Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia.

Oleg Tarasov. Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia.

London and New York: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2003. 416 pp. + 50 col. pls. index. illus. $40. ISBN: 1-86189-118-0.

Is it possible to explain a people on the basis of its religious art? Anyone who has explored the concept of "Holy Russia" or l'idee russe will find an answer to that question in Oleg Tarasov's study of icons and devotion in imperial Russia. Art historians will find an interpretation of some subtlety for further appreciation of Russian icons, while all readers will profit from his construction of a cultural history of Russia that opens new ways of interpreting that nation's place in the contemporary world. The book originally appeared in Russian in 1995; the present translation reflects a "substantially revised and edited" (19) version prepared by Tarasov and Milner-Gulland. The many illustrations are well-chosen.

Tarasov divides his study into two roughly equal parts. "Part One: The Icon and the World" focuses on two pivotal transformations of post-medieval Russian culture: the far-reaching reforms of Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich to bring Russian liturgical and devotional practices into line with a supposedly more authentic Greek Orthodox model, and the westernization of Russian society by Tsar Peter Alekseevich. Here Tarasov expertly describes the rise of Old Belief and the tear in the hitherto seamless cloth of Muscovite society, and how religious sensibilities reflecting this are manifested in icons. "Part Two: The Icon and Popular Culture" carries this forward to the imperial age, where popular culture, the continuator of medieval religious and political ideals, finally meets with high-level cultural approbation through the avant-garde on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. Especially helpful and insightful is Tarasov's demonstration of the impact of Baroque and Romantic ideals on icon production.

The book explores not the great icons familiar to western readers but the massproduced icons that flooded Russia from three small towns in Vladimir-Suzdal: Mstyora, Kholuy, and Palekh. It is astounding to learn that by the mid-nineteenth century Kholuy produced one-and-a-half to two million icons annually (55)! Their dissemination to every part of Russia and installation in every conceivable setting helped to keep alive the idea of Holy Russia as a sacred space constructed on the religious-political notion of Moscow as the Third Rome.

Tarasov's theological history is not as sound as is his history of icons. He implies that the Orthodox liturgical year begins with the Nativity of Mary on 8 September (actually, 1 September) and ends on 15 August with her Dormition (95). He overstates the impact of Protestantism on the policies of the sixteenth-century Russian Orthodox Church and seems to regard the Old Believers as Protestants, surely a comparison requiring some qualification. He suggests that the Mother of God was "the first person to achieve divine status" (94), which is incorrect. In Christian theology, to achieve divinity is a contradiction in terms. Here, he confusedly alludes to the doctrine of theosis, according to which humans become godlike by grace. He gives 7 April as the date for the Annunciation (25 March) (105), without explaining that the Orthodox calendar is fourteen days behind the western calendar, and provides imprecise names for the sacraments and a faulty explanation of the Eucharist (158-59). Why the translator chose Santa Sophia instead of the usual St. Sophia, Haghia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom is a puzzle.

Fortunately, Tarasov's observations on icons and devotion outweigh his theological digressions and here the reader will be richly rewarded. His exposition of western influences on popular icons, in particular the incursion of such Baroque features as words, emblems, and heraldry into the most traditional of icon types, is masterful. A chapter entitled "The Middle Ages Delayed" breaks new ground in the cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, showing how idealized images of Holy Russia influenced both the imperial family and the peasant in their preferences for sacred art. That the Old Believers should be the repositories and exponents of those images is just one of the historical ironies that Tarasov unearths.

Bearing in mind the theological caveat, this book is immensely rewarding and will interest cultural, art, and political historians as well as the general reader.

ALLAN SMITH

University of St. Michael's College