The messages that Kyiv-educated clerics preached to the court elite from mid-
seventeenth century reflected the integration of classical thought into Orthodoxy
through Byzantine sources and Jesuit models that had been occurring in Kyiv
through the century. Polotskii, Slavinetskii, and others wrote panegyrics and poetry
in honor of regent Sofiia Alekseevna and court notables; Sofiia Alekseevna was
eulogized as“God-given”and pious, and also for more modern attributes. Playing
on the meaning of Sofiia’s name as“wisdom”(Figure 13.1), Karion Istomin
construed this as secular learning as opposed to tradition and praised her wisdom
for bringing the decidedly worldly benefits of peace, prosperity, and riches.
Ukrainian-influenced preachers introduced the court elite to concepts of the
“common good”and a more secular purpose for governance. Introducing Aris-
totle’s concept of tyranny, Polotskii also evoked biblical precedent in depicting the
good ruler as one who leads his people to better pastures. All these authors depicted
society as an earthly paradise and the state’s role as creating, in Viktor Zhivov’s
phrase,“cosmic order”in a turbulent world, drawing on ideas both age-old in
Orthodox thought and common to seventeenth-century European political theory.
Themes of the ruler as presiding over social harmony were not only inspiring but
pragmatic for Muscovite autocracy, inasmuch as they implied that the state was
modeled on godly images, was implicitly superior to the Church, and needed no
fundamental change.
From the 1680s Russian rulers manipulated the political sphere in word, image,
and artefact in ways that preceding rulers had not. Fedor Alekseevich had engrav-
ings made to commemorate his marriage and in 1678 minted coins in celebration
of a military victory. Sofiia Alekseevna commissioned baroque portraits of herself in
coronation garb, extolling in Latin and Russian her magnanimity, liberality, piety,
prudence, chastity, justice, and hope in God; she had banquets given and medals
cast to celebrate Prince V. V. Golitsyn’s Crimean campaigns even though they were
complete failures.
When Peter I came to power, he was convinced of Russia’s need to emulate
Europe to advance its geopolitical interests. That meant everything from reform of
the military to entirely new social and cultural institutions. With a close circle of
European and Ukrainian advisors, Peter oversaw the development of a powerful
ideology of state and ruler, one that heightened what Viktor Zhivov and Boris
Uspenskii have called the sacralization of the ruler at the same time as it secularized
the goals of state and society and the media in which political ideas were expressed.
Marc Raeff drew attention to the central role of the concept of“Polizeistaat”or
“well-ordered police state”in Petrine ideology. This set of ideas, emanating most
notably from Brandenburg-Prussia, reflected pietistic and early Enlightenment
values of the late seventeenth century. It argued traditionally that monarchs were
appointed by God, but construed the breadth and purpose of political power in a
new way. It posited that rulers exist to create prosperous, well-run states composed
of pious, disciplined individuals who served God all the more effectively by
pursuing order, hard work, and public service. The Prussian vision ofPolizeistaat
construed a ruler’s power as“absolute,”but constrained by service, duty, and
obligation. The monarch was“first servant of the state”and all social forces united
Imperial Imaginary and the Political Center 269