The culture of Tsarist Russia encompasses the changes in Russian society from the Late Middle Ages up to the proclamation of the Russian Republic in 1917. During this era, shaped by Byzantine influence, the legacy of the Mongol conquest, and the dominance of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Russian culture underwent a transformation from being a state and church-directed affair to one of the most influential on the global stage.
Under the Russian Tsardom, the Russian Church dominated affairs in artistic and intellectual life, with icon painting, ecclesiastical architecture, and Church Slavonic literature constituting the primary cultural forms. During the 17th century, Western influences began to change this, a process that was dramatically accelerated by the Western-oriented Peter the Great. The 19th century saw Russia emerge as a major cultural force in European civilization, with it being the Golden Age of Russian literature, classical music, and art.
Outside the arts, Russian society also saw an expansion in educational ability, with it shifting from being largely Church managed and rare to becoming relatively common and secular. The clash between western and traditional Russian ways of doing provided fodder for much cultural discourse and division in Russian society, as more Western-oriented and anti-Western folks fought in various culture wars over the direction of Russian society. The culture of Tsarist Russia was brought to and end by the Russian Revolution, with its feats and characteristics being absorbed and transformed by the culture of the Soviet Union.
Arts and literature
By the 15th century, a distinct form of painting and architecture had emerged in Muscovy, dubbed eponymously the Moscow School. Coming from the gradual integration of various styles native to individual Russian principalities as Muscovy consolidated, it developed throughout the century, being buttressed by the wider Renaissance as Italian artists moved to Russia and spread knowledge of the cultural revolution underway in their homeland. Described as "cooler" and "silvery" compared to the warmer tones of Novgorodian art, the school was exemplified by figures such as Andrei Rublev, Dionisius, and the Italian Aristotele Fioravanti. Works exemplified by the school include the first's icon, The Trinity, and the Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin.
Under Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible, expansive construction works were undertaken in Moscow in an attempt to make it one of the most splendid cities on Earth, ala the grandeur of Constantinople, who they furthered their claim to by formally adopting the title of tsar, with Ivan the Terrible crowing himself Tsar and establishing the Russian Tsardom in 1547. The Kremlin was significantly expanded and renovated by Ivan the Great, with works such as the Spasskaya Tower, Palace of Facets, and Ivan the Great Bell Tower being built. Saint Basil's Cathedral began construction in 1555 just outside the Kremlin under Ivan the Terrible, and would be completed with its colors in 1683, becoming arguably Russia's most famous landmark and a hallmark of Russian Renaissance architecture.
Russian architecture and painting remained distinct from that of Western Europe well into the 17th century. Russian art for decades during the early modern era missed out on many of the developments unfolding in the western artistic tradition. The Russians continued the practice of having art largely uphold preexisting artistic traditions, rather than prioritizing personal creativity and ownership of work, as had begun to occur in the west during the Late Middle Ages. This began to shift with Simon Ushakov, a 17th-century icon painter who undertook influences from both Catholic and Protestant Europe. The reforms of Patriarch Nikon to the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-17th century also saw reforms to icon painting, enabling greater western influence, though the raskol meant that this was rejected by the Old Believers, who continued icon painting in the traditional manner. Before Peter the Great, the last major development in Russian icon painting was the Stroganov school, or the style prominent in the 16th and 17th centuries that thrived under the patronage of the merchant House of Stroganov.
The Petrine reforms saw the importation of greater western influences into Russia, as Peter the Great sought to link Russia to the rest of the continent. As part of this, he moved the capital to Saint Petersburg in 1712, having seized the area from the Swedes in the Great Northern War. Western Baroque influences had already arrived in Tsarist Russia by the end of the 17th century, with the Church of the Intercession at Fili, built by the House of Naryshkin in 1689, ushering in a unique Russian Baroque style. Under Peter the Great, Baroque architecture continued to proliferate inside what was becoming the Russian Empire, under a style that derived more from Dutch and Scandinavian influences. The new capital of Saint Petersburg, which was built by a collection of peasants, slaves, and Swedish POWs, as well as had construction overseen by western men such as the Swiss architect Domenico Trezzini, the new city on the mouth of the Neva in the Gulf of Finland took inspiration in its urban design from Amsterdam and Versailles, and became an epitome of Baroque architecture. Some notable buildings from this are the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral and Alexander Nevskii Monastery, both of which show marked departures from earlier Russian ecclesiastic architecture, as well as the original new primary imperial palace, the Peterhof, all designed by Trezzini. He also designed the Winter Palace in an originally modest form; over the next few decades, it would be renovated and expanded to become the main imperial palace and an icon of the city and Tsarist autocracy. Western influence would continue under Catherine the Great and Alexander I, who both helped import Neoclassism and the Empire style to Russia.
