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had been different again. There had been in Muscovya great gulf between rulers and ruled, but the gulf waseconomic and social rather than cultural. Europe, inalmost all ways, was equally alien to both rulers and ruled.Muscovite civilization, until the Schism in the laterseventeenth century (see pp. 189-194), had a certainunity of its own. Subsequently, Russians have advancedsharply opposed views as to the character and value ofMuscovite civilization, but they have almost all agreedthat it had homogeneity and that then with Peter theGreat something happened (whether catastrophicallyfrom a clear sky, or, the truer view, at a violent pace incontinuation of a process already set in motion), whicheventually split Russia into two worlds. In this divorcemany have seen the fundamental cause of the ills ofRussia since Peter's day and of the Revolution in thiscentury. This is the reason why Peter the Great is themost debated of Russian sovereigns.2. Europe and RussiaWhat did Peter do which cleft the soul of Muscovy?He opened wider with sledge-hammer blows fissureswhich had already been spreading in the half-centurybefore 1700. Ever since the late fifteenth centuryintercourse between Muscovy and the West had beenincreasing; between 1650 and 1700 intercourse beganto grow into influence; after 1700 influence becameimitation; after 1800 came absorption.Muscovite civilization of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies was, in the main, unlettered; it was devoid ofscience, sorely lacking in intellectual accomplishments,but much more productive, though within a limited range,in the realm of art. It was unlettered in the sense thatliteracy was regarded as a specialized, professionalrequirement, necessary up to a point only for the clergy(though by no means all of them were literate) and foradministrative purposes. Schooling, where there wasany at all, was a family or monastic affair. The hand ofGod was everywhere, and religion, nationalized in the326