Valerie Kivelson

Seeing Muscovy Anew: Politics–Institutions–Culture is a snapshot of the field of early Russian history that upends traditional posing of questions, conceptions of tsarist power, and depicts aspects of Russian society that have heretofore remained in the shadows. The genesis of the collection was a conference held in 2015 in tribute to the field-changing scholarship of Nancy Shields Kollmann, William H. Bonsall Professor of History at Stanford University. Written by scholars representing a broad spectrum of interests, the nineteen chapters that comprise the volume employ the careful source study, thorough erudition, and innovative inquiry that define Nancy Kollmann’s oeuvre in a collection that advances interpretations of important new research and adds depth and vibrancy to our understanding of early modern East European history. “Seeing Muscovy Anew”, simultaneously sophisticated and accessible, showcases the fruits of a new phase in Russian history writing. Having moved beyond the state centered analysis favored during the highly politicized years of the Cold War, the decentered inquiry that drives these approaches presents a far broader vision of Russian culture, religion, and society, and, ultimately, politics. Indeed, one of the abiding findings of this volume is the extent to which politics suffused life at every level, be it in the realm of religious praxis or early modern espionage, from the 'care' of the insane to the rights of female property holders. Organized into four thematic sections, these chapters shed light on the politics of rule; dissent and conformity; the interaction of imagery, spirituality, and politics; social history; and the reach, pitfalls, and packaging of various imperial endeavors. These articles acquaint readers with the concerns and legacies of a broad swath of early modern East European society, including merchants, diplomats, spies, “heretics”, monks, church elite, women, forced laborers, the mentally unstable, Polish princes, Ukrainian Cossacks, court poets, academicians and explorers. They probe cartography, pedagogy, innovations in governance in Petrine Russia, and do not shy away from some of the thorniest debates in Russian history, such as the bewildering court politics of Ivan IV. Indeed, bringing new sources to questions of political culture, this volume presents a freshly invigorated view of politics firmly situated in those broader contexts. It will serve as a notable contribution to early modern Russian history and attendant fields. The creative use of sources, bold inquiry, and lucid writing on display throughout—and the sometimes provocative arguments advanced—produce a collection that can be used productively in undergraduate and graduate classrooms.

This article examines how the Black Death is represented visually in the Illustrated Chronicle Compilation (Litsevoi letopisnyi svod), a many-tomed account of the history of Russia compiled and lavishly illustrated at the court of Ivan the Terrible in the 1560s or 1570s. Illustrators and chroniclers depicted ordinary plague victims differently from those of high rank. Lofty individuals, like Grand Prince Semen Ivanovich and his sons, were shown apart from the mass deaths and their deaths were not explicitly attributed to plague. This may be because plague was understood as divine punishment. Nonetheless, the illustrations show the common humanity of plague victims. Illustrators also expressed an appreciation of the organic connections between human and natural spheres and the fragile relations between the two.

