Christ in Russia

The History, Tradition, and Life of the Russian Church

Helene Iswolsky

• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789125061
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia rusa

"Is all of Russia not in her church?" asked the great essayist, Rosanov. The question is likely to surprise many American Christians tempted, in spite of themselves, to believe a purely political propaganda. Russia—The Enemy—is both the historical Christian reality and the present hope.In a book of profound contemporary significance, the author has presented both a scholarly and moving history of the Church of Christ in Russia, from its beginnings to the present day, and a deeply sympathetic description of the Russian Church's Tradition and Life.The author is herself a Russian, a scholar, and a convert from the Orthodox Church in which she was raised. She writes with simplicity and with loving familiarity of things she has not only studied but lived with her heart.

PART ONE—The Russian Church in History

CHAPTER ONE—In St. Andrew’s Footsteps

THE historic birth year of the Russian Church is 988. In that year the Russian prince Vladimir brought Christianity to his people from Byzantium, and had them baptized in the river Dnieper, at the foot of the hills of Kiev, his capital. The christening of the Russian people is described in Russia’s earliest historic document: this is the “primary chronicle,” also known as the Povyest Vremennikh Lyet (The Tale of Years of Time). The Povyest has been analyzed and scrutinized by many scholars; it is still considered the initial source of Russian history. While many events pictured by the ancient chroniclers can be historically confirmed, others belong to legendary times. However, the more this research advances, the closer we can follow the main trends which prepared and announced the beginnings of the Russian Church long before the official date of her birth.

Most outstanding among these legends is the story of St. Andrew the Apostle visiting in the first century A.D. the regions where two famous Russian towns, Kiev and Novgorod, were to be founded hundreds of years later. According to tradition, St. Andrew preached on the shore of the Black Sea, in the cities of Synope and Korsun (Chersonese), in what is now known as the Sevastopol area; it was from this shore that he is said to have journeyed to Russia. This is how the apostle’s voyage is related by the chronicler:

When Andrew preached in Synope and in Korsun, he learned that not far from there was the mouth of the river Dniepr; he wanted to go to Rome, reached the mouth of the Dniepr and sailed up the river. And it came to pass that he stopped at the foot of some hills. In the morning he arose and said to the disciples who accompanied him: “See ye these hills?; on them will shine the Grace of God, and there will arise a great city, and God will erect many churches within its walls.” And he ascended these hills, and planted a cross and prayed on the site where now stands the city of Kiev, and descending, went up the Dniepr. And he came to the region where now stands the city of Novgorod.

St. Andrew’s voyage to Scythia (i.e., Russia) was first mentioned by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, the first historian of the Church, in the third century A.D. As to the apostle’s further journey up the Dnieper and to the Novgorod region—this still belongs to the realm of legend. The route to the Baltic sea seems, according to the chronicler, to have been chosen by St. Andrew, because he intended to sail from there to Western Europe and Italy. He visited his brother Peter in Rome, later returned to Synope, then came to Patras in Greece where he was martyred on the X-shaped cross which bears his name.

St. Andrew’s journey to the Dnieper and to the regions of Novgorod and the Baltic was considered in Russia as the symbol of her great religious vocation. Russians were indeed very proud that the “first called of the apostles,” as he is known in the Eastern Church (Protoclete in Greek),{1} should have visited their land at the very dawn of the Christian era. Was not his prophecy fulfilled on the hills above the Dnieper river, where not only the great city of Kiev was built, but also a great monastery, the cradle of Russian monasticism—the Kievo-Prtcherrsky Laura? And is not St. Andrew’s memory also preserved in the Russian North, near Novgorod, where another famous monastery was built on the apostle’s itinerary: the Valaamo hermitage on Lake Ladoga?

