"In the tides of Life, in Action's storm,A fluctuant wave,A shuttle free,Birth and the Grave,An eternal sea,A weaving, flowingLife, all-glowing.Thus at time's humming loom 't is my hand preparesThe garment of life which the Deity wears."
"In the tides of Life, in Action's storm,A fluctuant wave,A shuttle free,Birth and the Grave,An eternal sea,A weaving, flowingLife, all-glowing.Thus at time's humming loom 't is my hand preparesThe garment of life which the Deity wears."
"In the tides of Life, in Action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth and the Grave,
An eternal sea,
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowing.
Thus at time's humming loom 't is my hand prepares
The garment of life which the Deity wears."
In the dawn of recorded history woman on the great plains of eastern Europe shared the lot of her western sisters. She was purchased into her husband's family or carried away, she was sometimes only one of his many wives, she took care of the household and helped him in the field, participated in his manly sports, accompanied him in his military expeditions, enjoyed full social freedom, was treated with respect, ruled the state, and was sometimes burned on the funeral pyre with her husband's body.
Russian annals have preserved for us a picture of one of the most wholesome women of early, heathen Russia Princess Olga Igor. The Prince of Kief, Olga's husband, lost his life while collecting tribute on the upper Dnieper and left her a widow with a child in her arms. She avenged her husband's death on his slayers in true heathen fashion. She destroyed their ambassadors by burying alive some of them and burning others. She besieged their capital, took it, and laid a heavy tribute on them. Having thus performed her last duty toward her husband, Olga, as princess regent, travelled over all her country and made every effort to introduce a good system of government.
She defined the amount of taxes to be paid by the different provinces, left her fiscal agents behind her, and established courts of justice. Before her death Olga visited Constantinople and returned home a Christian.
To the deep respect for Olga's wisdom a Russian annalist ascribes a preponderating influence in the introduction of Christianity into Russia from the Byzantine Empire rather than from Rome. The Christian clergy immediately began a struggle against polygamy, deeply rooted in the early Russian society, and endeavored to prevent the excess of parental authority in the arrangement of marriages against their children's wishes. Valuable civil rights were secured for women, such as the right to inherit property and to bequeath it to their children at pleasure. But together with the praiseworthy efforts of the clergy in regard to women, there came, too, an undesirable influence. The Greek priests, full of holy zeal, considered it their sacred duty to combat idolatry in all its forms, and proscribed all ancient religious and semi-religious observances as unholy and coming from the evil one, who deluded the simple-minded and the uncautious into sinful practices and thus led them to eternal damnation. The clergy put an end to many games and pastimes, which formerly brought together persons of both sexes, and little by little the church removed woman from male society. To eastern as well as to western monks of ascetic aspirations woman was a source of evil, and therefore had to be kept out of man's way.
PRINCESS SOPHIA AND THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOL RELIGIONISTSAfter the painting by V. G. Peroff.
The disorderly and unruly standing army of the Russian tsars, the Strelets, sided with Sophia. Having secured the regency of Russia during the minority of her brothers, Ivan and Peter, she soon acquired almost absolute power. Slighting custom and tradition, she lost no opportunity to appear in public. In the matter of religion, her advanced ideas led her to support the orthodox or reform party. The conservatives or "old believers," having challenged to a discussion the orthodox prelates, Sophia convened a meeting, to be held in the Palace of Facets, on which occasion she presided. The discussion was of such a stormy character that violence was used, and the leader of the "old believers," Nikita was afterward executed by order of the empress.
During the epoch of troubles and confusion which followed the years marked by the introduction of Christianity, the woman of the higher class of Russians became more and more isolated from her former surroundings. The Tartar invasion and domination only contributed to the separatist tendencies in Russian society. Formally, woman retained her old right of being her husband's friend, companion, and adviser; she owned property in her own name, disposed of her dower at will, and was entitled to a share of her husband's property on his death. But as a matter of fact, the Russian woman was her husband's slave. She was excluded from that part of the house where her husband received his men friends.
Domostroi, the Russian domestic code, compiled in the sixteenth century confines woman to the kitchen and to purely domestic occupations. Woman's virtues are said to lie in silence and humility. She was to speak only when spoken to. She was to ask questions and advice with utmost deference. She was to have no secrets from her husband. Her husband's will was her law and her guide in life. Her aim in life was to save her soul, to please God and her husband. Her husband could even apply the rod to her in case of a serious transgression on her part. In her harem-like seclusion, Russian woman acquired a taste for luxury in apparel and house decoration and developed many varieties of fine handiwork.
This seclusion of woman and her separation from her husband's company had as their result a general coarsening of social tastes. Men amused themselves with bear hunting, pugilism, and other rough sports. When engagements were arranged between persons totally unacquainted with each other, when a wife was purchased, when another girl was substituted in the place of the one bargained for, and when the engaged parties could not see each other until the very wedding ceremony, marriages were often a failure, and led to a mutual deceit, secret immorality, and not infrequently to crime. Even one of the most enlightened Russian writers and educators of the seventeenth century, Simen Polotski, advised that woman should be kept like a slave or a wild beast. We read of many cases where men chastised their wives with heavy whips.
One Russian woman is reported to have frequently cried over the fact that her husband, a German by birth, would not whip her, which to her was a sign of indifference. Men got rid of their wives by sending them to a convent, or by poison. The code of Alexis Mikhailovich does not even punish a husband for disposing of his wife in a criminal way. But if a woman destroyed her husband, she was buried in the ground up to her neck, and everybody had a right to abuse her until she died.
