HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES

Volume I Number 1 March 1977

Ill

III

II

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Cambridge, Massachusetts

Copyright 1977, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved ISSN 0363-5570 Published by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts Printed by Imprimerie Orientaliste, Louvain, Belgium

CONTENTS
Note from the Editors

ARTICLES The Invitation to the Varangians

OMELJAN PRITSAK

7
HKOHUOHT, and

Two Early Slavonic Ghost-Words

HORACE G. LUNT

Hia,imnuHaub

23

The Origins of the Official Muscovite Claims to the "Kievan Inheritance"

JAROSLAW PELENSKI

29

The Ethnic Composition of the City of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century

PATRICIA HERLIHY

53 79

Tyynas Oernihiv
* GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

Observations on Ukrainian Erotic Folk Songs

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA

115

REVIEWS Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, ed., Historia Chana Islam Gereja III Omeljan Pritsak 130 Lewis V. Thomas, A Study of Naima Omeljan Pritsak 133
Perkdrukar Ivan Fedorov tajoho poslidovnyky na Ukrajini Frank

E. Sysyn Wiadyslaw Serczyk, Piotr I Wielki Orest Subtelny

134
135

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

Harvard Ukrainian Studies is the journal of the Ukrainian Research

Institute of Harvard University. It intends to be an international forum for the exchange of current scholarly research in Ukrainian studies and to cultivate an interdisciplinary approach to the field. In their task the Editors are assisted by a distinguished Editorial Board of scholars working both here and abroad in disciplines relevant to the field. The journal deals primarily with history, linguistics, and literature; however, related disciplines may be included if Ukrainian topics are treated within their framework. Each volume will contain articles, review articles, documents, and book reviews. The principal language of publication is English, although articles in French or German are accepted from time to time. Cyrillic alphabet is transliterated, except for brief passages or examples where the subject matter requires its use. The Editors recommend the use of the International Transliteration System ., c, , y, ja, etc.. However, studies in English that deal with history or literature especially of modern periods may follow the Library of Congress System. The Editors encourage authors to submit contributions that treat Ukrainian topics within the context of Slavic and European studies. Articles submitted for publication should be analytical or synthesizing studies dealing with an aspect of Ukrainian studies; they should not exceed forty pages of double-spaced typescript, including footnotes typed following the text. Review articles should not exceed twenty pages of typescript. Documents, which normally will be previously unpublished, should be accompanied by an appropriate introduction or analysis. The journal solicits information about all publications dealing with Ukrainian studies or related subjects, regardless of place of publication, and invites the publishers and authors of such works to submit copies for review.

6
One hundred years ago, in 1876, the Ems Ukase severely limited the use of the Ukrainian language-let alone the study of Ukrainian history or literature-in Imperial Russia. It is an encouraging sign that the hundredth anniversary of this act should witness the inau guration of a journal devoted precisely to these three disciplines.
Harvard University December 1976

Omeljan Pritsak Ihor ev&nko

THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS*

OMELJAN PRITSAK

1.

THE SOURCE EVIDENCE

One of the earliest recorded episodes in East European "Russian"/ "Ukrainian" history is the famous invitation to the Baltic Sea "Varangians," allegedly extended by the inhabitants of the Novgorod region, that a prince be sent "to rule over us and give proper justice." In response, according to the usual analysis, a Varangian from a group known as the Rusb = Rus was sent: Rjurik, his two brothers, and "all the Rus" arrived, and from them the whole land and its inhabitants came to be called Rus. The later rulers of Kiev, Novgorod, and other principalities took great pains to establish their legitimacy by tracing their descent to Rjurik. Modern scholars have been.reluctant to accept such a simple account of the origins of a major state organization. During the last two centuries, investigators have been particularly concerned with the ethnic identity of Rjurik and that of the inviters. Conflicting speculations have engendered lively and sometimes bitter controversy, too often marred by modern nationalistic passions. I will not touch on the history of studies about this episode; instead, I would like to present
continued on page 11 This article is part of a six-volume study, entitled The Origins of Rus, which is being prepared for publication. Certain statements made here are based on the detailed argumentation presented in volume 5 of that work. It is a pleasant duty to express my gratitude to Professor Horace G. Lunt, my colleague and friend, who skillfully made the textual rearrangements necessary to convert a chapter from a lengthy study into this short independent article, which he also furnished with several philological footnotes. However, all responsibility for the articles hypothesis and proofs remains my own. The bibliography on this subject is extensive. I will cite only the most informative items: Vladimir A. Motin, "Varjago-Russkij vopros," Slavia 10 1931: 109-136, 343379, 501-537; V.A. Molin, "Naalo Rusi, Normany v Vostonoj Evrope," Byzantino Slavica 4 1932: 33-58, 285-307; Henryk Lowmiaski, Zagadnienie roli Normandy w genezie panstw slowiadskich Warsaw, 1957; Vladimir P. uiarin, Sovremennaja
*

NOVGOROD FIRST Bb epeeisa ce Kbzeea U IJeKa u Xopuca uoewpocmuu ii,oae, peicosruu CJJ0BeHH, a KPHBHUH H Mepsi.
CJIOBeH caoio BoJIocTh arrkjia, a

HYPATIAN I

LAUR

KPISBHJ.W CBO}O, a Mepe csioso; icoxo caornvm QflOMJ BJIas1me; a qioa CBOI{MI, pooM; a naim tasixy Bapsn-osr,, 3 Hr.saxy pam, Bapsr3H npuxopiute aTh 3MOPb$1 4 isa qioga, is isa Cnoahsexi,, H Ha Mtpsixa H H Bcsx [a Ha] Kpsmwsaxi. 5 A Ko3ape UMQXYb isa Hojlirnexb, u isa Cmcepexb u isa Bamwsuxb, OT Mysia no 6trfa Bepaws; [T. 6ixa ii] a issice 6sixy y ffliX, TO TH Hacaime rgksixy CJIOBeHOMI, KPHBHIeMl, H MepsiMi, H H BacTama Ciroaeirh is Kpisassws is Mepsi is qioa Ha Bapsirss, is fl3rHaffla 51 3 Mope; 6 mssaxy no 6t, H BBHJ1H TaKo OT bIMa. 7

6367/859 A.D.

HMaxy naiss, B am 3aMOpbsl

isa Iiog, a isa Ha Mepa is Ha B KPHBHeXb. u isa Cmeepmx, isaxy iTo 6tn OT nalMa.

A Ko3apu uaxy

8 9 H risama Bapssrii 3a Mope, 10 a sie ama aMa naHH,

6370/862 A.D.

Hm,-isama Baps

H HC ama arca

H Haqama BJ1aLTH caMis co6k H FOpOM cTaBisTss.

11 II noqama caMis B co&k BOJ1OTH 12 13 a ise 6t B smm npaBux.

a noqama casm

a He 6k B isaxa

H BacTama caMH Ha cii Boeaam,

14

D H B1,cTa pQIb ha pu4t, H 6&cm Mexa isMis pam Beiimca a yco6isita, H BacTama rpa Ha rpa, H ise &hme B isaxa npaBM. 11 ptma a ce&k: KHWSSI noawer, mice 6j,s BiIajm isaMa is psutsui HbI no npaBy. Hitoma a Mope J BapsiroMa 16 a 6blma yco6ssuh B HH. 14 Ft BoeBaTa cais Ha cii noqama. 15 13 17 H pxoma: 18 nosue,c CaMIS B co6k 511151351, 19 mice 6ai BOJIOJn, llaMa H ps1.Jaim no psi,uy, no npaBy 20 Homa ia ope is Bapiiroira 21 KPYCU. Clije o 3axym mbz Bapiiz Pycb, 55K0 ce py3uu 3O6CE Ceee, Y3UU ace YpMaHU, Aubj1/use, u,smu Tome, maiso U CU. 14 picoma: 22 Picoma 23 FYCb
fws, Cizoee,sm, Kpuewsu u Becb
*:

fl

oo,.sa

pJ,4n

Lil

a 6Mma is issix

H isoeaa noqa

H ptma caMa HoanIesfi,

co6h

mice 6M BOl1Oitt no npay.

Homa 3H Mope

K Pycu. Cuqe 6o cq eaxy aKO ce py3uu 3b pyuu a#ce YpMa pysuu Fbme, ma Pma

Pycu [i:i PA; fLa ciloab, Cijoemisu,

3e1,uIsi isama ejnca a o6isnaa, a apswa y isac irary, a noa.ltTe x HaMb Kissnaism H Bu1atTb HaMM. Hm6pama cii 3 6paTa C pOU,i CH0HMH, a nosima co co6oio pyxcmiy Miiory is nperusBHy. H npaHtoma K Hoey2opoy
*

24 3eMnsl isama nejimca a o6isjisia, a apsizta Ba iseil HTh.

3eMJhii Hama ssei a apiiia Ba iselt

25

a nossiteTe KHSDIHT H BOJ1OtTB llaMa.

a noisTe icHs H BO31OjhTa ll

26 H nm6pama cii ipise 6paTa c poai CBOISMH, 27 a nosima no co6 edo Pycb ii npsi.ioma 28 Kb CiloemisoM nmpeme.

H a31,6pama cii c pobi cHoaM nosiuxa no co6 H npa.aoma

[P:K CJIOBeHOM n

InaT,JIaB:Bcsl; PA:Bca.

29 H cpy6uwa sopob JIao2y H cae cTapam}la e Hoemsopom 6s mssi ey Piopaici,; 30 H cne cTaptttumll 31 B J1aio3 Pioprnca, 32 a pyraa Crnieyci, isa EhJro3epk, eiviy 33 a pera TpyBopi, Ba H36opcU1,. 34 Hornmmxi, Bapaeib 35 36 npoiea cii Pycisaa 3eMJha. 37 38 39 Ho iaoio sice jihry yxipe Casieyca a 6par ero TpyBopa. H npmi rniacm earnra Piopmca, o6oio 6paTy isjiacm, a HaHa BJTazfrra earns!,. 40 Ho aaoio sice irty yrspe CHHeYCa a 6pam ero Tpyisopa. 41 H npasi Piopaica airacm iscio oaim. 42 43 H flpuweb
SOpOb isab Kb HAbMeplo U cpyu

a cpy6ama ropo is J1aio3] cTapsamaa Pioprnca,

npyria ctite a BJIt,o3ep Cimeyca;

a pyrass Caisey

a TpeTeis Bb H36opbcKk, a TpyBopi, Hom mmx BapRsb,

isaxOisUKb

TPTHH M3o

H OT rkcr, Ba

rnmxb,

nposeawa cii Pycb, u om mmx c.ioeem PycKars 3eMJiil;

u cym ,soesojxthcmuu iuoue ao nllemnero itHil om poOa eapia#cbdKa.

npoea Ca Pycxa

isOeySOpobqU [P

mu cyrn& Aiobe om poa eapcbC

npea,ce o mwa

Ho iwoio xce J1 a [TPA ii] 6pam H upail BJIacTb [PBCIO]

BoiixoeoMb, u npoeazua u Hoebsopob, is cme my sosisaica.

[P. Te Ca

THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS

11

an analysis of the rather scanty source material and attempt a fresh evaluation. 2 The "Invitation to the Varangians" is recorded only in the native chronicles ofOld Rus : there is no trace of it in Byzantine, Scandinavian, Islamic, or other written sources. Of the many variants the chronicles offer, only three need be taken into account here-the three which represent the earliest extant stages of Kievan annalistics.3 The Novgorod First Chronicle reflects the earliest compilation, dated about 1071, al though the modifications made by a later Novgorod editor must be reckoned with. The Laurentian Chronicle reflects the final version of the compilation known as the Povst vremennyx let or "Tale of Bygone Years" ca. 1123, whereas the Hypatian Chronicle is the second variant of the PVL the Mstislav Monomaxovi redaction, ca. 1119. One sign of the differences among these versions is that the story of Rjurik is recorded under the year 6362/854 in the Novgorod First Chronicle, while in the Hypatian and Laurentian it is divided into two entries: 6367/859 and 6370/862. Since the only research method possible for us is comparison, the texts of these three chronicles are given here. Italicized words and passages are those that seem, on grounds we will discuss, to be insertions.
2. WHO INITIATED THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS?

The Novgorod First Chronicle NFC has, on the whole, preserved the oldest stage of the tradition while reflecting knowledge of life in
buruaznaja istoriografija Drevnej Rusi Moscow, 1964; Knud Rahbek Schmidt, et al, Varangian Problems, Report of the First International Symposium on the Theme "The Eastern Connections of the Nordic Peoples in the Viking Period and Early Middle Ages," Moesgaard - University of Aarhus, 7-11 October 1968, Scando-Slavica, supp. I Copen hagen, 1970. 2 See the texts on pp. 8-10 Concerning the Old Rus chronicles letopisi see Aleksej A. axmatov, Razys kanija o drevnj.tix russkix letopisnyx svodax St. Petersburg, 1908; Mixail D. Priselkov, Istorja russkogo letopisanva XI-XV vv. Leningrad, 1940; Dimitrij S. LiAaev, Russkie let opisi i ix kulturno-istorieskoe znaenie Moscow, 1969 See also Mark X Aletkovskij, Povest vremennyx let Moscow, 1971. The texts are quoted here according to the following editions: NFC = AN. Nasonov, ed, Novgorodskajapervaja letopis Moscow and Leningrad, 1950, pp. 106-107; Laurentian Chronicle Lay = Evgenij F. Karskij, ed, Polnoe sobranie russkix letopisej hereafter PSRL, vol. 1: I, 2nd ed Leningrad, 1926, cols. 19-20; Hypatian Chronicle Hyp = A. A. axmatov, ed., PSRL, vol. 2, 2nd ed St. Petersburg, 1908, cols. 13-14. Spelling has been partly normalized. Some insignificant modifications based on related manuscripts are added in square brackets. Numerals are added to provide references to individual passages.

12

OMELJAN PRITSAK

the north. It emphasizes that the invitation concerns the citizens of towns gorody/grady, and not tribes or clans rody:
H aiama BflTH CMli
ii

co6

ropo,zui CTaBHTH... H wcrama rpatt Ha rpai, n He 6me B HHX6 rIpaBM.

11 And they began to govern themselves 12 and to build towns 15 and town rose against town 13 And there was no law among them.

The Kievan editor of the PVL, on the other hand, had no knowledge of the Baltic system of town self-government that we have ample reason to believe existed in Novgorod and other northern towns. He was used to the Polanian-Derevlianian type of tribal-territorial organiza tion based on the rod, that is, on the concept of "kin" having the extended meaning of "clan" or "tribe." The editor simply misunder stood his sources. He misinterpreted the judicial term pravda law i.e., a direct and correct mode of action, as opposed to a devious or illegal one by taking it in the moral sense of "truth" as opposed to falsehood. The loss of the correct jurisdictional definition entailed a major change in the force of the passage:
it

rioiama

CMH B

co6k

BOJTOTH H H 6 B tIHxb npaBM, H WbCT PO.1 Ha pOX1.

11 And they began to govern among themselves 13 And there was no truth among them, 14 And kin rose against kin.

The important notion of importing a legal code for the towns was thus lost.5 2.1 Both the Laurentian and Hypatian versions of the PVL associate the towns with ethnic names that we can assume refer to tribes.6 The
It is a well-known fact that the Pravda russkaja, the first legal code in Eastern Europe, was produced by the traveling merchants frequentantes of the city of Great Novgorod, which belonged to what I call the cultural sphere of the Mare Balticum Baltic Sea, a colony of the cultural sphere of the Mare Nostrum Mediterranean Sea. The original code of Novgorod was probably one of the early Franco-Frisian redactions not preserved, unfortunately of the "Merchant Law of the Island of Birka Bjarkeyjar rttr," typical for the Baltic cultural sphere after 800 AD. and prior to the emergence of the Hanseatic League. More on this important topic is contained in volume 5 of The Origins of Rus 6 It is clear that the larger p/em/a or "tribe" included or could include more than one rod. The early chronicles do not make the exact relationship clear. In the variants of this particular episode, only the term rod occurs for the NFC, see passage 2.

THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS

13

editor has set up a kind of code that equates the tribal names, which suit the Kievan understanding of the situation, with the names of towns known to the Kievans of about 1100. After noting that the Varangians are newcomers, the above passage then continues PVL, Lay col. 20:
a nepiit HCJThHIIIH B But the first settlers in HoBtropoid C.uoBHe; Novgorod [were] the Slovne [Slovenians]; B flo.nomcicit KpHBHH; in Polock-the Kriviians B POCTOBS Mepsi; in Rostov-the Merians; B EJ1-O3ep Becb; in Bloozero-the Yes [Yepsians]; B MypoM MypoMa; in Murom-the Muromians.

2.2 The list of tribes that appears in the invitation itself contains discrepancies, but these can be readily explained. The chief difficulty arose because the group called Ves in the passage given in 2.1 was not clearly known to the Kievan editors of about 1100, and was equally unfamiliar to later scribes. Whether the old name was Vbsb or Vesb, it quickly became confused with the pronoun vso all and possibly with the Slavonic noun V6Sb village well known from the Gospels and from translations such as those of Hamartolos.
Thus, the PVL phrase in passage 4 may be normalized to a later na vsx KriviCx on all Krivii.7 This, is turn, presumably arose from an attempt to "correct" the misunderstood original text: "na Vbsi [Vesi] i na KriviCixb." Similarly, in passage 23, the Laurentian text actually reads "KriviCi vsja zemija naa velika": the expected nominative VbSb or vest, has been taken over into the next clause to become a modifier: "all our land." Study of the manuscript tradition enabled scholars

to restore the original text in these instances long ago: the Yes disappear from the chronicle after 882. It is noteworthy that the distant Kievans retained the ethnonym Ves although it is distorted in four of seven passages, but the Novgorodians, presumably neighbors of the Yes, make no reference to the name at all.8
1

This perfectly grammatical phrase was copied into most later chronicles But it should be pointed out that nowhere in the early accounts is there any indication that sub-groups of the Krivii acted so independently that the annalist would feel it necessary to underline their unity in this particular instance. 8 The Yes appear only in lists, never as independent actors. The name occurs: a in a long list of the inhabitants of Japheths allotment of land Lay col. 4, Hyp col. 4; b in another enumeration of who lived where Lay col. 10, Hyp col. 8; c in a list of tribes paying tribute to the Rus Lay col. 11, Hyp col. 8; d, e, j in the three passages

14

OMELJAN PRITSAK

2.21 The NFC lacks the introduction of the redactions represented by the Laurentian and Hypatian chronicles, where the Yes are mentioned three times. It also omits the passage cited above in 2.1 and the account of Olegs campaign of 882. Indeed, our only comparison must be indirect: a juxtaposition of items 4 and 23 in the southern accounts of the invitation to the Yarangians with the elements in items 2, 3, 6, and 7 of the Novgorod account. 2.22 In items 4 and 23, the Cud and the Slovne stand together at the head of the lists, but the Novgorod editor has relegated the Cud to last place. It may well be that he considered the Novgorodians, including himself, as Slovne. Local pride may have impelled him to give precedence to his own group. On the other hand, it seems obvious that the meaning of the term Cud had changed. The earliest sources, whether written or oral, must have had separate names for two closely related groups of Fennic-speaking peoples: Cud for those to the west and north of Novgorod, ancestors of the Es tonians and Yots later Yod; and Yes or Ybsb for those to the east and northeast, presumably the ancestors of the Yepsians. In modern times, the Russians called the Yepsians Cud or Cuxari. Surely this name was established a thousand years ago, at a time when the Slavic newcomers had occupied choice positions in formerly Fennic territory, and after the time when the first Slavic settlers had reason to make careful distinctions among their neighbors.9 When the Novgorod editor removed the Cud from the favored first position, he probablyput their name at the end of the list. Later copyists, believing that the term Ves referred to the people now called Cud, simply deleted the name altogether.1
discussed above; and finally g in a list of soldiers Oleg took on an expedition in 882 Lay col. 22, Hyp col. 16. But, based upon the Oriental and Old Norse sources, one may assume that both the Ves and the tud were important competitors of the Slovne for domination in the North. After the latters final victory, the ruling strata of the newly created Great Novgorod thoroughly destroyed all vestiges of the former glory of their predecessors. A detailed analysis of the existing data is given in volume 5 of The Origins of Rus. The long silence in written sources about the Vepsians and the clear evidence that the group had been in the area continuously since well before 850 has made scholars cautious about identifying the Yes with modern Vepsians. The term f.ud has been applied over the centuries to various Fennic groups in the northern lake area and especially to the Estonians. See V. V. Pimenov, Vepsy Moscow and Leningrad, 1965, for a detailed discussion. References to the cud in the PVL sa. 907, 980, 988, 1030, 1071, 1113, 1116 generally refer to the Ests and to the area west and northwest of Novgorod. In the NFC s.a. 989 p. 161 is another item, noting that Gleb Svjatoslavi "fled beyond Volok;

THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS

15

2.23 In the two Kievan redactions of the PVL, the list of tribes paying tribute to the Yarangians includes five names. However, when the editor repeats the list with the invitation itself item 23, the name Merja Merians is omitted. I submit that this is not an accidental omission, but that the name was not present in the original text of the invitation. 2.3 If these considerations are accepted, the tradition of the invitation is seen to refer to five towns, disguised by the Kievan chronicler as tribes who participated in the action. The code and equivalent towns are these: 1. Cud = Old Ladoga, although the town is not mentioned directly 2. Slovne = Novgorod 3. Merja = Rostov 4. Yes = Bloozero 5. Krivii = Polock.

3.

DID FIVE "TRIBES" OR THREE "TOWNS" PARTICIPATE IN THE INVITATION?

An important discrepancy is now apparent: although five tribes are listed as extending the invitation, only three brothers came to be rulers. Why were two groups discriminated against? Let us examine their residences to see what information these provide. 3.1 The oldest brother settled in Old Ladoga, as the Hypatian Chronicle rightly states. The fact that the NFC has Rjurik settle in Novgorod is surely a change due to local patriotic sentiment as was moving the Cud out of first place in the initial listing in item 2. Since Ladoga is situated in the old Cud territory and the leading role in the invitation was played by the Cud-Ests-Yots, we might expect that
and the cud killed him." This presumably refers to the Zavolok tud to the northeast of Bloozero, the group Pimenov argues are Vepsians. In any case, Pimenov adduces an impressive body of evidence to indicate that the main territory of the Yes was west of Bloozero, extending well into Novgorods domain. In the sixteenth century Novgorodian and Muscovite officials apparently referred to any Fennic population in the Novgorod area as Cud Pimenov, p. 183. This usage may well have been established v-arlier, so that the scribe of the oldest copy of the NFC that contains the beginning of the PVL the Komissionnyj spisok, mid-fifteenth century already considered the special name Ves redundant, for the Cud were mentioned, too.

16

OMELJAN PRITSAK

Ladoga would be the town named here. This expectation is supported by archaeological evidence. Old Ladoga is the oldest town in the northwestern part of Eastern Europe: archaeologists date its founding to the seventh or early eighth century." Ladogas importance declined, however, and as A. N. Nasonov has demonstrated,2 the town was integrated into the territory of the Slovne sometime in the 1040s or 1050s, thus becoming a part of the Novgorod principality. Therefore, some decades later the Novgorod chronicler could afford to overlook Ladogas former position and substitute for it the contemporary Slovne economic and political center-Novgorod. 3.2 The second brother settled in Bloozero, on the territory of the Yes. Here, too, archaeology is helpful. Excavations of the "Old Town," seventeen kilometers to the east of the present Bloozero [Bloozersk?] have established the presence of a town population there during the ninth to thirteenth century.3 3.3 Relatively little is known about Izborsk, the town of the third brother. However, archaeologists have shown that its political successor, Ph,skov or Pskov, had some significance in trade and commerce from the eighth century.14 Surely, then, it is correct to regard Izborsk and Pskov as the old, pre-Novgorodian centers of the territory of the Slovne "tribe" Wends.5 3.31 Novgorod was established some time later: archaeologists date its founding to no earlier than the end of the ninth century.6
See W. J. Raudonikas, Die Normannen der Wikingerzeit und das Ladogagebiet Stockholm, 1930. Cf. also Aleksander L. Mongajt, Arxeologija v SSSR Moscow, 1955, pp. 360-361. 12 A. N. Nasonov, "Russkaja zemija" i obrazovanie territorii drevnerusskogo gosudarstva Moscow, 1951, pp. 73-74. 13 See Mongajt, Arxeolog:ja v SSSR, p. 362; L.A. Golubeva, "Raskopki v Beloozere," in Arxeologieskie otkrytija 1965 goda Moscow, 1966, pp. 174-176; L.A. Golubeva, "Amfory i krasnoglinjanye kuvtiny Beloozera," Kratkie soob.ienija Instituta arxeologii hereafter KS Inst Arx 135 1973: 101-104. V. V. Sedov, "Izborskaja ekspedicija," in Arxeologieskie otkrytzja 1972 goda Moscow, 1973, pp. 39-40; V. Y. Sedov, "Raskopki izborskoj ekspedicii," in Archeolo gieskie otkrytija 1973 goda Moscow, 1974, pp. 31-32. I. K. Labutina, "Oxrannye raskopki v Pskove," in Arxeologi6eskie otkrytija 1972 goda, pp. 20-21 ; K. M. Plotkin, "Raskopki gorodita Kamno pod Pskovom," in Arxeolo gieeskie otkrytija 1973 goda, p. 28. Cf. also A. L. Mongajt, Arxeologija v SSSR, p. 362; Mixail I. Tixomirov, Drevnerusskie goroda, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1956, pp. 389-390. 16 See Mongajt, Arxeologija v SSSR, p. 362-364; cf. S. N. Orlov, "Arxeologieskie

THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS

17

This means that Old Ladoga is some two centuries older, and Izborsk and Pskov about one hundred fifty years older than Novgorod. 3.32 All this suggests that at various times the Slovne had different economic-political centers, whose chronology and succession were approximately as follows: 8th-9th centuries Izborsk 8th- 10th centuries Plbskov/Pskov 10th century Novgorod. 3.4 The archeological evidence thus belies the insertions made in the story by Novgorod chroniclers and used in subsequent accounts. It seems clear, then, that the invitation was issued at the initiative of the citizens of only three towns, corresponding to the number of brothers. Their relative rank is indicated by the order of listing: 1. Rjurik: Old Ladoga = Cud 2. Sineus: Bloozero = Ves 3. Truvor: Izborsk = Slovne 3.51 The Slovne apparently played a minor role in the episode. The "invitation" came primarily from the two Fennic towns of Old Ladoga and Bloozero, represented by the "tribes" of the Cud Ests/ Vots and the Yes Yepsians. 3.52 As for the Kriviians Polock and the Merja Rostov, their names were added to the list later, because the chroniclers inter preted the great conquests subsequently made by the Polock as part of the alleged activities of Rurik.7
3.5

3.6 These facts and considerations lead us to the following conclusions. The invitation to the Yarangians was initiated not by tribal organiza tions, but by the citizens of two Fennic towns-Old Ladoga the center

issledovanija na Rjurikovom gorodiie pod Novgorodom," KS Inst Arx 1351973: 77-79. B. A. Kolin, who applied the dendrochronological method to the study of the fragments of the wooden structures from the Nerevskij Konec of Noygorod excavated between 1951 and 1962, dates the oldest stratum to 953 A. D. See his "K itogam rabot Novgorodskoj arxeologieskoj ekspediciji, 1951-1962," in Kratkie sooblenjja Instituta materialnoj kultury 99 1964: 3-30; BA. Kolin, Novgorodskie drevnosti: Drevljannye izde/ja, Arxeologija SSSR: Svod arxeologieskix istonikov, no. E 1-55 Moscow, 1968, pp. 10. See PVL, s.a. 6370/862. A chapter in volume 5 of The Origins of Rus deals with the relations between Polock/the Krivii and Rostov/the Merija.

18

OMELJAN PRITSAK

of the Cud/Yot and Bloozero the center of the Yes/Yepsianstogether with the citizens of the Slavic town of Izborsk then the center of the Slovne. All three centers were interconnected by waterways and belonged to the sphere of the Baltic Sea; each was also situated near a major lake.8 Old Ladoga, closest to the Baltic Sea, occupied the central position among them and therefore assumed the leading role.

4.

WHO WAS INVITED?

4.1 All three accounts of the invitation contain the identical phrase item 20, "They went overseas to the Varangians."19 4.2 The NFC has preserved the original text, which omitted item 21-the phrase "to the Rus "-and the list of different Yarangian peoples that followed.20 The second list of "tribes," following the words rkoa/rCa they said item 22, must also be viewed as an insertion. The variation rCa Rusi they said to the Rus, as opposed to ra Rusb said the Rus, is a later complication that involved speculations on the part of editors in the eleventh to fourteenth century as to whether there were Rus among the inviters or not. 4.3 After accepting the invitation, the three brothers took with them item 27 either "a numerous and most wonderful druina," according to the NFC, or "all the Rus," according to the other two versions. 4.4 The term vsja Rus all the Rus clearly refers to Rus in the sense of the domain governed by the "great prince of Rus," attested to as early as the year 971, when the great prince of Rus Svjatoslav pri SvjatoslavC velicCm knjazi rustCm concluded a treaty with the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimisces 969976.21
18 This is typical of the so-called Birka period in the culture of the Mare Balticuin about 800-97 5, as discussed in my Origins of Rus. 19 "Varangian" in this context refers to the members of a multinational, professional society participating in the maritime activities of the Baltic. It is not a specific ethnic term, but is comparable to a general one like "Cossacks." 20 This list will be examined below. 2! PVL sa. 6479/971 = Lay, PSRL, vol. 1:1, 2nd ed. col. 73.

THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS .5Ixo ice IcnsIxbcsI Ico

19

tiape rpeqcxit H Co MHoIo: 1 Go.usipe H 2 Pycb BC$1, ,ta CXPHHMb npaa CbBS-

As I have sworn to the Greek emperors, and with me: 1 the boyars and 2 all the Rus, let us keep this righteous agreement.

This passage makes it clear that "all the Rus" within the governance of the great princes of Rus refers to their druina or retinue. 4.41 This usage also occurs in a passage of Constantine Porphyro genitus 948-9 50, where icvcc ot Pth = BC$l Pyci, 2 2 4.42 In the eleventh century, the term "all the Rus" was replaced by that "all the land of Rus." Thus the Ecclesiastical Statute of Yolodimer Cerkovnyi ustav Volodimera refers to Yolodimer :23 rnie KCTH BCIO 3eMJuo Pycbclcoylo; "who christened the whole land of Rus." In describing the second translation of the relics of Saints Boris and Glb in 1115, the NFC states :24 coyrrniuacst 6pamst Bbxmeropod Bono,IHMep18, Oieri,, BbIb H BC$1 Pycbicasl 3CMJI$l In Yyegorod gathered the brothers [i.e., fellow-princes] Volodimer, Oleg, David and all the land of Rus.

In the PVLs description of the oath at Ljube in 1097, all the princes meet and agree to peace and cooperation; if anyone breaks the agreement: a 6yem ia
PycKasI 25 Hb

xpecm

secTHhIi H BCR 3MJI

Let the honorable Cross be against him and

all the land of Rus

22 HVIKIZ No.tl3ptoc ,.t11v ciac?9l1, sOO&o ot aOrlv f,kpovrai apovtcc sEr thvtwv rthv Pl ir roy KictIIov, KIlt itpovtat sic ta ,to?.Ubta, 6 yctas Opa, iyoov ci; ta; ThcAafqvta: "When the month of November begins, their chiefs bojars together with all the Rus, leave Kiev at once and go off on the polydia poludie: tribute, circuits, round which means [tribute] rounds to the Slavic regions See De Administrando Imperio, ed Gy. Moravcik Budapest, 1949, p. 62, and the English translation by R. J. H. Jenkins, p. 63. 23 A. A. Zimin, Pamjatniki prava Kievskogo gosudarstva, vol. 1 Moscow, 1952, p. 237 "pervaja redakcija 0 spisku Istorieskogo muzeja XV v."; cf. PSRL, vol. 2, 2nd ed, cols. 383-384. 24 NFC, ed. AN. Nasonov, p. 20, sa. 6623/Ills. 25 Hyp, ed. A.A. axmatov, PSRL, vol. 2, 2nd ed, cal. 231.

20

OMELJAN PRITSAK

Other examples of this usage of "all the land of Rus" are found s.a. 1145 and 1154.26 4.43 The phrase muC zemlC RuskoC men of the land of Rus is not as common. However, it does occur in Great Prince Svjatoslav Vsevolodis invocation 1185. 27 4.5 The editor of the Kievan PVL considered Rjurik the founder of the Kievan dynasty: therefore, obviously, Rjurik had to be a "great prince of Rus." The old terminology for the retinue of such a prince was "all of the Rus" although in the editors contemporary parlance it would have been "the whole land of Rus ". It was thus natural for the PVL editor to replace the word druina of the older Novgorod

text by the term "all the Rus," the term that had been correct in Kiev
at the court of the great prince of Rus ca. 1116-1123. 4.6 Following the list of the residences of the three Varangian brothers there is an obvious editorial insert items 34-39 which is particularly clumsy in two of the three variants:
NOVGOROD FIRST HYPATIAN LAURENTIAN

And from those Varangians, those newcomers, they were named Rus and from them is known the land of Rus and the people of Novgorod are
to this very day of the kin of the Varangians

And from those Varangians was named the land

of Rus

And from those Varangians was named

the land of Rus;

Novgorodians, and the people of Novgorod are

of the kin of the Varangians; for formerly they

were Slovne.

4.61

Novgorod was never called "the Land of Rus": this is proved in the texts of the chronicles and in other documents.28 Moreover, as noted above 3.31, Novgorod surely did not exist as a city at the time
26

NFC, ed AN. Nasonov, p. 27 sa. 1145; Kievan Chronicle in Hyp, ed. A.A. axmatov, PSRL, vol. 2, 2nd ed, col. 469 s.a. 1154; col. 478 s.a. 1154. 27 Kievan Chronicle in Hyp, ed A. A. axmatov, PSRL, vol. 2, 2nd ed, col. 645 s. a. 1184: 0 rno6a MOB 6pamsi i CbIHOBt a MYK 3eMn PYCKOk. 28 See, e.g., Nasonov, "Russkaja zemija," pp. 28-50, 69-92, and passim.

