Utah Rus’

While reading the Russkaia Pravda, I couldn’t help but laugh a little to myself because in my leisure time I’ve been reading a book called Under The Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, which is a profile of the crazy, extreme Mormon sects that routinely practice kidnapping, rape (statutory & not), marrying girls and women off inappropriately. These are simply a few of the horrible atrocities committed by these extreme Mormon sects. What took me by storm, was how many offenses listed in the Russkaia Pravda were applicable to these mormons. I swear, the Rus’ government would be making loads of grivnas off of these religious fanatics. From page 51… rules 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14… Clearly these mormons would have some serious issues with the Rus’. At the same time, however, I was blown away by how strong a presence religion really was in Kievan Rus’. For instance, Rule No. 19 of the Russkaia Pravda basically says if you leave your wife and kids you get punished. From my eyes, in today’s society – that seems pretty unfair. The next rule however, rule no. 20, cleared up my confusion. Rule 20 states that if a Muslim or Jew marries a woman, they have to pay (I think) 60 grivnas and take her to a convent. Rule 20 helped clarify rule 19 because it showed me how religious the Rus’ were, which is why leaving your wife would be considered a giant problem in their society. The amount of rules pointed at fornication contributes to this notion. I can’t imagine myself living in Kievan Rus’ society and feeling comfortable being there.

Reading the Russkaia Pravda also makes me wonder if the anti-gay sentiments of Russian people are deeply rooted in the highly religious Kievan Rus’ society. Clearly, this is an enormous stretch, but it could be worth a delving into. I wonder how much documentation exists on the treatment of homosexuals during the Kievan Rus’ period – this is also something to delve into.

The Value of Revolutionary Culture

The nature of revolutionaries is always emotional, and it is essential for all the revolutionaries. The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, was composed and completed in one nightThe anthem calls directly for fighting against tyranny, with the core idea of retrieving liberty from the tyranny by “swords and shield.” As it is stated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the “natural and imprescriptible” rights of man are “Liberty, Property, Security and Resistance of Oppression.” When a government cannot ensure these rights for its people, it ought to be replaced by a new one. In the process of destroying the old government and constructing a new one, conflict arises between the people who are in control and those controlled – there will be blood. One of the key values of  the revolutionary culture is that, it out speaks about the fact that man could lose his life in fighting, yet it encourages and empowers man to risk his life in order to retrieve other inalienable rights. Thus people must be charged with emotions, mostly through a justification for their actions. For example, in La Marseillaise, it goes:

Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling hosts a ruffian band
Affright and desolate the land
While peace and liberty lie bleeding?
To arms, to arms, ye brave!
Th’avenging sword unsheathe!
March on, march on, all hearts resolved
On liberty or death.

By provoking the repressed emotion of the people, the anthem brings people together because it stresses the common resentment towards the tyrants. Peace and Liberty can be achieved only if the public fight bravely for them, even at the cost of their lives. Revolutionaries must be emotional, for without passion, courage and sacrifice, change cannot be taken place.

The Cult of the Supreme Being by Maximilien Robespierre provides French people justification for their revolution in a religious context. He states that the Supreme Being did not “create kings to devour the human race; he did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery, and falsehood.” With a rejection to all the behaviors that the Supreme Being did not want to create, Robespierre justifies the French people’s fight against these roles. He also addresses that the revolution is the responsibility of the French people, for the Supreme Being would like to see the justice be brought back to the earth. Robespierre achieved in using religion, as opposed to the way it has been used hundreds of years before, which is to stabilized the political situation and prevent the rise of revolution, to fuel people with motive and emotion so as to push revolution forward.

Law and Women in Early Rus Society

The two law codes we have read for the people of Rus are very different. They show changing attitudes to governance, punishment, and women. The First law code we read, the Pravada Russkaia, mostly describes crimes that pretty much everyone would have a problem with. They are things like theft, violence, and destruction of property. The mechanism for enforcement is the wronged party. The second set of laws we have read, Iaroslav’s Statute, Are much broader. Instead of before when crimes such as rape where left out, probably because everyone knew what to do about it, they are included. There are lots of new laws about women, their actions, and actions against them. There is also the inclusion of laws with religious reasons. Punishments no longer go just to the wronged party, but they may now also have to be paid to the Metropolitan or the Church. Some crimes even require people to go to covenants. The laws protected people especially women from things such as being kicked out of their house, or raped, but also restricted rights we would see as very important today.

