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  • Cited by 8
  • Volume 1: From Early Rus' to 1689
  • Edited by Maureen Perrie, University of Birmingham
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
2006
Online ISBN:
9781139054102

Book description

This first volume of the Cambridge History of Russia covers the period from early ('Kievan') Rus' to the start of Peter the Great's reign in 1689. It surveys the development of Russia through the Mongol invasions to the expansion of the Muscovite state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and deals with political, social, economic and cultural issues under the Riurikid and early Romanov rulers. The volume is organised on a primarily chronological basis, but a number of general themes are also addressed, including the bases of political legitimacy; law and society; the interactions of Russians and non-Russians; and the relationship of the state with the Orthodox Church. The international team of authors incorporates the latest Russian and Western scholarship and offers an authoritative new account of the formative 'pre-Petrine' period of Russian history, before the process of Europeanisation had made a significant impact on society and culture.

Reviews

'This three volume Cambridge History of Russia, the first such English-language reference work of its kind, is based on up-to-date research and is admirably detailed and reliable in its judgments … contributions are of such outstanding quality that they deserved to be fully read and savoured.'

Source: FT Magazine

‘… valuable for debunking national myths … thought provoking.’

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'This work organises idea, interpretations and research that don't appear in previous overviews.'

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

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Contents


Page 2 of 2


  • 27 - The Orthodox Church and the schism
    pp 618-639
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter surveys the institutional structure and economic position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century. After the relatively uneventful tenure of Patriarch Filaret, the Muscovite Church began to feel pressure for change from within and from without. When Patriarch Nikon became patriarch in 1652, many of the latent tensions within the Russian Church erupted into open conflict. During his tenure in Novgorod, Nikon made it clear that, in his opinion, the ecclesiastical hierarchy was the natural leader in the campaign to revitalize Russian Orthodoxy. Belief was a significant element in the resistance of the Don ossacks to Moscow's administrative control. The Russian Orthodox community had fallen into schism. In competition with the state-supported official Church, the Old Believers had begun to build their own organisations, select their own cadre of leaders and create their own religious culture. Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church soon had to bend before the onslaught of a wilful reforming autocrat.
  • 28 - Cultural and intellectual life
    pp 640-662
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Russia achieves cultural salvation by imitating and assimilating Western culture. To understand Muscovite high culture one must initially abandon the search for the genres, activities and practitioners defined by Western experience. Western architectural ideas emanated from the Armoury and Foreign Office workshops, where craftsmen had access to prints, maps and illustrated books. The Westernised tastes of its owner, Peter I's tutor Prince Boris Golitsyn, who knew Latin and had access to Italian craftsmen, place the church at Dubrovitsy at the very limits of transitional culture. The royal churches and residences swallowed up icons by the dozen and the Armoury's studios employed the best icon painters in the land. The tsar's theatre accelerated the importation of Western instruments and musical scores, previously virtually unknown. After the Time of Troubles many historical narratives appeared that retold real-life events and showed an interest in personalities, for example Avraamii Palitsyn's Skazanie of the Troubles and Katyrev-Rostovskii's Book of Chronicles.

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