[A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections by Isabel Florence Hapgood]@TWC D-Link bookA Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections CHAPTER VI 2/18
Out of pure love for his fatherland he began to write projects and books in which he endeavored to direct the attention of the government to many social defects, and to point out means for correcting them.
One of the most interesting works of Peter the Great's period was Pososhkoff's written "Plan of Conduct" for his son (who was one of the first young Russians sent abroad, in 1708, for education), entitled, "A Father's Testamentary Exhortation." His "Book on Poverty and Wealth" is also noteworthy, inasmuch as it affords a complete survey of Russia under Peter the Great. During this reign, the highly educated and eminently practical Little Russians acquired more power than ever.
The most notable of them all was Feofan Prokopovitch, Archbishop of Novgorod (born in Kieff, 1681), who had been brilliantly educated in Kieff and Rome, and was the most celebrated of Peter the Great's colaborers, the most zealous and clever executor of his sovereign's will, who attained to the highest secular and ecclesiastical honors, and prolonged his influence and his labors into succeeding reigns.
His sermons were considered so important that they were always printed immediately after their delivery, and forwarded to the Emperor abroad, or wherever he might chance to be.
Like others at that period, he indulged in dramatic writing, for acting on the school stage; and at Peter the Great's request he drew up a set of "Ecclesiastical Regulations" for the Ecclesiastical College, and was appointed to be the head of the church government, though Stepan Yavorsky was made head of the Holy Governing Synod when it was established, in 1721. Peter the Great's ideas were not only opposed but persecuted, after his death (1723), until the accession to the throne of his daughter Elizabeth, in 1741.
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