Tsar of all the Russias

November 11, 2009

Tsar of All the Russias

November 11, 2009

The tsar of all the Russias: the official title of the tsar, beginning with САМОДЕРЖЕЦЪ ВСЕРОССІЙСКІЙ ‘autocrat all-Russian’ — ‘of all the Russias’, etc., etc. Another phrase pops into my head: Царь всея Руси ‘the tsar of all Rus’ ‘. This is a Russian Slavonicism, this odd-looking feminine genitive of the quantifier весь, вся всё ‘all, entire; everything’ (neuter), ‘everybody’. The genitive, if you have learned it yet in 203, is всего (masc and neuter), всей (feminine). In Old Church Slavonic the form was vьs’eję, the last letter representing a nasal vowel as in French, or a front vowel followed by a nasal, somewhat like French en enfance, or the last syllable in enfin. This sound was written by a special letter called the юс малый, which has a counterpart, the юс большой, for a back nasal, like French dont. Methodius’s school invented unique graphemes for these sounds, which I don’t have on my font. The nasal vowels which they symbolized very quickly disappeared in Slavic, except in Lechitic.

At any rate, Russian never had a nasal vowel in the old declension of this word; it had another obsolete sound-and-letter, the jat’, ять. This vowel, in some Slavic languages a diphthong like -ije- or -ai-, also appeared in the old genitive singular and nom.-acc. plural of words like земля. Using э to represent jat’, and я to represent the old юс малый, here are some of the forms of the word земля:

Old Russian-OCS-Modern Russ
N Sg земля земля земля
G Sg землэ земля земли
D-P Sg земли земли земле
N-A Pl землэ земля земли


Confusing, isn’t it? But what happened was that the Gen sg and the N-A pl, in Old Church Slavonic Style, could look the same: наша земля, отъ земля, те земля. And the gen. sg. and nom.-acc. pl. of these ‘soft’ stems had a special Old Russian ending, the jat’, which by-and-by was replaced by the generalized plural ending ы for hard stems, и for soft stems.

So the Modern Russian style, based on hard vs. soft as well as on gender, did away with those special jat’s and jusy.

Words like весь were of the soft pronominal declension, so that they had a gen like моей, твоей, and lost all trace of the jat’. The plurals of pronouns can be eccentric: эти, одни, мои, наши but те, все.

Nom Sg карта земля вся
Gen Sg карты земли всей
Nom-Acc pl карты земли все


So what is Царь всея земли, tsar of all the land, or tsar of all of Rus'? It is a Russian Slavonicism, with a deliberately archaic flavor of Church Slavonic, not native Russian. It can be found in several set phrases in Russian.

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