Pub Date : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340010
K. Platt
Jeffrey Brooks’ book The Firebird and the Fox presents a synthetic account of Russian cultural history from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Brooks describes culture as an “ecosystem,” persistent across seeming moments of historical rupture such as the revolutions of 1917, animated by certain overarching thematic concerns, and uniting readers and writers across a broad spectrum of levels of social life, from the newly literate popular masses to the educated elites, and forms of media, from prestigious belles lettres to popular illustrated weeklies, satirical journals and children’s literature. Drawing on the theoretical description of historiographical writing offered by Hayden White, this essay examines Brooks’ book in terms of its formal patterning as a comedic narrative and its poetic basis in the trope of synecdoche, which undergird its analytical efforts to integrate material across seeming historical and social divides.
{"title":"Over Hill and Dale in Pursuit of the Russian Fox","authors":"K. Platt","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Jeffrey Brooks’ book The Firebird and the Fox presents a synthetic account of Russian cultural history from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Brooks describes culture as an “ecosystem,” persistent across seeming moments of historical rupture such as the revolutions of 1917, animated by certain overarching thematic concerns, and uniting readers and writers across a broad spectrum of levels of social life, from the newly literate popular masses to the educated elites, and forms of media, from prestigious belles lettres to popular illustrated weeklies, satirical journals and children’s literature. Drawing on the theoretical description of historiographical writing offered by Hayden White, this essay examines Brooks’ book in terms of its formal patterning as a comedic narrative and its poetic basis in the trope of synecdoche, which undergird its analytical efforts to integrate material across seeming historical and social divides.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45412584","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 : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340016
A. Golovlev
The article examines the financial history of the Bolshoi within USSR’s mobilized wartime cultural industry as an example of a cultural institution highly placed in the Stalinist establishment and symbolic canon. It explores the income-outcome flows, personnel management, the impact of evacuation, notably on Bolshoi’s hard capital, and relations with supervising authorities. The theater’s perceived importance within the war effort conditioned unshakable financial support, a non-market protective environment, and lenient administrative treatment, contrasting with logistical and personnel challenges which the house only partly mastered. This relative stability stands in contrast with the absence of strong leadership, as the director’s position was kept vacant in stark difference to most European opera theaters. The shock of 1941–1942 was absorbed with internal adjustment measures and external subventions, and the Bolshoi’s budgets swelled towards the end of the war, indicating inflation and the house’s “most-favored-opera status”. The stable and conservative management still showed shortcomings, which the state chose not to punish. The opera’s symbolic and prestige capital trumped quantitative efficiency, creating a haven in the war economy.
{"title":"Balancing the Books and Staging Operas under Duress: Bolshoi Theater Management, Wartime Economy and State Sponsorship in 1941–1945","authors":"A. Golovlev","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article examines the financial history of the Bolshoi within USSR’s mobilized wartime cultural industry as an example of a cultural institution highly placed in the Stalinist establishment and symbolic canon. It explores the income-outcome flows, personnel management, the impact of evacuation, notably on Bolshoi’s hard capital, and relations with supervising authorities. The theater’s perceived importance within the war effort conditioned unshakable financial support, a non-market protective environment, and lenient administrative treatment, contrasting with logistical and personnel challenges which the house only partly mastered. This relative stability stands in contrast with the absence of strong leadership, as the director’s position was kept vacant in stark difference to most European opera theaters. The shock of 1941–1942 was absorbed with internal adjustment measures and external subventions, and the Bolshoi’s budgets swelled towards the end of the war, indicating inflation and the house’s “most-favored-opera status”. The stable and conservative management still showed shortcomings, which the state chose not to punish. The opera’s symbolic and prestige capital trumped quantitative efficiency, creating a haven in the war economy.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47197291","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 : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340017
B. Mironov
In the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1990, the political inequality of the nationalities’ representation in institutions of governance was overcome, non-Russians’ participation in the power structures increased, and Russians’ role in administration correspondingly decreased. The increased non-Russian percentage in governance was mainly due to the introduction of the democratic principle in government formation, according to which ethnicities should participate in proportion to their number. By 1990 in the USSR overall, Russians had a slight majority in all power structures, corresponding roughly to their higher share in the country’s population. In the union republics, however, the situation was different. Only in the RSFSR did all peoples, Russian and non-Russian, participate in government administration in proportion to their numbers, following the democratic norm. Elsewhere, Russians were underrepresented and therefore discriminated against in all organs of power, including the legislative branch. Representatives of non-Russian titular nationalities, who on average filled two-thirds of all administrative positions, predominated in disproportion to their numbers. Given these representatives’ skill majority in legislative bodies, republican constitutions permitted them to adopt any laws and resolutions they desired, including laws on secession from the USSR; and the executive and judicial authorities, together with law enforcement, would undoubtedly support them. Thus, the structural prerequisites for disintegration were established. Thereafter, the fate of the Soviet Union depended on republican elites and the geopolitical environment, because of the Center’s purposeful national policy, aimed toward increasing non-Russian representation among administrative cadres and the accelerated modernization and developmental equalization of the republics.
