation of the Warsaw ghetto inAndrzejewski's "Holy Week" to the latestprose works by the realist writer Miron Bia-loszewski. Similar themes run through thenew Polish cinema, from Kavalerowicz toWajda, and the new cinema of Yugoslavia,represented by Veljko Bulajic.

The War is still a major subject in theSoviet novel, and permeates the works ofKonstantin Simonov and Yuri Bondarev.

Oles Goncar in the Ukraine, and Vasyl

Bykau in Byelorussia draw on the war years

for inspiration; the Croatian writer MiroslavKrleza has turned his attention again to thesame period; and the novels of the Monte¬negrin writer Mihailo Lalic set wartimeevents in a new light.

The oppression of man, his resistance toconstraints and terror of all kinds, and hisliberation from the fear and threat of war,are themes which find reflection in the

many sculptures and monuments whichare familiar landmarks in countless Rus¬

sian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian townsand villages. Similar monuments are to befound at the scene of battles and suffering

which already seem a part of distant his¬tory, but which are not to be forgotten, forthey were the battles and sufferings ofwhole peoples, indeed, of all mankind.

Aleksandar Flaker

THE COMMON HERITAGE

continued from page SB

songs and laments. During the nineteenthcentury, this tendency was to be transfor¬med into a powerful and enduring current.The ancient Slav tradition inspired not onlyPushkin and Mickiewicz, but also Killar Lju-dovit Stur, the founder of the Slovak lit¬erary language; Vuk Karadzic, who estab¬lished Serbo-Croatian on a similar lit¬

erary footing; the Ukrainian poet TarasShevchenko and many other prominentfigures of Slav culture.

The general tradition of Slav folklore alsogave rise to endeavours to create a new"national music". These attempts were atfirst reflected in the composition of "popu¬lar songs" which were often the product ofcross-cultural collaboration. For example,Czech musicians were actively involved inthe development of Russian music at theturn of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen¬turies. The works of Tchaikovsky and hislively contacts with other Slav composers,particularly Czechs, Dvorak's SlavonicDances and the long career of Josef Suk asa composer and conductor in Russia arejust a few examples of collaboration of thiskind. Out of this current of "Slav music",

fed by the tributaries of individual populartraditions, emerged the works of out¬standing composers of worldwiderenown, from the operas of Smetana,Glinka and Moniusko to Stravinsky's balletPetrushka.

The work of the Czech composer LeosJanacek (1854-1928) is a brilliant example

of inter-Slav cultural exchange. His cantataTaras Bulba is based on a poem by theUkrainian Shevchenko; the libretto of the

opera Katya Kabonova comes from a playby the Russian dramatist Ostrovsky; ano¬ther of his operas, From the House of theDead, is based on a novel by Dostoevsky;and finally, his Glagolitic Mass draws itsinspiration from Slavonic literature andancient Russian music. All these creations

reflect at the same time the living traditionof popular Slav music, which Janacek hadstudied in great detail.

The continuation of the process ofcrystallization of their national musical cul¬ture may be observed today among diffe

rent Slav peoplesamong the Slovaks, forexample, where imaginative adaptations ofpopular songs written by one of the foun¬ders of "national" Slovak music, Stefan

Fajnor, are found alongside the operas ofcomposers like Suchon and Cikker.

Constant awareness of their affinity anda feeling of belonging to a single family ofpeoples was natural to the Slavs, whocould understand each other without inter¬

preters and who recognized the great simi¬larity between the historical destinies oftheir countries. And this awareness came

to the surface in different social, spiritualand historical circumstances time and time

again between the ninth and the nineteenthcenturies. It formed the background to thedevelopment of all the various themes andforms of artistic creation, particularlyamong the common people, who also ser¬ved as intermediaries for its transmission. It

found an echo when the Slav peoples, oneby one, were converted to Christianity, andlay at the foundations of their literacy. Itfacilitated the dissemination of the "hereti¬

cal" ideas of the Bogomils, the Hussites,the Arians and the Moravian and Bohemian

Brethren, and the circulation of the huma¬nist ideals of the Renaissance and Baroqueperiods. And it made itself felt even morestrongly during the age of Romanticism.

