1
00:00:16,093 --> 00:00:19,272
- [Narrator] The Fall of an Empire:
The Lesson of Byzantium.

2
00:00:44,232 --> 00:00:47,953
In 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell.

3
00:00:48,451 --> 00:00:51,070
Let us now take a look at
how this happened.

4
00:01:39,384 --> 00:01:41,899
This city was once called Constantinople;

5
00:01:42,275 --> 00:01:45,323
six centuries ago it was the capital city

6
00:01:45,323 --> 00:01:47,592
of what was without exaggeration one

7
00:01:47,592 --> 00:01:50,098
of the greatest civilizations
in world history,

8
00:01:50,300 --> 00:01:52,022
the Byzantine Empire.

9
00:02:10,902 --> 00:02:13,732
A rule by law,
something we now take for granted,

10
00:02:13,732 --> 00:02:16,954
was created here,
based upon the Roman codes,

11
00:02:16,954 --> 00:02:19,977
in Byzantium, 1500 years ago.

12
00:02:21,009 --> 00:02:22,648
A legal system which was

13
00:02:22,648 --> 00:02:25,902
to become the basic foundation
of all types of laws

14
00:02:25,902 --> 00:02:29,262
in most modern governments
was the monumental creation

15
00:02:29,262 --> 00:02:31,863
of Byzantine jurisprudence

16
00:02:31,863 --> 00:02:34,359
during the reign of Emperor Justinian.

17
00:02:34,741 --> 00:02:37,512
The system of elementary
and higher education

18
00:02:37,512 --> 00:02:39,741
first developed in Byzantium;

19
00:02:40,045 --> 00:02:41,996
it was here, in the fifth century,

20
00:02:41,996 --> 00:02:44,070
that the first university appeared.

21
00:02:44,070 --> 00:02:46,094
The most stable financial system

22
00:02:46,094 --> 00:02:49,704
in the history of mankind was created
in Byzantium,

23
00:02:49,704 --> 00:02:52,582
and existed in a nearly unaltered form

24
00:02:52,582 --> 00:02:54,676
for over one thousand years.

25
00:02:54,676 --> 00:02:58,729
Modern diplomacy with its
basic principles, rules of conduct,

26
00:02:58,729 --> 00:03:02,297
and etiquette was created
and refined here, in Byzantium.

27
00:03:03,039 --> 00:03:07,224
Byzantine engineering and architectural
arts were unrivaled.

28
00:03:07,559 --> 00:03:11,335
Even today, famous works
by Byzantine masters

29
00:03:11,335 --> 00:03:14,588
as the domes of the Hagia Sophia
amaze the world

30
00:03:14,588 --> 00:03:16,530
with their technological perfection.

31
00:03:17,069 --> 00:03:19,854
No other empire in human history lasted

32
00:03:19,854 --> 00:03:21,693
as long as Byzantium.

33
00:03:21,944 --> 00:03:25,407
It existed for 1,123 years.

34
00:03:25,863 --> 00:03:29,605
In comparison: the great Roman Empire
collapsed 800 years

35
00:03:29,605 --> 00:03:31,267
after its establishment;

36
00:03:31,267 --> 00:03:34,391
the Ottoman Empire fell apart
after 500 years;

37
00:03:34,391 --> 00:03:38,281
the Chinese Qing or Manchu Empire
after 300 years.

38
00:03:38,388 --> 00:03:41,747
The Russian Empire lasted 200 years;
the British 150 years;

39
00:03:41,747 --> 00:03:44,912
the Austro-Hungarian empire lasted
around 100 years.

40
00:03:44,912 --> 00:03:47,662
During its zenith, Byzantium was home
to one-sixth

41
00:03:47,662 --> 00:03:49,959
of the entire world population.

42
00:03:50,483 --> 00:03:52,219
The Empire stretched from Gibraltar

43
00:03:52,219 --> 00:03:54,313
to the Euphrates and Arabia.

44
00:03:54,313 --> 00:03:57,481
It encompassed the territories of
modern Greece and Turkey,

45
00:03:57,481 --> 00:04:01,100
Israel and Egypt, Bulgaria,
Serbia and Albania,

46
00:04:01,218 --> 00:04:04,005
Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco,

47
00:04:04,005 --> 00:04:06,352
part of Italy, Spain and Portugal.

48
00:04:07,275 --> 00:04:10,107
There were around one thousand cities
in Byzantium—

49
00:04:10,107 --> 00:04:12,552
nearly as many as in modern Russia.

50
00:04:14,891 --> 00:04:17,521
The capital city’s incalculable wealth,

51
00:04:17,521 --> 00:04:18,906
its beauty and elegance,

52
00:04:18,906 --> 00:04:20,916
amazed all the European peoples,

53
00:04:20,916 --> 00:04:22,883
who were still barbarians at the time

54
00:04:22,883 --> 00:04:25,627
when the Byzantine Empire was
in its apogee.

55
00:04:45,163 --> 00:04:46,800
One can only imagine—

56
00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:48,964
indeed, history records it as such—

57
00:04:48,964 --> 00:04:51,503
how crude, ignorant Scandinavians,
Germans,

58
00:04:51,503 --> 00:04:53,497
Franks, and Anglo-Saxons,

59
00:04:53,497 --> 00:04:54,807
whose chief occupation

60
00:04:54,807 --> 00:04:57,637
at the time was primitive sacking
and pillaging,

61
00:04:58,493 --> 00:05:01,518
after arriving from some town
like Paris or London

62
00:05:01,614 --> 00:05:04,377
which had populations of some
tens of thousands

63
00:05:04,377 --> 00:05:06,505
to this megalopolis of millions,

64
00:05:06,505 --> 00:05:08,911
a city of enlightened citizens, scholars,

65
00:05:08,911 --> 00:05:12,763
and elegantly dressed youths crowding
imperial universities,

66
00:05:12,763 --> 00:05:15,912
dreamt of only one thing:
invading and robbing,

67
00:05:16,276 --> 00:05:17,788
robbing and invading.

68
00:05:24,519 --> 00:05:28,371
In fact, when this was actually
accomplished in 1204

69
00:05:28,371 --> 00:05:31,267
by an army of Europeans calling
themselves Crusaders,

70
00:05:31,348 --> 00:05:33,278
who, instead of freeing the Holy Land,

71
00:05:33,278 --> 00:05:36,382
treacherously sacked the most beautiful
city in the world,

72
00:05:38,161 --> 00:05:40,903
Byzantine treasures were carried away

73
00:05:40,903 --> 00:05:42,591
in an uninterrupted flow

74
00:05:42,591 --> 00:05:44,692
over the course of fifty years.

75
00:05:51,223 --> 00:05:53,959
Hundreds of tons of precious coins alone
were carried away

76
00:05:53,959 --> 00:05:55,879
at a time when the annual budget

77
00:05:55,879 --> 00:05:58,286
of the wealthiest European countries
was no more

78
00:05:58,286 --> 00:06:00,177
than two tons of gold.

79
00:06:12,227 --> 00:06:15,060
Venice. The Cathedral of St. Mark.

80
00:06:15,060 --> 00:06:16,759
All the columns, marble,

81
00:06:16,759 --> 00:06:18,650
and precious adornments were stolen

82
00:06:18,650 --> 00:06:20,199
at that very time.

83
00:06:20,338 --> 00:06:23,972
By the way, those horses are
from the imperial quadriga,

84
00:06:23,972 --> 00:06:26,998
carried away from Constantinople
by the Crusaders.

85
00:06:32,909 --> 00:06:35,916
Priceless holy relics and works
of art were looted,

86
00:06:36,836 --> 00:06:40,297
but even more taken by barbarians
from Brussels, London,

87
00:06:40,297 --> 00:06:43,013
Nuremberg, and Paris were
simply destroyed—

88
00:06:44,142 --> 00:06:48,058
melted down into coins or thrown away
like refuse.

89
00:06:51,962 --> 00:06:55,284
To this day, the museums of Europe
are bursting

90
00:06:55,284 --> 00:06:57,583
with stolen Byzantine treasures.

91
00:06:58,913 --> 00:07:00,780
But let us take into consideration that

92
00:07:00,780 --> 00:07:04,349
only a small portion was
actually preserved.

93
00:07:10,177 --> 00:07:12,260
It was during this period of looting

94
00:07:12,260 --> 00:07:14,808
that the monstrous modern
lending system was created

95
00:07:14,808 --> 00:07:17,484
using treasures stolen from
Constantinople.

96
00:07:19,090 --> 00:07:21,776
This average sized city in Italy—Venice—

97
00:07:21,776 --> 00:07:24,167
was the New York of
the thirteenth century.

98
00:07:24,398 --> 00:07:27,074
The financial fate of nations
was decided here.

99
00:07:29,264 --> 00:07:31,880
At first, most of the booty was
easily taken by sea

100
00:07:31,880 --> 00:07:33,703
to Venice and Lombardy.

101
00:07:33,703 --> 00:07:36,638
The Russian word for “pawn shop” to
this day is “Lombard”.

102
00:07:38,813 --> 00:07:41,776
The first European banks began to
spring up like mushrooms

103
00:07:41,776 --> 00:07:43,356
after a good rain.

104
00:07:43,992 --> 00:07:45,588
The English and Dutch,

105
00:07:45,588 --> 00:07:49,008
more reserved than their contemporary
Italians and Germans,

106
00:07:49,265 --> 00:07:51,935
joined the activity a little later,

107
00:07:51,935 --> 00:07:55,154
and, with the help of Byzantine riches
pouring in,

108
00:07:55,154 --> 00:07:57,253
developed that famous capitalism

109
00:07:57,253 --> 00:07:59,662
with its inevitable lust for profits,

110
00:07:59,662 --> 00:08:03,443
which is essentially a sort of
genetic continuation

111
00:08:03,443 --> 00:08:05,592
of the sport of military plunder.

112
00:08:09,144 --> 00:08:11,852
The first significant Jewish capital
was amassed

113
00:08:11,852 --> 00:08:15,436
as a result of speculation
in Byzantine relics.

114
00:08:16,627 --> 00:08:20,987
An unprecedented flow of free money caused
the Western European cities

115
00:08:20,987 --> 00:08:22,650
to grow turbulently,

116
00:08:22,650 --> 00:08:25,955
and became the decisive catalyst in
the development of craft,

117
00:08:25,955 --> 00:08:27,731
science, and the arts.

118
00:08:47,255 --> 00:08:50,499
The barbaric West became
the civilized West

119
00:08:50,752 --> 00:08:54,601
only after it had taken over,
seized, destroyed,

120
00:08:55,070 --> 00:08:57,772
and swallowed up the Byzantine Empire.

121
00:09:01,283 --> 00:09:04,470
We must admit that our own
Slavic forebears

122
00:09:04,470 --> 00:09:06,165
were no more well-mannered,

123
00:09:06,165 --> 00:09:08,282
and also succumbed to
the barbaric temptation

124
00:09:08,282 --> 00:09:10,476
to get rich quick at the expense

125
00:09:10,476 --> 00:09:13,996
of Constantinople’s seemingly
inexhaustible wealth.

126
00:09:14,555 --> 00:09:16,878
However, to their credit,
and fortunately for us,

127
00:09:16,878 --> 00:09:18,620
their lust for the spoils of war

128
00:09:18,620 --> 00:09:20,952
did not eclipse the most important thing:

129
00:09:20,952 --> 00:09:24,054
Russians comprehended Byzantium’s
greatest treasure.

130
00:09:27,001 --> 00:09:30,166
This was neither gold,
nor expensive textiles,

131
00:09:30,166 --> 00:09:32,436
nor even art and sciences.

132
00:09:32,436 --> 00:09:35,571
The greatest treasure of Byzantium
was God.

133
00:09:58,073 --> 00:10:01,614
Having traveled the world over in
the search of the truth and God,

134
00:10:01,614 --> 00:10:04,231
the ambassadors of Grand Prince Vladimir
of Russia

135
00:10:04,231 --> 00:10:06,080
experienced only in Byzantium

136
00:10:06,080 --> 00:10:08,996
that a true relationship between God
and man exists;

137
00:10:08,996 --> 00:10:11,506
that it's possible for us to have
living contact

138
00:10:11,506 --> 00:10:12,712
with another world.

139
00:10:18,421 --> 00:10:21,460
“We did not know whether we were
in heaven or on earth,”

140
00:10:21,460 --> 00:10:23,909
said the ancestors of
present-day Russians,

141
00:10:23,909 --> 00:10:27,111
astounded by their experience
of Divine Liturgy

142
00:10:27,111 --> 00:10:30,729
in the Empire’s most important cathedral,
the Hagia Sophia.

143
00:10:31,557 --> 00:10:33,558
They understood just what kind of treasure

144
00:10:33,558 --> 00:10:35,486
can be obtained in Byzantium.

145
00:10:36,476 --> 00:10:40,047
It was upon this treasure that
our great forebears founded

146
00:10:40,047 --> 00:10:43,757
not banks, nor capital, nor even museums
and pawn shops.

