The article deals with the reconstruction of the political governance in Novgorod from the first half to mid-11th century, which was being interpreted very differently due to significant discrepancies in the sources. The Novgorod prince was usually the son of the Kiev one, but not necessarily the eldest (who could also occupy another see, e.g., of Turov), or even, perhaps, the son of his deceased older brother: Novgorod received special significance also as the previous throne of the most powerful Kiev princes (Vladimir Svyatoslavich and Yaroslav Vladimirovich). Any prince in Novgorod of this period always ruled alone, without a posadnik, whom the Kiev prince (often the former Novgorod prince) usually appointed there in those situations when he did not have a sufficiently adult son, and who was his relative, but not a Rurikid. Contrary to the text "And behold [the princes] in Novgorod", Konstantin Dobrynich was removed and exiled not during the accession of Vladimir Yaroslavich in 1036, but in 1019, 1020, or perhaps even 1021. No later than the war with Mstislav in 1023-1024 begun, Novgorod was ruled again by Yaroslav Vladimirovich himself, and from 1026, when he returned to Kiev, until 1036, it was apparently ruled by his posadnik. The description of the reign of Ilya Yaroslavich coincides with the facts of the reign of Vladimir Yaroslavich, and Ilya could have been his Christian name. After the death of Vladimir Yaroslavich (1036-1052), Novgorod came back to his father Yaroslav, who did not pass it on to his next eldest son Izyaslav, since he was reigning in Turov in 1054. Yaroslav, who was in Southern Rus' in 1052-1054, could only have appointed his posadnik to govern Novgorod in 1052-most likely, Ostromir, whose family was closely connected with Vladimir Yaroslavich. After Yaroslav's death in 1054, Izyaslav, who received both Kiev and Novgorod, reappointed Ostromir as posadnik, which he remained until at least 1057: he was possibly the last posadnik to rule Novgorod independently, without a local prince. It is quite possible that the Novgorod was in possession of Rostislav Vladimirovich between 1061 (or even earlier) and 1064, and then Mstislav Izyaslavich ruled there only in 1064-1067.
The foot washing ceremony performed on Maundy Thursday recreates the events described in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John: a clergyman, usually a bishop or an abbot of a monastery, washes the feet of twelve clerics or monks, just as Christ, according to the Gospel of John, washed the feet of his twelve disciples (apostles). One of these apostles was Judas. In the modern foot washing ceremony, none of the participants represent Judas. The situation was different in pre-Petrine Russia, where each participant was given the name of one of the apostles, and one of them had to play the role of Judas. As it is demonstrated in the present paper, the ceremony itself was a liturgical drama, a theatrical performance: the foot washing ritual was presented as a reenactment of the Gospel story. The evolution of this ritual was largely associated with the elimination of the role of Judas from the cast of characters.
The article examines the famous political metaphor: Russia resembles an unshakable cliff against which the waves of European revolutionary sea break in vain. This image is well known from Vassily Zhukovsky's To the Russian Giant (1848) and Fedor Tyutchev's The Sea and the Cliff (1848-1851), but it was invented earlier, being wide-spread in the political rhetoric of the time. The article reconstructs the pre-history of the metaphor and reveals its association with other political metaphors. It tries to explain why the image of a cliff in stormy sea was so widespread in conservative journalism and poetry. The author of the article seeks to find out, what kind of political imaginary could stand behind such rhetorical figures and what kind of political expectations could be inspired by this rhetoric. The article also tries to outline in general the methodology of investigating social, political and ideological metaphors.
In accordance with the principles of imitatio and aemulatio Derzhavin saw himself not only as a translator of Horace, but also as an Horatian poet in his own right. Reading Horace not in Latin, but in German, modifying this tradition under the specific conditions of eighteenth-century Russian culture as well as of his personal inclinations. In addition to the general analysis of Derzhavin's use of Horace, the article offers detailed comparisons of three of Derzhavin's Horatian poems with the original texts. It concludes with a reflection on the fundamental change in Derzhavin's conception not only of translation, but also of poetry which he experienced in the last years of his life under the possible influence of Herder's aesthetics and early Russian historicism.
