Of course all the theatres were going every night, including Sundays. Karsavina appeared in a new Ballet at the Marinsky, all dance-loving Russia coming to see her. Shaliapin was singing. At the Alexandrinsky they were reviving Meyerhold’s production of Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan the Terrible”; and at that performance I remember noticing a student of the Imperial School of Pages, in his dress uniform, who stood up correctly between the acts and faced the empty Imperial box, with its eagles all erased.... The _Krivoye Zerkalo_ staged a sumptuous version of Schnitzler’s “Reigen.”
Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?
GEDYMIN (d. 1342), grand-duke of Lithuania, was supposed by the earlier chroniclers to have been the servant of Witen, prince of Lithuania, but more probably he was Witen's younger brother and the son of Lutuwer, another Lithuanian prince. Gedymin inherited a vast domain, comprising Lithuania proper, Samogitia, Red Russia, Polotsk and Minsk; but these possessions were environed by powerful and greedy foes, the most dangerous of them being the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian knights of the Sword. The systematic raiding of Lithuania by the knights under the pretext of converting it had long since united all the Lithuanian tribes against the common enemy; but Gedymin aimed at establishing a dynasty which should make Lithuania not merely secure but mighty, and for this purpose he entered into direct diplomatic negotiations with the Holy See. At the end of 1322 he sent letters to Pope John XXII. soliciting his protection against the persecution of the knights, informing him of the privileges already granted to the Dominicans and the Franciscans in Lithuania for the preaching of God's Word, and desiring that legates should be sent to receive him also into the bosom of the church. On receiving a favourable reply from the Holy See, Gedymin issued circular letters, dated 25th of January 1325, to the principal Hanse towns, offering a free access into his domains to men of every order and profession from nobles and knights to tillers of the soil. The immigrants were to choose their own settlements and be governed by their own laws. Priests and monks were also invited to come and build churches at Vilna and Novogrodek. Similar letters were sent to the Wendish or Baltic cities, and to the bishops and landowners of Livonia and Esthonia. In short Gedymin, recognizing the superiority of western civilization, anticipated Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great by throwing open the semi-savage Russian lands to influences of culture. Entry: GEDYMIN
KAZAÑ (called by the Cheremisses _Ozon_), a town of eastern Russia, capital of the government of the same name, situated in 55° 48´ N. and 49° 26´´ E., on the river Kazanka, 3 m. from the Volga, which however reaches the city when it overflows its banks every spring. Kazañ lies 650 m. E. from Moscow by rail and 253 m. E. of Nizhniy-Novgorod by the Volga. Pop. (1883), 140,726; (1900), 143,707, all Russians except for some 20,000 Tatars. The most striking feature of the city is the _kreml_ or citadel, founded in 1437, which crowns a low hill on the N.W. Within its wall, capped with five towers, it contains several churches, amongst them the cathedral of the Annunciation, founded in 1562 by Gury, the first archbishop of Kazañ, Kazañ being an archiepiscopal see of the Orthodox Greek Church. Other buildings in the kreml are a magnificent monastery, built in 1556; an arsenal; the modern castle in which the governor resides; and the red brick Suyumbeka tower, 246 ft. high, which is an object of great veneration to the Tatars as the reputed burial-place of one of their saints. A little E. of the kreml is the Bogoroditski convent, built in 1579 for the reception of the Black Virgin of Kazañ, a miracle-working image transferred to Moscow in 1612, and in St Petersburg since 1710. Kazañ is the intellectual capital of eastern Russia, and an important seat of Oriental scholarship. Its university, founded in 1804, is attended by nearly 1000 students. Attached to it are an excellent library of 220,000 vols., an astronomical observatory, a botanical garden and various museums. The ecclesiastical academy, founded in 1846, contains the old library of the Solovetsk (Solovki) monastery, which is of importance for the history of Russian religious sects. The city is adorned with bronze statues of Tsar Alexander II., set up facing the kreml in 1895, and of the poet G. R. Derzhavin (1743-1816); also with a monument commemorating the capture of Kazañ by Ivan the Terrible. The central parts of the city consist principally of small one-storeyed houses, surrounded by gardens, and are inhabited chiefly by Russians, while some 20,000 Tatars dwell in the suburbs. Kazañ is, further, the intellectual centre of the Russian Mahommedans, who have here their more important schools and their printing-presses. Between the city and the Volga is the Admiralty suburb, where Peter the Great had his