For many centuries, St. Andrew’s cross was specially venerated in Russia; it became the emblem of the Russian navy, and its name was given to the highest order conferred by the tsars on princes and the most distinguished statesmen. Whether fact or legend,{2} St. Andrew’s journey to Russia offers us the key to Russian church history as well as to Russian spirituality. In the light of the Protoclete’s Apostolate we can behold Christianity in Russia not as something alien, imported from without, but deeply rooted in a people’s memory. Indeed, if we examine the early maps of the Russian land, we discover that this was not a closed world, withdrawn into itself, but on the contrary, linked by many waterways and seaways with other lands: as the chronicle of the Povyest tells us, there was even in those early days, a communication line from the Greeks to the Dnieper, and from the Dnieper to Lake Ilmen, and from Lake Ilmen to the Varangian (Baltic) sea, and from that sea to Rome. It was to Rome that St. Andrew finally made his way, at a time when this was the most logical journey’s end, since Peter still lived there and would soon be martyred. There was in those days but one Church, which knew no divisions, and was still listening to the voice of Christ’s own disciples.

Another great saint and martyr of these early times is linked to the birth of Christianity in Russia. He is St. Clement, third successor of St. Peter, first of the Apostolic Fathers. According to St. Irenaeus, St. Clement knew the blessed apostles and conversed with them. We also know that he preached on the Black Sea shore, in the area known as the Crimea. He too came to Korsun, where he was martyred by the pagans. His body was hurled into the sea and was later discovered in an underwater chapel, miraculously erected. St. Clement’s relics were preserved in the Crimea and were brought in the tenth century to Kiev as a gift of the Byzantine emperor to the newly founded Russian Church.

St. Andrew and St. Clement can thus be said to have presided over the Christianizing of Russia.

*****

But at the time of St. Andrew and St. Clement, Russia herself was not yet born; in fact, the religious and cultural future which awaited her could be seen only dimly, even by prophetic eyes.

The land to which St. Andrew carried his mission was at that time inhabited by the Scythians, an Iranian people who had settled in the basins of the Don and the Dnieper and whom Herodotus described in the fifth century B.C.; in the days of Herodotus the Scythians were a nomadic and barbaric people, but as centuries passed they developed a way of life which was no longer primitive. Contemporary archaeologists tend to prove that there existed in the beginning of our era a Scythian civilization of considerable interest, as shown by the excavation of tombs in the Crimean region. At that period the Scythians were trading with their neighbors, the highly civilized Greek colonies on the Black Sea shore. Under these colonists’ influence, they developed a peculiar form of Greco-Scythian art and craftsmanship: arms, ceramics, tools, silver and gold jewelry, some specimens of which are preserved in the museum of the Hermitage in Leningrad. The more the Greco-Scythian period of Russian pre-history is explored, the more the story of St. Andrew and St. Clement comes to light. These Southeastern European plains, so near to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, were not a “wasteland.” They were mission territory of great interest and value, and continued to be so in the days of St. Jerome, who prophetically wrote that the “Frozen climes of Scythia were aflame with faith.”

However, the time of the flowering of this faith was still far ahead. The great Scythian empire was soon to vanish under the impacts of new migrations and conquests; as early as the fourth century B.C. the power of the Scythians had been disputed by another Iranian people, the Sarmatians, who also occupied the shores of the Black Sea. They, too, evolved an industry and civilization of their own, and were skilled in armory and jewelry. The Sarmatians were divided in a number of tribes, one of which, the Alans, can be considered as the direct forefathers of the Slavs. An Alan clan was called Rukhs-As; it may have been the original tribe of Ross or Russ—which later formed the nucleus of the Russian people.{3}

As centuries rolled by the picture changed again and again. The Sarmatians and Scythians were defeated by Goth-Germanic and Hun Turco-Mongol invaders. They were pushed back even further or conquered by the Khazars, a people of mixed origin, half Turk, half North Caucasian, with Hun and Bulgar strains. The Khazars who settled in the land of Tmutarakan, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, founded a powerful kingdom, which was to defy the other peoples of that region, and even Byzantium itself, for many centuries. Though not belonging to the Semitic race, the Khazars had embraced Judaism, while their neighbors, the Bulgars, of Turkish origin, professed the heathen faith. These latter also formed a powerful empire, extending over the Balkan Peninsula. Here they mingled with Slav tribes who were likewise seeking refuge from the Khazars. These were the groups later known as Western and Southern Slavs. As to the Eastern Slavs, successors to the Sarmatians, Scythians, and Alans, they became for a time the vassals of the Khazar Kaganate,{4} but later gained their independence and formed the so-called Kaganate of Eastern Slavs. This principality was formed on the banks of the river Dnieper, which St. Andrew the Apostle had blessed as the future cradle of the Russian Church.

