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Historical narrative genres, such as the historical tale and story, were altered significantly in the seventeenth century. Both their content and form were made more democratic. Historical facts were gradually crowded out by fiction; interesting plots, motifs and images from oral folk art began to play an increasing part.

The Tale of the Defence of Azov
by the Don Cossacks

p The process of democratisation of the historical tale is vividly reflected in the poetic Tale of the Defence of Azov by the Don Cossacks. It was written by a Cossack and immortalised the selfless feat of a handful of bold men who not only seized the Turkish fortress of Azov in 1637, but managed to defend it in 1641 against superior enemy forces.

p A. N. Robinson has proposed a convincing theory that the tale’s author was Cossack Captain Fedor Poroshin who arrived with a Cossack embassy in 282 Moscow in 1641 in order to convince the tsar and state to take the fortress of Azov out of the hands of the Cossacks.  [282•1 

p Fedor Poroshin paints an authentic, detailed picture of the Don Cossacks’ feat, using a familiar form: the Cossack- military report. He managed to lend the chancellory genre extraordinary poetic resonance, not only as a result of the mastery of the finest traditions of historical narrative literature (the tales of the battle with Mamai, The Tale of the Taking of Constantinople], but due to his broad, creative use of Cossack folklore and his authentic, precise description of the events themselves.

p The hero of the Tale of the Defence of Azov is distinguished because he is not a renowned historical figure such as a ruler or military commander. Rather the hero is collective—a handful of courageous, bo’d Cossacks who have performed a feat of heroism, not tor personal glory, or selfishness, but in the name of their native land, the state of Muscovy, which “shines forth with grandeur and spaciousness brighter than any other kingdom and the hordes of pagans, the Persians and the Greeks, as the sun does in the heavens”. They are inspired to perform their deed by lofty feelings of national awareness and patriotism. The great majority of Cossacks were former serfs who had run away from their owners to the free Don, “from eternal slavery, from serfdom, from the boyars and the nobles in the service of the tsar”. And although in Rus they are not respected “any more than stinking dogs”, the Cossacks love their motherland and cannot betray it. With biting irony they answer the Turkish envoys, who propose that they surrender the fortress without a fight and join the 283 service of the sultan. The Don Cossacks’ answer to the Turks to a certain degree anticipates the famed letter of the Zaporozhye Cossacks to the Turkish sultan.

p With the purpose of glorifying the Cossacks’ feat, the tale’s author presents an exaggerated picture of the enemy’s approach to the fortress:

p “Where there was pure steppe, there sprang up such a crowd of people that the land looked like a great, impenetrable dark forest. From the number of men and the neighing of their steeds the land by Azov shook and buckled, and the waters of the Don splashed up onto the shores....”

p Five thousand Cossacks were attacked by 300,000 soldiers of the Turkish sultan! Despite this, the Cossacks proudly and scornfully rejected the envoys’ proposal that they peacefully surrender the city and entered an uneven battle. The siege lasted for 95 days; the Cossacks repelled 24 enemy charges and destroyed the tunnel by means of which the enemy attempted to take the fortress. The battle raged on day and night; the Cossacks were exhausted: “And the blood caked on our lips, for we neither ate nor drank! ... For there was no one to relieve us—we had not one hour of rest! " After collecting their strength, the Cossacks went out for the final, decisive sortie. First they bade farewell of their motherland, their native steppes and the quiet Don. Their farewell is the most poetic passage in the tale and reflects Cossack folklore:

p “Farewell dark woods and green groves. Farewell open fields and quiet creeks. Farewell Dark Blue Sea and swift rivers. Farewell Black Sea. Farewell to our sovereign, the quiet Don; for no longer shall we follow you, our chieftain, with fierce warriors to battle, nor shall we shoot wild beasts in the open fields, or catch fish in the quiet Don.” Not only did the Cossacks take leave of their native landscape, they said farewell to their sovereign who was, for them, the personification of the entire Russian land.

