Pub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340032
Charles J. Halperin
Many historians have questioned the accuracy of the “Tale of Ivan IV’s Campaign against Novgorod in 1570.” Cornelia Soldat now expands that critical approach to the “Tale” by arguing that it derives from German pamphlets published a century earlier. She relies upon the congruence of macro- and micro-structures to demonstrate textual influence without textual borrowing. Given the absence of Muscovite manuscripts of the “Tale” between 1570 and the second half of the seventeenth century, the composers of the “Tale” “must have” relied upon foreign sources about the raid, because no domestic sources existed. Her analysis is certainly possible, but it elides a number of issues about the transmission and translation into Russian of the German pamphlets. Reliable contemporary Muscovite sources tells us more about the “real” raid than Soldat allows. It is equally possible that the “Tale” derives from circulating native oral legends. However, the methodological and evidentiary issues Soldat raises are serious and deserve further discussion.
{"title":"“German Pamphlets, Russian Chronicles, and Ivan the Terrible”","authors":"Charles J. Halperin","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340032","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Many historians have questioned the accuracy of the “Tale of Ivan IV’s Campaign against Novgorod in 1570.” Cornelia Soldat now expands that critical approach to the “Tale” by arguing that it derives from German pamphlets published a century earlier. She relies upon the congruence of macro- and micro-structures to demonstrate textual influence without textual borrowing. Given the absence of Muscovite manuscripts of the “Tale” between 1570 and the second half of the seventeenth century, the composers of the “Tale” “must have” relied upon foreign sources about the raid, because no domestic sources existed. Her analysis is certainly possible, but it elides a number of issues about the transmission and translation into Russian of the German pamphlets. Reliable contemporary Muscovite sources tells us more about the “real” raid than Soldat allows. It is equally possible that the “Tale” derives from circulating native oral legends. However, the methodological and evidentiary issues Soldat raises are serious and deserve further discussion.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48943933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340033
A. Filyushkin
Historiography of the study of Ivan the Terrible’s times contains many examples of demystification attempts: E. Keenan declared the correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Andrey Kurbsky to be apocrypha, Anthony Grobovsky exposed the ‘Chosen Rada’, Mikhail Krom unmasked the time of ‘boyar rule’. Cornelia Soldat suggests revising the history of the ‘massacre of Novgorod’ in 1570. She believes it to be a product of a ‘literary game’. The story of the destruction of Novgorod first appeared in the German Flying Leaf in 1570 and Alexander Guagnini’s Chronicle in 1578. It was a product of European political discourse. The Novgorod Chronicles borrowed that story from Guagnini’s Chronicle in the late 17th century. However, this hypothesis lacks sufficient proof. Independent evidence exists: The Solovetsky Chronicle of the 16th century. According to Soldat, the reports from The Novgorod Uvarov Chronicle date back to the late 16t–early 17th (about 1606) centuries, rather than to the 17th century. The main argument against her concept is the confirmation in independent sources and documents of the death of many people, while the circumstances of the repression or death point to Novgorod and 1570. The Novgorod chronicles contain no evidence of text borrowings from German or Polish sources. There is no proven textual similarity between them. The story of the ‘massacre of Novgorod’ evolved in the Novgorod’s urban legends. This would have been hardly possible, if this story had been of a purely bookish, literary origin. Therefore, Cornelia Soldat’s attempt to demystify the history of the ‘massacre of Novgorod’ in 1570 cannot be considered convincing.