In early Rus the Orthodox Church had a heavy hand in people’s views of women. The Church had a way of viewing women that we might refer to as the “Madonna/Whore complex.” Women where either good or evil based on a set of guidelines we today would most likely not think of. However that does not mean that women where without power in the society. There was evidence of them doing everything from being mayors of towns to brewing their own beer. While this might have set them occasionally at odds with the Church they where still able to enjoy greater freedoms. The Church’s opinion of women was widespread it often did not reflect the actual position of women, who often had prominence than they where given credit for. I wonder how comparable the situation of women was in Rus to other places around the world at the same time.

Early Rus Law

    Once a society evolves into a body with some form of governance (whether it be a system of lords, barons, or landowners), a law code is often developed for the purpose of keeping the peace. In the Kiev region of the world during the evolution of the Rus people, two prominent law codes came to the forefront as a list of commandments by which their society stood. The first of these codes, known as Iaroslav’s Statute, came into being during the early 11th/late 10th century, and existed as a compilation of laws borrowed, modified, and evolved from tribal customs and statues that existed among the Kievan people for centuries. The second, more modern version of early Rus lawcode, known as Russkaya Parvda, stuck to many of the major principles put forth in Iaroslav’s Statute, with only a few minor alterations. Both law codes reflect a civility in style of governance that shows a relative leniency towards those who violate the principle laws illustrated in both edicts.

                 The lack of an overarching, state mandated death penalty for major offenses (excluding rape) shows both a respect for human life on the part of Rus society as a whole, a respect that perhaps blossomed out of the necessity to keep a sizeable enough population to have society function properly; in other words, perhaps the early Rus people believed a man more valuable alive as a tax paying citizen and land-worker opposed to an executed convicted criminal. Perhaps the Rus people placed a heavier financial levy on more serious crimes in order to make a steadier profit for the government, or perhaps , in the case of murder, to recoup the financial contribution that the deceased would have made as a tax payer and layman during the rest of his/her lifetime.  

                The way in which both codes directly address the issue of gender proves confusing, especially in a society that acted in an inherently patriarchal manner (excluding the rule of a female regent or two). Iaroslav’s Statute in particular goes into detail regarding the way in which men and women should act when engaged in marital affairs, assigning a government enforceable punishment for such acts as infidelity, incest, bestiality, and “defrocking” of a nun. This attention to detail in regard to the way in which men and women treat each other shows the way the early people of Rus felt about gender. Although specific gender roles are also assigned in the law code, and women are clearly subservient to men, the amount of detail given in regard to the way men and women are meant to behave towards each other in both codes shows that the patriarch based society cared enough about the well being of its women to write specific legal precedent into their highest law code, solely for the purpose of providing ample punishment for those who did each other wrong across the board, regardless of gender.  

Revolutionary Culture & Religion

As the French Revolution began to transition from phase one, the Liberal Revolution, to the Revolution of War, Terror, and the Rise of Republican France, culture was extremely effected. In La Marseillaise, written by laude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, he uses his song to call all citizens to arms to defend against “The roar of these savage soldiers” as
“They come right into our arms, To cut the throats of your sons, your country.”   La Marseillaiseis still the national Anthem of France, which is a prime example of how the cultural changes in the Revolution have made a lasting impact even to the present day.  I found the situation in which La Marseillaise was written was somewhat similar to that of the Star Spangled Banner.  Written in one night, by someone who was not primarily a poet/song writer (laude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle was a captain of the engineers, and Francis Scott Key was a lawyer).  Also, neither instance was written specifically to be a national anthem.  La Marseillaise was for a banquet at Marseillaise, and Francis Scott Key’s was a simple retelling of what he say aboard a British Vessel.

