Russian literature

Front matter

BY

P. KROPOTKIN

NEW YORK

Chapter I : Introduction i

The Russian Language — Early folk literature: Folklore — Songs — Sagas — Lay of Igors Raid — Annals — Mongolian Invasion; its consequences — Correspondence between John IV. and Kurbskiy — Religious splitting — Avvakum's Memoirs — The eighteenth century — Peter I. and his contemporaries : Tretiakovskiy — Lomonosoff — Sumarokoff — The times of Catherine II: Derzhavin — Von Wizin — The Freemasons: Novikoff — Radischeif — Early nineteenth century: Karamzin and Zhukovskiy — ^The Decembrists — Ryleeff.

Chapter II: Pushkin; Lermontoff . . -39

Pushkin — Beauty of form — Pushkin and Schiller — His youth; his exile; his later career and death — Fairy tales: Ruslan and Ludmila — His lyrics — " Byronism " — Drama — Evgheniy Onyeghin — Lermontoff — Pushkin or Lermontoff? His life — ^The Caucasus — Poetry of nature — Influence of Shelley — The Demon — Mtsyri — Love of Freedom — Pushkin and Lermontoif as prose-writers — Other poets and novelists of the same epoch.

Chapter III: Gogol 67

Little Russia — Nights on a Farm near Dikanka and Mirgorod — Village life and humour — How Ivan Ivanovitch quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforytch — Historical novel: Taras Bulba — The Cloak — Drama: The Inspector-General — Its influence — Dead Souls: Main types — Realism in the Russian novel.

Chapter IV: Turgueneff; Tolstoy ... 88

Turgueneff — The Character of his art — A Sportsman's Note-book — Pessimism in his early novels — His series of novels representing the leading types of Society: Rudin —

CONTENTS

Lavretskiy — Helen and Insaroff — Bazaroff — Why Fathers and Sons was misunderstood — Hamlet and Don Quixote — Virgin Soil — Movement towards the people — Tolstoy — Childhood and Boyhood — During and after the Crimean War — Youth: in search of an ideal — Small stories — The Cossacks — Educational work — War and Peace — Anna Karenina — Religious crisis — His interpretation of the Christian teaching — Main points of Christian ethics — Latest works of art — Kreutzer Sonata — Resurrection,

Chapter V: Gontcharoff; Dostoyevskiy; NekrAsoff 151

Gontcharoff — Oblomoff — ^The Russian malady of Oblomoffdom — Is it exclusively Russian? The Precipice — Dostoyevskiy — His first novel — General character of his work — ^Memoirs from a Dead House — Down-trodden and Offended — Crime and Punishment — The Brothers Karamazoff — NekrasofiF — Discussions about his talent — His love of the people — Apotheosis of Woman — Other prose-writers of the same epoch — Serghei Aksakof? — Dal — Ivan PanaefE — Hvoschinskaya (V. Krestovskiy-pseudonyme) — Poets of the same epoch — KoltsofE — Nikitin — Plescheeff — The admirers of pure art: TutchefE; A. Maykoff; Scherbina; A. Fet — ^A. K. Tolstoy — ^The Translators.

Chapter VI: The Drama 191

Its origin — ^The Tsars Alexel and Peter I. — Sumarokof! — Pseudo-classical tragedies: Knyazhnin; OzerofiE — First comedies — ^The first years of the nineteenth century — GriboyedoflF — ^The Moscow stage in the fifties — Ostrovskiy: his first dramas — The Thunderstorm — Ostrovskiy 's later dramas — Historical dramas: A. K. Tolstoy — Other dramatic writers.

Chapter VII : Folk-Novelists . . . .221

Their position in Russian literature — The early folk-novelists — Grigirovitch — Marko Vovtchok — Danilevskiy — Intermediate period: Kokoreff; Pisemskiy; Potyekhin — Ethnographical researches — ^The realistic school: Pomyalovskiy — RyeshetnikofE — Levitoff — Gleb Uspenskiy — Zlatovratskiy and other folk-novelists : Naumoff — Zasodimskiy — SalofE — Nefedoff — Modern realism: Maxim Gorkiy.

