Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin (71 page)

INTRODUCTION

1
. Walter Benjamin, ‘Moscow’, in
Reflections, Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings,
ed. Peter Demetz (New York, 1978), pp. 97–100.

2
. Marquis de Custine,
Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia,
Foreword by Daniel J. Boorstin, Introduction by George F. Kennan (New York, 1989), pp. 412–14.

3
. Mark Frankland,
The Sixth Continent: Russia and the Making of Mikhail Gorbachev
(London, 1987), p. 5.

4
. Interview with K. A. (Tony) Bishop, CMG, OBE, 6 July 2006.

5
. For evidence of this, it is hard to do better than the outpourings that accom panied the 1997 celebrations of Moscow’s 850th jubilee. See, for example, Petr Palamarchuk, ‘Moskva kak printsip’,
Moskva,
6 (June 1997), pp. 3–7.

6
. On the textbooks and misuse of history, see the articles by Liudmila Rybina and Iurii Afanas’ev in
Novaia Gazeta,
24 September 2007.

7
.
The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, SJ,
trans. Hugh F. Graham (Pittsburg, Pa., 1977), pp. 7 and 11.

8
. The literature on such foreign travellers is huge. For a bibliography, see Marshall Poe,
Foreign Descriptions of Muscovy: An Analytic Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources
(Columbus, Ohio, 1995).

9
. To name two figures from opposite political poles, I could cite the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci, who wrote despairing comments on the feeble condition of civil society in Russia (
Prison Notebooks,
eds. G. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith (London, 1971), p. 238), and the Polish-American historian Richard Pipes, whose classic
Russia Under the Old Regime
(New York, 1974) reads like a diatribe against this state.

10
. Walter Laqueur,
The Long Road to Freedom
(London, 1989) p. 8.

11
. David Satter,
It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2011), p. 228.

12
. Dmitry Shlapentokh, ‘Russian history and the ideology of Putin’s regime through the window of contemporary movies’,
Russian History,
36 (2009), pp. 279 and 285.

13
. James H. Billington,
The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture
(New York, 1970), p. 62.

I FOUNDATION STONES

1
. For a video introduction to the icon by the museum itself, see
http://video.yandex.ru/users/queenksu/view/26/

2
. V. Rodionov, ed.,
The Tretyakov Gallery Guide,
4th English edn (Moscow, 2006), p. 30.

3
. T. N. Nikol’skaia,
Zemlia Viatichei: K istorii naseleniia basseina verkhnei i srednei Oki v IX–XIII vv
(Moscow, 1981), p. 177; see also T. D. Panova, ‘Istoriia ukreplenii srednevekovoi Moskvy XII–XIV vekov’, in
Materialy i issledovaniia,
vol. XV, pp. 86–93. For a discussion by one of the archaeologists involved, see M. G. Rabinovich, ‘O nachal’nom periode istorii Moskvy’,
Voprosy istorii,
1 (1956), pp. 125–9.

4
. Nikol’skaia,
Zemlia Viatichei,
pp. 244–7.

5
. The armies were those of Mikhail Iurevich and the Rostislavovich princes Iaropolk and Mstislav. I. E. Zabelin,
Istoriia goroda Moskvy
(Moscow, 1904; repr. 2005), p. 38.

6
. For an entertaining review of the possible origins of the word, see Zabelin,
Istoriia goroda Moskvy,
pp. 51–5.

7
. The Viatichi paid tribute to the Khazar khaganate by the tenth century, but remained almost independent until the reign of Yury Dolgoruky in the twelfth. Nikol’skaia,
Zemlia Viatichei,
p. 12.

8
. See Janet Martin,
Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and its Significance for Medieval Russia
(Cambridge, 1986), pp. 5–34; the routes also fascinated Zabelin (
Istoriia goroda Moskvy,
p. 38) and they were explored by the archaeological team that prepared the ground for the Moscow metro in the 1930s.
Po trasse pervoi ocheredi Moskovskogo metropolitena imeni L. M. Kaganovicha
(Leningrad, 1936), pp. 12–13.

9
. Zabelin,
Istoriia goroda Moskvy,
p. 33. The date on the coins was 862. For more on the settlement itself, which had developed into a small town by the twelfth century, see Rabinovich, ‘O nachal’nom periode’, pp. 126–8.