{"title":"De-Russification of Government as a Factor in the Disintegration of the USSR","authors":"B. Mironov","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1990, the political inequality of the nationalities’ representation in institutions of governance was overcome, non-Russians’ participation in the power structures increased, and Russians’ role in administration correspondingly decreased. The increased non-Russian percentage in governance was mainly due to the introduction of the democratic principle in government formation, according to which ethnicities should participate in proportion to their number. By 1990 in the USSR overall, Russians had a slight majority in all power structures, corresponding roughly to their higher share in the country’s population. In the union republics, however, the situation was different. Only in the RSFSR did all peoples, Russian and non-Russian, participate in government administration in proportion to their numbers, following the democratic norm. Elsewhere, Russians were underrepresented and therefore discriminated against in all organs of power, including the legislative branch. Representatives of non-Russian titular nationalities, who on average filled two-thirds of all administrative positions, predominated in disproportion to their numbers. Given these representatives’ skill majority in legislative bodies, republican constitutions permitted them to adopt any laws and resolutions they desired, including laws on secession from the USSR; and the executive and judicial authorities, together with law enforcement, would undoubtedly support them. Thus, the structural prerequisites for disintegration were established. Thereafter, the fate of the Soviet Union depended on republican elites and the geopolitical environment, because of the Center’s purposeful national policy, aimed toward increasing non-Russian representation among administrative cadres and the accelerated modernization and developmental equalization of the republics.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42344303","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 : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340008
Michael David‐Fox
This article discusses Jeffrey Brooks’ metaphor of an integrated ecosystem to describe Russian cultural history in the late imperial and early Soviet periods. Brooks’s Firebird and the Fox describes an interlocking cultural system marked by high-low interactions, as a rich Russian folkloric tradition based on fable and popular tales was reworked with remarkable creativity in what he calls an “age of genius.” In response, this article argues that this period of Russian cultural creativity can be seen as coinciding with the extended life-cycle of the Russian Revolution. The subversive, satirical humor and irony running through Brooks’s cultural “play-sphere” was complemented by another tradition: a didactic, instructional, enlightening “teach-sphere” that animated a wide range of intelligentsia and cultural forces shaping cultural evolution and cultural revolution. If the play-sphere highlights the rebellious distance between culture and power, the teach-sphere’s project of transforming the masses reveals their many commonalities. The essay reflects on how the intersections of culture and power shaped early Soviet culture, the avant-garde, and successive phases of Stalinist culture. While Socialist Realism promoted the theoretical declaration of a unified socialist culture, the persistence of differing elements of the cultural system raises the question of Soviet cultural syncretism.