Caspian fleet built for his campaigns against Persia. The more important manufactures are leather goods, soap, wax candles, sacred images, cloth, cottons, spirits and bells. A considerable trade is carried on with eastern Russia, and with Turkestan and Persia. Previous to the 13th century, the present government of Kazañ formed part of the territory of the Bulgarians, the ruins of whose ancient capital, Bolgari or Bolgary, lie 60 m. S. of Kazañ. The city of Kazañ itself stood, down to the 13th century, 30 m. to the N.E., where traces of it can still be seen. In 1438 Ulugh Mahommed (or Ulu Makhmet), khan of the Golden Horde of the Mongols, founded, on the ruins of the Bulgarian state, the kingdom of Kazañ, which in its turn was destroyed by Ivan the Terrible of Russia in 1552 and its territory annexed to Russia. In 1774 the city was laid waste by the rebel Pugachev. It has suffered repeatedly from fires, especially in 1815 and 1825. The Kazañ Tatars, from having lived so long amongst Russians and Finnish tribes, have lost a good many of the characteristic features of their Tatar (Mongol) ancestry, and bear now the stamp of a distinct ethnographic type. They are found also in the neighbouring governments of Vyatka, Ufa, Orenburg, Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk, Tambov and Nizhniy-Novgorod. They are intelligent and enterprising, and are engaged principally in trade. Entry: KAZAÑ
The Holy Roman Empire of western Europe had in its own day a contemporary and a rival--that east Roman empire of which we have already spoken. From Arcadius to John Palaeologus, from A.D. 395 to 1453, the Roman empire was continued at Constantinople--not as a theory and an idea, but as a simple and daily reality of politics and administration. In one sense the East Roman Empire was more lineally and really Roman than the West: it was absolutely continuous from ancient times. In another sense the Western Empire was the most Roman; for its capital--in theory at least--was Rome itself, and the Roman Church stood by its side, while Constantinople was Hellenic and even Oriental. Between the two Empires there was fixed an impassable gulf; and they were divided by deep differences of thought and temper, which appeared most particularly in the sphere of religion, and expressed themselves in the cleavage between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. Yet, as when Rome fell, the Catholic Church survived, and ultimately found for itself a new Empire of the West, so, when Constantinople fell, the Orthodox Church continued its life, and found for itself a new Empire of the East--the Empire of Russia. Under Ivan the Great (1462-1505) Moscow became the metropolis of Orthodoxy; Byzantine law influenced his code; and he took for his cognizance the double-headed eagle. Ivan the Terrible, his grandson, finally assumed in 1547 the title of Tsar; and henceforth the Russian emperor is, in theory and very largely in fact, the successor of the old East Roman emperor,[13] the head of the Orthodox Church, with the mission of vengeance on Islam for the fall of Constantinople. Entry: A
What little culture there was outside the court, the capital and the palaces of a few prelates, was to be found in the towns, most of them of German origin. Matthias laboured strenuously to develop and protect the towns, multiplied municipal charters, and materially improved the means of communication, especially in Transylvania. His Silesian and Austrian acquisitions were also very beneficial to trade, throwing open as they did the western markets to Hungarian produce. Wine and meat were the chief exports. The wines of Hungary were already renowned throughout Europe, and cattle breeding was conducted on a great scale. Of agricultural produce there was barely sufficient for home consumption, but the mining industries had reached a very high level of excellence, and iron, tin and copper were very largely exported from the northern counties to Danzig and other Baltic ports. So highly developed indeed were the Magyar methods of smelting, that Louis XI. of France took the Hungarian mining system as the model for his metallurgical reforms, and Hungarian master-miners were also in great demand at the court of Ivan the Terrible. Moreover, the keen artistic instincts of Matthias led him to embellish his cities as well as fortify them. Debreczen was practically rebuilt by him, and dates its prosperity from his reign. Breslau, his favourite town, he endowed with many fine public buildings. Buda he endeavoured to make the worthy capital of a great realm, and the palace which he built there was pronounced by the papal legates to be superior to any in Italy. Entry: A