The article presents new archival data that provide reconstruction of the history of two secular French and German teachers who worked at the Trinity Seminary in the 1780s: Antoine Orenov and Mikhail Vysheslavtsev. Despite their different backgrounds (a foreign pastor and a Russian nobleman), both of them were anomalies in the clergy environment. New archival findings allowed rectifying the age and details of a poet and translator of the late 18th and early 19th centuries Mikhail Vysheslavtsev's biography. The article reconstructs the reasons for their appearance in the seminary as teachers, their position, and their involvement in teaching French, German, and other subjects. This reconstruction reveals an interesting model of cultural and social interaction that was not typical of the seminary environment during this period, but was, as it turns out, possible.
The article, first published by a well-known British scholar W. F. Ryan (1937-2023) in 1971, discusses curious texts within Russian manuscripts that he had discovered, associated with the Church calendar, entitled The Uighur cycle of twelve years containing the Polovtsian [Cuman] years'. This is a short piece, usually presented in diagrammatic form. Ryan found this in five manuscripts of the 17th and 18th centuries. These texts clearly have a common origin. The first text is a series of concentric circles divided into twelve. The first circle contains the names of the twelve animals of the oriental duodenary cycle: Mouse, Ox,-Pig etc. The next circle contains the Russian names of the signs of the zodiac, the next shows the propitiousness of the sign. The last carries the first letter of the name of the month in the Julian calendar. Another text includes in addition to the circular diagram a hand diagram in which the joints and sections of the fingers are marked by the names of cyclic signs. It is entitled The Uighur hand for 12 years. Another version of the text also gives the parts of the body etc. governed by each sign and offers predictions (albeit limited in scope). The presence of texts of this sort in Russian manuscripts linked to the Church calendar was probably associated with diplomatic relations between Russia and the Golden Horde.
This is an introduction to the publication of the article by the outstanding British scholar W. F. Ryan (1937-2023) The Oriental Duodenary Animal Cycle in Old Russian Manuscripts (1971). The text in question was identified by Ryan in five manuscripts dating to 17th-18th cent. Most probably, it originally reflected the needs of diplomatic correspondence with the Golden Horde, which used this calendar. The present introduction contains information about the late scholar and the scientific merits of his works, and about the outstanding importance of his article. More than 50 years passed after the first English publication of this work. For this reason, some additions were needed in both contents and bibliography. The additions and corrections are related to the earliest examples of the use of the cycle by the Turkic peoples and by the Danube Proto-Bulgarians (Turks) which survived in the Medieval Bulgarian and Russian manuscript traditions omitted by Ryan. The latter demonstrate earlier acquaintance of the Slavic and Byzantine written tradition with the Oriental calendar. Some information concerning Medieval Russian written text dealing with this cycle is added, in particular two manuscripts dated to the 15th cent. and one inscription dated to the 14th cent. The information on terminology associated with the cycle also underwent some corrections.
This paper provides a transcription of an inscription in honour of the Orthodox saint Gabriel of Zabludow, also known as Gabriel of Bialystok, Slutsk. Today only a photograph of the inscription, kept in the collections of the National Historical Museum of the Republic of Belarus, remains. The inscription consists of two not entirely identical syllabic epitaphs in honour of Gabriel, dating from the mid-18th century, one in Cyrillic, the other in Latin script. In both cases, the text of the epitaph is written in thirteen syllables with a caesura after the seventh syllable, with paired feminine rhyme. Both epitaphs report that Gabriel was murdered in 1690 in Bialystok (now in Poland) by a group of Jews, indicating that the inscription is set in the context of medieval and early modern accusations against Jews known as the "Blood Libel". The authorship of the epitaphs to Gabriel cannot be accurately identified at this time. The two epitaphs are the only source of information about the child-martyr Gabriel; everything that has ever been written about him goes back to this text. The two syllabic epitaphs to Gabriel represent a typical example of Baroque occasional verse, since the funeral inscription was one of the most widespread cultural phenomena during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The case of Saint Gabriel of Zabludow is a very late example of the memorialisation of infant martyrs, alleged victims of "ritual murder", in the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The autocephalous Orthodox community of the Polish-Lithuanian state had an extremely tense relationship with the rapidly growing Greek Catholic Church; in such a situation the veneration of its own saints, and of Gabriel in particular, constituted a more conscious confessional affiliation. Under the dominance of the Polish sociocultural model, an inscription intended for the Orthodox community was in fact the product of inter-confessional cultural symbiosis.
