The Icon and the Axe

extensive personal project for translating such Western political theorists as Grotius, Pufendorf, and John Locke. Under their influence, "golitsyn_be-came, m effect, Russia's first secular political theorist. He waTthe first native Russian to popularize the familiar Western idea of objective natural law.^Al.the same time, Golitsyn became the spokesman for the new service nobility by drawing uptheconstitutional project of 1730 in an effort to limit autocratic authority by a council of the higher nobility. This project represented a genuine innovation rather than a traditionalist protest movement. The models were Swedish, and the objective was to extend the Petrine reforms further in the same Westward direction which the original reforms pointed.60 The Senate, which Peter had created in 1711, was not basically a legislative or even a consultative body, but an executive organ of the emperor for transmitting his commands to the provinces and to the administrative colleges, which were created subordinate to it in 1717. Like Peter, Anna was inhospitable to any limitation on her power; and Golitsyn suffered an even crueler fate than had befallen Tveritinov and Pososhkov in the preceding decades. His library was taken, and he was imprisoned in the Schliisselburg fortress. In 1737 he became the first in a long line of reformers to die within its walls.

Nonetheless, Anna was forced to concede a few new privileges to the service nobility. The founding in 1731 of a school for the Corps of Nobility accelerated the trend begun by Peter of providing a veneer of Western manners to his crude new ruling class. The name of the corps, shliakhetsky korpus, was derived from the Polish word for nobility, szlachta, and reveals the source of inspiration for this effort to civilize the ruling classes. But the teachers and the language of instruction were-as in the Academy of Sciences-primarily German. This school, like that founded for the Corps of Pages in 1759, provided the non-technical curriculum of an aristocratic finishing school.61 Graduates of these schools (and of the somewhat more rigorous gymnasium of the Academy of Sciences) provided the nucleus of a Western-educated minority.^A new secular culture slowly began to emerge under Anna as the first orchestra was assembled and the first opera was performed on Russian soil. Certain emphases of this new culture were already apparent by the end of her reign.

First of all this new world rejoiced in the discovery of the human body. The cutting off of the beard destroyed man's sense of community with the idealized likenesses of the icons. The introduction of secular portraiture, of heroic statuary, and of new, more suggestive styles of dress-all aided in the discovery of the human form. The beginnings of court ballet and of stylized imperial balls under Anna placed a premium on elegance of form and movement that had never been evident in Muscovy.

Gradually, the individual was being discovered as an earthly being with personal attributes, private interests, and responsibilities. The word persona was used to describe the new portraits which were painted of men in their actual, human state rather than in the spiritualized saintly manner of the icons. By the late seventeenth century, this word had begun to acquire the more general meaning of an important or strong individual. Even he who was not important enough to become a persona in his own right was now considered an individual "soul" by the all-powerful state, which began to exact taxes and services directly from the individual rather than from the region or household.

Prokopovich introduced the word "personal" (personal'ny) in its modern sense early in the eighteenth century; and the first precise terms for "private" and "particular" also entered the Russian language at this time. Words that are now used for "law" and "crime" had long existed in Slavic, but "they did not penetrate into the language of Russian jurisprudence with their modern meaning until the eighteenth century."62

There was also a new love of decorative effects, of embellishment for its own sake. The lavish ornamentation and illusionism of the European baroque quickly imposed itself on the new capital. Guided by the bold hand of Rastrelli, the first original style for Russian secular architecture emerged under Anna's successor: the so-called Elizabethan rococo. At Peterhof and in the rebuilding of Tsarskoe Selo and the Winter Palace, this style superimposed decorative effects drawn from Muscovite church architecture on the giant facades, theatrical interiors, and monumental staircases of the European baroque. A similar ornateness soon became evident in furniture, hair styles, and porcelain.