Igor's Campaign, The Song of
▪ Russian literature
also translated Lay of Igor's Campaign , Russian Slovo o polku Igoreve
masterpiece of Old Russian literature, an account of the unsuccessful campaign in 1185 of Prince Igor (Igor Svyatoslavich) of Novgorod-Seversky against the Polovtsy (Kipchak, or Cumans). As in the great French epic The Song of Roland, Igor's heroic pride draws him into a combat in which the odds are too great for him. Though defeated, Igor escapes his captors and returns to his people. The tale was written anonymously (1185–87) and preserved in a single manuscript, which was discovered in 1795 by A.I. Musin-Pushkin, published in 1800, and lost during Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812.
The tale is not easily classified; neither lyric nor epic, it is a blend of both, with a suggestion of the political pamphlet as well. It is the product of a writer familiar with oral poetry, chronicles, and historical narratives. It is distinguished principally by its modernity. The author's worldview is secular; Christianity is incidental to events.
The Song alone of all Old Russian literature has become a national classic, one that is familiar to every educated Russian. An English translation of it by Vladimir Nabokov was published in 1960.
Kurbsky, Andrey Mikhaylovich, Prince
▪ Russian military commander
born 1528, Russia
died 1583, Poland-Lithuania
Russian military commander who was a close associate and adviser to Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible of Russia during the 1540s and '50s.
A member of the princely house of Smolensk-Yaroslavl, Kurbsky became attached to the special advisory council (Izbrannaya Rada, or “Chosen Council”), which Ivan formed in 1547 to assist him in the preparation of internal reforms and the formulation of foreign policy. At the age of 21, Kurbsky was appointed groom-in-waiting to the tsar and also began his military career, participating in the 1549 campaign against the khanate of Kazan. Although he was wounded while storming the city in 1552, he later took part in consolidating Russian power over the newly conquered Kazan (1553–56). During that period Kurbsky also became one of the tsar's intimate associates and in 1553 demonstrated his loyalty to Ivan, who was then seriously ill, by pledging to support Ivan's infant son Fyodor as heir, although many nobles refused to do so.
In 1556 Kurbsky was promoted to the rank of boyar, the aristocratic order just below the rank of ruling princes. After fighting the Crimean Tatars in the south (1556), he was named by Ivan to be one of the Russian commanders in the campaign to conquer Livonia and was sent to the western frontier (1557). Although militarily successful, after 1563 Kurbsky lost Ivan's favour and was effectively confined to Dorpat (now Tartu). When Ivan failed to renew his appointment, Kurbsky fled (April 30, 1564) to the camp of King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland-Lithuania, who granted him large estates and gave him a commission in his army to fight Ivan (September 1564).
Later Kurbsky defended the interests of the Orthodox population of Lithuania against encroachments from Catholics and Protestants. He also wrote religious works and an account of Ivan's reign (Istoriya o velikom knyaze moskovskom; “History of the Grand Duke of Muscovy”), in which he attacked Ivan's reign of terror. Kurbsky's letters are also interesting—the most famous being those he wrote to Ivan after his flight. From his correspondence it is evident that the Russian nobles—who until recently had been independent rulers of their principalities—found a spokesman in Kurbsky to voice their disapproval of Ivan's absolutist tendencies.
Avvakum Petrovich
▪ Russian priest
born 1620/1621, Grigorovo, Russia
died April 14, 1682, Pustozersk
archpriest, leader of the Old Believers (Old Believer), conservative clergy who brought on one of the most serious crises in the history of the Russian church by separating from the Russian Orthodox church to support the “old rite,” consisting of many purely local Russian developments. He is also considered to be a pioneer of modern Russian literature.
In 1652 he went to Moscow and joined in the struggle against Patriarch Nikon, whose high-handed methods and brutal treatment of dissidents made unpopular his reforms of adopting Greek Orthodox church customs in an effort to unite the entire Orthodox church. Under Nikon's regime, Old Believers were excommunicated and severely persecuted. Avvakum himself was twice banished and finally imprisoned. It was during his imprisonment in Pustozersk that he wrote most of his works, the greatest of which is considered to be his Zhitiye (“Life”), the first Russian autobiography. Distinguished for its lively description and for its original, colourful style, the Zhitiye is one of the great works of early Russian literature. A council of 1682 against the Old Believers condemned Avvakum to be burned at the stake, and the sentence was carried out.
Old Believer
▪ Russian religious group
Russian Starover,
member of a group of Russian religious dissenters who refused to accept the liturgical reforms imposed upon the Russian Orthodox church by the patriarch of Moscow Nikon (1652–58). Numbering millions of faithful in the 17th century, the Old Believers split into a number of different sects, of which several survived into modern times.
Patriarch Nikon faced the difficult problem of deciding on an authoritative source for the correction of the liturgical books in use in Russia. These books, used since the conversion of Rus to Christianity in 988, were literal translations from the Greek into Old Slavic. In the course of centuries, manuscript copies of the translations, which were sometimes inaccurate and obscure at the start, were further mutilated by the mistakes of the scribes. Reform was difficult, for there was no agreement as to where the “ideal” or “original” text was to be found. The option taken by Patriarch Nikon was to follow exactly the texts and practices of the Greek Church as they existed in 1652, the beginning of his reign, and to this effect he ordered the printing of new liturgical books following the Greek pattern. His decree also required the adoption in Russia of Greek usages, Greek forms of clerical dress, and a change in the manner of crossing oneself: three fingers were to be used instead of two. The reform, obligatory for all, was considered “necessary for salvation” and was supported by Tsar Alexis Romanov.
Opposition to Nikon's reforms was led by a group of Muscovite priests, notably the archpriest Avvakum Petrovich. Even after the deposition of Nikon (1658), who broached too strong a challenge to the Tsar's authority, a series of church councils culminating in that of 1666–67 officially endorsed the liturgical reforms and anathematized the dissenters. Several of them, including Avvakum, were executed.
The dissenters, sometimes called Raskolniki, were most numerous in the inaccessible regions of northern and eastern Russia (but later also in Moscow itself) and were important in the colonization of these remote areas. Opposed to all change, they strongly resisted the Western innovations introduced by Peter I, whom they regarded as Antichrist. Having no episcopal hierarchy, they split into two groups. One group, the Popovtsy (priestly sects), sought to attract ordained priests and were able to set up an episcopate in the 19th century. The other, the Bezpopovtsy (priestless sects), renounced priests and all sacraments, except Baptism. Many other sects developed out of these groups, some with practices considered extravagant.
The Old Believers benefitted from the edict of toleration (April 17, 1905), and most groups survived the Russian Revolution of 1917. Numerous branches of both the Popovtsy and the Bezpopovtsy succeeded in becoming registered and thus officially recognized by the Soviet state. The membership of one Moscow-centred Popovtsy group, the convention of Belaya Krinitsa, was estimated in the early 1970s at 800,000. Little is known, however, of the Old Believer settlements supposed to exist in Siberia, the Urals, Kazakhstan, and the Altai. Some groups exist elsewhere in Asia and in Brazil and the United States.