{"title":"Making an Anti-Hero or Describing a Tyrant? Postmodernism and Ivan the Terrible","authors":"A. Filyushkin","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340033","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Historiography of the study of Ivan the Terrible’s times contains many examples of demystification attempts: E. Keenan declared the correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Andrey Kurbsky to be apocrypha, Anthony Grobovsky exposed the ‘Chosen Rada’, Mikhail Krom unmasked the time of ‘boyar rule’. Cornelia Soldat suggests revising the history of the ‘massacre of Novgorod’ in 1570. She believes it to be a product of a ‘literary game’. The story of the destruction of Novgorod first appeared in the German Flying Leaf in 1570 and Alexander Guagnini’s Chronicle in 1578. It was a product of European political discourse. The Novgorod Chronicles borrowed that story from Guagnini’s Chronicle in the late 17th century. However, this hypothesis lacks sufficient proof. Independent evidence exists: The Solovetsky Chronicle of the 16th century. According to Soldat, the reports from The Novgorod Uvarov Chronicle date back to the late 16t–early 17th (about 1606) centuries, rather than to the 17th century. The main argument against her concept is the confirmation in independent sources and documents of the death of many people, while the circumstances of the repression or death point to Novgorod and 1570. The Novgorod chronicles contain no evidence of text borrowings from German or Polish sources. There is no proven textual similarity between them. The story of the ‘massacre of Novgorod’ evolved in the Novgorod’s urban legends. This would have been hardly possible, if this story had been of a purely bookish, literary origin. Therefore, Cornelia Soldat’s attempt to demystify the history of the ‘massacre of Novgorod’ in 1570 cannot be considered convincing.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49499885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340035
Yelizaveta Raykhlina, Ala C. Graff
This forum examines the professionalization of journalism in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union using recent revisionist approaches in press history. Four essays, ranging chronologically from the 1820s through the 1960s, use case studies of both commercial and state-owned periodicals to explore the rise of the press as a source of information and opinion in Russia. Yelizaveta Raykhlina’s article examines the institutions and networks, both formal and informal, that promoted the earliest professional and commercial periodicals in the first third of the nineteenth century. Ala Graff’s article analyzes the professionalization of the press during the 1860s–1880s, exploring how newspaper editors navigated the space between limited editorial autonomy and the growing technical complexity of the newspaper publishing business. Felix Cowan’s article examines the professionalization of the penny press in late Imperial Russia, focusing on how editors and journalists viewed their work as a vehicle for social mobility as well as a public service for the poor and marginalized. Ekaterina Kamenskaya’s article analyzes the newspaper Sel’skaia zhizn’ (Rural Life) and the role of its foreign correspondent network in both carving out space for professional autonomy as well as in bringing a unique narrative of the world to a rural Soviet audience in the 1960s.
{"title":"Introduction: Agency and Autonomy in the Russian Press across the 1917 Divide","authors":"Yelizaveta Raykhlina, Ala C. Graff","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340035","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This forum examines the professionalization of journalism in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union using recent revisionist approaches in press history. Four essays, ranging chronologically from the 1820s through the 1960s, use case studies of both commercial and state-owned periodicals to explore the rise of the press as a source of information and opinion in Russia. Yelizaveta Raykhlina’s article examines the institutions and networks, both formal and informal, that promoted the earliest professional and commercial periodicals in the first third of the nineteenth century. Ala Graff’s article analyzes the professionalization of the press during the 1860s–1880s, exploring how newspaper editors navigated the space between limited editorial autonomy and the growing technical complexity of the newspaper publishing business. Felix Cowan’s article examines the professionalization of the penny press in late Imperial Russia, focusing on how editors and journalists viewed their work as a vehicle for social mobility as well as a public service for the poor and marginalized. Ekaterina Kamenskaya’s article analyzes the newspaper Sel’skaia zhizn’ (Rural Life) and the role of its foreign correspondent network in both carving out space for professional autonomy as well as in bringing a unique narrative of the world to a rural Soviet audience in the 1960s.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44280197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340038
Felix Cowan
Through case studies of five prominent journalists, editors, and publishers, this article explores journalism at late imperial Russia’s kopeck newspapers. Exploring the lives and careers of journalists from wide-ranging backgrounds who shared a view of their work as both a business and a form of service to poor Russians, this article argues that kopeck journalists thought their profession combined entrepreneurship and upward mobility with activism and civic responsibility. The life stories and views of kopeck journalists reveal that civil society was not limited to small groups of educated middle-class Russians but rather included a wide range of actors and initiatives. Viewing these figures as members of late imperial Russian civil society also demonstrates that civil society activity could coexist with business concerns and operate within Russia’s emerging free market, despite the critiques of contemporary observers who saw commercial and social goals as inherently contradictory.