CONTENTS

Chapter VIII: Political Literature; Satire

Art-Criticism; Contemporary Novelists . 263 Political Literature — Difficulties of censorship — The circles: Westerners and Slavophiles — Political literature abroad : Herzen — Ogaryoff — Bakunin — Lavroff — Stepniak — The Contemporary and Tchernyshevskiy — Satire: Schedrin (Saltykoff) — Art-Criticism — Its importance in Russia — Byelinskiy — Dobroluboff — Pisareff — Mihailovskiy — Tolstoy's What is Artf Contemporary Novelists: Oertel — Korolenko — Present drift of literature — Merezhovskiy — Boborykin — Potapenko — ^Tchehoff.

Bibliographical Notes ...... 319 i

Chapter I _

THE Russian Language — Early folk literature: Folk-lore — Songs — Sagas — Lay of Igors Raid — Annals — ^The Mongol Invasion; its consequences — Correspondence between John IV. and Kurbiskiy — Split in the Church — Awakum's Memoirs — The eighteenth century: Peter I. and his contemporaries — Tretiakovsky — Lomonosoff — Sumarokoff — The times of Catherine II. — Derzhavin — Von Wizin — ^The Freemasons: Novikoff; Radischeff — Early nineteenth century: Karamzin and Zhukovskiy — The Decembrists — Ryleeif.

o

^NE of the last messages which Turgueneff addressed to Russian writers from his death-bed was to Implore them to keep In Its purity " that precious Inheritance of ours — the Russian language." He who knew In perfection most of the languages spoken In Western Europe had the highest opinion of Russian as an Instrument for the expression of all possible shades of thought and feeling, and he had shown In his writings what depth and force of expression, and what melodiousness of prose, could be obtained In his native tongue. In his high appreciation of Russian, Turgueneff — as will often be seen In these pages — was perfectly right. The richness of the Russian language In words Is astounding: many a word which stands alone for the expression of a given idea In the languages of Western Europe has In Russian three or four equivalents for the rendering of the various shades of the same Idea. It Is especially rich for rendering various shades of human feeling — tenderness and love, sadness and merriment — as also various degrees of the same action. Its plIablHty for translation Is such that In no other language do we find an equal number of most beautiful, correct, and truly poetical renderings of foreign authors. Poets of the most diverse character, such as Heine and Beranger, Longfellow and Schiller, Shelley and Goethe — to say nothing of that favourite with Russian translators, Shakespeare — are equally well turned Into Russian. The sarcasm of Voltaire, the rollicking humour of Dickens, the good-natured laughter of Cervantes are rendered with equal ease. Moreover, owing to the musical character of the Russian tongue. It is wonderfully adapted for rendering poetry In the same metres as those of the original. Longfellow's " Hiawatha " (In two different translations, both admirable), Heine's capricious lyrics, Schiller's ballads, the melodious folk-songs of different nationalities, and Beranger's playful chansonnettes, read In Russian with exactly the same rhythms as in the originals. The desperate vagueness of German metaphysics Is quite as much at home In Russian as the matter-of-fact style of the eighteenth century philosophers ; and the short, concrete and expressive, terse sentences of the best English writers offer no difficulty for the Russian translator.

Together with Czech and Polish, Moravian, Serbian and Bulgarian, as also several minor tongues, the Russian belongs to the great Slavonian family of languages which, in its turn — together with the Scandinavo-Saxon and the Latin families, as also the Lithuanian, the Persian, the Armenian, the Georgian — ^belongs to the great Indo-European, or Aryan branch. Some day — soon, let us hope: the sooner the better — the treasures of both the folk-songs possessed by the South Slavonians and the many centuries old literature of the Czechs and the Poles will be revealed to Western readers. But in this work I have to concern myself only with the literature of the Eastern, i. e,, the Russian, branch of the great Slavonian family; and in this branch I shall have to omit both the South-Russian or Ukrainian literature and the White or West- Russian folk-lore and songs. I shall treat only of the literature of the Great- Russians; or, simply, the Russians. Of all the Slavonian languages theirs is the most widely spoken. It is the language of Pushkin and Lermontoff, Turgueneff and Tolstoy.

Like all other languages, the Russian has adopted many foreign words: Scandinavian, Turkish, Mongolian and, lately, Greek and Latin. But notwithstanding the assimilation of many nations and stems of the Ural-Altayan or

Turanian stock which has been accomplished In the course of ages by the Russian nation, her language has remained remarkably pure. It Is striking indeed to see how the translation of the Bible which was made In the ninth century Into die language currently spoken by the Moravians and the South Slavonians remains comprehensible, down to the present time, to the average Russian. Grammatical forms and the construction of sentences are indeed quite different now. But the roots, as well as a very considerable number of words, remain the same as those which were used in current talk a thousand years ago.