The lubok, or a sort of popular print depicting common narratives and simplistic graphics, garnered prominence in the 17th century, and remained common for the rest of the state's history. As western influence increased, Russian illustration became more westernized as well. The Russian Academy of Arts was founded in 1757 to increase the prominence of Russian artists on the global stage. Russian painting from the 18th century onwards took influences from and embraced Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Realism.
In the 14th century, South Slavic clerks revised Church Slavonic to align more with the original Greek texts. This revised Church Slavonic became the literary language of Muscovite Russia. The Bulgarian-born Metropolitan of Kiev, Cyprian, helped make Moscow the new center of Russian culture by writing, translating texts, and aligning Russian religious practice with those of the Byzantines. The fall of Constantinople and subsequent claim to the Roman legacy by Moscow helped initiate a world of literature justifying said claims, such as Nestor Iskander's Tale on the Taking of Tsargrad in the late 15th century, as well as the The Tale of the Princes of Vladimir, authored in the early 16th century by Dmitry Gerasimov, Pachomius the Serb, or possibly someone else. 16th century Russian literature was largely dominated by state-control, with the written word being used to reinforce Tsarist supremacy; following the Time of Troubles around the turn of the 17th century however, control floundered as the instability weakened central authority. This shift began with men like Avraamy Palitsyn, who was known for his complex characters and story arcs. Western influence began creeping in in the late 17th century, as Tsar Alexis sought to import Baroque writing to his court and as members from the Kiev Academy brough with them Polish-influenced texts to Russia. Men like the Belarusian Symeon of Polotsk, as well as Demetrius of Rostov are all examples of Baroque writers from this era.
In the 18th century, Russian literature was influenced by the Petrine reforms and the broader Enlightenment raging across Europe. Early writers such as Antiochus Kantemir, Alexander Sumarokov, and Mikhail Lomonosov, defined Russian literature for much of the 18th century, often extolling Peter the Great's legacy as a tribute to lifting Russia out of its perceived backwardness. Under Catherine the Great, literature took a more controversial and political tone as the Age of Revolution kicked in; the author Alexander Radishchev regularly lauded the French Revolution and illustrated the brutal realities of Russian serfdom, prompting Catherine to force him into Siberian exile and destroy much of his work. The 19th century is known as the Golden Age of Russian literature, and featured great men such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Tyutchev, Vladimir Odoyevsky, and Konstantin Batyushkov. Many of these fellows wrote for the mid-19th century Russian magazine Sovremennik.
Classical music came to Russia under the Russian Empire, with secular and religious folks song predominating during the Tsardom era. Russian classical music seriously took off in the 19th century, as new composers combined Russian folk with western influenced traditions. A group dubbed the Mighty Handful, consisting of César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Mily Balakirev held large sway over Russian music between 1856 and 1870. They were responsible for works such as Scheherazade, Boris Godunov, and The Snow Maiden. They were often influenced by the emerging Russian operatic tradition, itself undergoing a golden age under men such as Stepan Davydov, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, and Anton Rubinstein. The year 1859 saw the founding of the Russian Musical Society (RMS), often presented as the rival of the Mighty Handful. The RMS' most famous member, and arguably the most famous Russian composer in history, was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who produced works such as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and 1812 Overture.
In the Belle Époque, as realism and modernism took hold in Russia and as anti-Tsarist sentiment began to mount, the Russian government attempted to crack down on Russian artists, often through the state-run Bureau of Censorship. Despite this, architecture, painting, music, and literature continued to flourish, often containing serious themes of social critique. The Peredvizhniki were a group of Russian painters who protested the restrictions of the Imperial Academy of Arts and left to form a realist collective active during the fin de siècle. The group consisted of men such as Ivan Kramskoi, Vasily Polenov, and Ilya Repin. On the musical front, Russian music was dominated by figures such as Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Scriabin, and Igor Stravinsky. Throughout the 19th century, eclecticist architecture, often of a revivalist sense and incorporating Byzantine architecture, became common, and the decades preceding World War I saw the rise of Art Nouveau and Neoclassical Revival. The Silver Age of Russian literature consisted of the final developments of Russian literature during the Tsarist era, seeing the rise of Russian Symbolism and an influx of writers of peasant origin following the emancipation of the serfs. Following the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, the new Soviet Union subsumed the developments of Russian culture under the Tsars, but transformed it to meet their strict Communist, anti-religious, anti-capitalist, and anti-monarchical ideology, often using even more state control to enforce it.
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