147
00:10:47,949 --> 00:10:50,262
They founded Rus’, Russia,

148
00:10:50,262 --> 00:10:52,680
the spiritual successor of Byzantium.

149
00:10:59,833 --> 00:11:02,115
So what made it possible for
a nation so great

150
00:11:02,115 --> 00:11:03,953
in the arena of world history,

151
00:11:03,953 --> 00:11:06,269
with such extraordinary capabilities,

152
00:11:06,269 --> 00:11:09,133
to so suddenly begin to lose
its life-giving force?

153
00:11:17,657 --> 00:11:21,492
What is most interesting is that
the problems Byzantium met

154
00:11:21,492 --> 00:11:25,393
during its period of decline—
aggression from foreign nations,

155
00:11:25,393 --> 00:11:28,852
natural disasters,
economic and political crises—

156
00:11:28,852 --> 00:11:30,201
were nothing new for this

157
00:11:30,201 --> 00:11:32,222
over a thousand-year-old government

158
00:11:32,222 --> 00:11:33,748
with its proven mechanism

159
00:11:33,748 --> 00:11:36,166
for getting out of
the most difficult situations.

160
00:11:39,084 --> 00:11:42,304
After all, the empire had experienced
all these things before,

161
00:11:42,304 --> 00:11:43,838
and had overcome them.

162
00:11:46,239 --> 00:11:50,159
Yes, there were many envious enemies
both east and west,

163
00:11:50,159 --> 00:11:52,831
there were earthquakes,
there were plagues;

164
00:11:54,039 --> 00:11:56,721
but it was not these which
crushed Byzantium.

165
00:11:57,355 --> 00:11:59,789
All of these problems could
have been overcome

166
00:11:59,789 --> 00:12:01,854
if only the Byzantines had been able

167
00:12:01,854 --> 00:12:03,399
to overcome themselves.

168
00:12:11,157 --> 00:12:13,820
Today we will talk about that inner enemy

169
00:12:14,030 --> 00:12:16,236
which appeared within the spiritual depths

170
00:12:16,236 --> 00:12:18,018
of Byzantine society,

171
00:12:18,417 --> 00:12:20,914
and broke the spirit of that great nation,

172
00:12:22,425 --> 00:12:26,382
turning it into a helpless victim of
those historical challenges,

173
00:12:26,382 --> 00:12:28,962
which Byzantium was no longer
able to answer.

174
00:12:34,466 --> 00:12:36,965
Nowadays we generally assess
a society’s well-being

175
00:12:36,965 --> 00:12:38,668
according to its economy.

176
00:12:39,552 --> 00:12:42,353
Although the word “economics,”
and even the science

177
00:12:42,353 --> 00:12:45,248
of economics itself hails from Byzantium,

178
00:12:45,248 --> 00:12:48,670
the Byzantines themselves never gave it
much attention.

179
00:12:48,670 --> 00:12:51,287
The Byzantine financial-economic system

180
00:12:51,287 --> 00:12:54,790
underwent several serious crises
during the course of history,

181
00:12:55,059 --> 00:12:58,120
but the effectiveness of
the Empire’s industry

182
00:12:58,120 --> 00:13:01,472
and agriculture generally enabled it
to weather the storms.

183
00:13:02,086 --> 00:13:05,095
Suffice it to say that for
a thousand years,

184
00:13:05,095 --> 00:13:08,957
all international trade was based upon
the Byzantine gold coin.

185
00:13:11,701 --> 00:13:14,317
But Byzantium could not solve the problem

186
00:13:14,317 --> 00:13:16,430
of its government’s loss of control

187
00:13:16,430 --> 00:13:18,054
over its own finances

188
00:13:18,054 --> 00:13:20,998
and the huge, ungovernable process
of capital flow

189
00:13:20,998 --> 00:13:23,579
towards the West, to developing Europe,

190
00:13:23,754 --> 00:13:26,659
and this is what finally destroyed
its economy.

191
00:13:29,138 --> 00:13:32,389
The government dropped all levers
of trade and industry,

192
00:13:32,734 --> 00:13:36,366
and in the end gave all its trade
and industrial resources

193
00:13:36,366 --> 00:13:38,153
over to foreign entrepreneurs.

194
00:13:43,060 --> 00:13:44,789
It happened like this:

195
00:13:44,789 --> 00:13:46,522
An important financial resource

196
00:13:46,522 --> 00:13:49,595
in the country was not gas and oil,
as it is now,

197
00:13:49,595 --> 00:13:52,714
but customs obtained from
the enormous international trade

198
00:13:52,714 --> 00:13:54,875
in the Bosphorus and Dardenelles.

199
00:13:56,119 --> 00:13:58,054
The Byzantines, who earlier relied

200
00:13:58,054 --> 00:14:00,155
solely upon their own capability

201
00:14:00,155 --> 00:14:02,037
to govern the country’s economics,

202
00:14:02,037 --> 00:14:04,419
suddenly began heated discussions about,

203
00:14:04,419 --> 00:14:06,070
and finally decided upon,

204
00:14:06,308 --> 00:14:08,973
consigning the problems of
international trade

205
00:14:08,973 --> 00:14:12,263
to their foreign friends,
who were more resourceful,

206
00:14:12,263 --> 00:14:14,236
and ready to take responsibility

207
00:14:14,236 --> 00:14:16,590
for the expense of complex transport,

208
00:14:16,590 --> 00:14:18,652
armed guards along trade routes,

209
00:14:18,652 --> 00:14:20,444
the construction of new ports,

210
00:14:20,444 --> 00:14:22,904
and the intensification and development

211
00:14:22,904 --> 00:14:24,599
of commercial activities.

212
00:14:26,016 --> 00:14:29,585
Western specialists were called in
from Venice and Genoa,

213
00:14:29,585 --> 00:14:31,275
towns which had grown large

214
00:14:31,275 --> 00:14:33,977
on several centuries of Byzantine trade.

215
00:14:33,977 --> 00:14:35,997
They were granted duty-free trade,

216
00:14:35,997 --> 00:14:38,230
and entrusted with the patrol
of sea routes

217
00:14:38,230 --> 00:14:40,097
along the Empire’s territory.

218
00:14:42,571 --> 00:14:45,202
The West began by hook or by crook

219
00:14:45,202 --> 00:14:48,405
to lure Byzantium into
the formative prototype

220
00:14:48,405 --> 00:14:50,798
of unified European trade organizations;

221
00:14:50,798 --> 00:14:53,666
and, taking advantage of one of
the most complicated periods

222
00:14:53,666 --> 00:14:55,183
in the life of the Empire,

223
00:14:55,183 --> 00:14:57,072
succeeded in reaching its aim:

224
00:14:58,307 --> 00:15:00,678
Emperor Alexios Komnenos signed

225
00:15:00,678 --> 00:15:02,293
an international trade agreement

226
00:15:02,293 --> 00:15:05,495
to the Empire’s great disadvantage,
called the “Golden Bulla.”

227
00:15:06,574 --> 00:15:09,412
This agreement was in actuality deceitful,

228
00:15:09,412 --> 00:15:11,311
and profitable only to the West.

229
00:15:15,552 --> 00:15:17,614
At first everyone was pleased:

230
00:15:18,728 --> 00:15:20,674
the government saved a lot of money

231
00:15:20,674 --> 00:15:23,261
that formerly went to its trade
and military fleets,

232
00:15:23,759 --> 00:15:25,154
trade increased,

233
00:15:25,154 --> 00:15:27,842
and the city’s shops and markets
overflowed with European

234
00:15:27,842 --> 00:15:29,985
and Asian products they
had never seen before.

235
00:15:29,985 --> 00:15:32,319
But this did not come without a price.

236
00:15:32,319 --> 00:15:33,793
After just a few decades,

237
00:15:33,793 --> 00:15:36,610
domestic industry and agriculture
degraded sharply.

238
00:15:37,257 --> 00:15:40,121
All the Byzantine traders
either went bankrupt

239
00:15:40,121 --> 00:15:42,348
or became dependent upon foreigners.

240
00:15:43,869 --> 00:15:46,936
When the country finally realized
what was happening,

241
00:15:46,936 --> 00:15:48,107
it was too late.

242
00:15:49,556 --> 00:15:51,592
The “Golden Bulla” was annulled,

243
00:15:51,845 --> 00:15:54,877
and Emperor Andronikos tried to
reverse the flow of money

244
00:15:54,877 --> 00:15:56,555
back towards the empire.

245
00:15:57,483 --> 00:16:00,446
He confiscated all foreign
commercial enterprises,

246
00:16:00,446 --> 00:16:03,349
which were draining the government
of its last resources.

247
00:16:03,851 --> 00:16:06,345
Both he and the country paid
dearly for this.

248
00:16:06,628 --> 00:16:08,553
He himself was brutally murdered;

249
00:16:08,822 --> 00:16:10,437
as for his country…

250
00:16:12,002 --> 00:16:13,556
The republic of Venice,

251
00:16:13,556 --> 00:16:16,596
which had by that time become
a huge financial oligarchy,

252
00:16:16,596 --> 00:16:18,234
hired a whole crusade,

253
00:16:18,234 --> 00:16:21,932
and sent it to back to Constantinople
instead of the Holy Land.

254
00:16:25,066 --> 00:16:26,139
The Byzantines,

255
00:16:26,139 --> 00:16:28,499
who had up until then considered
the crusaders

256
00:16:28,499 --> 00:16:32,364
to be in general brothers in Faith
and military allies,

257
00:16:32,364 --> 00:16:35,332
were so unprepared for such
a treacherous blow

258
00:16:35,332 --> 00:16:37,969
that it was unable to organize
sufficient defense.

259
00:16:38,652 --> 00:16:42,681
In 1204, French, German,
and Italian contingents

260
00:16:42,681 --> 00:16:46,088
of the Western allies advanced
upon Constantinople

261
00:16:46,088 --> 00:16:47,421
and took it over.

262
00:16:47,811 --> 00:16:51,417
The city was mercilessly pillaged
and put to the torch.

263
00:16:54,626 --> 00:16:56,331
At the same time, Venice,

264
00:16:56,331 --> 00:16:59,065
considered then to be the stronghold
of free enterprise,

265
00:16:59,065 --> 00:17:00,913
announced to the whole Western world

266
00:17:00,913 --> 00:17:03,533
that it was only restoring
disdained law and order

267
00:17:03,533 --> 00:17:05,946
and the rights of a free
international market;

268
00:17:05,946 --> 00:17:08,180
and mainly, it was warring with a regime

269
00:17:08,180 --> 00:17:10,329
which denies all European values.

270
00:17:16,119 --> 00:17:18,420
This was the moment when the West began

271
00:17:18,420 --> 00:17:22,184
to create an image of Byzantium
as a heretical “evil empire.”

272
00:17:22,184 --> 00:17:25,567
As time went by, this image would 
continually be pulled out

273
00:17:25,567 --> 00:17:28,262
for use from Western ideological arsenals.

274
00:17:30,911 --> 00:17:34,595
Although Constantinople was recovered
fifty years later,

275
00:17:34,595 --> 00:17:37,294
Byzantium would never recover
from the blow.

276
00:17:40,266 --> 00:17:43,999
Meanwhile, foreign traders would retain
complete control

277
00:17:43,999 --> 00:17:46,919
over both the economy and
the Byzantine market.

278
00:18:00,764 --> 00:18:02,632
Another unresolved problem

279
00:18:02,632 --> 00:18:06,032
in Byzantium was corruption and oligarchy.

280
00:18:06,032 --> 00:18:08,397
The government warred
with them continually,

281
00:18:08,397 --> 00:18:10,555
and was for a long time quite effective.

282
00:18:10,731 --> 00:18:12,663
Bureaucrats and financial schemers

283
00:18:12,663 --> 00:18:15,006
who had gone too far were
punished and exiled,

284
00:18:15,006 --> 00:18:17,150
their possessions completely confiscated

285
00:18:17,150 --> 00:18:18,718
and given to the treasury.

286
00:18:18,718 --> 00:18:21,290
However, the authorities never
really had the strength

287
00:18:21,290 --> 00:18:23,898
and resolve to check this evil
systematically.

288
00:18:25,291 --> 00:18:27,753
Oligarchs gathered whole armies
under the pretext

289
00:18:27,753 --> 00:18:29,319
of servants and guards,

290
00:18:29,319 --> 00:18:32,488
and plunged the government into
the thick of civil wars.

291
00:18:38,095 --> 00:18:39,830
How did these oligarchs emerge

292
00:18:39,830 --> 00:18:40,958
in Byzantium,

293
00:18:40,958 --> 00:18:43,304
and why did they become uncontrollable?

294
00:18:43,304 --> 00:18:44,762
Byzantium had always been

295
00:18:44,762 --> 00:18:47,632
a strictly centralized bureaucratic
government;

296
00:18:47,632 --> 00:18:50,454
however, this was by no means
its weakness,

297
00:18:50,454 --> 00:18:52,751
but rather its historical strength.

298
00:18:53,458 --> 00:18:55,413
All efforts to combine authority

299
00:18:55,413 --> 00:18:58,780
with personal interests were cut off
firmly and decisively.

