Merridale, Catherine. Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History (review)

Abstract

SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 554 which presented a new perspective on the co-reign issue in documents 14 and 15. Meanwhile, the most recent publications cited are from 2010. There are also various errors in dating, the first being that of Stephen Nemanja’s charter for the Holy Virgin’s monastery at Polimlje (8), which is without reason dated from 1168–96 rather than the wider 1166–96. Stephen Nemanja’s charter for the Chilandar monastery (9) is given as the widest possible (after June 1198, before 13 February 1199) even though the narrower (the autumn of 1198) has been proven in the literature as very probable. Similarly, Stephen Nemanjić’s second Žiča charter (15) is dated ‘1221–1224?’, even though the cited literature reveals that there is no reason for setting 1224 as a borderline. Stephen Nemanjić died in 1227, therefore the only viable dating can be 1221–27. Other shortcomings include the manuscript of Stephen Nemanjić’s charter for Chilandar (12) — previously considered to be the original — which is for the first time here described as ‘original (?)’ (p. 79) but without any explanation why. In some places the identity of the author of the manuscripts is mentioned, but for documents 4 and 12 this information is omitted, even though one of the cited references points out that both were written by the same person. Lastly, dates in the list of contents are misleading, as they sometimes differ from dates given in descriptions of particular documents in the Zbornik itself. In summary, the Zbornik offers a complete edition of sources with useful indexes. However, this prominent publication is not free of methodological and meritorical shortcomings in its accompanying materials. Łódź B. Szefliński Merridale, Catherine. Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History. Allen Lane, London and New York, 2013. xvii + 506 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Suggestions for further reading. Index. £30.00. History can be focused and organized in any number of ways. Microhistory à la Carlo Ginzburg can produce startling new visions of the world; a variety of this approach is to select a city, street, institution, building, and craft a history around that object. In her Red Fortress, Catherine Merridale has produced a stimulating narrative of Russian history by focusing — none too narrowly — on the most famous building in Russia: the Kremlin. The rather silly subtitle of the British edition (cited above) only partly captures Merridale’s vision; the American subtitle (History and Illusion in the Kremlin) better reflects the book’s content. In any case, this is an admirable and serious romp through Russian history from the twelfth to the twenty-first century. Merridale’s approach is chronological but does not limit itself to the building we now know as the Kremlin. Rather, while keeping this fortress, the buildings REVIEWS 555 within it and its environs in central Moscow as the book’s centre of gravity, she does not hesitate to pursue — sometimes at considerable length — various topics, anecdotes, people, events that illuminate larger issues in Russian and Soviet history. This approach probably makes the book more engaging for non-specialists, who are given a great deal of general Russian historical background even while the author pursues in detail the specific architectural and artistic history of this object. For example, Merridale expounds at some length (pp. 87–98) on the events of Ivan the Terrible’s reign but in the end comes back to the Kremlin itself and the changes to it during these years. To take another example, chapter six covers both Peter I’s reign (wars, conflict with conservative forces, reforms) on the one hand and the impact of these years (fire, plans for buildings in the classical style, decay, attempts at restoration), not to mention a capsule history of Moscow’s changed role as the second capital after Peter’s founding of St Petersburg. The narrative is stately, occasionally a bit slow-moving, but full of delicious anecdotes, curiosities and solidly-researched history that goes back and forth between narrow focus (the Kremlin itself) and the wide lens (Russia). The fate of the Kremlin in the decades from March 1917 may well be the least known part of this story...