p But in the final, decisive battle with the enemy, the Cossacks were victorious and compelled the Turks to abandon their siege.

p The author of the tale pays tribute to tradition: the 284 victory of the Cossacks is explained by the miraculous intercession of heavenly powers led by John the Baptist. Religious fantasy here is only means of glorifying the patriotic feat of the defenders of Azov.

p Traditional battle scenes, taken from the tales of the battle with Mamai and The Tale of the Taking of Constantinople, are combined with a large dose of Cossack folklore. The language of the tale has no literary, rhetorical elements, but is highly colloquial.

p The author makes an effort to create the image of the masses, their emotions, thoughts and moods, and to affirm the power of the people triumphant over the forces of the Turkish potentate.

p Speaking in the name of the entire Don Army, the author tries to persuade Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich to accept the city of Azov and take it under his rule. But Zemsky Sobor of 1641 to 1642 decided to return the fortress to the Turks and Fedor Poroshin, who zealously supported the annexation of Azov by Moscow and exposed the boyars and nobles as oppressors of the Cossacks, was exiled to Siberia.

p The Cossacks’ heroic defense of Azov in 1641 was also reflected in a “documentary” tale that lacked the artistic pathos of the “poetic” tale.

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the historical narratives of events of Azov in 1637 and 1641 developed into the folk tale version known as the Tale of the Siege of Azov and the Defence of the City from the Turkish King Bragim by the Don Cossacks (Istoriya ob Azovskom vzyatii i osadnom sidenii ot turskogo tsarya Bragima donskikh kazakov);  [284•1  it was highly influenced by Cossack songs about the Peasant War under the leadership of Stepan Razin.

Tales of the Founding of Moscow

p In the second half of the seventeenth century, the 285 historical tale began to lose its historicism and took on the features of picaresque tales which, in turn, provided a foundation for the further development of picaresque novels. Attention was primarily focused on people’s personal lives. Writers and readers began to take an interest in daily questions and ethics.

p Very telling in this respect are the Tales of the Founding of Moscow which S. K. Shambinago divides into three kinds: the chronicle tale, the story and the folk tale.  [285•1  These tales were based on the tale of the killing of Andrei Bogolyubsky in 1174 which, in the sixteenth century, was subjected to a fundamental reworking when it was included in the Nikonovsky Chronicles and the Book of Generations. Here the hagiographical description of the prince and the negative evaluation of his murderers, the accursed sons of Kuchka, were intensified.

p The chronicle tale of the founding of Moscow is somewhat true to history: here the founding of Moscow is linked to Yury Dolgoruky who creates the city on the site of the lands belonging to boyar Stepan Kuchka whom he killed. Yury Dolgoruky exiles Kuchka’s sons and daughter Ulita to Vladimir where his son Andrei rules. After becoming Andrei’s wife, Ulita, possessed by lust, heads a conspiracy against her pious husband and, together with her brothers, kills him.

p The “story” totally lacks historical foundation. Here Moscow’s founder is Prince Andrei Alexandrovich, the date is given as June 17, 1291 (an attempt on the author’s part to stress the “historical accuracy" of his tale). The story centres around Ulita, here the wife of Suzdal Prince Daniil Alexandrovich, who illicitly loves the two young sons of the boyar Kuchka. (Actually Alexander Nevsky’s youngest son was prince of Moscow from 1272 to 1303.)

p The portrait of Princess Ulita, burning with “lust inspired by the instigations of Satan”, is related to the tradition of moralistic literature about “evil women”. In the hagiographical tradition we find the author’s 286 attempt to depict Daniil as a martyr who “accepted a martyr’s death" from his wife and her lovers.

p Not only is the story’s plot, based on a lovers’ intrigue, new for the period, we also find a new effort to show the psychological state of the sons of Kuchka, their “lamentations and grief and great sorrow" at the fact that they have let Prince Daniil escape alive and their growing repentence of their deed. Only after Ulita inspires them by telling them all of her husband’s secrets do they once again become “filled with evil" and commit the murder.

p The tale combines traditional literary language and elements of folk narrative.

