Russia’s Image in Early Modern Europe: Between Paradise and Despotic Hell

Abstract

Western perceptions of Russia have a long history, starting from the earliest reports in the fifteenth century. For some Westerners Russia appeared as a utopian, harmonious society. For others it appeared as an ideal monarchy. Some, however, saw it as a despotic Asian state. The Western images of Russia from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries were thus mixed and ambiguous. The positive image of Russia as the ideal Biblical society that stood outside of history somewhat blurred the differences between Russia and the West. In contrast, for an increasing number of Westerners, especially from the more advanced proto-capitalist countries, Russia was part of the non-Western world, thus emphasizing its difference from the West. Russia was thus assimilated into the Western image of the Orient where repulsion combined with fascination, until, under the impact of Romanticism in the nineteenth century, its foreignness was articulated in terms of civilizational and religious differences.

All translations from the Russian into English, except for the travels of Adam Olearius (see note 12), are mine.

Notes

1. This increasing restrictiveness and predetermination of behavior was recorded more than a generation ago by the French postmodernists, especially by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995); originally published as Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).

2. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958).

3. Albertus Campensis, De Moscovia, in Rossiia v pervoi polovine XVI v: vzgliad iz Evropy [Russia in the first half of the sixteenth century: The View from Europe] (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk; Institut Vseobshchei Istorii, 1997), 106; hereafter page references are cited in the text.

4. Joannes Fabri, “Moscovitarum religio,” in Rossiia v pervoi polovine XVI v, 192;

hereafter page references are cited in the text.

5. Sebastiannus Munsterus, “Cosmographia universalis,” in Rossiia pervoi polovine XVI v, 317–41.

6. Angliiskie puteshestviniki v Moskovskom gosudarstve v XVI veke (Ryazan: Aleksandriia, 2006), 80.

7. Etienne de la Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008), 63, 59.

8. Francesco da Collo, Donesenie o Moskovii (Moscow: Nasledie, 1996), 59. Da Collo might have heard of the animal riches while hunting with the Prince. See Olga Simich, “Diplomaticheskaia missiia posla Maksimilianna I,” in ibid, 28; hereafter page references are cited in the text.

9. See, for example, Angliiskie puteshestviniki v Moskovskom gosudarstve v XVI veke.

10. Sigismund von Herberstein, Zapiski o Moskovii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universitety, 1988), 121; hereafter page references are cited in the text.

11. Zapiski Stanislava Nemoevskogo (1606–1608), Rukopis’ Zholkevskogo (Ryazan: Aleksandriia, 2006), 43, 85; hereafter page references are cited in the text.

12. Adam Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, trans. and ed. Samuel H. Baron (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967); hereafter page references are cited in the text.

13. The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, 92, 142.

14. Jan Struys, “Tret’e puteshestvie,” in Moskoviia i Evropa (Moscow: Fond Sergeia Dubova, 2000), 33, 358, 371, 362. Stepan Razin was a legendary leader of rebellious peasants in seventeenth-century Russia. He started his career as a plains bandit, and turned his later criminal activities against the social-political order.

15. The image of Russia as a rich country was also enhanced by other reports such as the report of the Russian defector Grigorii Karpovich Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Michailovicha (Moscow: Rosspen, 2000), 84.

16. Francesco Algarotti, Viaggi de Russia, Russkie Puteshestviia: Pis’ma o Rossii (St. Petersburg: Kniga, 2006), 76.