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(Temporary) Notes : From http://www.geocities.com/britgrad/win3.htmlM.S. Anderson has shown that ‘the feature of Russian life which impressed observers the most was the arbitrary and tyrannical system of government’ (143). We can see these views in accounts of voyages to Russia from as far back as that of Chancellor’s in 1553. In his 1554 account of Chancellor’s voyage, Clement Adams describes the lack of private property in Russia, noting, implicitly, that this state of affairs is the result of the tyranny of the Tsar. Adams writes that if a man cannot fight in the Tsar’s wars, then ‘the unhappy man is by and by sent for, and in that instant, deprived of all of his riches, which with great paines and travell all of his life he had gotten together’ (260).[16] The emperor, then, ‘having taken these goods into his hands, bestoweth them among his Courtiers’ (260). The Tsar, in this description, is an absolute ruler who has the authority to redistribute wealth and property on a whim. In other descriptions, the Tsar’s tyranny is more explicit. For example, the poet George Turberville, who assisted the English ambassador on his voyage to Russia in the mid-sixteenth century, wrote the following about the Tsar: In such a savage soil, where lawes do beare no sway, But all is at the king his will, to save or els to slay. And that sans cause, God wot, if so his mind be such. But what meane I with Kings to deale? We ought not saints to touch. Conceive the rest your self, and deeme what lives they lead, Where lust is Lawe, and Subjects live continually in dread. And where the best estates have no assurance good Of lands, of lives, nor nothing falles unto the next of blood.[17] Here, Turberville makes explicit what was implicit in Adams. Russia is a place where ‘lust is law’, where ‘laws do beare no sway’, and where ‘all is at the king his will’. It is worth noting that Russians themselves did not feel the way that the English felt about the Tsar. According to one historian, Ivan was, in his own country, viewed a champion of the people.[18] Still the English image of Ivan as a tyrant was widespread. At least two famous English writers, who never stepped foot on Russian soil recorded their view that Ivan was an autocrat. Francis Bacon wrote of the Tsar that ‘he is advised by no council, but governeth altogether like a tyrant’, and Sir Walter Raleigh wrote that the monarch should be careful to rule moderately, ‘so that a monarch be not too monarchical strict or absolute, as the Russe kings’.[19] English perceptions of the tyrannical emperor, also, produced a corresponding notion that the people, who were completely subject to him, were actually his slaves. Sidney’s Astrophil reflects this view, when he compares himself to the ‘slave-born Muscovite’. If the English thought that the Russian leader was unruly, they also thought that Russians themselves were unmannerly. Accusations of Russian dishonesty, cruelty, and drunkenness pervade the accounts of Muscovy from the period. Clement Adams describes their ‘intemperance of drinking’ (267), adding that Russians are ‘notable tospots’ (267). George Turberville repeats this sentiment. Writing in rhymed couplets that reflect the drunken jubilance of the Russians themselves, Turberville contends that Muscovites are: A people passing rude, to vices vile inclinde, Folke fit to be of Bacchus traine, so quaffing is their kind. Drinke is their whole desire, the post is all their pride, The sobrest head doth once a day stand needful of a guide. (Turberville, in Hakluyt, III, p. 124) Such a ‘rude’ people, who were inclined to vice, gained a reputation in the West for their excessive behaviour. The English ambassador Thomas Randolfe describes the extremities of Russian behaviour in this way: ‘They lie apart, they eat together, and are much given to drunkenness, unlearned, write they can, preach they doe never’. They are, he continues, ‘ceremonious in their church, and long in their prayers’.[20] Yet the problem with Russians was not solely that they seemed to lack civility. The very arrangement of their society seemed disordered. Clement Adams suggests such a view when he describes the way that Russian armies ‘goe forth without any order at all’ (259) to greet the enemy. For him, even the arrangement of the city of Moscow is confused. Their houses are ‘built out of order’ (254). In the accounts of voyages to Russia, Russians simply lack discipline. M.S. Anderson summarises Western views of Russian unruliness in this way: ‘In a word, the Russians seemed to English, as all Western European observers during this period, a people who were moved by instinct and appetite, rather than by intellect and reason’ (146). Fromhttp://www.embassygifts.ru/portal/page.jsp?secId=library/catalog_countries_dmitrieva&locale=EN Owing to the regular contacts between the two countries the English were better informed about the Muscovy State than any other European nation. Many of their ambassadors and travellers (among them Richard.Chancellor, Clement Adams, Anthony Jenkinson, Thomas Randolph, Jerome Horsey, Giles Fletcher and Sir Thomas Smith) left memoirs some of which were collected and published by Richard Hakluyt in 1589. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Russian theme emerged from time to time in English poetry and drama of the 16th and 17th centuries, for example, in the works of William Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Nashe, and Thomas Lodge. The first decade of the 17th century witnessed a growing interest in Russia shown by English intellectuals, such as M.Ridley and R.James, authors of the first Anglo-Russian dictionaries, and 'the first Russian botanist' John Tradescant, whose Russian collection formed the nucleus of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford Note http://econserv2.bess.tcd.ie/SER/archive/2004/6.pdf http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/history/emsi/papers/Fuller.pdf |
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W. Paul Tabaka
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