ABSTRACT
It is by now widely accepted in scholarly circles that the reign of Peter the Great did not signify as sharp a break with the Muscovite past as had been previously thought or imagined. Recent work has investigated several aspects of Muscovite culture in which the ground had already been prepared for Peter the Great’s subsequent “reforms.” Such work has provided clues and even in some cases analyzed in depth, the ways in which western ideas (whatever the “West” that they came from was) had penetrated into Muscovy since at least the middle of the seventeenth century. Literary scholars took the lead in this direction by analyzing the western, baroque notions of language and style prominent in the
1 For examples, see Lidiia I.Sazonova, “Poeticheskoe tvorchestvo Evfimiia Chudovskogo,” Slavia 56:3 (1987), 243-52 [but cf. her “Vostochnoslavianskie Akademii XVI-XVIII vv. v kontekste evropeiskoi akademicheskoi traditsii,” Slavianovedenie 1995, 3, 46-61, in which she still employs the binary model grecophile-latinophile, although she avoids any characterizations of the Leichoudes themselves in this regard]; Andrei N.Robinson, ed., Simeon Polotskii i ego knigoizdatel’skaia deiatel’nost’ (Moscow: Nauka, 1982); Aleksandr M. Panchenko, Russkaia stikhotvornaia kul’tura XVII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973); Anna S. Eleonskaia, Russkaia oratorskaia proza v literaturnom protsesse XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1990); Andrei N.Robinson, Bor’ba idei v russkoi literature XVII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1974); Anatolii S. Demin, “Russkie p’esy 1670-kh godov i pridvornaia kul’tura,” TODRL 27 (1972), 273-83; James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), esp. chap. 4; Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Cathy J. Potter, “The Russian Church and the Politics of Reform in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1993). 2 Pre-revolutionary and Soviet historians had also identified education and active pursuit of learning as speeding up in the second half of the seventeenth century but almost invariably misinterpreted it, or failed to analyze it fully or to draw its implications for the subsequent developments. Representative are: Nikolai F.Kapterev, Kharakter otnoshenii Rossii k pravoslavnomu vostoku v XVI-XVII stoletiiakh, 2d ed. (Sergiev Posad: Izd. M.S.Elova, 1914); Andrei P.Bogdanov, “K polemike kontsa 60-kh-nachala 80-kh godov XVII v. ob organizatsii vysshego uchebnogo zavedeniia v Rossii. Istochnikovedcheskie
Russian court since the 1660s. Historians of art have disputed the extent of baroque influences on Russian art and architecture, but nonetheless have identified changes as well. Historians have expanded upon these developments by tracing their impact on the court elite’s attitudes to learning and religious experience.1 The majority of these scholars have emphasized an increasing interest and even active quest for education and learning by the court elite as a theme running throughout the second half of the seventeenth century.2 Both informal, private and formal, institutional education appear to be major venues through which western ideas, (whether modern or not in the West, but certainly new in the Russian context) found their way into Russia. Still, much more work remains to be done, especially with regard to attempts at institutionalized education, prior to Peter’s initiatives. Only through an in depth analysis of the content, purposes and possible impact of these attempts can we hope to fully realize the evolution of Russian educational enterprises in particular, and Russian culture in general on the eve and during Peter the Great’s reign.