It must be said that the South-Slavonian had attained a high degree of perfection, even at that early time. Very few words of the Gospels had to be rendered in Greek — and these are names of things unknown to the South Slavonians; while for none of the abstract words, and for none of tlie poetical images of the original, had the translators any difficulty in finding the proper expressions. Some of the words they used are, moreover, of a remarkable beauty, and this beauty has not been lost even to-day. Everyone remembers, for instance, the difficulty which the learned Dr. Faust, in Goethe's immortal tragedy, found in rendering the sentence: "In the beginning was the Word." "Word," in modern German, seemed to Dr. Faust to be too shallow an expression for the idea of " the Word being God." In the old Slavonian translation we have " Slovo," which also means " Word," but has at the same time, even for the modern Russian, a far deeper meaning than that of das Wort. In old Slavonian " Slovo " included also the meaning of " Intellect " — German Vernunft; and consequently it conveyed to the reader an idea which was deep enough not to clash with the second part of the Biblical sentence.

I wish that I could give here an idea of the beauty of the structure of the Russian language, such as it was spoken early in the eleventh century In North Russia, a sample of which has been preserved in the sermon of a Novgorod bishop ( 1035 ) . The short sentences of this sermon, calculated to be understood by a newly christened flock, are really beautiful; while the bishop's conceptions of Christianity, utterly devoid of Byzantine gnosticism, are most characteristic of the manner In which Christianity was and Is still understood by the masses of the Russian folk.

At the present time, the Russian language (the Great- Russian) Is remarkably free from patois. Little-Russian, or Ukrainian,* which is spoken by nearly 15,000,000 people, and has Its own literature — folk-lore and modern — Is undoubtedly a separate language. In the same sense as Norwegian and Danish are separate from Swedish, or as Portuguese and Catalonlan are separate from Castlllan or Spanish. White-Russian, which Is spoken In some provinces of Western Russia, has also the characteristics of a separate branch of the Russian, rather than those of a local dialect. As to Great-Russian, or Russian, It Is spoken by a compact body of nearly eighty million people In Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southern Russia, as also in Northern Caucasia and Siberia. Its pronunciation slightly varies In different parts of this large territory; nevertheless the literary language of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgueneff, and Tolstoy Is understood by all this enormous mass of people. The Russian classics circulate In the villages by millions of copies, and when, a few years ago, the literary property In Pushkin's works came to an end (fifty years after his death), complete editions of his works — ^some of them In ten volumes — were circulated by the hundred-thousand, at the almost incredibly low price of three shillings (75 cents) the ten volumes; while millions of copies of his separate poems and tales are sold now by thousands of ambulant booksellers In the villages, at the price of from one to three farthings each. Even the complete works of Gogol, Turgueneff, and Goncharoff, In twelve-volume editions, have sometimes sold to the number of 200,000 sets each. In the course of a single year. The advantages of this intellectual unity of the nation are self-evident.

EARLY FOLK-LITERATURE : FOLK-LORE SONGS SAGAS

The early folk-literature of Russia, part of which is still preserved in the memories of the people alone, is wonderfully rich and full of the deepest interest. No nation of Western Europe possesses such an astonishing wealth of traditions, tales, and lyric folk-songs — some of them of the greatest beauty — and such a rich cycle of archaic epic songs, as Russia does. Of course, all European nations have had, once upon a time, an equally rich folk-literature; but the great bulk of It was lost before scientific explorers had understood its value or begun to collect it. In Russia, this treasure was preserved in remote villages untouched by civilisation, especially In the region round Lake Onega; and when the folk-lorlsts began to collect It, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they found in Northern Russia and in Little Russia old bards still going about the villages with their primitive string instruments, and reciting poems of a very ancient origin.

Besides, a variety of very old songs are sung still by the village folk themselves. Every annual holiday — Christmas, Easter, Midsummer Day — has its own cycle of songs, which have been preserved, with their melodies, even from pagan times. At each marriage, which Is accompanied by a very complicated ceremonial, and at each burial, similarly old songs are sung by the peasant women. Many of them have, of course, deteriorated In the course of ages ; of many others mere fragments have survived; but, mindful of the popular saying that " never a word must be cast out of a song," the women In many localities continue to sing the most antique songs In full, even though the meaning of many of the words has already been lost.

