«СКАЗАНИЕ О ХОЛОПЬЕЙ ВОЙНЕ»: ЛИТЕРАТУРНАЯ ИСТОРИЯ И ПРОБЛЕМА ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ ОСНОВЫ

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to restore the literary history and to determine the historical basis of the so-called «The Tale of the Kholop War». This plot of Russian historical literature of the late Middle Ages and Early Modern times has been pre-served in various similar, but textually not directly related versions of the 16th-17th centuries. The earliest among them is the story of the German diplomat Siegmund Herberstein; he presented it with reference to the Novgorod Chronicle. The oldest Russian versions known to science, however, date back to the end of the 17th century. These are «The Tale of Vyatka citizens» and «Historical and Ancient Description» by T. Kamenevich-Rvovsky. The article discusses possible literary sources of the Russian plot dating back to antiquity and proposes a reconstruction of the content of the original text known to Herberstein. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that the origin of «The Tale» is linked to how the Nov-gorod elites feel after the loss of Novgorod's independence in the 15th century. At the same time, the plot of «The Tale» can also be based on elements of an oral tradition dating back to the times of the formation of the Old Russian state.