In June 1648, a crowd of supplicants approached Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich as he returned to Moscow from a pilgrimage. Rather than accept their petitions, his retinue waved them off and rode into the Kremlin. Still hopeful, the crowd approached the tsaritsa, who followed her husband into the city. This time, the guards drove them off by force. The refusal of the traditional right to petition the tsar proved costly: the city erupted in insurrection. When the ash settled, half of Moscow had burned, and thousands of people had died. Spurning petitions was not the sole cause of the uprising, but it provided the spark. Disappointed petitioners might seem an unlikely set of rebels. A petition, after all, is an exercise in groveling. It is a document or speech that asks, begs, or humbly requests. According to the Oxford En glish Dictionary, it can be "a supplication or prayer; an entreaty; esp. a solemn and humble prayer to the Deity, or to a sovereign or superior." In Muscovy, petitions were called chelobitnye, literally, forehead-beating documents, and indeed the supplicants ritually bowed their foreheads to the ground before the tsar. Moreover, the potential benefits of petitioning would seem too low to be worth a rebellion. Even if the tsar had personally received their supplications, there was no guarantee that their requests would have been granted. Yet Muscovite subjects energetically availed themselves of what they saw as their ancient and inalienable right to hand petitions to the tsar, and, moreover, they expected the ruler would attend to their woes. Petitions historically have served as a primary means of conveying information from below, funneling news upward and allowing rulers to mea sure the pulse of their people. The expectation that those in power would attend to the information contained in petitions was not unique to Rus sia or to the seventeenth century. Shakespeare had Julius Caesar hurry into the Capitol, leaving petitioners futilely proffering their " humble suits." His murder follows immediately after. Charles I's refusal of petitions added an irritant to already tense relations in seventeenth-century England, contributing at some level to his ultimate demise. Back in Rus sia in 1905, another group of humble petitioners marched, crosses and icons aloft, to pre sent a petition to Nicholas II, only to be gunned down by the Cossack guard. Revolution ensued. Most scholarly work on petitions considers the significance of petitions as informational instruments intended to provoke po liti cal action. In older work, petitioning is often represented as a lesser, "immature" form of po liti cal engagement, one invoked by those without other forms of redress. Yet a fascinating body of recent scholarship has upended this impression, showing that petitions can provide a power ful basis for rights claims. Studies demonstrate not only the ubiquity of petitioning practices but also the obligation, both ideological and practical, of those in authority to respond. Norms of reciprocity in such situations are not just polite fictions but are observed as both important cultural touchstones and hardnosed pragmatic strategies of state building and survival. As we have seen, historically monarchs ignore them at their own peril.

This story is a composite tale, based closely on the records from two trials of alleged witches in the late seventeenth-century. Muscovite records, predominantly generated by state administrators or churchmen and reflecting their particular interests, do not usually devote much space to describing people's domestic or emotional lives. Trial records offer a rare point of access to the lives of ordinary people and take us into the usually opaque realm of the serf-and slave-owning household. Transcripts of the testimony provided by plaintiff, accused, and witnesses allow us to hear the voices and inflections of the wide variety of people who came before the courts. Some caution is necessary in reading court transcripts, since the voices of the witnesses were recorded through the pens of court officials, who had their own formulas and agendas. Moreover, witnesses undoubtedly tailored their testimony to suit instrumental ends, such as winning a case or mitigating the harshness of a sentence. Nonetheless, these documents are invaluable for helping us understand the experiences of women like our fictional " Oksan'ka, " who occupied a precarious position as the widow of a soldier. Bereft of her husband and his defined position in society, she lacked the fundamental necessities of survival in a world built around rank and affiliation. Without protection, connections, financial means, a " free person " like Oksan'ka fell into the suspicious gray zone of masterless and rootless people. When she fell into the hands of an unscrupulous " patron, " she found herself in a position where her only defense came in the form of magic. It is important to note that most of the people accused of witchcraft in Muscovite courts were men. A sizable minority of cases, however, involve women, and the story of our fictional Oksan'ka draws on those models.

... From New England to Poland approximately 80 percent of accused witches were female. ... The ratio of male lo female witches in seventeenth-century Mus-covy, nearly seven to three, reversed the typical preponderance, with men comprising the majority of accused witches. ...

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Litsevoi letopisnyi svod, a massive illustrated chronicle of the history of the world and of Russia was produced in a single manuscript. Consisting of over 20,000 pages, with over 17,000 illustrations, the work should be a treasure trove for visually-minded scholarship. However, at first glance, the figures appear rigid and formulaic, offering little promise for interpretation. This article examines a small subset of these images that depict the Russian conquest of the Muslim Khanate of Astrakhan in 1556. The images deploy an unexpectedly powerful language of emotion, expressed through gesture. The Astrakhan images provide opportunities not only to explore early modern Russian ideas about emotion, but also to consider human connections across the Christian-Muslim divide.

... to by the title Istoriia Sibiri) are modified from the English version avail-able in Yermak's Campaign in Siberia: A Selection of Documents Translated from the Russian Chronicles by Tatiana Minorsky and David Wileman, ed. Terence Armstrong (London, 1975). Gol'denberg uses ...

