Women in Russian History

From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century

Natalia Pushkareva, Eve Levin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315480435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Campañas políticas y elecciones

As the first survey of the history of women in Russia to be published in any language, this book is itself an historic event -- the result of the collaboration of the leading Russian and American specialists on Russian women's history. The book is divided in to four chronological parts corresponding to eras of Russian history: (I) Kievan/Mongol (10th - 15th centuries); (II) Muscovite ( 16th - 17th centuries); (III) 18th century; and (IV) 19th - early 20th centuries.

Each part gives coverage to four main topics: (1) The role of prominent women in public life, with biographical sketches of women who attained prominence in political or cultural life; (2) Women's daily life and family roles; (3) Women's status under the law; (4) Material culture and in particular women's dress as an expression of their place in society.

Chapter 1

Warriors, Regents, and Scholars: The Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries

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Princesses in Their Own Right

Ten centuries ago, an enormous Slavic state, called Rus, arose in Eastern Europe. It stretched from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean, and from the Danube to the Volga and the Ural Mountains. Scholars debate the ethnic origin of these Rus or Ros; some believe they were Scandinavian, while others are convinced that they were Slavic. These Rus dwelt among an ethnically mixed population of Slavs, Baits, Finns, steppe nomads, Greeks, and Jews. Yet when the first Russian state emerged in the tenth century, it was unambiguously Slavic and quite distinct from the other nascent Slavic states emerging in Poland, Bulgaria, and Moravia.

The history of this Russian state, recorded in chronicles and folklore, in Scandinavian sagas and Polovtsian songs, in the writings of Byzantine annalists and Arab travelers, contains the names of many prominent figures, including a number of women.¹ But unlike the history of early medieval Western Europe, which is rich in detailed accounts of the lives of great queens and sage women rulers, medieval Russian history does not abound in analogous figures. Russian literary and folkloric sources usually refer to women as insignificant, secondary figures.

But were women in reality so insignificant, or were they simply ignored by the men who controlled the writing of history in that period, who stressed events in accordance with their own understanding of the world? However truthful and judicious the chroniclers were in their treatment of their women contemporaries, they invariably relegated women, if not to oblivion, at least to last place. Did they secretly wish to consign them to the role of silent, barely visible nonentities?

Only by compiling testimony from a variety of narrative sources, both secular and ecclesiastical, contemporary and retrospective, is it possible to reconstruct an accurate picture of women’s participation in the historical dramas of the Kievan period. Some women have left only a few traces in the record, while of others, primarily rich and aristocratic women, a much fuller portrait can be drawn. The latter include women rulers of the principalities of Rus, as well as the foreign brides of Russian princes and Russian princesses who contracted marriages abroad. The noted Russian historian N.M. Karamzin (1766–1826) assembled his original “Gallery of Famous Russian Women” from among them, “depicting each face with the lively coloration of love for the female sex and for the Fatherland.”²

The most impressive figure in the history of early medieval Russia is Grand Princess Olga, who ruled the Russian state from 945 to 964. Because of her sagacity in uniting the Russian lands and her introduction of Christianity to Rus, her descendants called her a “wise woman,” and she is numbered among the saints of the Russian Orthodox Church.

It is difficult to establish the circumstances of Olga’s birth and childhood, even through a meticulous reading of the sources. One of the legends composed many centuries later describes her as a peasant maiden, whose beauty and sharp mind prompted Igor, the ruling prince of Kiev, to propose marriage. The chronicle account of Olga’s origins and her accession to the throne has little in common with this artless folktale. It is much more likely that Olga came from an aristocratic family of Pskov and that she married Igor sometime between 903 and 927.

As a woman of the upper aristocracy, Olga possessed the political experience to take the reins of power after the death of her husband in 945. Olga ruled the country for twenty years as regent for her underage son Sviatoslav, her single, closely guarded child. She earned fame throughout the known world for her efforts to build and enrich the Russian land.