There are, moreover, the tales. Many of them are certainly the same as we find among all nations of Aryan origin : one may read them In Grimm's collection of fairy tales; but others came also from the Mongols and the Turks; while some of them seem to have a purely Russian origin. And next come the songs recited by wandering singers — the Kaliki — also very ancient. They are entirely borrowed from the East, and deal with heroes and heroines of other nationalities than the Russian, such as " Akib, the Assyrian King/* the beautiful Helen, Alexander the Great, or Rustem of Persia. The Interest which these Russian versions of Eastern legends and tales offer to the explorer of folk-lore and mythology is self-evident.

Finally, there are the epic songs: the byliny, which correspond to the Icelandic sagas. Even at the present day they are sung In the villages of Northern Russia by special bards who accompany themselves with a special Instrument, also of very ancient origin. The old singer utters in a sort of recitative one or two sentences, accompanying himself with his Instrument; then follows a melody, into which each individual singer Introduces modulations of his own, before he resumes next the quiet recitative of the epic narrative. Unfortunately, these old bards are rapidly disappearing; but some five-and-thlrty years ago a few of them were still alive in the province of Olonets, to the north-east of St. Petersburg, and I once heard one of them, whom A. Hllferding had brought to the capital, and who sang before the Russian Geographical Society his wonderful ballads. The collecting of the epic songs was happily begun in good time — during the eighteenth century — and it has been eagerly continued by specialists, so that Russia possesses now perhaps the richest collection of such songs — about four hundred — which has been saved from oblivion.

The heroes of the Russian epic songs are knights-errant, whom popular tradition unites round the table of the Kieff Prince, Vladimir the Fair Sun. Endowed with supernatural physical force, these knights, Ilyia of Murom, Dobrynia Nikitlch, Nicholas the Villager, Alexei the Priest's Son, and so on, are represented going about Russia, clearing the country of giants, who infested the land, or of Mongols and Turks. Or else they go to distant lands to fetch a bride for the chief of their schola, the Prince Vladimir, or for themselves; and they meet, of course, on their journeys, with all sorts of adventures, in which witchcraft plays an important part. Each of the heroes of these sagas has his own individuality. For instance, Ilyia, the Peasant's Son, does not care for gold or riches: he fights only to clear the land from giants and strangers. Nicholas the Villager is the personlficatlon of the force with which the tiller of the soil is endowed: nobody can pull out of the ground his heavy plough, while he himself lifts it with one hand and throws it above the clouds; Dobrynia embodies some of the features of the dragon-fighters, to whom belongs St. George; Sadko is the personification of the rich merchant, and Tchurilo of the refined, handsome, urbane man with whom all women fall In love.

At the same time. In each of these heroes, there are doubtless mythological features. Consequently, the early Russian explorers of the byliny, who worked under the Influence of Grimm, endeavoured to explain them as fragments of an old Slavonian mythology, In which the forces of Nature are personified in heroes. In Iliya they found the features of the God of the Thunders. Dobrynia the Dragon-Killer was supposed to represent the sun In its passive power — the active powers of fighting being left to Iliya. Sadko was the personification of navigation, and the Sea-God whom he deals with was Neptune. Tchurilo was taken as a representative of the demoniacal element. And so on. Such was, at least, the Interpretation put upon the sagas by the early explorers.

V. V. StAsoff, in his Origin of the Russian Byliny (1868), entirely upset this theory. With a considerable wealth of argument he proved that these epic songs are not fragments of a Slavonic mythology, but represent borrowings from Eastern tales. Iliya is the Rustem of the Iranian legends, placed In Russian surroundings. Dobrynia Is the Krishna of Indian folk-lore; Sadko Is the merchant of the Eastern tales, as also of a Norman tale. All the Russian epic heroes have an Eastern origin. Other explorers went still further than Stasoff. They saw In the heroes of Russian epics insignificant men who had lived In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Iliya of Murom Is really mentioned as a historic person In a Scandinavian chronicle), to whom the exploits of Eastern heroes, borrowed from Eastern tales, were attributed. Consequently, the heroes of the byliny could have had nothing to do with the times of Vladimir, and still less with the earlier Slavonic mythology.

The gradual evolution and migration of myths, which are lo RUSSIAN LITERATURE

successively fastened upon new and local persons as they reach new countries, may perhaps aid to explain these contradictions. That there are mythological features in the heroes of the Russian epics may be taken as certain; only, the mythology they belong to is not Slavonian but Aryan altogether. Out of these mythological representations of the forces of Nature, human heroes were gradually evolved in the East.