The paper deals with the provenance of a hoard from the first half of the 15th century, discovered near the village Litva in the Maladzyechna district of the Minsk region in Belarus. The hoard included a precious belt set, known under the conventional name "Vytautas' Belt", which is now stored in the National Historical Museum of the Republic of Belarus. New data allowed establishing that the same hoard also included another belt set and three silver bowls-two inscribed with the names of Pan (Lord) Vasily Bratoshich and one with the name of his wife, Princess Ulyana. They are currently kept in a private collection. Comparing these findings with written sources suggests that the hoard was concealed at the end of 1432, after Grand Duke of Lithuania Zygimantas K & eogon;stutaitis regained control of Kreva castle, which had been transferred shortly before by its lieutenant Vasily Bratoshich to Grand Duke Svitrigaila Algirdaitis, who was struggling for power with Zygimantas. The identification of the hoard's owner not only sheds light on the wealth structure of the noble family, represented by movable property (jewelry), but also allows us to characterize Vasily Bratoshich's social strategy-a member of an untitled but noble and influential Orthodox kinship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His marriage to an Orthodox princess was aimed at maintaining and elevating his status without converting to Catholicism. Despite inscriptions on the bowls indicating Vasily's affiliation with the Bratoshich descendants, the kinship unity was unsettled during the dynastic war of the 1430s, which influenced the fate of the hoard.
The paper discusses the distribution and competition of infinitive constructions with the auxiliary verbs imeti, imati and jati, which have a reference to the future, in the 15th century East Slavic official writing. The verbs imeti and imati in combination with the infinitive could have two paradigms: imam and im & ecaron;ju, imaju and maju, respectively. The verb jati also had forms paronymically similar to the latter (imu, imesi, etc.). This could give rise to interaction between constructions with these auxiliaries. The data for the research was collected from the Middle Russian, Middle Belarusian and Middle Ukrainian official documents since the 15th century. It is argued that in the 15th century Middle Russian writing, there was no unification of the paradigms of imeti and jati. Two clear poles could be distinguished: construction imeti + infinitive with the meaning of the future with strong assertion in Church Slavonic writing, and periphrasis jati + infinitive with a phase or general factual meaning in vernacular writing. In the 15th century Old Belarusian official documents, the auxiliary verb imati/imeti had a set of paradigms imaju/im & ecaron;ju/maju, the paradigm imu, imesi belonging to the verb jati. There was no interaction between imeti and jati, since the maju-paradigm stronlgy prevailed, so that there were no sufficient grounds for confusion. In Old Ukrainian official documents, the use of the constructions in question varied depending on the region. In the Moldavian documents, the rapprochement between imeti and jati was most clearly evident. In the dialects of this territory, the boundary between modal constructions with imati/imeti and the phase one with jati began to blur, which contributed to the expansion of the construction imu + infinitive into the modal domain and its penetration into the contexts of the pure future tense.
The paper is based on the author's complete accent description of one rather independent fragment of the medieval Serbian accent system, presented in two manuscripts of the fifteenth century. It deals with one of the most striking problems concerning the genesis of the system under discussion (and a number of similar Slavic systems)-the problem of the development of the so-called "poluotmetnost" in the present tense of a number of *& ecaron;/i-verbs dating back to the Proto-Slavic accent paradigms *b and *c. In this article, we propose an attempt to solve this problem, which seems to be substantiated in the accentual behavior of the class of *i-verbs in the studied South Shtokavian system as well.
The article considers those episodes from the notes of Afanasy Nikitin that allow us to doubt his merchant status. Based on the analysis of grammar, vocabulary and pragmatics of Afanasy's messages, it is concluded that he traveled along the Volga and further as the head of a small community of people and that he differed from his companions in rank. A. G. Bobrov's assumptions that Afanasy fulfilled some assignment given to him in Russia are confirmed. It is suggested that he could have been a boyar from a famous Tver family, and his possible relatives are named.
