What are the nation and nationhood? What are hidden forces creating national identity? Is national identity a conscious construct chosen by a person because of earthly needs or irrational feeling driving an individual against his will? These are first questions arising after reading the papers by Michel Bouchard and A. V. Korenevsky. Unfortunately, these questions are left without a definite answer. At the same time, modern historiography of medieval West proposes interpretations which might provide useful background for the study of the “nation” and “nationhood” in medieval Russia.
The first issue which can shed light on the problem of “national” identity is the debated problem of Gothic identity. The Goths emerged on the European horizon in the fourth and fifth centuries. The Gothic ethnic conglomeration was created after the migration of some German tribes from Eastern Pomerania to the territory of modern Ukraine. This mixture of German migrants with indigenous population is now identified as the Cherniakhovsky archaeological culture. Reinhard Wenskus and Herwig Wolfram^[1] argued that the appearance of Gothic identity was the creation of aristocratic elite, that is, the Gothic royal families in the fourth century. These elite, which included just a few per cent of the whole people, imposed their own identity on other German groups and conquered population. Thus, the Goths existed while their royal dynasties were alive. According to this theory, nationhood or national identity was primarily rational and political construct, and people chose and changed their national “affiliation” easily and consciously.
On the other hand, Peter Heather^[2] strongly argues that this ‘royal’ interpretation is visibly influenced by Cassiodorus’ Getica, which were written at the mid-sixth century and re-interpreted early Gothic history in the interest of the Amal dynasty. Heather proves that Gothic free men were the carriers of Gothic identity in the “Cherniakhovsky’ period and later on, while the royal dynasties appeared in the fifth century when the Goths were already on Roman lands. The free Goths consisted of about 20-30 per cent of population. This was the reason why the Gothic identity survived through three centuries. The Gothic identity gave high social status and related privileges in the society, and the slaves, dependent people, and conquered people were formally excluded from the Gothicness. Many people from other ethnic groups tried to become the Goths when the Goths were the ruling group in the state. Yet the Gothic identity disappeared soon after the military defeat and annihilation of the free Goths or their departure. The latter case happened on the territory to the north and east from the Carpathian Mountains. When the Goths left this region for Roman lands, the former dependent tribes and ethnic groups created their own Slavic identity. Thus, in Heather’s opinion, the Gothic identity was the irrational category and rational construct simultaneously. This example demonstrates that ethnic identity in the early Middle Ages was a very complicated category quite different from the nationhood of the modern period. That is why Michel Bouchard’s attempt to find the earliest traces of a sense of Russian nationhood back to the eleventh century seems to me too presumptuous.
Bouchard’s methodology is based on Adrian Hastings’s study of late medieval England. Yet English “national” identity at that time was rather an exception in medieval Europe. For example, when late medieval authors spoke of France and French nation in the Higher Middle Ages, we realize that this “nation” included not only French speaking majority, but other ethnic groups such as the Bretons and Gascons with different languages, customs, and tradition. Therefore, “the most Christian French nation” speaking of the same language was simply an ideological construct of the emerging French state. That is why the reviews on Colette Beaune’s book Naissance de la nation France (Paris, 1985) mentioned that this book describes the emergence of the French state and national ideology in the late medieval period rather than the birth of the French nation. Consequently, her book, translated into English, changed its title, i. e, Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late Medieval France (Berkeley, 1991). Are not “the Russian nationhood” and “the concept of nation”, whose emergence Bouchard traces back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a similar ideological myth created in written sources of the later time?
Since I am not a specialist in Old Russian linguistics – though Bouchard’s endeavor to translate the word “народ,” found in Russian medieval texts, with the term “nation” creates serious doubts – I will turn to the postulated role of the Psalter in the creation of “nationhood.” It is known that the Psalter, Bible, and other liturgical texts were produced in the Frankish state in the ninth century. In the late eighth through early ninth century, Frankish kings undertook a liturgical reform to standardize the use of liturgical texts in the ceremony of mass. In the early ninth century, the expression Christiana religio became the main legend on Carolingian coins and consequently were seen by the majority of the Franks. Yet the political tumults and changes of the late ninth and tenth century caused the dissolution of the previous Frankish identity, which later was replaced with French and German ones. Although the modern Germans call France Frankreich, this does not mean that the modern French and the early medieval Franks are the same nation. The ethnic terms are sometimes more conservative than real ethnic and national processes. For this reason, they demand more careful analysis, and the mere existence of the Bible or Psalter cannot be a decisive factor in the creation of the concept of nation.
The Frankish history also questions Korenevsky’s thesis that the Old Testament and, in particular, its concept of a chosen people and land had exeptional influence on the Old Russian people. By the ninth century, the concept of the Franks as a people chosen by God deeply entrenched in Carolingian ideology. This was an important factor in the policy of the Christianization of pagan neighbors such as the Saxons. Carolingian monarchs imitated the kings of the Old Testament, and in the luxurious Carolingian manuscripts the images of David and Solomon were placed near those of Charlemagne and Charles the Bald. Charlemagne even chose the name of David as his nickname in the Palace Academy. Aachen, the new capital of the Carolingian Empire, was built as an earthly image of heavenly Jerusalem.
Returning now to the role of Psalter, the question seems obvious: what was the real influence of the Psalter on lower strata of the medieval Russian society? Bouchard does not answer this question and makes a sweeping conclusion: “Given the importance of the Russian Orthodox Faith in the life of the average Russian peasant, and the central importance of the Psalter in Orthodox religious practice, it is difficult to conceive how the peasantry could not have understood that they belonged to a nation/narod.” Yet the span between the formal Christianization and internal Christianization of the mentality and culture of the peasantry is usually very wide. The Franks were converted to Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries. Previous historiography, relying on the sources mainly written by clergy, supposed that the official conversion quickly led to the wide spread of Christian beliefs and practices in popular culture.^[3] Yet recent studies, based on other types of evidence, demonstrate that the oral popular culture full of pagan practices and rudiments were still strong in the eighth and ninth century.^[4] The real Chistianization on the level of internal beliefs was the product of the High Middle Ages when the structure of parish churches developed in the countryside. Thus, the internalization of Christianity in the popular culture on the Frankish lands took approximately five or six centuries. Was this process in medieval Rus’ so fast that in the eleventh or twelfth century the Psalter was able to shape thoughts and feelings of the medieval Russian peasantry? In the Middle Ages, the Psalter or another liturgical text was a sumptuous manuscript available only to a member of elite, church, or monastery. Only in church were the medieval peasants able to hear some psalms, but this happened so rarely that one can doubt if they really “heard” the arcane “national” interpretations found in them by Michel Bouchard…