The “folk tale" has not a hint of historical events. Its hero is Daniil Ivanovich who founds the Krutitsky family from which archbishops were traditionally elected.

The Tale of the Founding of
the Page’s Monastery of Tver

p We can see the transformation of the historical tale into the picaresque tale in The Tale of the Founding of the Page’s Monastery of Tver. Its hero is the prince’s servant Grigory, smitten by love for Ksenia, daughter of a sexton. After obtaining the consent of Ksenia’s father and the prince to the marriage, Grigory joyfully prepares for the wedding; “the will of God”, however has decreed that Ksenia marry Prince Yaroslav Yaroslavich of Tver himself, and Grigory is no more than the best man. The shaken Grigory takes off the princely robes and puts on peasant clothing; he retires to the forest where he makes himself a hiit and a chapel.

p The reason for Grigory’s flight into the wilderness and founding of the monastery is not a pious effort to dedicate his life to God, as in the case of Feodosy of the Caves, but unrequited love.

p The heroine of the tale, Ksenia, in many ways recalls Fevronia: she is also a wise, prophetic girl with Christian virtues.

p The tale makes wide use of folk wedding songs and 287 their symbolism. The prince has a prophetic dream: his favourite falcon catches a beautiful, shining dove, and then during the hunt when the prince releases his falcons and sends them after a herd of swans, his favourite falcon leads him to the village of Edimonovo and alights on the Church of St. Demetrius of Salonika where Ksenia and Grigory’s wedding is to take place. Fate has the prince take Grigory’s place.

The hagiographical elements at the end of the tale do not cancel its purely secular content based on an artistic fiction.

The Tale of Sukhan

p In search of new images and narrative forms connected with the heroic themes of the defense of the motherland from the enemy, late seventeenth century literature turned to the folk epic. The Tale of Sukhan was one result of the literary adaption of a bylina. (It is now extant oniy in a single copy dated late seventeenth century.) Its bogatyr hero struggles against the MongolTatar aggressors who, headed by King Azbuk Tavruevich, want to capture the Russian land. The author makes Sukhan’s heroic feat poetic and has high praise for his faithful services rendered to the ideal sovereign Monomakh Vladimirovich. Only with the help of battering rams can the enemy mortally wound the bogatyr. Even when wounded Sukhan fights until he has routed the enemy. The sovereign wants to reward him for faithful service with cities and estates, but the dying bogatyr asks only that he, a poor servant, be granted a word of praise and farewell. He then dies. It is characteristic that the relations between the bogatyr and the king reflect the relations between a service man and the tsar.

Thus having lost all historicism, the genres of historical literature in the seventeenth century took on new qualities, developing artistic fiction, interesting plots, and intensifying the influence of oral folk genres; 288 history itself became a form of ideology, gradually being transformed into a science.

Sources

p 1. F. I. Buslayev, “Idealnye zhenskie kharaktery Drevnei Rusi”, Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva (“Ideal Women of Old Rus”, in Historical Essays on Russian Folk Culture and Art), vol. II, SPb., 1861.

p 2. Voinskie povesti Drevnei Rusi (Military Tales of Old Rus), M.-L., 1949.

p 3. V. I. Malyshev, Povest o Sukhane. Iz istorii russkoi povesti XVII veka (The Tale of Sukhan. From the History of Russian Seventeenth Century Tales), M.-L., 1956.

p 4. Povesti o nachale Moskvy (Tales of the Founding of Moscow). Research and preparation of texts by M. A. Salmina, M.-L., 1964.

5. Khrestomatiya po drevnei russkoi literature (Anthology of Old Russian Literature). Compiled by N. K. Gudzy, 8th edition, M., 1973.