Three Takes on One Legend: Polyphony in Muscovite Court Culture (original) (raw)
Related papers
US Publications (2000-2020) on Muscovite History, 1462-1689
2021
Between 2000 and 2020 historians and philologists in the US published a considerable number of books and articles on Muscovite history from 1462 to 1689. On nearly all major issues there is no consensus, so it is impossible to speak of a "US school" of Russian historiography. This survey, organized thematically, will reference thirty-three books and approximately 350 articles. In each rubric authors are listed alphabetically and their publications chronologically. The survey selectively mentions unstudied topics or topics that require further study and briefly summarizes differences of opinion.
Halperin, Charles. The Early Modern Muscovite state reconsidered, in Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 2018. № 2. Pp. 181-196., 2018
Mikhail Krom’s new monograph «Rozhdenie gosudarstva. Moskovskaia Rus’ XV ‑– XVI vekov» reconceptualizes the problem of the origins and nature of the Muscovite state, whose existence almost no previous historian had questioned. He disputes the paradigm of Russian exceptionalism, arguing that by the middle of the sixteenth century Muscovy possessed a sufficient number of the qualifying characteristics of an early modern European state to be called an early modern European state. Although Muscovy differed from other early modern European states in the unlimited authority of the ruler and the servility of the elite, the European model still applies. Krom raises numerous conceptual and substantive questions about Muscovy within a rigorously comparative framework. Although Krom presents his book as a a popularization, it should be read by all specialists as well. ******* Статья посвящена анализу новой монографии Михаила Крома «Рождение государства: Московская Русь XV – начала XVI веков», где переосмысляется проблема происхождения и сущности Москвии — вопросы, которые ни кем из историков ранее не ставились под сомнение. М. Кром оспаривает парадигму русской исключительности, утверждая, что к середине XVI в. Московия уже обладала достаточным количеством характеристик, свойственных государствам ранней модерной Европы, и тоже может называться ранним модерным европейским государством. Проведя тщательный сравнительный анализ, историк приходит в выводу, что несмотря на то что Московия отличалась от других европейских государств неограниченной властью правителя и раболепием элиты, европейская модель может быть к ней применима.
Thoughtful Agglomeration: Late Byzantine Sources for Muscovite Ceremonial
Medieval Rus' and Early Modern Russia. Texts and Contexts, 2023
The agglomeration of information equals a failure of thinking. (Simon Franklin's comments on an early thesis chapter c. 2011) The construction and development of symbolically charged landscapes, processions, rituals of commensality, and inauguration rites and regalia all formed a court culture to accompany the increasing wealth and power of the Muscovite princes and, later, tsars. Richard Wortman, in his study of court ceremony and ritual in early modern Russia (Muscovy and the Tsardom of Russia), indicated that Muscovite rulers and their advisers considered the symbolic sphere of ceremonies and imagery intrinsic to their exercise of power. 1 The political innovations of the Muscovite period found their stylised expression in the ritual world of the Muscovite rulers, as described in chronicles and service books (trebniki). However, rather than attending to the changing fortunes of the Muscovite elite, the content of ceremonies (inauguration, procession, etc.) became itself a type of power, one that was constructed and structured by a literate ecclesiastical elite, both to bolster and to invent (and re-invent) the historical legitimacy of the Muscovite rulers based on local and immediate political requirements. Muscovy saw a new set of sources for the legitimacy of rulers and the idea of rulership, one that was both an innovation and an invention. This is because the idea of monarchy (of solitary rule) was, to a large extent, alien to northeastern Europe, especially when viewed in contrast to the non-centralised functioning dynastic political system of the pre-Mongol (early or Kyivan) period in Rus'. 2 The chroniclers of Rus' had access to a rich source base, including constitutive precedents, symbols, and cultural forms for the construction of political legitimacy in early Rus' and Muscovy. The linearity of this contact (Rus' to Muscovy) was itself the result of a series of narrative strategies that shaped and reshaped events to justify outcomes and make the de facto, de jure. Ceremonies of inauguration were a powerful technology to externalise and encode rule, featuring appropriate symbols, forms of representation, and rites (such as enthronement or acclamation). Such rituals form a narrative substrate 3 or ritual mainstay, one that permitted the agglomeration of ritual elements without disrupting the message. 4 Although there is a narrative continuity, that of the chronicles of Rus' and Muscovy, documenting rites and