Die Geschichte Russlands im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert aus der Perspektive seiner Regionen by Andreas s> Kappeler (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 76I Kappeler, Andreas (ed).Die Geschichte Russlands imi6. undI7. Jlahrhundert ausder Perspektive seinerRegionen. Forschungen zur osteuropaischen Geschichte, 63. Ostueuropa-Institut der Freien Universitat Berlin. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2004. 430 pp. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. ?78.oo (paperback). THIS welcome addition to the growing number of works on Russian regional history consists of twenty-five contributionsin six sections from eight countries . First, S. 0. Shmidt and Carsten Goehrke contribute useful historiographical surveys, Schmidt making the distinction between parochial kraevedenie and the wider context of regionologiia, even glokalizatsiia, an amalgam of the local and the global;and Goehrkeusing the examples of the North and Cossackdom to support his argument against Staatsfetischismus. The second section, on justice and administration,begins with Nancy Shields Kollmann finding that local custom persistedalong with state control in Beloozero and Arzamas. V. N. Glaz'ev concludes that the central government relied on estate representativesin the South, while Andre Berelowitch scrutinizesthe influence of family networks in the Middle Volga. A. L. Khoroshkevich detects no more than minor changes to the full titles of the Grand Duke and Tsar in the sixteenth century, all from Siberia. In Section Three, looking to the West, particularly Smolensk and Novgorod, M. M. Krom suggests that by about i6oo 'service patriotism' embodied by old and new landlordsbound Smolensk to Moscow. Widening the focus to the years I654-I764, Angela Rustemeyerexamines the manner in which the landlords controlled the peasants and restrictedtheir flight across the frontiers. Frank Kampfer seeks the source of Herberstein's concept of 'Muscovitepestilence',while AndreasKappeler evaluatesearly modern Western accounts of the relationship between Moscow and Novgorod. Section Four, on church, religion and regional identity in the North, opens with an authoritativesurvey by A. V. Kamkin, who finds six types of administration with widely differing degrees of attachment to the centre. There are three pin points from the vastness:AleksandrLavrov on Old and New Belief in Kargopol'; Georg B. Michels on the reforms by Archbishop Afanasii of Kholmogory; and Daniel C. Waugh on the Miracle-Working Icon of St Nicholas Velikoretskiiin Viatka. Then, Isolde Thyret searchesfor the cult of the True Cross as it spread to the North with promotion from Moscow. Daniel Waugh rightlyassertsthat 'EarlyModern Russia' cannot be understood without an appreciationof the part played by religion in the process of 'modernization',but there must be consideration of Islam and Animism as well as of Christianity.All three are to be found in Section Five, as we move from the North to the East,from the forestto the Volga and the steppe.V. V. Trepavlov scrutinizes the problems of adaptation experienced by Turkic peoples leaving the Golden Horde for tsardom. S. M. Kashtanov assessesthe activityof Orthodox monasteriesin the Middle Volga in the reign of Ivan IV while IskanderGiliazov writes about the interactionof Islam and Orthodoxy in the same area from Ivan onwards. Leonid Taimasov anatomizes interconfessional relations during the early stages of the Christianizationof the peoples of the Kazan', while Ananii Ivanov looks at the 'Cheremisiiawars' and other aspects of the assimilationof the Mari. From the point of view of 762 SEER, 84, 4, 2006 the steppe, Michail Khodarkovskyasks if Moscow was the 'Third Rome' or a tributarystate in the context of the vocabulariesand identitiesthat the government was attempting to impose on peoples and landscapes alike. Section Six, devoted to the Cossacksin the South and East, opens on the Don with N. A. Mininkov on changes among the Atamans in the later seventeenthcentury and Brian Boeck on relationsbetween the Host and Moscow after the Razin uprising. Christoph Witzenrath weighs up the effect of the trade frontier's institutionalchanges on the SiberianCossacks,takingTransbaikalia,i696-99, as a special case, before Serhii Plokhy brings the book to a close with an evaluation of the case for the comparativestudy of Cossackdom. AndreasKappeler has done well to assemblea group of scholarsinterested in a wide range of aspectsof their subject,spiritualand secular,and to find six contributorsofferingtheir perspectivesfrom the regions themselves:Kamkin fromVologda; Glazev fromVoronezh; Giliazovfrom Kazan'; Taimasov from Cheboksary;Ivanov from Ioshkar-Ola;and Mininkov from Rostov-on-Don. Four of the others are located in Moscow, one in St Petersburg,and the rest range from North America to Europe. It is a measureof the excellence...