There was no education to be had for woman, and she grew up, lived, and died in ignorance and superstition. The Russian Middle Ages have left to posterity the memory of only one woman who took an active part in history Martha Boretskaia, the wealthyposadnitsa(mayoress) of Novgorod the Great. The steady growth of the power of the Moscow princes in the fifteenth century began to be dangerous to the independence of the ancient northern republic. The intelligent, energetic, and freedom-loving Martha became on her husband's death an active leader of a powerful political party advocating union with Poland, a union which was to save Novgorod from being subjugated by Moscow. Conscious of her power, Martha often offended the Moscow representative in Novgorod, and was slow to give satisfaction to Ivan III., whose life work it was to unite all Russia under the sovereignty of Moscow and to throw off the Tartar yoke.
In 1471 there was a stormy town meeting in Novgorod in connection with the election of a Moscow partisan to the office of the Archbishop of Novgorod. The adherents of Martha found themselves in a majority. An embassy was immediately sent to the King of Poland, offering him the supreme power over Novgorod if he consented to rule according to the ancient liberties of the republic. Ivan III. tried to conciliate the city by entreaties, but these failing with the proud posadnitsa, he moved his army toward Novgorod, defeated the troops of the republic in several engagements, laid a tribute on the conquered, exacted a promise to discontinue all relations with Poland and Lithuania, and extorted an oath from the Novgorodians by which they recognized him as their supreme judge. Ivan did not dare as yet to meddle with Novgorod's local self-government and political freedom. But Martha could not be subdued, and soon the parties renewed their struggle. The sympathizers of Moscow were persecuted and complained to Ivan. Under a flimsy pretext Ivan again led his army to Novgorod, was admitted into the city without resistance, and joined it to his domain. Martha was arrested and exiled to a convent in Nizhni-Novgorod. Her spirited though unsuccessful resistance to the growing power of Moscow gave her a lasting name in Russian history. With the accession of the Romanoffs to the throne a new and more promising era began for the Russian woman. Matveyeff, the favoriteboyarof Alexis Mikhailovich, was an admirer of the culture of western Europe and treated the women of his family with marked consideration, freely admitting them into the society of his friends. His clever ward, Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina, attracted the widowed tsar's attention and became tsarina and mother of Peter the Great.
In the palace of Alexis women enjoyed almost modern freedom. They were allowed to go out of the palace, and to go to the theatre. A daughter of Alexis by his first wife, Sophia Alexeyevna, received as complete an education as could be had at that time in Russia. She grew up to be a woman of unusual intelligence, energy, and ambition, and on her father's death began a struggle with her stepmother, Natalia Kirillovna, for political predominance. The disorderly and unruly standing army of the Russian tsars, the Strelets, sided with Sophia. Having secured the regency of Russia during the minority of her brothers, Ivan and Peter, she soon acquired almost absolute power. Slighting custom and tradition, she lost no opportunity to appear in public. In the matter of religion, her advanced ideas led her to support the orthodox, or reform, party. The conservatives, or "old believers," having challenged to a discussion the orthodox prelates, Sophia convened a meeting, to be held in the Palace of Facets, on which occasion she presided. The discussion was of such a stormy character that violence was used, and the leader of the "old believers," Nikita, was afterward executed by order of the empress. She made peace with Poland and China. In 1689 Peter decided to rule independently. The chief of the Strelets, being unable to raise his troops in defence of Sophia's interests, decided to assassinate Peter. The plot did not succeed: its instigators lost their lives, and Sophia was immured in a convent. She caused a revolt of the Strelets during Peter's travels abroad, but they were again subdued; many of them were hanged under the very windows of Sophia's retreat. Sophia died in 1704, leaving the memory of a rare intelligence and an indomitable energy, overmatched only by that of her great brother.
Peter the Great found the Russian woman a painted doll, hung over with pretty ornaments and trinkets, eating fattening foods and sleeping all day long in order to get stout, for stoutness at that time passed for beauty. Peter forbade the clergy to marry persons against their will, and required a formal engagement six weeks previous to the wedding, so as to give persons a chance to become acquainted before they were bound to each other for life. He introduced public theatres, and compelled persons of both sexes to attend them. Social intercourse of the sexes, under modern and civilized restrictions, was forced not only upon the Russian nobility, but upon the merchant class. Receptions were compulsory functions; these were attended by both men and women. At these receptions, and generally in public, Russians, particularly women, were required to wear western European dress in public. This movement toward the social emancipation of the Russian woman inaugurated by Peter found a powerful support and development during the reigns of Peter's female successors. During the eighteenth century, Russian women were taking part in all the court revolutions. During that time, too, social morality was at a low ebb, owing to a lack of moral restraint.
Peter died in 1725. After the weak reign of Anna Ivanovna (1730-1740) and the unpopular one of her foreign successor, the supreme authority passed into the hands of Peter's daughter, Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-1762). She was skilfully kept in the background by the family of her predecessor, spent all her time in amusements, and apparently took no interest in state affairs and politics. As Peter's daughter, she was adored by the people and by Peter's Old Guard, whom she attached to herself by constant kindness and attentions. She was an embodiment of unaffected simplicity, warmth, and sunshine, and her apparent light-heartedness and gayeties put to sleep all suspicion of seeking to gather the reins of power in her own hands. But on the night of November 25, 1741, after a prayer and a solemn oath never to sign a death sentence, Elizabeth put on a cuirass, went to the barracks, led the grenadiers to the palace, had the reigning family and their supporters arrested, and was proclaimed empress in the morning, amid general rejoicing.
