Russian Literature and Orthodoxy

If literature is judged by texts alone, the history of Russian literature must be said to have begun in concert with the adoption of Christianity in Kievan Rus’. While no one doubts the existence of oral literature among the pre-Christian Slavs, no samples from this period exist for the simple reason that Kievan culture was then in the preliterate state of development. And in the early years after the “Baptism of Rus,” the distinguishing feature of the Byzantine mission to the Slavs – the introduction and promotion of the Slavic language in ecclesiastical usage – contributed directly to the exclusion of non-religious verbal art from the written record. Because the Gospels, the liturgical service books, and other explicitly religious texts constituted the primary written canon, the written mode per se tended to be associated with a high and solemn status that was naturally inhospitable to works on non-religious themes. To this one must add the understandably negative attitude of church-connected writers toward any tradition containing pre-Christian symbolism. ¹