{"title":"Age of Genius or Century of Revolution? Russian Culture and Power Across the High-Low Divide, 1850–1950","authors":"Michael David‐Fox","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article discusses Jeffrey Brooks’ metaphor of an integrated ecosystem to describe Russian cultural history in the late imperial and early Soviet periods. Brooks’s Firebird and the Fox describes an interlocking cultural system marked by high-low interactions, as a rich Russian folkloric tradition based on fable and popular tales was reworked with remarkable creativity in what he calls an “age of genius.” In response, this article argues that this period of Russian cultural creativity can be seen as coinciding with the extended life-cycle of the Russian Revolution. The subversive, satirical humor and irony running through Brooks’s cultural “play-sphere” was complemented by another tradition: a didactic, instructional, enlightening “teach-sphere” that animated a wide range of intelligentsia and cultural forces shaping cultural evolution and cultural revolution. If the play-sphere highlights the rebellious distance between culture and power, the teach-sphere’s project of transforming the masses reveals their many commonalities. The essay reflects on how the intersections of culture and power shaped early Soviet culture, the avant-garde, and successive phases of Stalinist culture. While Socialist Realism promoted the theoretical declaration of a unified socialist culture, the persistence of differing elements of the cultural system raises the question of Soviet cultural syncretism.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46866531","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 : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340012
Olga V. Velikanova
From the plethora of big and small achievements that the author celebrates in the book, my essay addresses such subjects as the continuity of cultural creativity in the 19th and 20th centuries, children’s literature, the sociology of reading, and the place of goodness in literature and life under Stalinism – all within the span of the 20th century. Sharing with the author my admiration of accomplishments of Russian and Soviet culture, I try here to historicize the themes and expand slightly on some of them, like perceptions of the cultural products.
{"title":"In Search of a Cultural Code","authors":"Olga V. Velikanova","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000From the plethora of big and small achievements that the author celebrates in the book, my essay addresses such subjects as the continuity of cultural creativity in the 19th and 20th centuries, children’s literature, the sociology of reading, and the place of goodness in literature and life under Stalinism – all within the span of the 20th century. Sharing with the author my admiration of accomplishments of Russian and Soviet culture, I try here to historicize the themes and expand slightly on some of them, like perceptions of the cultural products.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47433954","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 : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340009
Muireann Maguire
This essay responds to Jeffrey Brooks’ 2020 monograph The Firebird and the Fox, drawing attention to Brooks’ emphasis on a set of cultural symbols persistent during the historical period he surveys, and on the social activism which he identifies with leading Russian cultural figures such as Tolstoi and Chekhov. In support of Brooks’ argument, I present the example of Aleksandr Chaianov (1888–1937), a specialist in agronomy and amateur writer whose reputation as a driver of early Soviet agricultural policy was overshadowed by his arrest in 1930 and subsequent exile and execution. Chaianov’s social activism, as expressed in his short fiction and historical essays, took the form of reminding his readers about the cultural continuities between Russia’s past, present, and future.
{"title":"Reflecting on Jeffrey Brooks’ The Firebird and the Fox: The Unusual but True Adventures of a Soviet Agronomist","authors":"Muireann Maguire","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This essay responds to Jeffrey Brooks’ 2020 monograph The Firebird and the Fox, drawing attention to Brooks’ emphasis on a set of cultural symbols persistent during the historical period he surveys, and on the social activism which he identifies with leading Russian cultural figures such as Tolstoi and Chekhov. In support of Brooks’ argument, I present the example of Aleksandr Chaianov (1888–1937), a specialist in agronomy and amateur writer whose reputation as a driver of early Soviet agricultural policy was overshadowed by his arrest in 1930 and subsequent exile and execution. Chaianov’s social activism, as expressed in his short fiction and historical essays, took the form of reminding his readers about the cultural continuities between Russia’s past, present, and future.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47374834","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 : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340011
W. Todd
Jeffrey Brooks’ new book, The Firebird and the Fox, draws on an unsurpassed knowledge of Russian literature and culture of all levels, from the folk and popular to the canonical and avant-garde. It divides the “age of genius” (1855–1953) into three periods: the emancipation of the arts (1850–1889), politics and the arts (1890–1916), the Bolshevik Revolution and the arts (1917–1950), each with its own configurations of popular and high culture and construction of creative artists, media, and readers. But three core themes overarch the periods and the exceptionally broad range of phenomena the book discusses: freedom and order, boundaries, art and reality. Throughout Brooks analyzes crossovers and intersections between cultural institutions, between genres and media, and – especially for the Soviet period – between the lines. His categories are at times sociological, historical, and literary. The book implies a theory of cultural production that gives unusual weight to the agency of creative artists. In conclusion readings of three works Brooks does not analyze (Dostoevsky’s Demons, Bely’s Petersburg, and Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky) illustrate the productivity of Brooks’ broad and humane approach to Russian artistic culture.
