In these days of glasnost, Soviet officialdom has decided--some seventy years after Lenin decreed, quoting Marx, that "religion is the opium of the people" and closed most of the churches--to celebrate the millennium of the coming of Christianity first came to the Ukraine; there are records of several attempts to introduce Christianity to the region as early as 964. The mission to the Slavs had begun in 863 with two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, Christianizing the kingdom of Great Moravia, now part of Czechoslovakia. The Ukraine was successfully brought into the faith with the baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 988.
Rus, as the Kievan kingdom was called, accepted unquestioningly the Orthodox definitions of truth along with the Byzantine forms of art. As James Billington put it so eloquently in his magisterial work, The Icon and the Axe, "Man's function was not to analyze that which has been resolved or to explain that which is mysterious, but lovingly and humbly to embellish the inherited forms of praise and worship."
Down through the centuries, Russian artists did exactly that. Their churches, their bells, their paintings are silent, magnificent testimonials to their faith and artistic genius. In the following pages you will find articles on what Russian culture has given the world in the realms of music and art. Related articles on Easter services in Moscow and the history of church-state relations in Russia appear on pages 474 and 681, respectively.
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