Abstract This article explores the nonliterary sources for the biography of Prince Semën Ivanovich Shakhovskoi (ca. 1585–1654 or 1655), one of the most prolific and accomplished Russian writers of the seventeenth century. Most attempts to understand Shakhovskoi’s thinking and life course rely on his vast literary corpus, including historical tales, liturgical services, prayers, and personal and diplomatic letters. But Shakhovskoi also had a long and prominent career as a diplomat, regional administrator, and courtier, aspects of his life best accessed by the trail of nonliterary, documentary sources he left behind in the chancery archives. This article takes two petitions ( chelobit’ia ) from 1643 that Shakhovskoi submitted to the tsar listing his many service assignments between 1613 and 1643, and compares them with the service biography he provides in his famed “Autobiographical Notes,” written in 1649. These sources, when read together, offer new details about Shakhovskoi’s biography and his role in several key events of the period, as well as insights into the ways literary and nonliterary sources can be combined to write biographies in the early modern period.
Abstract Romanesque architectural details on the façades of the Church of St. Panteleimon in Halych, Ukraine (ca. 1188–1193), which included round-headed portals with carved relief sculpture along the arches, carved capitals and columns, demonstrate the selective adoption of Western Romanesque elements in the 12th-century Halych Principality. Comparative analysis of round-headed portals, carved leaves and knotted columns in contemporary churches across Hungary, Italy, and former Byzantine area suggests that these elements were part of broader cultural and architectural networks. In particular, the use of the knotted columns on the western portal, more so than ornamental vegetal scrolls, supports my argument for the deliberate ambiguity in expressing cultural affinities with the Latin West or the Orthodox East due to the knot motif’s complex symbolism. This strategic ambiguity in the façades of St. Panteleimon allowed Halych princes to present Halych as a European capital while maintaining a distinct Orthodox, particularly Slavic, identity.
Abstract Russia’s 17th century witnessed a systematization, reflection, and justification of knowledge, which could be called “grammaticalization” according to the concept of Stefan Schneck. Its pre-history commenced with the transmission of several 9th–10th century Bulgarian textbook or quasi-textbook translations from early medieval Greek originals and increased with more such Balkan Slavic renderings in the late 13th–14th centuries. Russia’s first original systematic treatises, composed in the late 15th-early 16th centuries, were, among other things, the pedagogical fruits of the availability of these works as well as indicators of overall preparedness for further structured organization of available knowledge.
Abstract This article explores the Slavic manuscript tradition of the Questions and Answers to Antiochus the Duke ( QAD ), a theological dialogue attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria that circulated widely in the Byzantine world and played a significant role in transmitting Christian thought from Byzantium to the Slavic world. Focusing on the so-called Preslav recension – originating in medieval Bulgaria – we undertake a comparative analysis of three key textual witnesses: the Laurentian Miscellany, the Zograf manuscript, and the Izmaragd collection. Among these, the Laurentian Miscellany is the only complete text of the Preslav recension that scholars have studied most extensively. Some research has also been done on Izmaragd , while the Zograf manuscript has only recently entered scholarly circulation through our work. By analyzing the textual, linguistic, and orthographic features of these witnesses, this study seeks to elucidate the preservation, regional adaptations, and integration of QAD into broader Slavic literary traditions, as well as to establish the relations of the three witnesses to one another. This work forms part of a larger effort to prepare a critical edition of QAD and to explore its influence in shaping Slavic theological discourse.
Abstract This article presents a pilot study on the application of computer-assisted quantitative research into genre and textual similarities among Serbian Early printed books dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. It is grounded in computational stylometric analysis, conducted with the stylo package in the statistical programming language R, applied to a large corpus of texts automatically transcribed through a pre-trained model within the Transkribus platform. The study tests the initial hypothesis concerning genre-related and textual affinities among Serbian Early printed books of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The hypothesis is corroborated by stylometric analysis based on the 1,000 most frequent word-level bigrams, employing multidimensional scaling alongside Eder’s modified Delta metric. The study demonstrates that orthographic variation within the corpus can substantially affect the results of computational stylometric analysis, highlighting the need to combine this method with traditional qualitative approaches.