At a later epoch when these Eastern traditions began to spread in Russia, the exploits of their heroes were attributed to Russian men, who were made to act in Russian surroundings. Russian folk-lore assimilated them; and, while It retained their deepest semi-mythological features and leading traits of character, it endowed, at the same time, the Iranian Rustem, the Indian dragon-killer, the Eastern merchant, and so on, with new features, purely Russian. It divested them, so to say, of the garb which had been put upon their mystical substances when they were first appropriated and humanised by the Iranians and the Indians, and dressed them now In a Russian garb — just as in the tales about Alexander the Great, which I heard In Transbaikalia, the Greek hero Is endowed with Buryate features and his exploits are located on such and such a Transbaikallan mountain. However, Russian folk-lore did not simply change the dress of the Persian prince, Rustem, Into that of a Russian peasant, Iliya. The Russian sagas, m their style, in the poetical Images they resort to, and partly In the characteristics of their heroes, were new creations. Their heroes are thoroughly Russian: for Instance, they never seek for blood-vengeance, as Scandinavian heroes would do; their actions, especially those of " the elder heroes,'* are not dictated by personal alms, but are imbued with a communal spirit, which Is characteristic of Russian popular life. They are as much Russians as Rustem was Persian. As to the time of composition of these sagas. It is generally believed that they date from the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, but that they received their definite shape — the one that has reached us — In the fourteenth century. Since that time they have undergone but little alteration.

In these sagas Russia has thus a precious national Inherit-

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE ii

ance of a rare poetical beauty, which has been fully appreciated in England by Ralston, and in France by the historian Rambaud.

" LAY OF IGOR's RAID "

And yet Russia has not her Iliad. There has been no poet to inspire himself with the expolits of Illya, Dobrynia, Sadko, Tchurilo, and the others, and to make out of them a poem similar to the epics of Homer, or the " Kalevala " of the Finns. This has been done with only one cycle of traditions: in the poem, The Lay of Igor*s Raid {Slovo o Polku Igor eve).

This poem was composed at the end of the twelfth century, or early in the thirteenth (its full manuscript, destroyed during the conflagration of Moscow in 1812, dated from the fourteenth or the fifteenth century) . It was undoubtedly the work of one author, and for Its beauty and poetical form it stands by the side of the Song of the Nibelungs, or the Song of Roland. It relates a real fact that did happen in 11 85. Igor, a prince of Kieff, starts with his druzhina (schola) of warriors to make a raid on the PolovtsI, who occupied the prairies of South-eastern Russia, and continually raided the Russian villages. All sorts of bad omens are seen on the march through the prairies — the sun Is darkened and casts its shadow on the band of Russian warriors ; the animals give different warnings; but Igor exclaims: "Brothers and friends : Better to fall dead than be prisoners of the PolovtsI ! Let us march to the blue waters of the Don. Let us break our lances against those of the PolovtsI. And either I leave there my head, or I will drink the water of the Don from my golden helmet." The march is resumed, the Polovtsi are met with, and a great battle is fought.

The description of the battle, in which all Nature takes part — the eagles and the wolves, and the foxes who bark after the red shields of the Russians — is admirable. Igor's band is defeated. ** From sunrise to sunset, and from sunset to sunrise, the steel arrows flew, the swords clashed on the helmets, the lances were broken in a far-away land — the land of the Polovtsi." " The black earth under the hoofs of the horses was strewn with bones, and out of this sowing affliction will rise in the land of the Russians.'*

Then comes one of the best bits of early Russian poetry — the lamentations of Yaroslavna, Igor's wife, who waits for his return in the town of Putivl :

" The voice of Yaroslavna resounds as the complaint of a cuckoo ; it resounds at the rise of the sunlight.

" I will fly as a cuckoo down the river. I will wet my beaver sleeves in the Kayala; I will wash with them the wounds of my prince — the deep wounds of my hero.

" Yaroslavna laments on the walls of Putivl.

" Oh, Wind, terrible Wind ! Why dost thou, my master, blow so strong? Why didst thou carry on thy light wings the arrows of the Khan against the warriors of my hero? Is It not enough for thee to blow there, high up In the clouds? Not enough to rock the ships on the blue sea? Why didst thou lay down my beloved upon the grass of the Steppes?

*' Yaroslavna laments upon the walls of Putivl.

