Slezkine

their beauty after only two years of marriage. Some naturalists opine that such early mat-

uration and fertility are brought about by frequent baths, while the fact that their beauty

is so short-lived is due to their habit of rubbing various substances onto their bodies, or

perhaps to the heavy chores commonly performed by married women.44

And yet there was something about the Russians that made them feel supe-

rior to both the Moldavians and the Mingrelians, something that allowed them to

dismiss the Buriats as brutes (and occasionally made them uneasy about their own

position vis-a-vis the Germans). This was education, or Enlightenment, roughly

analogous, on the national level, to the development of the "arts, sciences, trade,

and industry." Education was the reason the learned mercenaries were in Russia,

the official cause of Russia's growing greatness, the true meaning of history, and

perhaps the only meaningful way of measuring the relative virtue of nations.

According to a German geography textbook that went through three Russian

editions and was remarkable for the consistency of its criteria of excellence, the

French "apply themselves greatly to the arts and sciences, have excellent and prof-

itable industries and prosperous commerce"; the Germans "diligently pursue the

arts and sciences, and their industry and commerce are both prosperous"; and

the Dutch "maintain in a prosperous situation not only the arts and sciences, but

also their industries and commerce." On the other hand, there were the Portu-

guese, "who do poorly in sciences, do not apply themselves to the arts and indus-

tries, and engage in commerce without having much to show for it"; the Irish,

"who do not care about the arts and sciences but engage in cattle-raising and

commerce"; and the totally "unenlightened" Africans who "are not at all diligent

in either the sciences or the arts." Perhaps uniquely, the Russians were rapidly

moving from the second into the first category: "The sciences, arts, and industries

introduced by Peter the Great are in very good [izriadnom] condition; commerce

is quite prosperous."45

Even conversion to Orthodoxy seemed indistinguishable from Enlighten-

ment, "for it is self-evident," wrote Leibniz for Peter's benefit, "that the spread of

science can be accompanied, most successfully, by the spread of truth and piety."46

Proper education involved both piety and "good citizenship," and good citizen-

ship presupposed the adoption of the "Russian language, life's rituals, clothing,

and mores."47 In other words, Christianization was equal to education, which

was-still-equal to becoming Russian, particularly because "the uniformity of

State organization wisely helps to bring this along by leading our rude Peoples by

giant steps toward the common goal of general Enlightenment in Russia, of a

wonderful fusion of all into a single body and soul, and of creating, as it were, an

unshakable Giant that will stand for hundreds of centuries."48

This was a very distant goal, celebrated in courtly introductions but alto-

gether irrelevant to the work of traveling "naturalists" trying to classify the

existing diversity of strikingly non-Russian customs. If Enlightenment was the

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ultimate measure of nations, how could one measure an unenlightened nation's

relative enlightenment? Tatishchev proposed three criteria: the possession of a

writing system, adherence to Christianity, and the use of the printing press. His

scheme was strictly historical, however (the enlightened peoples of today were

first enlightened by Moses, then by Jesus, and finally by Gutenberg), and thus a

relatively poor yardstick for the peoples of the contemporary Russian Empire. If

illiterate Christians were not Christians, as Tatishchev argued, and if learned non-

Christians were not truly learned, then there was only one criterion rather than

three. And if so, how was one to rank the many nations that languished below

that line? How was one to evaluate "the numerous peoples still enveloped in the

deepest darkness of ignorance and unawareness?"49

Perhaps surprisingly, the basics of sustenance, sex, and settlement remained

the touchstones of collective identity: Enlightenment had as much to do with

bodily needs as faith had. On the frontier, of course, the change in scholarly

paradigms had not affected the traditional notions of difference: Russian soldiers

returning from "the Kirgis-Kaisak steppe" waxed sentimental about the look of

a settlement and the "taste of bread"; while some "rich lakut" refused to be bap-

tized/Russified/educated because "Christian law forbids having two wives; eating

beef, milk, and butter during Lent; and especially partaking of mare's meat,

which they consider the best treat in the world."50 Yet even in academic and

administrative discourse, "raw-eating" was still the clearest line of demarcation-

except that now it was not a violation of a religious taboo but a sin against hygiene,

neatness, and good manners. "I have almost no strength left to go on detailing

for my readers the unspeakably filthy state in which these peoples find them-

selves," writes V. F. Zuev about the inhabitants of the Lower Ob', "for it consists

