Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [199]
Above all, he despised their Orthodox religion, and their illiterate mumbling to their icons.
‘It is,’ he would say definitively, ‘a religion fit only for serfs.’
How far indeed it was from the romantic Catholicism of this Polish gentleman who, for all his cruelty and contempt towards the peasants, saw himself as a crusading, courtly knight, albeit in a twilight world.
This religious split between lord and peasant in the Ukraine had, if anything, been made worse half a century before when the subtle Catholic Church had come to a great historic compromise with the old Orthodox bishops centred at Kiev. By this arrangement, the Orthodox bishops had agreed to acknowledge the Pope as their spiritual head, so long as he would allow them to celebrate their services in, for all practical purposes, the Orthodox way.
This was the start of the so-called Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church.
The trouble was that many of the Orthodox had refused to accept the compromise so that now in the Ukraine there were three Churches instead of two: Catholic, Uniate and Orthodox. The Cossacks, moreover, had decided to champion the old Orthodox faith. In every city, especially in the eastern Ukraine around Kiev, the citizens formed brotherhoods to defend their faith so that now there was a powerful religious movement sworn to oppose both the Catholic Poles and any kind of compromise with them.
It was, Stanislaus thought, just the kind of movement that would appeal to a Cossack like Ostap. He felt very little sympathy for him.
So now, with a casual wave of his hand, he indicated the thinner of the two Jews who had accompanied him.
‘This is Mordecai,’ he said casually. ‘I have given him the lease of this place, so you’ll be working for him. He’ll tell you what to do, won’t you, Mordecai?’ he remarked easily.
It was the final insult. As Ostap looked from the Pole to the Jew, he could not himself have said which one he hated the most. Religiously, he distrusted the Catholic more than the Jew. For although his grandfather had come from Muscovy, where the fear of Judaism was often deep, Ostap had lived all his life in the Ukraine where, ever since the time of the Khazars, the Orthodox and Jewish communities had usually tolerated each other well enough. The hatred he now felt for the Jew was not in fact based upon his religion but upon the particular roles in which the Polish overlords had used them – usually as tax collectors, liquor stall concessionaires, and rent agents. Consequently, men like Ostap found that, though in fact they were always in debt to the Poles, the face of the creditor they saw was nearly always Jewish. It was an arrangement that suited the Poles very well, for whenever their extortions went too far, they blamed their agents.
It is generally agreed that the root of the endemic anti-Semitism in South Russia lay in this cynical and unfortunate Polish system.
And no part of the system was worse than the practice of leasing, which Stanislaus was now planning to use. It was simple enough: Mordecai would hold the farm, probably on a short lease, of only two or three years. For this he would collect and pay Stanislaus a stiff rent; and in turn, Stanislaus would support him in whatever exactions he made to get extra profits out of the peasants. Whereas Stanislaus might demand three or four days’ work from Ostap, therefore, this adding of an intermediary who was also looking for his profit might mean that Ostap finished up working five or even six days for someone else. And since justice lay in the Polish courts, there was probably nothing he could do about it.
The old man said nothing at all. Outwardly he seemed calm, though Andrei knew that this only masked a seething rage within.
‘Good,’ Stanislaus said cheerfully. ‘That’s all settled then.’ Now he glanced at the other Jew. ‘There’s just one other matter. It seems you owe Yankel here for your liquor. He says