How the Eastern Slavs were related to their Scythian and Sarmatian ancestors, is hard to say. They certainly retained from the peoples of Scythia certain traditions—the warrior-like breeding of many generations exposed to continuous attacks by enemy hordes. There was a constant fear and awareness of danger in the vast steppes and wastelands of Tmutarakan and the Khazar Kaganate. This was to stimulate the military virtues of the Eastern Slavs, and at the same time draw them farther and farther away from the scene of battle.

The Russ gradually moved to more peaceful lands up the Dnieper to the fields where the sword could be turned into a plow; to the forests where one could hide from the enemy or build wooden fortresses and log cabins. On the whole, if undisturbed, the Eastern Slavs became a peaceful nation, or rather a confederation of tribes, known as the Polyane and Drevlyane (field and forest peoples). At first they led a nomadic life, mostly fishing and hunting; later they settled down in primitive villages under a tribal, patriarchal system. These were mainly agricultural communities, but little by little agriculture led to an exchange of goods with neighboring tribes and then with other countries.

The Greek colonies of the Black Sea shore and especially the great Eastern Empire’s capital Byzantium, became the main markets of export for the Slavic people. The waterways, which St. Andrew is said to have followed many centuries ago, now became essential routes. These routes led from the Bosphorus to the Dnieper, from the Dnieper to the Northern lakes and rivers—and to the Baltic or Varangian Sea, so called because of the Varangians (Norsemen) who lived on its Northwestern shores. Of course, these rivers were not all connected, as our modern seaways; part of the route had to be covered by “portage,” just as in primitive North America. But there existed a lifeline—commercial, political, and cultural—of primary importance. It was known as the Great Way, from the Varangians to the Greeks, for it was between these two geographic areas that early Russian history began to develop.

The Varangians, Norsemen or Vikings, as they are often called, inhabited the Scandinavian lands today known as Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. This was a dynamic people of mariners, tradesmen, and explorers, who came in the sixth century to the Eastern shores of the Baltic and moved on to the upper Volga region. We find them often co-operating with the Slavs, sharing their commercial interests—and at times controlling them. The Vikings made armor, shields, and swords of fine steel which they used for their conquests and also sold to their customers. The Slavs traded in costly furs, wax, and timber. The Vikings had a fleet of ships to carry the various merchandise down the waterways. These ships were manned by well-armed soldiers who could protect the floating caravans against the attacks of pirates, the nomadic tribes of the steppes who posed a continuous threat to both Slavs and Norsemen. At the end of the long voyage lay Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern empire, the great center of Byzantine political and ecclesiastical power, of culture, art, philosophy, and belles lettres.

From the sixth to the eighth and ninth centuries, relations between the people of Russ, their Varangian escorts, and Byzantium were constant; they led to the development of the Russian State.

The story of the birth of this state is well known, as described by the Povyest: the Slavs first welcomed the Varangians’ help and protection, but later resented their control. They refused to pay the usual tribute due to the Vikings for their military and commercial services and pushed them back to Scandinavia. But without the Norsemen’s protection the trade routes were no longer safe; they were threatened by pirates and nomad warriors, and by the aggressive Khazars. Moreover, the Slavs themselves were divided by internal feuds and outside competition; and so, finally, the Povyest tells us, the people of Russ called a meeting of all the tribes and clans, who decided as follows: “Let us look for a prince who will rule us and judge us according to the right law.” The Russ ambassadors “crossed the sea” and presented their petition to the Varangian warriors, saying: “Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it; come and govern us.”

The call was answered by the Varangian prince Ryurik and his two brothers, Sinius and Truver, who spread their rule over the Eastern Slavs. Ryurik founded his capi...