not only in their way of life but in their very food, on which all human life

depends."95' A. P. Krasheninnikov and G. A. Sarychev were similarly impressed by

the Kamchadal (Itel'men); Novitskii, by the Ostiak (Khanty); Lepekhin, by the

Zyrian (Komi); and Georgi, by the Izhor.52 The Archmandrite Sofronii reported

that the Chinese ate dogs, cats, mice, "and other animals that other peoples found

disgusting"; Lepekhin discovered that the folk etymology of "Samoed" was

"eating filth"; and Egor Nesterev refused to consider the Soiot human because

"they ate the same food as the fiercest of animals."53 To convey the physical imme-

diacy of this crucial national difference, most authors resorted to the same sty-

listical devices. The city of Beijing exuded "such a terrible odor [smrad] that one

could hardly walk the streets"; the Vogul (Mansi) huts were so "disgusting"

[gadkie] that "spending any time there should be considered a punishment"; "The

smell in [Ostiak] tents [was] so revolting [merzkoi] that probably no one would

agree to sit there for a long time"; "The infectious odor that exhale[d] from [Kam-

chadal] fish would suffice to repulse the most hungry being"; and, "The air and

filthiness occasioned by [Chukchi tents] are insupportable; let it suffice to say that

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they feel no disgust at seeing their food and their drink close to the most offensive

objects, for no words can describe the excess of their indolence."54

Food was frequently overshadowed by smell, but smell-no matter how pun-

gent-was not a separate ethnographic item but one ingredient of the increas-

ingly important virtue of cleanliness. The eighteenth-century scholars appro-

priated a common religious metaphor and made it literal: "unclean living" came

to mean "not washing their hands and faces; not cutting their fingernails; eating

off the same plates as dogs and never washing them; smelling like fish . . . and

not combing their hair."55 On the other hand, cleanliness was an attribute of

"civility" or "good manners" [uchtivstvo, obkhozhdenie], generally synonymous with

the ideal demeanor of a "true fine gentleman" (as per Steele and Addison). The

Kamchadal, for example, exhibited their lack of "fear and modesty" by "singing

and giving themselves up to all the absurdities which their imagination suggests";

the Crimean Tatars offended against the rules of gentlemanly warfare by

"fighting more in the manner of highwaymen"; and the Georgians betrayed their

"most spoilt ways" and "incorrect upbringing" by not respecting each other's

physical integrity, private property, or bonds of matrimony (by the last quarter of

the century many "Christians laws" had passed through customs and entered the

realm of manners).56 Conversely, a Crimean khan did well by forsaking his saddle

in favor of an "English carriage," and a Tungus comportment (obkhozhdenie)

turned out to be pleasantly "direct and without affectation.

Civility was a reasonable artifice because it was ultimately based on natural

law and hence on moderation. "Everything done in moderation is useful [polezno]

and necessary, whereas excess and insufficiency are called sins or damage to one-

self."58 With reference to nations, the two extremes were usually described as

joyless dreary labor, on the one hand, and laziness or indolence, on the other.59

The latter vice was characteristic of all "unenlightened" peoples, including the

Crimean Tatars as observed by Pallas:

To sit with a pipe in their hands, frequently without smoking, for many hours on a shady

bank, or on a hill, though totally devoid of all taste for the beauties of nature, and looking

straight before them; or, if at work, to make long pauses, and above all to do nothing,

constitute their supreme enjoyments.60

This false (undeserved and unappreciated) paradise was contrasted with the

real one, found in the new agricultural settlements of southern Siberia:

The healthy, strong, and neatly dressed husbandmen that I encountered numbered up to

two hundred people. Scattered around the fields like industrious ants, they followed their

heavy ploughs attached to two or four horses and sang joyous songs. In delight, I felt

transported to the beautiful Magdeburg plains, sown with wheat for so many centuries.6'

Prosperous industry was unthinkable without "industriousness," so that true

Enlightenment had to be accompanied by-and be based on-the "love of toil"

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(trudoliubie). Curiously, however, only "husbandmen" and their urban cousins

could be industrious, and only agricultural toil could be truly meaningful (that is,

ultimately conducive to the flourishing of the arts, sciences, industry, and com-

merce). Nomads could not be enlightened any more than they had been able to

be Orthodox.

The other excess was a matter of gender because, according to eighteenth-

century travelers, almost all dreary and ungrateful labor was done by women.