" Oh, glorious Dnieper, thou hast pierced thy way through the rocky hills to the land of Polovtsi. Thou hast carried the boats of Svyatoslav as they went to fight the Khan Kobyak. Bring, oh, my master, my husband back to me, and I will send no more tears through thy tide towards the sea.

" Yaroslavna laments upon the walls of Putivl.

"Brilliant Sun, thrice brilliant Sun! Thou givest heat to all, thou shinest for all. Why shouldest thou send thy burning rays upon my husband's warriors? Why didst thou, in the waterless steppe, dry up their bows in their hands? Why shouldest thou, making them suffer from thirst, cause their arrows to weigh so heavy upon their shoulders ? '*

This little fragment gives some Idea of the general character and beauty of the Saying about Igor's Raid, *

* English readers will find the translation of this poem in full in the excellent Anthology of Russian Literature from the Earliest Period to the Present Timej by Leo Wiener, published in two volumes, in 1902, by G. P. Putnam & Sons, at New York. Professor Wiener knows Russian literature perfectly well, and has made a very happy choice of a very great number of the most characteristic passages from Russian writers, beginning with the oldest period (911), and ending with our contemporaries, Gorkiy and Merezhkovskiy.

Surely this poem was not the only one that was composed and sung In those times. The introduction Itself speaks of bards, and especially of one, Bayan, whose recitations and songs are compared to the wind that blows In the tops of the trees. Many such Bayans surely went about and sang similar " Sayings " during the festivals of the princes and their warriors. Unfortunately, only this one has reached us. The Russian Church, especially In the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, pitilessly proscribed the singing of all the epic songs which circulated among the people: It considered them " pagan," and Inflicted the heaviest penalties upon the bards and those who sang old songs In their rings. Consequently, only small fragments of this early folk-lore have reached us.

And yet even these few relics of the past have exercised a powerful Influence upon Russian literature, ever since it has taken the liberty of treating other subjects than purely religious ones. If Russian versification took the rhythmical form, as against the syllabic. It was because this form was Imposed upon the Russian poets by the folk-song. Besides, down to quite recent times, folk-songs constituted such an Important Item in Russian country life. In the homes alike of the landlord and the peasant, that they could not but deeply influence the Russian poets; and the first great poet of Russia, Pushkin, began his career by re-telling In verse his old nurse's tales to which he used to listen during the long winter nights. It Is also owing to our almost Incredible wealth of most musical popular songs that we have had In Russia, since so early a date as 1835, an opera (Verstovskly's Jskold's Grave) ^ based upon popular tradition, of which the purely Russian melodies at once catch the ear of the least musically-educated Russian. This Is also why the operas of Dargomyzhsky and the younger composers are now successfully sung In the villages to peasant audiences and with local peasant choirs.

The folk-lore and the folk-song have thus rendered to Russia an Immense service. They have maintained a certain unity of the spoken language all over Russia, as also a unity between the literary language and the language spoken by the masses; between the music of Glinka, Tchaykovsky,

Rimsky Korsakoff, Borodin, etc., and the music of the peasant choir — thus rendering both the poet and the composer accessible to the peasant.

THE ANNALS

And finally, whilst speaking of the early Russian literature, a few words, at least, must be said of the Annals.

No country has a richer collection of them. There were, in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, several centres of development in Russia, Kieff, Novgorod, Pskov, the land of Volhynia, the land of Suzdal (Vladimir, Moscow *), Ryazan, etc., represented at that time independent republics, linked together only by the unity of language and religion, and by the fact that all of them elected their Princes — military defenders and judges — from the house of Rurik. Each of these centers had its own annals, bearing the stamp of local life and local character. The South Russian and Volhynian annals — of w*hich the so-called Nestor^s Annals are the fullest and the best known, are not merely dry records of facts : they are Imaginative and poetical In places. The annals of Novgorod bear the stamp of a city of rich merchants : they are very matter-of-fact, and the annalist warms to his subject only when he describes the victories of the Novgorod republic over the Land of Suzdal. The Annals of the sisterrepublic of Pskov, on the contrary, are imbued with a democratic spirit, and they relate with democratic sympathies and in a most picturesque manner the struggles between the poor of Pskov and the rich — the " black people " and the " white people." Altogether, the annals are surely not the work of monks, as was supposed at the outset; they must have been written for the different cities by men fully Informed about their political life, their treaties with other republics, their inner and outer conflicts.