Religion also changed dramatically during the revolution.  Maximilien Robespierre, one of the leaders of the Committee of Public Safety wrote The Cult of the Supreme Being, almost as a new declaration of religion.  Along with more tame pieces, concerning Monarchical rule and the waste of the clergy, stating “He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery, and falsehood.” Robespierre also included many radical statements.  He called for outlawing the traditional calendar, and to replace it with a completely different one.  This caused extreme confusion within the nation.  Additionally, he called” Republican Frenchmen, it is yours to purify the earth which they have soiled, and to recall to it the justice that they have banished!”  This is similar the Karl Marx’s final quote in the communist manifesto in which he calls the working class to reclaim the earth from the elite class.  With the removal of Christianity from France, all religious traditions were deemed hostile to the success of France, causing the populous to be under threat of execution.

Religion in a Revolutionary Context

Religion remained the primary justification of the French Revolution by the citizens of the third estate. Robespierre, the leader of Public Safety, pushed both ideologies of Supreme “Reason” and “Being” in order to provide a more understandable means to motivate revolutionaries. The state religion at the time revolved around a Deist philosophy, the notion that there is no divine intervention and God is a clockmaker who merely wound up the springs of nature and set them into motion. Logically, because God cannot interrupt the flow of the human course, but simultaneously promoted particular virtues that the monarchy did not reflect, it became justified that it was their right to overthrow the atheistic monarch to perpetuate God’s will. Religious sentiments such as these are extremely powerful. When man and woman can be convinced that their violence is justified and the result will bring them higher fortunes, it is very difficult to stop them.

La Marseillaise, the French National Anthem composed during the French Revolution, contained very violent language that no one could find religiously justifiable without it’s context. Phrases such as “Their impure blood should water our fields”, paired with adjectives like “vengeful”, actually caused it to be banned by Napoleon and Louis XVIII due to its revolutionary implications. These documents reveal that revolutionary culture during the French Revolution was fueled by violence while simultaneously being justified in religious contexts.

Values of Revolutionary Culture

La Marseillaise is a remarkably bloodthirsty national anthem, marking the desire for revenge over those who oppressed the French citizenry. It is interesting that Rouget de Lisle was himself a royalist, not only because he composed this anthem in a revolutionary spirit, but also because of the incredibly violent nature of the lyrics:

Aux armes citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.

To arms, citizens!
Form up your battalions
Let us march, Let us march!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields

These lyrics express a desire to repay blood with blood, which with the limited information about Rouget de Lisle provided, is strange because it would seem that himself, as a royalist, would be one of the ones whose blood would “water [the] fields.” It would seem that he took a great risk by refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution, and he narrowly escaped the guillotine.

The Cult of the Supreme Being by Robespierre at parts seems almost to contradict many of the events of the Reign of Terror. Robespierre says the Supreme Being “created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.” According to him, however, this only applies to those Frenchmen taking part in the revolution, and basically the opposite applies to the oppressors.

These references to the “Supreme Being” are the establishment of Deism as a state religion, meaning that Robespierre and many French revolutionists believed that there was a Supreme Being, or God, who created the universe but did not interact with it. The revolutionists believed that the Supreme Being was in favor of their movement and against all those who opposed it. This, again seems to be contradictory since a main tenet of deism is that the Supreme Being does not interact with the universe which He created.

These works by Rouget de Lisle and Robespierre show us that the values of revolutionary culture were geared primarily at attaining their goal of overthrowing the French monarchy and establishing a new order. They were not necessarily concerned with absolute consistency in their ideals, as is evident in the 40,000 people who were sent to the guillotine while revolutionists preached that the Supreme Being created man to “love each other mutually” and to seek enlightenment. Robespierre says “[m]ay all the crimes and all the misfortunes of the world disappear…Armed in turn with the daggers of fanaticism and the poisons of atheism, kings have always conspired to assassinate humanity.” This seems oddly reminiscent of the way the revolutionists handled their Reign of Terror; one could easily argue that there were a great many crimes and misfortunes inflicted on the world, and a great many assassinations were carried out at the guillotine.