THE INVITATION TO THE VARANGIANS

21

the invitation to the Varangian brothers was extended, which must have been well before 900 see below. Therefore the rendition of Rjuriks activities in the Hypatian Chronicle that ascribes to Rjurik of Ladoga the idea that Novgorod was his residency, created by the Novgorod chronicler, is clearly a later editorial addition. Furthermore, important traditions that cannot be discussed here ascribe the founding of Novgorod to another man, Gostomysl.29 4.62 Kiev became known as Rus only after it had been conquered by the great prince Igor of the Rus Yolga Kaganate, no earlier than the 930s.3 Basically all three chronicles agree thus :31
NOVGOROD FIRST, p. 107 HYPATIAN, col. 17 LAURENTIAN, col. 23

H ctte Hrop KHK B KMeB

H 6uia y nero BapsI3is MKH CJIOBeH H OTTOJTF, npoitit nposamacsi Pycbio
s.a.

it 6suia y nero CJIOBHH ii Bapsrit it [it OTToJ1k] npoamacsi Pyclilo

H 6kma y Hero

Bapsl3H it CJ1OB&HH it npornit [it OTTOJ1h] nponamacsi PycbIo, i.e.:

6362/854

s.a. 6390/882

"Igor settled in Kiev, reigning as prince There were with him Yarangian warriors, Slovne and others, who from that time were [also] called Rus." Thus, I submit, there can be no doubt that the invitation was extended only to the Yarangians. The word Rus that follows the word Varangians in the PVL items 21, 27, 36 of the passage is merely an editorial addition made when the text was revised sometime after 1072.

5.

THE DATE OF THE INVITATION

The dates in the early part of the PVL, including that of the invitation to the Yarangians, are speculations made by the scholarly chroniclers of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries; they are not to be accepted as
29

Concerning Gostomysl see A.A. axmatov, Razyskan/a o drevnPj.iix Russkix ltopisnyx svodax St. Petersburg, 1908, pp. 311, 517-518; Nasonov, "Russkaja zemija," pp. 69, 72, and the relevant chapter in my Origins of Rus, volume 5. 30 See Norman Goib and Omeljan Pritsak, The Khazar Hebrew Documents in press. One should take into account that the editor of the PVL replaced Igor with Oleg as the conqueror of Kiev, certainly in agreement with his Kievo-centric conception.

22

OMELJAN PRITSAK

valid.32 It is clear from other Rusian sources that the invitation must
have been extended before Great Prince Oleg of Rus concluded a treaty with the Greeks in 911. Most likely, the treaty was connected

with the extensive piracy of the Vikings in the mid-ninth century, known to us from Western sources.33
* * *

The invitation to the Varangians was initiated by the citizens of two Fennic towns, Old Ladoga and Bloozero, along with the citizens of the Slavic town of Izborsk, sometime after the mid-ninth century but no later than 910. The invitation was extended only to the Yarangians. The term Rus in the text of the invitation was added by the P VL editor sometime after 1072. Novgorod could not have played any role in the invitation of the Yarangians because at that time it did not exist as a town. The town of Izborsk was then the center of the Slovne. There is no source basis for the theory, long dominant in scholarship, which claims that Rus came into being because a group of five "Slavic" tribes invited the Rus clan to Novgorod in 862. Every part of such an argument is wrong, for: The inviters were not five tribes, but the citizens of three towns; They did not invite the Rusians, but the Yarangians; The chief inviting town was not Novgorod, but Old Ladoga; The year 862 as the date of the invitation is fictitious. The entire conception behind this argument is merely a repetition of the subjective speculations of the Old Rusian chroniclers. Therefore it must be corrected rather than accepted as a fact of history.
Harvard University
See, e.g., the study by E. G. Zykov "Izvestija o Bolgarii v Povesti vremennyx let i ix istonik," Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoj literatury 24 1969: 48-57. It is necessary to stress that contrary to the views of the so-called Normanist school which postulates the direct importation of a monolithic and monolinguistic higher Scandinavian culture that was still non-existent at the time into the Volga Dvina-Dnieper area I regard the "Vikings" as the developing society of the Mare Balticum region. The "Swedes," the Rus, the Varjagi, etc., appear as a polyethnic, multilingual and non-territorial community composed of "nomads of the sea" and urban dwellers in partly "Oriental" i.e., owned and controlled by lords and partly "polis" type towns and trading settlements. In the professional society of the Mare Balticum, as described above, all peoples along its shore were equal participants : Norsemen Scandinavians, Wends Slays, Balts, and Finns.
32

TWO EARLY SLAVONIC GHOST-WORDS: HKOHHOHb and HKbJThIHHAHb

HORACE G. LUNT

The major collection of lexicological data from manuscripts written in Rus during the eleventh to fourteenth centuries was compiled by I. I. Sreznevskij, with the help of his students, in the 1 860s and 1 870s and was published posthumously under the modest title Materials
for a Dictionary of the Rusian Language. In his attempt at least to

record all items in the texts he excerpted, Sreznevskij often included words that he did not try to account for. Since it is unlikely that these volumes will be replaced for many years to come,2 we must continue to try to interpret passages which Sreznevskij did not elucidate. In the Izbornik of Svjatoslav 1073, a passage translated from a letter of St. Basil contained two words Sreznevskij did not understand.
Under ikonionb he gives a cross-reference to ikiilipinanis, at which entry he reproduces the passage with no attempt at interpretation: "Zelje jesti, ikonionz,, jako fr i mjaso jests ikblpinanb; ni belena nikto ze um imy ne zoble, ni psa kusitt," [the punctuation is Sreznev
The language of the manuscripts of this period is an East Slavic version of Slavo nic i.e., a local modification of Old Church Slavonic that was common to the ancestors of modern Ukrainians and Belorussians as well as to the Great Russians who lived in Old Rus. I therefore venture to use the neologism Rusian to refer to it, as an equivalent of the clumsy and misleading term used by careful Soviet scholars drev nerusskij obIevostonos1avjanskjazyk or davn orus ka spilnosxidnoslavjans ka mova. A discussion of these terms and the object they are intended to refer to is to be found in Lunt 1975 see list of references, p. 28. 2 The Soviet Academy of Sciences has been working for years on a Slovar drevneruss kogo jazyka XI-XIV vv., envisioned as encompassing the written culture of this early Rusian period, but publication has repeatedly been postponed. In any case, it excludes many major sources, among them the Izbornik of 1073, on the grounds that the manuscripts are religious in content and South Slavic in origin. The first fascicle of another Academy project, entitled Slovar russkogo [!] jazyka XI-X VII vekov, appeared in 1975. Judging from this first volume, this "Russian" dictionary will not replace Sreznevskij for the early period, for though it furnishes some words not in Sreznevskij it unaccountably omits others. The principles for the selection of sources and examples are unclear and the definitions are not fully reliable cf the review in Language 53 [1976], no. 3.

24

HORACE G. LUNT

skijsJ. These phrases are near the end of Basils answer to the question why Christians, too, do not eat everything poCbto i my vsego ne jamb. This same passage from Basil is found in a completely different Slavonic translation in the Efremovskaja kormCaja, a Rusian manuscript usually dated to the early twelfth century. Beneevis edition con veniently provides the Greek text p. 524, which of course solves the major problems of what the passage means.

St. Basil explains that we dont eat everything simply because not everything is good for us: our own excretions, for example.
Obviously, we must distinguish the useful from the harmful in greens vegetables or meat: epei lachanon estin kai to kneion since even hemlock is a green. The Izbornik version of this phrase should be cited thus: imie zelje jestb i konionb. Therefore Sreznevskijs entry ikonionb is to be erased from our dictionaries of Rusian and a

future comprehensive thesaurus of Old Church Slavonic and replaced

by konionb, which is merely an untranslated reproduction of the Greek kneion hemlock, conium maculatum, a plant which looks

rather like parsley.

The next phrase is more interesting: hsper kreas estin kai to gypeion just as even vulture-flesh is meat. And it continues, "but anyone in his senses would neither eat henbane hyoscyamus nor

touch dog, unless there is urgent necessity." Thus Sreznevskijs oddlooking entry ikthpinanz3 loses not only the unwarranted middle The first, i, is the intensive "kai, also, too," while the final flb a scribal error for the conjunction tm all homs, but. The n
b,
is is

which is not in the manuscript, but both the first and last syllables.

provided with the diacritic mark that otherwise usually indicates a palatal I distinguished quite regularly in the Izbornik and certain other early Rusian manuscripts, as well as in the Old Church Slavonic codex Suprasliensis. The confusion of the "soft" syllable with the "hard" syllable *nb suggests that the scribe did not understand the passage, for otherwise he uses b and b very correctly, and the lack of punctuation at an important syntactic break strengthens this supposition. For "kai to gypeion. all homs" we can then read "i kblpina; im" and the longer context may be transcribed thus with
modern punctuation: jakoe i mjaso jesti, i kilpina; nt, [= n1} i belena niktoe unm imy ne zoble, ni posa kusiti,, cite ne velika nu&lja bude.3
These sentences are garbled in the translation recorded in the Efremovskaja kormaja, "Ponjefr zelije jests, i be/em, jakoe mjasa sutb . ns obae . ne jasti, nikz,toe . uml, imPja ni posa prikosnetb sja." Kneion is represented by be/em,, which in fact means

TWO EARLY SLAVONIC GHOST-WORDS

25

The equivalent of to gypeion vultures i.e., vultures flesh is simply kblpina, a word not recorded in the dictionaries. It consists of the root kblp- and the suffix -in- a, obviously identical with one that

occurs in texts that go back to translations surely made early in the OCS period-udavlenina the meat of a strangled animal Acts 15:20, and idolobrenenina the meat of sacrificed animals Nomokanon, Ustjuiskaja kormaja, cf. Prague SlovnIk-as well as in twelfth-century Rusian copies of texts that probably go back to tenth-/eleventh-century Bulgaria-vveriina squirrel-meat, medvdina bear-meat, diina meat of game. In Jaroslavs Church Statute, surely compiled in the eleventh century, we find kobylina mares-meat and teterevina grouse-meat, while modern Ukrainian has husjatyna goose-meat and holub atyna pigeon-meat, to cite only words referring to birds. A noun *kblpl,, from which kblpina would be a normal derivative, can be established for early Slavic, but its meaning is certainly not "vulture." The descendents in Kashubian, Sorbian, and Serbo-Croatian dialects Hercegovinia all mean "swan" Slawski 1952 s.v. kielp; 1960. Modern Russian has klpik and, according to the seventeenvolume Academy dictionary, klpica, which are both defined as "spoonbill." Yasmer, however, cites kolpIca Schwanenjungfrau, swan-maiden, which Trubaev renders, surely correctly, as "young female swan."4 Yasmer cites Ukrainian kolpc Seeadler Berneker writes koype;
-

"henbane" Ukrainian belna, Russian be/en, a plant that is poisonous but far less dangerous than hemlock; but where the Greek has hyoskyamos and the Izbornik correctly belena genitiye of negation, cf Sreznevskij s.y. be/ens, the Kormaja has nothing. Nor is any equivalent given for "vulture-meat." It is difficult to see what use this whole passage could have been to the readers of this Slavonic text, poorly translated and distorted as it is. The Izbornik version is literalistic and not easy to understand, but it is better. Vasmers source is very likely Berneker s.v. "lcalpb", who defines ko/pica as "Schwanenmdchen in Marchen"; he is presumably referring to a tale such as Morskoj cam i Vasi/isa Premudraja, from Afanasevs collection pointed out to me by Professor Edward L. Keenan. There, however, although the ko/pica does turn into a maiden, surely the proper meaning is "young female swan," for at the outset one is not supposed to know that the bird is in fact a magical person. It is a pity that Trubaev did not emphasize the folkloric context of this word, since no other dictionary equates East Slavic ko/pica with the swan. Even Dal in his common entry for kolp, kolpica and k/pik, defines them all simply as "spoonbill." In Afanaseys Skazka o mo/odce uda/ce, mo/odi/nyx jab/okax i zivoj vod, the ptica-ko/palIca is taken by all editors to be a ko/pica, but it is a meat-eating bird which carries the hero and his bride from the nether world and thus not the usual swan-maiden figure. In any case, the two tales are from the Vorone and the Tambov regions, well beyond the ordinary known range of the spoonbill see fn. 5. It is surely incorrect to render ko/pica as "spoonbill" in English here, as does Guterman 431 f. also ko/palIca, 319 f.

26

HORACE G. LUNT

Trubaev translates rod pelikana, although this word is not in Hrinenko or any of the recent dictionaries; klpyk -ycja spoonbill is only in Andrusyshen-Krett.5 The common denominator of these various modern dialectal Slavic meanings is "large white bird." Sreznevskij lists kolp, the expected East Slavic form of *kblp, after about 1300, with two examples. One, the phrase zemlju ... blujuu sja aki koiph, fits the meaning "white bird" and parallels a usage recorded by Dal for kolpIca, but is not specific. The other is a sixteenthcentury gloss to sirinb, an untranslated Greek word seirn in Isaiah 43:20. We cannot assume that the glossator knew what, in this instance, the Greek means modern scholars suggest several kinds of birds and therefore we have no clue as tojust what the gloss meant. It is tempting to see a connection between the siren of classical mythology also seirn in Greek and the swan-maiden of the North-both dangerous, part-human female figures who lure men to death with song. This would fit the less menacing kolpica of Afanasevs fairy tales in the nineteenth century. The combined East Slavic evidence, while not fully decisive, makes the meaning "swan" quite plausible for older *kblpb and derivatives. Why did the tenth-century Bulgarian translator choose kblpina to render "vulture-meat"? Two major possibilities suggest themselves. Least likely is that *kblpj, had taken on the meaning "vulture" in the translators local dialect. Surely the agreement of modern Hercego vinian and northwest Slavic dialects on the meaning "swan" makes it quite probable that *kblpb meant "swan" in Simeons Bulgarian lands as well, although other types of large white birds might have taken on that label. St. Basils text is difficult, and the translation of this whole passage is not fully clear; perhaps the translator did not know precisely what sort of bird a gyps was and just selected some bird at random. Yet, he must surely have understood the gist of the passage, and we can assume that he selected a bird he considered, for some reason, to be inedible. In Slavonic translations of equal antiquity the word lebedb is used see Sreznevskij. It occurs in Deuteronomy 14:16 in the list of animals Jews are forbidden to eat, and Gregory of Nazianzus mentions
Russian ko/pica, Ukrainian ko/pycja is the generic term used by professional ornithologists for the crested white spoonbill, P/ata/ea leucordia, a moderately large wading bird closely akin to the ibis. It is generally a southern bird, now found in the USSR only in the Danube delta, though formerly it also nested in marshlands at the mouths of other rivers emptying into the Black Sea.

TWO EARLY SLAVONIC GHOST-WORDS

27

skvmnavQ lebedb, referring to the constellation, in a denunciation of

astrologers. There is a remote chance that some echo of one of these passages might have affected the translator. But surely it is far more likely that he was motivated by something in his own tradition. Basil gives two examples of inedible meat and greens: hemlock and vulture, henbne and dog. Hemlock was apparently unknown to the Slavic translator, or known only by a Greek name. Henbane, however, must have been familiar to him, for he knew its proper Slavic name and we can assume that he had some knowledge of the plants poisonous characteristics and its medicinal and magical uses. The tabu against eating dog is widespread, perhaps the translator believed that Basils vulture was intended as a parallel example of tabu. In translating, he felt that the swan would better express this idea to his readers. Moszyski reports a widespread reverence for the swan across northeastern Europe and Asia, with a specific prohibition against eating swan in the Yologda region of Russia 570-572. This is surely a survival of a pre-Christian tabu. The swan, particularly the singing swan, a northern bird, was connected with the cult of Apollo in ancient Greece.6 Menges p. 1, fn. 2 points out that the swan was a totem-animal among certain Turkic perhaps this
The swan is depicted on objects found in northern Italy at a site dedicated to Apollo-Belenus. The Celtic Belenus, apparently also the god of light and the sun, was chiefly the god of healing de Vries, 75-6, 132. The name is cited in connection with the etymology of Slavic terms for henbane Vasmer, s.v. "belena", which is one ofthe oldest known pharmaceutical plants. It was widely used as a pain-killer, especially for toothache, and caused blurred speech and vivid hallucinations; it was also used in charms and witchcraft. To be especially effective, it had to be gathered at the time of the summer solstice Handwrterbuch des deutschen Aberg/aubens 1, s.v. "Bilsenkraut". This suggests a connection with the sun-god, an association strengthened by the names of the plant given in Dioscurides, a first-century medical writer Berendes, 402-3. The usual Greek is hyoskyamos pig-bean but other names -which very likely stem from later interpolaters-include Dios kyamos Zeus-bean and pythonion surely, as Berendes suggests, referring to the Pythian Apollo. The Romans are said to call it apol/inaris, i.e., "Apollo-plant" and is this indeed the term used by Pliny in his Natural History, though he ascribes the plant to Hercules; XXV 35. The Gauls are said to call it belenuntia, a form etymologists associate with Belenus Vasmer cites the variant be/inuntia. Perhaps pagan Slays also considered both the swan and henbane sacred to the sun-god; if so, St. Basils reference to henbane may have influenced our translator to substitute the swan for the vulture. The "splashing of swans wings" in verse 76 of the S/ovo o pa/ku Igorev clearly represents an evil omen; Menges takes it as an allusion to the Polovcians with their swan-totem. The verse associates a personified obida injury, injustice with the forboding noise of the swans in a manner that has reminded many commentators of the swan maiden of other tales.

28

HORACE G. LUNT

memory survived among upper-class Bulgars in some form or other. Inasmuch as it was generally forbidden to eat the flesh of any totemanimal, this would account for a tabu. It is thus quite possible that even an educated man at Simeons court, still in the second generation after the official conversion of Bulgaria to Christianity, might have singled out the swan as an obvious example of a bird that no rightthinking person could possibly eat. At any rate, the conjecture that kblpina means "swan-meat" in the Izbornik of 1073 is fully plausible. To summarize, Sreznevskijs entries ikonionb and ikblzpinanb are to be deleted and two new entries devised that would include this basic information: konionb Greek kneion: hemlock, conium maculatum-Izb 1073 l35d. klpina: meat of the *kblp,, a large white bird, probably swan represents to gypeion vultures [sc. flesh]-Izb 1073 1 35d.
Harvard University

REFERENCES Andrusyshen, C. H., and Krett, J. N. 1957. Ukrainian-English Dictionary. Toronto. Beneievi, V. N. 1906. Drevne-slavjanskaja kormaja XIV titu/ov be: tolkovanij. Vol. 1. St. Petersburg. Berendes, J. 1902. Des Pedanios Dioskurides Arzneimittellehre. Stuttgart. Berneker, Erich. 1924. S/avisches etymologisehes Wrterbuch. Heidelberg. Dal, VI. 1903-09. To/kovyj slovar zivogo ve/ikorusskogo jazyka3. 4 vols. St. Peters burg and Moscow. de Vries, Jan. 1961. Keltische Religion = Die Religion der Menschenheit, ed CM. Schrder, vol. 18. Stuttgart. Guterman, Norbert, trans. 1945. Russian Fairy Ta/es. New York: Pantheon. Hrinenko, B. 1907-09. Slovnyk ukrajinskoji movy. 3 vols. Kiev. Izbornik Ve/ikdgo Knjazja Svjatos/ava Jaroslavia 1073 goda, in the Izdanija Oblestva ljubitelejdrevnejpis mennosti, 1880 reprinted as vol. 3 of Monumenta Linguae S/avicae Dia/ecti Veteris, Wiesbaden, 1965. Lunt, H. G. 1975. "On the Language of Old Rus: Some Questions and Suggestions." Russian Linguistics 2, no. 3-4: 269-81. Menges, Karl H. 1951. The Oriental Elements in the Vocabulary of the Oldest Russian Epos, The Igor Tale = Monograph no. I, supplement to Word, New York. Moszyski, Kazimierz. 1934. Ku/tura ludowa slowian. Part 2: Kultura duchowa. Cracow. Slawski, Franciszek. 1952-. Slownik etymologiczny jczyka po/skiego. Cracow. 1960. "Dubrownicka nazwa labcdzia." Rocznik Slawistyczny 21 Wroclaw and Cracow: 37-40. Sreznevskij, Izmail I. 1893-1912. Materia/y d/ja s/ovarja drevnerusskogo jazyka. 3 vols. St. Petersburg. Vasmer, Max. 1953-58. Russisches etymo/ogisches WOrterbuch. 3 vols. Heidelberg. Russian translation by NO. Trubaev, 4 vols. 1964-73. Moscow.

THE ORIGINS OF THE OFFICIAL MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

JAROSLAW PELENSKI

No other historico-ideological assertion of the Muscovite government and ruling elite has made such a powerful impact on modern Russian historical thought, as well as on Western scholarship dealing with the early history of the Eastern Slays, as Muscovys claim to the Kievan inheritance. Its impact has been so strong and so all-pervasive that, until very recently, Muscovite views on Kievan Rus and her history, and particularly Muscovys assertions that she succeeded to Kiev by right of inheritance, were accepted by a large number of historians as matters of fact, beyond the limits of permissible inquiry and critical examination. Some caustic remarks by P.N. Miljukov and by A. E. Presnjakov2 questioning Muscovite perceptions of the Kievan inheritance and bringing up some related problems that seemed to cast doubt upon them were conveniently overlooked. The profound influence of the historical ideas and ideological propositions of the Muscovite chroniclers and publicists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on Russian historiography has not diminished from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries up to the present day. The classical controversy over the Kievan inheritance between the "Northerners" and the "Southerners," i.e., between Russian historians and Ukrainian historians, which began in the nineteenth century and culminated in Myxajlo Hruevskyjs "rational organization" of early East Slavic history,3 has not effectively disturbed traditional patterns
P.N. Miljukov, Glavnye teenia russkoj istorieskoj mysli, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1913, pp. 174-177. 2 A. E. Presnjakov, Obrazovanie velikorusskogo gosudarstva: Oierki p0 istorli XIII-XV stoletif Petrograd, 1918, pp. 2-3, 7, 19. For a summary of Hruievskyjs views and a convenient English translation of his seminal article on this subject, see "The Traditional Scheme of Russian History and the Problem of a Rational Organization of the History of Eastern Slays [1909]," in The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., 2 1952: 355364. Hruievskyjs views as stated in this article reflect those found in his Istoria Ukrainy-Rusv, 10 vols., 3rd rep. ed. New York, 1954-58.

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of thinking that are always so difficult to revise. National historio graphies have devoted a great deal of effort to discussing the influence of the Kievan heritage, or at least its most outstanding features, on subsequent socio-political organizations for example, the Suzdal Yladimir Grand Principality and Muscovite Russia, in the case of Russian historiography, and Lithuania-Rus and subsequently the Cossack Ukraine, in the case of Ukrainian historiography. But the problems of the origins of these claims, their dating, and their promul gators have received only scant attention. Both Miljukov and Presnja koy, for example, refer only in very general terms to Muscovite diplomats, bookmen, and "philosophers" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; neither has written explicitly on these problems. The first attempt to deal more specifically with the origins of the Muscovite preoccupation with the Kievan succession was undertaken by D. S. Lixaev in the process of trying to prove that Russian culture in general, and Muscovite culture and chronicle-writing in particular, were permeated by a new historicism-an assumption that also served as the crucial argument for his hypothesis about the existence of an Early Renaissance movement in Russia in the late fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century.4 The application of the combined concepts of historicism and Early Renaissance to the Muscovite culture of this early period not only raises a number of questions of a semantic nature, but also poses serious methodological and theoretical problems concerning Lixaevs understanding of these ideas. Lixaevs use of the concept of histo ricism is at the same time monogenistic and surprisingly sweeping. He reduces historicism to a simple interest in history or participation
D. S. Lixaev, Naciona/noe samosoznanie drevnej Rusi. O&rki iz oblasti russkoj literatury XI-X VII vv. Moscow and Leningrad, 1945, pp. 68-81; Ku/tura Rusi epoxi obrazovanija russkogo naciona/nogo gosudarstva: Konec XIV - naalo XVI v. Moscow and Leningrad, 1946, pp. 40-41, 57-97, 103-104; Russkie letopisi i ix kulturno-istori eskoe znaenie Moscow and Leningrad, 1947, pp. 293-305; Ku/tura vremeni Andreja Rubleva i Epifanija Premudrago: Konec XIV - naialo XV v. Moscow and Leningrad, 1962, pp. 4, 6, 11-12, 17, 19-20, 90-115, 142-146; 161-170; Die Kultur Russ/ands udhrend der osteuropischen FrOhrenaissance vom 14. bis :um Beginn i/es /5. Jahrhunderts Dresden, 1962, pp. 6, 8, I3-14, I8-19, 20-21,90-117, 145-152, 167-175; "Predvozroldenie na Rusi v konce XIV - pervoj polovine XV veka," in Literatura poxi io:rodenia I prohiemy vsemirnoj literatury Moscow, 1967, pp. 136-182. Curiously enough, the most recent attempt to substantiate Lixaevs hypothesis with an extravagant antedating of Muscovite texts pertaining to the Kulikovo Battle of 1380 was made in an American dissertation: C. J. Halperin, "The Russian Land and the Russian Tsar: The Emergence of Muscovite Ideology, 1380-1408," Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1973, especially pp. 22, 199.

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

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in a history-related endeavor. His distinction between "real/realistic" historicism and medieval historicism is not very helpful in clarifying his meaning of the term.5 His thesis about the existence of "monu mental historicism" in the literature and chronicle-writing of Old Rus from the eleventh to the thirteenth century is even more ambiguous,6 mainly because his dating of historicism back to the Middle Ages brings forth additional questions with regard to his methodological and conceptual approach. In the study of modern intellectual history, the origins of historicism-i.e., of a history-oriented mode of thinking and of a general theory of history and culture-have been traced back to the early eighteenth century, that is, to the Enlightenment in France and England, and subsequently to German Classicism and Early Romanticism.7 Lixaev consistently avoided considering the classical discussions of historicism Troeltsch, Hintze, Meinecke, Popper in his studies on Russian culture, which may partially explain his surprisingly unin hibited use of this concept. A manifest interest in history or a general preoccupation with history is not necessarily identical with historicism. A historicist approach to history and culture implies an active re thinking and redefining of a historical process, preferably in its own terms, possibly in terms of a superimposed historical perspective. The earliest manifestations of such an approach to history in the West can be detected in Humanism and in the Renaissance, although the revival and the reception of classical antiquity that took place then was formalistic and mechanical, and therefore lacked a genuine histori cist quality. Lixa.evs assumption that the historicist mode of thinking was present in Muscovite Russia at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century does not stand up to scrutiny. His hypothesis is based primarily on the revival of chronicle-writing in
Lixaev, Kultura Rust, p. 57. D. S. Lixaev, elovek v literature drevnej Rusi, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970, pp. 25-62. For the most fundamental study of historicism as a phenomenon of intellectual and cultural history, see Friedrich Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus, 3rd ed. Munich, 1959. The concept of historicism was applied to the history of plastic art in the nineteenth century: L. Grate, ed., Historismus und die bildende Kunsi Munich, 1965. Lixaevs introduction of this idealistic and genetic German concept in the Soviet Union in 1946 coincided with attacks on the works of M. Hrutevskyj and his school for having "imported" German theoretical concepts from Hegel and Ranke, which in fact Hrutevskyj never utilized in his work cf. J. Pelenski, "Soviet Ukrainian Historiography after World War II," JahrbOcher fur Geschiehte Osteuropas 12, no. 3 [1964] : 377-378.

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Muscovy, as reflected in the compilation of the Troickaja letopis TL

under the auspices of Metropolitan Cyprian during that time.8 The TL represented an official, or semi-official, codex composed in the metropolitans chancery. It included the Povest vremennyx let PVL following either the Laurentian recension or a closely related text. For the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it incorporated Suzdalian and Yladimirian historical materials, also based on the Laurentian version or other closely related sources; its entries from 1305 to 1408 represent a very valuable source and the only contemporary Muscovite chronicle now extant.9 The study of the TL was greatly facilitated by A. A. axmatovs discovery of the Simeonov Chronicle SCh and by his finding that for the years 1177 to 1393 both chronicles are virtually identical. This, in turn, proved to be immensely helpful for M. D. Priselkovs reconstruction of the TL text. The TL also included information pertaining to the history of the Rus lands when they were under the sovereignty of the Lithuanian Grand Principality, and of other Russian states such as Novgorod and Rjazan. Lixaev claims that the inclusion of the PVL in the TL by the Muscovite compilers indicates that they were aware of the Kievan tradition and of Moscows assumed exclusive right to the Kievan inheritance. Its inclusion can also be interpreted in other ways, however. Since most Rusian chronicles contain the PVL, we can assume that it was standard procedure for editors and compilers of Rusian chronicles to begin their compilations with the PVL or a synopsis of it, for it was the earliest existing text they had available.
Lixaev, Ku/tura Rusi, pp. 64-67; Lixaev, Kultura vremeni Andreja Rubleva, pp. 100-103. For the text of the reconstructed Troickaja letopis see M. D. Priselkov, Troickaja letopis: Rekonstrukeija teksta Moscow and Leningrad, 1950. The most important scholarly contributions to the study of the Troickaja letopis are the following: M.D. Priselkov, "Letopisanie XIV veka," in Sbornik statej pa russkoj istorii posvjalennyx S.F. Platonovu, 1922, pp. 24-39; "0 rekonstrukcii teksta Troickoj letopisi 1408 g., sgorevlej v Moskve v 1812 g.," Uenye :apiski Gosudarstvennogo pedagogieskogo instituta im. Gercena, 1939, pp. 5-42; M.D. Priselkov, Istorija russkogo /etopisanlja XI XV cv. Leningrad, 1940, pp. 113-142; Priselkoy, Troickaja letopis, Introduction, pp. 7-49; SI. Koetov, "Troickij pergamennyj spisok letopisi 1408 g.," Arxeograflieskjj ezegodnik za 1961 1962, pp. 18-27; G. N. Moiseeva, "Otryvok Troickoj pergamennoj letopisi perepisannyj G. F. Millerom," Trudy Otde/a drevnerusskoj literatury hereafter TODRL 26 1971: 93-99. 10 The text of the Nikifor Simeonov Chronicle was published in Polnoe sobranie russkix /etopisej hereafter PSRL, 18 1913, under the editorship of A. E. Presnjakov.

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

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The First Novgorod Chronicle INCh of the "older" recension about mid-fourteenth century, as well as of the "younger" recension about mid-fifteenth century, also included edited Kievan historical materials, as do the Tverian and Pskovian codices, compiled around the middle of the fifteenth century. In fact, the most consistent and historically integrated codices were provided by the editors and compilers of the Hypatian and the Laurentian chronicles, which were completed long before the TL. The TL reflects the all-Rusian perspective, however, not so much of the Muscovite state as of the Moscow-based Metropolitanate of "Kiev and all Rus." At the time of Cyprians tenure, the Metropolitanate was attempting to preserve a united ecclesiastical organization for all Rus, an endeavor supported by the Patriarchate of Constantinople for practical and political reasons." Thus it may be argued that the inclusion of the PVL does not represent a reevaluation of the history of the Kievan Rus-not even in terms of a hypothetical "medieval" or providential historicism. The latter variant of "historicism" cannot be attested in Muscovite historical writing earlier than the sixteenth century, where it is found in the Yoskresensk, Lvov and Nikon chronicles. It is particularly evident in the Kniga stepennaja, where the new historical and ideo logical perspective was superimposed on the history of early nonMuscovite Rus.2 The dating of the origins of the official Muscovite claims to the Kievan succession is complicated by the appearance of these claims in some texts that traditionally have been regarded as belonging to the so-called Kulikovo cycle. Until very recently, the majority of scholars who have studied these sources tried to date them soon after the Battle of Kulikovo 1380. However, some scholars have begun to question
For a discussion of Byzantine policies and attitudes with regard to the Metropoli tanate of Kiev and all Rus in the fourteenth century and the literature on the subject, see the following recent studies: D. Obolensky, "Byzantium, Kiev and Moscow: A Study in Ecclesiastical Relations," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 11 1957: 21-78; I. Sevenko, "Russo-Byzantine Relations after the Eleventh Century," in Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies, ed. J. M. Hussey, D. Obolensky, and S. Runciman London, 1967, pp. 93-104; F. Tinnefeld, "Byzantinisch-russische Kirchenpolitik im 14. Jahrhundert," Byzantinische Zeitschrjfl 67 1974: 359-384. 12 I have serious reservations about applying the term Renaissance to cultural developments in Muscovite Russia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The limits of space preclude a fundamental critique of Lixaevs notion of the Russian Early Renaissance in this article, but the use of this concept as applied to Muscovite Russia is even more problematic than the assumptions about the presence of historicism in the culture and art of Muscovy.