As a result of the Munich Agreement and the subsequent dissolution of the residual Czechoslovakia, a completely new political and state-legal situation emerged in the Czech lands in 1938-1939, which also had an impact on local ethnographic activities. Until recently, the prevailing view in Czech academia was that the closure of the Czech universities from 1939 meant that virtually all ethnographic activities in the Czech lands had ceased. However, this assertion is true only to a limited extent and, if the activities of Czech-German colleagues are included in the domestic ethnographic tradition, the picture changes radically. The aim of this article is to present thematic and methodological aspects of wartime ethnographic research in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, based on an analysis of the relation of ethnography to the then "Slavic studies". The article devotes particular attention to two prominent figures in the field of Sudeten-German ethnography at the time, namely Bruno Schier and Josef Hanika.
This paper deals with the phrase intonation of two Southern Russian dialects- Eastern (Rasskazovsky district, Tambov region) and Western (Pochinkovsky district, Smolensk region). The study conducted reveals that the prosodic system of the former one is relatively similar to that one of the Modern Standard Russian and the Eastern Middle-Russian Vladimir dialects, sharing with them most bitonal pitch accents (H*+L, L*+H, L+H*) and association of tonal structures with the basic communicative categories-statements, yes-no questions, wh-question, non-finality, commands and requests. The main peculiar properties of the Tambov dialect as compared to Standard Russian is the phonological distinction between high and low initial boundary tones %L and %H. The Smolensk dialect, by contrast, utilizes two monotonal pitch accents-H* and L*-as opposed to absence of such accents in Standard Russian and presence of the only L* in Tambov dialect. There are as well two initial boundary tones-%H and %L in this dialect. Thus, the intonational system of Smolensk idiom is much more focused on the level tunes than the Tambov one, while both dialects studied share two basic peculiarities which differ them from the Standard idiom: the lack of final boundary tone's truncation in polar question and the of two initial tones.
The article deals with the way the Russian hagiographer Epiphanius the Wise conceptualised, composed and wrote his texts. As part of the preface to his Eulogy to Sergius of Radonezh, two fragments borrowed from the Slavic translation of the Sermon on the Annunciation to Joachim and Anna by John of Euboea were identified, which, along with borrowings from other sources, force us to reconsider the conclusion that Epiphanius the Wise's method of writing was "free". The creative process of this author included some preparatory work, in particular, the selection of literary sources and the exception of the necessary passages, as well as subsequent work on adapting the borrowed text using draft extracts, so it could not be free. The same fragments from the source of Epiphanius the Wise were included in the Tale of the Appearance of the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan in the edition of Hermogenes of Kazan (1594). This fact can be explained either as the independent work of two authors and the coincidence of their literary tasks, literary tastes and literary techniques, or, less likely, as a conscious orientation of Hermogenes of Kazan on the work of Epiphanius the Wise that found its expression in the borrowed fragments.
The article deals with the translation and editorial techniques of early Slavic scribes based on the lives of saints included in the Slavonic Menaion-Reader for October. These Menaion-Readers are preserved in the South and East Slavic traditions in late codices, usually not older than the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries, and a vita may be presented in several versions-translations or redactions. Although they can only be traced back to late codices, the text of many vitae shows lexical and syntactical acquaintance with the two major early Slavonic translation schools, the Cyrillo-Methodian school and the Preslav school. Some of these early vitae were used when the long redaction of the Prologue was elaborated in Rus' at the end of the twelfth century, in particular the vitae of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, St. Varus and others. The article examines which version (translation or redaction) was available to the compilers of the Prologue in each case, taking into account both East and South Slavic codices as well as the Great Menaion of Metropolitan Macarius. It is concluded that the composition of the Menaia was already heterogeneous at the time when the Prologue was compiled since it contains excerpts from translations of different schools and from various redactions; the methods used by translators and editors of hagiographies are clarified. The appendix to the article lists all the hagiographies for October which are known in several versions.