BORIS FEDOROVICH GODUNOV, tsar of Muscovy (c. 1551-1605), the most famous member of an ancient, now extinct, Russian family of Tatar origin, which migrated from the Horde to Muscovy in the 14th century. Boris' career of service began at the court of Ivan the Terrible. He is mentioned in 1570 as taking part in the Serpeisk campaign as one of the archers of the guard. In 1571 he strengthened his position at court by his marriage with Maria, the daughter of Ivan's abominable favourite Malyuta Skuratov. In 1580 the tsar chose Irene, the sister of Boris, to be the bride of the tsarevich Theodore, on which occasion Boris was promoted to the rank of _boyar_. On his deathbed Ivan appointed Boris one of the guardians of his son and successor; for Theodore, despite his seven-and-twenty years, was of somewhat weak intellect. The reign of Theodore began with a rebellion in favour of the infant tsarevich Demetrius, the son of Ivan's fifth wife Marie Nagaya, a rebellion resulting in the banishment of Demetrius, with his mother and her relations, to their appanage at Uglich. On the occasion of the tsar's coronation (May 31, 1584), Boris was loaded with honours and riches, yet he held but the second place in the regency during the lifetime of his co-guardian Nikita Romanovich, on whose death, in August, he was left without any serious rival. A conspiracy against him of all the other great boyars and the metropolitan Dionysy, which sought to break Boris' power by divorcing the tsar from Godunov's childless sister, only ended in the banishment or tonsuring of the malcontents. Henceforth Godunov was omnipotent. The direction of affairs passed entirely into his hands, and he corresponded with foreign princes as their equal. His policy was generally pacific, but always most prudent. In 1595 he recovered from Sweden the towns lost during the former reign. Five years previously he had defeated a Tatar raid upon Moscow, for which service he received the title of _sluga_, an obsolete dignity even higher than that of boyar. Towards Turkey he maintained an independent attitude, supporting an anti-Turkish faction in the Crimea, and furnishing the emperor with subsidies in his war against the sultan. Godunov encouraged English merchants to trade with Russia by exempting them from tolls. He civilized the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of Muscovy by building numerous towns and fortresses to keep the Tatar and Finnic tribes in order. Samara, Saratov, and Tsaritsyn and a whole series of lesser towns derive from him. He also re-colonized Siberia, which had been slipping from the grasp of Muscovy, and formed scores of new settlements, including Tobolsk and other large centres. It was during his government that the Muscovite church received its patriarchate, which placed it on an equality with the other Eastern churches and emancipated it from the influence of the metropolitan of Kiev. Boris' most important domestic reform was the _ukaz_ (1587) forbidding the peasantry to transfer themselves from one landowner to another, thus binding them to the soil. The object of this ordinance was to secure revenue, but it led to the institution of serfdom in its most grinding form. The sudden death of the tsarevich Demetrius at Uglich (May 15, 1591) has commonly been attributed to Boris, because it cleared his way to the throne; but this is no clear proof that he was personally concerned in that tragedy. The same may be said of the many, often absurd, accusations subsequently brought against him by jealous rivals or ignorant contemporaries who hated Godunov's reforms as novelties. Entry: BORIS
Dünaburg was originally founded in 1278 by the Livonian Knights of the Sword, about 12 m. farther down the river than its present site, at a spot still known as the Old Castle or _Stariy Zamok_. In 1559 it was mortgaged by the grand-master of the Knights to Sigismund Augustus, king of Poland. Although captured in 1576 by Ivan the Terrible of Russia, it was again restored to Poland; and in 1582 Stephen Bathori, king of Poland, transferred the fortress to its present site. In the 17th century it was held alternately by the Swedes and the Russians. It was finally incorporated with Russia in 1772 on the first division of Poland. In July 1812 the _tête-de-pont_ was vainly stormed by the French under Oudinot, but a few weeks afterwards the town was captured by them under Macdonald. Entry: DVINSK
BASIL IV., SHUISKY (d. 1612), tsar of Muscovy, was during the reigns of Theodore I. and Boris Godunov, one of the leading boyars of Muscovy. It was he who, in obedience to the secret orders of Tsar Boris, went to Uglich to inquire into the cause of the death of Demetrius, the infant son of Ivan the Terrible, who had been murdered there by the agents of Boris. Shuisky obsequiously reported that it was a case of suicide; yet, on the death of Boris and the accession of his son Theodore II., the false boyar, in order to gain favour with the first false Demetrius, went back upon his own words and recognized the pretender as the real Demetrius, thus bringing about the assassination of the young Theodore. Shuisky then plotted against the false Demetrius and procured his death (May 1606) also by publicly confessing that the real Demetrius had been indeed slain and that the reigning tsar was an impostor. This was the viler in him as the pseudo-Demetrius had already forgiven him one conspiracy. Shuisky's adherents thereupon proclaimed him tsar (19th of May 1606). He reigned till the 19th of July 1610, but was never generally recognized. Even in Moscow itself he had little or no authority, and was only not deposed by the dominant boyars because they had none to put in his place. Only the popularity of his heroic cousin, Prince Michael Skopin-Shuisky, who led his armies and fought his battles for him, and soldiers from Sweden, whose assistance he purchased by a disgraceful cession of Russian territory, kept him for a time on his unstable throne. In 1610 he was deposed, made a monk, and finally carried off as a trophy by the Polish grand hetman, Stanislaus Zolkiewski. He died at Warsaw in 1612. Entry: BASIL