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these early attributions, and to revive and refine some of the tenta tive suggestions made by A.A. axmatov, who proposed different dates. Since it is impossible to deal adequately with the cumulative problems of all the texts of the Kulikovo cycle here, I shall present my own chronology of the texts in question, concentrating my analysis on those texts that are of an official or semi-official nature, with a few additional remarks about the unofficial Zadonina. At the same time, I shall propose a reinterpretation of the crucial Kievan references. It appears that the earliest text that refers to the Kulikovo Battle is the concise version of the Short Chronicle Tale 1380, entitled o velikom poboi.e, ie na Donu of the reconstructed TL, the SC/i, and the Rogofskzj letopisec.3 This Short Chronicle Tale is the most factual; in its style and composition, it perfectly fits into the general pattern of the Muscovite annalistic tales contained in the TL and its control text, the SCh.4 It was most probably written for the Letopisec velikjj russk/ an official Muscovite chronicle, which, according to Priselkov, covered events up to the death of Dmitrij Ivanovi [Donskojj 1389. It can be assumed that the Short Chronicle Tale about the Kulikovo Battle was composed before the death of Dmitrij Ivanovi, possibly very soon after the battle, i.e., in the 1380s. The ideological claims and justifications found in this Tale are limited. According to its author, Dmitrij Ivanovi fought "wishing to defend his patrimony, for the holy churches and for the true [Orthodox] faith and the whole Russian land." The term "whole Russian land" was used in fourteenth-century Russian sources rather loosely, and it usually referred to Northeastern Rus or ethnic Great Russian territory, but not to Southern, or Kievan, Rus.6
Priselkov, Troickaja /etopis, pp. 419-421; PSRL 181913: 129-131. The Rogolskjj letopisec was published in PSRL, 2nd ed., 15, no. 1 1922 under the editorship of N. P. Lixaev for the text of the Tale, see cols. 139-141. For the best treatment of the Short Chronicle Tale and the literature on the subject, see M. A. Salmina, "Letopis naja povest o Kulikovskoj bitve i Zadonlina," in Slovo a Pa/ku Igoreve i pamjatniki Kulikovskogo cik/a Moscow and Leningrad, 1966, pp. 344-384, especially 344-364. 14 Its similarity to the "Tale About the Battle on the Voa River" prompted Salmina to suggest that both texts had the same author " Letopisnaja povest," pp. 356-359. Priselkov, Istorija russkogo letopisantja XI-XV vv., pp. 121-122. 16 For the various uses of the concept vsja russkaja zemija from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, see L. V. Cerepnin, "Istorieskie uslovija formirovanija russkoj narod nosti do konca XV v.," in Voprosy formirovarnja russkoj narodnosti i nacii: Sbornik statej Moscow and Leningrad, 1958, pp. 61-63, 79-88. One example from the INCh will suffice to illustrate the Northeastern Russian meaning of vsja russkaja zem/ja in the fourteenth century. The entry about the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Tver, under13

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The second major text devoted to the Kulikovo Battle is the Ex panded Chronicle Tale, entitled 0 pobothe ie na Donu, i o tom, knjaz veIikj kako bilsja s ordoju in the Fourth Novgorod Chronicle IVNCh,7 or Poboie velikogo knjazja Dmitreja IvanovMa na Donu s Mwnajem in the First Sophia Chronicle ISCh,8 in the Nikanor Chronicle NCh,9 and in other compilations, although with various changes and adjustments. Two views can be found regarding the dating of the Expanded Chronicle Tale and its relationship to the short version. The first, following the lead of S. K. ambinago, assumes that the Expanded Chronicle Tale is the earlier version and that the Short Chronicle Tale represents an abridged form.2 The second school of thought, introduced by A. A. axmatov, holds that the Expanded Chronicle Tale is later. According to M.A. Salminas analysis, it was composed in the second half of the 1440s, after the Battle of Suzdal 1445 and before 1448,21 the year of the compilation of the hypothetical Codex of 1448,2 2 and it reflected the political atmosphere of the beginning of the last phase of the great Muscovite civil war 1444/46-1453. Salminas hypothesis may still be in need of refinement, but she is certainly on the right track in dating the text after the Battle of Suzdal. It can be argued that the account of the Battle of Kulikovo in the Expanded Chronicle Tale represented, among other things, an ideo logical response to the crushing defeat of the Russian army by the military forces of the emerging Kazan Khanate in the Battle of
taken with Muscovite support in 1327, reads as follows: "Na tu e zimu prude rat tatarskaja mnolestva mnogo, i vzjaia Tfer i Kaiin, i Novotorskuju volost i prosto rkuie vsju zemlju ruskuju i poloiia ju pustu, tokmo Novgorod ubljude Bog i svjataja Sofeja" A. N. Nasonov, ed., Novgorodskaja pervaja letopis star.ego I m/adtego i:vodov [Moscow and Leningrad, 1950], p. 341. 17 PSRL, 2nd ed., 4, pt. I, nos. 1-21915-1925: 311-325. 18 PSRL 6 1853: 90-98. 19 The Nikanor Chronicle was published under the editorship of A. N. Nasonov in PSRL 27 1962. For the text of the Tale, see pp. 71-76. 20 S. K. ambinago, Skazanie a Mamaevompoboil 1907, pp. 1-2. 21 Salmina, "Letopisnaja povest," pp. 364-376, including the literature on the subject. 22 A.A. Saxmatov was the first to suggest the existence of a Codex of 1448 "Obie russkie letopisnye svody XIV i XV vv.," urna/ Ministerstva narodnogo prosveleenija hereafter 2MNP, n.s., 1909, no. 9, pp. 98, 104; Obo:renie russkix leropisnyx svodov XIV-XVI vv. [Moscow and Leningrad, 1938], pp. 151-160. Recently Ja. S. Lure revived the axmatov thesis and offered additional evidence to substantiate Saxmatovs views that it was an all-Russian codex "K probleme svoda 1448 g.," TODRL 24 [1969]: 142-146; and "Obierusskij svod-protograf Sofijskoj I i Novgorodskoj letopisej," TODRL 28 [1974]: 114-139.

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Suzdal 7 July 1445, in which Grand Prince Yasilij II was taken prisoner. The dynastic struggle between Yasilij II and Dmitrij emjaka made the Tatar problem, now in its Kazanian version, particularly acute, since both contenders sought the support of Ulu Mehmet, the Kazanian khan, in their endeavors to seize the throne of the Muscovite Grand Principality; in addition, Yasilij II was using "service Tatars" in his struggle with emjaka. Tatar influence during the final years of the Muscovite civil war 1446-1453 is clearly reflected in the Pastoral Epistle of the five Russian Bishops one of the five was the future Metropolitan lona, dated 29 December 1447.23 It appears that the later texts of the Kulikovo cycle have more relevance for the ideological justifications of the Muscovite-Kazanian struggle and the Muscovite relations with the Golden Horde from the time of the invasion of Edigu 1408 to 1480, than for the history of the Kulikovo Battle and its significance for the Muscovite political thought of the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth century. The Expanded Chronicle Tale refers hardly at all to the Kievan inheritance: one perfunctory comparison of Oleg of Rjazan with Svjatopolk [Oka jannyj], and one vague reference to Boris and Gleb. Of special significance to the problem of the Kievan succession is the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi [Donskoj}, a work thematically connected with the texts of the Kulikovo cycle, although of a different genre and date. The earliest and the most complete of the known texts of this Vita are the Slovo o itii 1 o prestavlenii velikogo knjazja DmitrUa Ivanovia carja russkago, which appears in the IVNCII under the entry for 1389,24 and the 0 itii i o prestavlenii velikogo knjazja DmitrUa Ivanovia, carja rus skago, in ISCh under the same date.25 The latter text, with some editorial adjustments and emendations, was incor porated into the official Muscovite chronicles of the 1470s.26 The earliest Muscovite account of Donskojs death is found in TL and in SC/I in an annalistic necrolog, entitled 0 prestavlenii velikago knjazja Dmitrja Ivanovia, and composed in a form similar to the necrologs written for the Muscovite rulers before and after him.27
Akty istorieskie, sobrannye I izdannye Arxeografieskoju kommissieju hereafter Al, 1, no. 67 1841: 75-83. For a discussion of the Russo-Kazanian relations and their ideological ramifications, see J. Pelenski, Russia and Ka:an: Conquest and Imperial Ideology 1438-1560s The Hague and Paris, 1974, pp. 23-26; 180-182. 24 PSRL. 2nd ed., 4, pt. 1, no. 2 1925: 351-366. 25 PSRL 61853: 104-111. 26 PSRL 27 1962: 82-87 under the year 1387; PSRL 25 1949: 215-218. 27 "0 prestavlenii velikago knjazja Danila Moskovskago" under the entry for 1304,
23

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The dating of the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi presents a number of problems. The chronicles into which it was integrated and the contents of the Vita itself must be analyzed together in order to obtain a plausible dating. Even A. A. axmatov, the founder of modern critical studies of the Russian chronicles, assumed that it had been composed soon after the death of the prince by someone who had attended the funeral.28 The first to question this early dating was Y. P. Adrianova-Peretc, who, because of the stylistic peculiarities of the text-i.e., pletenie sloves the "braiding of words"-came to the conclusion that it could not have been written before 1417-1418, and was probably even later than that.29 A.Y. Solovevs attempts to antedate the Vita to the 1390s and to attribute it to Epifanij Premudryj do not hold up under scrutiny, and are further examples of his excessively optimistic approach to the study of old Russian literature.30 Recently, M.A. Salmina, on the basis of an analysis similar to that used for the Expanded Chronicle Tale of the Kulikovo Battle, has dated the text around 1444-1447, that is, just before the compilation of the hypothetical Codex of 1448. Salmina assumes, of course, that the variant of the Vita found in the IVNC/i was included in the hypothetical Codex of 1448, and that it reflects, as does the Expanded Chronicle Tale, the political conditions of Muscovy during the civil war in the later part of the 1 440s. But even if one were to assume the existence of the hypothetical Codex of 1448, 2 doubts can be raised concerning its inclusion of the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi. In contrast to the Expanded Chronicle
and "V leto 6848 1340 prestavisja knjaz velikij moskovskij Ivan Danilovi" Priselkov, Troickaja letapis, pp. 351, 364; cf. also PSRL 18 [1913]: 85, 93. "0 prestavlenii velikogo knjazja Vasilija Dmitrievia" under the entry for 1425, and "0 prestavlenii velikogo knjazja Vasilija Vasilevia" under the entry for 1462 PSRL 27 [1962] 100, 123. 28 A. A. axmatov, Ot:yv a soinenii S. K. ambinago "Povesti o Mamaevom poboi,e" St. Petersburg, 1910 also separate offprint from "Otet o 12-m prisudenii premii mitropolita Makarija", p. 119. 29 V. P. Adrianova-Peretc, "Slovo o itii i o prestavlenii velikogo knjazja Dmitrija Ivanovia, carja Russkago," TODRL 5 1947: 73-96, especially 91-92. 30 A.V. Solovev, "Epifanij Premudryj kak avtor Slova o itii i prestavlenii velikago knjazja Dmitrija Ivanovia, carja russkago," TODRL 17 1961: 85-106. MA. Salmina, "Slovo o kitii i prestavlenii velikogo knjazja Dmitrija Ivanovia, carja Russkago," TODRL 25 1970: 8 1-104. 32 The date 1448 had been set by A. A. axmatov on the basis of the computation of certain holidays. However, Saxmatov changed his opinion on this matter "Kievskij Naalnyj svod 1095 g.," in A.A. .axmatov, 1864-1920 [Moscow and Leningrad, 1947], p. 135.

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Tale about the Kulikovo Battle, which was included, for all practical purposes, into every manuscript copy utilized for the edition of the IVNCh,33 the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi was incorporated in only some of them.34 According to F. P. Pokrovskij and A. A. axmatov, the Copies N, G, and T were dated earlier than the other manuscripts utilized for the second edition of the IVNCh.35 Salmina is undisturbed by the fact that Copy A ends with the entry for 1447, Copy N with 1437, and that the final entry for Copy T is unknown. Her assumption seems to be that the Vita constituted an integral part of the hypothetical Codex of 1448, but, particularly in view of Copy N, she evidently came to the conclusion that all the copies that included this Vita and became the basis for the second edition of IVNCh were taken down at a later time. The textual history of the IVNCh justifies this reasoning; in its various manuscripts, especially after the events of 1470s and the final annexation of Novgorod 1478, heavy layers of Muscovite political propaganda came to be incorporated into it over time. Salmina also believes that the IVNCh version of the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi is closest to the original work because it is the most com plete text. The texts of the IVNC/J and ISCh are in fact virtually identical, except for an extensive and rhetorical middle section in the "Praise for Dmitrij Ivanovi," a section which is found only in IVNCh.36 However, a different conclusion can be drawn from these
The following copies were used by F. P. Pokrovskij, the editor of the second edition of the I VNC/I publication of the edition was supervised by A. A. axmatov: Stroev Copy, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, covering historical materials from 912 to 1477 St; Sinodal Copy, copied in 1544, beginning with the PVL and ending with the entry for
1477 S;

Public Library Copy Frolov, taken down in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, starting with PVL and ending with 1447 P; Academy of Sciences Copy from the first half of the sixteenth century, opening with PVL and concluding with the entry 1447, like P A; Golicyn Copy, from the first half of the sixteenth century and ending with the year 1516 G; New-Russian Copy, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, starting with the PVL and ending with the entry for 1437 N; [F. P.] Tolstoj Copy, taken down at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, lacks the beginning and the end of the manuscript, and covers only the years from 1382 to 1418 T. The text of the Vita was published from Copy A with variant readings from G, N, T. The Vita was not included in St, 5, P. PSRL, 2nd ed., 4, Pt. I, no. 11915: ix. 36 PSRL, 2nd ed., 4, Pt. 1, no. 2 1925: 361-365.

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

39

facts. One is certainly justified in arguing that the middle section of the "Praise" was lacking in the original work, which was presumably identical to the text in the ISCh. Furthermore, there seems to be no logical reason why the Novgorodian chroniclers should have included ideologically-imbued Muscovite texts into their own codices. Lure, for example, explains the inclusion of the Expanded Chronicle Tale about the Kulikovo Battle in IVNC/I as a reflection of the formation of a pro-Muscovite faction in Novgorod by the 1440s,37 but this is rather unlikely. Such a faction could only have emerged in Novgorod a decade or so later, as a result of the Muscovite campaign against that city in 145638 and the Treaty of Jaelbicy concluded in the same year;39 consequently, this would be the earliest possible date for the inclusion of pro-Muscovite materials in the lyNCh. However, there is no conclusive evidence it was done even then. Thus we are left with the text of the Vita in ISCh as being the safer of the two earliest ones. This brings us to the question of when it was included into ISCh. It was incorporated in all of the known manuscript copies that served as basis for the edition of ISCh, with one exception-namely, the Yoroncov manuscript.40 ISCII is a Mus covite chronicle that exists in two recensions: the first was compiled in 1422, and the second ends with an entry for 1456.41 While axmatov emphasized the similarity of the second recension of the ISCh or a hypothetical Codex of 1456 with the official Muscovite Codex of 1479,42 Priselkov advanced the hypothesis that the Codex of 1456 was in fact a chronicle written in the metropolitans chan cery.43 He also suggested that both the metropolitans and the grand princes had chronicles compiled throughout the fifteenth century, and that the two chronicles the recensions of 1426 and 1463 existed before the compilation of the Muscovite Codex of 1472. The

Halperin, "The Russian Land and the Russian Tsar," p. 117, n. 194. For an analysis of the campaign and the resulting developments, see L. V. 2erepnin, Obrazovanie russkogo centralizovannogo gasudarstva v XI V-X V vekax Moscow, 1960, pp. 817-825. For the texts of the Treaty of Jaelbicy, see S. N. Valk, ed., Gramoty Velikogo Novgoroda i Pskava Moscow and Leningrad, 1949, pp. 39-43. For a commentary on this treaty, see L. V. Cerepnin, Russkiefeodalnye arxivy XI V-XV vekov, 2 pts. Moscow and Leningrad, 1948-1951, 1: 356-363. 40 PSRL 5 1851: 243 n * Cf. also Salmina, TODRL 25 1970: 81, n. 4. 41 axmatov, Obozrenie, pp. 208-221; Priselkov, Istorija russkogo /etopisanija XI-XV vv., pp. 151-154, 162-164. 42 axmatov, Obozrenze, p. 217. Priselkov, Istorija russkago letopisanija XI-XV cv., pp. 162-164. Priselkov, Istorja russkogo letopisanija XI-XV cv., pp. 164-173.
38

40

JAROSLAW PELENSKI

idea that there were two separate lines of Muscovite chronicle-writing grand princely and metropolitanean during the fifteenth century is rather doubtful, but there is no reason to question the hypothesis of a Codex of 1456, which reflected the interests both of the grand prince and the metropolitanate. The assumption that such a codex existed is as valid as the notion that the hypothetical Codex of 1448 existed. It is also much more likely that a pro-Muscovite text such as the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi was first incorporated in a Muscovite chronicle, of which ISCh seems to be a much closer version than IVNC/I, and that it was included not in the later 1440s, but in the mid-l450s, and specifically in the Codex of 1456. The internal evidence of the Vita strongly suggests the political circumstances, the time of writing, and the author of this work. The Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi [Donskoj] is an exceptional document loaded with Muscovite ideological content.46 In it for the first time, to my knowledge a direct claim to the Kievan dynastic succession was made for a Muscovite ruler. The opening statement to the Vita reads as follows: This Grand Prince Dmitrij was born to his honorable and venerable father, Grand Prince Ivan Ivanovi, and his mother, Grand Princess Aleksandra, and he was a grandson of Grand Prince Ivan Danilovi, the gatherer of the Russian land[sJ, [and] he was the most fertile branch and the most beautiful
flower from the God-planted orchard of Car Vladimir, the New Constantine who baptized the Russian land, and he was [also] a kinsman srodnik of Boris

and Gleb, the miracle-workers.47 This statement on the direct and uninterrupted dynastic continuity
Ja. S. Lure has postulated the existence of a Codex of 1453 on the basis of the manuscript GBL M. 3271, the main entries of which end with the year 1453 "Nika norovskaja i Vologodsko-Pennskaja letopisi kak otraenie velikoknjaeskogo svoda naala 70-x godov XV v.," Vspomagatelnye istorieskie discip/iny [hereafter VID], 5 [1973] : 225, 238, 249-250. However, the manuscript in question does not contain the crucial text of the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi and does not include any material of relevance for its dating. For a good outline of the contents of GBL M. 3271, consult the informative study by I. M. Kudrjavcev, "Sbornik poslednej etverti XV-naala XVI v. iz Muzejnogo sobranija," Zapiski Otdela rukopisej Gosudarstvennoj biblioteki im. Lenina 25 1962: 220-288, especially 225-233. 46 It is surprising that such an astute specialist in the field of Old Russian literature as John Fennell could have written: "Indeed, there are few biographies of laymen in medieval Russian literature that are so strikingly lacking in message or political tendentiousness. As the sharp historical outline of earlier works has faded here [in the Vita-J. P.], as fact has given way to generalities, so has ideology receded into the background. For once we are not expected to learn a political lesson from a text" J. Fennell and A. Stokes, Early Russian Literature [London, 1974], p. 133. PSRL 6 1853: 104; PSRL, 2nd ed., 4, Pt. 1, no. 2 1925: 351-352.

[Vsevolodovia]

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

41

from the Kievan ruler Yladimir I definitely represents a major departure from the statements on the dynastic lineage that appeared in the annalistic necrologies of the previous Muscovite rulers. Those found in TL and the control text of SC/i that list the names of the dynastic ancestors start from the Suzdal-Yladimir Grand Principality.48 For the purpose of genealogical linkage, two rulers were carefully selected. The first, Yladimir I, whose role in the baptism of the land of Rus is emphasized, is elevated to the position of a car, a title he never held. The second, Ivan Danilovi [Kalita], is given the extraordinary epithet of "gatherer" of Russian lands, apparently alluding to his successful Russian policies. Finally, Dmitrij Ivanovi is referred to as a blood relative of the first, martyred saintly princes of Rus. The Vita abounds with terms designed to strengthen claims to the inheritance of Kievan Rus and to enhance the position of the Kievan and, even more, of the Muscovite ruler to the highest political rank. Dmitrij Ivanovi is referred to nine times as car-a title he, like Yladimir, had never dreamed of attaining. Terms such as carstvo, carsktj, carstvovat are used quite frequently with regard to his reign; and the concept russkaja zemlja is employed in the text twenty-two times.49 Furthermore, the author of the Vita twice maintains that the russkaja zemlja is a votina patrimony of the Muscovite ruler. This last assertion reflects the traditional Muscovite legal theory concerning the relationship between the ruler and the land. Like its Western equivalents, Russian patrimonial theory made no distinction between the private and public spheres in the realm of law and political domination HerrschaJi.5 In political terms, the claim con stituted a sweeping extension of the relevant statement in the Testament of Dmitrij Donskoj, in which he bequeathed the Principality of Yla
48

In the Traickaja letopis and the SCh, the relevant phrases read as follows: 1304 "prestavis knjaz Danilo A1eksandrovi, vnuk Jaroslavl[ja Vsevolodoia 1238-1246], pravnuk velikogo Vsevoloda [Jurevia 1176-1212...]"; 1340 "prestavisja knjaz velikij moskovskij Ivan Danilovi, vnuk velikogo Aleksandra [Jaroslavljia 1252-1263], pray nuk velikogo Jaroslava Solovev, TODRL 17 1961: 104, n. 47. For the classical Western definition of patrimonial theory, see M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, 3 vols. New York, 1968, 3: 1013, 1028-29, 1085-86. The best historical discussion of the concept of patrimonialism and the scholarly controversies concerning the actual existence of a patrimonial state in medieval Germany has been provided by 0. Brunner, Land und Herrschaft, 4th ed. Vienna, 1959, pp. 146-164. For a discussion of the meaning of the term votina in the old Russian sources and the literature on the subject, see Pelenski, Russia and Kazan, pp. 76-78, n. 1.

42

JAROSLAW PELENSKI

dimir, in theory a territory of the grand prince, whoever he might have been, to his son. This step had not only been a major departure from the old assumption that Muscovy alone was a patrimony of the Muscovite rulers, but it also signified the merging of the Yladimir Grand Principality with the Principality of Moscow.5 The "Praise for Dmitrij Donskoj" in the Vita concludes with the most extravagant upgrading of Dmitrij Donskoj, placing him above Yladimir I, and a downgrading of the significance of Kievan Rus, followed by a glori fication of the all-Russian and imperial Muscovite ruler and his country. Paraphrasing the famous Praise of Yladimir I by the Metro politan Ilarion, the author of the Vita exclaims: The Roman land praises Peter and Paul, the Asian [land] John the Evangelist, India [praises] the Apostle Thomas, [the land of] Jacob, the brother of the Lord; Andrew the Apostle [is praised] by the Black Sea Coast pomor e, Car Constantine by the Greek land, Vladimir [is praised] by Kiev and the neighboring towns Kiev s okrestnymi grady. You, however, Grand Prince Dmitrij [Ivanovi], are praised by the whole Russian land.52 A document such as the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi, in which the status of the Russian ruler is elevated to that of a car and his position in the world is exalted, could hardly have been written during a Muscovite dynastic civil war, and certainly not when the Muscovite Grand Prin cipality, in spite of all its intra-Russian expansionism, was only an insignificant territorial state. A text with such exaggerated political claims could only have been written after the fall of Constantinople 1453, when the Muscovite ecclesiastical and political establishment had begun to recognize the religio-political significance of the Council of Florence 1438-39 and, in view of the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, to offer its ideological interpretation of those two epochal events.53 Only in Muscovite texts of the Florentine cycle can one find claims and assertions analogous to the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi. The two texts of relevance for our discussion are the Povest
Simeona Sudalca, kako rimskU papa Evgen sostavijal osmyj sobor
For the texts of the Testaments of Dmitrij Donskoj and an English translation, see R. C. Howes, trans. and ed., The Testaments of the Grand Princes of Moscow Ithaca, N.Y., 1967, pp. 126-130; 208-217, especially pp. 127, 212 the relevant phrase reads: "And, lo I bless my son, Prince Vasilij, with my patrimony, the Grand Principality". 52 PSRL 61853: 110; PSRL, 2nd ed., 4, Pt. 1, no. 2 1925: 356. For an informative and perceptive discussion of the theological and political currents at the Council of Florence and its impact on posterity, as well as the literature on the subject, see I. Sevenko, "Intellectual Repercussions of the Council of Florence," Church History 24, no. 4 1955: 29 1-323.

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

43

so svoimi edinomy.lenniki,54 and the Slovo izbrano ot svjatyx pisanjj ee na latynju i skazanie o sostavlenii osmago zbora latynskago i o izverenii Sidora prelesnago i o postavlenii v rustej zemli metropolitov. sixe poxvala blagovrnomu velikomu knjazju Vasilju VasilevMju vseja Rusi.55 In both accounts the title of car is used for the Russian Grand Prince Yasilij Yasilevi 1425-1462: in the Povest of Simeon of Suzdal the term belyj car, meaning "white car," is applied once, and in the Slovo izbrano the term car is employed fourteen times,

not to mention a frequent appearance of the variants of the term in this text. The only other contemporary Russian source that uses the terms car, carsk/, carstvuju5zj in reference to a Russian rulernamely, the Tverian grand prince Boris Aleksandrovi 1425-1461is a Tverian ideological treatise, entitled Slovo poxvalnoe o blagovrnom velikom knjaz Boris Aleksandrovie, written, in my opinion, after the fall of Constantinople, most probably in 1454 or 1455.56 In all three treatises-that is, the two "Florentine" texts and the Vita-Yladimir I and his role in the baptism of Rus is prominently acknowledged. The Tale of Simeon of Suzdal was definitely written after the fall of Constantinople, in the late 1450s,57 and the extensive Slovo izbrano in the early 1460s.58 The Slovo izbrano seems to provide the closest parallel to the Vita of Dmitrij Donskoj in its glorification of the Russian ruler Yasilij II. The praises in both works are strikingly similar in terms of style pletenie sloves. Almost a century ago, A. Pavlov advanced the hypothesis that
For the texts of the Tale of Simeon of Suzdal, see V. Malinin, Starec E/eazarova manastyrja Filofej i ego paslanja Kiev, 1901, apps. 17 and 18, pp. 89-114. For the text of the Slovo izbrano, see A. N. Popov, Istoriko-literaturnyj abzor drevnerusskix polemMeskix soinenij protiv /atinjan Moscow, 1875, pp. 360-395. 56 For the text of the S/ova poxvalnoe, see N. P. Lixaev, ed., "Tnoka Fomy Slovo poxvalnoe o blagovernom velikom knjaz Boris Aleksandrovi," Pamjatniki drevnej pismennosti I iskusstva 168 1908: 1-55. For a review of Lixaevs publication, consult A. A. axmatov, Otzyv ob izdanii N. P. Lixaeva: "Inoka Fomy s/ova poxvalnoe a b/ago vernom velikom knjaz Boris A/eksandroviP" St. Petersburg, 1909. An interesting analysis of this work was provided by W. Philipp, "Em Anonymus der Tverer Publicistik im 15. Jahrhundert," in Festschrift fr Dmytro yzevskyj zum 60. Geburtstag Berlin, 1954, pp. 230-237. " F. Delektorskij showed that Simeons Tale was written many years after the Coucil of Florence but before 1458 "Kritiko-bibliografi&skij obzor dreyne-russkix skazanij a florentijskoj unii," ZMNP 300 1895: 131-184, especially 138-144. Cf. idem, "Florentijskaja unija po drevnerusskim skazanijam i vopros a soedinenii cerkvej v drevnej Rusi," Strannik, September-November 1893, Pp. 442-458. 58 Popov, Istoriko-literaturnyj obzor, p. 359. A. Pavlov, KritMeskie opyty pa istorii drevnjlej greko-russkaj polemiki protiv latinjan St. Petersburg, 1878, pp. 106, 108.

44

JAROSLAW PELENSKI

Paxomij Logofet the Serbian was the author of Slovo izbrano, as well as of some works attributed to Simeon of Suzdal.59 Pavlov based his argument on stylistic analysis, on the use of the title car, and on the presence of political terms stressing the God-given nature of the Muscovite rulers power. Other Russian scholars have disagreed with Pavlovs hypothesis. F. Delektorskij, for example, claimed, without evidence, that Russian authors had been using the title of car quite frequently by that time.6 Another author maintained that the Slovo izbrano was "imbued with vital Muscovite patriotism" and that Paxomij Logofet, who was a Serbian and who "worked for money, had no reason to be a Russian patriot" and therefore he could not have written the Slovo.61 Conclusive evidence exists, however, that Paxomij knew Simeon of Suzdal, the author of the Tale, and that both lived in the Troice-Sergiev Monastery until l458l459.62 It is quite possible that Paxomij Logofet helped Simeon of Suzdal to compose his Tale, or parts of it. The preponderance of evidence points to Paxomij Logofet as the most probable author of the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi. He might have written it at the request of Muscovite authorities during his stay in the Troice-Sergiev Monastery, following the fall of Constan tinople, but before the compilation of the Codex of 1456-that is, in 1454 or 1455.63 The other two principal texts of the Kulikovo cycle, i.e., Zadonsina and the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboi, need not concern us here. The Zadonina never became part of the official Muscovite political
Pavlov, Kritieskie opyty, pp. 105-108, 99-102. Delektorskij, 2MNP 300 1895: 154. M. Cherniavsky repeated Delektorskijs claim; moreover, he maintained that the title car had been used in Russian documents Al, 1 [1841], nos. 44, 56, 60, 61, 63 "The Reception of the Council of Florence in Moscow," Church History 24, no. 4 [1955]: 347-359, especially 358, n. 30. A rechecking of the five documents quoted revealed that the title car does not appear in them. 61 v Jablonskij, Paxomij Serb i ego agiografleskie pisanija St. Petersburg, 1908, pp. 201-202. 62 Pavlov, Kritieskie apyty, p. 100. Paxomij Logofet was an intellectual who worked for different employers from both Novgorod and Moscow and, for a price, could adjust his views according to the wishes of his employers. He could easily assume a more patriotic Muscovite tone than any of his Muscovite contemporaries. 63 The following sentence in the Vita fits particularly well into the context of the "Florentine" texts and is definitely premature for the period of Dmitrij Donskoj : "ty e stolp neestja razdruiil esi v ruskoj zemli i ne primesi sebe k bezumnym stranam na krestianskuju pogibel" PSRL 6 [1853]: 110. Cf. also Salmina, TODRL 25 1970: 102-103.
60

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

45

literature, and it seems not to have been widely distributed, judging by the limited number of its manuscript copies.64 However, several important references to the Kievan succession found in the text of the Zadonina pose certain problems for the student of Muscovite ideology. Their study has been complicated by the tendency to date this text as closely as possible to 1380, although the arguments in favor of this early dating are unconvincing, at least for me. In my judgment, this work was composed after the Expanded Chronicle Tale,65 and after the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi, as well.66 It is also very improbable that the early chronological attributions of the Skazanie o Mamaevom poboi.e will stand up to critical scrutiny.67 Even if one were to assume that the text of the Skazanie of the London British Museum manuscript of the Yologda-Perm Chronicle VPCh, which concludes with entries under 1499 and dates from the second half of the sixteenth century, reflects the earliest variant of the basic recension of the Skazanie,68 it cannot be dated earlier than into the late 1480s or early 1490s,69 although a strong case could be made for dating it later, into the l520s-1540s.7 The diffi culties in dating the Skazanie combined with its limited official use it is found only in one provincial, but official codex, the VPCh, force us to eliminate it from the present analysis. The composition of the Vita of Dmitrij Ivanovi Donskoj and its inclusion into the Muscovite Codex of 1456 can be characterized as the first major step in the development of the official Muscovite claims to Kiev. The significance of this Vita for the emergence of
For the most recent critical edition of the Zadonlina texts and the extensive literature on the subject up to 1965, see S/ova a Pa/ku Igareve i pamjatniki Kulikovskogo cikla, pp. 535-556; 557-583. For a recent reconstruction of an ideal text and an English translation, see R. Jakobson and D. S. Worth, eds., Safonijas Tale of the Russian-Tatar Battle on the Ku/ikovo Field The Hague, 1963. 65 Salmina, "Letopisnaja povest," pp. 376-383. 66 I shall present my arguments for this dating in another study. 67 For the most recent dating of the Skazanie between the middle of the fifteenth and the early sixteenth century and the literature on the subject, see M. A. Salmina, "K voprosu o datirovke Skazanija o Mamaevom poboiie," TODRL 29 1974: 98-124. 68 The VPC/i has been published in PSRL 24 1959 under the editorship of M. N. Tixomirov. For the text of the Skazanie from the London copy, see ibid., pp. 328-344. 69 I hope to offer my hypothesis for the dating of this work elsewhere. 70 v S. Mingalev, "Letopisnaja povest - istonik Skazanija o Mamaevom poboiI.e," Trudy Moskovskogo istoriko-arxivnogo instituta 24 no. 2 1966: 55-72; "Skazanie o Mamaevom poboile" I ego istoniki Aytoreferat kand. dissertacii; Moscow and Vilnius, 1971, especially pp. 10-13.
64

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JAROSLAW PELENSKI

Muscovite governmental pretensions to the Kievan inheritance was further enhanced by its incorporation, albeit with some editorial modi fications, into the official Muscovite codices of the 1470s, in which additional dynastic claims were raised. The newly articulated claims represented the second stage in the evolution of Muscovite political thought concerning the Kievan succession. The editors of the Mus covite Codex of 1472 as reflected in the NC/i, for example, not only integrated the Vita into their work, but formulated their own version of the dynastic translatio theory from Kiev through Suzdal-Yladimir to Muscovy.7 The latter version appears in the annalistic Tale under the entry for 1471, entitled "About the Novgorodians and Yladyka Filofej." The Tale is devoted to the problem of the struggle between the Novgorodian irredentist faction, which wished to preserve the Novgorodian constitutional system and ecclesiastical autonomy, on the one hand, and the pro-Muscovite group, which supported Muscovite attempts to subordinate Novgorod to Muscovy, on the other. The leaders of the irredentist faction were trying to realize their objectives by inviting Mixail Ole1kovy of Kiev, a prince with indisputable Orthodox credentials, who came from the Rus lands of the Lithuanian Grand Principality, as the prince-protector of the Novgorodian city republic. The Tale also dwelt on the Muscovite diplomatic prepara tions aimed at Novgorods subordination.72 Two expositions of the dynastic translatio theory appear in the Tale. One was allegedly made by the leaders of the pro-Muscovite faction; another, similar statement was put forward by the Muscovite envoys on behalf of Ivan III Yasilevi.
Pro-Muscovite Novgorodian
Leaders

Ivans [III] Envoys

"From antiquity we [the Novgorodi-

ans] have been the patrimony of those

"

antiquity, you people of Nov gorod have been my patrimony, from

"From

For a detailed recent treatment of the relationship between the Muscovite grand princely codices of the l470s and the NCh, as well as the VPCh, and the literature on the subject, see Ja. S. Lure, "Nikanorovskaja i Vologodsko-Permskaja letopisi kak otraenie veIikoknjaeskogo svoda naala 70-x godov XV v.," VID 5 1973: 219-250. 72 For the text of the Tale, see PSRL 27 1962: 129-134. The most recent literature on Novgorodian affairs, as well as Muscovite policies aimed at the incor poration of Novgorod, is written from the Muscovite point of view. For the two most prominent examples of the Moscow-centered interpretations of Muscovite-Novgorodian relations in the 1470s and the literature on the subject, see Cerepnin, Obrazovanie, pp. 855-874, and V. N. Bernadskij, Novgorod i Novgorodskaja zemija v XV veke Moscow and Leningrad, 1961, pp. 264-313.