Though not inheriting all her father's gifts, Elizabeth possessed a high degree of intelligence and showed much wisdom and insight in the selection of her assistants in the work of governing Russia. She was deeply interested in state affairs, and established a special council whose sessions she often attended. The people called her their "little mother," and in her soul Elizabeth remained a thorough Russian, though into her court a splendor equalling that of the French king was introduced with her accession to the throne. She faithfully adhered to her father's rule in life to do everything for Russia and through Russians. The leading positions in all departments of government were given to Russians, and Elizabeth consented to the appointment of foreigners even to places of secondary importance only when no Russian could be found with the necessary qualifications for the office. Peter's reforms and the work of civilizing Russia by the introduction of western culture and education were continued by Elizabeth. A new Russian literature and a higher learning had their birth during Elizabeth's reign. It is true that her wars weakened Russia, but they gave training to Russian generals, and prepared the ground for Elizabeth's successors. The favorites and assistants of the empress were mostly men of ability and broad aims. They encouraged popular education and native literature, fought indolence and corruption, which were deeply rooted in the government, endeavored to do away with the abuses of the provincial authorities, and to increase the government revenue, not by fresh taxation, but by developing the natural resources of the country. A better system of taxation was introduced, and Peter's idea of taking a census of population from time to time was revived. The burden of the compulsory service in the army was made lighter. A higher value was set on the workingman, and capital punishment was entirely dispensed with. Pioneer settlements were encouraged in the eastern part of European Russia, beyond the lower Volga. Mines were opened and worked.
Russian commercial caravans began to reach Tashkent. Government banks were established which lent money to merchants and landowners on easy terms. A special "commerce commission" was created to look after the welfare of the trading class. A general government survey put an end to many territorial disputes among landowners. The internal custom duties were abolished. A new system of public instruction was being gradually built up. The first Russian university was founded in Moscow in 1755, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg two years later. Two high schools were established in connection with the university, and public schools were opened even in Orenburg and in far southern Russia. Young men were encouraged to enter foreign universities. Efforts were made to raise the intellectual attainments of the Russian clergy and to make use of it toward the enlightenment of the people. The national consciousness awakened. A new literary language took form and shape, Russian satire began to deride the foibles and the shortcomings of society. Lomonosoff acquired reputation as a scientist and a man of letters even in western Europe. A national historian appeared in the person of Tatishcheff. The first Russian daily paper, theMoskavskiia Vedomosti, was published in 1756, and the first Russian monthly appeared in the same year.
Elizabeth did not succeed in all her efforts to raise Russia to the level of her western neighbors. There was much conservatism to overcome. There were wars to pay for wars which exhausted Russia's resources. But Elizabeth was preparing the way for her energetic successor, Catharine II., who always held Peter the Great as an example before her eyes and who continued his work of reform. During Catharine's reign a woman, Princess Katerina Romanovna Dashkova, was put at the head of the Russian Academy of Science. The princess was a phenomenal woman. She was an accomplished linguist, an enthusiastic reader, an admirer of Bayle, Montesquieu, Boileau, and Voltaire. She travelled abroad, made the acquaintance of many great writers and philosophers, and became one of the most enlightened women of her time. She early manifested a taste for politics, and Catharine owed her a debt of gratitude in connection with the revolution which overthrew the unpopular rule of Peter III. (1762). The most important service, however, was rendered by Princess Dashkova to her country not in the field of politics, but through her connection with the academy. It was her aim that arts and science should not be the monopoly of the academy, but "should be adopted by the whole country, take root and flourish there." The public lectures established by her in connection with the academy became very popular and drew large audiences. She increased the number of fellowships given by the institution and sent Russian students to Gottingen. A "Translator's Department" was established which enabled the Russian society to read in their own tongue the best productions of foreign literature. Several periodical publications were started under the impulse given by the princess, and the best Russian writers, even the empress herself, sent literary contributions to them. One of the most important undertakings of the academy was the publication of a dictionary of the Russian language to which the princess copiously contributed. She wrote for magazines, and translated from foreign languages. Among her works we have poems in Russian and French, a number of speeches made before the academy, one comedy, one drama, and interesting memoirs.
The great drawback to the social and intellectual progress of woman in the Russia of Dashkova's time was the general lack of educational facilities. In the early Russia only daughters of princes and of the higher nobility could obtain instruction even in reading and writing, though the importance of educating women was always appreciated. At the end of the eleventh century a princess-nun founded a girls' school in Kief. A Russian metropolitan bishop of the sixteenth century spoke in his sermons of the value of the education of women. Beginning with the first tsar of the house of Romanoff, the tsarevas were instructed in reading, writing, and church music. The six daughters of Alexis Mikhailovich received a good education. Peter the Great fully appreciated the importance of schools for women, but did not establish them. During his reign, however, as during that of Elizabeth, there began to appear private schools, to which girls were admitted. A ukase of Catharine II. laid the foundation of an Educational Society for noble young women, and in connection with it a high school for the daughters of town residents. The chief aim of Catharine's institution was the formation of character, the development of good habits, good social manners, and self-reliance in the pupils. Many other schools were opened in Catharine's time, not a few of which were under her patronage, to which children of both sexes and of all social classes were admitted, though it was considered improper for girls to attend public schools. Catharine sought to create a "new race" of men, as well as of women, by offering the latter all possible advantages of education. The policy of Catharine was dominated by her desire for the aggrandizement of Russia and the extension of the central rule. One of the most striking results of her active government is the extraordinary exodus of Kalmuck tribes in 1771. These people are of Central Asian origin. Their incursions led them early in the seventeenth century into Russian territory, where they secured a foothold in the region east of the Volga. Other immigration followed till the Kalmuck population and power became considerable. Generally nomadic in their habits, they dwelt in circular felt tents, and were impatient of government, but about the middle of the eighteenth century they came into voluntary subjection to Russia. Their splendid horsemanship and hardy character made the Kalmucks a most valuable auxiliary force to the Russian army. But Catharine's measures proved irksome to the independent spirit of some of the tribes, and an immense number escaped from Russian despotism and resumed subjection to the less active tyranny of the Chinese ruler.
