Konstantin Makovsky. The Call to Arms of Kuzma Minin in Novogorod in 1611. 1879

The Call to Arms of Kuzma Minin in Novgorod in 1611

Konstantin Makovsky

1879

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This illustrates one of the most pivotal episodes in Russian history. The Poles invaded Russia during the Smuta (Time of Troubles) after the death of Tsar Boris Gudunov. They attempted to place a Catholic Pole on the Russian throne and wanted to ram the Unia down the throats of the Russian people, to make them submit to the Pope of Rome. Quite obviously, this led to a Russian national awakening. The opolchenie (militia) came to arms under the leadership of the boyar Dmitri Pozharsky and the butcher Kuzma Minin. The Poles, after hard fighting and a long siege, were defeated, and Russia and Orthodoxy were preserved from destruction. Any time you hear a Pole downing Russia, remember, they started the fight, we finished it. They attempted to force their religion upon us, and we not only rejected them, we threw them out. There’s a reason for their hatred… they attempted to murder us as a people and we foiled them. Sic semper tyrannis!

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Ilya Repin. A Study for “The Zaporozhe Cossacks Write a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan”. 1880

A Study for “The Zaporozhe Cossacks Write a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan”

Ilya Repin

1880

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Repin made this study in preparation for his larger-scale work completed in 1891. Even so, I believe that this more modest piece has its own voice, more intimate and more human in scale. I seem to think that the cossacks are having more fun in this version. I am posting another week of Repin as I have so many works by him in my files. I can truthfully say that even adding a week more of posting shall NOT exhaust my collection, so, you can see more at another point in future. Oh, yes… the theme today is “cossacks”.

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Ilya Repin. The Zaporozhe Cossacks Write a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan. 1891

The Zaporozhe Cossacks Write a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan

Ilya Repin

1891

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This is one of the most famous and most-copied artworks in the Russian oeuvre. The original canvas is huge, giving proper scope to the subject. Along with Repin’s Burlaki (Bargehaulers on the Volga) (1873), it’s one of the few Russian paintings familiar to non-Russians. There’s much nonsense out there on the Cossacks, including the claim that they were the precursors of present-day “Ukrainians”. Such wasn’t so. “Ukrainian” is an ahistorical term; one finds no substantial reference to such before the 19th century. The time of the action in the painting is the 17th century, a time when the Cossacks of the Zaporozhean Sich (the main encampment) fought against both infidel Turks and heretic Poles. The Turks held the Crimea; the Poles seized Little Russia to the western bank of the Dnepr (prior to 1648, they also held some lands on the east bank). The Cossacks rose to defend their faith and motherland. The Turks kidnapped Christian boys to forcibly convert them to Islam, to serve as janissaries. The Poles rammed the Unia down the throats of the Little Russians under their rule. This provoked hard resistance from the Little Russians, and in 1654, they asked for the Russian tsar to protect them. This is the reason for the extreme hatred of Poles one often finds amongst “Ukrainians”, as the fighting between the Poles and Little Russians was often more intense than that with the Turks.

You see, Orthodoxy, not nationalism, was the means of unity; that’s been so ever since. When a man came to the Sich, they asked him to cross himself. Obviously, if one did it the Latin way, well… it wouldn’t go well, I can assure you. One must understand that the more a “Ukrainian” confesses true canonical Holy Orthodoxy, the greater the love he bears for his Greater Russian homeland. We can see this today in the parvenu Yushchenko’s favour of EP and self-consecrated (samosvyatsy) schismatics and Uniates. The vast bulk of the Little Russian people, some 85 percent, are loyal to Metropolitan Vladimir Sabodan and the canonical church under the MP, and, no doubt, yearn for the return of the stability, order, and prosperity of the Greater Russian state. In any case, some 45 percent of the “Ukrainian” population is Great Russian and speaks Russian! Be extremely wary of anything you hear from “Ukrainian nationalists”, especially from Uniate sources. As Zhanna Bichevskaya sang in one of her popular songs (My Russkie!, We are Russians!), Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia are parts of one inseparable and organic whole, only temporarily rent apart. The day’s coming when we’ll be reunited, never again to be torn asunder.

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