The author examines which version of The Tale on the Taking of Tsargrad was included in the original Sbornik (i.e. Miscellany) by Ivan Peresvetov. Challenging A. A. Zimin's hypothesis that Peresvetov created a "special" late redaction of the Tale, the author demonstrates that the original Sbornik contained its "ordinary" late redaction, which was later reworked only in the 17th century. This conclusion, drawn from a textual comparison of several copies of the Sbornik, is further supported by an analysis of the grammatical features of the "special" redaction of the Tale. The author argues that the text of the "special" redaction reflects the 17th-century trend toward linguistic "simplification". The findings also suggest that the "Incomplete" redaction of Peresvetov's Sbornik better preserves the original text, whereas the "Complete" redaction, which Zimin favored, represents a later adaptation. This reinterpretation offers new insights into the reception and cultural significance of Peresvetov's works in the 17th century.
The article analyzes early evidence of the presence of the articles from the Alphabetical Syntagma in Rus'. It is shown that in the first half of the fifteenth century in Rus' two types of them occur. There are translations of article excerpts made from the Greek Syntagma in the chancery of the Metropolitan of All Rus' Photius. Along with them, one can find individual articles in Slavic translation of the 14th century that came to Rus' as part of a certain canonical collection (mostly abbreviated articles from the literary environment (convoy) after the main text of the Syntagma). The list of metropolitanates and archbishoprics of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, also found in the convoy to the Alphabetic Syntagma, can be attributed to the translations made in the metropolitan chancery. The canonical collection containing texts dating back to the Syntagma was the archetype of the Tver Rules and the manuscript KB XII. The author argues that the arrangement of materials from the Alphabetical Syntagma in the manuscript KB XII is closer to the archetype than the one in the Tver Rules. It is also suggested that articles from the convoy of the Alphabetical Syntagma ended up in the Kormchaya of the Danilov subgroup of the Serbian redaction as a result of contamination of the Tver Rules and their archetype.
The article examines the novel by N.Berberova Tverdotrubov (1930). In the first publication, the text had a subtitle-To the cycle of "Billancourt Holidays", but in the 1970-1990s Berberova deliberately did not include this text into the book and never published it again (unlike other novels). The reconstruction of the creative history of the cycle carried out in the article shows that Berberova's work on her own style was more complex process, than she declared in the preface. Her work included not only serious reflections on creative technique, a close study of the predecessors' and contemporaries' artistic manner, but also the need to take into account public opinions on certain authors in the literary field. Tverdotrubov significantly stands out from the general logic of the writer's evolution indicated by Berberova since it was written under the influence of F. Dostoevsky's style. Unlike the previous stylistic guidelines of the 1920s (M. Zoshchenko and I. Babel), the public did not accept such a turn. As a result, Berberova had to change her literary strategy radically, focusing not so much on her own taste, but on the demands of the reading audience. The text of the story is republished below.
Most people in old Russia were not informed about the name of Leviathan that is used in several books of the Bible to designate a mysterious sea monster. This is why Theodor Ivanovich Karpov, a well-educated Moscow aristocrat, having encountered the name of Leviathan in a translation of the Third Book of Ezra, asked Maxim the Greek, who had just arrived from Athos, for clarification. Karpov addressed a special letter on this topic to the learned Greek monk. However, he never received a reply, or possibly Maxim the Greek's response was later lost. Instead, starting from the 16th century, a small article entitled On Leviathan used to be copied (and then used to be published) together with Karpov's letter. Although the article On Leviathan lacks any signs of epistolary form, scribes and then publishers used to perceive it as Maxim the Greek's response to his friend's letter. As it turns out, the article is actually an extract from Chapter 10 of Guido de Columna's Historia destructionis Troiae. Historia was translated from Latin at the end of the 15th century or (more likely) in the 1520s-1530s. The text of the article On Leviathan is taken from this translation. We have reason to think that the excerpt On Leviathan was extracted from the translation of Historia and added to Karpov's epistle by a scribe from the Chudov Monastery. This was done at the end of the 16th century. The article On Leviathan is published en regard with the text from the Latin original and from the Russian translation of Historia destructionis Troiae.