Abstract The notion that Ivan the Terrible’s volatile character and behavior are accurately reflected in his volatile literary style is widespread. Two rarely-cited published sources suggest that this conclusion might require modification. In a 1572 speech to the Lithuanian envoy F. Voropai in which Ivan nominated himself to be the next King of Poland, Ivan admitted that many people considered him cruel, but, he insisted, he was only cruel to those who were cruel to him. In a 1582 letter to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II Ivan proposed that Rudolph lift the arms embargo on Russia because following the signing of the Treaty of Iam-Zapol’skii with King Stefan Batory, Muscovy was united in friendship with all Christian powers in opposing the Muslim Ottoman Turks. In these texts Ivan unemotionally engages the points-of-view of his critics and enemies without indulging in any vituperation. Therefore Ivan could control his supposedly “out-of-control” literary inclinations when he chose to do so. Ivan’s ability to adjust his literary style to circumstances suggests that at least sometimes his literary volatility derived from his theatricality.
Abstract This article takes as its starting point a charter issued by Oleg Ivanovich, grand prince of Riazan’ (1351–1371, 1372–1402), to the Ol’gov monastery in c. 1371. The document stands out for two reasons: first, as one of the few grant charters surviving in its original from before 1400; and second, as the only such charter to be illuminated, with a deesis depicting the monastery’s hegumen in prayer. Interweaving bureaucratic and aesthetic analysis of this object, I explore how it might be used to craft something approaching a global microhistory of Riazan’. The principality’s geography – squeezed between the steppe and Moscow – offers an archetypal example of liminal politics. Against perceptions of late medieval Rus’ that sublimate alternative princely ambitions into a narrative of Muscovite encroachment, Riazan’ offers a crucial corrective, of rulers who could face elsewhere in their modes and expressions of governance.
Abstract This article explores the ways in which an Orthodox polymath printer Pamvo Berynda (d. 1632) employed his printer’s mark, focusing on its use in the Slavonic translation of Dorotheos of Gaza’s Instructions published in Kyiv in 1628. By analyzing the various versions of his device and the interplay between the visual and textual components in his published works, I demonstrate how Berynda was able to use it as a means of limiting his endorsement through the paratextual game of concealment. Maintaining a balance between compliance and nonconformity during the times when the Orthodox Church was outlawed in Poland-Lithuania, Berynda codified the use of equivocation through recourse to the Byzantine tradition, contributing to the development of the early modern European humanistic thought.
Two texts, usually dated to the 1590s during the reign of Ivan IV’s son Tsar Fedor Ivanovich, appear remarkable for their critique of Ivan the Terrible. The Vypis’ o vtorom brake (Excerpt on the Second Marriage) of Vasilii III declares that if Vasilii III commits adultery by sending his wife Solomoniia to a convent in order to marry a woman who will give him a male heir, that heir will destroy the realm. The second text, the vita of Metropolitan Filipp, contains extensive criticisms of Ivan’s oprichnina for harming the Orthodox and blames Ivan for listening to slanderers and shedding innocent blood. In one redaction Ivan is even labeled a “tormentor” (muchitel’). Probably the Extract and definitely the vita were composed by monks. This paper asks whether monks in Muscovy during the reign of Ivan the Terrible’s son could compose such accusations against the tsar’s father. What mechanism of censorship, by an abbot, bishop or the patriarch, could prevent such texts from being composed or copied? These questions may very well be unanswerable.
The article deals with the perception and portrayal of Fascism by a group of extraparty Mensheviks, led by Semën Portugeis, that coalesced around the journal Zaria. Focusing on this publication, the article traces the evolution of their views on this phenomenon, from Mussolini’s seizure of power in Italy to its transformation into a pan-European threat, and how these positions were shaped by their own political struggles in the diaspora. It also shows that, even though the study of Fascism (and fascism) was not central to the zaristy, some of their views in regard to it outlived the journal. In particular, it is postulated that it was their attempts to place fascism in tandem with the Bolshevik regime that laid the foundation for the later development of the theory of totalitarianism as an analytical framework.