Olga undertook the first reform of financial administration in Russian history. She was motivated to do so because of a personal tragedy: in 945 her husband, Igor, was killed during an attempt to collect tribute a second time from the Drevlians, a tribe subject to Kiev. Having wreaked vengeance on those guilty of Igor’s murder, Olga was able to overcome her personal grief. Unlike previous Russian rulers, who collected revenues from subject peoples through seizure and pillage, Olga ordered the establishment of a fixed tribute. She arranged for an orderly collection of taxes at specified intervals. The author of the Grand Princess’s vita, which was composed many years after her death, was astonished and delighted by the talent of the “builder of the Russian land” and her striving to grasp thoroughly every aspect of governmental affairs. In his words, “she herself traveled throughout the Russian land, establishing the amount of tribute; like the mistress of a great household, she answered for everyone and everything.”³

By strengthening the financial bases for her princely power early in her reign—that is, in the 940s—Olga was able to fortify the administrative apparatus and broaden the areas under princely rule, defining their boundaries. And in founding her powerful state, Olga relied not upon force but rather upon her intelligence.

However, this new system of governance required a new ideology. Princess Olga understood that the transformation of her country could be achieved only through the conversion of Rus to Christianity. Having weighed her powers and evaluated the possibilities, the princess decided to accept baptism from Russia’s neighbor, the Byzantine Empire. Her baptism in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople strengthened the princess’s personal power and enhanced Russia’s international prestige.

Olga’s journey to Constantinople (which the early Russians called “Tsargrad,” the “Emperor-City”) in the 950s has been embellished by legend, like so many other events of her life. The Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus personally received the “hegemona and archonissa of the Rus,” as Byzantine chronicles tided Olga.

The compiler of the Russian Primary Chronicle, parts of which date from the eleventh century, propagated a legend about the circumstances of Olga’s baptism. Supposedly, the emperor hoped to wed the Russian princess, although she was “much past thirty” and he was already married. But Olga was proud and independent, and single-minded in her pursuit of her goals. She asked the emperor to stand as her godfather at her baptism, and then responded to his marriage proposal, “How can you desire to marry me, when you have just baptized me and called me your daughter?”—for Orthodox canons forbid marriages among spiritual relatives.

Thus the legend presents Olga’s baptism as a clever device to escape from the emperor’s proposition. In actuality, everything was much more straightforward. Olga undertook the journey to Constantinople for reasons of state. After receiving baptism, she hoped to arrange a marriage for her son to one of the princesses of the Byzantine imperial family, but did not succeed.

Even so, the journey to Byzantium was fruitful. After the administrative reform, this was Olga’s second success as ruler of the Russian state. The princess discussed diplomatic and commercial issues in the Byzantine Empire and received generous gifts. She was elevated to the honorary rank of “daughter” to the Byzantine emperor, to whom she promised military aid in case of need. The sixteenth-century Radziwill Chronicle contains a miniature of the signing of the treaties, depicting Olga and Constantine Porphyrogenitus sitting together on the same level, emphasizing their equality.

Having blazed a trail for Russia’s entry into the ranks of Christian states, Olga sent an embassy to Holy Roman Emperor Otto I in 959. She also gave her consent for German missionaries to preach among the Rus. Although these missionaries did not enjoy much success, Olga’s initiative opened Russia’s first “window on the West.”

During the last years of her life, Olga once again assumed the functions of head of state while her son Sviatoslav went off to war. In 968 it fell to her to organize the defense of Kiev from a sudden attack by steppe nomads. The chronicle notes that Sviatoslav showed his mother exceptional respect and returned from his campaign in order to be with her in her final hours.⁴

Olga’s fame and accomplishments survived her. No later chroniclers and historians doubted the significance of her reforms. At a time when war was the primary means of resolving international disputes, the first Russian princess demonstrated that prestige could and should be earned peacefully, through diplomatic means. However, while granting Olga her due, these same historians regarded her as atypical of Russia, where otherwise heroes were exclusively male.

But in fact Olga was not unique, as careful scrutiny of the sources attests. The chronicle account of the legendary founding of the Russian state in the eighth century names not only Kii, Shchek, and Khoriv as the first Russian princes, but also their sister, Lybed. A reference to her is preserved in the name of a small river near Kiev, and she also appears as a character in Russian and Armenian epic poetry. However, early Russian chroniclers suppressed accounts of Lybed’s activities, considering them paltry in comparison with Olga’s achievements.

Grand Princess Olga visits with the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. Miniature from the Radziwill Chronicle, fifteenth century.

