There was, in Russian historiography of the last century, an established pattern of interpretation, and, to some extent, it is still commonly used. It was traditional to divide the history of Russia into two parts, and to divide it sharply and rigidly: the Old and the New, Ancient and Modern. The time of Peter the Great was regarded as the Great Divide, as the decisive turning point in the total process. Of course, it was much more than a chronological demarcation. Passionate value judgments were implied therein. Kliuchevsky has rightly stated: "The whole philosophy of our history was often reduced to the appraisal of Peter's reform; by a certain scholarly foreshortening, the whole problem of the meaning of Russian history was condensed into one single questionabout the deed of Peter and the relation of his new reformed Russia to the old."1 The Old Russia was regarded and evaluated in the perspective of the New, in the light of "ithe Reform." In fact, this approach was itself an integral part of the Reform, and its most ponderous legacy. This pattern of interpretation was first invented by the pioneers of the Reform in order to justify the break, which was intended to be radical and definitive, and then it was maintained in its defense. The story of Old Russia had to be presented in such a way as to show that the Reform was inevitable, necessary, and just. "The Old" meant in this connection the obsolete, sterile and stagnant, primitive and backward. And "the New" was depicted, by contrast, in the brightest colors as a great achievement and a glorious promise. The whole history of Old Russia, before Peter, was usually treated as a kind of prehistory-a dark background against which the whole splendor of the new cultural