{"title":"Kopeck Journalism as a Social Profession: Upward Mobility, Service, and the Civil Society Spectrum in Late Imperial Russia","authors":"Felix Cowan","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340038","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Through case studies of five prominent journalists, editors, and publishers, this article explores journalism at late imperial Russia’s kopeck newspapers. Exploring the lives and careers of journalists from wide-ranging backgrounds who shared a view of their work as both a business and a form of service to poor Russians, this article argues that kopeck journalists thought their profession combined entrepreneurship and upward mobility with activism and civic responsibility. The life stories and views of kopeck journalists reveal that civil society was not limited to small groups of educated middle-class Russians but rather included a wide range of actors and initiatives. Viewing these figures as members of late imperial Russian civil society also demonstrates that civil society activity could coexist with business concerns and operate within Russia’s emerging free market, despite the critiques of contemporary observers who saw commercial and social goals as inherently contradictory.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47757423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340036
Yelizaveta Raykhlina
The article explores the kinds of institutions and networks that promoted a reading economy in periodicals in Moscow and Petersburg in the first third of the nineteenth century. The article examines why Petersburg experienced a dramatic growth in periodical publishing during this time period, and what factors constrained Moscow’s periodical publishing market. Looking at official institutions, public social venues, and individual journalists like Nikolai Grech, Faddei Bulgarin, and Osip Senkovskii, the article argues that institutional support and a thickening of public and private networks enabled the rise of a commercial and professional press in the 1820s. To bring the rise of Petersburg journalism into sharper relief, the article also examines the early career of Nikolai Polevoi and the circumstances constraining Moscow publishing in the first third of the nineteenth century. The article draws on recent scholarship examining the press as an “infrastructure” or “network” itself, as well as on theories of the press as part of a “network of means” regulating information and communication.
{"title":"Developing a Commercial Press in Petersburg and Moscow: Institutions and Networks of Journalism under Alexander I and the Early Reign of Nicholas I","authors":"Yelizaveta Raykhlina","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340036","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article explores the kinds of institutions and networks that promoted a reading economy in periodicals in Moscow and Petersburg in the first third of the nineteenth century. The article examines why Petersburg experienced a dramatic growth in periodical publishing during this time period, and what factors constrained Moscow’s periodical publishing market. Looking at official institutions, public social venues, and individual journalists like Nikolai Grech, Faddei Bulgarin, and Osip Senkovskii, the article argues that institutional support and a thickening of public and private networks enabled the rise of a commercial and professional press in the 1820s. To bring the rise of Petersburg journalism into sharper relief, the article also examines the early career of Nikolai Polevoi and the circumstances constraining Moscow publishing in the first third of the nineteenth century. The article draws on recent scholarship examining the press as an “infrastructure” or “network” itself, as well as on theories of the press as part of a “network of means” regulating information and communication.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44853822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340028
A. Kamenskii
At the beginning of the 18th century, sexual crimes, which until then were considered only a sin and were subject to ecclesiastical punishment, became crimes also subject to secular courts. Henceforth, the Orthodox Church and the state now had to interact in the fight against violations of the norms of people’s sexual behavior. The article analyzes how this interaction took place in practice and shows that there was a kind of competition between the Church and the state for power over emotions and bodies. At the same time, the state personified by secular officials appeared to be more sensitive to the changes taking place in Russian society and, in fact, was gradually ousting the Church from this sphere.
