--- #TODO <iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/3qDpMgJ28GwGu2P3UePSvW?utm_source=generator&theme=0" width="100%" height="152" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe> In the 1800's Russia stood as an autocratic colossus—vast, powerful, yet unsure of its soul—still feudal in economy, yet increasingly exposed to the ideological tremors of post-Enlightenment Europe. For the past two centuries, the [Raskól](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism_of_the_Russian_Church?utm_source=chatgpt.com) had not only divided religious practice but shattered the identity through which Russia once saw itself—the last true bastion of Holy Roman Orthodox Christianity. On the tailwinds of this anxiety, Peter the Great introduced radical reforms, a Western-style bureaucratic and militaristic state to consolidate his power and avoid a potential revolution. The result was a ruling class that spoke French and modelled themselves after Prussian bureaucrats, while its masses remained anchored in a feudalist serfdom more akin to slavery. > _“The Czar is on Earth the sole emperor of the Christians, the leader of the Apostolic Church which stands no more in Rome or Constantinople, but in the blessed city of Moscow.... Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands and the fourth there will not be.”_ > - [Philotheus of Pskov - Филофей](https://quote.org/quote/the-czar-is-on-earth-the-sole-583001) ![[Nikita_Pustosviat._Dispute_on_the_Confession_of_Faith.jpg]] The Russian elite coveted the prosperity and mobility of the Western bourgeoisie, but could not replicate its productive base without dismantling the very social order that kept them powerful. Their agrarian economy which largely fed the capitalistic west had over 80% of the Russian population legally bound surfs. *How could a self-proclaimed Christian empire, have people live in bondage, while the west moved towards prosperity.* This contradiction—envy without capacity—culminated in the ideological chasm of the 1840s between the Westernizers and Slavophiles. The former, led by thinkers like [Belinsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vissarion_Belinsky) and [Herzen,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Herzen) believed salvation lay in embracing Europe’s rationalist and democratic ethos. The latter, like [Khomyakov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksey_Khomyakov) and [Aksakov,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Aksakov) argued for a return to Russia’s unique spiritual and communal traditions, rooted in Orthodox mysticism and the peasant commune. Russia needed an answer, a literate urban public, cultural symbols of belonging. Meanwhile German opera houses and Italian touring companies dominated St Petersburg, threatening to brand Russia a perpetual pupil. The Slavophile-Westernizer quarrel moved from pamphlets to playbills: if “Russianness” could be heard, not just preached, it might unify classes and rebut Western condescension. Алекса́ндр Порфи́рьевич Бороди́н (Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin) was the illegitimate son of a Georgian prince (borderland pedigree) and a professor of organic chemistry who wrote music at night. With railways, journals and universal military service knitting provinces to the capital as Poland (1863) and the Caucasus smouldered. A emblem of unity felt urgent before separatists supplied their own anthems. However, what did it mean to be Russian? The empire stretched into Muslim Kazakh steppes and Turkic Central Asia; St Petersburg elites feared Europe saw this as barbaric. However, by absorbing “eastern” timbres, Russian art could recast _otherness_ as _uniqueness_, turning geopolitical liability into aesthetic capital. ![[Riding a Flying Carpet, an 1880 painting by Viktor Vasnetsov.jpg]]