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

47

from Rjurik, our first Grand Prince, who with his two bro thers has been willingly invited from the Varangians by our own land. After wards, Grand Prince Vladimir, [Rju riks] great-grandson was baptized and
Grand Princes,

our grandfathers and our ancestors, from Grasd Prince Vladimir, who bap

tized the land of Rus, the greatgrandson of Rjurik, the first Grand
Prince in our land. And from that Rjurik and up to this day, you have

[he] baptized all our lands: the Rus [land] and our Slavic [land], and the

recognized

only one [ruling] gens

rod

Meria [land] and the

K.riviijan [land], and the Ves, called the Bloozero

[land], and the Murom [land], and the

[land] of the Vjatiijans, and [many] other [lands]. And from that Grand

Prince, St. Vladimir and to our [present] lord Grand Prince Ivan Vasilevi..."

of those grand princes, first [those] of Kiev, and [then] Grand Prince Vsevo lod [III] Jurevi [and Grand-Prince] Dmitrij [Ivanovi] of Vladimir. And from that Grand Prince and until my time, we, their kin, rule over you, and we bestow upon you [our mercy] and we protect you against [all adversaries] and we are free to punish you if you shall not recognize us in accordance with the old tradition po starine."73

These pronouncements of the Muscovite court were incorporated into the Muscovite Codex of 1479 and SCh,75 and this suggests that they were fundamental assumptions of official Muscovite political theory in the last quarter of the fifteenth century.76 The Muscovite claims to the Kievan dynastic legacy were expounded at the beginning of the three-century-long contest between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania for the lands of Old Rus.77 While political and military struggles were conducted to conquer as much territory and as many cities as possible, an ideological contest was waged for all of Old Rus. During its first phase, this struggle centered on the important Great Russian, albeit non-Muscovite, territories-namely, Great Novgorod and the Grand Principality of Tver 1449-1485. Its outcome was the annexation of those two Russian states-a major
PSRL 27 1962: 130; for some additional remarks on the application of the Muscovite dynastic trans/atia theory to Novgorod, see A. L. Goldberg, "U istokov moskovskix istoriko-politieskix idej XV v.," TODRL 24 1969: 147-150. PSRL 25 1949: 285. PSRL 18 1913: 226-227. 76 Most of these fundamental assumptions were used not only for the justification of Muscovite expansionism in Russia proper but also in conjunction with the annexation of non-Russian ethnic territories, as, for example, the Kazan Khanate in the sixteenth century. Cf. Pelenski, Russia and Kazan, especially chaps. 6 and 7. An outline of the major methodological and theoretical problems connected with the study of this contest in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is presented in my unpublished study entitled "The Contest between Muscovite Russia and Poland Lithuania for the Lands of Old Rus l450s-1580s."

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JAROSLAW PELENSKI

Muscovite victory. Particularly in the process of annexing Novgorod, Muscovy formulated an ideological program that remained in use until the end of the sixteenth century. However, these claims were also employed in anticipation of the second major phase of this contest, which was conducted for the Great Russian border areas, and also for the Belorussian territories and the lands of Ukrainian Rus. Five major wars 1487-1494; 1500-1503; 1507-1508; 1512-1522; 1534-1537 were waged and they resulted in Muscovys annexation of the lands of ernihiv and Novhorod-Siverskyj, Brjansk, Homel, and Starodub in 1503, and Smolensk in 1514.78 In the second phase of the struggle, the annexation of Kiev was also a major goal of the Muscovite ruler. Over a period of eleven years 1493-1504, the Muscovite court formulated its claims for all of Rus against the Jagiellonian double monarchy. The views expressed during this period can be regarded as the third stage in the deve lopment of Muscovite thought concerning the Kievan inheritance. The Muscovite court advanced its pretensions cautiously, step by step. In a radical departure from the traditionally established arrangements between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania concerning the titles of their respective rulers, the Muscovite court, in a charter of 4 January 1493 that verified the credentials of its envoy Dmitrij Davidovi Zagrjazskij, used for the first time the phrase "Sovereign of all Rus" as part of the title of the Muscovite ruler.79 The Muscovite envoy was instructed to avoid any confrontation regarding the use of this sweeping term; still, the wording of the title and the note of instruction made it clear that Ivan III was claiming sovereignty over all lands of Rus.8 The Lithuanians were well aware of the significance of this addition, but were unable to negotiate in the summer of 1493 any change in the Muscovite position.8
For the best factual accounts of these wars, albeit from the Muscovite perspective, see G. Karpov, "Istorija borby Moskovskogo Gosudarstva s Polsko-Litovskim," Ctenja v Imperatorskom Oblestve istorii i drevnostej rossijskix, Pt. 1, 1866, bk. 3, pp. 1-140--pt. 2, 1866, bk. 4, pp. 1-154; El. Kaiprovskij, "Borba Vasilija III Ivano vita s Sigizmundom I Kazimiroviem iz-za obladanija Smolenskom 1507-1522," Sbornik Istorika-fi/o/ogieskogo oblestva pri Institute knjazja Bezborodko v Nezine 2 1899: 173-344; K. V. Bazilevi, Vne.fnjaja po/itika Russkogo centralizovannogo gosudarstva Moscow, 1952. F. Pape had touched upon some aspects of the first of these wars in his informative work, Polska i Litwa na przelomie wiekw .Irednich, vol. I Cracow, 1904, Pp. 132-150. Sbornik Imperalorskogo russkogo istorieskogo obestva hereafter SIRIO 35 1882: 81. 80 SIRIO 35 1882: 82. SIRIO 35 1882: 103-108.
78

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

49

The Muscovite court, in addition to adhering to its original claim, reimed its wording from the point of view of its own patrimonial theory by maintaining that the Muscovite ruler had included in his title only those lands that he had received "from his grandfathers and ancestors and that from antiquity he has been by law and by birth the Sovereign of all Rus."82 In diplomatic terms, Muscovy scored a tem porary, but nevertheless important, success by forcing Lithuania to recognize the phrase "Sovereign of all Rus" as part of the title of the Muscovite ruler in the Peace Treaty of 1494.83 This triumph reflected the great change that had taken place in the relations between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania since the Treaty of 1449. That treaty had been concluded between Kazimierz Jagielloczyk and Yasilj II with the aim of delimitating each rulers spheres of influence in Rus. In it, the word Rus did not even appear in the title of the Muscovite ruler, who was referred to simply as moskovskij, whereas his Polish-Lithuanian counterpart was designated as ruskj.84 In addition to the claim implicit in the change of this title, the Muscovite court, at the very outset of the sixteenth century, pro mulgated a patrimonial justification for its expansionist aims in the lands of Old Rus. This justification was simultaneously advanced in diplomatic negotiations with the Hungarian king Wiadyslaw Jagiel loczyk and the Polish-Lithuanian ruler Aleksander Jagielloczyk in 1503-1504. The two statements of the Muscovite government are almost identical in terminology.
Muscovite Response to the
Hungarian King "And we responded to the Hungarian kings envoy that his patrimony [Aleksander Jagielloczyks] is the Polish land ljackaja zemija and the Lithuanian land litovskaja zemlja, but [that] the whole Russian land is our patrimany from antiquity. And those cities, which with Gods help we conquered

Muscovite Responses to the PolishLithuanian Ruler "And not only those cities and provinces which are now in our hand are our patrimony, [but] the whole Russian land, according to Gods will, is our patrimony from our ancestors and since antiquity."85 "It is well known to our son-in-law, the King and Grand Prince Aleksander,

from the Lithuanian [Grand Prince],

82 83

that all the Russian land, according to

SIRIO 35 1882: 107. SIRIO 35 1882: 125, 129. 84 For the text of the Treaty of 1449 see L. V. erepnin, ed., Duxovnye I dogovornye gramoty ve/ikix i ude/nyx knjazej Xl V-XVI vv. Moscow, 1950, pp. 160-163. 85 SIRIO 35 1882: 380.

50

JAROSLAW PELENSKI

are our patrimony and we shall not return them. And whichever Russian cities are still [in the possession] of the
Lithuanian [Grand Prince, namely]

Gods will, is

our patrimony from our ancestors and since antiquity... and his patrimony [Aleksanders] is the Po lish land Ijackaja zemija and the

Kiev, Smolensk and other cities of the Russian land, with Gods help, we would like to obtain all this patrimony which is ours."86

Lithuanian land litovskaja [zemija]... And not only those cities and provinces that are now in our possession are our patrimony, [but] the whole Russian land, Kiev and Smolensk and other cities that he holds in the Lithuanian land, according to Gods will is our patrimony from our ancestors and since
antiquity."87

These statements reveal some confusion in the delimitation of the patrimonies; Kiev and Smolensk are both claimed as part of the Russian patrimony and referred to as being in the Lithuanian land. The constant and often ambiguous use of the terms zemija and votcina is indicative of the fact that the Russian patrimonial law of the Muscovite period lacked a sophisticated theoretical framework, limiting itself to a few general assumptions regarding the focus of territorial possession and political domination. The Russian, as well as the Polish, preoccupation with Kiev as the symbolic capital of Old Rus lasted throughout the sixteenth century. The Muscovite court culminated its claims to Kiev and all Rus lands with the assertion that Moscow was the "second Kiev."88 Much earlier, the Polish-Lithuanian side rejected Muscovite expansionist claims, as well as the Muscovite rulers insistence on being addressed as the "Sovereign of all Rus," as unjustified, since the larger part of Old Rus was under the sovereignty of the Polish Kingdom, i.e., the Polish-Lithuanian state.89 In connection with the annexation of the Ukrainian lands of Old Rus into Crown Poland at the Diet of
86 87

SIRIO 411884: 457. SIRIO 35 1882: 460. 88 The claim that Moscow was "the second Kiev" was most explicitly formulated in the Kazanskaja istorija, whose author or authors stated that "the capital and the most famous city of Moscow shineth forth as a second Kiev..." G. I. Moiseeva, ed., Kazanskaja istorja [Moscow and Leningrad, 1954], p. 57. A parallel to this statement is found in the last sentence of the Otryvok russkoj /etopisi, which reads: "May we see as ruler in Kiev, the Orthodox Car, Grand Prince Ivan Vasilevi of all Russia" PSRL 6 [1853]: 315. For additional comments and the literature on this problem, see Pelenski, Russia and Kazan, chap. 7. 89 "... v korolevstve i pod korolevstvom est bollaja east Rusi,..." Akty, otnosja.i iesja k istorii Zapadnaj Rossii 1 [I 84]: 347-348.

THE MUSCOVITE CLAIMS TO THE "KIEVAN INHERITANCE"

51

Lublin 1569, the Polish ruling elite and the Polish king Zygmunt II August formulated their own set of legal and historical pretensions to Kiev and the whole land of Rus.9 The first phase of the official Muscovite claims to the Kievan inhe ritance extended over a period of approximately half a century 1454/55 1504. They originated at the time of Muscovite ideological awakening that had followed the Council of Florence and the fall of Constantinople, when the Muscovite political and ecclesiastical esta blishment saw its chance to strengthen its position not only in Russia but in all of Eastern Europe, as well. These ambitions were reinforced by Muscovys successes in her expansionist policies, espe cially in Novgorod, where dynastic claims had been successfully applied, and subsequently, with the annexation of the Russian border areas, a large part of the Belorussian, and some Ukrainian lands. Between the initial implementation of these dynastic pretensions to Novgorod in the early 1470s and the full formulation of the claim to the whole Rus in 1493-1504, there was a period of about two decades when Muscovys foreign policy, and especially her relations with the Crimea, underwent a major transformation. In particular, Mengli-Gireys campaign against the Kievan area and the sack of the city of Kiev in 1482, which had resulted from the reversal of alliances in Eastern Europe and close Muscovite-Crimean cooperation, may have delayed for a time the development of Muscovite ideology.9 This slow pace may also have been due to the static and traditionalist tendencies of Muscovite legal and political theory. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, a fairly coherent set of claims to the
-

For an extensive discussion of this problem and the literature on the subject, see J. Pelenski, "The Incorporation of the Ukrainian Lands of Old Rus into Crown Poland 1569: Socio-material Interest and Ideology-A Reexamination," American Cantributians to the Seventh International Congress of Slavists, Warsaw, 21-27 August 1973, vol. 3 The Hague and Paris, 1973, pp. 19-52, especially pp. 38-46; cf. also idem, "Inkorporacja ukraiskich ziem dawnej Rusi do Korony w 1569 roku: Ideologia i korzyci-prba nowego spojrzenia," Przeglqd Histaryczny 65, no. 2 1974: 243-262, especially 252-256. For factual accounts of the sack of Kiev in 1482, see Pape, Po/ska i Litwa, pp. 83-92; and Bazilevi, Vneknjaja politika, pp. 192-199. The actual attitude of Ivan III
90

toward Kiev and Kievan sacred places and ecclesiastical treasures is best reflected in

the following statement of the oppositional Muscovite codex: "Knjaz e velikij posla k Mengireju k Krymskomu, povele voevati korolevu zemlju; Mengirj e s siloju svoeju vzja Kiev, vsja Ijudi v polon povede, i deratelja Kievskago svede s soboju i s enoju i s dtmi, i mnogo pakosti uinil, Pe.erskuju cerkov i monastyr razgrabil, a mu bali v peeru i zadxolasja, i sudy sluebnye Sofi velikoj, zolotyj potir da diskos, prislal k velikomu knjazju" PSRL 6 [1853]: 234.

52

JAROSLAW PELENSKI

Kievan inheritance had been formulated, based on the uninterrupted dynastic continuity of the Rurikides, on the Kiev- Suzdal- Yladimir Moscow translatio theory, and on traditional patrimonial law.
University of Iowa Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF THE CITY OF ODESSA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

PATRICIA HERLIHY

The tongue of golden Italy resounds along the gay street where walks the proud Slav,

Frenchman, Spaniard, Armenian, and Greek, and the heavy Moldavian, and the son of
Egyptian soil, the retired Corsair, Morali. Alexander Pushkin I 820s In the streets [of Odessa] one hears Russian, English, Italian, German, Tatar, Polish, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Moldavian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Dalmatian, French, Swedish and Spanish, and these are not spoken merely by passing strangers, but by the regular inhabitants.

J.G. Kohl 1830s

There [in Odessa] the Russian jostles a Turk, a Frenchman an Arab, an Englishman an Armenian, an Italian a Bulgarian or Wal lachian, a Pole a Circassian, a Hungarian a Persian or Bokharan. Daniel Wegelin 1840s

Among the cities of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, Odessa was distinctive for several reasons. Until the incorporation of Warsaw into the empire in 1863, it was the third largest city in Russia, a position it held from mid-century. For most of the nineteenth century it was the fastest growing major city in the Russian Empire, rivaling in its rate of expansion such American cities as Chicago.
For a bibliography on the history and growth of Odessa in the nineteenth century, see Patricia Herlihy, "Odessa: Staple Trade and Urbanization in New Russia," JahrbOcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas 21 1973: 184, n. 3. I would like to thank Dr. Barbara A. Anderson for the opportunity of reading her unpublished dissertation, "Internal Migration in a Modernizing Society: The Case of Late Nineteenth-Century European Russia" Princeton University, 1973.

54

PATRICIA HERLIHY

And the ethnic composition of its population was the most complex of all large imperial cities. This paper will be concerned with this last aspect of Odessas development in the nineteenth century. In examining the ethnic com position of Odessa, we shall make particular use of the rich data contained in the first All-Russian Imperial Census of 1897.2 This census, although late, allows reliable comparisons between Odessa and other cities of the empire; it also contains a comprehensive listing of inhabitants by native language and by citizenship. All persons in all linguistic groups are classified by occupation, social class, religion, age, marital status, and literacy. This detailed survey affords numerous insights into the composition and contributions of non-Russians to the social and economic life of Odessa. The 1897 census, in sum, presents a solid, if static, picture of Odessa at the end of the century. Earlier, fragmentary data permit us to construct a more dynamic picture of Odessas social development over the preceding decades. Consular reports, newspapers, travel journals, and imaginative litera ture, as well as subsequent official and non-official histories of Odessa, permit us to see well, if not always to measure, the growing city and the groups which formed it.
THE AGGREGATE POPULATION

At the time of the census the population of Odessa, including its suburbs, was 403,815 persons the city alone numbered 380,541 inha bitants. In 1897, Odessa was still a growing community. Since 1856, its population had increased at an extraordinary rate-3.42 percent annually, compounded and calculated on an average yearly basis.3
2

Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis naselenila Rossiiskoi imperli, 1897 g., prepared by

the Tsentralnyi statisticheskii komitet Ministerstva vnutrennikh del, under the super vision of N. A. Troinitskii, 80 vols. in 24 St. Petersburg, 1899-1905. The data for Odessa appear in vol. 47; for St. Petersburg, in vol. 37; and for Moscow, in vol. 24.
For a brief history of the census and a critical evaluation of the results, see V. K. Voblyi and P.1. Pustokhod, Perepisi naseleniia Moscow and Leningrad, 1940, pp. 9798, and B. Ts. Urlanis, Rost naseleniia v SSSR Moscow, 1966, p. 17. For additional and more lengthy criticisms of "the first and last census of Tsarist Russia," with a bibliography and rsums in French and English, see A. I. Gozulov, Perepisi naseleniia SSSR i kapita/isticheskikh stran Moscow, 1936, pp. 185-221. For the populations in 1856 of Odessa 101,302 persons, St. Petersburg 490, 808, and Moscow 368,765, respectively, see Statistische Tabelle des russischen Reiches fr das Jahr 1856 in ihren al/gemeinen Resu/taten zusammengeste/It und heraus gegeben auf Anordnung des kaiser/ich-russischen Ministeriums des Innern durch das statistische Central-Comit, ed. E. Olberg Berlin, 1859, p. 113.

THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF ODESSA

55

The comparable average annual rates of growth, over exactly the same period, are 2.34 percent for St. Petersburg and 2.56 percent for Moscow. From 1897, Odessas headlong expansion shows signs of slowing; between that year and 1904, the average annual growth rate had dropped to 3.09 percent. But not until after 1905 does the city experience a really precipitous decline in its rate of expansion.4 Of the 403,815 persons living in Odessa in 1897, foreign subjects numbered 19,422. Many more were immigrants from within the Russian Empire. In 1897 only 43.6 percent of the population had been born in the city. Another 9.6 percent had been born in the Kherson gubernia, which included Odessa, while 44.3 percent of the population had birthplaces in other parts of the Russian Empire. Within this category are to be found numerous Russian subjects whose native language was not Russian: Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Lithuanians, and so forth. Surprisingly, only 2.5 percent of the population had been born in foreign countries, despite the fact that nearly twice that percentage were foreign subjects. Pre sumably, many babies had been born in Odessa to foreign parents. The basic ethnic mixture of Odessa consisted of these foreign subjects, of Russians, and also of Russian subjects who spoke languages other than Russian as their native tongue. In Odessa in 1897, 57.78 percent of the population all ages included could read, a literacy rate somewhat lower than that for St. Petersburg 62.6 percent and slightly higher than the rate for Moscow 56.3 percent. In Odessa, however, literacy shows a distinctive association with age. In St. Petersburg the literacy rate peaks among school-age children and diminishes at the older levels of the population. This certainly reflects the lack of educational opportunities in the past and probably also the continuing immigration of illiterate peasants into the city. In Odessa the peaks of literacy are not found among the young school children. Rather, the highest rates are recorded in the groups between the ages 15 and 19, and between 30 and 39. The delayed bulge
An American reporter wrote in 1910 that Odessas population was 520,000, "but there has been a steady decrease during the last five years, which is due to the rivalry of other ports which are attracting trade because of better harbours, better railway connections and better facilities for doing business. The strong and violent socialist element in Odessa has also injured the city by frightening away capital and preventing the establishment of manufacturing industries because of the fear of labour strikes." He also suggested that the tsar was deliberately fostering Mykolaiv to favor his friends and harm the Jewish capitalists in Odessa. See William E. Curtin, Around the Black Sea New York, 1911, pp. 327-28, 336-38.

56

PATRICIA HERLIHY

in the literacy rate coincides at least in part with the age groups of the heaviest immigration into the city. The administrative, educational, mercantile and cultural positions available in the city required literate persons to fill them. Perhaps even more than St. Petersburg, Odessa attracted those who could read. According to the census there were fifty languages other than Russian spoken in Odessa by 166,345 individuals 41.20 percent of the population. Most of these people probably acquired Russian during their lifetime, but their literacy was calculated on the basis of their mother tongue. Fully 28.4 percent of Odessas inhabitants reported Yiddish as their first language. But language alone does not reveal the true extent of the Jewish population. According to the 1897 tables, 138,935 persons, or 34.41 percent of the population, professed the Jewish religion. Presumably, most Jews who did not speak Yiddish as a first language were Russian speakers by upbring ing.5 The next largest communities of foreign speakers were the Poles 4.3 percent, Germans 2.5 percent, and Greeks 1.5 percent. Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian were spoken as mother tongues by 237,525 persons-58.8 percent of the citys population. In Moscow about 95 percent of the inhabitants spoke these languages, and in St. Peters burg, 87 percent. In Odessa only 56 percent of the people belonged to the Orthodox faith or a schismatic sect thereof; in St. Petersburg 85 percent of the population were Orthodox, as were 93 percent of the inhabitants of Moscow. If we take either language or religion as an index, it could be affirmed that as late as 1897, Odessa was little more than half-Slavic in its ethnic composition. The structure of the population in Odessa shows several distinctive characteristics. There were relatively more women in the Black Sea port than in the two northern capitals. The sex ratio for Odessa was 116 males for every 100 females, which compares with 120 males per 100 females in St. Petersburg and 133 in Moscow. It may be that these last two cities were more advanced industrially than was Odessa, and were therefore attracting young males in proportionately greater numbers to work in their factories. Still, a principal reason for the relatively large numbers of women was cultural rather than economic.6
We are cautioned by the Jewish Statistical Society in Russia to count Jews on the basis of religion rather than language: Evreiskoe naselenie Rossii pa dannym perepisi 1897 g. i 0 noveishim istochnikam Petrograd, 1917, p. iii. The same group, using the figures for religion and for the city with suburbs, concluded that the Jewish population for Odessa in 1897 was 35 percent of the total: ibid., p. 72. 6 The sex ratios of persons in the population age 20 to 29 were 177 men per

THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF ODESSA

57

The Jewish population contained more women than men sex ratio= 98. If the Jews are subtracted from the population of the city, then the sex ratio among gentiles in Odessa is 130, almost as high as Moscows 133. The size of the Jewish community in Odessa, and the large numbers of women within it, thus helped tip the ratio for the city as a whole. Among the Russians men outnumbered women by 120 to 100; among the Ukrainians, males held an even greater prepon derance-159 to 100. The predominance of males among Odessas gentiles reflects the fact that many non-Jews were students, soldiers, convicts and seasonal workers who were bachelors or had families elsewhere. The Jews, in contrast, when they immigrated, seem to have done so as entire families.7 Their households, as we shall see, contained large numbers of children and were not lacking in females. In Odessa, as elsewhere, girls entered the labor force, especially domestic service, at a very young age. Out of every 100 male workers in Odessa, only two were age 14 and under. But nearly six girls of every 100 female workers were 14 and under. The demand for domestics and seamstresses drew girls into the city when they were still quite young. Women began to work earlier and they worked longer than men, all the while for inferior pay. It is, however, interesting to note that among the Russian women, 33.33 percent were independently employed, as opposed to only 19 percent of the Jewish women. This seems to reflect the peculiar strength of the Jewish household in Odessa, which tended to retain its females and did not send them forth in large numbers to household service or to outside employment. Sex ratios can also tell us something about the cultural life of the city. Although the number of French in Odessa was small 0.3 percent of the population, French women outnumbered males by nearly 164 to every 100 males. Those among them who were employed were nearly all governesses or teachers. The high literacy rates for Italian, American, English and German women, compared with males of the same nationalities, indicate that Odessa attracted many trained and
100 women in Odessa, 156 in St. Petersburg, and 167 in Moscow. This indicates that Odessa was attracting young male adults as much as these last two cities. Although Jewish immigration into Odessa was substantial, the population does not show the bulge of males in the young adult years characteristic of other ethnic groups. Among Jews, the sex ratio of those age 20 to 29 was 99 men per 100 women. Clearly, Jewish men did not immigrate unaccompanied by women. The cohesiveness of the Jewish family is also shown in the illegitimacy rates 0.1 percent of all births among the Jews, and 11.9 percent, more than ten times greater, among the Orthodox. See The Jewish Encyclopedia New York and London, 1905, s.v. "Odessa," citing rates for 1902.

58

PATRICIA HERLIHY

plucky foreign women, who took up positions in the wealthy house holds and schools of the city. Finally, Odessa, like all large cities in the Russian Empire, attracted elderly women, many of them widows, some of them with means. For age 60 and older, the number of men per 100 women falls to only 86. Females nearly equal males in number during childhood, fall well behind them during young adult hood, and dominate the ranks of the elderly. The relatively large numbers of women in Odessa and its attractiveness to the elderly testified to the elegance, amenities and cultural appeal of this southern seaport and summer resort, and served to stimulate the demand for theater, music, fashionable clothes and luxury commodities. The patterns of marriage observable in Odessa are also distinctive. Although women were present in somewhat larger numbers than in other towns, males showed no particular zeal to marry. Among the total population of males, only 45.36 percent were married in Odessa, below the 49.5 percent in St. Petersburg and substantially lower than the 57 percent found in Moscow. The most obvious explanation for this large proportion of bachelors in Odessa is the presence of a sizeable military garrison: 16 percent of the working male population were in the armed forces. Only 9 percent were so employed in St. Pe tersburg, and less than 5 percent in Moscow. Odessa was founded with a view to defending the imperial frontiers, and it remained an armed outpost in 1897. Odessa also attracted many young men who were interested in pursuing careers in commerce or in the liberal professions. Intellectuals and dissidents also gathered there. Just as Novorossiia New Russia had traditionally been a haven for run-away serfs, prisoners, and the lawless, Odessa, its capital, drew migrs from many societies. Unattached, impetuous males, living in crowded quarters, sought the many inns, pubs and clubs for the exchange of stimulating ideas as well as for the consumption of stimulating beverages. The University of Novorossiia, located in Odessa, and several scientific and learned societies also provided focal points for the exchange of ideas among both Slays and Western Europeans. The active port and easy com munications abroad added further to the intellectual vitality of the city. With a social composition that included numerous, young, un attached males, and with a cosmopolitan cultural atmosphere and good contacts with the outside world, Odessa understandably became one of Russias major centers of political activism. As early as 1821 the

THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF ODESSA

59

Greek secret society, the Hetaireia, was established in the city; it went on to plan the Greek national uprising against the Turks.8 Bulgarian patriots notably Yasil Aprilov made the city a center in their efforts to raise Bulgarian national consciousness.9 In 1861 a joint Polish and Ukrainian revolutionary committee set up its illegal head quarters in Odessa. From there it spun a conspiratorial network stretching to Kiev, Warsaw, London, Paris and Genoa. Jewish liberals, reformers, and Zionists found Odessa hospitable to their movements." Russian radicals also favored Odessa; the Independent Society functioned there, and several Decembrists were from the city.2 The first labor union in Russia was formed in Odessa, although the city was not as industrialized as St. Petersburg or Moscow.3 The Black Sea port was the major distribution point for Herzens illegal paper, Kolokol, as well as the home of the most radical, legally printed paper, Odesskii vestnik. The rapid movement of men and goods through the port made censorship difficult-and the censors of Odessa had long enjoyed a reputation for corruption. Even the land frontier was difficult to patrol; contraband, whether in goods or ideas, slipped easily over the border. With reason, therefore, three-quarters of a century before the 1905 revolution and the Potemkin mutiny, Nicholas I marked Odessa as "a nest of conspirators."14
G.L. Arsh, Eteristskoe dvizhenie v Rossii: Osvobodite/naia borba grecheskogo narada v nachale XIX v. i- russko-grecheskie sviazi Moscow, 1970.
8

On the life and activities of Aprilov and other Bulgarian patriots at Odessa, see
Nikolai Genchev, Odeskoto Bulgarsko nastoiatelstvo, Godishnik na Sofiiskiia univer sitet, Filosofsko-istoricheski fakultet, vol. 64, bk. 3 [Istoriia, 1970] Sofia, 1972; G. A. Kashirin and V. S. Alekseev-Popov, "K voprosu a roli Odessy v istorii sviazei russkogo i bolgarskogo narodov: Obzor pechatnykh istochnikov, khraniashchikhsia v fondakh Odesskoi gosudarstvennoi nauchnoi biblioteki imeni A. M. Gorkogo," l:vestiia no narodnata biblioteka I bibliotekata na SoJIiskiia derzhaven universitet, vol. 3 9 Sofia, 1963; M. Arnaudov, Vasil Evstatiev Aprilov: Zhiiot, deinost, sevremennitsi 1789-1847 Sofia, 1971. 10 8. S. Itenberg, Iuzhno-rossiiskii saiuz rabachikh Moscow, 1974, pp. 40-41. For Jews in Odessa, see especially A. M. Lerner, Evrei v Novorossliskom krae Odessa, 1901. The article, "Odessa," in Encyclopaedia Judaica New York, 1971, reviews social and intellectual movements among Odessas Jews. 12 S. Ia. Borovoi, "Kolokol i obschchestvenno-politicheskaia zhizn Odessy v gody pervoi revoliutsionnoi situatsii," in Revo/iutsionnaia situatsila v Rossil v 1859-1861 gg. Moscow, 1974, p. 195. 13 Itenberg, Soiuz rabochikh, pp. 31ff. Quoted by Borovoi, "Kolokol," p. 195. Borovoi also attributes a "revolutionary tradition" to Odessa. A visiting Englishman observed in the 1820s that Odessa was the seat of Polish agitation: "Odessa was one of the chief seats of the conspiracy against Russia, and is viewed with proportionate suspicion by the government" James Webster, Travels through the Crimea, Turkey and Egypt, 2 vols. [London, 1830], 1:

60

PATRICIA HERLIHY

In spite of the considerable numbers of single males, the average size of households was comparatively large at Odessa. The census does not give exact figures, so we must estimate average household size on the basis of aggregate information. Although this limits the precision of the estimates, still the figures retain a comparative value. In Odessa, if we exclude convents, barracks, prisons and other groups not based in the natural family, the average household size was 4.18 persons; the same figures, calculated by the same methods, are 4.01 for Moscow and only 3.78 for St. Petersburg. Why were households larger in Odessa? We can only speculate about the answers. Single young men from distant areas were likely to lodge in the homes of relatives living there. The Jewish population in particular seems to have lived in large households, with members well balanced between the sexes and with relatively numerous chil dren.16 Perhaps, too, in this commercial city young men remained long in their households of origin, as they acquired the training and
42. Webster claimed that despite governmental suspicion, "There is, perhaps, more political freedom enjoyed in this town [Odessa] than in any other of the empire. This probably arises from the high and liberal character of Count Woronzow [Voront soy], the present Governor-General of New Russia" ibid., 2: 342. A quarter of a century later, another Englishman repeated the assertion : "There is a great deal more liberty enjoyed by the inhabitants than by those of any other town in the empire" Laurence Oliphant, The Russian Shores of the Black Sea in the Autumn of 1852 [New York, 1854], p. 234. Households khoziaistva are grouped in the census according to the following number of persons: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-10, and more than 10. It should be noted that these household figures include only the head of household and his relatives, not lodgers or servants. Without the complete, ungrouped distribution, it is impossible to calculate precisely the average household size. We estimated the average by adding to the distribution the number of one-person units not regarded as households by the census takers and by assuming an average size of 8 for all households in the category 6-10, and an average size of II for those in the category, more than 10. 16 The census gives no direct information on family size for the various ethnic groups. It does, however, list according to ethnic groups those employed in some occupation, whom it calls "independent," and those "members of the family" who were economically dependent upon them. The ratio of dependents to employed workers would thus reflect family size of course, a single family could well have more than one member employed. For the city of Odessa as a whole, there are 146,064 independent men and 51,546 independent women, or a total of 197,610 persons. Again for the city proper, the male "members of the family" number 58,713, and the female 124,218, for a total of 182,931. The ratio of dependents to employed is therefore 0.93. Among the Jews, considered separately, there are 37,054 independent men and 11,970 indepen dent women; and 24,102 and 50,560 male and female family members, respectively. Among the Jews, the ratio of dependents to employed is 1.52-more than a third greater than that found in the entire urban population. Although we cannot convert these ratios into exact estimates of family size, it is manifest that the Jews were supporting numerous dependents in their households. For further comment, see below, pp. 65ff.

THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF ODESSA

61

awaited the success which allowed them to marry. Finally, the large average size of households may perhaps be an early sign of Odessas slowing growth; perhaps its economy in 1897 was not buoyant enough to allow young people to marry at an early age and set up their own families. Large households tend to be the mark of a stagnating, rather than a growing economy. The social divisions or sosloviia of the population further differen tiated Odessa from the two northern capitals; in the latter, peasants formed the largest single class.7 Since there was no category for industrial laborers, these workers appear in the census as "peasants" since they were recent emigrants from rural areas. The fact that Odessa had comparatively fewer "peasants" among its inhabitants does not imply, as one might think, a greater degree of industrialization, but the contrary. The inflated numbers of those classified as meshchanin -petty bourgeois-in Odessa, in comparison with the other two cities, indicate the vitality of trade and small crafts in the southern port and the large Jewish population.
ETHNIC COMPONENTS OF THE POPULATION

In surveying the various ethnic groups in Odessa, we shall begin with the largest-the Slavic-speaking peoples. Among the Slays, the Russians predominated; they formed almost exactly one-half of the population 50.78 percent. The figure may, however, be inflated by a tendency on the part of many non-Russians to report Russian as their native language, and thus claim for themselves membership in the politically dominant group. In 1880, according to one observer, onethird of the family names in the city were Ukrainian, but in 1897, less than one out of ten inhabitants reported Ukrainian as their mother tongue.8 Although the exact size of the Russian component in Odessas
In the census of 1897 the population was classified by class according to the following categories: 1 hereditary nobles and their families; 2 personal nobles, officials, and their families; 3 clergy and their families; 4 personal and honorary citizens and their families; 5 merchants and their families; 6 petty bourgeois; 7 peasants; 8 military Cossacks; 9 aliens; 10 native Finns without class; 11 per sons not belonging to the above classes; 12 persons of unspecified class. 18 v Zagoruiko, Pa stranitsam istorii Odessy i Odesshchiny, 2 vols. Odessa, 1957-60, 2:42. Zagoruiko cites a book by a Dr. Pantiukhoy, published in 1885, in which the author noted that one-third of Odessas population bore Ukrainian names; one-third, Russian, Polish, Armenian, and Greek names; and one-third, Jewish and other names. Zagoruiko believed that the Ukrainians made up a large portion of the population, but he did not venture to say that they formed the major part.