Generally closer to natural law and more sensitive to the ideal of moderation,

women tended to be represented as less unenlightened than their male partners

(the Cossack women, for example, were "as industrious as the Cossack men were

lazy and generally improvident"62). In spite of that, and perhaps for that very

reason, they were, according to the Russian observers, roundly and universally

oppressed by their fathers and husbands-so universally, in fact, as to make igno-

rance synonymous with gender injustice. "In China the husband has no less

power over his wife than a master does over his slave"; among the Chuvash "the

husband has total power in everything, and his wife must obey him without ques-

tion"; on Kamchatka "women are ... the slaves of their husbands"; and on the

Lower Ob' "the female sex is worse off than the slave of the sternest master."63

Most forms of traditional gender-based division of labor, avoidance rules, and

social intercourse were now considered grossly unfair. As Zuev put it,

I am not equal to the task of fully depictingjust how despised the female sex is among the

Ostiak and the Samoed, but I dare say that their women live not like human beings but

like cattle that men cannot do without. The poor woman spends her whole life working,

knowing neither rest nor holidays, and ever trying to please her man. All his fortune rests

on her and her alone, yet he never deigns to even talk to her . . . (a funny aside: they do

not know how to embrace their wives, do not know anything about kissing, and are gen-

erally unaware of how nicely the charming [prelestnyi] sex is treated in polite society).64

In this fashion, the triad that used to define communities based on faith was

now employed to provide the true measure of Enlightenment. Just as the

seventeenth-century (male) "foreigners" had expressed their foreignness (and

the Christian ascetics, their asceticism) through their peculiar relationship to

food, women, and domicile, so the eighteenth-century "peoples" could-at the

very minimum-be distinguished by the way they ate, treated the "charming sex,"

and related to the land.

As the number of derivatives increased and their mutual relationships

became more complex, however, the picture appeared progressively less stark.

Civility narrowly construed ("They do not take off their hats and do not bow to

each other") could become a dominant variable, and the application of the "sci-

entific usefulness" yardstick to all customs/manners could result in an endless

series of collective rationality tests (Lepekhin, for example, surveyed the rural

scene in Russia and reported on the unacceptable health hazards posed by the

use of folk medicine, the wearing of baste shoes (lapti), the soaking of hemp in

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rivers, the making of soap, the tanning of leather, and the universally inept way

of raising cattle, among other things).65 There were also some brand new ways of

comparing nations. As Russia's own government became increasingly "enlight-

ened," for example, the degree of Enlightenment of non-Russian peoples could

be measured according to the "fairness" of their government. China's troubles

resulted from the "great injustice" of its political system; Georgia's chaotic state

might have something to do with the scandalous treatment of its commoners; and

the "lamentable predicament" of what used to be "the highest degree of human

glory" in Persia was entirely due to government tyranny and corruption.66

The inexorable piling-up of such criteria, old and new, resulted in the crea-

tion of an ethnic rating system with the "perfection" of Enlightenment at the top

and, quite literally, "nothing" at the bottom. As most ethnographic lists assumed

the absolute normalcy of perfection and formulated their questions accordingly

("Do they have . . . ?"), a great number of ethnographic subjects could only

respond with silence. The result was a negative mode of description and a

growing collection of absences. The Moldavians, for example, "do not know any-

thing about the arts and sciences"; "The Kuriles have no notion of any eternal

being"; the Oliutor Islanders "care nothing about their souls"; the mid-Volga

peoples "have no concept of honesty or virtue"; and the Aleut "have no law at

all," including "no rituals such as weddings, funerals, or festive gatherings" and

"no authorities-either elected or of any other kind."67 This state of nonposses-

sion was known as "savagery" (dikost'), which was now equal to "ignorance" (neve-

zhestvo) and "stupidity" (glupost'). All nations had some ignorant people and

stupid (or nonexistent) customs, and some peoples had so many of them as to be

totally "blinded by exceeding stupidity and ignorance" (with fairly Hobbsean

results).68 A special entry in the monthly almanack Miesiatseslov, for example,

introduced a translated account of "the stupid and strange opinions of the Green-

landers on stars and celestial phenomena, in order to observe the blindness and

utter ignorance of that poor idolatrous nation, as well as to ascertain the well-

being of those nations that, while adhering to Christian law, accompany it with

the most solid knowledge of the natural sciences."69

There were certain advantages to being stupid, as Catherine's sentimental

sojourners occasionally pointed out (with a sigh), but those were the advantages

of childhood innocence, and while many scholars professed to envy the "utmost

harmony" of the Kamchadal or the "heroic spirit" of the Circassians, no one

seemed prepared to "barter the polished vices" of Enlightenment for the "rude

virtues" of ignorance.70 The underlying question was much larger and much less

frequently posed: If "mankind is so much the same, in all times and places" (as

David Hume, unchallenged, summed up the conventional wisdom of the day),

then why were some people polished and others rude? The most common answer

was "climate," meaning environment in general. As A. N. Radishchev proposed,

perhaps not originally, "The first teacher of invention was necessity.... Those

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who lived by the water invented boats and nets; those who traveled in the woods