... I would like to thank Nancy Shields Kollmann, Eve Levin, Laura Downs, Miriam Bodian, andSueann Caulfield, Susan Juster, and Susan Johnson ... In 1640 Tito Osipov, a Mosal'sk cossack, charged Pavel Dolgoi, a fellow cossack, with threatening him with bewitchment, but Tito ...

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Litsevoi letopisnyi svod, a massive illustrated chronicle of the history of the world and of Russia was produced in a single manuscript. Consisting of over 20,000 pages, with over 17,000 illustrations, the work should be a treasure trove for visually-minded scholarship. However, at first glance, the figures appear rigid and formulaic, offering little promise for interpretation. This article examines a small subset of these images that depict the Russian conquest of the Muslim Khanate of Astrakhan in 1556. The images deploy an unexpectedly powerful language of emotion, expressed through gesture. The Astrakhan images provide opportunities not only to explore early modern Russian ideas about emotion, but also to consider human connections across the Christian-Muslim divide.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, between the reign of Ivan the Terrible and that of Peter the Great, Muscovite Russian forces swept eastward, conquering, colonising, and controlling territories reaching from the Volga to the Pacific. Unlike contemporary Western European empires, Russians left few theoretical considerations of what this imperial advance signified to them or how they understood their role as imperial conquerors and overlords. They did, however, leave a colourful collection of illustrated chronicles depicting their battles with the many varied peoples of the steppe and Siberia. Filled with blood and carnage, these images employ surprising visual tropes that distinguish moral from immoral and just from unjust uses of violence, with significant implications for understanding early modern Russian policies of imperial incorporation.

This article surveys the few witchcraft trials from the Novogrod region that survive in central archives of the Razriadnyi prikaz from the seventeenth century to determine whether or not there is some particular skew to the cases from that region. Although the number of cases is very small, they all show an uncommon willingness on the part of community members to accept benign, medical explanations for the use of roots and grasses
instead of attributing malevolent supernatural powers to those ingredients and their users.

This story is a composite tale, based closely on the records from two trials of alleged witches in the late seventeenth-century. Muscovite records, predominantly generated by state administrators or churchmen and reflecting their particular interests, do not usually devote much space to describing people's domestic or emotional lives. Trial records offer a rare point of access to the lives of ordinary people and take us into the usually opaque realm of the serf-and slave-owning household. Transcripts of the testimony provided by plaintiff, accused, and witnesses allow us to hear the voices and inflections of the wide variety of people who came before the courts. Some caution is necessary in reading court transcripts, since the voices of the witnesses were recorded through the pens of court officials, who had their own formulas and agendas. Moreover, witnesses undoubtedly tailored their testimony to suit instrumental ends, such as winning a case or mitigating the harshness of a sentence. Nonetheless, these documents are invaluable for helping us understand the experiences of women like our fictional " Oksan'ka, " who occupied a precarious position as the widow of a soldier. Bereft of her husband and his defined position in society, she lacked the fundamental necessities of survival in a world built around rank and affiliation. Without protection, connections, financial means, a " free person " like Oksan'ka fell into the suspicious gray zone of masterless and rootless people. When she fell into the hands of an unscrupulous " patron, " she found herself in a position where her only defense came in the form of magic. It is important to note that most of the people accused of witchcraft in Muscovite courts were men. A sizable minority of cases, however, involve women, and the story of our fictional Oksan'ka draws on those models.

... bore responsibility for collecting the taxes and tribute demanded by the Khan from all of ... designated Rus' representatives with military might, intervening directly when their chosen Grand Prince met internal ... For the first century or so of their rule, the Mongols managed to play the ...

... Thanks, too, to Eugene Avrutin, John Bushnell, David Goldfrank, Richard Hellie, Tim Hofer, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Michael Khodarkovsky, Nancy Kollmann, MM Krom, Ron Suny, Elise Wirtschafter, and the Chicago Russian History Workshop for their helpful suggestions. ...