Scribd
Upload
8 views1 page

Bunyn - копия

The document outlines the transition of Kyiv from a period of destruction under the Tartars to a cultural revival during the reign of the Romanovs. It highlights key historical figures, such as Ivan II and Ivan IV, and their impact on Russian culture and Orthodox faith. The introduction of Russian printing and the translation of Western literature under the Romanovs marked a significant shift in literary expression in Russia.

Uploaded by

distortion504
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
8 views1 page

Bunyn - копия

The document outlines the transition of Kyiv from a period of destruction under the Tartars to a cultural revival during the reign of the Romanovs. It highlights key historical figures, such as Ivan II and Ivan IV, and their impact on Russian culture and Orthodox faith. The introduction of Russian printing and the translation of Western literature under the Romanovs marked a significant shift in literary expression in Russia.

Uploaded by

distortion504
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

From Dark Age to Golden Age

Kyiv was destroyed in Russia’s literary Dark Age under the Tartars, and Russian culture
was dominated by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, whose ruler Dmitri won a victory over
the Tartars at Kulikovo, memorialized in the fifteenth-century Cossack
epic Zadónščina (beyond the river Don). Ivan II at last drove the Tartars from a unified
Russia in 1480, less than a generation after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople,
and Moscow became the “third Rome.” Imperial power was inseparable from Orthodox
belief, and Ivan II, wed to a Byzantine princess, regarded himself as the sole genuine
defender of the Orthodox faith. His grandson and namesake, Ivan IV, popularly known
in the West as Ivan the Terrible (more accurately, the Awesome), a talented political
polemicist, practiced heinous excesses in the name of personal absolutism. After Ivan
murdered his oldest son, his line died out, and for the next generation civil disorder was
exacerbated by crop failures, famine, and plague. Finally, in 1613, delegates from all
the Russias elected Mikhail, the first of the Romanov czars.

During the post-Ivan Time of Troubles, literature in Russia was confined to Old Church
Slavonic, though the people clung to folktales and Russianized Western romances.
Under the first Romanovs, every Western form of literature except theology began to be
translated and widely promulgated with the advent of Russian printing in 1564. In 1678,
Simeon Polotsky, tutor to Czar Alexei’s children, introduced a syllabic verse system,
solemn and even pompous, that dominated Russian poetry for a century.

You might also like