After Catharine's death, the Empress Maria Teodorovna, wife of Paul I. (1796-1801), continued her educational work, though abandoning the "new race" idea, confining herself to more practical problems, and recognizing the different needs of different classes of children. A large number of schools was founded by the empress, the management of which was after her time given in charge to a special department of government bearing her name. The schools rapidly increased in number, variety, and character, and gradually the ground was prepared for the present system of public and high schools for girls, which, under the auspices of the Department of Education and of the ecclesiastical educational establishments, are to be found throughout the vast Russian empire.
Long before public schools existed, and long after they were in operation, there was another educational agent to which Russian woman owed most of her accomplishments and to which Russia is indebted for many of her most accomplished women. This is the private instruction in the home, which was conducted by French, German, and English governesses and tutors, when a family could afford them. This method has brought and is still bringing the culture and the polish of western Europe to Russia. It has made accomplished linguists of so many Russians, and has opened to them the treasures of the world's literature.
The field of letters was the first in which Russian women distinguished themselves. One of the brilliant women of the first half of the nineteenth century was Princess Zenaide Alexandrovna Volkonskaya, who devoted herself to literature. Having received a fine education at home, she spent many years abroad, in Paris, Vienna, and Verona, during the time of the famous congresses which met there to settle the fate of kingdoms and empires. Returning home, the princess devoted herself to the study of Russian antiquities. At one time her studies were treated with such scorn among her circle in Saint Petersburg that she retired to the more appreciative atmosphere of Moscow. She was much admired by the leading men of letters of her time. To the life of the primitive Slavs she devoted two of her most important works. A poet and a musician, she wrote cantatas and composed music for them. She spent about one-half of her life in Rome, where she died, a devout Catholic.
Beginning with the year 1860, women began to appear in the lecture rooms of Russian universities. The attitude of universities to the presence of women within their walls was not always the same, but their attendance was generally discouraged. Finally, a lack of social and political discretion and tact on the part of some women legally closed the university doors to all, and Russian women were forced to seek higher education abroad. A movement was started at home in favor of establishing schools of higher learning for women, and resulted in the so-called "higher courses for women" in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan, Kief, and Odessa, which were conducted by the university professors of those cities. The "courses" were not uniformly successful. Those of Saint Petersburg have shown the greatest strength and vitality, having been conducted with skill and having met with strong moral and financial support on the part of Russian society. Professional schools for women, medical schools, normal schools, and the like, have had a more uniformly successful career. The status of education for woman is not so advanced in Russia as it is in some countries, but the future is promising.
About the time of the emancipation of Russian peasants by Alexander II. (1855-1881), Marko-Vovchok (Maria Alexandrovna Markovich) attracted much attention by her stories picturing Russian life and advocating the liberation of the serfs. Among the large number of Russian women who have acquired reputation in Russian literature, special mention should be made of Khvoshchinskaya. She received a fine preparatory training at home; then in 1867 she began to study law in German universities, and took her doctor's diploma in Leipzig. She spent several years studying the Common Law of the Southern Slavs, and made several original contributions to legal literature. In 1885 she began to publish a magazine,Severnyi Vestnih(The Northern Messenger), which had many women among its contributors. It remained five years under her editorial management.
During the nineteenth century many Russian women distinguished themselves in the field of arts and science. Madame Kochetova may be mentioned as one of the many gifted actresses. Madame Esipova has acquired a world-wide reputation as a pianist. Marie Bashkirtseva found her way to the French Salon, and left to the public a diary vividly picturing her striking individuality. Born in Southern Russia, Mademoiselle Bashkirtseva, when ten years old, settled with her family in Nice. She began at an early age to show her gifted nature, her love of knowledge and her lofty ambition. When only thirteen, she made out a programme of her studies, in which were included mathematics, physics, chemistry, Greek, and Latin. She spoke English, German, and Italian from her childhood days. French was the language in which she did her thinking and writing. She, too, was an enthusiastic student of music. In 1877, Mademoiselle Bashkirtseva settled in Paris and began to study painting. After eleven months' work she received, at a general competition in her school, a gold medal awarded by Robert-Fleury, Bouguereau, Lefevre, and others. In 1880, when twenty years of age, her first picture,A Young Woman Reading 'La Question du Divorce'by Alexandre Dumas, was admitted to the Salon. Her next picture in the Salon,Julian's Studies, was spoken of by the Parisian press as a work full of life, with firm touch and warm coloring. Two years later herJean et Jacques, representing two little schoolboys from the poorer class of the Parisian population, attracted general attention and was very highly praised by the press: the picture showed the artist's power, boldness, and fine insight into the realities of life. In 1884 the Meeting of Mademoiselle Bashkirtseva occupied the leading place in the Salon, owing to its excellent delineation of figures, fine presentation of types, and correctness of detail. That same year the young artist died of consumption. An exhibition of her pictures made by the society of French woman artists exhibited the great variety and productiveness of her talent. Mademoiselle Bashkirtseva left about one hundred and fifty pictures, sketches, and drawings. Some unfinished studies in sculpture showed her great talent in that direction also. Her numerous sketches manifest her warm love of humanity and the great depth of her powerful talent. The French government purchased the best of Mademoiselle Bashkirtseva's pictures for a national collection, while the public throughout the civilized world have read in an abridgment of the artist's diary the story of her life and of her struggle with worldly temptations and vanities.
