The Icon and the Axe

The final conquest and colonization of all of southern Russia in the late eighteenth arM"tfie earlyTiineteenth century had swollen the ranks of the peasant population; and the image of the steppe began to replace the more northerly image of the forest in the Russian imagination. There were

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two major forms that life took on the steppe; and both forms were reflected in the brutalized earthbound life of the average peasant. There was vegetable life, free from striving, passively accepting whatever nature sends. There was also the life of the predators-the insects, rodents, ponies from Mongolia, and grain collectors from the cities. Passive, vegetable existence was in many ways the peasant ideal; but many of the Russian peasants transformed themselves into predators through one of those metamorphoses in which peasant folklore abounds. Nothing was more brutal than the peasant who had become a landowner or state official. For he was a new and particularly hungry predator who knew the secrets of the vegetable kingdom: where the deep roots of the plants were kept, and how the silent vegetables managed to survive endless attacks from avaricious nomads. Many peasants secretly aspired to join the ranks of the predators; and when authority weakened or a prophet appeared, many seemingly happy vegetables suddenly turned into rabid animals. Many peasants went through the more peaceful form of metamorphosis which changed him into a wealthy peasant who came to be designated by the Russian word for "fist," kulak. The century since emancipation has seen this long-silent class slowly and reluctantly stream into the cities, and be transformed by modern culture. Behind this seething human drama looms, however, a nagging question which can again be expressed in terms of the older peasant folklore. Have the masses been lifted up from their previous animal and vegetable state? Or have these lower forms of life simply come to prevail over a higher, human culture that was, or might have been?

As more and more Russians became infected with the aristocratic spirit of inquiry, they turned to the question of how Russia might lift itself from the animal and vegetable life of the steppe to some loftier type of reality. In their anguished discussion, Russians of all persuasions tended to turn their metaphorical imagination to the image of a ship at sea. Just as the very coldness of the north had created a fascination with heat and fire; so the vastness and monotony of their land created a certain fascination with the water and those who voyage upon it.

Unlike Gogol's enigmatic image of Russia as a flying troika, the popu-image of Russia as a ship had clear roots in early Christian symbolism. The overwhelming majority of Russians in the mid-nineteenth century still felt secure in the "second ark" of the Russian Church, which reminded them that

just as a boat under the guidance of a pilot leads man across the stormy sea to the safe harbor, so does the Church guided by Christ save man from drowning in the depths of sin, and leads him to the heavenly kingdom.1

The book of law and direction for the Church was known as the "Pilot Book"; and most major monasteries were located on islands or peninsulas, like Athos, best reached by boat. Most pilgrimages ended with sailor-priests piloting the faithful across bodies of water separating them from their shrine. The journey was sometimes dangerous-particularly the increasingly popular route on the pilot ships Faith and Hope across the stormy and ice-clogged White Sea to Solovetsk. In the years after the Crimean War, pilots on these ships were fond of telling pilgrims how the English warships had been unable to harm the monastery with artillery fire because God had miraculously sent flocks of seagulls into the path of their shells.2 Old Believers derived new hope from Russian explorations across the northern Pacific, contending that a surviving remnant of Christ's uncorrupted Church might be found on some island beyond the reach of Antichrist in the Pacific.3 Just as Awakum's first religious calling came to him in a youthful dream that God offered him a ship to pilot,4 so the flagellant sectarians spoke of their itinerant prophetic groups as "boats" led by "pilots" in search of converts whose robes of initiation were known as "white sails."

Secular images of shipsas^yjnbols of hope blended with, and sometimes feplaced7"tBe*reTigious image of ??^??????^?^?^?????? In the Russian north, legends arose about the mythical origins and special personalities of ships, which were often launched with songs of invocation:

Water-maiden All-providing river! … Here is thy gift: A white-sailed bark!5

In the south, ships along the Volga were associated with the free life of the Cossacks; and the favorite form of popular variety show was known as lodka, or the bark. Many of its songs and traditions were absorbed into popular folklore about the Volga, and the popular productions of the naval theater.6