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PATRICIA HERLIHY

population is questionable, still there can be no doubt that this was the largest single ethnic group in the urban population. In terms of employment, more Russians living in Odessa in 1897 are found in "private work and service" than in any other occupation. This category, while it included some managers and employers, was largely made up of unskilled labor: servants, day laborers, and the like. The Russians so employed numbered 15,743 out of 75,983 males. The second largest occupational group of Russians 11,734 comprised those in the armed forces. In third place came the construction workers 5824. Smaller, but still important groups of 2000-3000 Rus sians were engaged in the carrier trade postmen, carters, and the like; the processing of food; carpentry and wood products; and the clothing industries. All these last occupations conferred relatively low status in the social hierarchy. But Russians were also well represented among those in government service 2224; men who lived from stocks and savings 2616; and those supported by land rents 1954. These occupations conferred relatively high prestige. In sum, the Russians fill the lowest and the highest ranks of Odessas society, but are singularly absent on the middle levels of the social pyramid, where most shopkeepers and small manufacturers are found. This distinctive distribution of Russians in Odessas society partially reflects the pattern of Russian immigration into Novorossiia. The opening of this new territory had attracted land speculators, deve lopers, and some nobles who were anxious to duplicate on the southern steppes the manner of life they had known in the central regions. In Gogols Dead Souls, P. I. Chichikov purchased his "souls" ostensibly to settle them on land in Novorossiia; the government, he explained, granted free land to those who brought the labor to work it.9 In real life, Mikhail Yorontsov, governor-general of the region in the 1 820s, transferred some of his peasants-live onesfrom his less productive estates in central Russia to the new land. His palace in Odessa, although recently damaged by fire, is still one of the great monuments of the city. Besides opportunities in agri culture, the growth of governmental bureaucracy also attracted Rus sians. On the other end of the social scale, the work available in the booming port and the nascent industries drew large numbers of unskilled, often illiterate workers. The social position of Russians in Odessa was a microcosm of their
19

Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls London, 1931, pp. 132, 199.

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status in the empire as a whole. They dominated the land-holding aristocracy and the government service, and they also helped fill the lowest social orders; but they contributed relatively few members to Odessas middle class. The census of 1897 allows us to investigate, although indirectly, the fertility and the natural increase of the various components of Odes sas population. We can calculate ratios between the numbers of young children in the population and women of child-bearing age. These child-woman ratios indirectly reflect both the fertility of women and the survival of their offspring, and give us a rough but usable way of measuring the comparative success of the various ethnic groups in rearing children. The age categories utilized in the census require that we consider women between 20 and 39 as representative of all women able to bear children. In Table 2 in the Appendix, we have calculated ratios between women in that age category with babies less than one year of age, and then with children from one year to nine years inclusively. Russian women were considerably more prolific than Ukrainian, Polish, and German females. For every 100 babies born to the Russian women and surviving up to age 1, there were 87 Ukrainian, 73 Polish and 64 German babies born and surviving.20 One factor here was the large number of unmarried, employed women among these last groups. German women, for example, frequently served as teachers and governesses, and many doubtlessly returned home to marry. Then, too, with the exception of the Germans, these last groups were gene rally on a lower socioeconomic level than the Russians, and this apparently affected the size of their families. On the other hand, Russian women were distinctly less fertile than Jewish wives; for every 100 babies born and surviving in Russian families, there were 127 Jewish babies. We shall presently examine some of the reasons for this remarkable contrast. Ukrainians formed another large group of Slavic speakers in Odessa. Although Odessa is located in the Ukraine, only 9.39 percent of its population were registered as Ukrainians in the city and suburbs. In the city alone, only 5.66 percent reported Ukrainian as their mother tongue. These percentages, as we have seen, may well be too low, but the Ukrainian component at Odessa is still surprisingly
20 These figures are comparative indices of the child-woman ratios, which result when the figure for the Russian babies and women is set equal to 100. The data on which this calculation is based are given in Table 2.

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PATRICIA HERLIHY

small. In founding Odessa, the Russian government deliberately en couraged Russians to move to the area with their serfs, and it invited foreign settlers; but it did not actively recruit Ukrainians. The Ukrain ians who immigrated to Odessa were predominantly poor, male and unmarried. Yery few were rentiers of any sort. Of the 11,172 Ukrainian men living in Odessa, only 224 were supported from interest on savings or stocks, and only 100 from land rents. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, we know of at least two extremely wealthy Ukrainian capitalists-Iakhnenko and Symyrenko-but they were ex ceptions.2 More Ukrainians were in the military than in any other occupational category. About 14 percent of the males were to be found in the local quarries and mines. Only 1.5 percent of Russian males were miners. Among Ukrainians, 12 percent were in manufacturing on a small scale and about 8 percent were in transport. The Ukrainian carter, the chumak, had long been a familiar sight on the roads to Odessa, carting grain from the hinterland to the port. By 1897 the railroad had largely supplanted the ox-drawn wagon, but Ukrainians continued to work on the still important river barges. Few Ukrainian women came to Odessa the sex ratio among Ukrai nians was 159, and they appear with comparatively few babies in the census. Moreover, rates of child mortality must have been high among them.22 All these characteristics seem to be linked with their low socioeconomic status. Among the Slavic groups in Odessa, there were some 1100 Belo russians in the city, exclusive of its suburbs, and a few Serbs, Sb venes, Bulgarians and Czechs. The other sizeable Slavic group was the Poles, who numbered about 17,000 in the city itself. In their socio economic position and their demographic characteristics, they resemble both the Russians and the Ukrainians. They included relatively more rentiers than the Ukrainians 259 Poles supported themselves from land rents and another 335 from interest and dividends, and some Poles appear in the relatively skilled occupations of tailor, metal worker, and even medical doctor. But many Poles were also employed in low-level occupations. A large proportion 4144 were soldiers. The second largest group 1490 were day laborers and servants.
21 Zagoruiko, Po stranitsam, 2: 36. Zagoruiko notes that there were many large landlords in the southern Ukraine, but few made their homes in Odessa. See also ibid., 1:73. There were sufficient Ukrainians in the city, however, to patronize plays given in Ukrainian; see ibid., 2: 123. 22 See below, p. 20, and Table 2 in the Appendix.

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The high sex ratio 191 and low child-woman ratios among the Poles would indicate a population predominantly composed of the poor. After the Slays, the second major component of Odessas population were the Jews. Most of Odessas Jews were Russian subjects, although there was a group of foreign Jews as well, chiefly from Austria. Subject to various civil disabilities, the Jews were frequently regarded as foreigners, but they were in fact among the earliest settlers of the region. Jews were probably already in the area when the Russian state acquired the small Turkish fort that became the site of Odessa.23 The city possessed a Jewish cemetery soon after its founding in 1 79424 Catherine II, while hardly partial toward the Jews, encouraged their settlement in Novorossiia.25 Alexander I, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, tried to establish colonies of Jewish cultivators on the virgin lands of the region.26 The hardships of rural life on this new frontier led many colonists to give up farming in order to settle in the growing city of Odessa. Other Jews streamed to the city from the formerly Polish provinces and from Galicia. By 1828, according to the citys newspaper, the population of Odessa, which then numbered 32,995, contained 4226 Jews-12.81 percent of the total.27 According to the same newspaper, a new Jewish school had been founded in 1827; within it, some 200 pupils were learning Hebrew, Russian, and German.28 By 1844, Jews made up some 33 percent of the guild membership of the city, although still comprising a much smaller proportion of the population.29 In 1856, when they formed 10.3 percent of the urban population, Jews made up 46 percent of the guild membership. The American consul reported in 1856 that Odessa contained three syna gogues one of which served Karaite Jews and 36 Jewish houses of prayer.3
For the early arrival of Jews in Odessa, see the entry "Odessa," in The Jewish Encyclopedia New York and London, 1905. 24 The Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. "Odessa." 25 N. D. Polonska-Vasylenko, The Settlement of the Southern Ukraine 1750-1775, The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., vol. 4-5 New York, 1955, p. 263. 26 S. Ia. Borovoi, Evreiskaia :emledelcheskaia kolonizatsiia v starol Rossii Moscow, 1929, pp. 43ff. 27 JournaldOdessa, 6/18 October 1828. 28 Journal dOdessa, 20 July/1 August 1827. 29 A. A. Skalkovskii, Population commerciale dOdessa Odessa, 1845, p. 4. 30 National Archives, Washington, D. C. hereafter NA, Dispatches from U. S. Consuls in Odessa, 12 April 1856.
23

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PATRICIA HERLIHY

In 1843, in one of its sporadic anti-Semitic campaigns, the Russian government sought to restrict the activities of foreign Jews in the empire. The then governor-general of Novorossiia, Prince Yorontsov, petitioned the authorities in St. Petersburg to exempt his region from the new regulations. He argued that many of the bankers in Odessa were Austrian Jews whose departure would disrupt the business of the city.3 The size and economic importance of Odessas Jewish community continued to grow after the Crimean War and during the period of the Great Reforms. Several Greek firms departed the city, and Jewish merchants took their place as shippers and bankers. Although the cereals of the southern Ukraine faced increasing competition on world markets, still the export retained importance, and the Jews were coming to play an ever larger role in it.32 Conversant with the ways of the Russian peasant and landlord, well-informed in foreign com mercial practices, the Jews provided a vital link between native suppliers and foreign consumers of Russian wheat. Some observers ascribed the success of Jewish merchants to their alert use of the telegraph to ascertain European grain prices, and others, more simply, to their invaluable "universal connections."33 The 60s and 70s of the nineteenth century represented almost a golden age for Odessas Jews. As one visitor remarked: "Judaism held up its head as it never dared to do in Moscow or St. Petersburg." The same commentator further noted the handsome synagogues, the participation of Jews in municipal management, and their contribution toward the social life and the culture of the city. So satisfied were the Jews with their condition, he affirmed, that few ever converted to Christianity.34 In 1863 the French consul reported that Jews were free to follow professions and some became bourgeois notables. They could hold office, and, in his words, were liberated from the "moral ghetto" in which they were confmed elsewhere in the empire.35 To be sure, in
Archives du Ministbre des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris hereafter AMAE, Odessa, vol. 6, f. 344, 14 December 1843. 32 Public Record Office, London hereafter PRO, FO 65, vol. 647, 23 February 1863. See also Encyclopedia Hebraica Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1949, s.v. "Odessa," in Hebrew, translated for the author by Professor Richard A. Webster of the University of California. PRO, FO 65, vol. 647, 4 February 1863. Harold Frederic, The New Exodus: A Study of Israel in Russia New York and London, 1892, p. 255. AMAE, Odessa, vol. 9, 4 January 1863.
31

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67

the same year, the British consul related the incident of a Jewish banker who aspired to election to the Club of Notables but was rebuffed in his efforts. It is significant, however, that he tried, and significant, too, that the British consul noted "general public indig nation" in the city over his humiliation.36 From the late 1 870s the status of Jews in Odessa entered a period of slow deterioration. The Ignatiev or May Laws of 1882 and the crop failures of the early 1 890s injured both the social position and the economic status of Odessas Jews.37 Mounting discrimination and poor economic times prompted many Jews to emigrate to Germany and the United States. The hostile attitude of Alexander III and his anti-Semitic ministers, and the pogroms which darkened the epoch further promoted emigration. On the other hand, the Russian govern ment never officially encouraged the exodus of Jews. In fact, Russian law did not even recognize a right of emigration.38 Odessa was not spared the social disorders of the period. In 1884, Prince Demidoff or Demidov San Donato sought to explain the deepening hostility toward the Jews and the acts of destruction against their property perpetrated in Odessa, Kiev, and Rostov-on-the-Don; he affirmed that "a considerable portion of the population of these towns consists of trading and industrial classes inimically disposed toward the Jews, for there is very dangerous rivalry in almost every branch of trade and industry."39 The frugality, sobriety, energy, and, above all, the success of the Jews aroused animosity among their com petitors. The discriminatory laws of the empire further imparted the belief that the Jews were somehow foreign and disloyal, and this in turn invited further persecution. Odessa in particular was "distin guished for its turbulent instincts and for its readiness to manifest them in some form or other." The restless, rootless, mateless men of Odessa were not only potential revolutionaries, but could also turn into hoodlums when moved by fear, frustration, or greed.
36 "

PRO, FO 65, vol. 647, 23 February 1863. The May Laws were designed to evict Jews from rural areas where they had gone from overcrowded cities and towns. See I. M. Rubinow, Economic Condition of the Jews in Russia, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, U. S. Department of Commerce and Labor, September 1907 reprint, Washington, D.C., 1908, p. 492. 38 Hans Rogger, "Tsarist Policy on Jewish Emigration," Soviet Jei;ish Affairs 3, no. I 1973: 26. For an example of this policy in practice, see NA, Odessa, 8 December 1880. A Jewish boy of 14 who had left Odessa as a baby, become an American citizen, and could no longer remember Russian, was seized and put into the army in Odessa upon his return there, on the basis that he had no right to emigrate. For this and the following quotation, see Prince Demidoff San Donato, The Jewish Question in Russia London, 1884, p. 98.

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PATRICIA HERLIHY

According to the census of 1897, the Jews remained chiefly traders and shopkeepers. Of the ten occupations in which most of their numbers were enrolled, four categories involved some kind of trade in agricultural products, grain, clothes, and general trade, and a fifth included middlemen or brokers. Jews were not, on the other hand, numerous in industry. Only in the manufacture of metal and wood products are there any significant numbers. Over 5000 males out of 37,000 were engaged in the making of clothes. Clearly, these were tailors rather than industrial workers. Another 3000 men were em ployed as servants and day laborers, and slightly more than 1500 served in the armed forces. Unlike any of the ethnic groups we have so far considered, the Jews belonged pre-eminently to the middle classes of society. In many respects the Jews seem to have been the most stable com ponent of Odessas population. The sex ratio among them is nearly normal 98 men per 100 women, and the Jewish household appears to have been large and cohesive. Jews were also the fastest growing major group in the city. In 1873, members of the Jewish faith con stituted 26.55 percent of Odessas population. By 1892 the portion had grown to 32.96 percent; and by 1897 it rose further to 34.41 percent. Concurrently, the Orthodox population at Odessa declined from 64.79 percent in 1873 to 57.46 percent in 1892. It reached a new low of 55.93 percent in 1897. Despite all the efforts of Alexander III to promote Russification and Orthodoxy, Odessa was rapidly becoming a predominantly Jewish city. While this indicates that conditions were still favorable for Jews in Odessa, it doubtlessly also contributed to the antagonism of many gentiles toward them. The growth of Odessas Jewish community was partially due to continuing immigration, but also to high fertility among Jewish women and comparatively low death rates among their children. Table 2 in the Appendix shows that Jewish women of child-bearing age appear in the census with considerably more babies under age 1 than do the women of any other of the groups surveyed. If we compare the Jewish women with the number of older children, age 1 to 9, in the census, then the number of Jewish children increases in relation to two groups, the Ukrainians and the Poles, while remaining stable in relation to the Russians. This suggests that child mortality was par ticularly high among the Poles and Ukrainians, who included, as we have stated, many disadvantaged members of urban society. Not all the Jews of Odessa were wealthy, and this high rate of

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survival was not entirely a reflection of affluence. Stable family life and the traditional care of Jewish mothers for their children doubtlessly also contributed. The Jewish family and child benefited from both material and cultural resources. Mortality rates for the Jews had been lower than those for the general population well before 1897. In a survey conducted in the 1 860s, the redactors noted that the mortality rate among Jews was distinctly low.40 A book commemorating the centennial of the city specified the advantage in 1895: from the ages of 6 to 15, only 5 Jewish children died per 1000 whereas 9 non-Jewish children perished. The authors concluded that the Jewish population in Odessa was growing at the rate of 36.4 per 1000, while the gentile population was increasing at the rate of only 21.4 per 1000. Well before the census of 1897, contemporaries were aware of the remarkable increase of the Jewish communities. A study of the census itself revealed that in the southern Ukraine, the population grew between 1881 and 1897 by 37.8 percent, but the Jews had increased their numbers by 60.9 percent.42 This enormous growth was the combined result of immigration, high fer tility, and low mortality. In the years immediately preceding the First World War, many Jews emigrated from Odessa and its hinterland. According to the Jewish Statistical Society, by 1904 the percentage of Jews in Odessa had dropped from 35 to 30.5 percent of the total urban population.43 But many remained. An American reporter who visited Odessa in the first decade of the twentieth century wrote that "all the wealthy classes are Jews." He gives us this remarkable description of their status
Mark I. Finkel, "Issledovanie o smertnosti v Odesse, v desiateletnii period, s 1851 p0 1861 god vkliuchitelno," Trudy Odesskago statisticheskago komiteta 11865: 181-82. 41 Odessa 1794-1894: Izdaniia gorodskogo obshchestvennogo upravleniia k sta/etiiu goroda Odessa, 1895 p. 450. There is evidence that mortality rates for Jews in Europe and in the United States were also lower than for the general population, especially among the young. See, for example, Jakob Lestschinsky, Problemen der Bevlkerungs Bewegung bei den Juden Padua, 1926; and H. Seidman, L. Garfinkel, and L. Craig, "Death Rates in New York City by Socio-Economic Class and Religious Groups, 1949-51," The Jewish Journal of Sociology 4, no. 2 1962: 254-73. I am grateful to Professor Bernard D. Weinryb for the last two citations and for other useful infor mation concerning Jewish mortality rates. For attempted explanations for the low mortality rates among Jews in nineteenth-century Manchester, England, see Hugh T. Ashby, Infant Mortality Cambridge, 1915, pp. 25-26. 42 Rubinow, Jews in Russia, p. 496. Evreiskoe naselenie Rossii pa dannym perepisi 1897 g. i p0 noveishim istochnikam Petrograd, 1917, p. 72.
40

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PATRICIA HERLIHY

There are more than 200,000 Jews in Odessa-exceeding one-third of the entire population-and, as everywhere else, they control the banking, the manufacturing, the export trade, the milling, the wholesale and retail mercantile and commercial enterprises. And, naturally, they are hated by the Russians and envied for their success and prosperity. The prejudice against the Jewish population elsewhere as well as here is due to economic rather than religious reasons-simply because they are getting richer and more prosperous, while the Russians are losing ground in all the occupations and professions. They have wasted their capital in bad investments and dissipations and extravagance, and are forced to mortgage their property to the Jews to keep up appearances. In the meantime the Jews have been securing control of all the profitable enterprises and lines of business in Odessa. Their sons show the same earnestness and zeal in the university that they show in the counting-room. Therefore, they make the best doctors and lawyers and engineers, and their services are in demand, while the Russian members of the profession are all idly waiting for

business.44 Jews fared well, but also suffered in Odessa. Shortly after World War I, Isaac Babel, one of the citys most accomplished writers, expressed these ambivalent feelings about Odessa, which both nutured Jews and rejected them: "Odessa is an awful place. Everyone knows how they murder the Russian language there. All the same, I think theres a lot to be said for this great city, which has more charm than any other in the Russian Empire."45 Much fewer than the Jews, but no less intimately connected with Odessas commercial development, were the Greeks. For centuries-or millenia-Greeks had sailed the waters of the Black Sea. Well before the time of Christ, they had traded for grain from the Pontine steppes.46 After the Russian conquest of the area, many Greek firms established agencies on the shores of the Sea of Azov and on the western littoral of the Black Sea. Only three years after the founding of Odessa, 25 Greek merchants arrived with their families.47 Many came from the island of Chios. In 1798 at least 21 more Greek merchants settled in the city, some of them with substantial capital. Famous mercantile names, such as the Mavrocordato, appear in Odessas records. In 1824 an English traveler
Curtin, Black Sea, p. 4. Isaac Babel, "Odessa," in You Must Know Everything, ed. Nathalie Babel New York, 1969, p. 26. 46 M. Volskii, Ocherk istorii khlebnoi torgovli Novorossiiskogo kraia s drevneishikh vremen do 1852 g. Odessa, 1854, pp. 11-62. I am indebted to E. I. Berkovich for obtaining this rare book for me. See also A. Jard, Les crales dans lantiquit grecque Paris, 1929. A. Orlov, Istoricheskii ocherk Odessy s 1794 pa 1803 god Odessa, 1885, pp. 104-22.

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wrote that among the many foreigners in Odessa, the Greeks were the most numerous.48 Among the most prominent commercial firms were the Ralli brothers and the Rodocannachi Company. In 1846 Theodore Rodo cannachi was the leading merchant of Odessa. The monetary worth of his transactions totaled three or four million rubles-at least one million more than his closest competitor handled. His commercial operations alone constituted about 10 percent of the total trade of Odessa for that year.49 Members of the Rodocannachi family were already well established in the principal Mediterranean ports before coming to the Russian Empire. By the end of the eighteenth century, Michael Rodocannachi was a prosperous merchant in Livorno, which seems to have served as the center of the familys commercial network.5 This network of family support enabled the individual branches to survive even in the face of local disasters. The embargo on Russian grain exports during the Crimean War severely taxed the operations of Theodore Rodo cannachi in Odessa, but simultaneously his brother George, from his base in Livorno, was importing grain from the Danubian ports of Galatz and Braila. One mans woe was another mans profit, but both men were members of the same family enterprise. The Ralli Brothers Company similarly maintained partners or agents in many ports, not only across the Mediterranean Sea but over the world. They traded in Livorno, New York, London, Calcutta, and Odessa, as well as other cities.5 Their London headquarters operated until 1961. John Ralli, the companys founder in Odessa, was also the first American consul there, serving until his death in 1860.52 By the end of the century, Odessas Ralli family had intermarried with Russians,
John Moore, A Journey from London to Odessa with Notices of New Russia, etc. Paris, 1833, p. 149. Journal dOdessa, 28 January 1847. M. Baruchello, Livorno e ii suo porto: Origini, caratteristiche e vicende dei traffici livornesi Livorno, 1932, pp. 380-8 1, 563. Much material on the Rodocannachi family in Tuscany may be found in the Archivio di Stato, Firenze hereafter ASF, Affari Esteri. Chr. Moulakis, Oikos Adelphon Ralli Athens, 1964. 52 For information on John Ralli and his son Stephen, see NA, Consular Reports, 20 May 1845; 14 October 1849; 1 January 1854; 29 October 1854; 5 December 1856; 25 June 1860; and 19 July 1861. I am grateful to Marfa Viktorovna Tsomakion, great-niece of Stephen Ralli and niece of Paul Ralli, for granting me an interview in Odessa in September 1974. The interview provided me with valuable information on the later history of the Ralli family in Odessa.
48

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PATRICIA HERLIHY

so that they no longer appear in the 1897 census among the foreign population. Indeed, by 1897 native-speaking Greeks represented only 1.3 percent of Odessas population, and even this represented a decline from the 1.6 percent registered only five years earlier.53 Although few in number, the Greeks in Odessa were found in almost all occupations. The majority of them, however, were connected with trade. The next largest group worked in the processing of food and animal products and in the manufacture of clothes. Some of the Greek residents of Odessa in 1897 were wealthy: more than 100 of their small group lived from interest and dividends. But many Greeks were in Odessa only tempo rarily-a fact which seems reflected in the small number of Greek women. Only 58.6 Greek women could be found in Odessa for every 100 males. Clearly, when the young Greek merchant achieved success, he returned home to marry. Among the more exotic residents of Odessa were the Tatars, who numbered 1835 in 1897. More than 300 were serving in the military, and about 100 worked in making foods of various types-macaroni, coffee, oil, baked goods, flour, and the like. A substantial number of Tatars appear in the ranks of unskilled laborers and domestics, and some were traders on a small scale. Among the Tatars, men outnum bered women by more than 2.5 to 1; males came to the city to work primarily in unskilled trades, and those who wished to marry usually returned home. Many nationalities of Western Europe are represented in Odessa in the census of 1897, but none of them in great numbers. The French early recognized the commercial importance of the new port and of the cereal export which soon flowed through it. Even before the foundation of Odessa, French merchants were trading in Kherson, and they were among the first participants in Odessas early growth. Antoine de Saint-Joseph Anthoine and Charles Sicard, both merchants, have given us two of the oldest and best depictions of the city.
"

Pervaia vseobshchaiaperepis... 1897g., vol. 47 : Gorod Odessa, pp. vi-vii, in which the redactor notes that Greeks, Germans, and Rumanians were fewer in Odessa in 1897 than in 1892. Antoine Ignace Anthoine, Baron de Saint Joseph, Essai historique sur le commerce et Ia navigation de Ia Mer-Noire ou voyages et entreprises pour tablir des rapports cam merciaux et maritimes entre les ports de Ia Mer-Noire et ceux de Ia Mditerrane Paris, 1805. For Anthoines career, see Hans Halm, in his edition of J. Weber, Die Russen oder Versuch einer Reisebeschreibung nach Russland und durch dos Russische Reich in Europa Innsbruck, 1960, pp. 164-68. For Charles Sicard, see Lettres sur Odessa par

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Newspapers in the French language-the short-lived Troubadour dOdessa and the Messager-were the first to be published in Odessa; the long-surviving Journal dOdessa, which first appeared in 1824, had a Russian counterpart only from l827. The Duke de Richelieu, an migr who served as the first governor-general of Novorossiia from 1803 until 1814, laid out the large boulevards, regular streets, trees, parks and public buildings which made Odessa so attractive.56 His successor, another Frenchman, Count Langeron, who served from 1814 to 1822, did not acquire the same brilliant reputation, but added further to the French influence on the city. French immigrants came to Odessa in small but not insignificant nutnbers. They occupied themselves in viticulture, small manufactures such as soap-making, and in the wool industry the duke introduced merino sheep to the steppe. In 1858 at least 30 French families belonged to the second and third guilds of Odessa.57 French influence on the citys culture was manifest. The theater was called the Palais Royal, and the plays performed there were often in French. The language was commonly spoken in the elegant clubs and salons of the city. By 1869 the balls given by the French Benevolent Society were among the social highlights of the season.58 French technical assistance was also of considerable importance in the growth and design of the city. The dirt streets of Odessa seemed always covered with mud or dust, depending on the season, and French engineers designed projects for paving them.59 The building
Sicard ain, ngociant tabli dons cette ville St. Petersburg, 1812; and his Lettres sur Ia Crime, Odessa et la Mer dAzov Moscow, 1810. Zagoruiko, Pa stranitsam, 1:86. For the history of the Journal dOdessa in the 1 870s, see Alexander de-Ribas, Staraia Odessa. Istoricheskie ocherki I vospominanila Odessa, 1913, p. 314. For an excellent survey of printing, books, and periodicals in early Odessa, see S. Ia. Borovoi, "Kniga v Odesse v pervoi polovine XIX v.," in Kniga: Issledovaniia I materialy 14 Moscow, 1967: 145-59. 56 His memoirs are published in vol. 54 of the Sbornik lmperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskoga obshchestva St. Petersburg, 1864-1916. See also Leon Crousez-Crtet, Le Duc de Richelieu en Russie et en France, 1766-1822 Paris, 1847. For a recent, favorable appraisal of his career, see E. I. Druzhinina, Iuzhnaia Ukraina, 1800-1825 gg. Moscow, 1970, pp. 187-202. AMAE, Odessa, vol. 8, 20 January 1858. 58 AMAE, Odessa, vol. 10, 12 February 1870. In 1843 the French consul claimed that "Odessa has borrowed from France more than from any other country; of all the foreign languages ours is the most widespread. It is spoken not only in salons, but also in all the stores, in most of the shops and workshops. Our customs, our habits, our tastes have become those of the area and everything which comes from France, from Paris especially, is well received." AMAE, Odessa, vol. 6, f. 293, 4 March 1843. AMAE, Odessa, vol. 6, f. 293, 23 March 1843.

74

PATRICIA HERLIHY

of the railroad in the southern Ukraine brought a wave of engineers and construction workers. Substantial French and Belgian investments in the I 890s in the economy of the southern Ukraine led to a renewed influx of Gallican visitors.60 Still, the French population of Odessa remained largely transient. In 1897 there were only 319 employed Frenchmen in the city. Most of them worked in the metal-processing industry. The high esteem accorded French culture is, however, evident in the numerous govern esses-some 208 among the 383 working Frenchwomen in the city. Frenchmen came and departed, but their influence abided. The same judgment would apply to the Italians in Odessa. In 1897 there were only 286 working Italian males in the city. Most were merchants dealing primarily in luxury commodities, or skilled artisans such as, for example, ceramists. Italians were also prominent as proprietors of hotels and restaurants. Like the Greeks, the Italians had first come to the city as merchants trading in grain and in other agricultural commodities, but they had abandoned such interests by the end of the century. While Italy itself remained a principal consumer of Russian wheat, the large commercial firms in Odessa were no longer Italian.61 Italian culture exerted a continuing influence on the city. The Italian language was the commercial lingua franca of the region. Street signs were given originally in both Italian and Russian, and notarial docu ments were redacted in Italian, as were passports, lists of current grain prices, and even theater notices.62 The first publication by a local press was a sonnet in Italian. The architectural style of the growing city showed many Italian influences. Most operatic productions were of Italian works. Upon hearing Rossinis Barber of Seville and other
60 Some 60 to 80 French families accompanied the 120 to 150 railroad engineers and workers who came to Odessa in the l850s. See AMAE, Odessa, vol. 8, f. 177, 20 August 1859. For French and Belgian investments and participation in industry in the southern Ukraine, see John McKay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885-1913 Chicago and London, 1970. 61 For grain purchases by Italy, see Vincenzo Cacciapuoti, Relazioni commerciali tra lItalia e Ia Russia Naples, 1928; and Jean Gorrini, La Russie moderne et les rapports italo-russes Turin, 1918. Vincenzo Giura, Russia, Stati Uniti dAmerica e Regno di Napoli nellet del Risorgimento Naples, 1967, gives much material on the earlier period. 62 Odessa, 1 794-1894, p. 585. There is a theater notice published in Italian in the Historical Museum in Odessa. For passports, see PRO, FO 65, vol. 257, 4 September 1821. For the street signs, see Edward Morton, Travels in Russia and a Residence at St. Petersburg and Odessa in the Years 1827-1829 London, 1830, p. 198.

THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF ODESSA

75

works by Italian masters, Pushkin proclaimed them to be "represen tatives of heavenly paradise."63 Even the great hero of the Italian Risorgimenlo, Giuseppe Garibaldi, lived briefly in Odessa.64 And Odessa was involved, although in a minimal degree, in the growing hostility which Italians felt against Austria. Tuscan merchants voci ferously complained that the Austrian consul, who supposedly repre sented their interests in Odessa, was more concerned with developing the rival Austrian port of Trieste than their own Livorno.65 The style of the city, its distinctive combination of climate, culture and cuisine, prompted one visitor to remark in 1835: "I was almost tempted to believe that, by some hocus-pocus, we had tumbled on an Italian town.... There was little or nothing Russian about it. Its inhabitants were chiefly Italian or Greek, with a sprinkling of French, German and English."66 If Odessa impressed some visitors by its old-world charm, it appeared to Samuel Clemens Mark Twain as almost an American city: I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I "raised the hill" and stood in Odessa for the first time. It looked just like an American
city; fine, broad streets, and straight as well; low houses two or three stories, wide, neat, and free from any quaintness of architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering the sidewalks they call them acacias; a stirring businesslook among the streets and stores; fast walkers, a familiar new look about the houses and everything; Look up the street or down the street, this way or that way, we saw only America. There was not one thing to remind us that we were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling in this home vision, and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and presto: the illusion vanished !6 7

If Odessa looked like an American city to Mark Twain, it never contained many Americans-or Englishmen either. The American government had an early interest in the city, and appointed a per manent consul as early as 1832. But the two countries sold to the world many of the same products, and a vigorous trade never developed between them. An American traveling to Odessa in the 1 830s was
J. Thomas Shaw, ed. and trans., The Letters of Alexander Pushkin, 3 vols. Bloomington and Philadelphia, 1963, 1: 143. 64 de-Ribas, Starala Odessa, p. 322. 65 ASF, Affari Esteri, protocol 207, no. 7, 24 December 1830, in which the Tuscan Council of State wrote to the Grand Duke of Tuscany: "Se evidentemente preso a promuovere i vantaggi di Trieste contrariando Livorno." 66 Henry WikofT, The Reminiscences of an Idler New York, 1880, p. 231. 67 Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrims Progress, Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker Citys Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land, 2 vols. New York, 1911, 2:116.
63

76

PATRICIA HERLIHY

amazed to find an migr from Philadelphia, General Sontag, who had lived in Odessa twenty years. He married a Russian noblewoman, raised grain on a vast estate outside the city, and had adapted well to his new environment. His daughter played "Hail, Columbia!" and "Yankee Doodle" on the piano for the visitor.68 But the 1897 census tells us that there were only 36 American citizens living in Odessa. We cannot determine what they were doing there, as they are treated with Englishmen in a single category in regard to occupations. The English themselves maintained close diplomatic and commercial ties with Odessa, but sent few immigrants. The British consuls at Odessa regularly filed informative reports at the Foreign Office, and English firms were among the principal purchasers of Russian grain.69 More numerous and more diverse were the German speakers of Odessa.7 Many retained their foreign citizenship; in 1897 some 3435 were citizens of Austria and 2790 of the German Empire. But German-speaking subjects of the tsar were also numerous. From the time of Catherine II German colonists had come to Novorossiia, chiefly as farmers, although some drifted to the city. Among the German speakers in 1897 there were substantial numbers of rentiers-perhaps retired peasants-and many skilled workers in metal products, foodprocessing, carpentry, and in the making of clothes. But the German contribution to the development of the region seems to have been more in agriculture than in the urban trades. We shall not examine the still smaller ethnic groups-Armenians, Turks, Georgians and so forth-even though their presence added further to the cosmopolitan flavor of the city. And we must recognize that our analysis is incomplete for other reasons. While we have said something about the composition and characteristics of the separate ethnic groups, we have not considered, and cannot here consider, how these groups interacted, clashed, and cooperated, and how they formed a living city. We hope to do this in the future. Odessa, remarkable for its nineteenth-century expansion, remarkable, too, for

John Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia and Poland, 2 vols. New York, 1838, 1:264. Wikoff, Reminiscences, p. 233, also recalls a meeting with General Sontag in Odessa. 69 James Yeames was a merchant and consul at Odessa as early as 1819. At the same time William Yeames was vice-consul at Taganrog. See PRO, FO 65, vol. 257, 7 June 1819; and vol. 258, no. 3, 22 September 1823. 70 See Herlihy, "Odessa," p. 189, n. 27, for a bibliography on the German colonists.
68

THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF ODESSA

77

the many cultural communities which contributed to it, eminently deserves much further study.
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

APPENDIX

The following tables are based on data from the city alone, exclusive of its suburbs.