The end of the nineteenth century witnessed the death of a prominent Russian mathematician, Sofia Vasilievna Kovalevskaya. She, too, received her preparatory training at home, from foreign governesses and private tutors, and early showed a taste for mathematics. Her conservative parents would not allow her to continue her studies away from home, and in order to obtain her freedom, she married early and went abroad to study her favorite subject. For two years she attended lectures on mathematical subjects in Heidelberg, studied in Berlin under Weierstrass, and, in 1874, at twenty-four years of age, took her doctor's degree at Gottingen. Seven years later, Madame Kovalevskaya was elected a member of the Moscow mathematical society. In 1884, after her husband's death, she received the chair of mathematics at the University of Stockholm. She soon mastered the Swedish language, and began to publish her mathematical works and contributions to literature in that language. In 1888, the Paris Academy of Science awarded to Madame Kovalevskaya a prize of five thousand francs for her work on the rotation of a solid body around a stationary point. In the following year she won fifteen hundred crowns from the Academy of Stockholm by a similar work. In 1889, two years before her death, she was elected corresponding member of the Academy of Saint Petersburg.
But mathematics was not the only accomplishment of Madame Kovalevskaya. She was a woman of great depth of feeling and of keen observation, and possessed, in a high degree, the ability to picture her inner life in literary and artistic form. Her personal life did not give her all she expected from it, and in herStruggle for Happiness: Two Parallel Dramas, she tried to present the fate of a person from two opposite points of view, how it was and how it might have been. She was a strong believer in predestination, but at the same time she admitted in human life the existence of moments when alternatives are presented, the choice of which will shape human life in accordance with the path taken: she saw a parallel to her theory in Poincare's work on differential equations. Madame Kovalevskaya's literary career had just begun to develop and her contributions to magazines to be universally admired when pneumonia put an end to her work and to her abundant promise.
The field of the Russian woman's activity is as wide as it is in western Europe or in America. In some respects there is in Russia less prejudice against woman's adopting a professional career than is found in more civilized countries. Women compose the ranks of the teachers in the public schools throughout Russia. There are many women physicians and registered minor medical practitioners and trained nurses whose services are particularly valuable to the Mohammedan female population. Many a Russian woman wears the uniform of the government telegraph operator. She has legal right to practise law. She takes part in local government on the same level as men when there is no one to represent her interests. She has won her position by her energy and talents as well as by her moderation, tact, deep earnestness, unselfishness, and readiness to sacrifice herself for the welfare of her fellow men and women.
In Russia there are several business firms conducted wholly by women. They once startled the former famous minister of finance, Witte, by sending him a petition requesting him to allow them to do business on their own account in the stock exchange instead of employing brokers. The minister asked for time to consider the petition.
The change which has taken place in the condition of the woman of the well-to-do classes during the last two hundred years has not affected the most numerous class of the Russian population, the peasant woman. For years, while special schools were being founded for the daughters of the noble, the merchant, and the burgher families, she bore with her husband and family the yoke of servitude, at times degrading and intolerable, was the lord's property, body and soul, was worked like a domestic animal, sometimes sold away from her family and otherwise abused. When the emancipation came with the imperial decree of February 19, 1861, she began to breathe more freely. Now the elementary education, at least, is accessible to her, and when means allow there is nothing to keep her from obtaining the highest education to be had in the country. Even in her modest station throughout the centuries the peasant woman has not remained intellectually inactive. When students of Russian literature became interested in the national folklore and began to collect it, they found a large number of peasant women in the northern provinces of Russia who possessed astonishing memories and who dictated one long epic poem after another to the collectors. These female Homers took pride in their accomplishment and were highly respected for it in their neighborhoods. While the chief merit of these poem singers lies in their highly retentive memory, women singers of another type, the professional mourners at funerals, display creative genius in composing and improvising songs. The names of peasant women who composed some of the most popular Russian songs are known, and in the latter part of the nineteenth century one of them was living in a western province of Russia. In vocalization Russian women have few equals among their class, both in civilized and uncivilized countries, this owing to the richness and vigor of their voices, to the characteristic fondness for music, and to the beauty of the national music. Women sing their babies to sleep, sing at social gatherings in and out of doors, sing while spinning and weaving, going to work and returning from it.
KALMUCK INTERIORAfter Racinet
The policy of Catharine was dominated by her desire for the aggrandizement of Russia and the extension of the central rule. One of the most striking results of her active government is the extraordinary exodus of Kalmuck tribes in 1771. These people are of Central Asian origin. Their incursions led them early in the seventeenth century into Russian territory, where they secured a foothold in the region east of the Volga. Other immigration followed till the Kalmuck population and power became considerable. Generally nomadic in their habits, they dwelt in circular felt tents, and were impatient of government, but about the middle of the eighteenth century they came into voluntary subjection to Russia.
