Russia

Cities in Russia owed their origins to two very different developments. On the one hand there was the headquarters of the super-chief, head of a tribal confederation, its organizer, defender and (insofar as he extracted income from it) oppressor too. This sort of city was a military and administrative centre which acted as a magnet for people simply because men who took decisions and exercised power were to be found there. The other kind of city was in origin a commercial centre, a defensible point along a route which joined two or more emporia. This helps to explain the different settlement pattern in northern Russia, where strongholds were established without a populated hinterland capable of supporting them, by contrast to Russian settlement in the south.

Archaeologists argue that strongholds — most of them positioned by important river crossings and often on a periphery of any settled region in order to control trade routes and tax the value passing through — preceded settlements in northern Russia. But the distinction soon became theoretical rather than practical, because the surplus goods the super-chiefs had to sell attracted merchants, and the commercial centres needed both craftsmen and protection. The functions of the city-in the-making soon became mixed. And the creation of cities and the advent of merchants operating over long distances implied the end of isolated, tribal life. It also indicated some exposure to outside influences, heralding a new kind of life with a potential for civilization. However, it also implied the loss of that self-contained, self-supporting realm of blood-related family rooted in a place (the mythic realm of which all nationalists dream), and threatened the old beliefs associated with the old ways of life.

Russia’s famous store of fairy tales includes some that date from ancient times, and these provide our only evidence of the spiritual world of the Russians before it was influenced by outside agencies, including Christianity. Unfortunately, the provenance of these traditions is inextricably bound up with the early history of the Christian Church in Russia, which was intent on eradicating them and the magic beliefs many of them reflected. Some dimly reflect real historical heroes and events and must be relatively late inventions, but others are more ancient, and it is reasonable to infer that some, at least, have pre-Christian origins. Such tales reflect the natural world the early Russians inhabited. They stress the importance of water to life and death to a greater extent than the folklore of other peoples, and purport to explain such mysteries as the placid river which hides dangerous rapids, the sudden, death-dealing storm, the relative who becomes a burden or who turns nasty (as Little Red Riding Hood’s nice grandmama turns into an all-devouring wolf).

In doing so they created a magic realm for children and for us, conjuring up a world of forest sprites which appear as wolves, bears or even whirlwinds; of girls called rusalki, water-spirits that float on streams or lakes decked out in wreaths and garlands like live Ophelias; of tree- and spring-spirits; of wild animals which talk, and water-demons who are the spirits of people who died by drowning and who, by beckoning watchers on the bank, cause more young men to drown. And, the most powerful and fundamental of them all, Perun the Thunder God, bringer of rain, fertility and hence prosperity. ²¹

This magic world of early Russia was not only to inspire literature and the theatre; it also helped form the Russian national character itself. However charmingly presented, these tales reflect an essential realism rooted in the land of Russia and in all the peculiarities of that land. They acknowledge both nature’s bounty and the price in hard labour and risk that nature often demanded for it. They recognize the dangerous streaks of unpredictability both in weather and in humankind; and they teach the importance of going with nature, not against it.

But though the original, isolated, magic Russia was to leave its imprint on the people, it was not to survive the impact of the outside world. As those caches of Islamic coins demonstrate, the outside world had discovered Russia even as early as the 6oos. From then on commercial pressures were to play an important role in moulding Russia’s development. And the first such important influence seems to have been the Khazars.