TABLE I

The Ten Largest Groups by Native Language in the City of Odessa, 1897

Language 1. 2. 3. 4.
5.

Males 104,172 61,156 13,224 11,174

5,253

Females 89,081 62,530 8,302 5,864 4,680 1,847 459 470 701 296

Total 193,253 123,686 21,526 17,038 9,933 5,013 1,429 1,399 1,124 1,095

Percentage Total Pop. 50.78 32.50

5.66

6.
7.

8. 9. 10.

Russian Yiddish Ukrainian Polish German Greek Tatar Armenian French Belorussian

3,166 970 929 423 799

4.48 2.61 1.32 0.38 0.37 0.30 0.29

Source: Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis. . .1897 g., vol. 47.

78

PATRICIA HERLIHY TABLE 2

Women and Children in the City of Odessa, 1897

Russians Ukrainians Infants, to One Year Children, Age 1-9 Women, Age 20-39
Ratios:

Poles 245 1,382 2,514 Poles 9.75 58 54.97 44

Jews 3,466 25,398 20,548 Jews 16.87 100 124.33 100

Germans 142 1,160 1,868 Germans 7.60 45 62.10 50

4,246 30,715 31,811

364 2,376 3,146

Russians Ukrainians Infants/ 13.35 11.57 100 Women Index Jews= 100 79 69 Children/ 96.56 75.52 100 Women Index Jews= 100 78 61

Source: Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis... 1897 g., vol. 47.

TYYNAS

CERNIHIV

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

B
HaBib THHHa

MI1 ,LPYT POE ITHHK BOLHTb MEHE HO MICTY t XBAJIHTbCSI

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rxojIi

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80
M1ICJTB

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

nanopca nepeidnHy.aacb noBlic.aa

B 4opMi 4HOFO Moc-ra

Hpoic.na4acMo pixceM .rIaMacM Hi xcarno am xcaJIOwiB HeMa 6o ue xc cnjismoBanicm caa AHy xc oKibenyite OKJIHHHSIM wo6 cana xcwsnslFr BJ1HJI npHli4emHiM IIOKOJIiHHSJM BHH 3a6y4oBycM BHCOICO It ropo axc r.ayxHM JxoFyKay.aacsl iiya Hexalt we Bwe te BOHR 3HaHHSIM 3aFocTpeHHsIM CTaJIiHHSIM wo6 CHJI xcM3HsIH Brnua npHIl4emHiM n0K0JIiHHSIM
BIIHR

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TYYNAS CERNIHIV

81

Ocb

BOHR

KJlslcBa BapTisI

HenpilMilpl-ma <<cpecits>>
HiMeLbKa KoMrlapTisl

14-ro nepecusi
TpeMTiTh coIlisulb
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itepri6e.rii
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ax
MOK IIOMO?KeTJ,C51 ax KanivajiicTwma cTa6im3awsl mIce xpycyna Ha 3y6ax

B EepJIiHi ii EcceHi y Pypi l BecT4ani

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82

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ 3JICTH aeponismait 3aiTisBHMH EJIJIaHaMH B Mail6yTHe xonocitc

Mit CJ1BHMO Mit XBJIHMO

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Mit CJIBHMO

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4 6jiaort 10 3BJIaMH a 3axi,rt ce xc O6BaJIHMO wo6 nani 300B iTO A 411 HE CTb UE CAM! HAXBAJIKH AEOK 3AHAMOPO4EHHSI BI YCHIXIB O Hi MR SICHO xaxceo
3 3aBOOM fflXOJ1 3BslxceMo y BCi 3HHHSi Y3YCMOCIS Bpi3eMocb JllO3CMOCb rIoJuTexHi3ycMocl
IIITypMyeM naHcMci yCTpOI

y Hac no6a mnycTpii B HC TMfl i TJIYM rIouToffoBi Tpy,lo i .LLHI IIBOTOHOB! 3aJIi3o6eToHoBi Hexail EBporra KYMICaC a B HC onoa JIORI nyxa e ona ona TYP6aIW1

TYYNAS ERNIHIV

83

TpaIwrtiil niLtpi3aWsI Ico.neIcToBi3awsI

He 6amKoBa He HeHiHa noqa 1 Mac i JieRma

Wi MHCJIb yciM 3BiItOMJIeHa enaneoa H3JIoMJ1e1Ia nepeycBinoMjleHa

Feil 6inHsixR-6e3Lni6n0x0
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1 BR

eJIeXTPIUCY nOrIitJll,HeHHSI

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riepe-nepe6ynnMo <n ICJIJI UbOFO 3PO3YMIJIO>> POE ITHHK KAKE <<qoro YKP-BAPfflABCbKOMY CMITTIO TAK 3APA3 BECEJiO>>
flaim MOl pinHeceHHci co6axo cyrnm TamIloilTe He TaHwoilTe no TaHI-Tepopy 3y1ern He BHTHWOCTbC$I

O6epnucR nopocn na icapac

4o6oTy 1o6oTy 1o6oTy niilcyIprnHH noicjiornecsi TaXi Bit IcpoTKi naHo MOl oeponeei no IIIJISIXTH HOJThCI,KOI 3KOM HaJunJIeHi HaIcneeH1 Hy npoCTo xc He HaMitJTyBTMcSI

O6epnucR nopocn na icapac

4o6oTy Io6oTy Io6oTy ncsl-KpeBmuI IOIJ1OfflTCSI

He

CIRTbCSI WOCb rIaHaM TOM 6i.nbme renepa.moBi Ee3po6rrrsl HOBCTaHH$1 flitIflaJI Ha rIInrIaJIOBl

84

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ TiJIBKR BiTpe nono

Coim nacmao nm ne coucmao

a 3a6oproBaoicTb a il 3 rIOnaTKaMR 3aXopno}moMyKaniTaJIoBi

a apa 3HOB XH3CTbCSI wo Yicpaiiiy il Einopycb no npay rloimu.w3yemcss

XBaJIRBCI, KOJIRdB XBaJIIOKO B iM$I opiia T}OMO lit BR IyCTC B iMSI xpeca

Coim nacmao

flfl

tie ceucmao
OX 1

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4aHTa3yCTbdSI

X.ii6miil RHOI ycox ElcdnopTy SIX Hau.JlaIcaHo Tpsice xc Te6e BCIO Tp3smo 3api3sncaoo L1e He Hoju,uta a TPSICWi caa

<<fonicu puica>> a o puaicoi yxy nea

He OHRM II

fflH3MOM

noxcaicao

XiJIMcaHnwmoMa

Ta ii no xcnam on 6ypxcya3ii IcpiM rIOKOPWRHR

Bin 6ypxcya3iI RIO 3 pd3nanOM ABCTPO-YFOPLUHHH we 6a H a II i C T b d 51

Eyymb nanu dymbcR noicu no4ona?ombcR

A KOPOHR 1o6oToM noMopnern SIOJIM ii He 3HRXHTb no Xim.IsI

nepeMiHSITb cit

YJ1HCb IIAHH fl 25 JIlT TOMY POE ITHHK 3FA,LYC 1905 P1K HA 4EPHIFIBWHHI
llo 3a my i3 KaTnaBaHa

4o THYTh naoa nponanaa

10 TO iepm xBaJm6a
1IoMy

Toxc
Mixc

xBaJm6a loMy we ii epm KoHoTndIXi MailcTepHi Kopsoxiacaxi 3aBOH

Kpoieaesu flimnrne
flomBxa BaTypHH 3arpe6enna

3a.rIi3HHqHi MailcTepln

6onor MDX C1JI MDX SIM po36ypxaJrncsi nOJIyMSIM

TYYNAS CERNIHIV Epxano Ta BC we MJIO Oil rnyiio xc U1MYBJ1O mc e nsme BOHO we Ii nsiHe Toxc 13 BIlxBocToBa censiHo Hail6inHimi cemIHR
4OMy BRHO tOMy

85

6iom noMiRIaXa y CXOH ue 6e33aXoHcTBo a 3aXOH

"Fata morgana" Kouio6mscaxoro

Eonit IX Ta Bd we PO6iTHIIIITBY 6 citiit dTJIO TK He BcniJlo ceno 4oMy ce.iio tOM He Bfl1HO
Eo npi6HonllcHiiwrno ite
annio Xo assi Iloro 1H8J1COBMM Mani4ecToM

BJ1CHHTBO He 3BJTllJIO

6at <<3no6pimaB>> ria i run

i MaH14ecTOM nap ripitmrn

Xail 6it ucpawe He no6pimaB Xail 6it ru 0 T i M emne BimaB 6o Ha tep3i xc i3HOB -loMy i3HOB lOMy Ha I31

Ue xc ne 6uoptepcTno
JIXiBCTBO B

HIopH6ep3i
JlioHcxe nepwe p03yMT1,c51 noacTaHila a ue tpyre

HlopH6ep3i

He

HioHcbXitil 6yHTo-IoBr

i He XMenbHitnbXitli-HyraioB

4onrana ii pyuca <<BJianuHSi>> ucJIIonyJTa eBSITitM Ci1Hs1 rynuc axc psi6ica ii 6epe 4oMy 6epe 1oMy we if pit6uca TIopeMHasi ruomia rnit6Xa pea Ha6llTa riui6ica <<ito xc nonac ronyil wypst IXHII ipOHia 3BWIaaHO ne BM BCSI if apapiSI>>
FJISIHb

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Bpa3 flomoMlciHoM axc Ha MHOO SICH1UJ
cpycnyno

4oMy $IcHi IOM Ha MHOO

86

GEORGE 0. GRABOWICZ So mice xc BicimucaMit HOBOFO

BidHmcaMit HOBOrO it Panit i KPOHUJTanT 1 fflr.irr npo4lcninXo SIX nRHaMiT

A ce ne 3po6HJla jztesi 36poBHorO

noacTaHmi

TYT CAME ,LEMOHCTPALU5I HPOXO,L11Tb FETh fflKIHHKIB CMEPTb IHTEPBEHUIT

JIEHIH OnHo T1JIMCR CJIOBO a MR mice mc 6ypsi F0T0B0 HanpyxcitM B onoui 6iic HflPBRM i icpemeM i XRU1RM XU1HM SIX JIEHIH

npyroil

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Bcu,oro niim nsum .rirrep

a cinico eHeptiui
Tauc pie xc LapsiM He riooxcym Hi 6pexHi ai xcecT fflyMyii BilmyMoByil 3aJu3HRil HPOTCT

OT BiH BM

I xaxcym

pi3HO

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I OT BiH BMC I axcym 3 <<enep nepxcaa dnolciilHim

HxHM XO1 pa XOJIHUJH1M MXOM rpome cBo6ononbicy 3a rpim>>

Hexali xce 3oaiom <<naTpioTo>>

Hexail noBinoMnSlm <<MiwaH>> He 3acnoXoiMoci, MR OTH

X riolcit
HC B R

nonit Beck 6ypSIH

Be MO

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TYYNAS CERNIHIV
KJISIHeMCSI XJIS1TBOIO 3aJli300

87

nO sopor xconell He BT1.

CTAPA YKPATHA 3MIHFITHC}, MYCHTb

flepeXo1oBylotit HacwLyIomcb IciJmXicHo S1XiCHO nepexluiony}omcb rupoiluiaiotn B3CMHO npoTRJrexcHocTi 3ariepeIeHHSIM caporo Bit6yxalorn nps1MyeM 3a 3XO11OM niSUIeXTHXR

no He3MipHHoro Mail6yTHborO
OTxce nepenori BCi nocninxceoo oxce rnit6RHH BC1 poranao oxce 3sIcoBaHo Bdi enoynpeosi Po3xceHiMocb woicrn no icopii oxce onicpomomcsi HaM B}noMOK on He3BR1ailHoro Mail6yTHbOFO

SIc iacTo

npi6Hro eanoiojxem

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3aropsiilcb nanail 3aoXpRJlIoilcsI

BXnloqailcl, Ta H MHSIBiCTIO 6ailutyxcoro He 6oxceinmsurvi i He oniaeM cnsimnoro a nprlcTpacHolo conoio cHinoMocTo wo6 MU 6yno IITXmII ii HednoXlilHimi
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Bin

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88

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

HepeKo9oBybon Hacrn1yboHCz
K1JIEKiCHO SIKiCHO nepexinonyiomc& npoutMabow B3RCMHO nponlJiexcHoci

anepeensi
J151MCM 40

caporo BnGyxabom
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3R 3KOHOM

He3MipHHol-o Maut6yTHboFo

TYCYNAS CER NIHI V

q0 MoxHa
He roroTam, Konsi uo6a, Jo6a rorose! CKoeopoa, <<Cms4oHja>>

After Zamist sonetiv I oktav, ernihiv is Tyynas most heavily censored collection of poetry. The former, since its first appearance in a separate edition in 1920, and, subsequently, in the "collection of collections," Zolotyj homin 1922, has not been reprinted even in part, and only recently have excerpts from it been cited in the better Soviet studies on Tyyna.1 ernihiv, first published in 1931, and included in full in the

third 1932 edition of Tyynas poetry, has in all subsequent editions been reduced to only two poems: the first, "Mij druh robitnyk vodyt mene p0 mistu j xvalytsja," and "Lenin" i.e., "Tut same demonstracija proxodyt...". Most recently, two more poems have been "rehabilitated," making precisely one half of the collection accessible
to the general reader.2 The fate of both collections is yet another

monument to the Soviet approach to literature, but while the pattern of censorship-or, indeed, self-censorship3-- as applied even to the "bard of the Revolution" is all too familiar, the history of ernihiv has its peculiar ironies. Thus, though it deals with eminently sanctioned themes-industrialization, revolutionary ardor, the transformation
of society, Lenin himself-and treats them with ostensible orthodoxy, it still suffered the same fortune as the "ideologically vacillating" and "idealistically humanist" Zamist sonetiv i oktav. Despite a few initial positive reactions, notably the enthusiastic reviews by the poet Nikolaj Aseev and the critic A. Lejtes,4 negative opinions came to hold sway.
See S. Telnjuk, Pavlo Tyina Moscow, 1974; there are also more guarded references to it in Leonid Novy&nkos PoezUa i revoijucija Kiev, 1959. 2 Cf. Pavlo Tyyna, Vybrani tvory, 2 vols. Kiev, 1971. The poems are "Kupujemo hazetu" and "Stara Ukrajina zminytys musyt." Thus Semen axovskyj Vmajsternipoetycnoho slova [Kiev, 19581, p. 100 states with Stalinist impudence that Tyyna himself freely concurred in the suppression of his own work. Functionally, of course, it matters little whether the censorial principle is external or internalized. As far as the creative personality is concerned, however, the latter is by far more pernicious-and, sadly, quite typical for the Soviet sphere. Cf. axovskyj, Pavlo Tyyna Kiev, 1968, pp. 132-33, and Telnjuk, Pavlo Tyina, p. 155.

90

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

The reasons for the disfavor are rather obvious, and the more official the critic the more frankly he was wont to state them as nothing other than the poets "formalism" and his "inability to correlate form and content." Typical of the categorical and unabashedly simplistic judg ments on Oernihiv is this by Arsen Iuk: The deep ideas, the great historical meaning of cernihiv, a work constructed out of rich and vital material, were not conveyed by the poet to the reader because the form he chose did not correspond to the content. Here the poetry loses
-

much as a result of a crying contradiction between content and form. A striking example of this is the poem entitled "A y ne jest ce sami naxvalky abo zapomoroennja vid uspixiv." The theme of the poem is the year of the
great leap. It is a complex,

responsible, historically significant theme. It

requires means of artistic

treatment that would assure an emotional contact of the

reader with the ideas embodied in the given image. One should speak in an

elevated and solemn voice about the national events which are the basis of this work. The poet, however, chose the form of a "astuka".. . To be sure, since that time such critics as 0. Bileckyj in his
introduction to the 1957 and the 1961 editions of Tyynas poetry and particularly S. Telnjuk in a recent study have sought to defend ernihiv.6 But however much they try to explain and mitigate, they make quite clear both the vehemance of the initial hostility and the tenacity of the views that hold this work and this phase as a "xvoroba rostu."7 The same kind of retrograde poetics coupled, of course, with different ideological premises motivated the migr poet and critic Jevhen Malanjuk as he pronounced ernihiv a "psychopathic collection of autoparodies."8 The literary dogmatism of both camps notwithstanding, however, Cernihiv, far from being a detour, is in the very mainstream of Tyynas poetic development; rather than an aberration, it is, from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective, a centerpiece of his ceuvre. In a real sense Cernihiv is nothing less than a "missing link" in the complex evolution of the poet; it is a key to understanding the road which for some is a precipitous slide9 from SonjaJni kljarnety
Arsen Iiuk, Pavlo Tybyna Kiev, 1954, p. 85. Cf. Telnjuk, Pavlo Tvina, pp. 148-60. Cf. axovskyj, Vmajsterni; IIuk, Pavlo Tyyna; and 0. Hubar, Pavlo Tyyna: Litera turnyj portret Kie, 1958, p. 60. In the introduction to the three-volume 1946 edition, Leonid Novyenko also felt obliged to say that ernihiv was excessively "experi mental," indeed "destructive," and thus justifiably forgotten Pavlo Tyyna, Vvbrani tvory, 3 vols. [Kiev, 1946], 1: 9. Je. Malanjuk, Knyha sposlerefrn, vol. 1: Proza Toronto, 1962, p. 302. Cf. G. Grabowicz, "The Poetry of Reconstitution: Pavlo Tyynas V serci u mourn," Recen:,ja 2, no. 2 1972: 3-29.
6

TYtYNAS CERNJHJV and Pluh to Partya vede and the later poetry. Cern ihiv, in

91

short, highlights the various changes that occur in Tyynas poetry-of thematic focus, of prosodic and linguistic devices, of the poets ideology and his stance with respect to the represented world. It does this by virtue of an artistry that is unique in both its condensation and the brevity of its flowering. As with all the previous collections, the style and Weltanschauung of Cernihiv is peculiarly its own, but this is also the last collection to express the range of poetic complexity that is associated with Tyynas earlier poetry; the later poetry, i.e., that which remained unimpaired by the official desideratum of a leveling to the lowest common denominator, achieved its aesthetic effects by different, "simpler," and more traditional means. Bileckyj is un doubtedly correct in considering Cernihiv to be, by reason of its manifest content, the beginning of a new period in Tyynas work. After the highly engage and- tribunicial moments of Viter z Ukrajiny 1924 cf. "Vidpovid zemljakam," "Za vsix skau," "Velykym brexunam", the later 20s saw a greatly decreased tempo of creativity and self-expression, primarily in the meditative, inward-turning poetry of the "Krymskyj cykl" 1925 and the pained and no less reflective, in fact, almost mystical "ystyla maty kartoplju" 1926, for which TyCyna was accused by Peoples Comissar cubar of "peddling a nationalist opiate under the banner of proletarian art."1 To be sure, meditative and introspective elements and a mystical sense of oneness with the cosmos, with nature and with the community of man is also quite pronounced in Viter z Ukrajiny. In its unqualified turning to the social and communal, however, Cernihiv marks a sharp departure from the poetry preceding it. It is as if Tyyna were finally fulfilling a deeply felt imperative, an imperative which in one poem he stresses by having it voiced by nature herself: BecHa BcTac, xeca BcTae,
eca no ee npoMoBnSue, RTSI Moe! 3enemiMit JIRCT0IXaMH, rony6RMU IXaMR: tOM BC ropom 0FHeM-cniBoM,

Pavlo Tyyna, Tvory, 6 vols. Kiev, 1961-62, 1:28. For a discussion of this attack and of Tyynas reply, see George S. N. Luckyj, Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, 1917-1934 New York, 1956, p. 122.

10

92

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

tOM HC 3 XOJIeKTHBOM?

BecHa npanacsi no MeHe

-

3CJICHHMR JTUCTOIXaMH.2

Eernihiv, in a word, actualizes the "kolektyv" and thus sets the tone for much of Tyynas later poetry. It does so, however, with the full range of his poetic resources, and without breaking the threads of motifs and themes from his previous collections. Cernihiv, which Tyyna himself called a "poetic sketch" narys v poezjax, has been compared to a form of literary reportage.3 According to Bileckyj, its hero is "that very city in which the poet spent his childhood and partially the years of his early manhood, the city that was returned its youth by Soviet rule." "The time of the action of this collection," he continues, "comprises one day which

is typical not only for the life of the new ernihiv, but for all the Soviet Ukraine."4 While there is an element of truth in them, these obser vations require deeper scrutiny. This is particularly so because the manifest content of the collection which Bileckyj considers simple and straightforward is subtly qualified by the very mode and manner of presentation. This is not only a question of what the early critics saw as a tension between the "form" and the "content" of the poetry. Here, even the "content"-the subject matter-is more complex than it seems on the surface. The conventional argument that this collection simply depicts the new "socialist" achievements and that, further, "the poets main intent is to recreate the pathos and
the heroicism of people at work, to recreate the high tempos with which the people realized the task of socialist reconstruction, the activity,

energy, and effectiveness of the masses that is the basic feature of the new age,"6 does nothing other than reduce a complex structure to a narrow ideological reading. The key to this structure may perhaps best be found in the dramatic principles of this work. For Cernihiv is above all a dramatization of the present day-a dramatization, however, that in its stylization, its formal features, in its telescoping of the ethos of the whole society and in its presentation of a highly charged, monochromatic ideology, is very
12 13

Pavlo Tyyna, Vserci u mojim Kiev, 1970, p. 81. Iluk, Pavlo Tyyna, p. 83. Tyyna, Tvory, 1:28. Tyyna, Tvory, 1:28-29. II.uk, Pavlo Tyyna, pp. 82-83.

TYYNAS CERNIHIV

93

much like a modern equivalent of the mystery play. The dramatic tendency is, of course, quite pronounced throughout Tyynas work. In Sonjani kijarnety it appears as dramatic vignette e.g., "Po xlib jla dytyna," "Odynjajte dveri", as dramatized narrative "Skorbna maty," "Vijna," and especially "Zolotyj homin", and in virtually all the other poems as dramatization of lyrical perception. In the early period it is expressed most fully in the "feerija-drama" Dzvinkoblakytne 1915-17 and the psychodrama Rozkolpoetiv 1919. Subsequently, Zamist sonetiv i oktav relies on a unique montage of reflection and dramatic vignette. While the straightforward and conventional drama or "dramatic poem," as Tyyna calls it Sevenko I Cernysevs kyj 1939 is not altogether successful, his two other long works, the heroic-epic "ablja Kotovskoho" 1938 and the "symphony" Skovoroda 1920-40, show the dramatic principle at a highly effective and masterful level. Tyynas ability to evoke a "transcendent" dramatism is revealed in his superb and still censored poem "ystyla maty kartoplju." The entrance of the crazed father who believes himself to be God projects a total, mystical dramatic tension that enfolds all of reality-the inanimate and the human, the mundane and the sublime:
HaBcTixc 3 pO3FOHy PO3XitRCSI nBepi, i 3BinTiI IcpR1aJlo:

flanailTe nony: $IBMBCSI XpitcToc! 3ycTpitailTe, cniBailTe, BoilTe B KiMBaJIit, TOMnairn: SIBHBCSI XpitcToc-6or i nap Barn!
Torna HacTana. 4aByH 3amitniB. Tpi3Ho-cRHSI
-

TRll1 -

BucHax Siarocnoinsuiorn anpaio I HaniBo, yBixonRB no xaio 6or: y coponi ruin noslcoX, 6ocoil, no6 y3eHbXHil y twa ruami.ti. Eor: YTOMIJBcSI it! Csiny, ruocoxcy. A no TM TO Bapom? 3Haern, cboronHi BO3HOCOBCB Ha He6o i TaX 6yno XaJII,XO, TaX xc ac xcaJu,Xo.

For the most part, Cernihiv is far removed from such mystical over tones. As we shall see, however, it embodies TyCynas dramatic drive on various levels of its structure, ranging from the overall construction where the central issues appear like players on a stage and are given "stage directions," through the device of a dialogue between the poets persona and an archetypal worker, to the dramatic content

Cf. Grabowicz, "Poetry of Reconstitution," pp. 13-14.

94
of

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

individual poems, and, finally, to the smallest semantic and poetic units, all of which throb with movement and energy. The essential, determining feature of the dramatic portrait that is Cernihiv is its focus on the people, the narod, and the concomitant utilization of the forms and devices of popular literature. Setting aside closer analysis for later, we can now note several outstanding moments in this development. First, Cernihiv marks the beginning of Tyynas turning in the 1930s to popular burlesque and vulgarian forms; this culminates, and is most successful, in the already mentioned Homeric-Gogolian poem "ablja Kotovskoho", but it also plays a major role in the collections Partija vede 1934 and Cuttjajedynoji rodyny 1938. Tyynas recourse to the tradition of the Ukrainian vertep and the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century intermedia and the achieve ment ofvarious, largely comic effects through a characteristic juxtaposi tion of low and buffonic with elevated and bookish styles has been noticed though not with reference to Cernihiv. What has not been noted is that these forms had attained currency on the Ukrainian literary scene. Specifically, this was in the spirit of the Literaturnyj jarmarok, the almanac of the officially disbanded VAPLITE.8 In slightly more than a year of existence and in the face of increasingly ominous official disfavor, it proceeded to publish a number of works of lasting literary merit by various "oppositionist" writers.9 The almanac was indeed run as a fair, with a melange of very heterogeneous contributions and with a given anonymous writer-a self-styled "Jamarkom," representing a fictitious editorial board of 697 membersserving as a master of ceremonies for each issue.2 His running commentary or guided tour through the almanac replete with many sly Aesopian allusions was explicitly called an intermedium. In the course of this, various objects of discourse-be they people from a conjured-up crowd, or writers like Baan or Hoffmann, or herrings in a barrel-would materialize and add their voices to the polyphony of the fair. Dynamism, vitality and an irrepressible sense of the comic are projected as the basic characteristics of the Ukrainian tradition and the present "young Ukraine," and this portrayal is given historico-literary credence not only by references to the intermedia but to Gogol s all-Ukrainian
VAPLITE Vilna akademija proletarskoji literatury was a major unofficial literary organization of the late 20s uniting some of the most outstanding Ukrainian writers of the day, including Tyyna. Cf. Luckyj, Literary Politics, p. 122. Cf. Luckyj, Literary Politics, pp. 151-57. 20 Cf. Literaturnyj jarmarok 1 December 1928: 246-47.

TYYNAS CERNIHIV Fair, as well.2 These same of a bustling microcosm of

95

characteristics, and the central notion the Ukraine, are also at the heart of

Tyynas Cern ihiv.

Cernihiv is also quite obviously constructed as a cycle of statements

coming directly from the people. This projection of the vox populi, as one variant of the above-noted use of popular forms, characterizes Tyynas poetry of the 30s-primarily in Partija vede, but also in the war poetry of Peremahat i yt. In one sense, this can be seen as a transitional stage between the early impressionist, symbolist and pre dominantly "subjective" phase, and the late "objective" phase, where he overtly assumes the stance of a quasi-official spokesman for the nation, as epitomized by the war poem "Ja utverdajus." The difficulty with such a periodization, however, is that it can be clearly shown that the intimate and the tribunicial elements have coexisted from the beginning-cf., for example his pre-Sonjani kijarnety poetry or "Za vsix skau" from Viler z Ukrajiny. The determining difference is, rather, the degree to which one or the other tendency predominates, as well as the total acceptance of the official line in the late "public" poetry. In Cernihiv there is a two-fold effect to the projection of the peoples voice. One is thematic and ideological: as their feelings and words are made the stuff of poetry, the narod, the working people are apotheized, and their values become the new aesthetic, precisely as Tyyna had foreseen in Rozkol poetiv.22 The other effect is more subtle. By reason of the dramatic structure of the poetry and in con sequence of the direct addresses by the "players," the persona of the poet disappears-he becomes a mere spectator whose presence is mentioned or implied only in the "stage directions," i.e., the titles of the poems. Essentially, however, this is an illusion, for what is in fact established is a form of aesthetic distance: the persona of the poet is
21 Literaturnyj jarrnarok 1:6. There are subtle layers of irony in these references to Gogol "nal trahinyj zemljak" and to the "jarmarok" as his "soroynska vyhadka." 22 Cf., for example, the words of Ihe Worker:

51 6yy l ecm,
Uueoiorisi Mog.

soc 6ya noanc, noeT-rojloTa, po6iisigx.

BcenpoileTapcl,Icasl
or those of the Communist:

C1MH

epBOHHk atsan aepojzir:

ecTeTsoca IcoampoMicoaa 3a BiTPOM noiuemna...

96

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

distanced, "hidden," yet he is clearly discernible, not through sub jective or lyrical signals, but through the formal properties of the poetry itself. Significantly, tensions and ironies spring up between the thematic and formal spheres, and orthodox ideology is counter balanced by subjective nuances.
*
*

The first poem, "Mij druh robitnyk vodyt mene p0 mistu j xvalytsja," introduces the fundamental theme of Cernihiv-the dynamism of great social changes, or, as Soviet critics would say, the "pathos" of industrialization and the five-year plan. In three descriptive and three exhortatory stanzas, it sets a boldly militant tone for the whole work and also sounds the specific motifs that will subsequently be elaborated: the transformation of former "slaves" into worker-architects of the future "uCora e raby...", the imperative of total, indeed ruthless, commitment "ni alju ani aloiv nema...", the measureless vistas of construction and energy "Zabudovujem vysoko i hordo... e leat pid zemleju bahatstva...". But while the tone and totality is new, the poems statement still draws upon and modulates motifs from Tyynas earlier poetry. Such, for example, is the welcoming of a new urban Ukraine, which had been expressed to be sure, with more qualms and nuances a decade earlier in the cycles "Vulycja Kuz nena" and "Xarkiv" in Viler z Ukrajiny. Still more striking is the elaboration of the theme of youth and of youthful energy. An imme diate precursor in the militant, exhortatory key was "Pisnja kom somolciv," a direct prefiguring of the songs of Part/a vede.23 For example: To e irep 3 BOX 6oXiB 3 Harnoro 1 3 TOrO, TO anitxpitnocsu cucpi3b 6ypsrno i MHOFO. -

Mononoro,

MononOro,

MoJ,onRcToro!

The boundless optimism, the inebriation of youth "Ta xiba ne zave molod/ molodia od usix" is also central to Sonjani kijarnety, and the refrain ofthe last three stanzas, "ob syla yznjana/ vlyla pryjdenim
It is dated 1921 and became part of Viter z Ukrajiny. Though included in the 1946 edition of Tyynas poetry, it has been deleted from the subsequent ones.
23

TYYNAS CERNIHIV

97

pokolinnjam/ vyna," distinctly echoes "Zolotyj homin," the poem of elemental, national rebirth, where the poet, quintessentially identified with the nation, exclaims: I Bci CMiIoThc$I SIX I Bci cniBalom SIX Si nyxcitif Hapon. .51 Mononilil!
-

But the structure that animates this poem and proceeds to become a conceptual axis of the whole cycle is the interrelation of idea and reality. Again it can be established that in his earlier poetry Tyyna had juxtaposed the concrete manifestation of a "hard reality" with the idea or even the "metaphysical nature" of a phenomenon. The prime example of this can be the extended meditation on the idea and the reality of the Revolution in Zamist sonetiv I oktav, but one can also find it expressed in such miniatures as "0dynjajte dveri." In Cernihiv idea and reality are yoked explicitly. On the one hand, this is the notion of the idea made flesh-as expressed most succinctly in the third stanza:
1lepe3 piticy .TIiHUBy i cIiy no MyTH xc Ta po3cna6nella ycsi HOB xce Mucn siiitnacsi MepexcHo - npyxca ceucna ii citcna MRJIb anopitca nepeucifirynaci, noitcna B 4opMl nyxcoro MocTa.

Similarly, in the following stanza, it is the galvanization of great effort "Prokladajemo riem lamajem" solely by the idea "bo cc spljano vanist sama". On the other hand, this is the metamorphosis of concrete facts and events into ideas or an abstract reality, as when, in the second stanza, steel rails create history,
HpoxonslTb peiluco lepe3 .IIeTSIm icTopilo icropSim

no

or when the fruits of construction and industrialization become the "philosophy of an age." Thus, from the beginning, the process of change is total, involving both the physical and the spiritual spheres.