Russian woman has shown much artistic skill and taste in domestic manufactures. Her crochet work, laces, and embroidery deserve high praise and will doubtless be appreciated when they become better known outside of the comparatively narrow circle to which they are now confined. Russian peasant women have studied medical botany from time immemorial. For centuries they were the only physicians within the reach of the people. Even at present, when doctors with university training are accessible to almost everyone, peasants frequently prefer the ministrations of female herbalists.
In her home the Russian woman is a hard and steady worker. She gets up at daybreak and tends her cows, cooks and serves the family breakfast and the rest of the meals, keeps her house tidy, does the family sewing and washing, is her family dressmaker and tailor. She transforms the main room of the house into a factory in spring, and on her looms turns into crashes and homespuns the result of a winter's work at the spinning wheel. When the harvest time comes she does a good share of work in the fields. A woman parasite is unknown to the peasant family and can have no place in it. The Russian peasant woman earns her position in life through honest, wholesome toil by her husband's side. Her reward is the respect and consideration paid her. She is treated in the family as her husband's equal. Under special conditions she has a voice in the village folkmote, and has a right to a share in the village landed property on equal footing with men. She is not debarred even from holding offices in the village administration. Peasant women of ability have acted as preachers and spiritual advisers among the Russian dissenters who do not recognize the clergy of the established church. Through the woman school teacher the Russian village girl now begins to learn in a wholesome way of the wide world outside, and with ambition and means she will evolve for herself a career full of interest and success. The future of the Slavic race is the present world problem. It is a problem that becomes more prominent with each decade. In the solution, whatever it may be, of that problem the women of Russia will be a factor of tremendous importance.
In the great family of the Slavic races the Poles are preeminent by their ancient civilization, their genius, and their literary and artistic activity. Their ancient history, like that of most other nations, is lost in a confused mass of legends, but the rich treasures of their ancient popular songs reveal to us, largely, their old cultural status. Especially do many love and marriage songs of ancient origin and others preserved in Latin versions in old chronicles prove the conservatism of the mind of the Polish people and their conceptions of life. The maiden, now as in the olden days, sings before the all-important act of marriage: "Wreath, delicately bound of roses and white lilies intertwined, thou shalt for the last time adorn my anxious brow. Thou art the last of all garlands that I wound in the spring of maidenhood! By the side of the husband do I wander far away. Farewell to the mother's heart that bore me through bliss and pain. Might I repay all her toils with rich treasures...." Adorned with the gaily colored bridal treasures or tinsel, she kneels to-day as of yore before her parents to receive their blessing. All the symbolic ceremonies betray an ancient origin.
Though legendary and mythical, Princess Wanda, daughter of Cracus (founder of the ancient capital Cracow), symbolizes the virtues of Polish patriotism, chastity, and grace. She is the noblest type of Polish womanhood, and her memory lives on and on, in the soul of her race, as it were the personification of her sex Polonized. She had vowed eternal chastity, but a German war lord, Ritiger, inflamed by her beauty, waged war against her people to win her by force. Though the Poles were victorious, Wanda threw herself from the bridge of the castle on the Wawel mountain into the Vistula to save her country and her people from similar wars. Lyric and dramatic poetry, as well as the fine arts, music, painting, and sculpture, have glorified the self-sacrifice of the noble Polish princess at the legendary entrance of her race into history. Only the other great race of the western Slavic family, the Czechs, begins its history in like fashion with the beautiful and semi-divine form of Libussa.
With the reign of Mieczyslaw I. (962) Polish history begins. In 965, this prince adopted Christianity in order to win the hand of Dombrowka, daughter of king Boleslaw of Bohemia, and thus to consolidate the two great western Slavic races against the ever-increasing encroachments of the Germans. Roman Catholicism stands at the cradle of the Poles, thus placing them from the start in opposition to the eastern Slavs, foremost among whom are the Russians. After Dombrowka's death in 977, a German markgravine, Oda, shared the Polish throne.
Polish literature begins with a hymn to the Holy Virgin (Bogarodzica, Mother of God), the national protectress of the Poles, whose worship pervades their entire life, and whose sacred picture is the essential part of their national coat of arms of the white eagle and their national banner. This hymn is the Polish catechism; it accompanies the schoolboy and the warrior and, in fact, all classes and ages throughout life. This feminine romantic song and thePsalter of Queen Margaretare the oldest monuments of Polish literature.
The later princes and kings of Poland, a dignity bestowed upon them by Otto II., Emperor of Germany, married, for dynastic reasons, Czech, Kief, and German princesses, who, it is true, did not further Polish national life, but broadened Polish culture by contact with other nations. Wladislaw Lokietek (the Short), who about 1312 made Cracow the centre of Poland, being the first monarch crowned there, married Jadwiga, daughter of Boleslaw, Prince of Kalisz. She was an eminent woman, and was buried in the magnificent cathedral at Cracow, where her granite monument still stands.
