The Latest from Muscovy

Abstract

The study of Muscovite history in the past decade reflects the proverbial juxtaposition of good news and bad. To judge by the quality of recent publications and the level of discussion at conferences, the field enjoys robust health. Muscovite historians, especially the emerging leaders of the field, have analyzed a wide variety of important issues with rigor and ingenuity, often using methods and insights shared with scholars of other times, climes, and disciplines. On the negative side, the much-and justifiably-lamented decline in "Westem" universities' support for teaching and research on early Rus'/Russia seems trifling compared with the wrenching institutional and economic changes with which our Russian colleagues must cope. In this essay, I will concentrate on the good news. What follows is a personal reflection on the main trends, prospects, and potential pitfalls of historical writing on Muscovite Russia since the late 1980s. I have chosen to concentrate on four broad themes that particularly interest me: the administrative and social elites of Muscovy with whom its monarchs ruled; the symbolic systems, visual and verbal, that justified the power of the ruler and the sanctity of the realm; the worldview and beliefs of ordinary Muscovites and the attempts of secular and religious elites to shape them; and Muscovy's relations with non-Russian ethnic communities within its borders and its closest neighbors across its frontiers. As the perceptive reader has undoubtedly noticed, women's history as such does not appear on this list.' I am not dismissing the substantial achievements of my colleagues in this area.2 Instead, my goal is to emphasize the extent to which study of women and gender in Muscovy has been integrated into the fabric of social and cultural history. Choosing these four broad areas means setting aside a number of extremely important recent publications that do not fall within them.3 This essay has other idiosyncratic features as well. The discussion will concentrate on the Muscovite monarchy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the territories that it encompassed, with only passing reference to