Two decades after Olga’s death—that is, in the late tenth century, another prominent woman appeared on the Russian throne. This was Princess Anna, the wife of Grand Prince Vladimir (980–1015), who baptized Russia. Anna was the granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII, and Vladimir was Olga’s grandson; thus the marital alliance of the Byzantine and Kievan monarchies, for which Olga had striven in the 950s, was accomplished a quarter-century later. Not even Vladimir’s great reputation—he is called the “Red Sun” in folk epics— could eclipse Anna’s participation in governmental affairs.

As a Byzantine porphyrogenita—a princess “born to the purple,” the daughter of a reigning emperor—Anna received an excellent education. Scholars of classical learning—historians, hagiographers, linguists, and jurists—filled the court of her father and grandfather. As the wife of the grand prince of Russia, she was competent to receive foreign embassies, for example, ambassadors from Germany who came to Kiev in 989–90. Acting at the behest of Byzantine clergy, Anna contributed to the promulgation of the “Charter of Prince Vladimir,” which granted immunities to the Russian Orthodox Church.

It was common in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries for princesses to be involved in legislation and governance alongside their husbands. For example, the “Charter of Prince Vsevolod of Novgorod Concerning Church Courts” lists “Vsevolod’s princess” among other influential city administrators in the preamble.⁵ The number of women lawmakers, akin to Anna and Vsevolod’s wife, grew substantially in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the Russian state dissolved into numerous autonomous principalities.

But earlier, in the first half of the eleventh century, the Russian state was united and at the height of its power under the rule of Olga’s great-grandson, Iaroslav, called “the Wise.” During his reign, Kiev became a major cultural center. The rulers of many Western European countries sought to ally themselves with Russia through marriage with one or another of Iaroslav’s daughters: Anastasia, Anna, Elizabeth, and a fourth, whose name is not preserved in the sources. Iaroslav and his wife Ingegerd (baptismal name: Irina), the daughter of King Olav of Norway, raised their daughters in an atmosphere of learning, surrounded by books. They were educated at home, but very rigorously, learning writing, mathematics, astronomy, and Latin, then the lingua franca of Europe.

Three daughters of Iaroslav and Ingegerd married into the ruling houses of powerful European states, where they could put their knowledge to good use. Anastasia, the eldest daughter, became the bride of King Andrew I of Hungary, where she became a fervent advocate of Hungarian unity. In widowhood, she ruled Hungary as regent, founding a number of Orthodox monasteries. Her sister Elizabeth (Elisava) married the Norwegian prince Harald Hardrada. Scandinavian sagas report Harald’s coundess expeditions in Sicily, Africa, Asia Minor, and Salonika. Having gained much fame and fortune, Harald convinced Elizabeth to marry him, or as the Scandinavian chronicle Hauksbók put it, “the Russian maiden with the golden necklace stopped holding him in disdain.” Neither Russian nor Western chronicles report anything about the princess’s life in Norway. It is known only that she did not return to Russia after Harald’s death in 1066 but instead agreed to marry the ruler of Denmark.

The third daughter of Iaroslav the Wise left the greatest mark on European history. Anna became the wife of King Henry I of France, who, according to the chronicler, “was enchanted by tales of her accomplishments.” In May 1051 the bridal cortege arrived in Paris. Anna was unimpressed with Paris, then a tiny city with muddy streets; it could not compare with Kiev, which styled itself the rival of Constantinople. “What sort of barbaric country have you sent me to!” Anna complained in a letter to her father. “The dwellings here are dark, the churches misshapen, and the customs appalling!” Anna’s dark mood worsened when, despite the birth of her son Philip, her husband became more and more distant; he preferred the company of comely troubadours.

The more Henry withdrew from governmental affairs, the more Anna threw herself into them, aided by her intelligence, energy, and undisputed administrative ability. The most important state documents of the 1050s often bear her signature, “Anna Regina,” written in neat Cyrillic letters. Underneath are crosses inscribed by illiterate French courtiers. Anna could express herself easily in Latin—a skill, according to contemporaries, that disquieted some French aristocrats. It was in Latin that Pope Nicholas II wrote to Anna, praising her for “fulfilling royal duties with enviable fervor and remarkable intelligence.”

After the death of Henry I in 1060, Anna settled at Senlis, a small castle north of Paris. From that point her life took on the character of a courtly romance...