10
. Al-Mukadassi, cited in Martin,
Treasure,
p. 12.

11
. Omeljan Pritsak,
The Origin of Rus
(Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 23.

12
. The debate was already raging in the eighteenth century. See Pritsak,
Origin,
pp. 3–4.

13
. The evidence is reviewed in Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard,
The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200
(London and New York, 1996), pp. 38–9.

14
. Martin,
Treasure,
p. 46.

15
. Dmitri Obolensky,
The Byzantine Commonwealth
(London, 1971), pp. 181–5.

16
. The tale appears in the Russian Primary Chronicle; see Timothy Ware,
The Orthodox Church
(London, 1997), p. 264.

17
. For more discussion, see Franklin and Shepard,
Emergence of Rus,
pp. 160–64.

18
. For the state and the Christian package, see Michael Cherniavsky,
Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 1961), p. 33.

19
. Though the Riurik legend is very old, Donald Ostrowski dates the first political prominence of the idea to the fourteenth century. See Sergei Bogatyrev, ‘Micro-periodization and dynasticism: was there a divide in the reign of Ivan the Terrible?’,
Slavic Review,
69, 2 (Summer 2010), p. 406.

20
. In the eastern church at least, Rome was considered on an equal footing to the other four, which were Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. On the patriarchate, see John Meyendorff,
Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1981), p. 30.

21
. Christian Raffensperger, cited in Bogatyrev, ‘Micro-periodization’, p. 406.

22
. The principles are described by Nancy Shields Kollmann,
Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547
(Stanford, Calif., 1987), p. 68.

23
. The Meeting of Liubech. See Franklin and Shepard,
Emergence of Rus,
pp. 265–6.

24
. Ellen S. Hurwitz,
Prince Andrej Bogoljubskij: The Man and the Myth
(Firenze, 1980), p. 50.

25
. The craftsmen came from ‘every land’; in practice probably modern Germany, the Baltic and the principality of Galich. See Cyril Mango,
Byzantine Architecture
(New York, 1976), pp. 332–3.

26
. David B. Miller, ‘Monumental building as an indicator of economic trends in northern Rus’ in the late Kievan and Mongol periods, 1138–1462’,
AHR,
94 (1989), p. 367.

27
. Hurwitz,
Bogoljubskij,
pp. 50–51; see also Dmitry Shvidkovsky,
Russian Architecture and the West
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007), p. 36; William Craft Brumfield,
A History of Russian Architecture
(Cambridge, 1997), p. 46. Very little of the original carving survived.

28
. Hurwitz,
Bogoljubskij,
p. 20.

29
. On Bogoliubovo, see Brumfield,
Russian Architecture,
p. 47; the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl was built to celebrate one of Andrei’s victories over the Bulgars.

30
. Obolensky,
Byzantine Commonwealth,
p. 355.

31
. On the Vladimir Virgin, see A. I. Anisimov,
Vladimirskaia ikona Bozhiei Materi
(Prague, 1928) and the review of legends in David B. Miller, ‘Legends of the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir: a study of the development of Muscovite national consciousness’,
Speculum,
43, 4 (October 1968), pp. 657–70.

32
. Ware,
Orthodox Church,
p. 60.

33
. Account in
PSRL,
vol. 1, ss. 460–61.

34
. John Fennell,
The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304
(London, 1983), p. 84.

35
. D. G. Ostrowski,
Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier
(Cambridge, 1998), p. 44.

36
. See Janet Martin,
Medieval Russia, 980–1584
(Cambridge, 2007), pp. 170–71.

37
. On Moscow’s insignificance, and the bar to Daniilovich succession, see Martin,
Medieval Russia,
p. 193.

38
. G. A. Fyodorov-Davydov,
The Culture of Golden Horde Cities
(Oxford, 1984), p. 10.

39
. A Fleming, William of Rubruck, passed through Batu’s own capital and also Karakorum in 1253–5. His account is printed in
The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253–55, as narrated by himself. With two accounts of the earlier journey of John of Pian de Carpine,
translated from the Latin, and edited, with an introductory notice, by W. W. Rockhill (London, 1900).