The founder of modern Czech poetry,Karel Hynek Macha, who was a contemp¬orary of Mickiewicz and Pushkin, appearsin the broad context of world literature and

culture as a confirmed "Byronist". Closerexamination, based on more detailed

knowledge of cross-cultural influences bet¬ween peoples of different regions, revealshim rather as a direct heir of the Polish pre-Romantic and Romantic tradition. This is

merely one of many examples of the parti¬cipation of the Slavs in the development ofworld culture, either anticipating majortrends or joining in them. Throughout thisparticipation is marked by the reciprocityand "togetherness" of the Slavs, men¬tioned above. Thus, Czech actors, singersand directors played an important part bothin the creation of a national South Slav

theatre, particularly among the Slovenes

and the Croatians, and in setting this the¬atre in a broader European context.

The idea of a cultural "commonwealth"

of Slavs, which found reflection in theworks of so many Slav writers, was closelyrelated to the ideals of justice, universalfreedom and the common good. On theeve of the revolution of 1848, Taras Shev¬

chenko praised, in a single line of verse,both Safarik and Jan Hus, the spiritualfather of nationalist and anti-feudal revolt.

In the same stormy year, the Slovak poetKarol Kusmany raised his voice in praise ofall "who were inflamed with the desire for

truth and were prepared to make thesupreme sacrifice for it, and those whodevoted their lives to the cause of human

rights". The words, "sweet freedom" thatappear in his verse echo the liberté chérieof a French song of the same period. Andthis should come as no surprise, sincethere was no such thing as a completelyisolated and introverted "Slav world"; the

leading representatives of the culture of theSlavs readily acknowledged that culturalrelations between themselves only madesense when their purpose was to serve allmankind, and to contribute to "the generalordering of human affairs". This was themessage of freedom and universal equalitythat Jan Amos Komensky had pronouncedtwo hundred years earlier.

Jan Komensky (Comenius) himself isinscribed in history as an outstandingeducationist, the founder of pedagogicalscience and the author of profoundlyhumanistic teachings concerning the ach¬ievement of universal peace and jus¬tice through mutual understanding and cul¬tural and scientific collaboration between

peoples, and through universal educa¬tion, irrespective of religion, nationality,sex or class.

The noble concepts of Comenius, the"teacher of the people", might well servefor all time as a sure guide and a standardby which to measure the value and signifi¬cance of cultural relations between peo¬

ples, and groups of peoples throughout theworld.

Slavomir Vollman

72

Letters

to

the editor

RETURN TO THE HOMELAND

Sir,

I have read with interest, and a certain

amount of sympathy, the article by M.Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow appealing for thereturn of art treasures to their country of ori¬gin. (Unesco Courier, July 1978).

Surely a distinction should be made be¬tween those objects acquired illegally andthose which were rescued, repaired, andhave been exhibited with loving care, andwhich would otherwise have gone forever.

Some years ago I had the privilege of visi¬ting New York's magnificent Cloisters at FortTryon. Until then I had regarded the Ameri¬cans as "snappers up of unconsideredtrifles", but after seeing tapestries collectedpiece by piece, cleaned and mounted tomake a whole, I couldn't help remarking, "Ifthat's how they look after them they are wel¬come to the rest."

D.M. SkippingsYarmouth, Norfolk

U.K.

HARNESSING THE ATOM

Sir,

Congratulations on your June 1978 issueon energy sources; every article dealt withan extremely important aspect of the energyproblem. However, one potential source wasnot discussed that of the enormous

energy, so far fortunately unused, stored inand for nuclear weapons. According to theStockholm International Peace Research

Institute (SIPRI), this energy amounts to onemillion times the force of the Hiroshima

bomb.

