From History to National Myth

In a 1759 article On the Use of Mythology Grigorii Kozitskii, a Latin teacher and future secretary to Catherine the Great, wrote that there is no history that is closer to our age than that of ancient Rome.' During the eighteenth century statements of this sort, identifying eighteenth-century Russia with the glories and powers of ancient Rome -the archetype of empire in the Western mind-echoed in Russian history and literature and formed the basis for a cultural myth, resurrecting, at least tacitly, the earlier idea of Moscow (the Russian Empire) as Third Rome. Articulating that idea at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Pskovian monk Filofei had stated that Russia had succeeded the Second Rome, Byzantium, as the preserver of true faith (the literal meaning of Orthodoxy) and implicitly as the country closest to God: All Christian monarchies have come to an end and have been

Ancient history · Archaeology · Archetype · Art · Empire · Faith · Humanities · Literature · Meaning (existential · Middle Ages · Monarchy · Mythology · Orthodoxy · Political science · Politics · Roman Empire · Theology · Classics · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Philosophy · Soviet and Russian History

• East, West, Rome’s best? The imperial turn

  A E Campbell•Global Discourse•2013

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