300
00:19:02,066 --> 00:19:04,185
However, during one moment in the period

301
00:19:04,185 --> 00:19:06,383
of political and administrative reforms,

302
00:19:06,383 --> 00:19:08,801
the temptation arose to exchange the old

303
00:19:08,801 --> 00:19:11,467
and seemingly awkward
bureaucratic machinery

304
00:19:11,467 --> 00:19:14,065
for something more effective and flexible,

305
00:19:14,065 --> 00:19:16,835
in which the government’s role
would be limited,

306
00:19:16,835 --> 00:19:19,822
and relegated to that of an overseer
of formal legalities.

307
00:19:25,408 --> 00:19:28,543
To put it simply, the government,
out of good intentions

308
00:19:28,543 --> 00:19:30,954
and with its eye upon European experience,

309
00:19:30,954 --> 00:19:33,186
in fact willingly relinquished a portion

310
00:19:33,186 --> 00:19:35,803
of its strategic monopolistic functions,

311
00:19:35,803 --> 00:19:38,092
handing them over to
a small circle of families.

312
00:19:38,515 --> 00:19:41,367
However, contrary to the
government’s expectations,

313
00:19:41,367 --> 00:19:43,581
this new aristocracy it was feeding

314
00:19:43,581 --> 00:19:45,665
did not remain long under the control

315
00:19:45,665 --> 00:19:47,441
of the bureaucratic apparatus.

316
00:19:47,441 --> 00:19:50,398
Resistance continued with
alternating success,

317
00:19:50,398 --> 00:19:52,370
and ended in a serious political crisis,

318
00:19:52,370 --> 00:19:54,339
out of which the government could escape

319
00:19:54,339 --> 00:19:57,590
only at the price of irreversible
concessions to foreigners.

320
00:19:59,243 --> 00:20:01,415
We know what happened after this.

321
00:20:01,711 --> 00:20:03,463
The oligarchic corruption

322
00:20:03,463 --> 00:20:06,008
of the government continued up until
the very takeover

323
00:20:06,008 --> 00:20:08,137
of Constantinople by the Turks.

324
00:20:10,514 --> 00:20:12,946
Incidentally, the oligarchs
not only failed

325
00:20:12,946 --> 00:20:15,369
to provide the government
with money or arms

326
00:20:15,369 --> 00:20:17,662
during this final invasion by the Turks,

327
00:20:18,812 --> 00:20:21,611
but even grabbed what little was left
in the treasury.

328
00:20:24,016 --> 00:20:26,581
When the young Sultan Mehmed
took the city,

329
00:20:26,581 --> 00:20:29,840
he was shocked at the exorbitant wealth
of some citizens

330
00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:32,430
while the city’s army was
completely lacking.

331
00:20:34,694 --> 00:20:36,361
He summoned the richest citizens

332
00:20:36,361 --> 00:20:38,178
and asked them a simple question:

333
00:20:38,944 --> 00:20:40,877
why they did not provide any money

334
00:20:40,877 --> 00:20:43,244
for the city’s protection from the enemy?

335
00:20:43,570 --> 00:20:46,377
“We were saving these funds for
your Sultanic Majesty”

336
00:20:46,377 --> 00:20:48,068
was their flattering answer.

337
00:20:48,941 --> 00:20:50,997
Mehmed had them punished immediately

338
00:20:50,997 --> 00:20:52,476
in the cruelest manner:

339
00:20:52,476 --> 00:20:53,982
their heads were chopped off,

340
00:20:53,982 --> 00:20:56,068
and their bodies thrown to the dogs.

341
00:20:59,039 --> 00:21:01,545
Those oligarchs who fled
to the West hoping

342
00:21:01,545 --> 00:21:04,378
to hide their capital were
mercilessly fleeced

343
00:21:04,378 --> 00:21:06,122
by their Western “friends,”

344
00:21:06,122 --> 00:21:08,323
and ended their lives in poverty.

345
00:21:12,630 --> 00:21:15,082
A huge problem of the Byzantine government

346
00:21:15,082 --> 00:21:18,021
during the period of decline was
its frequent change

347
00:21:18,021 --> 00:21:19,594
in political direction,

348
00:21:19,594 --> 00:21:22,482
which could be called a lack of
stability and succession

349
00:21:22,482 --> 00:21:24,040
in governmental powers.

350
00:21:24,711 --> 00:21:26,441
With each change of emperors,

351
00:21:26,441 --> 00:21:29,558
the empire’s direction would
often change drastically.

352
00:21:29,886 --> 00:21:32,036
This weakened the country severely,

353
00:21:32,036 --> 00:21:34,361
and cruelly exhausted the population.

354
00:21:37,261 --> 00:21:40,080
Political stability is one of
the most important conditions

355
00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:41,662
for a strong state.

356
00:21:41,662 --> 00:21:44,608
This was the testament of
the great Byzantine emperors.

357
00:21:45,237 --> 00:21:48,154
However, they began to disregard
this testament.

358
00:21:49,442 --> 00:21:51,594
There was a period when a new emperor was

359
00:21:51,594 --> 00:21:54,050
in power every four years on the average.

360
00:21:54,374 --> 00:21:56,860
Could it have been possible
under such conditions

361
00:21:56,860 --> 00:21:59,062
for the country to undergo a revival,

362
00:21:59,062 --> 00:22:01,903
or complete any large-scale
state projects—

363
00:22:01,903 --> 00:22:04,152
projects which would have
required many years

364
00:22:04,152 --> 00:22:05,545
of systematic effort?

365
00:22:05,947 --> 00:22:07,150
Of course, there were

366
00:22:07,150 --> 00:22:09,601
also very strong emperors in Byzantium.

367
00:22:09,601 --> 00:22:11,845
One example was Basil II, who was,

368
00:22:11,845 --> 00:22:14,489
by the way,
Grand Prince Vladimir’s godfather.

369
00:22:16,972 --> 00:22:20,143
He took on the Empire’s rule
after a serious crisis:

370
00:22:20,143 --> 00:22:23,117
the country had been practically
privatized by oligarchs.

371
00:22:24,308 --> 00:22:26,186
First of all, he took tough measures

372
00:22:26,186 --> 00:22:28,318
to enforce a vertical power structure,

373
00:22:28,556 --> 00:22:31,840
quelled all separatist movements
in outlying territories,

374
00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:34,545
and suppressed rebellious
governors and oligarchs,

375
00:22:34,545 --> 00:22:36,872
who were preparing to
dismember the empire.

376
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:40,529
Then he “purged” the government,

377
00:22:40,529 --> 00:22:43,154
and confiscated huge sums of stolen money.

378
00:22:47,864 --> 00:22:50,181
Basil II’s strict measures allowed him

379
00:22:50,181 --> 00:22:53,114
to build the state treasury
to unprecedented sums—

380
00:22:53,542 --> 00:22:56,700
the Empire’s annual income
was ninety tons of gold

381
00:22:56,700 --> 00:22:57,998
during his reign.

382
00:22:58,955 --> 00:23:01,301
As a comparison, Russia reached
such levels

383
00:23:01,301 --> 00:23:03,724
only towards the beginning of
the 19th century.

384
00:23:06,166 --> 00:23:07,838
Basil significantly weakened

385
00:23:07,838 --> 00:23:10,269
the mighty regional oligarch-magnates.

386
00:23:11,912 --> 00:23:14,281
These local sovereigns’ influence
and power were

387
00:23:14,281 --> 00:23:16,118
at times incomparably greater

388
00:23:16,118 --> 00:23:18,046
than that of the official governors.

389
00:23:19,854 --> 00:23:21,873
Once, during a military campaign,

390
00:23:21,873 --> 00:23:24,916
the Asia Minor magnate Eustaphios Maleinos

391
00:23:24,916 --> 00:23:27,584
demonstratively invited Emperor Basil
and his troops

392
00:23:27,584 --> 00:23:29,249
to rest at his estate,

393
00:23:31,027 --> 00:23:33,897
and was easily able to accommodate
this huge army

394
00:23:33,897 --> 00:23:36,149
until they had sufficiently recuperated.

395
00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:41,830
This oligarch seriously hoped to
influence the country’s fate.

396
00:23:42,308 --> 00:23:44,029
He began his intrigues,

397
00:23:44,029 --> 00:23:46,272
then moved his own puppet
candidate forward

398
00:23:46,272 --> 00:23:48,160
to the upper levels of authority.

399
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,058
Later he would pay dearly for this.

400
00:23:50,058 --> 00:23:52,310
All of his vast property was confiscated,

401
00:23:52,310 --> 00:23:53,781
and he himself was sent to one

402
00:23:53,781 --> 00:23:55,945
of the most distant prisons in the Empire.

403
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:02,415
After the rebellion of another magnate,

404
00:24:02,415 --> 00:24:04,479
Bardos Skleros, was put down,

405
00:24:04,479 --> 00:24:08,327
Skleros even advised Basil II
in a candid discussion

406
00:24:08,327 --> 00:24:12,034
to exhaust the magnates with taxes,
special tasks,

407
00:24:12,034 --> 00:24:13,664
and governmental service,

408
00:24:15,113 --> 00:24:17,076
so that they would not have time

409
00:24:17,076 --> 00:24:19,099
to get so rich and powerful.

410
00:24:30,425 --> 00:24:33,530
Having restored the verticality of
authority in the country,

411
00:24:33,530 --> 00:24:36,828
Basil left a sort of “stabilization fund”
to his successor

412
00:24:36,828 --> 00:24:40,251
which was so large, that, in the words
of Michael Psellos,

413
00:24:40,251 --> 00:24:42,097
he had to dig new labyrinths

414
00:24:42,097 --> 00:24:44,309
in the underground treasury stores.

415
00:24:45,389 --> 00:24:48,359
The national reserve was designated
first of all

416
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:49,830
for military reforms

417
00:24:49,830 --> 00:24:52,756
and the organization of a professional,
capable army.

418
00:24:59,325 --> 00:25:02,080
Byzantium in general had quite a problem

419
00:25:02,080 --> 00:25:03,511
with her “successors,”

420
00:25:04,619 --> 00:25:07,114
although the Byzantines were
the greatest specialists

421
00:25:07,114 --> 00:25:09,849
in the world in the area
of royal succession.

422
00:25:12,095 --> 00:25:15,473
They did not have the principle
of inheritance to the throne.

423
00:25:15,473 --> 00:25:18,875
Wishing to ensure that power succeed
to a worthy heir,

424
00:25:18,875 --> 00:25:21,425
the emperors usually chose
one or two candidates,

425
00:25:21,425 --> 00:25:23,869
and actively drew them into
governmental affairs,

426
00:25:24,139 --> 00:25:26,352
delegated high and responsible positions

427
00:25:26,352 --> 00:25:28,618
in the government to them,
and observed them.

428
00:25:28,618 --> 00:25:31,402
There was even a system whereby
the country would have

429
00:25:31,402 --> 00:25:33,064
at one time an emperor

430
00:25:33,064 --> 00:25:35,561
and so-called junior emperors, the heirs.

431
00:25:36,614 --> 00:25:38,476
This was all very reasonable,

432
00:25:38,476 --> 00:25:41,395
but no matter how well they honed
the system of succession,

433
00:25:41,395 --> 00:25:43,768
in the final analysis it became clear

434
00:25:43,768 --> 00:25:46,159
that it was simply the luck of the draw.

435
00:25:50,739 --> 00:25:52,645
Basil II was unlucky.

436
00:25:52,645 --> 00:25:54,826
Too occupied with governmental affairs,

437
00:25:54,826 --> 00:25:57,107
he was unable to prepare
a worthy successor,

438
00:25:57,107 --> 00:26:00,812
and the throne passed to
his natural brother Constantine VIII.

439
00:26:01,957 --> 00:26:04,120
When the new emperor began to feel free,

440
00:26:04,120 --> 00:26:06,262
powerful, and fabulously wealthy,

441
00:26:06,262 --> 00:26:09,517
he dedicated himself not
to governmental affairs,

442
00:26:09,517 --> 00:26:11,433
but rather to ecstatic daydreams

443
00:26:11,433 --> 00:26:13,234
about accomplishments and glory

444
00:26:13,234 --> 00:26:15,849
which were supposed to eclipse
those of his brother.

445
00:26:16,232 --> 00:26:18,065
The results were sorrowful:

446
00:26:18,065 --> 00:26:20,556
under the aegis of the dreamer
in porphyry,

447
00:26:20,556 --> 00:26:23,268
the cynical ruling elite quickly
lost the obedience

448
00:26:23,268 --> 00:26:25,745
and discipline cultivated by Basil II,

449
00:26:25,968 --> 00:26:27,975
and immersed themselves in power struggles

450
00:26:27,975 --> 00:26:29,325
with renewed vigor.

451
00:26:34,954 --> 00:26:37,528
Although the oligarchs quickly
achieved their aim,

452
00:26:37,528 --> 00:26:38,828
it came with a price.