The Kabardians are a branch of the Adyghè (Circassians). The policy of Russia was always to be friendly with the Kabardian aristocracy, who were possessed of feudal rights over the Ossetes, the Ingushes, the Abkhasians and the mountain Tatars, and had command of the roads leading into Transcaucasia. Ivan the Terrible took Kabardia under his protection in the 16th century. Later, Russian influence was counterbalanced by that of the Crimean khans, but the Kabardian nobles nevertheless supported Peter the Great during his Caucasian campaign in 1722-23. In 1739 Kabardia was recognized as being under the double protectorate of Russia and Turkey, but thirty-five years later it was definitively annexed to Russia, and risings of the population in 1804 and 1822 were cruelly suppressed. Kabardia is considered as a school of good manners in Caucasia; the Kabardian dress sets the fashion to all the mountaineers. Kabardians constitute the best detachment of the personal Imperial Guards at St Petersburg. Entry: KABARDIA
The reputation of the Laplanders for skill in magic and divination is of very early date, and in Finland is not yet extinct. When Erik Blood-axe, son of Harold Haarfager, visited Bjarmaland in 922, he found Gunhild, daughter of Asur Tote, living among the Lapps, to whom she had been sent by her father for the purpose of being trained in witchcraft; and Ivan the Terrible of Russia sent for magicians from Lapland to explain the cause of the appearance of a comet. One of the powers with which they were formerly credited was that of raising winds. "They tye three knottes," says old Richard Eden, "on a strynge hangyng at a whyp. When they lose one of these they rayse tollerable wynds. When they lose an other the wynde is more vehement; but by losing the thyrd they rayse playne tempestes as in old tyme they were accustomed to rayse thunder and lyghtnyng" (_Hist. of Trauayle_, 1577). Though we are familiar in English with allusions to "Lapland witches," it appears that the art, according to native custom, was in the hands of the men. During his divination the wizard fell into a state of trance or ecstasy, his soul being held to run at large to pursue its inquiries. Great use was made of a curious divining-drum, oval in shape and made of wood, 1 to 4 ft. in length. Over the upper surface was stretched a white-dressed reindeer skin, and at the corners (so to speak) hung a variety of charms--tufts of wool, bones, teeth, claws, &c. The area was divided into several spaces, often into three, one for the celestial gods, one for the terrestrial and one for man. A variety of figures and conventional signs were drawn in the several compartments: the sun, for instance, is frequently represented by a square and a stroke from each corner, Thor by two hammers placed crosswise; and in the more modern specimens symbols for Christ, the Virgin, and the Holy Ghost are introduced. An _arpa_ or divining-rod was laid on a definite spot, the drum beaten by a hammer, and conclusions drawn from the position taken up by the arpa. Any Lapp who had attained to manhood could in ordinary circumstances consult the drum for himself, but in matters of unusual moment the professional wizard (_naid_, _noide_ or _noaide_) had to be called in. Entry: LAPLAND
With other traditions of their feudal age, the Japanese nation has broken with its ancient custom of the razor, and their emperor has beard and moustache; a short moustache is common amongst Japanese officers and statesmen, and generals and admirals of Nippon follow the imperial example. The Nearer East also is abandoning the full beard, even in Mahommedan lands. Earlier shahs of the Kajar house have glorious beards below their girdles, but Nasiru'd-Dín and his successor have shaved their chins. In later years the sultan of Turkey has added a beard to his moustache; the khedive of Egypt, son of a bearded father, has a soldier's moustache only. In Europe the great Russian people is faithful to the beard, Peter's law being forgotten. The tsar Alexander III.'s beard might have satisfied Ivan the Terrible, whose hands played delightedly with the five-foot beard of Queen Elizabeth's agent George Killingworth. Indeed the royal houses of Europe are for the most part bearded or whiskered. It may be that the race of Olivier le Dain, of the man who can be trusted with a sharp razor