MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Anatoly Korolyov) -- Russia's national emblem, the two-headed crowned eagle, came to the country 553 years ago, in 1452, from Rome.
This amazing story is a drama of love and politics, involving Pope Paul II.
It was a difficult time for the entire Christian world: Muslim armies were attacking the eastern borders of Europe. Turkey destroyed the ancient Byzantine Empire and seized the holy city of Constantinople, which was renamed Istanbul. Greece was the next to bend. Eventually the army of the greatest Turkish ruler, the merciless Sultan Mohammed II, threatened Italy and the Vatican.
At that time the Pope had only one means of protection, the unfortunate family of Thomas Palaeologus, the Byzantine emperor's brother, who had fled to Rome from the fallen state.
Thomas had a young daughter, Princess Sophia. The Pope protected her and wanted to find her a husband who would strengthen Rome's position at such a hard time.
Finally, the Pope looked to Christian Moscow, where Grand Prince Ivan III had lost his wife shortly before.
He was the brightest genius in Russian history prior to Peter the Great.
Ivan III was the only person who could match the Turkish sultan in intellect and force. It was under him that Russia finally freed itself of the Tartar yoke. It was under Ivan III that the first code of laws and postal service appeared. He founded the police, and under him Moscow suppressed the riot in Novrogod, reined in the Kazan kingdom, defeated the Lithuanian-Polish King Kazimierz, and ascertained its right to be the capital of the young state.
At that time the Prince Ivan was just 20, although he had been married and had a small son.
The Pope hoped that having married the poor princess, Ivan III would want to return Constantinople to Sophia and would start a war against the Turks. Matchmakers were sent to Moscow to show Ivan III the young princess's portrait. She was very beautiful, but even if she had not been, the Russian ruler would have accepted the pontiff's proposal. Ivan, an ambitious monarch, immediately assessed the political benefits of a marriage to the rightful heiress of the Byzantine throne. The marriage would immediately make him suzerain, if only nominal, of a huge territory (conquered by the Turks) and heir of the great empire that had brought the light of Christianity to Russia.
Sophia was not Catholic, but Orthodox Christian.
Ivan III gave his consent and sent a delegation to Rome with generous gifts for the bride and the Pope.
The wedding took place without the groom in the St. Paul Cathedral in the Pope's presence, with the Russian ambassador standing in for Ivan III.
Leaving Rome on June 1, in the middle of the Italian summer, Sophia arrived in Moscow six months later on the bright winter day of November 12 and saw her husband for the first time. He waited for her in his mother's palace. The true wedding was celebrated the same evening.
Sophia gave birth to three daughters and six sons, the eldest of whom inherited the throne.
The princess brought the spirit of the great Italian culture to Moscow. It was she who inspired the tsar to build the Kremlin fortress in the Florentine style, the way it is known now: a town of palaces and churches behind the red wall. It was under Sophia that the first hanging gardens and goldfish ponds appeared.
However, Sophia's main dowry was the Byzantine emblem - a two-headed, golden eagle from the last emperor's seal, which Ivan III received from his wife. The eagle symbolized independence, and the two heads symbolized power over the eastern and western parts of the empire. The heads had two crowns, which symbolized double power. The Russians admired the mysterious power of the emblem.
At first no one dared to change it, but then Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV) ordered a shield of Moscow's emblem- St. George on horseback, killing a serpent with his spear - to be added on the eagle's chest.
This made the Russian emblem quite frightening: the two heads of the eagle were supplemented by another three -- the warrior's, the horse's, and the serpent's. Yet even that did not seem frightening enough and for four centuries the Romanov dynasty kept changing the emblem. At first the eagle's wings were spread proudly, as if it was about to fly. His beaks were opened, revealing two snake-like tongues, and he had mighty talons, in which he held a scepter and a round orb, the symbols of might.
Even the crowns seemed to soar over the demonic bird's heads. Now there were three of them, symbolizing the Christian Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The emblem projected pure aggression, but even this did not seem enough. Peter the Great decided to decorate the eagle's chest with the golden chain of the supreme Russian award, the order of St. Andrew the First Called. He also had the three crowns joined by a blue moire ribbon, thereby making the eagle a loyal soldier and a triumphant warlord. In addition, the emperor ordered the eagle to be painted black, the color of courage, and he had the black bird placed in the air because the golden eagle had stood for protection of the nest, not for attack.
Peter the Great's eagle marked Russia's new policy of expansion.
In the early 19th century, Emperor Alexander I decided that his empire, which occupied one third of the northern hemisphere, had reached its limits and ordered the golden color to be restored. He also had the scepter and orb replaced by lightning bolts, a torch, and a laurel wreath.
At that time, the Russian emblem promised its citizens the laurels of peace and the torch of enlightenment, and only its enemies the lightning of revenge should they dare to strike.
However, under Alexander II, Nikolai I, and Alexander III Russia continued to expand. It seized Dagestan and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus and started a war against Turkey, after which it annexed Bessarabia and finally liberated Greece, Serbia, and Moldova, which were given autonomy. Then followed the seizure of Lithuania, the division of Poland, the liberation of Bulgaria, a 20-year war against Muslim states in the deserts near the Caspian Sea, and the annexation of Central Asia. Finland was the final trophy.
Russia's last emperor, Nikolai II, considered it necessary to declare once again that Russia had reached its limits and ordered the emblem to be decorated with symbols of peace. The eagle's wings were decorated with the emblems of the states annexed by Russia: the Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian, Polish, and Finnish kingdoms and the Tauric Chersonese.
It seemed enough. It seemed that the heavy golden bird would never again fly in the sky of war.
But Russian history took a sharp turn. After the 1917 October revolution, the old emblem was abolished and a new emblem of the Soviet Union appeared. It depicted the Earth (although only its upper part was seen well) with a radiating sun rising above it. Above the Earth there was a symbol of the proletarian and peasant expansion, a sickle and hammer under a five-pointed star of mystic might. This symbolized the center of an expanding universe.
This emblem of the Communist state claimed power over the entire world. But history decided otherwise, and the Soviet empire collapsed.
The current emblem was born in the pangs of new times.
At first the previous emblem was restored but deprived of all crowns and symbols of power, including the scepter and the orb. Its two beaks were closed. Critics immediately dubbed the eagle "a shabby hen" and soon painter Yevgeny Ukhnalev reinstated almost all of the previous attributes.
Russia's new emblem was officially adopted in December 2000. Today this emblem, the symbol of a democratic federal republic, looks ironically like that of a monarchy, with all the attributes of tsarist power having been restored. However, the symbols have different meanings.
The golden, two-headed eagle is depicted on a red heraldic shield pointed downwards (the so-called French shield). The eagle is crowned with two small crowns and a big one. They are joined by a moire ribbon. In the eagle's right claw there is a scepter and in the left, an orb. On its chest there is another shield depicting Moscow's emblem -- a silver rider in a blue coat on a silver horse, killing a black dragon with a silver spear.
This picture can be interpreted as follows (but other variants are possible): Russia, still protected by the Holy Trinity, believes in God, the tsar (the authorities), and the fatherland. Russia focuses on holding its territory together, nothing more. It abides by the law and justice of the world order, which is shown by the order ribbon, a symbol of hierarchy. Russia does not threaten anyone. Its intentions are pure as silver; its forces obey the blue color of service; and its spear is pointed downwards against mankind's common evil, sins and common troubles, not people or countries.
As it is, the Russian emblem is both a military oath and a prayer in one.
