SEER, 99, 3, JULY 2021 548 Index’, a thorough glossary of the 2,000-odd words found in the Slavic text, with the Hebrew originals supplied for most, occupies another 24 per cent of the book and should be of immense utility for other researchers. The earliest extant manuscript (Belarus National Library No. 096/276K), penned on paper from the 1540s and 1560s, contains linguistic similarities and other textual affinities indicating that the translator was the same Zechariah ben Aharon ha-Kohen of Kiev (the ‘Judaizer’ ur-heresiarch Skharii according to Iosif Volotskii’s invective narrative), who translated the Logika and related philosophical pieces in the 1470s–80s. One might add supporting evidence here that the accompanying Planetnik in this codex, where the relevant political geography of Saturn’s astrological domain is nad Rusiiu, nad Novym gorodom, nad Moskvoiu, i nad Litvoiu (fol. 61v), was likely if not assuredly composed before Moscow swallowed Novgorod in 1478. Readers already familiar with Taube’s and other Hebraio-Slavicists’ work will recognize the speculation that at least some of the corpus of Hebrew literature translated into Slavic was connected with contemporary, regional Jewish messianism. Some mystery surrounds the initial legitimacy of the Slavic Secret of Secrets in Russia, since the Stoglav synod of 1551 condemned Aristotelian Gates (Aristotelevy vrata), an alternative name, which our authors surmise the synod applied only to a predictive extract from the translation. At any rate, the general consensus is that readers valued this work above all for its divinatory features, but places in the history of Russian science and political thought have also been forwarded. Did the East Slavic Secret of Secrets, most likely executed in Kiev in the 1470s and soon available in Russia, play any role in the early monarchial modernization of both grand principalities, Lithuania and Muscovy? Does it help explain the influence of the alleged astrology-informed ‘Judaizer’ d´iak Fedor Kuritsyn over Ivan III or the acceptance of Boris Godunov as pravitel´ (a frequent word for a top minister in this originally ‘wazirist’ treatise) under Tsar Feder I? These are just the tip of an iceberg of questions that Ryan’s and Taube’s remarkable scholarship have raised in this reviewer’s mind. Department of History David Goldfrank Georgetown University Głuszkowski, Piotr. Barwy polskości, czyli Życie burzliwe Tadeusza Bułharyna. Universitas, Kraków, 2018. 445 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. PLN 39.00; PLN 18.00 (e-book). This is the first book-format biography of the highly controversial Russian writer of Polish origin, Faddei Bulgarin (Tadeusz Bułharyn, 1789–1859). REVIEWS 549 For some, he was a ‘Russian literary guru’ (p. 6) and the most prolific and ‘avidly read Russian author for approximately a quarter of a century’ (p. 13). For others, he was a mere scribbler, a brazen plagiarist, a loathsome traitor to either Poland or Russia, and a despicable informer to the Third Section of His Majesty’s Chancellery (Tsars Nicholas I and Alexander II’s secret police). Given that Bułharyn’s career was unprecedented for a Polish expat (p. 403), it could perhaps have been expected that his first proper biography should come out in Polish, even though it has been preceded by many relevant and valuable publications in other languages, most notably Russian and English. Suffice it to name Nicholas Vaslef’s 230-page-long PhD, ‘Faddej V. Bulgarin: His Contribution to Nineteenth Century Russian Prose’, co-supervised at Harvard by Vsevolod Setschkareff and Roman Jakobson, and defended in 1966. Judging by the bibliography in the book under review, Vaslef’s dissertation, pioneering in several respects, remained unknown to Głuszkowski — as did Frank Mocha’s PhD, ‘Tadeusz Bułharyn (Faddej V. Bulgarin), 1789–1859: A Study in Literary Maneuver’, defended in 1970 at Columbia University and printed in full in 1974 in volume 17 of the Italian journal Antemurale, devoted to Polish history and culture. According to Vaslef (p. 70), Polish influences (often underappreciated by Russian experts on Bułharyn) should be ‘a very major consideration in any analysis of Bulgarin’s work’, while Mocha (also p. 70) asserts that Bułharyn had cultivated his Polishness more or less since childhood (partly spent at the...