453
00:26:40,046 --> 00:26:43,738
If Basil II punished insubordination
by confiscation of property,

454
00:26:43,738 --> 00:26:45,637
or, in extreme cases, by blinding—

455
00:26:45,637 --> 00:26:48,225
a punishment not uncommon
during the Middle Ages—,

456
00:26:48,225 --> 00:26:50,477
his successor, the hysterical Constantine,

457
00:26:50,477 --> 00:26:52,460
during fits of anger, castrated half

458
00:26:52,460 --> 00:26:55,071
of his contemporary Byzantine
administrative elite.

459
00:26:57,401 --> 00:26:59,585
Furthermore, his extravagance eclipsed

460
00:26:59,585 --> 00:27:01,832
even that of one of the most
dissolute emperors

461
00:27:01,832 --> 00:27:03,645
of the country’s period of decline,

462
00:27:03,645 --> 00:27:05,574
whose nickname was “The Drunkard,”

463
00:27:05,574 --> 00:27:08,451
and like him, in a state of inebriation,

464
00:27:08,451 --> 00:27:10,966
entertained the rabble at
the city hippodrome,

465
00:27:10,966 --> 00:27:13,744
three times larger than
this Roman Coliseum.

466
00:27:15,654 --> 00:27:18,895
The next successor also failed
to fulfill expectations.

467
00:27:19,092 --> 00:27:21,933
Their vertical, central power structure
began to collapse.

468
00:27:22,664 --> 00:27:25,654
The result of a new uprising amongst
the clans and elite

469
00:27:25,654 --> 00:27:27,254
and the continual re-shifting

470
00:27:27,254 --> 00:27:29,494
of property was predictably deplorable—

471
00:27:30,219 --> 00:27:32,796
within fifty years the Empire found itself

472
00:27:32,796 --> 00:27:34,508
on the brink of destruction.

473
00:27:36,548 --> 00:27:38,123
The large stabilizing fund,

474
00:27:38,123 --> 00:27:40,043
in the hands of inept sovereigns,

475
00:27:40,043 --> 00:27:41,828
caused more harm than good—

476
00:27:43,456 --> 00:27:45,552
this money gained without effort began

477
00:27:45,552 --> 00:27:48,202
to work against the country
by corrupting society.

478
00:27:51,207 --> 00:27:54,463
The same historian, Michael Psellos,
remarked bitterly

479
00:27:54,463 --> 00:27:57,228
that the empire “grew sick”
from the misuse

480
00:27:57,228 --> 00:27:59,937
and plunder of this money
set aside by Basil.

481
00:28:00,566 --> 00:28:03,310
“The government’s body,” he wrote,
“became bloated.”

482
00:28:05,676 --> 00:28:07,394
Some were glutted with money;

483
00:28:07,394 --> 00:28:09,789
others were stuffed to the gills
with ranks,

484
00:28:10,031 --> 00:28:13,793
and their lifestyle became
unhealthy and destructive.

485
00:28:18,291 --> 00:28:20,226
Thus, succession of power was a matter

486
00:28:20,226 --> 00:28:22,050
of life and death for the Empire.

487
00:28:24,929 --> 00:28:27,891
When there is stability in
succession and development,

488
00:28:27,891 --> 00:28:29,766
the country has a future;

489
00:28:29,766 --> 00:28:31,883
without stability collapse.

490
00:28:33,971 --> 00:28:36,372
But the people did not fully
understand this,

491
00:28:36,372 --> 00:28:38,384
and kept demanding various changes.

492
00:28:39,916 --> 00:28:42,770
Opportunists and run-away oligarchs
also played

493
00:28:42,770 --> 00:28:44,423
on these popular moods.

494
00:28:44,773 --> 00:28:46,909
They would usually hide somewhere abroad

495
00:28:46,909 --> 00:28:48,434
and support various intrigues

496
00:28:48,434 --> 00:28:50,812
with the aim of overthrowing
this or that emperor

497
00:28:50,812 --> 00:28:52,389
who did not suit them,

498
00:28:52,389 --> 00:28:54,029
providing for their own man

499
00:28:54,029 --> 00:28:55,907
and new re-assignments of property.

500
00:29:01,153 --> 00:29:03,560
Such an individual was
a certain Bessarion,

501
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:06,423
a mediocre scholar,
unprincipled politician,

502
00:29:06,423 --> 00:29:09,185
and ingenious intriguer of
the 15th century,

503
00:29:09,185 --> 00:29:11,223
who fled Byzantium for Rome

504
00:29:11,223 --> 00:29:13,235
and received there political asylum.

505
00:29:13,486 --> 00:29:16,857
Bessarion coordinated the entire
opposition in Constantinople

506
00:29:16,857 --> 00:29:19,176
and caused no small headache
to the government.

507
00:29:19,176 --> 00:29:21,605
He went on further to become
a Catholic cardinal.

508
00:29:21,605 --> 00:29:23,778
He bought himself a house in Rome.

509
00:29:23,778 --> 00:29:25,758
After his death, his Western protectors

510
00:29:25,758 --> 00:29:28,432
even named a small street on the edge
of town after him.

511
00:29:38,898 --> 00:29:42,535
Another serious and incurable disease

512
00:29:42,535 --> 00:29:46,262
never before a problem in Byzantium
also developed:

513
00:29:48,876 --> 00:29:51,140
the question of nationality.

514
00:29:56,876 --> 00:30:01,063
The fact of the matter is that
nationality problems in Byzantium

515
00:30:01,063 --> 00:30:03,432
really had not existed for many centuries.

516
00:30:03,432 --> 00:30:06,679
As the historical lawful descendants
of ancient Rome,

517
00:30:06,679 --> 00:30:09,802
which was destroyed by barbarians
in the fifth century,

518
00:30:09,802 --> 00:30:12,638
the inhabitants of Byzantium
called themselves Romans.

519
00:30:14,475 --> 00:30:18,043
In a vast empire divided into
many nationalities,

520
00:30:18,043 --> 00:30:21,215
there was one faith—Orthodox Christianity.

521
00:30:21,831 --> 00:30:25,434
The Byzantines literally fulfilled
the Christian teaching

522
00:30:26,021 --> 00:30:28,268
of a new humanity living
in the Divine Spirit,

523
00:30:28,747 --> 00:30:31,964
where “there is neither Greek,
nor Jew, nor Scythe,”

524
00:30:31,964 --> 00:30:33,783
as the Apostle Paul wrote.

525
00:30:34,917 --> 00:30:36,572
This hope preserved the country

526
00:30:36,572 --> 00:30:39,273
from the destructive storm
of ethnic conflict.

527
00:30:40,764 --> 00:30:43,118
It was enough for any pagan or foreigner

528
00:30:43,118 --> 00:30:46,473
to accept the Orthodox Faith,
and confirm it in deed,

529
00:30:46,473 --> 00:30:48,983
in order to become a full member
of society.

530
00:30:54,018 --> 00:30:56,518
On the Byzantine throne, for example,

531
00:30:56,518 --> 00:30:59,758
were almost as many Armenians
as there were Greeks;

532
00:30:59,758 --> 00:31:02,673
there were also citizens
of Syrian, Arabian,

533
00:31:02,673 --> 00:31:04,933
Slavic, and Germanic origin.

534
00:31:05,116 --> 00:31:06,445
Amongst the higher ranks

535
00:31:06,445 --> 00:31:08,284
of government were representatives

536
00:31:08,284 --> 00:31:10,215
of all peoples in the Empire—

537
00:31:10,215 --> 00:31:12,674
the main requirements were
their competence

538
00:31:12,674 --> 00:31:15,055
and dedication to the Orthodox Faith.

539
00:31:15,487 --> 00:31:17,952
This provided Byzantine civilization

540
00:31:17,952 --> 00:31:20,372
with incomparable cultural wealth.

541
00:31:25,031 --> 00:31:28,314
The only foreign elements for
the Byzantines were people

542
00:31:28,314 --> 00:31:30,595
who were strange to Orthodox morals

543
00:31:30,595 --> 00:31:32,828
and to the ancient Byzantine culture

544
00:31:32,828 --> 00:31:34,599
and perception of the world.

545
00:31:36,455 --> 00:31:38,178
For example, coarse, ignorant,

546
00:31:38,178 --> 00:31:40,546
money-grubbing Western Europeans
of the time

547
00:31:40,546 --> 00:31:42,856
were considered barbarian by the Romans.

548
00:31:44,439 --> 00:31:47,405
Emperor Constantine VII,
“The Purple-born,”

549
00:31:47,405 --> 00:31:49,788
instructed his son when choosing a bride,

550
00:31:51,503 --> 00:31:54,488
“Inasmuch as every nation has
its own traditions,

551
00:31:54,488 --> 00:31:56,041
laws, and customs,

552
00:31:56,787 --> 00:31:58,948
one should unite in matrimony

553
00:31:58,948 --> 00:32:01,727
only with one from
amongst his own people.”

554
00:32:03,402 --> 00:32:06,065
In order to understand
the emperor’s thoughts correctly,

555
00:32:06,065 --> 00:32:08,875
we must recall that his great grandfather
was a Scandinavian

556
00:32:08,875 --> 00:32:10,343
by the name of Inger,

557
00:32:10,343 --> 00:32:12,529
his grandfather was the son
of an Armenian man

558
00:32:12,529 --> 00:32:14,565
and Slavic woman from Macedonia,

559
00:32:14,616 --> 00:32:16,957
his wife was the daughter
of an Armenian man

560
00:32:16,957 --> 00:32:17,955
and a Greek woman,

561
00:32:17,955 --> 00:32:20,931
and his daughter-in-law was the daughter
of an Italian king.

562
00:32:20,931 --> 00:32:22,326
His granddaughter, Anna,

563
00:32:22,326 --> 00:32:24,535
became the wife of
the Russian Prince Vladimir,

564
00:32:24,535 --> 00:32:26,691
just after the latter was baptized.

565
00:32:28,526 --> 00:32:30,843
The very idea of a “nation” was

566
00:32:30,843 --> 00:32:33,065
actually a European concept

567
00:32:33,065 --> 00:32:36,199
which later in Byzantium evolved
into an idea

568
00:32:36,199 --> 00:32:38,206
of their own national superiority,

569
00:32:38,206 --> 00:32:40,191
or more precisely, of that of the Greeks,

570
00:32:40,191 --> 00:32:42,397
around whom Byzantium had grown.

571
00:32:42,397 --> 00:32:46,373
Europeans lived in smaller states
built upon ethnic principles;

572
00:32:46,373 --> 00:32:49,189
for example, France, Germanic countries,

573
00:32:49,189 --> 00:32:50,796
and Italian republics.

574
00:32:50,796 --> 00:32:53,157
National custom was good
and correct for them;

575
00:32:53,157 --> 00:32:54,766
but the fact of the matter was

576
00:32:54,766 --> 00:32:57,309
that Byzantium was not an ethnic state,

577
00:32:57,309 --> 00:32:59,780
but rather a multi-national empire,

578
00:32:59,780 --> 00:33:01,898
and this was an essential difference.

579
00:33:05,783 --> 00:33:08,501
For one hundred years
the Byzantines warred

580
00:33:08,501 --> 00:33:11,122
with this temptation
and did not allow themselves

581
00:33:11,122 --> 00:33:12,322
to be broken.

582
00:33:12,322 --> 00:33:15,245
“We are all Romans—Orthodox citizens
of the New Rome,”

583
00:33:15,245 --> 00:33:16,401
they proclaimed.

584
00:33:19,876 --> 00:33:22,117
It must be noted that all this unfolded

585
00:33:22,117 --> 00:33:24,371
at the very beginning of the epoch called

586
00:33:24,371 --> 00:33:26,497
by historians the “Renaissance”—

587
00:33:26,497 --> 00:33:29,543
the world-wide creation
of a nationalistic,

588
00:33:29,543 --> 00:33:31,487
Hellenic-Greek, pagan ideal.

589
00:33:31,681 --> 00:33:33,572
It was understandably difficult

590
00:33:33,572 --> 00:33:35,504
for the Greeks not to be tempted

591
00:33:35,504 --> 00:33:37,937
by this Western European Renaissance,

592
00:33:37,937 --> 00:33:39,815
and the European fascination

593
00:33:39,815 --> 00:33:43,024
with the culture of their great
ancient Greek ancestors.

594
00:33:50,501 --> 00:33:53,797
The first to give in were
the intelligentsia.

595
00:33:53,797 --> 00:33:57,265
The enlightened Byzantines began
to sense their Greekness.

596
00:34:00,033 --> 00:34:01,997
Nationalistic movements began,

597
00:34:01,997 --> 00:34:04,286
then the denial of Christian traditions,

598
00:34:04,286 --> 00:34:07,193
and finally,
during the reign of Palaeologi,

599
00:34:07,193 --> 00:34:09,900
the imperial ideal gave way to a narrow,

600
00:34:09,900 --> 00:34:11,750
ethnical Greek nationalism.

601
00:34:15,222 --> 00:34:18,156
However this betrayal of
the imperial ideal was costly—

602
00:34:18,579 --> 00:34:21,706
the nationalistic fever tore
the empire apart,

603
00:34:21,706 --> 00:34:23,602
and it was then quickly swallowed up

604
00:34:23,602 --> 00:34:25,742
by the neighboring Moslem empire.

