Meanwhile, Roman metaphors of power did not prevent a parallel emergence of Greek paradigms in Russian political and poetic discourse. The Greek associations in poetry became more and more visible precisely when the Baltic fleet, in summer of 1769, embarked from Kronshtadt on an adventurous journey to reach the Mediterranean Sea, invade the Greek Archipelago, and to attack the Turks in the rear. Aleksei Orlov’s daring strategic plan, approved by Catherine, sought to divide the gigantic Turkish army between several frontlines, and to help the Russian ground forces.43 According to Orlov’s plan, after an unexpected arrival on the shores of Greece, the Russian troops were to attack the Turks in different cities, relying on the help of local Greek Christians. The Russian court launched a very intensive pro-Russian propaganda campaign in Greece and Sparta, and sent numerous emissaries who attempted to incite the Greek population to riot against the Turks. Taken as a whole, Orlov and Catherine’s ambitious plan intended to repeat the legendary marine struggle near Lepanto of 1571, in which minor Italian and Venetian forces annihilated two hundred Ottoman galleys.
The propaganda (as well as Greek associations in poetry) steadily increased as the troops advanced inside Greece. The turning point in the war discourse was again Petrov’s ode addressed to Catherine and written on the occasion of the seizure of the city of Yassy and the conquering of Moldavia (1769). The title contains an inscription that indicates the ode “had been presented to Her
43 E. V. Tarle, Chesmenskii boi i pervaia russkaia ekspeditsiia v Arkhipelag, 1769– 1774 (Moscow — Leningrad, 1945), 17– 36.
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Majesty on October 22. The ode serves as an ideological introduction to the upcoming events in Greece. Petrov, adroit as usual, proclaims the Russian forces to be on a liberating mission to restore the independence (political as well as cultural) of the Greek people. He also draws a contrast between the Russian invasion and the unjust and insidious Roman occupancy of Greece. Speaking to the Greeks, Petrov writes:
Be calm now heroic race, Patiently await changes.
The longed-for time is coming;
Your, Greeks, captivity will be over.
Oh, how grateful you were, When the insidious Romans Gave you a false freedom!
Without asking for profit or worship, Catherine will grant you liberty, She is the patron of all who suffer.44
Petrov is referring here to the Roman colonization of Greece (by the time of the emperor Augustus’s rule, all Greek territories had fallen under Roman control, culminating in Augustus’s reorganization of the peninsula as the province of Achaea in 27 BC).
The poet implicates those “insidious” Roman rulers, who, while proclaiming the Greeks free for the duration of the Olympic Games, levied taxes on locals and drove many of them out of their lands. At the same time, the poet implies the second target of his sarcasm — the modern heir of Rome, Austria, officially called the Holy Roman Empire. Recently in 1769, Austria, a longtime enemy of the Ottoman Empire, had refused to join Russia in fighting the Turks.
Petrov’s image of the empress endows her with some new features. He repeatedly calls her by her Greek name Pallas (or Pallas Athena), not by the Latin version of the goddess’ name, Minerva.
The change was not accidental: it reflected a search for a new literary code to describe the empress in war. Minerva stood for wisdom, whereas Pallas Athena, equipped with a helmet and shield, implied
44 Vasilii Petrov, Oda vsepresvetleishei, derzhavneishei, velikoi Gosudaryne Imperatritse Ekaterine Vtoroi, samoderzhitse vserossiskoi na vziat’e Ias i pokorenie vsego moldavskago kniazhestva (Saint Petersburg, 1769), 11.
associations with battle. Petrov praised Catherine by invoking the name of the Greeks’ main patroness and constant protagonist of epic poems. At the same time, he makes use of another — Christian — symbolic system when he mentions the “suffering”
Greeks and calls the empress their “Supporter.” The Russian word
“покров” can be considered in religious terms as a clear reference to the Protective Veil of the Virgin. The poet combines both meanings, and the religious metaphor depicts the Russian invasion not only as a war of liberation, but also as a struggle to restore Orthodoxy in Greece. In the following strophes, Petrov brings in another metaphor by implicitly associating Catherine with a strong warrior who struggles against barbarity in order to usher in civilization; he depicts the Greeks who summon Catherine:
Oh Pallas, you are severe to barbarians!
Oh delight of many souls!