Petr Chaadaev’s retirement from military service in 1821 has always attracted attention and a number of explanations; however, as the extent of these different theories makes clear, the sense of this event remains incompletely understood. This article offers a deeper contextualization of the affair, one that considers how an emotional affect – Chaadaev’s display of contempt for authority in a personal letter – lies at the heart of the matter. This Chaadaevan affect only becomes fully legible when considered in relation to various contextual elements, including Romantic philosophy of language, early nineteenth-century “radical” political emotions, Russian liberal elite sentiment toward Alexander I, the global democratic movements of the 1810s, and, finally, the intricacies of contempt itself. Taken together, these different elements greatly expand understanding of how Chaadaev and his contemporaries understood his behavior – and why it was ultimately so meaningful as to inspire writers across the nineteenth century from Pushkin to Dostoevsky.
This article examines a particular historical moment as the dramatic events of the Napoleonic Wars were concluding at the Congress of Vienna, through the way in which it was reflected and refracted in the personal writings of a future Decembrist, Nikolai Turgenev. The analysis ensues from the juxtaposition of rapid historical change taking place on the ground, the European peace congress in which Turgenev was an active participant and which would soon be celebrated as the foundational peace framework of the nineteenth century, and the deep melancholy that permeates his diary entries written over this period. Employing a psychoanalytic understanding of melancholy as a type of mourning, and a melancholic as a figure outside of time, this article engages with the diary as “an archive of loss” and as a mechanism by which the “working-through” of the melancholic state takes place. By the end of this ninth diary book, Turgenev was poised to return home as a “radical melancholic,” still a melancholic but now able to act and ready to engage in political work for the happiness of Russia.
This article challenges the traditional divide between “revolt” and “revolution” in interpreting the Decembrist uprising of December 14, 1825, in St. Petersburg. Often seen as either a failed military mutiny or Russia’s first bourgeois revolution, the event is reexamined here through the lens of dynastic law and political legitimacy. Drawing on new archival sources and a fresh reading of state documents, the study argues that Nicholas I’s rise to power marked not just the suppression of a rebellion but a legal and political transformation that signaled the end of dynastic arbitrariness and the start of regulated succession under the 1797 Law on Succession. In this perspective, the interregnum crisis, marked by the Decembrist uprising, emerges as a pivotal moment in the institutionalization of autocratic legitimacy in the Russian Empire.
This article explores the under-researched theme of enthusiasm in Russian Imperial culture and its role in the Decembrist revolts. Enthusiasm played a crucial role in European history, evolving from religious fanaticism and mental disease to an agent of artistic creativity and liberal politics. The post-Napoleonic era and Romanticism embraced enthusiasm and its counterpart, melancholy, as important drivers of political change. Romantic enthusiasm and melancholy became part of the Decembrist generation’s cultural vocabulary in the early 19th century. Liberal noblemen in the post-1815 Russian Empire experienced political boredom and civic melancholy in response to the socio-political status quo, while the 1820s European revolts showed an alternative mode of action. Relying on a framework from the history of emotions, this article argues that the “first Russian revolutionaries,” the Decembrists, utilized enthusiasm as a political, Romantic, and revolutionary norm in structuring their motivation, secret societies, and the failed 1825 revolts.
This article examines the relationship between conspiracy theories and security decision-making in imperial Russia. Under Alexander I, the meta-narrative about the conspiracy of secret societies, such as the Freemasons and the Illuminati, assumed a dominant position in governmental discourse. From the idea of the pan-European revolutionary upheaval, it soon evolved into the concept of a Western plot against Orthodox Russia. After the Decembrist Uprising, this trope became a key perceptual framework within which tsarist officialdom shaped state policy. While the secret police of Nicholas I avoided excessive conspiracy fantasizing, instead reaffirming the image of the virtuous Russian metropole, the functionaries of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and powerful regional administrators like the Polish Viceroy Prince Ivan Paskevich and the Ukrainian Governor-General Dmitrii Bibikov exaggerated fears of revolutionary subversion to justify the expansion of the security apparatus. The article demonstrates the long-lasting impact of the Decembrist conspiracy on the Russian bureaucratic mentality.