The early kings favored the common people, who, unfortunately, in later centuries were reduced to servitude, against theszlachta(Geschlechi, nobility), so that in early days the women of the people (naród) attained a high social standard. Especially Casimir the Great, "the king of the peasants," and of the oppressed generally, greatly increased the happiness and prosperity of the nation. He even admitted to his realm the persecuted Jews by virtue of the statute of 1357 (privilegia judaeorum), a favor which, according to an unauthenticated tradition, was due to his love for a beautiful JewessEsterka(Esther). This great king was legally married three times. He was unhappy in his marriage with Anna Aldona, a Lithuanian princess, a union which remained, however, without political consequences. Anna never felt at home in Poland; she clung to Lithuanian customs, music, and dance. She loved the manly sports of horseback riding and hunting, and during her indulgence in them she was accompanied by Lithuanian flute players. Her Christianity appeared at all times rather doubtful in the eyes of the Polish clergy, and the Church pomp and ceremony were to her very distasteful.
Her husband, to whom she was married almost in his boyhood, led a very licentious life. Theodor Schiemann, the historian of the Slavs, relates how Casimir at the court of Budapest fell in love with Clara von Zach, daughter of a court official. Casimir's sister, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, aided him in seducing the innocent maiden. The father of the latter, maddened by the disgrace, broke into the royal hall to avenge himself upon the betrayers of his child, and wounded the royal couple, but he was finally slain. A terrible judgment was passed upon all the members of the family of Zach: Clara herself was mutilated and chased, as a beast might be, to death, but her royal seducer did not interpose a barrier to her punishment. This event throws a lurid light on the mediæval court life in Hungary and Poland.
After the death of Lithuanian Anna, Casimir betrothed himself to Margareth of Bavaria, who is said to have died of grief at the approaching marriage to the hated Polish king. His next wife, Adelheid of Hesse, was neglected and ill treated, and when the king married another woman, Christina Rokiczan, she left Poland forever. Christina shared the fate of her predecessor, and the king married in 1365 Hedwig, Duchess of Sagan, during the lifetime of his undivorced wife Adelheid. The Pope, however, who had at first called that marriage "a public disgrace," granted him a divorce from his former wife to legitimatize the new union. We may draw interesting comparisons between that otherwise great and tolerant but morally depraved Polish king and Henry VIII. of England.
The first great Polish woman in the glowing light of history is Jadwiga, daughter of King Louis of Hungary and Poland, the legitimate queen of Poland in default of a male heir, crowned on October 15, 1384, in the Cathedral of Cracow. Betrothed in her childhood to an Austrian prince, who now came to Cracow and quickly won her heart and actually consummated the marriage, she was nevertheless compelled by the Polish nobles, who hated the German and forced him to flee for his life, to accept Jagiello, the supreme duke of the Lithuanians, a still barbarous, pagan people, but whose power extended down to Kief. This union was a political stroke of the first magnitude. Jagiello and the Lithuanians became Christianized in the Latin form, the united countries became the greatest power in eastern Europe, and therewith the overwhelming might of the Teutonic Order was broken forever. The dynasty of the Jagiellos was founded and reigned supreme in Poland for two hundred years (1386-1572). When Jadwiga, a great queen and woman, died in 1399, the Poles, otherwise unruly, retained as their ruler King Wladislaw Jagiello, who from a great but savage pagan had become a good Christian and a strong statesman. The destruction of the Teutonic Order in the battle of Tannenberg, 1410, one of the greatest and most decisive battles in history, insured for centuries the hegemony of Poland in eastern Europe. Of this battle we have an interesting letter from Jagiello to Anna, his second wife, whom he addressed from the camp on the battlefield as "noble princess, illustrious and dear consort": "We slew numberless enemies, not through the strength of Our arm, or the multitude of Our warriors, but solely with the aid of Our Lord, who may further us in power and virtue!" This document not only shows Jagiello's adherence to Christianity, but also proves the respect paid to a Polish queen, even though she was inferior to Jadwiga, who was the reorganizer and refounder not only of a mighty realm, but also of the famous old University of Cracow, which before her time had sunk into complete insignificance. She had obtained in 1397 a papal bull for the foundation of a theological faculty, and insured the existence of the university for the future by rich legacies bequeathed on her deathbed.
One century and a half later a royal romance with a tragic ending was enacted in Poland. King Sigismund (Augustus) II. (1547-1572), on the death of his first wife Elizabeth, daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I., married secretly Barbara Radziwil, of the most illustrious Lithuanian family. On his accession to the throne he avowed his marriage, and the princess accompanied him to Cracow to attend the funeral of his father. The diet of Piotrkow believing a union with a foreign princess more profitable to Poland, demanded the annulment of his marriage with Barbara, but the king resisted, and saw her crowned as his queen in 1550. Six months after her coronation, however, she died suddenly, probably poisoned by her mother-in-law, the hated Italian, Bona Sforza, who as queen had exercised a baneful influence upon Polish life. The unfortunate Queen Barbara is idealized in Polish lays, and the portraits preserved of her show beauty of form and features.
It may be interesting to note the relation of the great Polish king Jan Sobieski (1674-1696), the liberator of Vienna, and in truth of Europe, from the Turkish conquerors, to his wife, who exercised an almost complete dominion over him. We have an admirable description of the Polish court at the time of Sobieski; of his extraordinary wife and daughter, and of social affairs there, in a report by a contemporary, an anonymous French abbé, whose manuscript was found in the Bibliothèque Mazarin, in Paris, and was published for the first time in 1858. He describes the Polish nobility as turbulent in the Diet and at home, tells of their luxury and their habits, the high esteem in which ladies of high birth were held, and the scandalous treatment of peasant women, as well as the absolute power of theszlachtaover the life and honor of the serfs and their women.
