Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin (93 page)

RENAISSANCE

The only biography of Ivan III in English is John Fennell,
Ivan the Great of Moscow
(London, 1961), and the period of his reign has not attracted large numbers of English-speaking specialists. For an overview of the era as a whole, see Robert O. Crummey,
The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613
(London and New York, 1987). For different aspects of the evolution of Ivan’s court, see Gustave Alef, ‘The adoption of the Muscovite two-headed eagle: a discordant view’,
Speculum,
41 (1966), pp. 1–21, and G. P. Majeska, ‘The Moscow coronation of 1498 reconsidered’,
Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas,
26 (1978), pp. 353–61.

Ivan the Terrible has drawn a larger press, including Isabel de Madariaga’s biography,
Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2005). Today, the most thoughtful writing on Ivan the Terrible and his era is the work of Sergei Bogatyrev, and an introduction to it might be his chapter, ‘Ivan the Terrible’, in Maureen Perrie, ed.,
The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 1: From Early Rus’ to
1689. On the coronation, see also D. B. Miller, ‘The coronation of Ivan IV of Moscow’,
Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas,
15 (1967), pp. 559–74. Ivan’s peevish correspondence with his former courtier Andrei Kurbsky was translated by J. L. I. Fennell as
The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564–1579
(Cambridge, 1955), but see also Edward L. Keenan,
The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha
(Cambridge, Mass., 1971) for the suggestion that the whole thing might be a fraud. On Ivan’s health, see Charles Halperin, ‘Ivan IV’s insanity’,
Russian History,
34 (2007), pp. 207–18 and Edward L. Keenan, ‘Ivan IV and the King’s Evil:
Ni maka li to budet?
’,
Russian History,
20 (1993), pp. 5–13; for his image and later reputation, see Maureen Perrie,
The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore
(Cambridge, 1987).

The structure of the Muscovite elite is discussed in Gustave Alef,
Rulers and Nobles in Fifteenth-Century Moscow
(London, 1983), Nancy Shields Kollmann,
Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System
(Stanford, Calif., 1987) and also Ann Kleimola, ‘The changing condition of the Muscovite elite’,
Russian History,
6, 2 (1979), pp. 210–29. The whole issue of slavery, which played such a role in large state projects at this time, is explored in Richard Hellie,
Slavery in Russia, 1450–1725
(Chicago, 1982), and a related but more technical issue of court language in Marshall Poe, ‘What did Russians mean when they called themselves “Slaves of the Tsar”?’,
Slavic Review
57, 3 (1998), pp. 585–608. For the structure of Ivan’s new bureaucracy, see Peter B. Brown, ‘Muscovite government bureaus’,
Russian History,
10, 3 (1983). Art, religion and court ideology are discussed in two articles by Daniel Rowland: ‘Moscow – the third Rome or the new Israel?’,
Russian Review,
55 (1996), pp. 591–614, and ‘Two cultures, one throne room’, in Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene, eds.,
Orthodox Russia
(University Park, Pa., 2003), pp. 33–57. Michael Flier’s essay in the same volume (‘Till the end of time: the apocalypse in Russian historical experience before 1500’) provides an insight into the mentality of the times, and also see his essay on the Palm Sunday ritual: ‘Breaking the code: the image of the tsar in the Muscovite Palm Sunday ritual’, in Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland, eds.,
Medieval Russian Culture,
vol. 2, California Slavic Studies (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994), pp. 213–42.

For European travellers’ tales, see W. Thomas et al., trans.,
Travels to Tana and Persia by Josafa Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini
(London, 1873), which relates Contarini’s experience of Ivan III’s Moscow. The impressions of Jenkinson and others are collected in Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey, eds.,
Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers
(Madison, Wisc., 1968). Staden’s vivid memoir of Ivan the Terrible’s Muscovy is available in English as Heinrich von Staden,
The Land and Government of Muscovy,
trans. Thomas Esper (Stanford, Calif., 1967), and Possevino has been translated by Hugh F. Graham as
The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, SJ
(Pittsburg, Pa., 1977).