605
00:34:28,579 --> 00:34:31,230
One apologist for Hellenic nationalism,

606
00:34:31,230 --> 00:34:33,062
the liberal scholar Plethon,

607
00:34:33,062 --> 00:34:35,832
arrogantly wrote to Emperor Manuel II,

608
00:34:36,526 --> 00:34:39,164
“We, the people whom you
command and govern,

609
00:34:39,164 --> 00:34:40,797
are Greeks by descent,

610
00:34:41,515 --> 00:34:44,299
as our language
and educational heritage testify.”

611
00:34:45,035 --> 00:34:47,069
Such words would have been unthinkable

612
00:34:47,069 --> 00:34:48,819
even a century earlier.

613
00:34:48,819 --> 00:34:50,184
However, Plethon wrote them

614
00:34:50,184 --> 00:34:52,584
on the eve of the fall of Constantinople,

615
00:34:52,584 --> 00:34:55,011
in which were living people
no longer Roman,

616
00:34:55,011 --> 00:34:59,144
but rather Greeks, Armenians,
Slavs, Arabs, and Italians,

617
00:34:59,144 --> 00:35:01,149
in enmity with one another.

618
00:35:05,469 --> 00:35:07,614
Greek arrogance led to the discrediting

619
00:35:07,614 --> 00:35:09,264
of Slavs in the Empire.

620
00:35:11,300 --> 00:35:14,365
Byzantium thereby estranged
the Serbs and Bulgarians,

621
00:35:14,365 --> 00:35:16,185
who could have provided real help

622
00:35:16,185 --> 00:35:17,919
in the struggle with the Turks.

623
00:35:18,942 --> 00:35:22,376
The result was that the peoples
of the once united Byzantium

624
00:35:22,376 --> 00:35:24,766
began to be at enmity with one another.

625
00:35:25,362 --> 00:35:27,116
The West did not miss the chance

626
00:35:27,116 --> 00:35:29,179
to take advantage of this new problem:

627
00:35:29,447 --> 00:35:32,426
it began to forcefully convince
the Serbs and Bulgarians

628
00:35:32,426 --> 00:35:34,295
that the Greeks had been suppressing

629
00:35:34,295 --> 00:35:36,412
their national identity for centuries.

630
00:35:36,596 --> 00:35:38,999
Several real revolutions were provoked,

631
00:35:38,999 --> 00:35:42,427
and finally, with the help
of economic and military forces,

632
00:35:42,427 --> 00:35:44,350
the West insisted upon the Serbs’

633
00:35:44,350 --> 00:35:46,622
and Bulgarians’ separation from Byzantium

634
00:35:46,622 --> 00:35:48,669
and unification with Latin Europe.

635
00:35:49,350 --> 00:35:52,164
These nationalities took the bait,
exclaiming suddenly,

636
00:35:52,164 --> 00:35:53,787
“We are also Europeans.”

637
00:35:54,035 --> 00:35:56,559
The West promised them
material and military aid,

638
00:35:56,559 --> 00:35:58,565
but of course, deceived them,

639
00:35:58,565 --> 00:36:01,228
instead throwing them cynically
before themselves

640
00:36:01,228 --> 00:36:04,020
as a buffer along the warpath
of the Turkish hordes.

641
00:36:08,476 --> 00:36:10,777
The Balkan states, so loyal to the West,

642
00:36:10,777 --> 00:36:13,143
found themselves under
the cruel Turkish yoke

643
00:36:13,143 --> 00:36:14,603
for many long centuries.

644
00:36:14,603 --> 00:36:17,399
And Byzantium was no longer able to help.

645
00:36:22,877 --> 00:36:27,126
National arrogance thus played
a wicked role for the empire.

646
00:36:39,379 --> 00:36:42,342
Another great problem was
the gradual loss of control

647
00:36:42,342 --> 00:36:44,360
over the far-flung provinces.

648
00:36:45,381 --> 00:36:47,461
The contrast between the provinces

649
00:36:47,461 --> 00:36:50,131
and the satiated, wealthy capital,
Constantinople,

650
00:36:50,131 --> 00:36:51,817
which lived for the most part

651
00:36:51,817 --> 00:36:53,945
at the expense of these
impoverished areas,

652
00:36:53,945 --> 00:36:55,112
became very sharp.

653
00:36:55,503 --> 00:36:57,607
At the beginning of
the thirteenth century,

654
00:36:57,607 --> 00:37:00,268
the Byzantine writer
Micheal Choniates wrote

655
00:37:00,268 --> 00:37:02,639
to the capital’s inhabitants
in bitter reproach,

656
00:37:05,155 --> 00:37:08,466
“Do not all riches flow into the city
as rivers into the sea?

657
00:37:09,330 --> 00:37:12,384
But you do not wish to take a look
at the towns around you,

658
00:37:12,384 --> 00:37:14,346
who await some fairness from you.

659
00:37:15,637 --> 00:37:18,405
You send them one tax collector
after another

660
00:37:18,405 --> 00:37:19,814
with brutish teeth,

661
00:37:19,814 --> 00:37:22,216
in order to devour their last morsels.

662
00:37:23,646 --> 00:37:26,914
You yourselves remain in your city
to enjoy your peace,

663
00:37:26,914 --> 00:37:28,633
and extract the riches.”

664
00:37:34,722 --> 00:37:37,134
Even the capital city’s
chief administrator,

665
00:37:37,134 --> 00:37:38,981
the eparch of Constantinople,

666
00:37:38,981 --> 00:37:41,234
enjoyed a particular status
in the country,

667
00:37:41,234 --> 00:37:43,451
and his contemporaries
often compared his power

668
00:37:43,451 --> 00:37:45,150
with that of the Emperor,

669
00:37:45,150 --> 00:37:47,331
“only without the purple,”
as they would say.

670
00:37:47,643 --> 00:37:50,425
One such eparch once became
so feverishly involved

671
00:37:50,425 --> 00:37:53,408
in the building of high-rise buildings
in the capital

672
00:37:53,408 --> 00:37:54,977
that he could only be stopped

673
00:37:54,977 --> 00:37:57,711
by a special imperial order
forbidding the construction

674
00:37:57,711 --> 00:37:59,553
of buildings over ten stories.

675
00:38:05,671 --> 00:38:08,329
All political, cultural and social life

676
00:38:08,329 --> 00:38:10,768
essentially took place in Constantinople.

677
00:38:11,405 --> 00:38:13,227
The government did not wish to notice

678
00:38:13,227 --> 00:38:15,493
that a serious imbalance was developing,

679
00:38:15,493 --> 00:38:17,722
and the forsaken provinces were becoming

680
00:38:17,722 --> 00:38:19,154
more and more decayed.

681
00:38:19,448 --> 00:38:22,056
Gradually, the tendency to flee
to the center

682
00:38:22,056 --> 00:38:23,843
became increasingly marked.

683
00:38:26,094 --> 00:38:27,964
Governors of these distant territories

684
00:38:27,964 --> 00:38:29,946
also played their deceitful games.

685
00:38:31,937 --> 00:38:33,289
Money budgeted and sent

686
00:38:33,289 --> 00:38:35,626
to the provinces was
shamelessly expropriated.

687
00:38:36,436 --> 00:38:38,371
It would not have been half as bad

688
00:38:38,371 --> 00:38:41,235
if this stolen money had gone
only towards the enrichment

689
00:38:41,235 --> 00:38:43,103
of governors and their proteges.

690
00:38:43,830 --> 00:38:46,419
But the money was often used
to create real armies

691
00:38:46,419 --> 00:38:48,444
under the guise of peace officers.

692
00:38:50,696 --> 00:38:53,327
These battalions were often
more capable in battle

693
00:38:53,327 --> 00:38:54,877
than the regular army.

694
00:38:57,359 --> 00:39:00,390
When the government weakened,
the provinces separated.

695
00:39:01,521 --> 00:39:04,727
The government watched this process unfold
almost helplessly.

696
00:39:06,796 --> 00:39:08,717
But the rebellious governors,

697
00:39:08,717 --> 00:39:11,018
having freed themselves
of central authority,

698
00:39:11,018 --> 00:39:14,119
were no longer to remain captivated
by their own high hopes.

699
00:39:14,248 --> 00:39:16,230
Together with their hapless population,

700
00:39:16,230 --> 00:39:19,372
they almost immediately fell prey
to the cruel authority

701
00:39:19,372 --> 00:39:20,784
of the non-Orthodox.

702
00:39:23,081 --> 00:39:24,444
When this happened,

703
00:39:24,444 --> 00:39:27,247
the local population was usually
destroyed completely,

704
00:39:27,247 --> 00:39:30,573
and the region re-settled
by Turks and Persians.

705
00:39:32,930 --> 00:39:35,138
The demographic problem was one

706
00:39:35,138 --> 00:39:37,484
of the most serious problems in Byzantium.

707
00:39:39,212 --> 00:39:41,044
The Empire was gradually inhabited

708
00:39:41,044 --> 00:39:43,112
by peoples of a foreign spirit,

709
00:39:43,112 --> 00:39:46,267
who firmly supplanted
the native Orthodox population.

710
00:39:46,524 --> 00:39:49,263
The country’s ethnic composition
changed visibly.

711
00:39:49,263 --> 00:39:52,663
This was in some ways
an irreversible process,

712
00:39:54,041 --> 00:39:56,942
for the birth rate in Byzantium
was decreasing.

713
00:39:57,467 --> 00:39:59,598
But this was not the worst thing.

714
00:39:59,890 --> 00:40:03,090
Something similar had earlier
occurred periodically.

715
00:40:03,951 --> 00:40:05,985
The catastrophe was that the peoples

716
00:40:05,985 --> 00:40:07,754
who were pouring into the Empire

717
00:40:07,754 --> 00:40:10,930
were no longer becoming Romans,
as they once had done,

718
00:40:10,930 --> 00:40:14,432
but remained permanently foreign,
aggressive, and enemy.

719
00:40:15,974 --> 00:40:18,237
Now the newcomers treated Byzantium

720
00:40:18,237 --> 00:40:21,951
not as their new homeland,
but only as potential property

721
00:40:21,951 --> 00:40:25,150
which should sooner or later come
into their own hands.

722
00:40:30,187 --> 00:40:32,411
This happened also because
the Empire refused

723
00:40:32,411 --> 00:40:33,841
to educate the people—

724
00:40:35,088 --> 00:40:37,120
a concession it had made to the new,

725
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:40,353
Renaissance-era demagogy
declaring state ideology

726
00:40:40,353 --> 00:40:42,547
to be a violation of the individual.

727
00:40:43,929 --> 00:40:46,239
However, nature abhors a vacuum.

728
00:40:48,635 --> 00:40:50,479
Having voluntarily renounced

729
00:40:50,479 --> 00:40:52,430
their thousand-year ideological function

730
00:40:52,430 --> 00:40:54,509
of educating and cultivating the people,

731
00:40:54,509 --> 00:40:56,372
the Byzantines made way for influences

732
00:40:56,372 --> 00:40:58,513
upon the minds and souls
of their citizens;

733
00:40:58,513 --> 00:41:00,884
influences which were not
so much a promotion

734
00:41:00,884 --> 00:41:02,706
of independent and free thinking

735
00:41:02,706 --> 00:41:05,906
as they were a form of
intentional ideological aggression,

736
00:41:05,906 --> 00:41:09,093
aimed at destroying the foundations
of state and society.

737
00:41:14,072 --> 00:41:17,535
But the Byzantines had amazing,
incomparable experience.

738
00:41:37,829 --> 00:41:40,010
The best leaders of the Empire
were capable

739
00:41:40,010 --> 00:41:41,947
of using their vast inheritance—

740
00:41:41,947 --> 00:41:45,076
a wealth of experience in
governance and subordination.

741
00:41:46,313 --> 00:41:49,486
As a result of this acumen,
cruel barbarians,

742
00:41:49,486 --> 00:41:52,700
after partaking of
the great Christian culture,

743
00:41:52,700 --> 00:41:54,767
became the most reliable allies,

744
00:41:54,767 --> 00:41:57,681
received grandiose titles
and vast estates,

745
00:41:57,681 --> 00:41:59,574
were numbered amongst the highest ranks

746
00:41:59,574 --> 00:42:01,079
of government service,

747
00:42:01,079 --> 00:42:03,132
and fought for the interests of the Empire

748
00:42:03,132 --> 00:42:05,442
in the furthest stretches
of its territory.

749
00:42:08,659 --> 00:42:10,696
As for demographic issues,

750
00:42:10,696 --> 00:42:12,813
the eternal headache of any empire—

751
00:42:12,813 --> 00:42:15,030
separatism in the outlying areas—

752
00:42:15,030 --> 00:42:17,077
the best Byzantine Emperors left

753
00:42:17,077 --> 00:42:20,428
as an inheritance proven methods
of solving these issues;

754
00:42:20,579 --> 00:42:22,864
for example, creating conditions

755
00:42:22,864 --> 00:42:25,064
for the massive resettlement
of the inhabitants

756
00:42:25,064 --> 00:42:27,741
of centralized areas to
the outlying provinces.

