Memory and Memoirs: The Past as a Foreign Country

Abstract

The posthumous publication of Iurii Dmitrievich Rykov’s most important contributions to the study of the writings of Prince Andrei Kurbskii (including for the first time his kandidat dissertation) has inspired this essay as a tribute to Rykov, one of the leading specialists on early Russian manuscripts. Rather than focus on the substance of the Kurbskii material, the emphasis is on Rykov’s own memoir in the book and more generally on memoirs as historical sources, among them ones written by the noted scholars S. V. Zhitomirskaia and A. A. Zimin. Appended to the essay are a number of letters which Rykov wrote to his American colleagues.