near a crowned king's throat, is extinct. Leopold II., king of the Belgians, however, was in 1909 the only sovereign with the full beard unclipped. The Austrian emperor, Francis Joseph, retained the moustache and whiskers of the 'sixties, and the German emperor, William II., for a short period, commemorated by a few very rare photographs, had a beard, although it was never suffered to reach the length of that beard which gave his father an air of Charlemagne or Barbarossa. In France bearded presidents have followed each other, but it may be noted that the waxed moustache and "imperial" beard of the Second Empire is now all but abandoned to the Frenchman of English comedy. The modern English fashion of shaving clean is rare in France save among actors, and during 1907 many Parisian waiters struck against the rule which forbade them to grow the moustache. Entry: BEARD
Clerks and the dependants of the metropolitan (afterwards the patriarch) appear to have been immune from secular jurisdiction, except in the case of crimes against life, from the time of Ivan the Terrible (ib. pp. 180-181). The tsar Michael, in the earlier 17th century, confirmed these immunities in the case of the clergy of the patriarch's own diocese, but provided that in country places belonging to his diocese, monasteries, churches and lands should be judged in secular matters by the Court of the Great Palace, theoretically held before the tsar himself (ib. p. 181). This tsar limited the "peculiar" monasteries to three, and gave the patriarch jurisdiction over them (ib.). The next tsar, Alexis, however, by his code instituted a "Monastery Court," which was a secular tribunal composed of laymen, to judge in civil suits against spiritual persons, and in matters arising out of their manors and properties (ib. p. 193). This court was not in operation during the time when the patriarch Nikon was also in effect first minister; but upon his decline exercised its full jurisdiction (ib. p. 216). Nikon was himself tried for abdicating his see, causing disorder in the realm, oppression and violence, first before a synod of Moscow composed of his suffragans and some Greek bishops, and afterwards before another synod in which sat the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, the metropolitans of Servia and Georgia, the archbishops of Sinai and Wallachia, and the metropolitans of Nice, Amasis, Iconium, Trebizond, Varna and Scio, besides the Russian bishops. This synod in 1667 deposed Nikon, degraded him from holy orders, and sentenced him to perpetual penance in a monastery (ib. pp. 220-232). The next tsar, Theodore, suppressed the secular "monastery court," and directed that all suits against spiritual persons should proceed only in the patriarchal "court of requests" (ib. p. 264). There was, however, a species of _appel comme d'abus_. Causes could be evoked to the tsar himself, "when any partiality of the judges in any affair in which they themselves were interested was discovered" (ib.). Entry: 3
DEMETRIUS, PSEUDO- (or FALSE), the name by which three Muscovite princes and pretenders, who claimed to be Demetrius, son of Ivan the Terrible, are known in history. The real Demetrius had been murdered, while still a child, in 1591, at Uglich, his widowed mother's appanage. Entry: DEMETRIUS
As an historian Karamzin has deservedly a very high reputation. Till the appearance of his work little had been done in this direction in Russia. The preceding attempt of Tatistchev was merely a rough sketch, inelegant in style, and without the true spirit of criticism. Karamzin was most industrious in accumulating materials, and the notes to his volumes are mines of curious information. The style of his history is elegant and flowing, modelled rather upon the easy sentences of the French prose writers than the long periodical paragraphs of the old Slavonic school. Perhaps Karamzin may justly be censured for the false gloss and romantic air thrown over the early Russian annals, concealing the coarseness and cruelty of the native manners; in this respect he reminds us of Sir Walter Scott, whose writings were at this time creating a great sensation throughout Europe, and probably had their influence upon him. Karamzin appears openly as the panegyrist of the autocracy; indeed, his work has been styled the "Epic of Despotism." He does not hesitate to avow his admiration of Ivan the Terrible, and considers him and his grandfather Ivan III. as the builders up of Russian greatness, a glory which in his earlier writings, perhaps at that time more under the influence of Western ideas, he had assigned to Peter the Great. In the battle-pieces (e.g. the description of the field of Koulikovo, the taking of Kazan, &c.) we find considerable powers of description; and the characters of many of the chief personages in the Russian annals are drawn in firm and bold lines. As a critic Karamzin was of great service to his country; in fact he may be regarded as the founder of the review and essay (in the Western style) among the Russians. Entry: KARAMZIN