Sobieski's wife was a French woman, but she became completely Polonized: Marie Casimire d'Arquien, originally maid of honor of Marie Louise, wife of Wladislaw and of his brother Casimir successively, had been married first to the Polish magnate Zamoiski, and after his death to Sobieski. She is said to have induced her royal consort to assist Austria against the Turks, very much against the wishes of Louis XIV. of France, who desired the power of Austria to be broken forever. The King of France had incurred her ill will by refusing to elevate her father to the rank of a duke. The queen had the strongest Polish interests and sympathies; the letters of Sobieski to her are all in Polish; they are of the greatest historical value, as the king informs her constantly of his progress; also the personal element in them is highly interesting; they abound in words of endearment: "My charming and incomparable Mariette." "Only joy of my soul." The queen, though beautiful and passionately loved by Sobieski, was an avaricious, despotic, jealous, revengeful woman. After the death of the great king she lived in Italy and France, and died in 1716 in the castle of Blois which Louis XIV. had given to her. Her remains rest with those of Sobieski in the Cathedral of Cracow.
The description of the decline of Poland under the Saxon kings, of the political and moral decay of the country under foreign rulers, does not belong to our theme, since the national element in the social life of the unfortunate country is wanting.
If so much attention has heretofore been given to royal women, it was done in the conviction that, since, after all, the history of culture is a comparatively modern branch of scholarship, national life in periods not too clearly defined in history is best depicted in the highest circles, which, for good or for evil, will ever serve as a model or a type to be imitated by the classes below. We need only to glance at the life of fashion, so essential to women in all stages of society, to realize the truth of this conclusion.
In spite of all class distinctions, which were stronger in Poland than in any other country of western civilization, the Polish type of womanhood was nevertheless more recognizable throughout all the classes than anywhere else. In spite of all their modesty and womanly beauty, Polish women were at all times political enthusiasts; at all epochs we find among them commanding natures, resolute and manly patriots. Patriotic motives governed their loves, their marriages, their motherhood, and at no time more than since the partition of their beloved country. They excel in hospitality, which is their particular métier, and upon which they lavish, almost frivolously, their earthly goods. Courage, bravery, even heroism, are common traits, and are presupposed in their men as prerequisites to winning female affections. Ideals prevailed at all times; and for ideals, often very empty and unstatesmanlike, they sacrificed themselves, and also the life blood of their men, nay, their commonwealth, in fatal contrast to the self-interested, cool-headed, and cold-hearted statesmanship of their well-disciplined German neighbors. Upon this noble, but unpractical, national characteristic is to be based also their lack of an economic sense; work as such for material reward was always, it may be said, despised by Polish women; money was, and is, considered a sordid means for a purpose; and the same training, inculcated into the souls of the sons of Polish women, was one of the chief reasons for the political downfall of the nation. A too highly developed sense of individual liberty, the pursuit of ideals, impracticable even for their own people, and a contempt for everyday work and commonplace activity, have destroyed Poland. The eminent Danish literary historian Georg Brandes, in his Poland, reports characteristically this significant remark by a distinguished Polish lady: "What company they invited me to meet! It was made up of workmen, advocates whom we pay, manufacturers who sell goods, doctors into whose hands three rubles are slipped for a visit."
It is true that it was not always thus with Polish women, and certainly not with those of the poorer classes. In early times the education of woman consisted in prayer and work. Learning was not a womanly requisite; the domestic and agricultural work in the fields belonged to women, while the tavern was too frequently the abode of the man (chlop). Piety is a most genuine reality with Polish women; they were at all times a rock of the Catholic Church. Chastity was the most common virtue, and was strictly enforced. Nitschmann, the German historian of Polish literature, mentions the fact that as late as A. D. 1645, a young gentlewoman at the Polish court, who had entertained improper relations with several courtiers, was condemned to death, together with her lovers. Strict discipline went so far that, according to old Polish custom, maidens were chastised with rods every Friday to remind them of Christ's sufferings and to bring them nearer to God. The prayer of innocent children was reputed more effective, which was a strong incentive for young women to keep themselves pure as long as possible. No wonder that such women attained, in the course of time, a moral supremacy over their men, and that nowhere in Europe such a genuine deference was offered to women as in Poland. The almost supreme rule of the Polish mother over her sons is proverbial. With all her tenderness for her children, it is the Polish mother who drove the youth of the land to an almost hopeless struggle against the foreign conqueror, and to death on the altar of the fatherland. Nowhere has the Spartan mother's "Either with the shield or upon the shield" become such an often repeated reality as in the Polish insurrections against Russia.
Until the entrance of French fashions, which, however, especially influenced the higher classes, the costume of Polish women of all classes was national, beautiful, and many-colored. A cap of fine linen and a diadem were worn; the neck was left uncovered, as with the Polish men, and was adorned with strings of beads or jewels; rich furs ornamented the edges of their garments. The unmarried women wore fine silken or linen aprons, which are even to-day an indispensable part of the costume of Polish peasant girls at their social functions, for example, dances and spinning parties. A gaily colored cloth, artistically wound around the head, was always worn by the Polish girl of the lower classes; a white veil, which, however, must not cover the face, as with Mohammedan women, covered the heads of the maidens of the higher classes. Since the partition of Poland the gay national costume of the Poles is prohibited in Russia, but it is still worn, especially on festal occasions in Austria and Prussia.
The charm and beauty of Polish women is the constant theme of the national poets. A lyric poet of the seventeenth century, Morsztyn, sings of the Polish virgin: