The Icon and the Axe

Ihe most important immediate consequence for Russia of the Mongol sweep across the Eurasian steppe in the thirteenth century was that the once-outlying forest regions of the north now became the main center of an j independent Orthodox culture. What the change of geographical focus from the central Dnieper to the upper Volga really meant can never be precisely ascertained. Pitifully few documentary or archeological materials have survived the fights, frosts, and fires of the north. Cultural historians are inclined to stress continuities with the Kievan age, pointing out that the principal cities of the northeast--Vladimir, Suzdal, Riazan, Rostov, and Yaroslavl- were almost as old as Kiev; that Vladimir had been the ruling seat of the leading Kievan princes for many years prior to the sack of Kiev; and that Novgorod, the second city of Kievan times, remained free of Mongol invasions and provided continuity with its steadily increasing prosperity. The characters, events, and artistic forms of Kievan times dominated the chronicles and epics "which assumed their final shape in the creative memory of the Russian north."1 The ritualized forms of art and worshipjmd the peculiar sensitivity to beauty and history-all remained constant features of Russian culture" ~

Yet profound, if subtle, changes accompanied the transfer of power to the upper Volga: the coldest and most remote frontieFregion oTEyzantine-Slavic civilization. This region was increasingly cut off not just from declining Byzantium but also from a resurgent West, which was just rediscovering Greekr'phito5oph7~fflid~KinaffigTtF^M~lMv^ffie^"TTie mention of Russia that had been sd~E«cjuent'"iri early medieval French literature vanished altogether in the course of the fourteenth century.2 Russian no less than Western European writers realized that the Orthodox Eastern Slavs now comprised a congeries of principalities rather than a single political force. The chroniclers in the Russian north sensed that they

•?- somewhat cut off, using the term "Rus'" primarily for the old jHilllico-cultural center on the Dnieper around Kiev.3

? sense of separation within the domain of the Eastern Slavs had llfeady been suggested by the tenth-century Byzantine distinction between ? u" and "distant" Rus'; and in the thirteenth century the distinction I •• i ween "great" Russia in the north and "little" Russia in the south was gi initially transplanted from Byzantium to Russia. What apparently began in 11 pure description of size eventually became a favored pseudo-imperial di ilgnation in the north. Individual towns like Novgorod and Rostov called llirmselves~**tfe"G¥eat." Details of the life of Alexander the Great-a favorite subject in the epic literature of the East-were blended by the chroniclers of the Russian north into the idealized life of Alexander Nrvsky4-whose victory over the Swedes in 1240 and the Teutonic Knights two years later was followed by a reign as Great Prince of Vladimir. His victorious exploits helped compensate for the simultaneous humiliation at the hands of the Mongols and made him seem no less "great" than the ruiier Alexander. By the late fifteenth century, Ivan III had brought great-BMI out of legend and into reality, subordinating most of the major cities of ihe Russian north to Moscow. The first grand duke of Muscovy to call himself tsar (Caesar), he also became the first of several imperial con-• |iicTors of modern Russia to be known as "the Great."

There was, however, nothing great, or even impressive, about Great Russia in the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century. It must have Mimed highly unlikely that the Eastern Slavs in the bleak Volga-Oka region would in any way recapture-let alone surpass-the glories of the Kievan past. Kiev and the original region of Rus' along the Dnieper had been despoiled by the still-menacing Mongols. The Volga was frozen for much ni ihe year and blocked to the south by Mongol fortresses. Flat terrain and wooden"fortifications offered little natural protection from eastern invaders. Shivic co-religioniststo"the west were preoccupied with other problems. To

IIic northwest, Novgorod had carved out an economic empire of its own and

moved increasingly into the orbit of the expanding Hanseatic League.

Further north, the rugged Finns were being converted to Christianity, not

by Ihe once-active Orthodox missionaries of Novgorod and Ladoga, but by

1 Ik- Westernized Swedes. Directly to the west, the Teutonic and Livonian

knights provided a continuing military threat; while Galicia and Volhynia

IIIthe southwest were drifting into alignment with the Roman Church. Most

of what is now White (or West) Russia was loosely ruled by the Lithuanians,

anil much of Little Russia (or the Ukraine) by the Poles. These two

western neighbors were, moreover, moving toward an alliance that was

sealed by marriage and the establishment of the Jagellonian dynasty in 1386.