TIME OF TROUBLES

Among the English sources, I learned most from Chester S. L. Dunning,
Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty
(University Park, Pa., 2001), a thoughtful as well as thought-provoking study of early modern Russia. Maureen Perrie’s
Pretenders and Popular Modernism in Early Modern Russia
(Cambridge, 1995) was also illuminating, and the chapter on Boris Godunov’s career in volume 1 of the
Cambridge History of Russia
that she edited and translated (A. P. Pavlov, ‘Fedor Ivanovich and Boris Godunov’, pp. 264–85) is insightful.

The most respected Russian historian of the Troubles is S. F. Platonov, whose authoritative but dated
Time of Troubles
has been translated by John T. Alexander (Lawrence, Kans., 1985). Two biographies of Boris Godunov, one by Platonov (Gulf Breeze, Fl., 1973) and one by Ruslan Skrynnikov (Gulf Breeze, Fl., 1982) are accessible in English, as is Skrynnikov’s vivid
Time of Troubles: Russia in Crisis, 1604–1618
(Gulf Breeze, Fl., 1988).

The travellers whose witness illustrated my account deserve a chapter of their own. The most colourful are Jacques Margeret,
The Russian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Moscow: A Seventeenth-century French Account,
trans. and ed. Chester S. L. Dunning (Pittsburg, Pa., 1983); Isaac Massa,
A Short History of the Peasant Wars in Moscow under the Reigns of Various Sovereigns down to the Year 1610,
trans. G. E. Orchard (Toronto, 1982); Stanislaw Zolkiewski,
Expedition to Moscow: A Memoir,
trans. M. W. Stephen (London, 1959) and
The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia,
trans. Samuel H. Baron (Stanford, Calif., 1967).

Readers with an interest in maps may pursue it through Valerie Kivelson’s
Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia
(Ithaca, NY, 2006). The economic background to the Troubles is one subject of Richard Hellie,
Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy
(Chicago and London, 1971) and similar problems are also explored in Marshall Poe and Eric Lohr, eds.,
The Military and Society in Russian History, 1350–1917
(Leiden, 2002).

ROMANOV MUSCOVY

I can think of no more entertaining introduction than Paul of Aleppo’s notes, the full version of which is available in English as
The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch: Written by His Attendant Archdeacon, Paul of Aleppo, in Arabic,
trans. F. C. Belfour, 2 vols. (London, 1836). The history of the period, however, is covered more soberly in Paul Dukes,
The Making of Russian Absolutism, 1613–1801
(London, 1982) and Robert O. Crummey,
Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613–1689
(Princeton, NJ, 1983). Religion, which played such a prominent role at the Romanov court, is explained by Paul Bushkovitch,
Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(New York, 1992), while P. Meyendorff,
Russia, Ritual and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the Seventeenth Century
(New York, 1991) and G. Michels,
At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia
(Stanford, Calif., 1999) both deal with the Great Schism. For blood-curdling detail of the results, see Michael Cherniavsky, ‘The Old Believers and the New Religion’,
Slavic Review,
25, 1 (March 1966), pp. 1–39.

The Romanovs are the subject of Lindsey Hughes’ book of the same title (London, 2008), and Philip Longworth has a biography of Aleksei Mikhailovich,
Alexis, Tsar of all the Russias
(London, 1984). The impressions of Aleksei’s doctor, Samuel Collins, were published as
The Present State of Russia: A Letter to a Friend at London, by an Eminent Person residing at the Czar’s Court
(London, 1671). Aleksei’s law code can be consulted in Richard Hellie, ed. and trans.,
The Muscovite Law Code (
Ulozhenie
) of 1649
(Irvine, Calif., 1988), and serfdom’s effects on the peasants, then and later, are discussed in David Moon,
The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1930
(London and New York, 1999) as well as Jerome Blum’s older, magnificent,
Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Centuries
(Princeton, NJ, 1961). At the time of writing, one of the most illuminating eye-witness accounts of the Muscovite court, written at the Swedish court by the defector Grigory Kotoshikhin, was being translated into English in its entirety for the first time; the publication will add considerably to the general appreciation of this arcane world among English-speaking readers.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Lindsey Hughes’ biography of Sofiya,
Sophia, Regent of Russia
(London and New Haven, Conn., 1990) remains the best available in English, and her biographies of Peter (
Peter the Great: A Biography
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2004)) and the more comprehensive
Russia in the Age of Peter the Great
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 1998) are models of scholarship and clear writing. For even more, see Robert K. Massie’s award-winner,
Peter the Great
(London, 1980 and reissued several times). Catherine has also attracted many biographers, the most recent of whom include Isabel de Madariaga (
Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great
(London, 1981)) and Simon Dixon (
Catherine the Great
(London, 2009)). The rulers after Peter’s death are the subjects of E. V. Anisimov,
Five Empresses: Court Life in Eighteenth-century Russia,
trans. Kathleen Carroll (Westport, Va., 2004).