and roamed the mountains invented the bow and arrow and became the first

warriors; and those who dwelled in the meadows covered with grass and flowers

domesticated peaceful animals and became pastoralists."''7 Accordingly, "the dif-

ferences in the color of human skin could be attributed to the differences in cli-

mate, way of life, and food"; the "mores" of the Moldavians varied "because the

state of the soil and weather was not the same throughout this large province";

and the Samoed tents were "nothing but mobile shelters invented through neces-

sity by a people who wander over the cold and barren steppes of the midnight

land."72 Sometimes environmental determinism led to cultural relativism, for if

"those who traveled in the woods invented the bow and arrow," and if this made

them stupid, then, in Johann Georg Gmelin's words, "the other peoples are

equally stupid from the Tungus point of view" because "in this fashion any person

can be called a fool if he is not particularly knowledgeable in things that he has

little opportunity to see or hear. The Tungus are, consequently . .. just as intel-

ligent as those who are good at deceiving but are stupid at hunting, at which the

Tungus are so skillful."73

This point was rarely pursued, however, because no one, including Gmelin,

seriously believed that the pol'za of hunting skills was comparable to that of the

arts and sciences. If one unabashedly affirmed the absolute value of Enlighten-

ment, on the other hand, the environmentalist position appeared defenseless

before the commonly held belief that "the arts and sciences . .. had their origins

among the peoples of the Orient, were later transferred from there to Greece,

and from there came to us in Europe."74 In other words-and again in Hume's

formulation-the manners of peoples "could change very considerably from age

to age," so that the North Sea coast could be as fertile in "great men" as the now

decayed shores of the Mediterranean.75 This augured well for Russia's own

efforts and generally offered hope for all future competitors of the current

champions:

The Greenlander, Lapplander, Moor, Hottentot, and Kamchadal are, in their own way, as

reasonable as the frivolous [vetrianoi] Frenchman, and if they had the same opportunity

for purifying their minds and rectifying their will as we do, they would if not exceed, then

certainly equal in this respect any enlightened European.76

It was not the climate, therefore, but a matter of the historical accident of diffu-

sion. There were intelligent people among the Tungus, but most of them hap-

pened to be stupid because they believed, for lack of an alternative, "what they

had learned from their stupid ancestors."77

This view was also vulnerable, however, because most Tungus seemed to

prefer the false wisdom of their ancestors even after they had been exposed to a

superior alternative. Radishchev, for example, observed that even "the grown-up

Tunguz who had been raised in Russian households almost always lagged far

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behind the Russians with regard to intellectual ability."78 In similar vein, a Turu-

khansk policeman named Ivan Bashkurov reported that the savagery of his native

subjects was "rooted in their nature" as well as the climate and thus "could not be

eradicated"; Tatishchev explained that the Jews were not tolerated in Russia "not

because of their faith but because of their evil nature"; and Lepekhin believed

that the mid-Volga pagans could not be fully Christianized because of the "dark-

ness of their mind."79

All these examples could represent temporary reverses, as Radishchev him-

self suggested:

Nature needs several generations to equalize intellectual abilities in humans. The appro-

priate organs will become finer and subtler; blood, lymph, and especially nerves will

become improved and pass from the father to the embryo; and insofar as everything in

nature is gradual, it should also be possible in this case.80

Yet the very association of "intellectual abilities" with "physical nature" was as

problematic as it was helpful. Along with "government," the most striking inno-

vation of eighteenth-century ethnographies was Leibes-Beschaffenheit, analogous to