If the world is wise and successfully urgesthe nuclear powers to dismantle their weap¬ons and to place their plutonium graduallyunder the custody and at the disposal of theUnited Nations Atomic Energy Agency inVienna, humanity will have an invaluable andready source of energy for years to come.

A. Loeff

Rotterdam

The Netherlands

THE WORLD'S FIRST

WOMAN PH. D?

Sir,

In your July 1978 issue the young Vene¬tian Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Plscopla, whoreceived her doctorate at the University ofPadua 300 years ago, is called the world'sfirst woman Ph.D.

But she was not the first female doctor!

That distinction belongs to Hypatla, whotaught in Alexandria in the 5th century A.D.

The daughter of a mathematician, Theon ofAlexandria, she was herself a prominentmathematician, astronomer and philoso¬pher. She wrote a number of astronomical

and mathematical commentaries, includingone on conic sections.

After a rigorous education she became aprofessor, with the right to wear the philo¬sopher's cape and to give lectures. A repre¬sentative of pagan, Neoplatonist scholar¬ship, she was murdered by fanatic Christiansin the year 415 after the Archbishop ofAlexandria had preached a sermon about"sinful women", especially meant for Hypa-tia, who had dared to give lessons to menl

Otto Ottesen

SandefjordNorway

RIDDLE OF

A ROYAL HUNT

Sir,

Reading once again an interesting articlein the October 1971 issue of the UnescoCourier, entitled "A Sassanian Royal Hunt",I noticed that the significance of the fifth-century A.D. relief shown on page 38 (seephoto 2) has never been explained.

I was intrigued and curious to discover themeaning of the scene, with its group of fourfigures that appear to be lying down in frontof a line of advancing elephants. After acareful study of all the illustrations of the

article, I believe that I have found the solu¬tion.

The four figures are not marching, as theymight appear to be. They are actually open¬ing a gate to allow the elephants and beat¬ers to enter the king's hunting area which, asone can see, was entirely enclosed. I alsonoticed that in the lower left corner the

figure of a small dog is visible.

I came to this conclusion by comparingthe figures with those shown at left of ano¬ther relief (see photo 1 ) pictured on page 35.

In closing, I should like to congratulate theUnesco Courier on its excellent choice of

articles and suggest for future issues anarticle on Alexander the Great, as well asone on the recent discovery of the tomb ofhis father , Philip of Macedón, at Verglnain Greece.

Walter MarquesRio de Janeiro

Brazil

An ivory head believed to portray Philip ofMacedón was shown on page 2 of our July1978 issue, and on page 30 of the presentnumber we publish a photo of another ivoryhead, presumed to depict Alexander theGreat. Both these important objects werediscovered in the tomb at Vergina whichmay have been Philip's burial-place. Theywere unearthed during excavations directedby Professor Mano/is Andronicos, whosearticle on the Athens Acropolis, AthenianDemocracy's Grand Design" appeared in ourOctober 1977 issue Editor.

MEASURING

THE WORLD'S WATER

Sir,

I agreed to cuts being made in my article"Will Deserts Drink Icebergs?" (UnescoCourier, February 1978) for reasons ofspace. As a result of these cuts, which werenot submitted for my approval, certain factsand figures which I consider importantdisappeared from my text.

All published figures, even the mostrecent, concerning the amount of water onearth are highly approximate, but it is esti¬mated that the total quantity is about 1,500million cubic kilometres, 2.7 per cent ofwhich (some 40 million cubic kilometres) isfresh water. It has also been estimated thatthe total volume of fresh water stored in ice¬

caps and glaciers is of the order of 30 millioncubic kilometres (90 per cent in the Antarc¬tic, 9 per cent in Greenland, 1 per cent inglaciers).

Thus 70 per cent of the earth's fresh wateris stored in ice-caps and glaciers and 30 percent is in liquid form.

This 30 per cent consists of: surface water -(streams, lakes, swamps, etc.); groundwater; moisture contained in soil, rocks,sand, plants, etc.; and atmospheric water(clouds, fog, etc.).