{"title":"Church and State and the Conflict over the Erosion of Morals in 18th-Century Russia","authors":"A. Kamenskii","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340028","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 At the beginning of the 18th century, sexual crimes, which until then were considered only a sin and were subject to ecclesiastical punishment, became crimes also subject to secular courts. Henceforth, the Orthodox Church and the state now had to interact in the fight against violations of the norms of people’s sexual behavior. The article analyzes how this interaction took place in practice and shows that there was a kind of competition between the Church and the state for power over emotions and bodies. At the same time, the state personified by secular officials appeared to be more sensitive to the changes taking place in Russian society and, in fact, was gradually ousting the Church from this sphere.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42558480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340026
A. Dvornichenko
The paper attempts at providing a comparative analysis of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy during their genesis and early development. Kievan Rus, the predecessor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy, was not a single political entity; it developed from chiefdoms to city-states that were, in essence, obshchinas (communities). This makes it all the more interesting to understand why the societies with the same roots evolved to become so different. Obviously, what comes to mind is the idea of external influences experienced by various parts of Kievan Rus while the new states were being formed, but the extent and the character of those influences can be understood through comparing these states. Comparing them reveals that they initially shared considerable similarity. It may even be said that there was a common model of state formation in the 13th to 15th centuries. For the purposes of this paper it is labelled a military-service state. It is this quite archaic polity that was the starting point in the progress towards the estates-based state. The paradox of the region is that before either the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or Muscovy could transform into an estates-based state, they both underwent drastic changes: the former became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, essentially a province within it, while the latter was plunged into Ivan the Terrible’s bloody “revolution from the top”, which accelerated the formation of the unique Russian state system based on serfdom.
{"title":"Why the GDL? Why Musсovy? The Early States of Eastern Europe in Comparative Historical Discourse","authors":"A. Dvornichenko","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The paper attempts at providing a comparative analysis of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy during their genesis and early development. Kievan Rus, the predecessor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy, was not a single political entity; it developed from chiefdoms to city-states that were, in essence, obshchinas (communities). This makes it all the more interesting to understand why the societies with the same roots evolved to become so different. Obviously, what comes to mind is the idea of external influences experienced by various parts of Kievan Rus while the new states were being formed, but the extent and the character of those influences can be understood through comparing these states. Comparing them reveals that they initially shared considerable similarity. It may even be said that there was a common model of state formation in the 13th to 15th centuries. For the purposes of this paper it is labelled a military-service state. It is this quite archaic polity that was the starting point in the progress towards the estates-based state. The paradox of the region is that before either the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or Muscovy could transform into an estates-based state, they both underwent drastic changes: the former became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, essentially a province within it, while the latter was plunged into Ivan the Terrible’s bloody “revolution from the top”, which accelerated the formation of the unique Russian state system based on serfdom.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47385621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340029
Oleg Rusakovskiy
The article aims to discuss how the Russian government dealt with foreign military law based on mercenary contracts while recruiting troops in Germany and Britain for the Smolensk campaign of 1632 to 1634. In the agreements made with foreign colonels that survive in contemporary Russian translations, the Tsar’s officials granted an almost unlimited legal and administrative autonomy to foreign military commanders in order to make service in Russia more attractive for Western mercenaries. While doing so, the Russian government believed that a unified military law and an effective court and administration system existed among the European military communities. However, some essential terms of military service remained unspecified in the documentation, depriving the Russian army commanders of any legal recourse to prevent conflicts within foreign regiments, which ultimately contributed to an administrative disaster at the end of the Smolensk campaign. The article analyzes both the Russian attitudes towards foreign military law and mercenary contracts and how this might have affected European mercenary units in Russian service.