杰弗里·布鲁克斯(Jeffrey Brooks)的新书《火鸟与狐狸》(The Firebird and The Fox)借鉴了对俄罗斯文学和文化各个层面的无与伦比的了解，从民间和流行文学到权威和前卫文学。它将“天才时代”(1855-1953)分为三个时期:艺术解放(1850-1889)、政治与艺术(1890-1916)、布尔什维克革命和艺术(1917-1950)，每个时期都有自己的流行文化和高雅文化的配置，以及创造性艺术家、媒体和读者的建设。但是，三个核心主题贯穿了这些时期，以及本书讨论的异常广泛的现象:自由与秩序、边界、艺术与现实。贯穿全书，布鲁克斯分析了文化制度、流派和媒介之间的交叉和交集，尤其是在苏联时期，分析了字里行间的交集。他的分类有时是社会学的、历史的和文学的。这本书暗示了一种文化生产理论，这种理论对创造性艺术家的能动性给予了不同寻常的重视。最后，布鲁克斯没有分析的三部作品(陀思妥耶夫斯基的《恶魔》，别利的《彼得堡》和爱森斯坦的《亚历山大·涅夫斯基》)说明了布鲁克斯对俄罗斯艺术文化的广泛而人道的方法的有效性。
{"title":"Reading Between the Institutions, Reading Between the Genres, Reading Between the Lines: Jeffrey Brooks’ The Firebird and the Fox","authors":"W. Todd","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Jeffrey Brooks’ new book, The Firebird and the Fox, draws on an unsurpassed knowledge of Russian literature and culture of all levels, from the folk and popular to the canonical and avant-garde. It divides the “age of genius” (1855–1953) into three periods: the emancipation of the arts (1850–1889), politics and the arts (1890–1916), the Bolshevik Revolution and the arts (1917–1950), each with its own configurations of popular and high culture and construction of creative artists, media, and readers. But three core themes overarch the periods and the exceptionally broad range of phenomena the book discusses: freedom and order, boundaries, art and reality. Throughout Brooks analyzes crossovers and intersections between cultural institutions, between genres and media, and – especially for the Soviet period – between the lines. His categories are at times sociological, historical, and literary. The book implies a theory of cultural production that gives unusual weight to the agency of creative artists. In conclusion readings of three works Brooks does not analyze (Dostoevsky’s Demons, Bely’s Petersburg, and Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky) illustrate the productivity of Brooks’ broad and humane approach to Russian artistic culture.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48163792","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 : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340014
J. Brooks
The author of The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks (Cambridge University Press, 2019) responds to comments of Michael David-Fox, Muireann Maguire, Kevin Platt, William Mills Todd, and Olga Velikanova. He expresses appreciation for the reflections provided and elaborates on several points raised by the commentators individually and collectively: the theoretical framing of the work and the importance of agency; continuity of culture over episodes of political disjuncture; the applicability of the term “cultural ecosystem;” an alternative treatment of the topic that would have accorded greater emphasis to political power and the life cycle of revolutions; and the relationship of the work to analysis of institutional history and cultural theory. He finds the five commentaries to be valuable companion pieces for readers of The Firebird and the Fox and stimulants to further scholarship.
{"title":"Author’s Response to Commentaries","authors":"J. Brooks","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The author of The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks (Cambridge University Press, 2019) responds to comments of Michael David-Fox, Muireann Maguire, Kevin Platt, William Mills Todd, and Olga Velikanova. He expresses appreciation for the reflections provided and elaborates on several points raised by the commentators individually and collectively: the theoretical framing of the work and the importance of agency; continuity of culture over episodes of political disjuncture; the applicability of the term “cultural ecosystem;” an alternative treatment of the topic that would have accorded greater emphasis to political power and the life cycle of revolutions; and the relationship of the work to analysis of institutional history and cultural theory. He finds the five commentaries to be valuable companion pieces for readers of The Firebird and the Fox and stimulants to further scholarship.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44340481","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 : 2021-03-30DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340006
A. Filyushkin
The paper asks how the Russian Empire emerged. In the course of European monarchical rise of the 16–17th centuries, composite monarchies turned into nation states and then empires. Russia never became a composite; very soon after its emergence at the end of the 15th century, it immediately moved to the imperial stage. The answer to why this happened is the key to understanding the Russian Empire’s history. One factor that prevented Russia from building a composite monarchy was the weakness of political actors united under Moscow’s leadership. European composite monarchies emerged when and where the dominant monarchy forcefully broke local laws, fought against local class and political systems. But Moscow’s rivals were too weak, and Russian monarchs did not need to compromise with them. A shared Orthodox faith, common culture, language, and economic structure, as well as the absence of natural borders on the Eastern European plain were other factors that allowed Moscow to ignore the rights of conquered regions. Russia’s background as a part of the Mongol Empire also played a role. By the time Russia faced strong European monarchical competitors, its imperial development path already formed. An important feature of the early Muscovite Empire was the dominance of political practice over ideology. The ideological design of the Empire occurred only in the 18th and 19th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the imperial character of Muscovy was formed intuitively and spontaneously; one might call it a neonatal, rudimentary, infant empire.
