The Memory of Saint Sergius in Sixteenth-Century Russia

This chapter reveals the appearance of Saint Sergius in several omens and dreams connected with the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan´ in 1552 by Ivan the Terrible. It refers to Russian soldiers that experienced visions of Saint Sergius sweeping the places of worship, streets, and squares of Kazan´ during the siege, presumably cleansing them allegorically of their Muslim associations on the eve of the conquest. It also discusses visions and stories that testify to the remarkable place that Saint Sergius held in the memories of Muscovites in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even until after his death. The chapter shows some of the many ways in which Sergius and his monastery were memorialized during sixteenth-century Russia. It shows some of the means that Muscovites used to maintain the memory of Saint Sergius and create new memories of him.

God, Tsar, and People

This chapter provides a background on the crucial role of fictions in history and in current lives, a role arguably bigger than that played by any other force, human or even natural. It mentions Yuval Noah Harari's claim that cultural skill allowed humans to first organize themselves into political or social units larger than a few tens of individuals. It also reviews developments in Russian culture that made the creation and preservation of the Muscovite state possible. The chapter explains how Muscovite culture was more effective as social cement than the broader, more diffuse, and more divided cultures of the West. It explores some of the themes that Muscovite churchmen created and elaborated, like the importance of the Old Testament to the historical thinking of Muscovy.

Kurbskii and the Historians

This chapter focuses on Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Kurbskii, who was descended from the princes of Yaroslavl´ and was remotely connected to the family of the Tsaritsa Anastasia. It covers Kurbskii's successful military career, of which he served both in the sieges of Kazan´ and in the Livonian war a year before his flight to Poland-Lithuania on April 30, 1564. It also cites History of Ivan IV which documents Kurbskii's own accounts of his military career. The chapter examines the interpretations by three of the most influential Russian historians: Karamzin, Solov´ev, and Kliuchevskii in relation to Kurbskii's role in Russian history. It explores fine points of interpretation and small increments of meaning that the three Russian historians had laid over or injected into the words of the Kurbskii statements.

Advice, Advisers, and Courtiers Decision Making and Advice in the Royal Book of the Illustrated Chronicle Compilation

This chapter investigates the problem of advice and advisers in the political culture of Muscovy, which was found to be vitally important to the various authors of the tales about the Time of Troubles. It shows that consultation with advisers, together with other legitimizing factors, was a crucial ingredient in the Illustrated Chronicle Compilation (ICC) when depicting proper judicial procedure prior to punishment. It also discusses ICC artists that were careful to represent the legitimating features of legal procedure, which were notably absent in cases of violence processed outside the official legal system. The chapter focuses on the imagery in the ICC that depict crucial moments in the succession from Vasilii III to Ivan IV. It confirms whether the pattern of presenting the monarch together with its advisers holds true for the ICC.

Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits on the Power of the Tsar (1540s–1660s)?

This chapter talks about Richard Pipes' publication of a sweeping and influential reinterpretation of pre-Soviet Russian political culture. It analyses Pipes' central idea that Muscovite Rus´ was a patrimonial state and the tsar or great prince exercised power that is comparable to that of the possessor of dominium in Roman law. It also details how Pipes traced the growth of the actual power of the monarch and the gradual narrowing of the boundaries of possible action for all classes. The chapter explains why no class or social group was able to limit the excessive growth of royal power. It discusses the ideology of royal absolutism in Russia that was worked out by clergymen who felt that the interests of religion and church were best served by a monarchy with no limits to its power.

The Problem of Advice in Muscovite Tales about the Time of Troubles

This chapter mentions celebrated Russian historian V. O. Kliuchevskii, who complained that S. F. Platonov's Old Russian tales and stories about the time of troubles of the seventeenth-century had lacked significant aspects, such as political ideas. It analyses political ideas that could have been in Platonov's work that illustrated the awakening and development of political thought under the influence of the Troubles. It also talks about Kliuchevskii's famous Course in Russian History, where he commented extensively on new political ideas and cast them into a constitutional framework. The chapter suggests that the reason Kliuchevskii failed to produce positive evidence from Platonov's tales in support of his position is that they simply do not reflect the kind of constitutional sentiment he claimed to find in other historical sources. It describes the legal-institutional approach that Kliuchevskii brought to the problem that led him to treat Platonov's tales as a negative echo of ideas.

Architecture and Dynasty

This chapter sketches the political and geographic environment in pre-Petrine Rus´ that favored architecture as a major but little-investigated arena for symbolic action by the ruler. It mentions rulers from Saint Vladimir to Peter the Great that made architecture a useful tool for state-building in order to demonstrate their power and define their image. It also points out that architectural construction, whether of churches, fortifications, or palaces, was avidly noted in chronicles from the Primary Chronicle to the Nikon Chronicle and beyond. The chapter elaborates the ways that Boris Godunov used architecture in order to make a useful case study as architecture in relation to the pre-Petrine period finds too little place in discussions of political history. It provides access to some perceptions of Godunov's architectural efforts and gauges how successful those efforts were.

Toward an Understanding of the Political Ideas in Ivan Timofeev’s Vremennik

This chapter examines the Vremennik of Ivan Timofeev and describes the disasters that then engulfed Muscovite Rus´, such as famine, civil war, and foreign intervention that stimulated historical thought. It identifies writers who set themselves the difficult task of integrating the disturbing events, particularly the virtual collapse of the “God-established tsarstvo” with the earlier history of Rus´. It also considers Timofeev's Vremennik as the single-best source for investigating how early seventeenth-century Muscovites thought about their own history and politics. The chapter explains how Timofeev, like a number of other smuta tale authors, did not write primarily to promote a particular political point of view or a particular set of ideas. It reveals that the Vremennik is closer to a diary than a polemical work based on the remarks of Timofeev.

Autocracy

This chapter looks at autocracy as the concept most widely used to describe the political culture of the Russian state before 1917. It explains how autocracy, understood as the unlimited rule of the monarch over his subjects, is often taken as the signature characteristic of Russian political culture in general. It also identifies historians that see the political structure of Russia as essentially oligarchical, with power shared in a mutually beneficial way among various layers of the nobility and the government. The chapter presents autocracy in the relatively stable political culture from 1450 to 1650 and discusses the changes wrought in that culture by massive influences from Western Europe under Peter the Great and his immediate predecessors. It considers the accounts of Western European visitors to Russia from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, which was responsible for the trope of total power of the Russian ruler over its subjects.

Muscovy

This chapter reviews the nature of the Russian polity in the early modern period and the nature and function of political thought within that polity. It looks at interpretations of the early modern period that became the subject of government supervision following the 1917 Revolution, which had the effect of imposing a crude Marxist framework on interpretations of Muscovite history and Muscovite political thought. It also cites texts on political subjects that were seen as products of a class war, chiefly between proponents of the centralizing government and supporters of a conservative boyar opposition. The chapter talks about historians in the West that oppose the formerly dominant image of an all-powerful government commanding a powerless, supine society. It analyses the cultural context for political thinking in Muscovy that was neglected by political necessity in the Soviet Union.