Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/66

40 Russian roughness was no worse than the roughness of the Old Teutons. In ancient monuments and other memorials of antique civilisation, the attentive observer can discern Teutonic and Russian elements side by side with Latin and Greek, and can trace how foreign influence was accepted and elaborated, but was also on occasions repelled.

The literary memorials of the Kievic epoch display to us Russian Old Russia in a more favourable light than Byzantine Old Russia. We see this, for example, in Vladimir's Instruction, compiled for the use of his sons. It is true that Monomachus's writing (Vladimir Monomachus, 1113-1125) betrays Byzantine influence, but his Christianity is comparatively humane, his morality is comparatively unascetic and natural, and the princely author recommends love and sympathy towards fellow men, especially towards the poor and lowly. The writer's own actions did not, indeed, always square with his words, but this is by no means an infrequent experience, whether we have to do with crowned or uncrowned heads.

Nestor the chronicler, who flourished in the beginning of the twelfth century, gives the same impression of naturalness and freshness. As author he was the first Russian realist. He had a thorough knowledge of peoples and places, and his outlook on life and on historical events was anything but monastic. If he was indeed a monk, as some maintain, this gives us additional proof that even in monasteries at that date Christianity existed solely in externals. To the same period and to the same category belong the epic The Lay of Igor's Raid, the vestiges of numerous sagas (byliny, etc.), and folk poetry in general collected during the nineteenth century. All these memorials serve to show that the education and transformation of ancient Russia by Byzantine influence was effected very gradually and encountered considerable opposition. The Muscovite realm was the first to become definitely Byzantine, and this only under Tatar auspices.

Kievic territory, however, was detached from Muscovite Great Russia, and was not reunited until the seventeenth century. Thenceforward the south again made its influence felt, politically, socially, and nationally.