Women of the Teutonic Nations

by Hermann Schoenfeld

PRINCESS SOPHIA AND THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOL RELIGIONISTS
After 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 wealthy posadnitsa (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 favorite boyar of 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.