757
00:42:28,534 --> 00:42:31,530
This would quickly spark an explosion
in the birth rate,

758
00:42:31,530 --> 00:42:34,387
and effectuate an
extraordinary adaptability

759
00:42:34,387 --> 00:42:37,034
to the new locality in
the second generation.

760
00:42:39,953 --> 00:42:43,065
However, this wealth of experience
was cruelly mocked

761
00:42:43,065 --> 00:42:46,007
and criminally disregarded in favor
of foreign opinion;

762
00:42:46,209 --> 00:42:49,391
and, finally, it was irretrievably lost.

763
00:42:52,644 --> 00:42:55,227
But just what was this invasive opinion?

764
00:42:55,227 --> 00:42:58,040
Whose views did the Byzantines
begin to value?

765
00:42:58,594 --> 00:43:01,085
Who was able to so influence their minds

766
00:43:01,085 --> 00:43:03,633
that they began to commit
such suicidal mistakes,

767
00:43:03,633 --> 00:43:05,048
one after another?

768
00:43:05,487 --> 00:43:08,841
It's hard to believe that
such enormous reverence

769
00:43:08,841 --> 00:43:10,842
and dependence could have developed

770
00:43:10,842 --> 00:43:13,203
with regard to that same
once barbaric West,

771
00:43:14,741 --> 00:43:17,180
which had for centuries so enviously

772
00:43:17,180 --> 00:43:19,578
and greedily looked upon
Byzantium’s wealth,

773
00:43:20,427 --> 00:43:22,786
and then coldly and
systematically grew fat

774
00:43:22,786 --> 00:43:24,726
upon its gradual dissolution.

775
00:43:29,743 --> 00:43:32,195
Byzantium was a unique state

776
00:43:32,195 --> 00:43:34,920
which differed from both
the East and the West.

777
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:36,980
Everyone recognized this fact;

778
00:43:36,980 --> 00:43:38,965
some were exhilarated by it,

779
00:43:38,965 --> 00:43:40,999
others hated this independence,

780
00:43:40,999 --> 00:43:43,054
while others felt oppressed by it.

781
00:43:44,613 --> 00:43:46,053
Be this as it may,

782
00:43:46,053 --> 00:43:47,898
Byzantium’s difference from the rest

783
00:43:47,898 --> 00:43:50,355
of world was an objective reality.

784
00:43:50,602 --> 00:43:54,233
First of all, Byzantium was
the only country in the world

785
00:43:54,233 --> 00:43:56,491
which stretched over a huge territory

786
00:43:56,491 --> 00:43:58,245
between Europe and Asia,

787
00:43:58,245 --> 00:44:02,190
and its geography was already
a large contributing factor

788
00:44:02,190 --> 00:44:03,623
to its uniqueness.

789
00:44:05,953 --> 00:44:08,253
It's also a very important fact

790
00:44:08,253 --> 00:44:11,822
that Byzantium was
a multi-national empire by nature,

791
00:44:11,822 --> 00:44:13,517
in which the people felt the state

792
00:44:13,517 --> 00:44:15,819
to be one of their
highest personal treasures.

793
00:44:16,117 --> 00:44:19,532
This was entirely incomprehensible
to the Western world,

794
00:44:19,532 --> 00:44:22,258
where individualism and personal self-will

795
00:44:22,258 --> 00:44:25,660
had already been raised to the status
of sacred principle.

796
00:44:31,059 --> 00:44:32,505
Byzantium’s soul,

797
00:44:32,505 --> 00:44:35,262
and its meaning of existence,
was Orthodoxy—

798
00:44:36,187 --> 00:44:39,093
the unspoiled confession of Christianity,

799
00:44:39,753 --> 00:44:42,523
in which no dogmas had changed essentially

800
00:44:42,523 --> 00:44:44,072
for a thousand years.

801
00:44:49,127 --> 00:44:50,835
The West simply could not endure

802
00:44:50,835 --> 00:44:53,084
such demonstrative conservatism,

803
00:44:53,084 --> 00:44:55,883
called it undynamic, obtuse, and limited;

804
00:44:56,119 --> 00:44:58,977
it finally began with grim fanaticism

805
00:44:58,977 --> 00:45:01,506
to demand that Byzantium
modernize her whole life

806
00:45:01,506 --> 00:45:03,089
in the Western image—

807
00:45:03,089 --> 00:45:06,259
first of all in the religious,
spiritual spheres,

808
00:45:06,259 --> 00:45:09,520
and then in intellectual
and material spheres.

809
00:45:10,282 --> 00:45:14,250
With respect to the uniqueness
and particularity of Byzantium,

810
00:45:14,250 --> 00:45:16,810
the West, despite its occasional raptures

811
00:45:16,810 --> 00:45:18,844
over Byzantine civilization,

812
00:45:18,844 --> 00:45:22,769
pronounced the sentence:
it must all be destroyed;

813
00:45:23,365 --> 00:45:25,702
if necessary, together with Byzantium

814
00:45:25,702 --> 00:45:27,719
and her spiritual inheritors.

815
00:45:36,757 --> 00:45:38,141
Not a bad organ.

816
00:45:38,313 --> 00:45:40,951
Also invented and created in Byzantium.

817
00:45:40,951 --> 00:45:43,768
In the ninth century, it was brought
here to Western Europe,

818
00:45:43,768 --> 00:45:46,449
and from that time on, as you see,
it has taken root.

819
00:45:52,191 --> 00:45:55,656
Of course, it's senseless to say
that the West was to blame

820
00:45:55,656 --> 00:45:58,355
for Byzantium’s misfortunes and fall.

821
00:45:59,435 --> 00:46:01,794
The West was only pursuing
its own interests,

822
00:46:01,794 --> 00:46:03,303
which is quite natural.

823
00:46:08,645 --> 00:46:10,709
Byzantium’s historical blows occurred

824
00:46:10,709 --> 00:46:14,477
when the Byzantines themselves betrayed
their own principles

825
00:46:14,477 --> 00:46:16,911
upon which their empire was established.

826
00:46:17,112 --> 00:46:19,361
These great principles were simple,

827
00:46:19,361 --> 00:46:21,685
and known to every Byzantine
from childhood:

828
00:46:21,685 --> 00:46:23,266
faithfulness to God,

829
00:46:23,266 --> 00:46:26,404
to His eternal laws preserved
in the Orthodox Church,

830
00:46:26,404 --> 00:46:27,741
and fearless reliance

831
00:46:27,741 --> 00:46:30,671
upon their own internal
traditions and strengths.

832
00:46:36,144 --> 00:46:37,721
For hundreds of years,

833
00:46:37,721 --> 00:46:40,871
Byzantine emperors
both wise and not so wise,

834
00:46:40,871 --> 00:46:43,701
successful governors and inept commanders,

835
00:46:44,191 --> 00:46:47,306
saints on the throne and bloody tyrants,

836
00:46:47,306 --> 00:46:49,376
when faced with a fateful choice,

837
00:46:49,488 --> 00:46:51,955
knew that by following these two rules

838
00:46:51,955 --> 00:46:54,678
they ensure their Empire’s ability
to survive.

839
00:47:02,328 --> 00:47:03,985
In the Holy Scriptures,

840
00:47:03,985 --> 00:47:07,688
which every Byzantine knew,
this is stated very specifically:

841
00:47:13,198 --> 00:47:17,461
I call heaven and earth to witness
before you this day:

842
00:47:18,141 --> 00:47:22,396
I have offered you life and death,
blessing and curse.

843
00:47:22,957 --> 00:47:26,674
Choose life, that ye might live,
and your descendants also.

844
00:47:42,211 --> 00:47:44,833
In Byzantium, after the end
of the 13th century,

845
00:47:44,833 --> 00:47:46,543
two parties emerged—

846
00:47:46,543 --> 00:47:49,658
one called for reliance upon
the country’s internal strengths

847
00:47:49,658 --> 00:47:51,720
to believe in them unconditionally,

848
00:47:51,720 --> 00:47:54,218
and to develop the country’s
colossal potential.

849
00:47:54,319 --> 00:47:55,622
It was prepared

850
00:47:55,622 --> 00:47:59,279
to accept Western European experience
discriminately,

851
00:47:59,357 --> 00:48:01,393
after a serious test of time,

852
00:48:01,393 --> 00:48:02,952
but only in those cases

853
00:48:02,952 --> 00:48:05,703
where such changes would not touch
the fundamental basics

854
00:48:05,703 --> 00:48:07,881
of the people’s faith and state politics.

855
00:48:08,105 --> 00:48:10,017
The other party, pro-Western,

856
00:48:10,017 --> 00:48:12,682
whose representatives pointed
to the indubitable fact

857
00:48:12,682 --> 00:48:16,036
that Europe is developing
more rapidly and successfully,

858
00:48:16,036 --> 00:48:18,069
began to proclaim more and more loudly

859
00:48:18,069 --> 00:48:20,717
that Byzantium has historically
exhausted itself

860
00:48:20,717 --> 00:48:23,368
as a political, cultural,
and religious phenomenon,

861
00:48:23,577 --> 00:48:25,531
and to demand a root-level reworking

862
00:48:25,531 --> 00:48:27,913
of all state institutions in the image

863
00:48:27,913 --> 00:48:29,753
of the Western European countries.

864
00:48:35,297 --> 00:48:38,084
Representatives of
the pro-Western party, secretly,

865
00:48:38,084 --> 00:48:41,222
or more often, openly supported
by European governments,

866
00:48:41,222 --> 00:48:44,435
held an undoubted victory over
the imperial traditionalists.

867
00:48:46,543 --> 00:48:48,470
Under their guidance, a series

868
00:48:48,470 --> 00:48:50,322
of important reforms took place,

869
00:48:50,322 --> 00:48:52,998
including those economic,
military, political,

870
00:48:52,998 --> 00:48:55,617
and finally, ideological and religious.

871
00:48:56,593 --> 00:48:59,441
All of these reforms ended
in total collapse,

872
00:48:59,669 --> 00:49:01,135
and lead to such spiritual

873
00:49:01,135 --> 00:49:03,287
and material destruction in the Empire

874
00:49:03,287 --> 00:49:05,537
that it remained absolutely defenseless

875
00:49:05,537 --> 00:49:08,601
before its Eastern neighbor—
the Turkish Sultanate.

876
00:49:10,338 --> 00:49:12,527
First of all, the pro-Western party began

877
00:49:12,527 --> 00:49:16,419
to re-evaluate its fatherland’s history,
culture, and Faith.

878
00:49:17,432 --> 00:49:19,834
However, instead of healthy criticism,

879
00:49:19,834 --> 00:49:22,596
they offered only destructive
self-abnegation.

880
00:49:23,040 --> 00:49:24,879
Everything Western was exulted,

881
00:49:24,879 --> 00:49:27,259
and everything of their own
was held in contempt.

882
00:49:27,664 --> 00:49:29,586
Byzantine history was distorted,

883
00:49:29,586 --> 00:49:32,677
faith and tradition were mocked,
and the army was degraded.

884
00:49:33,031 --> 00:49:35,349
The whole of Byzantium began to be painted

885
00:49:35,349 --> 00:49:37,345
as a sort of universal monster.

886
00:49:39,426 --> 00:49:42,618
The wealthy Byzantine younger generation
no longer studied

887
00:49:42,618 --> 00:49:45,467
in its own country, but rather left
to study abroad.

888
00:49:46,127 --> 00:49:49,225
The best minds of Byzantine science
emigrated to the West.

889
00:49:49,447 --> 00:49:52,060
The state ceased to give them
the proper attention.

890
00:49:53,647 --> 00:49:56,024
Emperor Theodore II foretold,

891
00:49:56,392 --> 00:49:58,759
“Rejected science will become our enemy

892
00:49:58,759 --> 00:50:00,695
and will take up arms against us.

893
00:50:00,695 --> 00:50:02,719
It will either consign us to destruction,

894
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:04,563
or turn us into barbarians.

895
00:50:04,563 --> 00:50:06,925
I write this in a state of
gloomy melancholy.”

896
00:50:07,016 --> 00:50:09,891
The Emperor’s presentiment
did not deceive him.

897
00:50:10,092 --> 00:50:13,070
During the final, fatal attack
on Constantinople,

898
00:50:13,070 --> 00:50:16,778
a brilliant metal-casting scholar,
a Hungarian named Urban,

899
00:50:16,778 --> 00:50:19,989
offered to create for the Emperor
large artillery armaments

900
00:50:19,989 --> 00:50:22,454
which could sweep away the Turkish troops.

901
00:50:22,454 --> 00:50:24,107
But the treasury was empty,

902
00:50:24,107 --> 00:50:26,820
and the rich of Constantinople
did not give any money.

903
00:50:27,535 --> 00:50:29,405
Not having received payments,

904
00:50:29,405 --> 00:50:33,029
the insulted Urban offered
his services to Sultan Mehmed.