Gemiiths-Beschaffenheit and usually translated as telesnye kachestva or "physical fea-

tures." Unlike Muscovy's faceless "foreigners," St. Petersburg's "peoples" could be

distinguished and classified according to any number of these features-a con-

stantly growing number, in fact, because they kept splitting and multiplying in

the manner of "customs" (size, skin color, hair, and "women's beauty" were the

most popular categories, with facial features and head shape gaining momentum

toward the end of the century).8' Following Linnaeus' general classification of the

human species ("American: copper-colored, choleric, erect. Paints self. Regulated

by custom"), Russian ethnographic descriptions combined bodies with souls in

still unexplained but potentially disturbing relationships. Complexion, which

most people explained in terms of climate or nature; cleanliness, which most

attributed to education; and intelligence, which apparently depended on all

three, were usually mentioned in the same breath-as witness Klevetskii's Per-

sians ("of middle height, dark complexion, lovers of cleanliness, quick-witted, and

as jealous as the Italians"), or Georgi's Chuvash ("with mostly pale faces, less agile

and even dumber than the Cheremis, and not any cleaner about their persons").82

The apparent asymmetry in the architecture of national traits was not the

only, and certainly not the most commonly, lamented problem for the eighteenth-

century classifiers. The fact remained that none of these traits-including the

newly discovered physical ones-could provide the universal axis around which

the ultimate ethnic nomenclature could be organized. Too interrelated to survive

on their own and too unwieldy as a group, they were unable to replace the no-

longer-tenable unity of "faith" with D'Alembert's "principle of the true esprit sys-

tematique." This principle had emerged, almost imperceptibly, from the very

source of the confusion-the Tower of Babel itself. In one of the most important

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and least celebrated intellectual developments of the eighteenth century, lan-

guage turned out to be the human mind's equivalent of Newton's law of gravita-

tion (in Condillac's formulation), and the human communities' equivalent of

Linnaeus' pistils and stamens (as Schlozer saw it).83 By 1776, when Adam Smith's

magnum opus came out, most scholars took for granted, and hence rarely made

explicit, the fact that the greatest wealth of nations were their languages.

According to the traditional Christian view, the plurality of both nations and

languages was due to the fruitfulness of Noah's three sons; their diversity

stemmed from the Babylonian Confusion; and their wide dispersal was the result

of Vlikerwanderungen. The original lingua adamica might or might not be Hebrew;

in any case, it had to be more pure and natural (in the sense of the unity of sound

and meaning) than any of the existing languages, and it could probably be recon-

structed through comparative word study. By the eighteenth century, the rise of

national states, national vernaculars, and national churches had resulted in the

nationalization of Paradise (claims had been made that Adam and Eve spoke

Flemish, French, and Swedish, among others), and then in the appearance of

multiple autonomous paradises (all nations/languages had their own excellent

ancestors). In 1610, Joseph Justus Scaliger had divided the European languages

into four major families: Greek, Romance, Germanic, and Slavic, all of which

were descended from totally unrelated "mother languages" (linguae matrices).84

The biblical genealogy and the metaphor of "human descent" had become sci-

ence: all languages and hence all nations had parents, siblings, and offspring

(dialects); all linguistic elements could be divided between congenital and

acquired; hence a correct method of distinguishing between the two would result

in flawless genealogy.85

This meant that the apparently arcane search for the origins of words was

the best answer to the much publicized search for the origins of nations. More-

over, it so happened that the reputed home of some European languages was

"Scythia," and that Leibniz, the world's most learned and enthusiastic champion

of comparative linguistics, was also the world's warmest supporter of Russia's

"debarbarisation."86 With remarkable persistence, he assured his eastern corre-

spondents that language was "the best means to discover connections among

nations"; urged them to translate "Our Father" into all the languages of the

Russian Empire; asked them about possible relationships among "les Siberians,

les Czirkasses, les Kalmucs, les Mugalles, les Uzbecs et les Lamas de Chine";

and himself suggested that "all peoples from the Laponians to the Tatars, who

live beyond the Caspian, are related to each other, and that the Finns, Estonians,

Livonians, Permians, Samoeds, and even Hungarians belong in the same cate-

gory."87 Philip Johan Tabbert von Stralenberg, Tatishchev, Muller, Fischer,

Schlozer, and Pallas applied themselves to the task, and by the end of the eigh-

teenth century the Finno-Ugrian and Turkic "families" had been discovered and

described, with the Russian Empire officially consisting of peoples classified first

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by language and then, within linguistic categories, by custom and physical type.88