Values of the revolutionary culture

The French National Anthem, written by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle clearly demonstrates the values of the French Revolution. Copies were given to revolutionary forces and it became widespread and well known, so as to inspire and motivate the revolutionaries. One stanza reads, “To arms, citizens! Form up your battalions. Let us march, Let us march! That their impure blood. Should water our fields.” This clearly reveals the blatant violence and fierceness that fueled the revolution. The anthem was composed in 1792, the year the king was executed and the beginning of the period of Terror that would see more than 40,000 people executed. The bloodthirsty nature of the anthem reflects the violence occurring in France during this time and shows that the values were war and violence based, encouraging death to gain liberty, and shedding blood, as the only way to achieve their goal. 

The Cult of the Supreme Being seems at first to encourage more peaceful values than La Marseilles. However upon further reading it is obvious that the document also encourages violence and war. Robespierre states that those actions are justified because that is what God would have wanted. Robespierre says that He did not create anything or anyone to harm the human race, but rather to love and care for each other. However, since these values of compassion towards others are not being upheld, those who go against it must be killed, “Perish the tyrants who have dared to break it!”. War is encouraged in the author’s stating that the earth must be purified of those who go against God, and those who are evil, thus fueling the violent nature of the revolution.

 

Gender in Rus Society

After having compared the  Pravda Russkaia with the Statute of Iaroslav, their treatment towards the subject of gender, women in particular, is not only apparent but different from each other as well. Specifically speaking, although both texts clearly state that women within society are more heavily governed, the methods which each text states are different.

Through out the Statute of Iaroslav the text clearly and consistently focuses on women in terms of sexuality. The text in particular focuses on laws around subjects including marriage, divorce, adultery, and cheating. Yet for the Pravda Russkaia, on the other hand, places more focus towards overall worth.

Furthermore when looking more closely to each document, in terms of  within Rus society, there was a surprisingly limited amount of information focusing on homosexuals. In the Statute of Iaroslav, in particular, the closest mention to any form of homosexual activity is found at the 28th law stating “If two brother engage in intercourse with one woman [they are to pay] the Metropolitan 30 grivnas; and take the woman into convent.” Other than this neither the statute or Pravda Russkaia made any attempt in mentioning the subject of homosexuals, which leads me to wonder if, during this time, the idea of homosexuality was so uncommon to the society that there was no need for laws to be made?

Values and Goals of the French Revolution

The bloodiness of the French Revolution came from its values, which are especially seen in La Marseillaise and The Cult of the Supreme Being. The French National anthem is drastically different from the American equivalent. It promotes values of war and violence to achieve liberty. La Marseillaise inspired citizens to take up arms to end government tyranny. The anthem is appropriate for troops marching into combat under heavy fire whereas the Star-Spangled Banner focuses on the values achieved by the war’s success such as liberty and equality.

The Cult of the Supreme Being, written by Robespierre in the Reign of Terror, represents similar values of violence and rebellion but from a very different angle. Robespierre justifies the call to arms with religion. He merges God with war by saying the He created men to help one another and that it is their duty to “purify the earth which they have soiled.” His radical writings are faith with fanaticism. Robespierre is careful to give “Him” a new name–The Supreme Being–to avoid losing the supports of more religious people of the Third Estate.

The dramatic text is an extreme, twisted version of civil religion. Instead of creating loyalty to the state through religious symbolism, he creates loyalty to the French Revolution with religious symbolism. He is certainly not the first to make his own perspective on religious to further violent goals.

The goals of the famous texts which inspired the revolution were corrupted during the actual revolution. Instead of achieving enlightenment through thinking for oneself or engaging in intellectual debate to better civil society, the goal became a violent overthrow of government tyranny. The French Revolution was an accurate depiction of Hobbes’ state of nature. Perhaps a contributing factor to the French Revolution’s unsuccessfulness (as compared to America) was that the civil religion used to inspire and justify the bloody revolution was never adapted for peacetime. Just a speculation…