905
00:50:33,029 --> 00:50:34,790
The Sultan seized the opportunity

906
00:50:34,790 --> 00:50:36,612
which would give him the capability

907
00:50:36,612 --> 00:50:38,744
to destroy the city’s invincible walls.

908
00:50:39,796 --> 00:50:43,077
He provided unlimited funds
and began the project.

909
00:50:43,077 --> 00:50:45,146
Finally, the canons of Urban,

910
00:50:45,146 --> 00:50:48,059
the best student of the Byzantine
ballistics school,

911
00:50:48,059 --> 00:50:49,908
decided the Empire’s fate.

912
00:51:00,705 --> 00:51:02,386
Western reforms in the military

913
00:51:02,386 --> 00:51:05,278
along Western lines had begun
long before this.

914
00:51:05,592 --> 00:51:09,046
In Byzantium, there had for
many centuries existed a proven,

915
00:51:09,046 --> 00:51:12,278
although not always effective system
called stratiotes—

916
00:51:12,278 --> 00:51:15,255
a national regular army
with mandatory service

917
00:51:15,255 --> 00:51:16,968
from the age of eighteen.

918
00:51:17,025 --> 00:51:20,472
With time, the Byzantine army
underwent serious changes.

919
00:51:20,957 --> 00:51:23,675
An army of a new type required
significant capital.

920
00:51:24,029 --> 00:51:27,552
The very stabilization fund of Basil II
was earmarked

921
00:51:27,552 --> 00:51:30,004
precisely for the creation of
an effective army.

922
00:51:30,580 --> 00:51:32,808
The fund, as we recall, was squandered,

923
00:51:32,808 --> 00:51:35,546
while decisions were made to
totally re-vamp the army

924
00:51:35,546 --> 00:51:38,357
according the image of
a Western professional one.

925
00:51:38,568 --> 00:51:41,476
At that time,
the Byzantine mind was captivated

926
00:51:41,476 --> 00:51:43,376
by the image of Western knights,

927
00:51:43,376 --> 00:51:45,192
all nailed into suits of armor—

928
00:51:45,192 --> 00:51:48,275
the latest achievement of
contemporary military industry.

929
00:51:48,522 --> 00:51:50,773
“My Byzantines are like clay pots,”

930
00:51:50,773 --> 00:51:54,113
one emperor commented contemptuously
about his warriors,

931
00:51:54,113 --> 00:51:56,797
“but the Western knights are
like iron kettles.”

932
00:51:58,907 --> 00:52:01,376
To be brief, as a result of the reforms,

933
00:52:01,376 --> 00:52:03,309
they took apart their regular army,

934
00:52:03,309 --> 00:52:05,346
but never built a professional one.

935
00:52:06,145 --> 00:52:08,668
In the final analysis,
they took the course

936
00:52:08,668 --> 00:52:11,441
of forming a block with the West
within the framework

937
00:52:11,441 --> 00:52:13,464
of a new military-political union.

938
00:52:13,788 --> 00:52:15,559
In practice this meant that

939
00:52:15,559 --> 00:52:17,469
during the most critical periods of war

940
00:52:17,469 --> 00:52:20,008
they were forced to resort
to a professional army,

941
00:52:20,008 --> 00:52:22,599
but not of their own—to a mercenary one.

942
00:52:22,820 --> 00:52:25,059
What it means to have a mercenary army,

943
00:52:25,059 --> 00:52:26,968
how loyal and capable it is,

944
00:52:26,968 --> 00:52:29,799
the Byzantines learned
from bitter experience.

945
00:52:35,278 --> 00:52:37,613
Attempting to rely on
the West’s experience,

946
00:52:37,613 --> 00:52:39,928
the state became
more and more ineffective.

947
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:43,178
Even so, they stubbornly sought salvation

948
00:52:43,178 --> 00:52:45,679
in a new imitation of Western examples.

949
00:52:49,464 --> 00:52:51,435
The final and most devastating blow

950
00:52:51,435 --> 00:52:55,149
to Byzantium was the ecclesiastical
union with Rome.

951
00:52:59,109 --> 00:53:02,230
Formally, this was the submission
of the Orthodox Church

952
00:53:02,230 --> 00:53:04,919
to the Roman Pope for
purely practically reasons.

953
00:53:04,919 --> 00:53:07,905
One after another aggressive attack
from foreign nations

954
00:53:07,905 --> 00:53:10,067
forced the country to make the choice:

955
00:53:10,067 --> 00:53:12,581
either to rely on God
and their own strengths,

956
00:53:12,581 --> 00:53:14,927
or to concede their age-long principles

957
00:53:14,927 --> 00:53:16,709
upon which their state was founded,

958
00:53:16,709 --> 00:53:19,797
and receive in return military and
economic aid from Latin West.

959
00:53:20,050 --> 00:53:21,448
And the choice was made.

960
00:53:23,391 --> 00:53:24,967
In 1274,

961
00:53:25,178 --> 00:53:29,403
Emperor Michael Palaeologus decided upon
a root concession

962
00:53:29,403 --> 00:53:30,503
to the West.

963
00:53:30,706 --> 00:53:32,453
For the first time in history,

964
00:53:32,453 --> 00:53:35,938
ambassadors from the Byzantine Emperor
were sent to Lyon

965
00:53:35,938 --> 00:53:38,477
to accept the supremacy
of the Pope of Rome.

966
00:53:38,687 --> 00:53:40,007
As it turned out,

967
00:53:40,007 --> 00:53:41,996
the advantages the Byzantines received

968
00:53:41,996 --> 00:53:45,614
in exchange for their
ideological concession were negligible.

969
00:53:45,990 --> 00:53:48,371
The pro-Western party’s calculations

970
00:53:48,371 --> 00:53:51,158
not only were unjustified, they collapsed.

971
00:53:51,454 --> 00:53:54,283
The union with Rome did not continue
for long.

972
00:53:54,283 --> 00:53:56,633
The Grecophile Pope Leo IV,

973
00:53:56,633 --> 00:53:58,605
who had drawn Byzantium into the Union

974
00:53:58,605 --> 00:54:00,042
out of better intentions,

975
00:54:00,042 --> 00:54:02,323
died soon after the Union was concluded,

976
00:54:02,323 --> 00:54:04,560
and his successor turned out to be

977
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:06,636
of a completely different spirit:

978
00:54:06,636 --> 00:54:09,371
the interests of the Latin West
were first on his list.

979
00:54:09,371 --> 00:54:12,257
He demanded that Byzantium
change completely,

980
00:54:12,257 --> 00:54:15,260
that it re-make itself in the image
and likeness of the West.

981
00:54:15,472 --> 00:54:17,660
When these changes did not happen,

982
00:54:17,660 --> 00:54:21,239
the Pope excommunicated
his newly-baked spiritual son,

983
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:23,483
Emperor Michael Palaeologus,

984
00:54:23,483 --> 00:54:26,521
and called Europe to a new crusade
against Byzantium.

985
00:54:31,859 --> 00:54:36,209
The Orthodox converts to Catholicism
were pronounced bad Catholics.

986
00:54:36,601 --> 00:54:38,979
The Byzantines were supposed
to get the point

987
00:54:38,979 --> 00:54:40,990
that the West needed only complete

988
00:54:40,990 --> 00:54:43,784
and unconditional religious
and political submission.

989
00:54:46,811 --> 00:54:49,986
Not only the Pope was to be recognized
as infallible,

990
00:54:50,199 --> 00:54:52,122
but the West itself as well.

991
00:54:59,834 --> 00:55:03,619
Another terrible loss from betrayal
of the Faith was the loss

992
00:55:03,619 --> 00:55:05,983
of trust amongst the people
in the government.

993
00:55:06,417 --> 00:55:08,887
The Byzantines were shocked
by the betrayal

994
00:55:08,887 --> 00:55:11,273
of their highest value—Orthodoxy.

995
00:55:11,734 --> 00:55:14,228
They saw that it was possible
for the government

996
00:55:14,228 --> 00:55:16,635
to play with the most important thing
in life—

997
00:55:16,635 --> 00:55:18,472
the truths of the Faith.

998
00:55:25,296 --> 00:55:28,385
The meaning of the Byzantines’
existence was lost.

999
00:55:28,979 --> 00:55:32,152
This was the final and main blow
which destroyed the country.

1000
00:55:33,689 --> 00:55:36,319
And although by far
not all accepted the Union,

1001
00:55:36,319 --> 00:55:38,190
the people’s spirit was broken.

1002
00:55:39,541 --> 00:55:41,676
In place of their former thirst for life

1003
00:55:41,676 --> 00:55:43,840
and energetic resolve to action,

1004
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:46,840
there appeared a terrible
general apathy and fatigue.

1005
00:55:47,762 --> 00:55:50,563
The people no longer wanted to live.

1006
00:55:57,100 --> 00:56:00,295
This horror has happened during
various periods in history,

1007
00:56:00,295 --> 00:56:03,152
with various peoples,
and with entire civilizations.

1008
00:56:03,521 --> 00:56:06,319
This is how the ancient
Hellenic people died out,

1009
00:56:06,319 --> 00:56:10,485
amongst whom an inexplicable
demographic crisis occurred

1010
00:56:10,485 --> 00:56:12,456
during the first centuries of A.D.

1011
00:56:12,456 --> 00:56:14,094
People did not want to live;

1012
00:56:14,094 --> 00:56:16,402
they did not want to continue
their generation.

1013
00:56:16,402 --> 00:56:19,469
The rare families that did form
often had no children.

1014
00:56:20,361 --> 00:56:24,159
The children who were born died
from a lack of parental care.

1015
00:56:24,755 --> 00:56:26,880
Abortions became common practice.

1016
00:56:27,401 --> 00:56:30,819
The darkest occult and Gnostic cults
came aggressively

1017
00:56:30,819 --> 00:56:34,498
to the forefront—cults characterized
by hatred for life.

1018
00:56:34,938 --> 00:56:37,455
Suicide became one of
the main causes of death

1019
00:56:37,455 --> 00:56:38,903
amongst the population.

1020
00:56:38,903 --> 00:56:42,085
This conscious dying out of a population
has been called

1021
00:56:42,085 --> 00:56:46,586
by science “endogenous psychosis
of the I-III centuries”—

1022
00:56:46,586 --> 00:56:49,228
a mass pathology and loss of meaning

1023
00:56:49,228 --> 00:56:50,877
for continued existence.

1024
00:57:01,697 --> 00:57:04,062
Something similar happened in Byzantium

1025
00:57:04,062 --> 00:57:06,046
after the conclusion of the Union.

1026
00:57:06,640 --> 00:57:09,918
The crisis in state ideology led
to total pessimism.

1027
00:57:12,806 --> 00:57:15,936
Spiritual and moral decline began
to take over,

1028
00:57:15,936 --> 00:57:18,885
along with unbelief,
interest in astrology,

1029
00:57:18,885 --> 00:57:21,054
and the most primitive superstitions.

1030
00:57:22,724 --> 00:57:26,437
Alcoholism became a true scourge 
of the male population.

1031
00:57:33,949 --> 00:57:36,434
A morbid interest in
long-forgotten mysteries

1032
00:57:36,434 --> 00:57:38,256
of the ancient Greeks arose.

1033
00:57:38,617 --> 00:57:41,645
An intelligentsia fascinated
with neo-paganism

1034
00:57:41,645 --> 00:57:44,132
consciously and cynically destroyed
the foundations

1035
00:57:44,132 --> 00:57:46,094
of Christian Faith in the people.

1036
00:57:46,180 --> 00:57:50,054
Processes of depopulation
and family crises ensued.

1037
00:57:50,495 --> 00:57:54,293
Out of the 150 Byzantine intellectuals
known to us

1038
00:57:54,293 --> 00:57:58,044
to have lived during the late 14th,
early 15th centuries,

1039
00:57:58,044 --> 00:58:00,504
only twenty-five had families
of their own.

1040
00:58:00,606 --> 00:58:03,792
This is only a small part of
what came to Byzantium

1041
00:58:03,792 --> 00:58:05,909
due to the decision amongst the elite

1042
00:58:05,909 --> 00:58:09,988
to sacrifice higher ideals for the sake
of practical advantages.

1043
00:58:09,988 --> 00:58:11,379
The soul collapsed;

1044
00:58:11,379 --> 00:58:12,544
in a great nation,

1045
00:58:12,544 --> 00:58:14,697
who had given the world
grandiose examples

1046
00:58:14,697 --> 00:58:16,165
of flights of spirit,

1047
00:58:16,165 --> 00:58:19,225
now reigned unbridled
cynicism and squabbles.

1048
00:58:26,861 --> 00:58:28,851
One Russian pilgrim wrote bitterly

1049
00:58:28,851 --> 00:58:30,711
during the mid-14th century,

1050
00:58:32,106 --> 00:58:35,074
“Greeks are those who have no love.”

1051
00:58:53,150 --> 00:58:56,376
The best minds of Byzantium
watched with sorrow

1052
00:58:56,376 --> 00:58:58,426
as the Empire gradually died,

1053
00:58:58,426 --> 00:59:00,327
but no one heeded their warnings.