Estimates of these different "reserves" of

water vary widely from one publication toanother and are still extremely approximateand tentative.

One of the most reliable figures at present¡s that for the Greenland ice-cap (which wasaccurately measured largely through thework of French Polar Expeditions), followedby that for the Antarctic ice-cap (measuredby a number of expeditions since Inter¬national Geophysical Year in 1957).

Paul-Emile Victor

Paris

73

Bookshelf

Recent Unesco books

and periodicals

Planning the Primary School Curri¬culum in Developing Countries, byH.W.R. Hawes. (No. 17 in Unesco's

"Fundamentals of Educational Planning"series) 2nd impression 1978, 50 pp. (8 F)

The Education of Migrant Workersand their Families. Case studies under¬

taken for the National Commissions for

Unesco of Finland, France, Sweden andYugoslavia. (No. 27 in Unesco's "Educa¬tional Studies and Documents" series)

1978, 44 pp. (8 F)

Coral Reefs: Research Methods,

edited by D.R. Stoddart and R.E. Johan¬nes. The most recent findings on thefunctional ecology of coral reefs. (No. 5in Unesco's "Monographs on Océano¬graphie Methodology" series). 1978,581 pp. (90 F)

Soil Map of the World 1: 5,000,000.Volume VI Africa. Prepared by theFood and Agriculture Organization of theUnited Nations (FAO). This volume des¬

cribes the soils of Africa and accompa¬nies the 3 map sheets already published(price 50 F each). Co-published with theFAO. 299 pp. (75 F)

Communication Policies in the

Republic of Korea by Hahn Bae-ho.1978, 50 pp. (10 F)

Exploring Global Interdependenceis the theme of Unesco's International

Social Science Journal (\lo\. XXX, No. 2,1978). Each issue 23 F; subscription 70 Ffor one year or 116 F for two years.

Non-formal education ¡s the majortheme of Prospects, Unesco's quarterlyreview of education (Vol. VIII, No. 2,1978). Each Issue 12 F; subscription 42 Ffor one year or 70 F for two years.

Unesco's literature

translations series

IRAN

The llahi-nama or Book of God of

Farid al-Din Attar, translated from the

Persian by John Andrew Boyle, with aforeword by Annemarie Schimmel. Man¬chester University Press, 392 pp. (£9.95)

ARABIC WORKS

Rusum Dar Al-Khilafah (The Rules

and Regulations of the Abbasid Court)by Hllal Al-Sabi. Translated with anintroduction and notes by Elle A. Salem.Lebanese Commission for the Trans¬

lation of Great Works, Beirut, 134 pp.

African technologyget-togetherNine African countries have established the

Association of African Industrial TechnologyOrganizations to co-ordinate their efforts inindustrial technological research and develop¬ment. Member countries are: Ghana, Kenya,Madagascar, Nigeria, Uganda, Senegal, Sudan,United Republic of Cameroon, and Zaire.

Let the Village HearA workshop on information sharing, "Let theVillage Hear", is being planned for Calcutta,India, in late November or early December 1978.People involved in village development in theThird World will take part in the workshop,whose goal is to increase information exchangein the developing world and to decrease relianceon the traditional north-south flow of technolo¬

gical aid. The workshop has been initiated byRural Communications, a Third World serviceagency based in South Petherton, Somerset,U.K.

New guideto U.N. information services

The first comprehensive directory of the infor¬mation activities of the U.N. system has beenissued by the Interorganization Board for Infor¬mation Systems (IOB) in Geneva. The 250-pageDirectory of United Nations InformationSystems and Services contains particulars on.over 100 information sources and covers sub¬

jects ranging from human rights to industry,science, technology and sociology. Published inEnglish (French and Spanish editions will appearlater in 1978) the directory is available free ofcharge to organizations, universities and librariesfrom the Director, IOB Secretariat, Palais desNations, CH-1211, Geneva 10, Switzerland.