{"title":"Why Did Russia Not Become a Composite State?","authors":"A. Filyushkin","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The paper asks how the Russian Empire emerged. In the course of European monarchical rise of the 16–17th centuries, composite monarchies turned into nation states and then empires. Russia never became a composite; very soon after its emergence at the end of the 15th century, it immediately moved to the imperial stage. The answer to why this happened is the key to understanding the Russian Empire’s history. One factor that prevented Russia from building a composite monarchy was the weakness of political actors united under Moscow’s leadership. European composite monarchies emerged when and where the dominant monarchy forcefully broke local laws, fought against local class and political systems. But Moscow’s rivals were too weak, and Russian monarchs did not need to compromise with them. A shared Orthodox faith, common culture, language, and economic structure, as well as the absence of natural borders on the Eastern European plain were other factors that allowed Moscow to ignore the rights of conquered regions. Russia’s background as a part of the Mongol Empire also played a role. By the time Russia faced strong European monarchical competitors, its imperial development path already formed. An important feature of the early Muscovite Empire was the dominance of political practice over ideology. The ideological design of the Empire occurred only in the 18th and 19th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the imperial character of Muscovy was formed intuitively and spontaneously; one might call it a neonatal, rudimentary, infant empire.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":"25 1","pages":"201-223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89054745","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 : 2021-03-30DOI: 10.30965/18763316-12340003
C. Halperin
In Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish I contradicted myself in discussing the possible existence of church parties in Muscovy. After accepting Ostrowski’s argument that Iosif Volotskii and Nil Sorskii did not belong to antagonistic “parties,” I followed Goldfrank’s earlier publications that there were Josephan and Non-Possessor “parties” after the deaths of their “founders.” I proposed that the Josephans were an old-boy network in Iosif’s time and then promptly dropped that concept in discussing the rest of the sixteenth century. This article attempts to rectify those errors by consistently applying the concept of old-boy network to the Josephans throughout the sixteenth century. Because the persecution of heretics is central to the paradigm of the Josephans as a “party,” this reconsideration entailed engaging the very notion of “heresy” in the Russian Orthodox Church at the time. It also proposes that the paradigm of antagonistic church parties, the Josephans and the Non-Possessors / Trans-Volga Elders, originated in Prince Andrei Kurbsky’s History of the Grand Prince of Moscow.
{"title":"Josephans and Non-Possessors (Trans-Volga Elders) during the Reign of Ivan IV","authors":"C. Halperin","doi":"10.30965/18763316-12340003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/18763316-12340003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish I contradicted myself in discussing the possible existence of church parties in Muscovy. After accepting Ostrowski’s argument that Iosif Volotskii and Nil Sorskii did not belong to antagonistic “parties,” I followed Goldfrank’s earlier publications that there were Josephan and Non-Possessor “parties” after the deaths of their “founders.” I proposed that the Josephans were an old-boy network in Iosif’s time and then promptly dropped that concept in discussing the rest of the sixteenth century. This article attempts to rectify those errors by consistently applying the concept of old-boy network to the Josephans throughout the sixteenth century. Because the persecution of heretics is central to the paradigm of the Josephans as a “party,” this reconsideration entailed engaging the very notion of “heresy” in the Russian Orthodox Church at the time. It also proposes that the paradigm of antagonistic church parties, the Josephans and the Non-Possessors / Trans-Volga Elders, originated in Prince Andrei Kurbsky’s History of the Grand Prince of Moscow.","PeriodicalId":43441,"journal":{"name":"RUSSIAN HISTORY-HISTOIRE RUSSE","volume":"26 1","pages":"173-185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83739185","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}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：