Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconography by Serhii s> Plokhy (review)

Abstract

352 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 studyof ambivalent'Soviet Perceptionsof the Alliesduringthe GreatPatriotic War': 'War-time co-operation with the Allies', she concludes, 'was not sufficient to dispel the deep-rooted suspicions which had accumulated over many years' (p. I86). As Lindsey Hughes observesin her opening chapter on 'Attitudestowards Foreignersin Early Modern Russia', 'the cursed questions of Russianxenophobia and "xenophilia",of national pride and imitation, are aspotent today as ever theywere in the earlymodern period' (p. I8). SchoolofHistoiy SIMON DIXON University ofLeeds Plokhy, Serhii. Tsarsand Cossacks: A Studyin Iconography. Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies. Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2002. X+ 102 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography. Index. [I2.50 (paperback). UKRAINE in the earlymodern period providesan especiallyinterestingsubject for a study in cultural history. A vast territory, stretched between Catholic Poland-Lithuaniaand Orthodox Muscovy, and bordering the Tatar-dominated steppe, it lay open to the currentsof competing influences flowing from different directions. Their combination sometimes produced singular phenomena of culturalhybridization. Serhii Plokhy's TsarsandCossacks: A Studyin Iconography, explores the complex interaction of the political, religious, and artisticaspects of the iconographic types of the Pokrova, the protective mantle of the Mother of God, as it evolved in the Ukrainian lands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This cameo of a book ofjust seventy-fivepages offersthe readera richview of a society in transition. Apart from the introduction and conclusion, it consists of six parts. Chapter one: 'The Cossack Identity', sketches the historicalbackgroundto the development of the iconographyof theTheotokos in the changing political conditions of early modern Ukraine. From I654 onward, Muscovy was gradually extending its political and ecclesiastical domination of the 'Polish'Ukrainianlands on both sidesof the Dnieper River. The process involved the continuous encroachment on Ukrainian autonomy by the tsaristand later imperial authoritiesand culminated in the abolition of the Hetmanate in the I780s. Drawing on the largely mythical identities, originated and propagated by the Cossacks and their supportersamong the Orthodox clergy in the period under discussion, Plokhy provides a crisp analysis of the fluctuating attitudes of the Cossack officersto their role and place in the 'all-Russianimperialproject' (p. 74). Chapter two: 'The Pokrova Iconography', outlines the Muscovite and Western iconographic traditions that both contributed to the formation of a distinct Ukrainian type of the Pokrova.Chapter three: 'The Wings of Protection', based primarily on engravingsin printedbooks, publishedin Kiev from I66I to I696, establishes the unmistakablelink between the deliberate shift of loyalty from the king to the tsar on the part of the Kievan clerics, and the way this transformationof political ideas reflected on contemporary iconography. In particular, the pregnant coincidence of the Western motif, representing the Virgin with a REVIEWS 353 pair of wings, and the theme of the two-headed Muscovite eagle influenced the emergence of the powerful symbol of eagle's wings as a representationof the tsar'sprotection spreadingover Ukraine. In chapters four and five: 'The Image of the Hetman', and 'Tsars and Colonels', Plokhyexplores how currentpolitical trendsfound theirexpression in eighteenth-century icons produced in the Hetmanate. While the former mainly looks into the meaning of the Khmelnytskyicultin Ukrainebefore and after the Poltava debacle, chapter five dwells on the desperate effortsof the Cossack officersto obtain the power and influence of imperial appointments. The commissioning of paintings and icons representingthe tsars and church dignitaries was but one means employed to assure their critical support. In addition, Plokhy here conducts a virtual detective investigation into the possible identitiesof some figuresdepicted on the icons, which in a number of cases helps to establish the identity of the patrons. Finally, chapter six: 'Cossacks, Bishops, and Kings', compares icons painted in the Hetmanate with those produced in the Ukrainian lands outside the Russian Empire. In the case of those of the Zaporozhianprovenance, Plokhypoints out an obvious lackof individualizationin the figuresof the tsarand ecclesiastics,represented on the icons, and sometimes even their total absence. He sees this as a clear indication of the Cossack officers' desire to commune 'directly with the Theotokos without the mediation (or even the presence) of either the Orthodox clergy or the Orthodox tsar' (p. 65). At the same time, the Pokrova icons from Galicia testifyto a notably differentsocial and political orientation on the part of the local elite, who took...