Unesco establishes

Simon Bolivar

International Prize

Unesco has set up an international prize,financed by the Venezuelan Government, to beawarded for noteworthy actions in line with the¡deals of Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), ElLibertador (The Liberator) of Latin America. The

biennial prize of not less than $30,000 willhonour contributions to the freedom,

independence and dignity of peoples and to thestrengthening of solidarity between nations bypromoting their development and the advent ofa new international economic, social andcultural order. It will be awarded for the first time

on 24 July 1983, bicentenary of Bolivar's birth,on the basis of candidatures presented byUnesco Member States or Associate Members,

and by intergovernmental and international non¬governmental organizations with consultativestatus or co-operative relations with Unesco.The award will be made by an international juryconsisting of a representative of Unesco'sDirector-General, a personality named by theVenezuelan Government and five other

representatives of the different world regionsdesignated by the Director-General.

Saving the MediterraneanMonk Seal

An Action Plan to save the Mediterranean Monk

' Seal, threatened by pollution, overfishing andthe destruction of its habitat, has been approvedat a meeting convened by the Greek Govern

ment and co-sponsored by Greece, the U.N.Environment Programme (UNEP), the Interna¬tional Union for Conservation of Nature and

Natural Resources (IUCN), and the University ofGuelph (Canada). The Plan will be co-ordinatedwith Monk Seal projects in Turkey and the WestMediterranean and with efforts to save other

species and habitats.

Radio manual

for population workersGrassroots Radio, a radio manual by Rex Kea¬ting, has been issued by the International Plan¬ned Parenthood Federation, 18-20 Lower

Regent Street, London SWI. The manual is notintended for professional broadcasters, but aimsto teach the basic elements of radio productionand writing and thus help family planning wor¬kers explain to listeners the purpose and practiceof family planning.

U.N. Industrial DevelopmentFund reaches $9.5 million

A donation of $1 million from Saudi Arabia, apledge of over $1 million from the U.K., andcontributions from Burundi and Venezuela have

brought the money available to the UnitedNations Industrial Development Fund to over$9.5 million. Created by the U.N. GeneralAssembly in 1976, the Fund consists of volun¬tary contributions to be used by the U.N. Indus¬trial Development Organization ¡n support ofindustry in the developing countries.

The Unesco Courier

in Korean

We are pleased to announce the launching of aKorean language edition of the Unesco Courier(see photo). Published by the Korean NationalCommission for Unesco, P.O. Box Central 64,Seoul, the first issue of the Korean editionappeared in June. Publication of the Korean edi¬tion brings the total number of language editionsof the Unesco Courier to 19: English, French,Spanish, Russian, German, Arabic, Japanese,Italian, Hindi, Tamil, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch,Portuguese, Turkish, Urdu, Catalan, Malaysianand Korean.

74

The scientific enterprise,today and tomorrow

Adriano Buzz»ti-Traverso

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A comprehensive study of the development of science andtechnology today by a leader in the field of population geneticsand biophysics. Former Assistant Director-General for Sciencesat Unesco, Professor Buzzati-Traverso examines a number ofhighly provocative and disturbing questions facing scientist andlayman alike:

Is science today the main hope for or the greatest threatto the further advance of mankind?

What have been the true benefits of science to man and

his institutions?

Is it possible for developing lands to absorb the shock oftechnology transfer on their ancient tradition-dominatedcultures?

Do we really need science and technology?

Dare we even continue to engage in laboratory researchand experiments?

439 pages 160 French Francs

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Avantgardeiconographer

Together with his compatriot Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (Kiev 1878-Leningrad'1935) was one of the founders of abstract painting. Malevich developed an abstract style known as "Supre-matism" which stressed the primacy of simple geometric elements and pure colours and culminated in hisfamous White on White (1918). In this Head of a Peasant (1910), now in the Russian Museum, Leningrad, hesought to achieve geometric harmony through the use of flat, tubular and conical forms. Like many of Male-vich's other works on the same theme, it suggests an affinity with the ¡con painters of medieval Russia.

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Photo Russian Museum, Leningrad