98

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

The second poem, "Kupujemo hazetu," immediately immerses us in this new world through its most pervasive features-mass media and official ideology. In counterpoint to the preceding, the focus of this poem is "international," and the mode satiric. We find here the topicality that one expects of a newspaper-and this is projected not only by the account of German elections, but also by the abuse heaped upon the socialists, which the Comintern then considered more vile than the fascists "Tremtit socijal-cergibeli...". However, this intellectual and political primitivism, so typical for the Soviet reality being depicted, is doubly distanced. The statements are clearly those of the news paper, not the poets persona; moreover, as a corollary to this and as counterbalance to the impoverishment of thought, they are maximally stylized. As we shall see below, the lexical and prosodic features of this poem clearly associate Tyyna with avant garde tendencies in Russian and Ukrainian poetry. The following poem, "Zustriajemo komsomolciv oburenyx ukraj i znovu kidnyctvo vykryto," reinforces our perception of the organic and polyphonous nature of Cernihiv. The outraged komsomol youths denouncing some "sabotage" could be encountered either in the street or in the columns of the newspaper, it matters little where-the phenomenon is typical for the society and essential for its dramatic portrayal. The most striking aspect of their statement is the way in which semantic structures seem to collapse. Incomplete sentences predominate, and there is a general feverish piling up of phrases, a nervous repetition and adumbration of words and notions that force fully projects overheated emotions and overflowing dedication, precisely as signaled in the title. Beneath the surface turbulence, however, there again appear ideas rooted in Tyynas earlier poetry. The first, expressed in the opening stanza, is the pained awareness that whatever his progress, there is a dark side to man. It can, of course, be dismissed ideologically as political sabotage and the title invites such a simple reading, but the very formulation, "Jaremne rabske ihove," recalls the refrain from "Plja" in the "Krymskyj cykl "-"Jaki e raby my, jaki e raby!" -and clearly refers to deep human flaws that cannot be gauged or explained by political criteria. As the son said in "Vijna" HeMac... opora Tail He 6yno. TiJThXR 11 CCTb y ac sopor -

TYYNAS cERNIHIV

99

Harne cepne.
EnarocjloBim, MaMo, myucao 3uinSu, fflyucaTit 3SI Ha nionci,ice 6oxceBinnsl.

In turn, the reference to "svoje" in the second stanza echoes the concluding antistrophe of Zamist sonetiv I oktav: Open, Tpit3y6eub, Cepri i MonoT... I Xoxce uncynae mc cBoe... CBoexc pymitwu B ac y6itna. CBoe Ha nymi nexcitTb. The optimistic counterthrust, the hope for a new life expressed in the third stanza,
yanip yitc 3JiTH aeponiisIao
0CTR 3anHBtHMR B

EnnaaaMR

Mail6yTHe uconocitc

also has a deeper core. For the line "Zalyvymy Ellanamy," with its evocation of "flowing grainfields" i.e., "zalyvni lany", names two writers closely connected with the Revolution and the Ukrainian literary renascence,24 and shows that here for all the Stakhanovite loudness a Ukrainian historical perspective is also involved. The last line, "v majbutnje kolosys," reveals the belief that the nation-for it is the implicit object of address-will bloom with the fruit, the legacy of its sons repossessed by the soil. Here there is a direct continuation of the imagery of the masterful "Hnatovi Myxajlyenku" a poem now censored, and Myxaj1yenko, like Za1yvyj, officially for gotten ;25 the identification of the revolutionary poet with his nation,
24

Andrij Zalyvyj 1894-1918, a founder of the Borotbist party and a budding prose writer, died in ernihiv in the uprising against the hetman. Vasyl ElIan-Blakytnyj 1892-1925, to whom the first poem of Oernihiv is dedicated, was a poet and journalist, leader of the Borotbist party, founder of the literary group Hart, and personal friend of Tyynas; before his early death he was a major presence on the Ukrainian literary scene. For their membership in the Borotbists Ukrainian communists not dominated by Russians both became non-persons. In 1956 Ellan-Blakytnyj was rehabilitated but is now again officially forgotten. 25 Hnat Myxajlyenko-writer, critic, and Borotbist--was executed by the Denikinists in 1919.

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GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

the absorption of his martyrdom into the nations destiny, is quite explicit: He ysinsre, SIX TO Tniern, mc y 3MJfl citpiil nexcorn, 6o 3aBme TM xcUBeJn, ropitm, 6o BitHO nyxo rlnoMeHiern.
We TO BoclcpecHem, 3a3opiern,

MinbioHax BcTaHern, 3aKRnirnl: loro, toro, Hapone, cr111111, tOM H .rtep3aern TO, He cMlem?
B

And, one may add, Tyyna also projects for himself this same ab sorption into and immortality in the hearts of the narod in his testament-"e ne raz kolys rozkvitnu."26 In Cernihiv, however, the idea of a national legacy remains in the subtext, not only so as to escape the charge of bourgeois nationalism of which Tyyna, like virtually every other Ukrainian writer, was accused,27 but primarily because of the different focus of his poetry. "Zustriajemo komsomolciv," in fact, voices loud assertiveness and confident prognostication. This flows over into the following poem, where it reaches still greater intensity. The title itself, "A y ne jest ce sami naxvalky abo zapamoroennja vid uspixiv," echoes Stalins well-known speech enjoining constant vigilance against overconfi dence,28 while the poem paraphrases the goals of the newly inaugurated five-year plan. In the already established pattern, the minimal semantic load, where thought is reduced to slogans, is matched by highly inventive linguistic and formal devices. In the preceding poem one saw how reason was sacrificed to hyperbole and verbal exuberance, as, for example, in the refrain, "Cy oblavom Cy zvalamy/ a Zaxid vse obvalymo/ ,ob dali znov ity." Now, it is pushed to the limit: Hexail EBpona yicae a B ac ona norn nyxa e
ona oniia Typ6awsi Tpanm.uil rnnpi3aLIlSL XoneIcTUB3aw Cf. Vserciumojim, p. 114. See Tyynas own reference to this in the poem "26-Il 11-Ill," part 2 in Pluh; cf. also Telnjuk, Pavlo Tyina, pp. 172-73. 28 See "Golovokrulenie ot uspexov," Pravda, 2 March 1930, no. 60, and his Soc7nen,ja, 13 vols. Moscow, 1946-51, 12: 191-200.
26

21

TYYNAS CERNIHIV

101

He 6amXoBa He HeHiHa
notica
i

ac i JIernHa enoneua

n itcn yciM 3BinoMneHa

enauieaa

nepeycBinoMneHa. Here again the verbal hyperbolism "pereusvidomlena," "pere-pere budemo" echoes Tyynas earlier motifs, particularly of the "plakat" poems in Pluh e.g., "Perezorjujut zori". The major effect, however, is one of comic, buffo exaggeration. Such lines as "tradycij pidrizacija/ kolektyvizacija" a singularly appropriate characterization, or the designation of the great new idea be it "politexnizacija," "kolekty vizacija," or "fondoususpilnennja" as the daughter of the masses and Lenin, can indeed be perceived as being parodic, as the scandalized axovskyj notes.29 The effect is surely intended. For example, the description of the idea in the fourth stanza as "zvidomlena/ nezlam lena nezlomlena/ pereusvidomlena" conveys nothing so much as a metamorphosis of that idea into mumbling; one need only add "zamamljana." In short, the slogan-mongering of the day is duly por trayed, and the verbal devices themselves become a form of Aesopian commentary. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the verbalism and the incan tations also have a deeper, non-comic significance. The following two poems continue with the dramatization of the attitudes and the ethos of his society as the worker, functionally a master of ceremonies or stage director, signals a new theme-the role of the class enemy, first as embodied by the Ukrainian emigres in Warsaw, and subsequently, in a historical reflection on the 1905 Revolution. The involved title of the first poem-" Pislja coho zrozumilo robitnyk kae oho Ukr-Varavskomu smittju tak zaraz veselo "-again stresses Tyynas characteristic elliptical and telescoped construction. The reason for the gloating of the Poles an4 the Ukrainian migrs the "Ukr-Varavske smittja" can be deduced from the concluding stanza of the preceding poem, where the Soviet Unions political isolation and general economic difficulties were explicitly noted:
Hexail MM i3oJmoBaHi xail nrn B ac Mo3oJmoBaHi...
29

axovskyj, Pavlo T.vyna, p. 136.

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GEORGE

G. GRABOWICZ

This poem, therefore, is intended to be a crushing rejoinder to their Schadenfreude. Along with the various topical references to the economic and political problems of Pilsudskis Poland in stanzas three and five, to its imperialist ambitions in stanza four, to the alle ged toadyism of the Ukrainian migrs this poem, more than any other, reveals the intermedial and burlesque elements of Oernihiv. They range from bawdy vulgarity "do ljaxty polskoji zadkom nalipleni naklejeni", to mock sympathy "Pany moji ridnesenki...", to such folk devices as diminutives, synonymy "sobaky suyni", the metrics themselves, and, most overtly, the folk saying in the fourth line of each stanza. Where" Pislja coho zrozumilo "isa political lampoon, the following poem, "Dulys pany j 25 lit tomu robitnyk zhaduje 1905 rik na Cernihivyni," exemplifies popular history. Though there is no intent to mock, the diction, images, and devices are no less burlesque than in the preceding poem. The masterful development here, however, is the way in which TyCyna establishes nuances and polyphony even within the confines of an account that is stylized to be "simple." Echoes of folk narrative, for example, are found in the series of three rhetorical questions in the opening of the first stanza, as well as in the repetition, with but slight variation, of the opening lines of stanzas two and three : "Burxaly ta vse e malo... Byly jix ta vse e malo...." But what is most effective for projecting a setting of oral narrative are the questions that occur in the fourth line of each stanza. They are precisely like the interruptions of some naive listener, and the narrator, interestingly enough, sometimes answers them explicitly stanzas three and six and sometimes seems to ignore them. The context of the narrative is further amplified as the worker makes an aside in each stanza. This favorite device of TyCynas has a possible dual purpose. It may be seen as an aside directed to the persona of the poet, since he more than, say, the naive interlocutor would under stand the reference to Kocjubynskyjs Fata morgana, for example, or to the first not the second! Lyon uprising. In the latter case the word "rozumijetsja" stresses the privy nature of this communication. At the same time these asides can be seen as an oral equivalent-for their diction is indeed that of informal speech-of the footnotes or glosses that every "proper" history should have. In either case, they increase the dramatism of the poem. The next poem leads us to the conclusion of Cernihiv, although not,

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as some have argued, to its culmination.30 For long one of the two poems of Cernihiv to remain uncensored along with "Mij druh...", it was always entitled "Lenin." But as we see from the full title, "Tut same demonstracija proxodyt het kidnykiv smert intervenciji," it is fully a part of the dramatic structure and not at all intended to be distinct by reason of ideological weightiness. As throughout, the title is essential, for it puts the poem in the context of the whole, like the scene of a play thus revealing its structure and elucidating the operant associations. Here a demonstration passes, as we are told, and the second part of the title is nothing other than the signs being carried, or, more likely, the slogans that are shouted : "Het kidnykiv!" "Smert intervenciji !" The opening "Lenin" -which is capitalized precisely like the title-is one of them; it is the slogan of slogans, the most galvinizing watchword of all. It is rather less likely that it would be a sign or portrait of Lenin, for the entire emphasis is on the verbal dimensions. If Oernihiv were to be staged, however, a portrait of Lenin would certainly be appropriate here. The text of the poem is the reaction, the resonance elicited by this potent name. Even more, it is a reassertion of the principle expressed at the very beginning-the power of the incarnate idea. In fact, this was already stated quite explicitly at the end of the preceding poem, where references to the Revolution of 1917 in action "Rady i Krontadt i mit/ profspilky jak dynamit" are given this explanation in the "gloss": "A vse ce zrobyla ideja zbrojnoho povstannja." Now, the architect of that Revolution and the reality that is Cernihiv is apotheized. His name is the catalyst-idea for great upheaval, be it the Revolution "burja" or the building of the Socialist Workers State: .JIEHIH Onno TiJIMCI{ cnouo a MO xce SIX 6ypsi... .JIEHIH Bcoro .rmm nsxm .nirep
a cXLJIiKH eHepriil...

As the poem goes on to show, it, like all great ideas, lives on after his death. The last four stanzas are an oath, sworn by the entire assembly, to
Cf. Telnjuk, Pavlo Tyina, p. 156; his argument is motivated by the thematic and ideological "weightiness" of Lenin and not by the structure of Cernihiv as such.
30

104

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

remain faithful and ruthlessly dedicated to his principles.3 In this there is, of course, a strong echo of Stalins speech on the death of Lenin.32 It is also the core of the official secular religion of Cernihivs world. That religion and that world are given culminating expression in the last poem, "Stara Ukrajina zminytys musyt." The situation can well be visualized as a final mise-en-scne, where the peripatetic poet and the worker, the marchers "demonstracija" from the preceding scene-poem, the komsomol youth, indeed, all the players, join in a final statement synthesizing the whole work. Whether one sees the dramatism of Cernihiv in analogy to a cantata with its narrative interspersing single "arias" with recitatives and choruses or whether one sees it as a libretto for a historico-ideological folk opera in the spirit of "The East is Red," this last poem is the crescendo. The fact that it is recited or sung by the entire company is again clearly indicated by the title, which, in contrast to the others, is general and all-encompassing. But whereas the setting is unambiguous, the poem itself is complex. In one sense, "Stara Ukrajina" can be taken as a catalogue of current Marxist-Leninistformulas: it has even been suggested that here Tyyna was consciously attempting to incorporate into poetic form the Marxist "philosophy" that he, like other writers "engineers of human souls", was being taught at "special seminars."33 This Soviet reading of the motivation and thus of the poetics of the work is predictably trite. On the contrary, rather than the poet subordinating himself so such philosophy, it is the latter that is absorbed and transformed into a higher poetic vision. Characteristically, the elements of this vision are typical and orthodox, and yet peculiarly qualified. Thus we have the "law of dialectics," the transformation of quantity into quality, the teleology of inexorable History with which each stanza culminates; we have also the crass hyperbole of Soviet particularly Stalinist rhetoric: OTxce uepenooo Bci nocjlinxceno oxce rnH6itHo Bci poranao oxce 3SLcOBaHO Bci HenoMytpeHHsL..
31

As Telnjuk points out, the last four stanzas were written much earlier, in 1924, on the occasion of Lenins death, and only the first two were written concurrently with Cernihiv, i.e., sometime in 1929-30; cf. Telnjuk, Pavlo Tyina, p. 157. 32 See his "Po povodu smerti Lenina," Pravda, 30 January 1924, no. 23, and Soi1inenija, 6:46-51. Cf. axovskyj, Pavlo Tyyna, p. 134.

TYYNAS CERNIHIV

105

We have typical self-criticism stanza three, then self-exhortation stanzas four and five, and finally the archetypical metaphor of the ship of state on its sublime but perilous journey.34 The manifest semantic plane, however, is subjected to far-reaching qualifications and this term hardly captures the essential shifts that are involved. The first "filter" seems to be that of irony. The opening line "Perkoovujuy nasyujuCys ", which can be taken as a concrete reference to demogra phic shifts from village to city and to improvements in agriculture, already presents the phenomenon in an unflattering or "naturalistic" light. The following three lines, especially "kilkisno jakisno perexlju pujuys," seem to simplify abstract ideas to the point of parody. Similarly, the optimism of the above-cited lines of the next stanza is simplistic to the point of silliness. Yet, while the possibility of irony is not to be denied, because it inheres in the aesthetic distance that Tyyna maintains throughout the cycle, it is not a determining mode. The reason for this is not because certain elements-such as nomadic wandering, the "sloshing over" of quantity into quality, the "exploding" of the old-become appropriate in terms of the metaphor of a ship passing through stormy seas. Rather, it is because a different and insistent tone becomes dominant. This is a tone, or aura, that seeks to reflect what, for want of a better term, can be called a quasi-mystical experience of man faced with transcendent, eternal powers. In one sense these are the cosmic forces "pornjamy/ xodyt dvyhot p0 vsesvitu" that Tyyna had apotheized earlier in "V kos miCnomu orkestri." This is also the inexorable flow of life and the need to accept and grow with it that he later epitomized in "Poxoron druha." Here, this transcendency is above all the Idea or the Power of History, perceived most simply as the future. It is not the rationalist absolute of Marx and Hegel, but something as sublime as the Divinity, and "Stara Ukrajina" is nothing less than a hymn to it. The poems hymnal properties are established not only on the semantic level, that is, in the striving for the future and the desire to possess at least a fragment of it: Po3xceuiMocb nthxHiM rio icTopi oxce onxprrnrnmcsi HM B1JIOMOX on He3BHiaifruoro Mail6yTHoro or in the confession of weakness and unworthiness in the face
Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon speaks of the pervasiveness of this metaphor in Comintern and not only Soviet pronouncements.

106

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

of it stanza three, or, fmally, in the fervent exhortation to become more perfect and more like it stanza four. The full sense of this experience, structurally so similar to a religious one, must also be conveyed by non-semantic elements. The poem has a remarkably resonant instrumentation, with rich alliteration and internal rhymes and a general sonorousness that is particularly emphasized by its tonic meter. The lines, as one critic has noted, have the inexorable drive of breakers striking a ship.35 The regularity, the repetitions, the flow of long syntactic units give the whole a strong sense of incantation, which is climaxed by the build-up to and then the falling cadence in the last line of each stanza. Here there is a most effective fusion of meaning, sound, and rhythm. The invocations to the future-"do nezmirennoho... od nezvyajnoho... vid neposydjuCoho... vid nespo kijnoho... vid nestarijuCoho... do nezmirennoho majbutnoho"-seem to echo the synonyms for the Deity that one encounters in Christian liturgy as in the refrain, "Svjatyj Boe, Svjatyj Kripkyj, Svjatyj Bezsmertnyj pomyluj nas". While there is no doubt that Tyyna rejected Christian dogma quite early in his life, it is also rather evident that the deep structure of an emotional openness to and resonance with the infinite remained with him. This indeed leads us to a crucial point. The sense of partaking in great, transcendent forces-the Revolution, the nation, the cosmic orchestra-has been a manifest feature of Tyynas previous poetry. It was expressed at its "purest"-that is, least topical and most "mystical" and emotional-in the poem-manifesto "Sonjani kljarnety":

.51 6yB

He Si. Jlisrn Mpiit, coH.

-

HaBicono

n3BOHHi 3ryIco,

I niTbMg TBOp1TOI XHTOH, I 6naroBicHi pyXit.

flpoicitHyBc it SI Bxce To: Han MHOIO, nino MHO}O FopMTB CB1TH, 6ixcam cBiTo My30rnolo pilcolo.

I cexcns it, i it Axopniurnc UJISIHeTO. HaBiX it B3HaB, no To HC FHiB, Ilium CoHSIrnHi KnSIpHeTo.
Telnjuk, Pavlo Tyina, p. 158.

TYYNAS cERNIH!V

107

In "Stara Ukrajina," the feeling of being part of a cosmic rhythm in "Sonjani kljarnety": "U tanci ja, rytminyj rux,/ V bezsmertnim vsi planety" is given in a different key: the poem is colored by a peculiar dread or angst, which can be taken as a uniquely Tyynian form of timor Del. It is understood that on this deeper level the poem is no longer defined solely by the mise-en-scne and the vox populi; it clearly differs from the others in its complexity, and here the voice of the poet is most discernible. On the other hand, this sense of uneasiness is not out of tune with the whole of Cernihiv, for, as we have seen, it portrays a whole society and ethos, and not simply a social realist celebration of "achievements." The perception of an angry God, of sinister forces, of the antipode to the feeling expressed in "Sonjaini kljarnety" "Navik ja vznav, o Ty ne Hniv..." is not new for TyCyna. It animates Zamist sonetiv i oktav and is epitomized in the apocalyptic notes of such poems as "Mesija." Its most pithy formulation is contained in "Viter" in the fearful question of those who flee the Revolution: "o ty za sylo jesy?" In Cernihivs culminating poem, the undercurrent of dread is given subtly and on more than one plane. In the opening and closing stanza there are no "negative" elements, except perhaps for the general indication of setting out on uncharted waters and this restlessness is then amplified by every epithet for the future. By the second stanza, however, there is already a discordant note. The insistent assertion of achievement with the anaphoric "ote" culminates with a subdued "moe odkryytsja nam vylomok/ od nezvyajnoho majbut noho." In the next stanza, the notion of this mere fragment is elaborated into an extended depiction of failure and inadequacy: .SIuc taco 3 npi6Hro He3a,roBoneHi
MM 3HeBipSteMocSI xinitocst nanaeM
MO cnOTitXaCMOcsI FJTyXHeMO

yxce He lyTo SIX npfflHSIMit XOUTb BroT no cecmy Bin oenoconloqoro Mail6yTHboro
i HM

The exhortation of the following stanza shows the ever-present pitfalls,

even in acceptance: BXJnolaifc} Ta H MJISIBicT}o 6ailnyxcoro xe 6oxceBinnitM He ontae cnslrnnoro...

108

GEORGE

G. GRABOWICZ

Finally, when the image of the ship is introduced, the setting is quite somber, and the journey is defined solely by dangers and the absence
of any firm bearings:

Onunono a xce naneo

Bin 6epera

Han rJrn600aMo cyxoBiilHo HernitHo Kopa6en nporacmcit ri0U1HSIMO

XOnOTI, Bin

nBoroT TaXoil xce no BcecBiTy HecTapiloloro Mail6yTitboro

When the opening stanza is now repeated, we see that its assertions are made in the face of unknown perils; it seems to intuit analogously to the prescience of the last line of Zamist sonetiv I oktav that the course ahead-in actuality, the Stalinist I 930s-is unlike any traveled before. Along with this circular construction and the absence of any clear resolution, there are non-semantic elements that contribute to a sense of unease. Primarily, this is the insistent, inexorable rhythm, which, in contrast to the preceding poems, shows no irregularities, no exclamations, no intimation of individuality. Instead there is a heightened sense of impersonality. Man, the passenger on the Ship of State, is in no position to affect its course; all he can do, as we see from the exhortation in stanza four, is to become part of the process and to become conscious of it.
* * *

To speak of the formal properties of Cernihiv is to speak of its meaning. This is so not only by reason of the generally accepted idea that form and content are inseparable in poetry, but also because of the programmatic nature of the work itself. Cernihiv expresses the
essence of the new life in various ways, but above all by capturing its

sounds and rhythms. To a degree unmatched in his total euvre Tyyna makes use of the language of newspapers, of party slogans and exhortations, of everyday expressions, broad popular humor, and the "agit-prop" idiom. This is epitomized by his weaving in of well-known moments from Stalins speeches-the above-noted echo of the "dizzy from success" speech, as well as the eulogy for Lenin, with its Lenin "36 Tyyna, in fact, drumbeat of "kljanmsja tebe tovari makes a rather clear allusion to Stalin in the term "zalizno"-i.e.,
"Kljanemsja kljatvoju zalizno." Characteristically, he is quite ready
See fn. 32. It is interesting to note that the device of a thematic refrain in a eulogy was later used with great mastery in "Poxoron druha."
36

TYYNAS CERNIHIV

109

to bare the device, as, for example, in "Kupujemo hazetu," which

is replete with newspaper jargon and which delights in rhyming, with the help of neologisms if need be, exotic, "impossible" words:
vartija-kompart?ja, jeresnja-veresnja, etc.

Indeed, neologisms are the center of gravity of the formal searchings in this work. They can be of various kinds, based, for example, on proper names "Stalinnja," "Zalyvi Ellany," "Nepmanjue," "pol yzujetsja," etc. or on foreign words "ihove," "psja-krevyna," "cergibeli";37 they can be neutral "oklynnja," "Spljanovanist,"
"proladano," "holubosyzjano," "pokoryna" or comic and vulgar "zarizjakano," "oevropejeni," "drypapana," etc..38 The latter cate

gory, especially, is used to establish ironic counterpoint and distance between the poet and the represented masses. It is most condensed in "A Cy ne jest ce naxvalky...," the "answer" to Stalins injunction. The mockery here is inescapable-a mockery not so much of a given phenomenon or goal e.g., collectivization as of the frenzy
of its propagation. Hence the inimitable "Nexaj Evropa kumkaje...,"

etc. The foil, or "model," here is the pseudo-sociological jargon of journalism and propaganda, the coining of words for "processes"
"pidrizacija" or "states of consciousness" "pereusvidomlena," "pere

perebudemo," "nedomudrennja," etc.. The neologisms of Cernihiv constitute an extraordinarily high percent of the total lexical stockundoubtedly the highest in Tyynas poetry, and most probably the highest in any longer work in modern Ukrainian. And this is true, one may add, without counting the "logical" neologisms-namely,
such unexpected but very telling and ironic expressions as "u vsi znannja uzujemos," "ne odnym jiji fayzmom pomakano," "kilkisno jakisno perexljupujuCys," etc. In sum, the word is the focus of attention. But it is brought to center-stage not only by the various forms of "building up" or "slovotvorennja." The same effect is also attained by "breaking down" the word, by creating enjambments within the word itself. This is used

much more rarely-in fact, only twice, both times in the first poem, "Mij druh...." Thus, in the first stanza it is a play on "perenjatyj":
oraHSIeMo Ix noraHseM SIX XOHSI nO BiTpaMO nepesi

To be sure, iho is now accepted as a Ukrainian word, equivalent to the Russian igo; cergibeli is most probably a variation on the Polish ceregiele. 38 The last is not as opaque as axovskyj assumes Pay/a Tyyna, p. 135 and is most probably a conflation of zadrypanyj and pan.

110

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ mu 6amm ca OCTM WOnHit

and in the second, on "pole": ,Le xu.lu.aacb Bep6itlXa y noni TM ienep napoitrone neno fipoxonsim peIhco tepe no nesim icTopilo icTopsim. TyCyna is fond of this device, which nicely imitates the flow and

ellision of natural speech. In "Pisnja traktorystky," for example, one stanza ends with "ta j pojidem, ta j poji..." and the next begins with "Dym dymok od mayn...." Unfortunately, this is also
where the heavy hand of the censor, ever wont to dot the is, makes itself felt: in all the later editions of Cernihiv the offending "gaps" are

filled in. The third stanza of "Mij druh...," however, shows the direction in which this device evolves. As Tyyna rhymes "sjajnu" with "usja" which is typical of the oblique rhymes in this poem and then begins the next line with "nova," we see that the
truncation of words is effectively continued into a masterful gamut

internal rhymes. Clearly, these and other aspects of the virtuosic instrumentation of Cernihiv require a separate study. The dominance of the spoken word and living speech is strongly reflected in the meters and rhythms of Cernihiv, and, not least, in the total absence of punctuation. It has already been observed that some
of

of the poems, particularly "Kupujemo hazetu," "A y ne jest ce

naxvalky," and "Zustriajemo komsomolciv," approximate the com plex tonic and syllabotonic principles of the asiuka.39 Apart from these, and the regular amphibrachic and iambic "Tut same demonstra cija proxodyt," the prevailing meter of Cernihiv is tonic. Thus in "Stara Ukrajina" there are two phrase accents in each tine in the opening line
this also corresponds to the word stress. In the first poem, "Mij druh," there are three accents per line, with the exception of the last two

lines, the "refrain," which has two and in the last line of the fourth and fifth stanza, only one. The shifting accentual meter is more complex in "Pislja coho zrozumilo" and in "Dulys pany." The effect of a dynamic, restless, natural rhythm and of new tempos and energies is

Cf. A. Kviatkovskijs "Rytmologija narodnoj astulki," Russkaja literatura 2 1962: 92-116.

TYYNAS

CERNIHIV

111

achieved throughout, however. For Tyyna this is the only appro priate means for presenting the new "content," one that is defined by "the people" themselves:
y Hac no6a iHnycrpii B itac TM1T i TJIM n0HT000Bi pyo i nHl B0TOHO 3aJln3o6eT000Bi Finally, the word, or human speech, is also an innermost theme of Cernihiv. Every poem, without exception, portrays or makes specific reference to boasts, threats, vows, curses, or shouts. Apart from the very title of the first poem these are, for example Mo cnaoo O
Hi

MO XBaJIISMO...

MM sicoo IcaxceMo...

Hexail EBpona IcyMIcae... XBaJIMBC IcoJIMcJ, XBJIBKO a apa

lit TO IPH1
3HOB

XH3yeTcit...

xBaJu,6a

oMy xBanb6a toy

we Ii lepHi...
HaLpSL.

Kpotim no HailBMwe ne

KiisiHeMcit XJI$JTBOIO 3aJIl3Ho... This explosion of noise "zapereennjam staroho vybuxajuy" is countered by the theme of deafness, which has already been introduced in "Mij druh" "a hluxym dohuknulasja luna", but which is stated fully in "Stara Ukrajina": "my spotykajemosja hluxnemo/ i nam ue

ne uty jak pornjamy/xodyt dvyhot p0 vsesvitu...." This deafness is, on the one hand, the inability to perceive the new reality, something
reminiscent of "I bude tak" from Pluh:

I 6yne raic

Cnirii: nexc Te He6o - it He 6aty? fiyxi: ern 3aETcit, npany si6 nOtyB! Kaiiico: nnaly, On 6orno icpwiy!

112

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

On the other, as stressed by the imperfective aspect of the verb "hluxnemo", it is an inevitable human reaction to the ever-present
noise. In keeping with the introspective nature of this poem and in true dialectical fashion, we are shown that assertiveness is inevitably

accompanied by doubt.
* * *

Even a brief summation of the thematic interests and formal premises of Cernihiv indicates a close correspondence to the poetics of con

structivism. The reasons that this has not drawn critical attention may be several: that Tyyna, as far as we know, never espoused the loudly proclaimed doctrines of the constructivists; that Cernihiv was a passing phase in Tyynas poetry so that discussion of it never went much beyond polemics; and, finally, that without accompanying theoretical pronouncements, constructivist poetry as witnessed by the work of the foremost Ukrainian constructivist, Valerijan Poliuk was not as easily distinguishable as its proponents believed. The similarities, nevertheless, are quite compelling. Apart from the obvious thematic desideratum of contemporaneity and immediate experience -and, indeed, the identification of constructivism with socialism
the constructivists also placed maximal theoretical stress on the word.

For Kornelij Zelinskij said, "the word is the arena, the battleplace of poetry with meaning."4 From this flowed such elaborations as the "loading-down" of the word "gruzifikacija slova" with the goal of maximalizing the expressiveness of the smallest units, as "v malom mnogoe, v to&e-vs" ;42 from this also came the "local principle,"
that is, the construction of a theme from its most typical components

e.g., words or sounds, the replacement of the voice of the author by that of his personages, and the use of jargon and argot.43 Thus, Ilja Selvinskijs "Vor" 1922 is composed largely of thieves jargon, and "Raport" 1923 of the telegraphic style of military reports, the gypsy poems of the sounds of Romany and of gypsy music. Formal and acoustic experimentation impinged on "zaum," as, for example,
in Selvinskijs "Cyganskij vals na gitare":

40 41

See Kornelij Zelinskij, Poezija kak smysi: Kniga o konstruktivizme Moscow, 1929.

Zelinskij, Poezija kak smysl, p. 129. Cf. the constructivist collection Mena vsex 1924 cited by A. A. Morozov in Bol.faja soveiskaja enciklopedija, 3rd ed., s.v. "Konstruktivizm." Cf. Zelinskij, Poezija kak smysi, p. 140 and passim; and Morozov, "Konstruktivism."
42

TYYNAS

CERNJHIV

113

Hitq-qo? C0H-l1. flpox? nnina

3nec B a.nnilestx aranoxme ?-ro cani,r,

H noocrhc* Tdnrnco cToHi,I? rHTTOpbI:

TpaTouHa-TpaTMHHa-tan.

The tendency to irony and comic effects that is so pronounced in this poets early work is also reflected in A. ierins variations or parodies on the astu.ka, for example, in his "Dve instrumy":

Ka nycIKi Mait
MenbIXapy6bnbHasr, ATaifnMTO, n6yna, .51 itany! npHas1.4

While Cernihiv does not approach such "zaum," the parallels with constructivist theory and practice extend to all the essential points. If there is a major divergence or differing premise, it is that for Tyyna constructivist principles are not taken as a defining credo on the nature of poetry, but are utilized with other heterogeneous elements e.g., the old Ukrainian intermedial tradition to produce a characteristic polyphony. Without considering these parallels, however, neither a picture of the poetics of Cernihiv nor of constructivist elements in Ukrainian poetry is complete. Returning now to our opening question on the genre of Cernihiv, it seems clear that it is not a reportage, nor even so much a veristic dramatic portrait, as it is a vision, a distillation of the popular
Ukraine in transition, presented through the verbal analogue of a musical composition-not a "symphony" like Skovoroda, but a can tata. It is a polyphony of voices and rhythms and moods, captured with

manifold artistry and with subtly modulated control. It is yet another instance of TyCynas restless creativity discovering new forms.

Ilja Selvinskij, I:brann e proizvedenija Leningrad, 1972, p. 65. astu.fka, ed. VS. Baxtin Moscow, 1966, p. 50.

OBSERVATIONS ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA

Why do folk songs please our ear not only by their music but also
by their lyrics? Why do they puzzle us although they offer a steady core of imagery and repetitive "lyrical plots"? The feeling of a puzzle seems to come from the impression of a non-sequitur, of some strange dissociation between the two sequences of phenomena a song presents. Indeed, what is the connection between "digging a well" and "loving

a girl" or that between a "vegetable garden" and "boys" in this

popular couplet: II i
H
B Bac, x i B Hac, Ha ropoi 6ypsiKH, i B BaC, six i B uac, yci x.noiuu ypaxH!

It is a particular kind of parallelismconsisting oftwo types of activity that on the surface lack any tertium comparationis or oppositionis, where as parallelism in literature is usually based on a more explicit similarity or contrast. The seeming dissociation between paralleling sequences endows folk songs with a surrealistic touch, comparable to occurrences in written literature where effects are devoid of causes-as, for example, in Gogols "The Nose." However, one must bear in mind that the basic parallelism in folklore represents a fixed inner symbolic pattern. Although not perceived by the general participant, this pattern is nevertheless very old and universal in the Slavic folk heritage, recognized and in vestigated by ethnographers, folklorists, and linguists. The same
symbolism has also been widely used beyond the scope of folklore. Today it can be observed even in the most modern forms of art-e.g., the

cinema.1 The pattern present in the songs selected here can be reduced to the following symbols:
1

Cf. the Russian film The Cranes are Flying, or the recent film, based on

Ukrainian folklore tradition, The White Bird with a Black Mark, which came out in the school of Dovenko.