Go quickly to help us, Take us under your scepter.45
At these early stages of war (and long before the elaboration of the so-called “Greek project”), the Greek theme did not cancel out the most popular Rome paradigms that dominated in imperial symbolism throughout the century. Moreover, the Greek theme gained importance as a rhetorical vehicle for propagandizing Russian colonialism. The Greek entourage of Russian propaganda combined with Russian odes to form a new paradigm of cultural refinement, and therefore, was reminiscent of the Emperor Augustus’s age, when Rome imitated Hellenic philosophy, literature, architecture, and even the Greek manner of dress. The Greek theme in Russia at that time often contained colonial connotations. Thus, for example, on June 25, 1779, Grigorii Potemkin, while organizing a special dinner in honor of Catherine II at his dacha in Ozerki (near Saint Petersburg), imitated the Greek symposium. The guests lounged on beds, and a chorus sang some Greek strophes translated by Vasilii Petrov.46 While maintaining the cultural atmosphere of Ancient
45 Ibid, 10.
46 Sochineniia Derzhavina, 1, 288.
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Greece, the place itself also had the look of a “mountain cave in some district of the Caucasus, recently adjoined to Russia and entrusted to Potemkin’s governance.”47 Greek and Caucasian accoutrements combined in order to commemorate the recent military triumphs of the Russian empire.
In his experimental Ode on the victories of the Russian fleet over the Turkish fleet, under the guidance of Count Aleksei Orlov, in the Archipelago, near Chios, 1770, Petrov develops the concept of the historical betrayal of another cultural descendent of Rome, France.
According to his view, in supporting the Turks, France abandons a longtime mission — to fight the Christian enemies:
Your great grandfathers in old and obscure times Following the Roman example went to the South;
You secretly fight
The Russians for Mahomet!48
As Petrov believed, new political circumstances brought up a paradoxical situation in which the Russians played role of the new Crusaders, a role that had belonged in Medieval Times to European Christians, first of all, to the French. In the Russo-Turkish war, France cooperated with the Porte, sending financial aid and military instructors, as described by the famous memoirist Baron de Tott.49 The political alliance of the Turks and France did not remain a secret. Mikhail Kheraskov, in his long poem Fight at Chesma (1771), had already repeated a well known formula when he wrote about the symbolic union of the national signs of these two countries: “lilies” (France) are intermingled with a “bloody moon”
(Turkey).50
In 1769, Russia was on extremely difficult terms with three Bourbon Houses, France, Spain, and the Neapolitan kingdom. All
47 Ibid, 287.
48 V. Petrov, Oda na pobedy rossiiskogo flota, oderzhannaia nad turetskim, pod predvoditel’stvom grafa Alekseia Grigor’evicha Orlova, v Arkhipelage, pri Khiose (Saint Petersburg, 1770), 9.
49 E. V. Tarle, Chesmenskii boi, 10– 12; E. I. Druzhinina, Kuchuk-Kainardjiiskii mir 1774 goda, ego podgotovka i zakliuchenie (Moscow, 1955), 71– 74.
50 M. M. Kheraskov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 145.
three, in addition, were Catholic countries. The Pope expressed a fervent condemnation of Russia, taking the side of the Ottoman supporters among the so-called Polish confederates (the Polish opposition against King Stanisław Poniatowskii), and calling for a crusade against Russia. In a letter to Voltaire from July 14, 1769, Catherine ironically discusses a historical paradox in which a whole distribution of roles becomes reversed: the former crusaders (the Pope and the Catholic countries) go against Russia who is in a fierce conflict with Muslims.51 While Petrov makes references to the crusaders in his odes, he aims to underline a new paradoxical inversion of a longtime paradigm under new geo-political circumstances.
Petrov not only filled his odes with eloquent imperial metaphors, but also packed his texts with burning political topics;
he definitely made all possible efforts to be a mouthpiece for Russian politics.52 Meanwhile, Petrov’s Ode on the victories continued the search for the most adequate form in which to describe military themes. He found some new poetic tools for it. First, he transfers to military leaders (not to the empress) a function of the main protagonist; here he imitates Pindar’s odes devoted to Olympic heroes. Then, he introduces an exotic strophic structure with a combination of iambic lines of various lengths as a Russian version of the Greek lyric metre (like in poetry of the Greek poetess Sappho).53 An elegant lyric form transformed the odes into long poems, which better corresponded with his task, giving a narrative account of a military event and, at the same time, implied an examination of its political meaning.
Such an analytical narrative style, with epic elements, allowed him to reinvigorate the established means of glorifying the empress.
Petrov’s military heroes committed their deeds for the sake of the empress who, in her turn, received an epic role of the protector of the heroes, the honorable role of Pallas Athena.
51 Documents of Catherine the Great. The Correspondance with Voltaire, 31.
52 A. L. Zorin, Kormia dvuglavogo oral. Literatura i gosudarstvennaia ideologiia v Rossii v poslednei treti XVIII– pervoi treti XIX veka (Moscow, 2001), 65– 94.
53 M. L. Gasparov, Ocherk istorii russkogo stikha (Moscow, 2000), 105.
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