{"title":"Foreign Military Law and Mercenary Contract in Seventeenth-Century Russia: The Сase of the Smolensk War, 1632–1634","authors":"Oleg Rusakovskiy","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340029","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article aims to discuss how the Russian government dealt with foreign military law based on mercenary contracts while recruiting troops in Germany and Britain for the Smolensk campaign of 1632 to 1634. In the agreements made with foreign colonels that survive in contemporary Russian translations, the Tsar’s officials granted an almost unlimited legal and administrative autonomy to foreign military commanders in order to make service in Russia more attractive for Western mercenaries. While doing so, the Russian government believed that a unified military law and an effective court and administration system existed among the European military communities. However, some essential terms of military service remained unspecified in the documentation, depriving the Russian army commanders of any legal recourse to prevent conflicts within foreign regiments, which ultimately contributed to an administrative disaster at the end of the Smolensk campaign. The article analyzes both the Russian attitudes towards foreign military law and mercenary contracts and how this might have affected European mercenary units in Russian service.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42486289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340027
C. Halperin
The History of the Grand Prince of Moscow traditionally attributed to Prince Andrei Kurbskii presents the “Josephians” (Iosifliane) in a very negative light. Donald Ostrowski contends that the History did not describe the Josephians as a Church “party.” However, the History did describe the Josephians as monks who pursued material wealth, supported Ivan the Terrible’s tyranny, and persecuted opponents of monastic possessions, a Church party even if the text lacked such a concept. The History did not invoke the supposed founders of the Church parties, Iosif of Volokolamsk and Nil Sorskii, nor was it equally precise in portraying the opponents and victims of the Josephians. Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century creators of the paradigm of Josephian/Non-Possessor (Trans-Volga Elders) Church parties, which Ostrowski has strongly criticized, did not misinterpret the History in using its passages to formulate their conceptualization of sixteenth-century Muscovite Church history.
{"title":"Josephians and the History of the Grand Prince of Moscow Revisited","authors":"C. Halperin","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The History of the Grand Prince of Moscow traditionally attributed to Prince Andrei Kurbskii presents the “Josephians” (Iosifliane) in a very negative light. Donald Ostrowski contends that the History did not describe the Josephians as a Church “party.” However, the History did describe the Josephians as monks who pursued material wealth, supported Ivan the Terrible’s tyranny, and persecuted opponents of monastic possessions, a Church party even if the text lacked such a concept. The History did not invoke the supposed founders of the Church parties, Iosif of Volokolamsk and Nil Sorskii, nor was it equally precise in portraying the opponents and victims of the Josephians. Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century creators of the paradigm of Josephian/Non-Possessor (Trans-Volga Elders) Church parties, which Ostrowski has strongly criticized, did not misinterpret the History in using its passages to formulate their conceptualization of sixteenth-century Muscovite Church history.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47677791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340030
Russell E. Martin
Paul Bushkovitch’s study of succession in Russia challenges a number of received historiographical traditions about succession and absolutism in early modern Russia. He questions the common view that power transferred from one ruler to the next by primogeniture and instead sees a long and largely uninterrupted tradition of parental designation. He also rejects the view that the concept of absolutism is useful for understanding monarchical power in Muscovy. Instead, Bushkovitch joins a growing group of historians who see the tsar ruling collaboratively with his boyars, making this a study as much about political culture as it is about succession. Some readers may find the conclusions about primogeniture to be highly revisionist and in need of further investigation, but the arguments about absolutism will no doubt influence in significant ways future works on power and politics, as historians continue to expand their understanding of pre-modern Russian political culture.
{"title":"“Whomsoever He Wishes As His Successor”: Paul Bushkovitch on Succession and Absolutism in Early Modern Russia","authors":"Russell E. Martin","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Paul Bushkovitch’s study of succession in Russia challenges a number of received historiographical traditions about succession and absolutism in early modern Russia. He questions the common view that power transferred from one ruler to the next by primogeniture and instead sees a long and largely uninterrupted tradition of parental designation. He also rejects the view that the concept of absolutism is useful for understanding monarchical power in Muscovy. Instead, Bushkovitch joins a growing group of historians who see the tsar ruling collaboratively with his boyars, making this a study as much about political culture as it is about succession. Some readers may find the conclusions about primogeniture to be highly revisionist and in need of further investigation, but the arguments about absolutism will no doubt influence in significant ways future works on power and politics, as historians continue to expand their understanding of pre-modern Russian political culture.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48592641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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