Russia's First Civil War. The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty by Chester S. L. Dunning (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 143 developed institutional and informal cooperation that reduced the risksand the costs of international trading, and did this before the structuresof the modern state emerged in the Swedish kingdom. The changes that this would involve were only beginning to appear at the point in time where this study concludes. There is a usefulEnglish-languagesummary. University ofStAndrews A. F. UPTON Dunning, Chester S. L. Russia'sFirst Civil War.ne Timeof Troubles andthe Founding oftheRomanov Dynasty. PennsylvaniaUniversityPress,University Park, PA, 200I. Xiii + 657 pp. Illustrations.Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?54.00? 'THETime of Troubles', the interregnumand period of civil strifein Russia (usually dated I598-I613) which marked the end of the Riurikid and the establishmentof the Romanov dynasties,has had a chequeredhistoriography. It is bedevilledby a profusionof shadowyactorsand a confusion of sources,as well asby ideological slantsand rivalrieswhich began in the Time of Troubles itself.Prof.Dunning, who has studiedthe period for many years, setsout here to put the record straight. He offers a comprehensively detailed narrative account of events, every twist and turn of every conspiracy and campaign. This is underpinned by a clearly articulated conceptual framework, and accompanied by a constant critical engagement with the historiography the book is littered with sentences such as 'That interpretation lacks any substance'and 'Let us have a closerlook at'. Dunning uses recent scholarship and recent theory to good effect, relying particularlyon the concept of the fiscal-military state and the ideas of Jack Goldstone on the nature and preconditions of early-modernrebellion, and his opening chapters especially provide both an excellent scholarly synthesis and a comparative European analysis. He justifies his title by reference to the unification of Rus' under Moscow around I500, which divides the smutafrom the civil wars of the appanage period. He finds the longer-term causes of the Troubles in a set of critical conditions not unique to Muscovy and Ivan IV the Europe-wide impact of the 'little ice age' of the sixteenth century and the 'gentry crisis' which was part of the growing pains of the fiscal-militarystate:Muscovy was one of many. Proximatecauseslay above all in the discontentsof the southern frontier, and in the religious belief and 'popular monarchism' (a phrase borrowed from Maureen Perrie) of the Muscovite masses which made it difficultforunsuccessfulmonarchsnot of royallineage to maintainthemselves. A repetitive refrain is the rejection as motive of any form of class struggle, 'peasant war', social revolutionism, popular utopianism or protest against serfdom. The actors in this Time of Troubles were politically conservative, and motivated either by personalgreed, ambition and clan pride, by material grievance, or by theirunshakeablebelief in a 'true'tsarwho would restorethe God-given socialand economic orderwhich had disintegratedunderillegitimate monarchs. Dunning's 'Tsar Dmitrii' is a popular ruler traduced by the successful propaganda of the murderous usurper Vasilii Shuiski, a man of impressivequalities who believed in his own royalty and may perhaps really I44 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 have been the son of Ivan IV, or a protege'of anti-Godunov boyarsraised to become a pretender. The tale is told crisply,and Dunning makesgood use of vividand sometimesjudgmental adjectives('despicable','amazing','horrible', 'brilliant') which illuminate and 'beef up' (another Dunning favourite, of troop reinforcements) the narrative. This is a formidable and convincing presentation, even if on occasion Dunning's put-downs of his scholarly predecessors are not clearly explained. Its combative stance and appeal to theory invite further elaboration and analysis;but it is likely to remain the standardEnglish-languageworkfor some time to come. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ROGER BARTLETT University College London Donnert, E. (ed.).Europa inderfriihen Jeuzeit.Festschriftfiir Giinter Mihlpfordt zum 75. Geburtstag: Band i. Vormoderne. Bohlau Verlag, Koin-Weimar, I997. 6I 2 pp. Tabula gratulatoria;Band 2. Frfihmoderne. Bohlau Verlag, KoinWeimar , I997. 663 pp.; Band 3. Aufbruch zurModerne. Bohlau Verlag, Koln-Weimar, I997. 80i pp.; Band 4. Deutsche Aufkldrung. BohlauVerlag, Koln-Weimar, I997. 754 pp. Listof contents,vols I-4; Band5.Aufklarung inEuropa. Bohlau Verlag,Koln-Weimar, I999. 882 pp. Listof authors. GUNTER MUHLPFORDT is one of the most distinguishedscholarsof the group which gathered around the historian of Eastern Europe, Eduard Winter, in the postwar GDR and produced notable researches into the European Enlightenment and German-Russian relations. Winter, a former priest...