116 or:

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA

drinking water . . giving water to a horse

digging a well

= a sexual act

= an incomplete sexual act courtship,

flirtation, etc.

Due to the symbolic nucleus of the parallelism, all elements in both sequences mentioned above acquire a figurative tinge-in other words, they become polysemantic. But along with these established, nuclear

pairs of symbols, all other juxtaposed elements build strong and striking correspondences. Examining these correspondences is the task of the present paper. In so doing, we will disclose the figurative meaning of each variation and reconstruct all the interconnections between
the songs. Thus, the richness of the parallelism and consequently the

poetic quality of the texts will become apparent. The three lyrical songs presented here are built around the symbolic pattern described above, except for the heroic verses on Sahajdanyj, which illustrate some more general and related phenomena. In the first song the corresponding elements begin on both the phonic and grammatical levels:

I
KonaB, icona IcipHMleHiXy Henijlem,IcH nBi, .11106MB, K0XB niBIHHOHJSXY JUOitM, He co6i. Oil xcam, xcam, HenoMany, Tho6on 1BIMHY 3 Many, JII06HB ,tuBlrniy 3 Many, .11106MB, Ta if He B3SIB!

Oil, xcam, xcam MeHi 6yne

Bi3bMym ii mono,

Bi3IMym ii mono,

Mosi if He 6yne! Oil xcaim, xcamB! II A xce xc Tait XipHwieHMca 3acopnJracSI, A xce xc Tasi niBlMHoH!Ica 3axcypuJlacSr. Oil xcatm, xcanb... refrain

ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS

117

III A xce xc 3 TOi IcipHWIeHBXi opio sony mom, A xce xc T10 niBlMHoImXy no B1HM.$1 Benym! Oil xcanb, xcanb... refrain IV
OnoH gene 3a pyleoMcy, npyroil 3a pyicaB, TpeTiif cToim, ripico unae, .TU06MB, Ta if He B3SIB!

Oil xca.nb, xca.nb... refrain In the pair:

Konae xipHoeocy
Koxa8 1BlMHOHbXY

the two juxtaposed verbs, referring to two different activities, are nearly

identical in sound and morphology only one phoneme differentiates

them. Their paronomastic closeness results in a semantic relationship according to the principle of so-called poetic etymology. Similarly,

the two objects of actionXipHoleHMca/niBlHHoHMca -

become close due to their morphological identity stanzas I, II, III. It is noteworthy that whenever the parallel in question is absent, the
non-diminutive form of "girl" appears cf. refrain. niBrna The full phrase-parallelism, especially of stanzas II and III, supports the whole set of similarities between the two activities presented. On the referential level the two activities are comparable because of their negative results. The Cossack loved a girl for himself, but "the others" took her; he dug the well for people, but "eagles" used it instead. Not only are the results of the actions similar, but so are both
-

which either replace the unfortunate protagonist or unjustly appropriate the result of his work: in stanza III the "others" taking the girl to the altar are juxtaposed with the "eagles." In stanza IV their behavior is described as truly ferocious, each one pulling the
acting subjects

girl to his own side: OnitH gene 3a pyleHMcy, npyroil 3a pyXaB.... Thus, humans acquire a complete similarity with rapacious birds opno especially because of the symbolism of the image: in folklore a sexual act is frequently represented as the killing of a
-

118

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA

love object by a predatory bird, i/the male happens to belong to a hostile side, as is the case in this song.2 Regardless of the basic symbolic tie between the two sequences, one

can also see their relative independence and, therefore, still another
relationship. One sequence in the song refers to an everyday enterprise whereas the other concerns an activity of higher meaning love. Any

number of songs, humorous verses, proverbs, and sayings are built on

such binarism, as, for example, the popular humorous verse:

"rpoi.uo, Tpowo no Te.nSIT!" MeHe HOCXH 6onitm! "rpowo, rprnio no XopoB!" Tpowo Hoxcico noXoJIOB!
-

-51

Tpowo, FPELUO - no Mapyci!" COIl ac xce npo6epycsi!

Other examples are the Polish proverb "Niedobry do roboty-dobry

do ochoty," and the saying "Lucky at cards-unlucky in love," or vice versa. These instances reflect the belief that between certain attitudes,
behaviors, or activities there exists a basic relationship in human life. The analyzed song apparently belongs to this repertory. It thus confirms

the theory that there is a connection between such forms of folklore as

proverbs and bywords and the higher, more developed folk phenomena.3 The famous "heroic" song on Sahajdanyj discloses a similar relation

ship, which, indeed, constitutes its leading theme : I Oil Ha FOP1 Ta xceiu xcHym, bis A nonin ropoio,
SipoM-nonoHoio Ko3aico Ilnym. Feil, noJumolo,

Feil, mopoicoio,
K03aXM ilnym.
2 Cf. Puikins Poltava, where in his "inner monologue" Marijas father, Koubej, threatens Mazepa by referring to "not, kogda golubku nalu, / ty, staryj korlun, zakleval." Cf., for example, G. L. Permjakov, Ot pogovorki do skazki Moscow, 1970. I. Bunin observed this in his autobiographical novel izn Arsen/eva New York, 1952.

ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS

119

II
floriepeny opOmeoKo, bis Bene cBoe BilicMcO,
BiilcIKo 3anopi3Mce,

Ko3aleHbXo.

Feil, oJIoHoio, Fell, mopoicoio,

Ko3aqeHbXo.

III A noany CarailnalHoIl, bis

IUo rIpoMiH$IB xciHXy

Ha TIOTIOH Ta J1i0flM,
Heo6arnoil.

Feil, n0JIMH0IO, Fell, mopoicoo,

Heo6amiIl.

IV "Feil, BepHocsi, CaraiinalHoif, bis

Bi3BMH CBO}O xciHlcy,

Birtnall TIOTIOH-JUOJIMcy, Heo6almsil! Feil, nommoio, Fell, nmpoicoio, Heo6aqIuliU" V

"MeHi 3 xciHIcO}O He BO3HTbC$I, bis A TIOTIOH Ta

Ko3aXy B OPO31
3oano6omcsi!

Fell, noiumolo, Fell, uiopoicoio, 3Hano6omcsL! The core of the song is a dialogue between the harvesters
-

xcemu

and Sahajdanyj, the famous leader of the Cossacks, "who exchanged

120

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA

his wife for a pipe and tobacco." For this he is called apparently by the harvesters "unreasonable"- HeO6alHMil -and is asked to turn

back and re-exchange the trifles of tobacco and pipe for his wife. In the last stanza, however, the ataman explains that marriage is
incompatible with the Cossack way of life-an existence of wanderings and danger. So the wife-icinxa- belongs to the sphere of harvesters

-3,cenld-and the two wards accordingly approximate in quality by paronomasia. Sahajdanyjs act, which is seemingly a joke, proves to be a serious matter: by his "unreasonable" act he has settled his accounts properly, renouncing his private, "everyday" life for the higher activity of Cossackdom. What seems unreasonable to the
harvesters, who are common folk, is perfectly reasonable to the Cossacks famous leader. Accordingly, two corresponding pairs of words are used: the rhyme Ca2at3airnu/Heo6anu and the paro nomasia Heo6alHuu-3uanoumcsr. The items that seem to be props- TIOTIOTYH Ta Jfl0JThX- are not at all mere accessories, but meaningful elements within this context.

As the jocular Russian proverb says:

Ka6aic na 6a6a, Ta6aic na 6aHitOnHa 3a6aBa. Thus "xcimca" "6a6a" and "TioT}oH" "ra6aic" become mutual sub stitutes: both function as instruments and entertainments. Through the use of so many binary oppositions and juxtapositions, some of which intersect, the main contrasting parallelism is firmly

established. Yet, the two sequences are simultaneously entangled by

so many different ties that the general tonality or "dialogue" of the song

becomes extremely variegated: a joke becomes a serious matter and,

in general, value judgements fluctuate. This makes the folk song both

humorous and heroic-features very typical of Ukrainian folk art. The landscape, too, is not mere background, but plays an important role in the contrasting parallelism of the whole. Properly simplified
to "ropa" and "nonona," as is traditional in Slavic folklore, it is then distinctly divided between the harvesters and the Cossacks and

thereby given a symbolic role. The mountain- ropa-is connected with an established pattern of life, that is, with the harvesters- oceHuiand stands for immobility and the static, closed aspects of life. By contrast, the valley- sip-noni.ma-represents an open road, a place of

movement and action. A similar situation exists in many Ukrainian

ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS

121

lyrical songs, among which the best known is "CToim ropa BocoXait..." where the whole symbolism of life is embodied in a valley while a mountain stands as an immobile witness to the life passing by at its foot. One also finds the same role ascribed to mountains in Medieval iconography, where they are a static decoration, cutting off vision and barring the perspective. It is important to note that in Ukrainian folklore this role for mountains has a geographic motivation, since the Ukraine is a country of steppes and open spaces. By contrast, Polish folk songs ascribe a quite different symbolism to the mountain/valley opposition.5 The next song offers the basic device "laid bare": due to the pecularities of its structure, both the requisite and symbolic characters of a Cossack and his horse are disclosed. Also, the nature of the Cossack-horse relationship becomes clear.

I Po3rlpitraifTe, xionid, XOHi

Ta .lIitrallTe cno0mBam,

A it niny B can 3e.neooil, B can XpHm4eHJ3Xy Xoriam. II

KonaB, XOIIB xpoHoqeHI,Xy Y 3eJielloMy cany... Io He Bollne iBqMHoHbXa Paoo-aparni no Bony?

III
Briimna, BOil nina iBqnHoHMca B can 3eJIeHHIl nony 6pam, A 3a Heio Bene XOH$1 HanyBam.

IV
ilpocoB, flOCHB BinepeIcO BoHa ioMy He ana,
-

Cf. "Ty pjdziesz gr / a ja dolin4, 1/ Ty zakwitniesz r, / a ja kalin," where the mountain symbolizes a high social position, and the valley, poverty and sadness.

122

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA Lapoo, napo 3 pyi Konenco, BoHa ifOO He B35u1a.

V
"3HaIo, 3Ha}o, niBMHoHbKO, it Te6e po3rHiBHB: Uo it opa i3Beopa 13 npyroio roBopOB.

VI
BoHa POCTOM HeBeJufqXa, IIe Il JIITMH MoJioa, Pyca oca no nosca, B ioci ieirra rony6a." The leading voice orders the ordinary workers-xsionid-to ter minate their work = unharness their horses and take a well-deserved rest after work, whereas he himself turns to a higher activity-courtship and love:

A ii niny B can enemm, B can XP11HOHMK

He BoIlne niBoHoHx5Ka PaHo-Bpauni 110 Bony?

In the third stanza, however, the first person shifts to the third, and
the Cossack who at the beginning of the song appeared as its main hero "A .t mnny B can 3eneHotL.." disappears from the scene; con sequently, stanzas III and IV are built on the third person. In stanza V a Cossack in the first person is introduced once again "3HaIo, 3Ha}o, iBqOHOHJ,KO, qoM $1 Te6e po3roiBoB...". However, it is unclear to whom

this voice belongs: to the Cossack from the first stanza, or to an

entirely new personage, particularly because the latters function and spatial position have changed. Apparently, this is a bjfurcation of the Cossack, quite frequent in folk songs, which underscores the con ventionality of this personage-a steady prop in the lyrical "plot." Similarly, there appears a bifurcation of the horse, another steady drwnatis persona in folk songs. The two appearances of the Cossack are connected with two functionally different types of horses. The

wieczora

ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS

123

first type, which belongs to the working boys, is a genuine workhorse.6 This horse or horses belongs to the frame pertaining to the motif of everyday life, which has not been developed into a full sequence, as it was in the first song, and has therefore not acquired any symbolic significance. The second type of horse is a symbolic one: it is the Cossacks substitute in courtship his metaphor, and at the same time the Cossacks indispensable part his metonymy. It is this horse that plays a role in courtship: the Cossack asks for a pail, "npocom ninepetuco" to give water to this animal. Because the parallelism of two realms is incomplete, although some instances of it are present, the non-symbolic casts light on the symbolic, allowing the song to be viewed as a self-explanatory text. The sound patterns of this song contain some very interesting characteristics. Among its rich sound repetitions is a particular

reiteration of the last identical syllables in a neighboring position that

creates a kind of internal quasi-rhyme: pyca icoca no riosica; or iopa ieziopa. This phenomenon is made possible by Ukrainian prosody, which has no vowel reduction. Ukrainian folk songs share this phenomenon with Polish folk songs.7 Together, they are in polar opposition to those in Russian, whose vowels are strongly reduced and whose folk songs can thus offer only paronomasia or alliteration. Another pattern of sound repetition in the song being discussed deserves special attention. A close analysis of the dense sound reit eration discloses the following anagrammatical structure: ito
JI JI
KO X0 itO

ne ne Xo

XO XO

11

jie

KO

Another variant of the song reads "Vyprjahajte xlopci voly," which confirms our point. Cf. the Polish Christmas carol "A wczora z

124

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA
ii

ito
JI JI K

no C
XO C ii 31

CXO

The result is the word KO - ile - co, the keyword to the erotic symbolism of the song. The last song presented here contains the same basic referential core
-an unsuccessful courtship-as well as the same symbolic repertory of accessories water, well, horse as did the first two songs.

I
Ha reif! 3alcyBana oyneica Ha XT1 flpoixano no niBtJoHM TH XO3XO B rOCT1, reli! bis
-

II
OnHH XOHSI Bonpsirac, npyroll XOHit Bslxce, reil! TpeTiil CTO1Th nm BiicoHneM, no6priif Bexip icazce, reli! bis

III
"o6puil Beip, capa MaTH, naIl BOO uamimcit, reil! Kaxcym .iuone niBica rapoa, O3BOJ1b nOniiBHTbCit, reil!" bis
-

IV
"Bona B cioitx y nixcotiXi B xaTi Ha XpOBaTI
-

mo Ta il HMilCit rell!

mo, nonuBocsI, rell!" bis

V
"Bona B Te6e He XOJIOH, niny no XipHHUi, reil! ,LiBica B Te6e He XpacoBa, niny no BnoBol.d, rell! bis Yet, this text offers still another variation of the traditional erotic parallelism. The song opens with the device of graduation: the image, or, rather, the functions of a Cossack are given three different real izations :
In this case, the essential role of the gradation is to underscore the conventional character of the Cossack as a personage. Another variant of the song presents it even
8

ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS

125

OnoH XOH$1 BumpsIrae, pyroli KOHit Bslxce, TpeTiil CTOiTb nm BiX0HILeM, o6poil Beiip Kaxce. The "main" Cossack has been separated from his metaphoric metonymic horse: it is now he himself who needs water, whereas his horse has only a decorative role. The symbolic character of the horse is thus laid bare. Furthermore, in the request of a third Cossack as the main function water and a girl are immediately juxtaposed: they are objects that will be tested at the same time. The similarity and exchangeability of both is further underscored as each comes in its proper "container": "Bona... y nixcouIi, .4dBIca... Ha XpoBaTi...." So the symbolic character of water has also been laid bare,
.

and thus this text, too, can be considered self-explanatory.

Where its major devices are laid bare, the text is characterized by an extreme compactness. While in the two songs analyzed above the usual attributes and props were fully developed into a landscape and a ritualistic courtship, here there is neither landscape nor flirtation.

The first is substituted by the features of a house, whose interior details prevail "Bona B CiHitX, niBXa B xaTi Ha KpoBaTi"; the second is
reduced to a Cossacks matter-of-fact request. The outcome is also in agreement with the metapoetic character of the whole, for the Cossacks choice does not agree with a proper pattern of elements. Since a girl- niBHHa -is usually juxtaposed with fresh water- XiPHHWI -hence the widow- BnoBrnJsl-should be equa ted with stale water, here coming from an indirect source of water nixcotoca. But in the analyzed text the sequence is reversed into a chiasm: XipanwI nlxcoIXa$
.

>< BOBHLit

..niBqMHa

This chiasmic structure indicates once again the above-mentioned set of the text toward a "play with devices." The samples analyzed here testify to the richness and refinement of Ukrainian folklore. This has made it a particularly rewarding area
of study for philologists, ethnographers, linguists, folklorists, and

anthropologists from the early Romantic period to our own day. The
more clearly: "Pryjixaly try Kozaki, a vsi try odnaki...," Malorossijskya pesni, izdannyja M. Maksimoviem Moscow, 1824, p. 713.

126

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA

special attraction of Ukrainian folklore was responsible for the creation

of a "Ukrainian school" in Polish Romanticism that included poets such as Bohdan Zaleski and Antoni Malczewski. The field has been enhanced by the great interest and care for
folklore among Ukrainian scholars. Myxajlo Maksymovy, the brilliant scientist and philologist, collected and published the first volume of Ukrainian songs as early as 1827 ;9 in the introduction to this work he offered both sociological and philological analyses of its contents. The achievements of Oleksandr Potebnja as linguist and literary

theoretician are well known; however, one should remember that

he was also one of the worlds greatest folklorists and ethnologists.

His study, today a bibliographical rarity, O6bRCHCHUR MaJlopoccucKux

U cpoHblX iiapoimzx necen, remains a model for the structural analysis of folklore and serves as a methodological paradigm to the present day. During the twentieth century such individuals as the devoted collector of Hucul folklore Jurij Fedkovy, Oleksandr Rubec, Filaret Kolessa, and Klyment Kvitka produced interesting collections and studies on various forms of Ukrainian folklore. The contemporary collections and studies of the Canadian linguist Jaroslav Rudnyckyj show that even displaced from its native land, Ukrainian folk art can develop and grow. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Translations of the songs

I dug, I dug a well one week, two weeks, I liked, I loved a girl-but for the others, not for myself.
0, sad, very sad will I be, I loved a girl since childhood, I loved a girl since childhood, I loved-but did not take her.

O sad, sad, will I be, The other people will

She wont be mine! 0, sad, sad!

take her, The other people will take her,

At the time Maksymovy was twenty-three years old. The songs analyzed in the text were recorded by the author in the Poltava region of the Ukraine. The translations are also by the author.
10

ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS II

And that well has now been littered, And that girl has now been grieved.

127

Refrain III
And from that well eagles now drink water, And that girl is now being led to the altar.
Refrain

Iv
One is leading her by the hand, the other-by the sleeve,
The third one is standing by and crying bitterly: he loved her, but didnt take her. Refrain

There, on the mountain, the harvesters are harvesting, bis And by the mountain, By a ravine, by a valley, The Cossacks are going.

There, by a valley,
There, by a wide one, The Cossacks are going. II

In

front of them there is Dorolenko, bis He is leading his forces,

The army of Zaporo2e, The good Cossack.

There, by a valley, There, by a wide one,

The good Cossack.

III

And in the back there is Sahajdanyj, bis Who exchanged his wife For a pipe and tobacco,

The unreasonable one.

There, by a valley, There, by a wide one,

The unreasonable one.

IV

"Hey, come back, Sahajdanyj, bis Take your wife, Return the pipe and tobacco,
You unreasonable one!"

128
There by a valley,

KRYSTYNA POMORSKA

There, by a wide one,

You unreasonable one.

V "I wont bother with a wife, And a pipe and tobacco

For a Cossack on the road Will be useful." There, by a valley, There, by a wide one, Will be useful! bis

Unharness your horses, boys,

And lie down for a rest, And I will go to a green orchard, To an orchard, to dig a well.

II
I dug, I dug a well In a green orchard, Will a girl come out, Early in the morning, for water?

III
There came, there came a girl Early in the morning to take water, And after her there comes a Cossack

To give water to his horse. IV

He asked her, and asked her for a bucket, But she didnt give it to him, He tried and tried to give her a ring,

But she didnt take it from him.

V "I know, I know, my girl,

With what I angered you:

Because last evening I talked with another.

VI
She is not very tall, She is young in age, Her blond braid is long and down to her waist, In her braid there is a blue ribbon."

ON UKRAINIAN EROTIC FOLK SONGS

129

A cuckoo cried out on the hut-on the corner, There came three Cossacks to visit a girl. II One is unharnessing a horse, the other is tying up a horse, The third one is standing by a window-he says, "Good-evening."

III
"Good-evening, old mother, give me some water to drink, People say your girl is pretty, let me take a look." IV "Water is in the hallway, in a pot, go and take a drink.

The girl is in the room, on her bed, go and take a look."

V

"Your water is not cold, Ill go to a well. Your girl is not pretty, Ill go to a widow."

REVIEWS

HISTORIA CHANA ISLAM GEREJA III. By Hady Mehmed Senai z Krymu. Turkish text published, translated, and edited

by Zygmunt Abrahamowicz. With a supplementary historical commentary by Olgerd Grka and Zbigniew Wjcik. Edited by Zbigniew Wjcik. Warsaw: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1971. 205, 71 pp. In his "Literature of the Crimean Tatars,"t published in 1930, Ahatanhel Krymskyj mentions that "the history of Khan Islam Giray for the years 1644-1650 was written by Iggi Mehmed Senai". Krymskyj based his information on Charles Rieus Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the British Museum London, 1888, pp. 250b251a no. add. 7870, 1. In the late 1930s, the Polish historian Olgierd Grka rediscovered on the basis of Rieus description this Tatar chronicle from the Xmelnyckyj epoch.2 He obtained a photocopy and decided to persuade

a Polish orientalist to prepare a translation, which he would provide with a historical Commentary. But due to World War II and
postwar events, it was not until 1954 that Grka found in Zygmunt Abrahamowicz a competent co-worker. Abrahamowicz prepared a draft translation which was immediately seized by the impatient discoverer

for his essay.3 Two months later, Grka died. The project was postponed for several years, until revived by Abrahamowicz, who reworked his
translation and sought the help of Zbigniew Wjcik, the competent
"Literatura Krymskyx Tatar," Studiji z Krymu 1-IX, Zbirnyk Istoryno-filolohinoho viddilu Vseukrajinskoji akademiji nauk, no. 89 1930, p. 168. 2 Cf. his note in Kwartalnik Historyczny 53 1938: 379. Olgierd Grka, "Nieznana kronika tatarska lat 1644-50," Kwarsalnik Historyczny 62, no. 3 1955; 107-124.
1

Reviews

131

historian of the Ukraine, in preparing an edition for publication. The result is the book under review. This excellent piece of cooperative scholarship begins with a general historiographical introduction by Wjcik pp. 7-8 and three sets of introductory essays by Abrahamowicz. These deal with the author and his sources, the works structure and time of composition, the toponymy and topography of the three Tatar expeditions in 1648-1649 as reflected in Senis work pp. 22-6 1, and with the Polish and Cossack affair presented there pp. 61-77; included is Abrahamowiczs general appraisal of the chronicle pp. 78-85. Thereafter follow Abraha mowiczs Polish translation of Senais work pp. 89-137, his extensive notes written in cooperation with Wjcik pp. 138-198, a bibliography pp. 199-203, the edition of the Turkish text pp. i-lxiii, and fac similes of some selected pages pp. lxiv-lxxi. The only source of information about Senai and his history available to us is the work itself. There we learn that sometime around 1650 i.e., after the victories over the Poles won by the Tatars in cooperation with Bohdan Xmelnyckyj, the former secretary mnii of the khans chancery, al-Hgg Mehmed, with the epithet Seni "Eulogist", then the retired judge of a secondary township, was invited by the khans minister aga, Sefer azi 1644-1645; 1647-1664, to write a history sah name of the glorious reign of his master, the khan Islam Giray III 1644-1654. Senai undertook this honorific task and on 15 abn 1061 A.H. 1 August 1651 he finished his work. It has come down to us in the unique copy now in the British Museum, completed

in September 1681 by one Qara Yazigi Mustaf b. Omer in the village Fjan Eli in the Crimea. The patron was a non-ruling member of the Giray dynasty named Ahmed Giray Sultan. Apparently Senai did not know any Tatar language, for he wrote his
chronicle in a correct, "learned" Ottoman Turkish, with many Persian and Arabic "poetic" or religious insertions. He was familiar with the laudatory literature this could be the reason Sefer Aga chose him for the task but, unfortunately, he had no knowledge of the Ottoman or general Islamic historiography of his time. His history begins with the arrival from Constantinople of Islam Giry III and his ascent to the inggisid khans throne on 6 July 1644 without, however,

any information about the circumstances involved, goes on to relate the nomination of the new khans brother, Qirim Giray, to the position of his qala heir-apparent, and some brief information about the
Tatar campaigns against the Circassians and Muscovite-held Azov

132

Reviews

fols. 1 r- 1 3r. The main part of the work then discusses the three

campaigns undertaken by the Tatars while they were allies of Bohdan Xmelnyckyj fols. 13r-48r. Unfortunately, the author concentrated on topography in his account and did not consider it necessary to explain how this unusual alliance between two unequal partners came into being. The campaigns themselves are presented without any causal context or interrelations; also, there is no discourse on the goals of the new allies. The final part opens with a genealogical tree of the khan. Here the author is clearly incompetent, for he makes several unusual errors in the lineage of the royal ancestors, the first of which is the attribution of an incorrect grandfather to the ruling khan fol. 48 v. This is
followed by a panegyrical description of the renewal of the fortress

Feral-Kerman and two insignificant accounts of humanitarian works completed by the khan the digging of a well in Gzleve in 1651 and
his minister, Sefer Aga the construction of a bridge over a rivulet. However, two important matters are mentioned, although just in

passing. These are: 1 the arrival of many West European e.g., Imperial and Swedish emissaries to the court of the victorious khan fol. 51r; similar events occurred concurrently in Xmelnyckyjs yhyryn; 2 the formulation of new principles for Tatar foreign policy-i.e., the reconquest, with Polish assistance, of Kazan and
Astraxan fol. Slr-v. Senai ends with a brief description of Qirim

Girys punitive expedition in 1650 against Jassy in Moldavia fols.

51v-52r. The only written sources Senai used for his ah-nme were the itineraries of three campaigns led by the Tatars 11 May 16484 July 1648, the first campaign of Islam Giray III against the Poles; 28 August 1648-31 January 1649, the campaign of his qalga Qirim Giray; 26 May 1649-24 September 1649, the second Campaign of

Islam Giry III and some court calendars. It seems that he either had no access to the original documents, or did not know how t6 use them and so based his story on hearsay. For example, while describing
the conditions the Tatars set at the peace negotiations in Zboriv, he says nothing about the text of the relevant official letter from the khan to the Polish king which, fortunately, has been preserved. To a historian of the Xmelnyckyj epoch, this new Tatar source is a great disappointment. True, some new data are to be found there, especially on topography brilliantly researched by Abrahamowicz, as well as several interesting details e.g., in the account of the first

Reviews

133

meeting of Xmelnyckyj with the khan in Bila Cerkva on the 2 or 3 June 1648. However, the work contains none of the "inside
information" about the three years of Tatar-Cossack cooperation that one might expect from a contemporary historical work. The text edition is exact and correct, as is the Polish translation, and the

comments and notes are elaborate and meticulous. Only in a few cases can one disagree with Abrahamowicz: for instance, on his inter pretation of the term Rs p. 74 in the story of Grand Vezir Almeds demarche of May l648. A few additions may be made to the com mentary: -don, the river name in Salgir-don fn. 99, is an appellative meaning "river"; sawgat gift from the booty fn. 329 is attested in pre-Mongolian Polovcian steppes in the variant sajgat, especially in the Hypatian Chronicle, s.a. 1174, 1193 etc.; the original meaning of Turkish
nemt5e Germans fn. 416 was "Austrian" < "Bavarian", as it was in

Old Church Slavonic and in the Byzantine, Hebrew, and Arabic texts of the tenth century; one of the qara-tribes, the ManUr fn. 477, were originally a subdivision of the Noghais. There are few typo
graphical errors, only one of which is somewhat misleading: in note 301 the term Rum e/lis explained as "zima Rumu" the winter of Rum whereas it should be "ziemia" the land of Rum. Even with these minor flaws, Senais edition by Abrahamowicz-Wjcik could be considered a model work if a general index were included.

Omeljan Pritsak
Harvard University

A STUDY OF NAIMA. By Lewis V. Thomas. Edited by Norman

Itzkowitz. Studies in Near Eastern Civilization, no. 4. New York: New York University Press, 1972. xii, 163 pp. The works of three Ottoman historians are of great importance to Ukrainian historians of the Cossack period: Mutaf Naim, called Naim 1655-1716, who began the official history of the second Muslim millenium, 1000 A.H./1591 A.D. to 1070 A.H./1659 A.D.; his successor as official historian weqi-nuwis, Mehmed Rid d. 1735,
Here he does not consider the study on the first Ukrainian-Turkish treaty published
in Oriens 6:2 [1953]: 266-298.

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responsible fortheperiod 1071 A.H./1660A.D. to 1134 A.H./1721 A.D.; and the private historian Findiqlii Mehmed Aga 1658-1724, who described the years 1065 A.H./l654 to 1134 A.H./1721. The first of these, Naim, earned the reputation of being not only the foremost Ottoman historian, but also the unsurpassed master of Turkish prose. The late Lewis V. Thomas d. 1965, professor of Ottoman studies at Princeton University, wrote his Ph.D. thesis about Naim some twenty-five years ago under the direction of the eminent scholar, Paul Wittek of the University of Brussels. The work remained unpublished during Professor Thomass lifetime, due to his insistence upon scholarly perfection. Now, we must be grateful to his former student and
successor, Norman Itzkowitz, for publishing his brilliant work. Remarkably, the quarter-century that has passed since the disserta tion was completed has not antiquated the work. This reflects the tragic state of pre-nineteenth-century Ottoman historical studies, which re main in somnolent inactivity. One might note that not even the works

of Ottoman official historians have been published in critical editions with indexes, commentaries, etc. Thomas divided his work into three parts, dealing with Naims life, his ideas, and his work. Each part contains translations of relevant passages from NaimAs history, particularly from his two prefaces. The author not only analyzes the structure of Naims chronicle and
his historical theory, but makes the first attempt to identify his sources. Finally, he evaluates Naims accomplishments as a historian. The result is a pathbreaking study indispensable for scholars of seventeenth-

and eighteenth-century Ottoman history and historiography. Omeljan Pritsak

Harvard University

PERODRUKAR IVAN FEDOROV TA JOHO POSLIDOVNYKY NA

XVI-PERA POLOVYNA XVII ST.: ZBIRNYK DOKU MENTIV. Holovne arxivne upravlinnja pry Radi ministriv
UKRAJINI

Ukrajinskoji RSR. Centralnyj deravnyj istorynyj arxiv URSR u Lvovi. Kiev: "Naukova dumka," 1975. 341 pp. This source volume has appeared as a jubilee publication celebrating the fourth centenary of printing in the Ukraine. In addition to two

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major monographs about Fedorov in the Ukraine-E. L. Nemirovskijs Nadalo knigopedatanja na Ukraine. Ivan Fedorov Moscow, 1974 and Ja. D. Isajevys Perodrukar Ivan Fedorov i vynyknennja drukarstva na Ukrajini Lviv, 1975-we now have a collection of all known archival sources for Fedorovs Ukrainian period 48 documents and of many about printing in the Ukraine before 1648 90 documents. A number of documents are published for the first time; in some previously published, the editors have corrected distortions in the texts.
Compiled by the major Ukrainian historians of bookprinting, the

volume contains the extensive scholarly apparatus found all too rarely in Soviet Ukrainian books. The work consists of an introduction by Ja. D. Isajevy pp. 5-13; the documents, with information concerning manuscript collections and prior publications and with Ukrainian translations of the Polish and Latin texts pp. 17-254; nineteen illustrations from early books and sources to their study p. 254ff.; Isajevys extensive notes to the text pp. 259-73 and a list of publishing houses and their workers pp. 274.76; a chronological table of the most important events in the history of printing, compiled by 0. Ja. Macjuk pp. 277-87; a glossary of rare or archaic Ukrainian words pp. 288-93; a bibliography pp. 294.95; name pp. 286-313 and place pp. 314-19 indexes; a list of the documents pp. 320-38; and Russian and English rsums pp. 339-42. The handsomely produced collection brings together a considerable body of information about Cyrillic printers and the problems of book
publishing in the Ukraine, particularly in Lviv, for which the most

extensive documentation is extant. On the post-Fdorov period the editors have provided only a sample of documents, so we must hope that their archival research and publication will continue. Frank E. Sysyn
Harvard University

I WIELKI. By Wiadyslaw Serczyk. Wroclaw-Warsaw Cracow-Gdask: Zakiad Narodowy imienia Ossoliskich, 1973. 260 pp.
P10TR

Soon after its publication this study of Peter I became one of the best selling historical works in Poland. Written primarily for the general reader, its popular appeal is attributable to the authors unusually

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vivid writing style and the rather surprising fact that it is the first study on Peter Ito be written in Polish. Wiadyslaw Serczyk, a noted specialist
in the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ukraine, has long

sought to rouse the interest of his westward-oriented countrymen in the history of their eastern neighbors. With this book he has taken an important step towards his goal. The study focuses on the person of Peter I and the formulation of
his political Weltanschauung three of eleven chapters, as well as on

the military episodes and external aspects-e.g., the tsars famous

journey to Europe and the question of Russias relation to the West-

of his reign five chapters. In dealing with his well-researched topics the author proves to be a capable synthesizer. His presentation reflects
familiarity with a vast amount of scholarly literature, which he discusses

clearly and concisely, and it is liberally interspersed with little-known but relevant anecdotes. The appealing manner of presentation has some failings, however. Mundane but important aspects of socio economic development in both Russia and Europe are neglected. For example, the Northern Wars military and political high points are discussed at length, but its economic motivations, deeply rooted in the long-standing Muscovite-Swedish commercial rivalry in the Baltic area,
are hardly mentioned. Also, even the general reader would gain a

better perspective on the significance of the Petrine era if a summary of the historiographical controversy surrounding it were included. Serczyks work leaves a positive impression on those interested in Peter I as he relates to Ukrainian history. For although the author provides little new information about Ukrainian-Russian relations during this period, he does succeed where his Soviet and some non-Soviet colleagues fail-that is, in treating the issue of Mazepa objectively and with an understanding of the hetmans political pre dicament. In accordance with the nature and readership of the book, footnotes and bibliography have been kept to a minimum. Nonetheless, to those who seek a lucid introduction to the person and reign of Peter I and read Polish, this book can be recommended as a valuable study. Orest Subtelny
Hamilton Co/lege