1054
00:59:01,119 --> 00:59:04,411
The high profile statesman,
Theodore Metochites,

1055
00:59:04,411 --> 00:59:06,876
who saw no salvation for Byzantium,

1056
00:59:06,876 --> 00:59:09,599
wept over the former greatness
of the “Romans”

1057
00:59:09,599 --> 00:59:11,462
and their “perished happiness.”

1058
00:59:12,166 --> 00:59:15,095
He lamented the Empire
“wasted by illnesses,

1059
00:59:15,095 --> 00:59:17,861
easily succumbing to every attack
by its neighbors,

1060
00:59:17,861 --> 00:59:22,268
and become the helpless victim
of fate and eventuality.”

1061
00:59:28,279 --> 00:59:30,830
A new Union signed in Florence,

1062
00:59:30,830 --> 00:59:33,113
in what was now a completely mad hope

1063
00:59:33,113 --> 00:59:35,580
for help from the West,
did not change a thing.

1064
00:59:35,733 --> 00:59:37,657
For the Byzantines themselves

1065
00:59:37,657 --> 00:59:40,635
this was a new moral blow
of great magnitude.

1066
00:59:40,682 --> 00:59:42,313
Now, not only the Emperor,

1067
00:59:42,313 --> 00:59:45,445
but even the Holy Patriarch shared
the faith of the Latins.

1068
00:59:49,715 --> 00:59:52,804
However, despite various
hierarchs’ betrayals,

1069
00:59:52,804 --> 00:59:55,045
the Orthodox Church stood firm.

1070
00:59:55,045 --> 00:59:58,832
“All were against the Union,”
a Byzantine historian relates.

1071
01:00:03,361 --> 01:00:05,070
“O, piteous Romans.”

1072
01:00:05,070 --> 01:00:08,171
monk Gennadios Scholarios
wrote prophetically

1073
01:00:08,171 --> 01:00:09,890
from his reclusion after the signing

1074
01:00:09,890 --> 01:00:11,704
of the Florentine Union,

1075
01:00:11,704 --> 01:00:14,789
and fourteen years before the fall
of Constantinople.

1076
01:00:14,789 --> 01:00:16,997
“Why have you gone astray
from the right path?

1077
01:00:16,997 --> 01:00:18,900
You have departed from hope in God

1078
01:00:18,900 --> 01:00:21,131
and begun to hope in the might
of the Franks.

1079
01:00:21,131 --> 01:00:22,334
Together with the city,

1080
01:00:22,334 --> 01:00:24,338
in which everything will
soon be destroyed,

1081
01:00:24,338 --> 01:00:26,449
have you apostatized from your piety?

1082
01:00:26,989 --> 01:00:28,935
Be merciful to me, O Lord.

1083
01:00:29,115 --> 01:00:32,586
I witness before the face of God
that I am not guilty of this.

1084
01:00:32,774 --> 01:00:34,602
Return, wretched citizens,

1085
01:00:34,602 --> 01:00:36,588
and think about what you are doing.

1086
01:00:36,588 --> 01:00:39,345
Together with the captivity which
will soon befall us,

1087
01:00:39,345 --> 01:00:42,532
you have apostatized from
your fathers’ inheritance

1088
01:00:42,532 --> 01:00:44,546
and begun to confess dishonor.

1089
01:00:44,546 --> 01:00:48,230
Woe to you, when God’s judgment
shall come upon you.”

1090
01:01:02,804 --> 01:01:06,144
The words of Gennadios Scholarios
came true to the letter.

1091
01:01:06,144 --> 01:01:09,245
And he himself was to carry
the unbearably heavy cross

1092
01:01:09,245 --> 01:01:11,155
of a bitter patriarchate—

1093
01:01:11,155 --> 01:01:14,898
he became the first Orthodox patriarch
in Constantinople

1094
01:01:14,898 --> 01:01:16,868
after its fall to the Turks.

1095
01:01:23,624 --> 01:01:26,869
The fatal year of 1453 was approaching.

1096
01:01:27,179 --> 01:01:29,515
In April, Sultan Mehmed,

1097
01:01:29,515 --> 01:01:31,551
still a very young man of twenty-one,

1098
01:01:31,551 --> 01:01:34,468
about the age of a college sophomore
in today’s Istanbul,

1099
01:01:34,468 --> 01:01:36,266
attacked Constantinople.

1100
01:01:36,586 --> 01:01:39,172
The Sultan was absolutely delirious
with the idea

1101
01:01:39,172 --> 01:01:40,990
of taking the Romans’ capital.

1102
01:01:44,262 --> 01:01:46,460
His elder councilors-viziers,

1103
01:01:46,460 --> 01:01:49,146
one of whom was a secret agent
from Byzantium,

1104
01:01:49,146 --> 01:01:51,334
persuaded him to cancel the attack,

1105
01:01:51,334 --> 01:01:54,615
saying that it was too dangerous
to battle on two fronts,

1106
01:01:54,615 --> 01:01:56,404
for all were certain that battalions

1107
01:01:56,404 --> 01:01:58,901
from Genoa and Venice would
arrive any minute.

1108
01:01:59,193 --> 01:02:01,966
But the Sultan turned out to be
a disobedient pupil.

1109
01:02:04,410 --> 01:02:07,908
The promised help from Europe,
of course, did not arrive.

1110
01:02:38,238 --> 01:02:40,964
To the party of Westernizers
in Constantinople

1111
01:02:40,964 --> 01:02:43,611
there was also added a pro-Turkish party.

1112
01:02:44,842 --> 01:02:48,548
Sad as it may be, there was
no true Byzantine-imperial party

1113
01:02:48,548 --> 01:02:50,171
amongst the politicians.

1114
01:02:52,320 --> 01:02:54,855
The Turkish party was headed
by the first minister

1115
01:02:54,855 --> 01:02:57,454
and admiral, Grand Duke Notaras.

1116
01:02:59,162 --> 01:03:01,359
He announced for all to hear that

1117
01:03:01,359 --> 01:03:04,263
“It would be better to see
the Turkish chalma cap ruling

1118
01:03:04,263 --> 01:03:06,737
in the city than the Latin tiara.”

1119
01:03:07,585 --> 01:03:09,975
A little later he, the first minister,

1120
01:03:09,975 --> 01:03:11,495
was to fully experience

1121
01:03:11,495 --> 01:03:14,789
just what this ruling Turkish chalma cap
was actually like.

1122
01:03:17,714 --> 01:03:20,239
When Sultan Mehmed II took the city,

1123
01:03:20,239 --> 01:03:22,994
amidst the general pillage
and wild mayhem,

1124
01:03:22,994 --> 01:03:26,265
he decided to appoint this very Notaras
as head of the city.

1125
01:03:27,457 --> 01:03:29,379
However, when he learned that

1126
01:03:29,379 --> 01:03:32,611
the Grand Duke had a fourteen-year-old son
of rare beauty,

1127
01:03:32,611 --> 01:03:35,021
he demanded that the son be
first surrendered

1128
01:03:35,021 --> 01:03:36,738
to his harem of boys.

1129
01:03:36,738 --> 01:03:38,820
When the shaken Notaras refused,

1130
01:03:38,820 --> 01:03:41,093
the Sultan commanded that both he

1131
01:03:41,093 --> 01:03:43,319
and the boy be beheaded.

1132
01:03:44,588 --> 01:03:47,900
The terrible outcome was
unfolding inescapably.

1133
01:03:49,843 --> 01:03:52,862
O Heavenly King, Comforter,
Spirit of Truth,

1134
01:03:52,862 --> 01:03:55,978
Who art everywhere present
and fillest all things,

1135
01:03:55,978 --> 01:03:58,766
treasury of good gifts and Giver of life,

1136
01:03:58,766 --> 01:04:02,281
come and abide in us,
and cleanse us of all impurity,

1137
01:04:02,281 --> 01:04:04,460
and save our souls, O Good One.

1138
01:04:17,474 --> 01:04:19,715
May 29, 1453,

1139
01:04:20,030 --> 01:04:23,496
after a siege lasting many months
and resisted heroically

1140
01:04:23,496 --> 01:04:25,282
by the city’s defense forces,

1141
01:04:25,282 --> 01:04:27,750
the Turks were able to break
through the upper wall.

1142
01:04:29,961 --> 01:04:33,186
The defense forces, frightened,
turned to flight.

1143
01:04:34,341 --> 01:04:36,407
The last Byzantine Emperor,

1144
01:04:36,407 --> 01:04:40,743
Constantine Palaeologus, remained alone,
abandoned by all.

1145
01:04:44,334 --> 01:04:47,548
Holding his sword and shield,
the Emperor exclaimed,

1146
01:04:48,941 --> 01:04:51,635
“Is there not a Christian who
might take off my head?”

1147
01:04:52,611 --> 01:04:54,435
But there was no one to answer.

1148
01:04:55,598 --> 01:04:58,966
The enemies surrounded him,
and after a brief siege,

1149
01:04:58,966 --> 01:05:02,181
the Turks standing behind the sovereign
killed him

1150
01:05:02,181 --> 01:05:03,814
with a knife in the back.

1151
01:06:01,439 --> 01:06:03,304
What more is there to say?

1152
01:06:03,304 --> 01:06:05,919
Now a completely different people
are living here,

1153
01:06:05,919 --> 01:06:07,716
with different laws and morals.

1154
01:06:13,378 --> 01:06:16,995
The Byzantine inheritance,
foreign to the invaders,

1155
01:06:16,995 --> 01:06:19,914
was either destroyed
or altered at the root.

1156
01:06:20,557 --> 01:06:22,763
The descendants of those Greeks

1157
01:06:22,763 --> 01:06:25,330
who were not destroyed by the conquerors
were made

1158
01:06:25,330 --> 01:06:28,234
into second class citizens
in their own land,

1159
01:06:28,234 --> 01:06:30,573
with no rights, for many long centuries.

1160
01:06:38,427 --> 01:06:42,577
The West’s vengeful hatred of Byzantium
and her successors is

1161
01:06:42,577 --> 01:06:45,398
entirely inexplicable to the West itself;

1162
01:06:45,398 --> 01:06:47,848
it goes to some deep genetic level,

1163
01:06:47,848 --> 01:06:50,747
and—as paradoxically as this may seem—

1164
01:06:50,747 --> 01:06:53,101
continues even to the present day.

1165
01:06:53,101 --> 01:06:56,853
Without an understanding of this amazing
but undeniable fact,

1166
01:06:56,853 --> 01:07:00,135
we risk misunderstanding
not only distant history,

1167
01:07:00,135 --> 01:07:03,350
but even historical events
of the twentieth

1168
01:07:03,350 --> 01:07:05,019
and twenty-first centuries.

1169
01:07:09,262 --> 01:07:11,323
In Russia, before the revolution,

1170
01:07:11,323 --> 01:07:14,106
serious research on Byzantium
was conducted.

1171
01:07:14,106 --> 01:07:16,634
However, the necessary conclusions
were not drawn

1172
01:07:16,634 --> 01:07:18,504
from purely theoretical knowledge.

1173
01:07:18,754 --> 01:07:21,526
During the first decades
of Soviet government,

1174
01:07:21,526 --> 01:07:23,681
research in Byzantology was cut off,

1175
01:07:23,681 --> 01:07:25,265
and then officially banned.

1176
01:07:26,834 --> 01:07:30,547
More than that: just in case,
the Bolsheviks repressed

1177
01:07:30,547 --> 01:07:32,730
all Byzantologists remaining in Russia;

1178
01:07:32,919 --> 01:07:35,848
only a few were able to flee abroad.

1179
01:07:38,872 --> 01:07:41,758
Research in Byzantology was re-opened
in Russia

1180
01:07:41,758 --> 01:07:44,346
by a decision from
the highest government levels.

1181
01:07:44,346 --> 01:07:46,698
In 1943, at Stalin’s orders,

1182
01:07:46,698 --> 01:07:49,039
the Institute of Byzantology was created,

1183
01:07:49,039 --> 01:07:50,828
and a corresponding department

1184
01:07:50,828 --> 01:07:53,109
in the Moscow State University was opened.

1185
01:07:56,741 --> 01:08:00,287
Was there no other time than 1943
to open such an institute?

1186
01:08:00,287 --> 01:08:02,341
It is simply that the former seminarian,

1187
01:08:02,341 --> 01:08:04,455
Joseph Dzhugashvili, finally understood

1188
01:08:04,455 --> 01:08:06,758
from whom they should be studying history.

1189
01:08:14,218 --> 01:08:16,671
And the great city of Constantinople,

1190
01:08:16,671 --> 01:08:19,818
which had oft times forgotten
the ancient laws of its fathers,

1191
01:08:19,818 --> 01:08:23,519
for which forgetfulness it
did not even preserve its own name,

1192
01:08:23,519 --> 01:08:27,602
performs if only its final service
as an instructor,

1193
01:08:27,602 --> 01:08:30,221
to retell the story of its greatness—

1194
01:08:30,221 --> 01:08:34,036
and of the monumental fall
of a great empire.