The Volga Boatmen Bird Song.

The Volga Boatmen is a famous grand canvas (131,5 × 281 cm) by Ilya Repin, painted in 1870-73.

There is realism and there is symbolism in the picture. It has been endlessly analysed and reproduced, and over the years it has been attached to another great piece of Russian cultural heritage, the Volga Boatmen song, performed by Shaliapin, the Read Army Choir and Glen Miller too.

Still, a detail or two remain unexplained.

One curious little fragment is the little bird in the bottom left corner of the painting. It is shimmering in the bright sunlight. He stands on the sandbank looking at the approaching band of barge-haulers.

The colours of the bird are strikingly similar to the sunlit central figure of the composition, 'Lar'ka' (Ларька) the young blond burlak, who is adjusting his harness irritatedly while looking ahead and at the sun.

Is there a symbolic connection between the bird and the man? What is it? Is it a representation of God? Or the elusive Blue Bird of happiness? I have my theories but was hoping to find an explanation in critical writings or memoirs — and couldn't.

And what is the bird? I've used several bird identifiers, including the RSPB site, to find out. It could be a wader but waders commonly have long legs and beaks, unlike the bird in the picture. And waders usually come in flocks. It may be a temminck (RSPB description), but it does not appear on the Volga. A common European and Russian bird that is often seen everywhere is a wagtail (picture), and they usually forage alone.

A wagtail, in Russian трясогузка (literally, tail, bottom shaker) is often associated with fickleness, or diffidence, or irresponsible behaviour. How does this apply here, if it is a wagtail, I don't know. The mystery remains.

The painting in high definition can be seen on Repin's internet gallery and on Wikipedia. His signature is lower right. Other birds, presumably gulls, are seen top right. The small bird is at lower left.

At the Feet of Tolstoy

(detail)

This is my favourite portrait of Lev Tolstoy, the great Russian writer.

It is different from others first of all because Tolstoy is barefoot in it. He is standing, in a pensive mood, on a path in the woods, probably at his estate Yasnaya Polyana (which means Clear Glade or Bright Clearing) as though drawing power from Mother Earth.

The portrait was done when Tolstoy was at the peak of his world-wide fame as a writer and thinker. His social philosophy became known as Tolsltoyism or Christian Anarchism. Tolstoy's word had more power in Russia than that of the tsarist government. His theory of non-violent public disobedience influenced such figures of the 20th Century as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

On an official visit to Russia Prime Minister Indira Gandhi went to see Tolstoy's home. As a sign of respect for the man whose ideas helped India gain independence she walked barefoot where Tolstoy stood being sketched for that portrait.

Picture: Tolstoy Barefoot, 1901, by Ilya Repin, o/c, 207 x 73 cm, Russian State Museum, St.Petersburg. Photo file from here.    

Russia and Ukraine: Cossacks writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan

'Zaporozhians', the huge painting (2.03 × 3.58 m) by Ilya Repin, first exhibited in 1891, almost instantly became an iconic representation of  Russia and Russians throughout the world, even though the cossacks in the picture are very Ukrainian.

Russians of that period (1676) wore beards and long hair.  But the cossacks in the picture are all cleanly shaven, beards and heads, with just the moustaches and the khokhols, locks of hair on top of their heads. That is what Ukrainians did and it was one striking difference between the two people. And that is why their Russian nickname - khokhly.

It hardly mattered at the time when Repin painted - Russia and Ukraine were one country. It does now.  Even attitudes to khokhol as a nickname vary wildly and are often very emotional.  Russians rarely put any derision in the word, but Ukrainians sometimes feel it is pejorative.

It seems to me that Ukrainians living among Russians or close to Russia are happy with the word (e.g. East Ukrainians, East meaning to the East of the Dnieper river). They happily tell khokhol jokes, whith the хохол cleverly tricking the Russian, but also with a self-mocking attitude. Think Irish jokes. The main character in The Ninth Company, a Soviet army seargeant in Afghanistan, is called Khokhol by his multiethnic unit and is happy wearing the nickname. 
On the other hand, West Ukrainians (zapadnetsy - западнецы) are more sensitive to the term and often do see it as pejorative. 


The difference seems to stem from that the хохол appeared as a Russian exoethnonym for Ukrainians as a reference to their tradition of shaving beards and heads, leaving moustaches and topknots (khokhol, or chub or oseledets), while Russians were wearing beards. Happy co-existence lead to adoption of the exonym for self-identification (East), strife lead to negative attitudes to the term (West). 


It's difficult to understand these subtleties if you are outside the 'soup' where nationalistic emotions brew. Repin was indeed criticised for not being 'historically accurate' and started painting a new version of the picture - where cossacks all have beards! Curiously, the two 'Ukrainian' versions are now in the two top Russian museums - Russky Muzey in Petersburg and Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, but the 'Russian' version is in Kharkov, Ukraine.  

'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire' (1893, unfinished):

Links: The  story behind the picture and Ilya Repin's bio.