Among the most illuminating pieces of new scholarship on this era, Ernest A. Zitser’s,
The Transfigured Kingdom
(Ithaca, NY and London, 2004) stands out for its approach to Peter’s raucous court. A more traditional work, which covers the development of court ceremony and Russian sovereignty since Peter’s time, is Richard Wortman’s magnificent
Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy,
most widely available now in a single volume edition (Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2006). For politics at the beginning of Peter’s reign, see Paul Bushkovitch,
Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power
(Cambridge, 2001).

The sudden change in architectural style is the subject of James Cracraft,
The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture
(Chicago, Ill., 1988) and Albert J. Schmidt,
The Architecture and Planning of Classical Moscow
(Philadelphia, Pa., 1989). Cracraft’s later volumes include
The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery
(Chicago, Ill., 1997), which continues many of the discussions begun in his work on buildings. Catherine’s passions are among the subjects discussed in Dmitry Shvidkovsky’s work on Charles Cameron,
The Empress and the Architect: British Architecture and Gardens at the Court of Catherine the Great
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 1996). For a more general survey, see Lindsey Hughes, ‘Russian culture in the eighteenth century’, in Dominic Lieven, ed.,
The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 2, Imperial Russia 1689–1917
(Cambridge, 2008), pp. 67–91.

NINETEENTH CENTURY

The nineteenth century began with the Napoleonic Wars and ended on the eve of revolution, so the potential literature is vast. An introduction to the war of 1812 is Adam Zamoyski’s
1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow
(London, 2005), which draws on many Russian sources. Daria Olivier,
The Burning of Moscow 1812
(London, 1966), is a more specific account of Moscow’s suffering. Among the memoirs available in English (it would take a whole book to list those in French or Russian), the best is probably Comte P.-P. de Ségur,
History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812,
2 vols. (London, 1826) or the abridged
New York Times
edition,
Defeat: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign,
trans. J. David (New York, 2008). Another first-hand source is General Armand de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza,
With Napoleon in Russia,
from the Original Memoirs as edited by Jean Hanoteau; abridged with an introduction by George Libaire (Mineola, NY, 2005).

The conservative intellectual atmosphere in Moscow is reviewed in Alexander M. Martin,
Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I
(DeKalb, Ill., 1997). Martin’s essay in the
Cambridge History of Russia
(‘Russia and the legacy of 1812’, vol. 2, pp. 145–61) is another excellent starting-point for the culture of the period, as is Rosamund Bartlett, ‘Russian culture: 1801–1917’ in the same volume, pp. 92–115. On romanticism, and especially its view of landscape, see Christopher D. Ely,
This Meager Nature: Landscape and Identity in Imperial Russia
(DeKalb, Ill., 2002). The mid-century romantic nationalist movement is the subject of Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, ed.,
Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past
(Leiden and Boston, Mass., 2010), and was also featured in a major exhibition at the New York Public Library,
Russia Imagined,
from March–June 2007 (catalogue by Wendy Salmond (New York, 2006)). The best introduction to the music of the era is Richard Taruskin’s
Defining Russia Musically
(Princeton, NJ, 1997).