Ausgewahlte Schriften. by Werner Philipp; Hans-Joachim TorkeReview by: Daniel H. KaiserSlavic Review, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Winter, 1984), pp. 674-675Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2499316 .

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674 Slavic Review

Dejevsky's "The Churches of Novgorod: the Overall Pattern," for instanice, begins by reminding us that "for nearly five centuries . . Novgorod was the most consistent and prolific center of culture in medieval Russia."

The first essay in the third section is Dean Worth's "Toward a Social History of Russian," a provocative yet thoughtful study which proposes that we avoid the term "literary language" and think instead of the "social history of language." As Worth demonstrates, it has been a history with its own dialectic. The contributions of Riccardo Picchio "The Impact of Ecclesiastical Culture on Old Russian Literary Techniques"- and Boris Uspensky "The Language Situation and Linguistic Consciousness in Muscov- ite Rus': the Perception of Church Slavonic and Russian" both emphasize the dominant role of the church in Old Russian culture. Yet how differently these two scholars write and think! In contrast to Picchio's abstract, jejune meanderings, Uspensky comes right to the point, with specific insights supported by well-selected corroborative evidence. Not that everyone will agree, of course: some may find his schema too "controlled" at times, leaving little room for phenomena such as those leading to the intrusion of Russian ele- ments into Church Slavic texts (see, for example, Gerd Freidhof's "Glossality in the Gennadius and Ostrog Bibles"). Dean Worth may declare that the "modest efforts" of Serapion Vladimirskii are "much less literary" than those of Metropolitan Hilarion, but Ralph Bogert in "The Style of Serapion Vladimirskij" illustrates Serapion's mastel-y of multifarious rhetorical devices to be used with a "collective audience" in mind-an au- dience 'composed not of his peers, but of his neighbors." Serapion had "no need for the showy, pictorial, demonstrative style." In "The Function of Word-Weaving in the Struc- ture of Epiphanius' Life of Saint Stephen, Bishop of Perm," Josten B0rtnes takes up Jakobsonian tools to work his way, diligently and effectively, through Epiphanius's cele- brated work.

Jakov Luria's "Unresolved Issues in the History of the Ideological Movements of the Late Fifteenth Century" was included in the first section of this anthology but is mentioned last as one more reminder to treat sources with care. Luria cites manuscript evidence showing that Nil Sorskii shared the views of Josif of Volokalamnsk on how to deal with heretics. As for the "Judaizers" to whom Birnbaum, Flier, Onasch, and Freidhof all refer in a fifteenth-century context, Luria insists that the actual term "Judaizer" first appeared in the late eighteenth century.

HORACE W DEWEY

University of Michigan

AUSGEWAHLTE SCHRIFTEN. By Werner Philipp. Edited by Hans-Joachim Torke. Forschungen zur osteuropaischen Geschichte, vol. 33. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz for Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universitat Berlin, 1983. 304 pp. Illustrations. Paper.

This collection celebrating the seventy-fifth birthday of Werner Philipp includes three essays published in the 1950s, seven from the 1960s, and one each from 1972 and 1981. Their subject matter ranges from a discussion of the religious ideology of Russia's me- dieval capitals to a survey of the October Revolution of 1917. Philipp's interest in histo- riography is also represented in a brief overview of Soviet historical writing, and the final essay examines the impact of National Socialism upon German studies of Eastern Europe.

In the spirit of the 1960s, when many of these essays were published, Philipp devotes considerable energy to explaining Russia's peculiar development. These reflections remain stimulating; Philipp's theses are no easier to demonstrate today than they were when he first proposed them. He believes that Russia was not like Europe mainly because it was cut off from social intercourse with Europe almost from the beginning of its existence.

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Reviews 675

The earliest Russian settlers, dispersed across the great plain of Eastern Europe, en- countered no "highly developed cultures, whose strength and alien character might have stimulated reflections on their own culture." Later, Russia was cut off from European society by changes within Western Europe itself: the Livonian Knights sealed off the Baltic; Scandinavia lost its former power, and its role in Eastern Europe diminished; and Constantinople, the prize which both Islam and Latin Christianity sought to win, could no longer serve as the center of Russian cultural interchange. It was thus not the Mongol invasion but centuries of isolation that separated Russia from Europe.

As Philipp makes clear on several occasions, the Middle Ages in Russia came to an end only when Russian Orthodoxy lost its privileged place and its resistance to Western values broke down. Beginning with the first days of Christianization, Orthodoxy had diminished the importance of mere historical and sociopolitical life by fixing man's gaze on the icon and focusing his attention upon the liturgy. Philipp suggests that late in the sixteenth century Russia lost its Christian identity with Byzantium. The resulting intel- lectual vacuum was soon filled by heresy. Heretical views were first expressed late in the fifteenth century and finally led to a split in the church in the seventeenth century. Philipp attributes to Western influence the emergence of religious doctrines that claimed a broader intellectual territory than Orthodoxy. This Europeanization distinguished modern Russia from its past and molded imperial Russian history. But the process of Westernization was not yet completed when World War I intervened, and Bolshevism initiated a new period.

It makes sense, therefore, to view Russia's past through the lens of religion, so that the old periodization of Russia's history according to its capitals Kiev, Moscow, and Petersburg is fully tenable. Each capital had its owIn religious justifications and provided the rationale for the state power its princes and emperors wielded. While in Kievan and Muscovite Russia that rationale borrowed the mantle of Jerusalem and Byzantium, Peter introduced a new "faith" borrowed from Western values so that Petersburg was the center not only of political power but also of the new "religion."

Philipp repeatedly probes the values of early Russia and always finds them lacking in the qualities that produced Western society. The roots of Russian autocracy, therefore, lie embedded in the culture of medieval Russia, while the hope for Russia's modernization depended upon the Westernization of the empire. But because this process had not yet matured when war, and then revolutioin, overwhelmed Russia, Soviet society was doomed to inherit a "Second Muscovite Period" when the full power of a centi-alized state elim- inated pluralism, denied the possibility of any furthei- historical development, and pro- duced a new static vision of history.

There is much else here for thoughtful consideration. We can be grateful to the editor for reminding us of these important essays.

DANIEL H. KAISER

Gritnuell College

ARISTOCRATS AND SERVITORS: THE BOYAR ELITE IN RUSSIA, 1613-1689. By Robert 0. Crumnmey. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. xvi, 315 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Diagram. $30.00.

Robert Crummey's research oIn the Muscovite aristocracy began as early as 1968, and at least seven of his nine articles cited in the bibliography of this volume deal with that subject. Nobody else could have written this book, and nobody else could have made his point so well. Given the scarcity of sources and the fragmentary evidence we have on seventeenth-century Russian history, one cannot but admire Crummey's skillful exami- nation and convincing presentation of the elite group, which has never been treated in a

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