"The main difference" could be reinforced, clarified, and sometimes contradicted

by other criteria (there would always be "Russian-speaking Finns" and "lakut-

speaking Russians"), but the consensus was that "the similarity of languages

proves the common origin of peoples."89 To be more precise,

although many people regard similarity of mores, customs, and behaviors as a sign of

kinship, and, conversely, difference as evidence of different derivations, the majority of

authors reject this view with convincing proof, for it has been sufficiently noted that

peoples who stem from the same root have very different ways and customs and, on the

other hand, peoples who have different ancestors and . . . never had or could have any

contact, possess great similarities in both their mores and their rites, religious as well as

secular; for which reasons the most reliable sign of kinship between peoples is thought to

be their language.90

This meant that, if the lakut spoke a "Tatar" language, they belonged to "the

Tatar generation" (pokolenie). Perhaps more significantly for future theories of

nationalism, this could mean that "as [the Votiak, Chuvash, and Cheremis] belong

to the Finnish generation, so they live like Finns."'9

In any case, kinship signified "origins." "Related" languages had common

ancestors, and all language "families" had their language matriarchs, or Mutter-

sprache. This was true of any "basic principle" because, as Condillac explained,

"principle and beginning are two words that originally signify the same thing."92

This was especially true of languages and nations, however, because the search

for origins was ultimately animated by the need to separate the "natural" from

the "artificial," and most scholars agreed that none of the existing languages and

nations were natural in the sense of having been created by God once and for all.

Thus, the great linguistic turn was by definition a turn toward historicism. If the

biological taxonomies were essentially static, the linguistic ones were genetic; if

the biological species were mutually insulated, the linguistic ones were potentially

open to interbreeding (two Muttersprache might very well turn out to be cousins);

and while Linnaeus had insisted that "every egg produces an offspring identical

to the parent," every linguist knew that Old French was different from Latin, and

Modern French was even more so.93 In other words, a difference in language-

and consequently in custom, and possibly in physical type-was also a difference

in time.94 Agriculture was not just better than hunting-it was later. A tent was

not just less comfortable than a building-it was its ancestor. Most non-Russian

peoples of the Russian Empire were notjust unenlightened-they were "ancient."

The Circassians resembled the medieval "German knights in Prussia and

Livonia," while some Siberians represented the "crude" infancy of mankind.95

The Russian Empire did not simply contain "a great number of different

peoples"-it embraced "all the stages of transformation from the ancient, simple

World very close to its natural condition to the present World, refined and

enriched by needs."96

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Universal history as a sequence of technological and behavioral stages was

not the only beneficiary of ethnographic research. Russian history as a profes-

sional and imperial enterprise also arose from the study of non-Russian peoples.

The reason for this was a paradox: the linguistic quest for the national origins

had been based on the presumed identity of languages and nations, yet the most

obvious result of this quest had been the decoupling of the two. It turned out that

not only had peoples themselves traveled from place to place (this was a truism)

but that their names, languages, and governments had moved around indepen-

dently of each other. The scholars brought to describe the Russian Empire and

bring glory to its name, state, tongue, land, and people had ended up discovering

that, in terms of origins and according to the best "primary sources," none of

these categories had anything to do with each other. The Russian land had not

been "Russian" for very long; the Russian state and the Russian name had come

from Sweden; the Russian apostle Andrew had never been to Russia; and the

Russian language had been-quite recently-brought in by the tribes chased out

of the Danube. As Schlozer summed up the scholarly findings, "Russian history

begins with the arrival of Riurik in the middle of the ninth century"; whatever

had come before was not any more enlightening than the "Kamchadal fables."97

Moreover, if "history without politics is nothing but monks' chronicles," and if

monks' chronicles "did not have the authority to persuade us of something that

was contrary to history," then until very recently the Russians themselves had

been like the Kamchadal and could only be described in terms of what they did

not have-most notably politics, history, religion, and Enlightenment.98

As far as "scientific usefulness" was concerned, this was just fine. After all, as

Muller insisted, there was a difference "between a historical dissertation and a

panegyric," and in any case "the origins of peoples, mostly quite obscure; the

beginnings of states, usually humble; and the savage ways of ancestors," among

other things, had "absolutely nothing to do with either fame or infamy."99 Yet

from the point of view of "state usefulness," they most certainly did. From the

point of view of "state usefulness," a historical dissertation that was not a pane-

gyric was "reprehensible" ( predosuditel'na), as well as "annoying" and "unpleasant"

to the readers, because a great state should have great beginnings. Besides, great

states were now associated with great peoples, which, like states, were now entitled

to glorious genealogies. "If the modern Russian nation is descended primarily

from the ancient people who existed before the coming of the Varangians, then

the dishonor engendered by contempt for those ancient people affects in very

large measure the modern nation."'00

One solution was to ignore the "prehistory" and trace Russian greatness from

the coming of Riurik, as Ivan Boltin chose to do. Another was to insist on greater

antiquity but essentially accept the deconstructed nature of past Russianness.

Thus, the Russian territory could be praised irrespective of who lived there:

188 REPRESENTATIONS

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