Cornelia Soldat
University of Cologne, Institute of Slavic Studies, Department Member
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Muscovite chronicle material is very disparate about Ivan the Terrible’s Raid of Novgorod in 1570. Novgorod and Pskov Chronicles show Ivan’s brutal behavior in detail. In this article I argue that in the second half of the 17th century... more
Muscovite chronicle material is very disparate about Ivan the Terrible’s Raid of Novgorod in 1570. Novgorod and Pskov Chronicles show Ivan’s brutal behavior in detail. In this article I argue that in the second half of the 17th century many chronicles were reworked in order to support an open discussion about dissatisfaction with the tsarist government in Novgorod and Pskov. Chronicle writing was used to disseminate the image of the terrible tsar Ivan. This image functioned as an allegory for the tsars of the end of the 17th century who were under pressure from a wider public that criticized autocracy. In this way, I am writing a nonlinear history of late Muscovy in which a historical figure like Ivan figured as a distorted allegorical image of a tyrannical tsar destroying the ancient régime. This history is non-linear in the sense that it puts some of the sources claiming to be from the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584) into the context in which they were used in later times. The history is linear in the sense that it begins with the oldest and ends with the youngest sources. In this way the story of history writing can be grasped in a historical-linear way, repeating a story and subtly modifying it according to the demands of the day of the writing of the later sources and so on.
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Boris Morozov has contributed very valuable archival studies and manuscript findings to research about the period of Ivan the Terrible. Therefore, I am contributing to his Festschrift a study about one of the most significant texts about... more
Boris Morozov has contributed very valuable archival studies and manuscript findings to research about the period of Ivan the Terrible. Therefore, I am contributing to his Festschrift a study about one of the most significant texts about Ivan IV’s Oprichnina, the Sinodik opal’nykh. This work, unique even among other Old Russian sinodiki, has been analyzed with the help of digital tools available on the internet (www.voyant-tools.org). As it turns out, the available manuscripts of the sinodik are so diverse that they cannot have originated from a single prototype; this new insight challenges most 20th-century scholarly reconstructions. The compilation and existence of the manuscripts found since the 17th century need to be re-evaluated. The existing so-called reconstructions corroborate nothing of the known history of the Oprichnina.
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The only surviving copy of a Testament of Ivan the Terrible stems from the beginning of the 19th century with a watermark from 1805. In January 1822 the director of the Foreign Office's archive, Aleksei Malinovskii, sent the testament... more
The only surviving copy of a Testament of Ivan the Terrible stems from the beginning of the 19th century with a watermark from 1805. In January 1822 the director of the Foreign Office's archive, Aleksei Malinovskii, sent the testament to the historian and novelist Nikolai Karamzin, who was working on his History of the Russian State, and who published it in the commentary to the ninth volume of the History. An analysis of Aleksei Kurbatov's and Vasilii Tatishchev's alledged authorship of the testament's preface and commentary leads to the conclusion that the testament displays the literary devices of a fictional text. The preface presents a story complete with the grammatically ambiguous signature ,,A. Kurbatova“, a host of conflicting dates and several lost copies of a lost original. The argument for Tatishchev's authorship rests solely on some peculiarities concerning the publications of his personal copy of the Sudebnik of 1550. The questions surrounding the testament are resolved easily when one takes into account the literary hints and regards the text as an early 19th-century mystification.
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This article examines five German pamphlets published between 1570 and 1582, which describe Ivan IV’s Oprichnina. The pamphlets serve as vitally important but underutilized sources for this period in Ivan IV’s reign and are widely... more
This article examines five German pamphlets published between 1570 and 1582, which describe Ivan IV’s Oprichnina. The pamphlets serve as vitally important but underutilized sources for this period in Ivan IV’s reign and are widely regarded by historians as eyewitness accounts. This study dissects the pamphlets into thematic parts (or “motifs”) and explores these themes as they appear across these five sources. The comparative textual analysis here shows that these pamphlets – the main German sources for Ivan IV’s Oprichnina – are not eyewitness accounts, but complex texts that rely on a variety of mostly early published sources, and that the master narrative of the Oprichnina they provide should not be taken as true eyewitness accounts.
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Muscovite chronicle material is very disparate about Ivan the Terrible’s Raid of Novgorod in 1570. Novgorod and Pskov Chronicles show Ivan’s brutal behavior in detail. In this article I argue that in the second half of the 17th century... more
Muscovite chronicle material is very disparate about Ivan the Terrible’s Raid of Novgorod in 1570. Novgorod and Pskov Chronicles show Ivan’s brutal behavior in detail. In this article I argue that in the second half of the 17th century many chronicles were reworked in order to support an open discussion about dissatisfaction with the tsarist government in Novgorod and Pskov. Chronicle writing was used to disseminate the image of the terrible tsar Ivan. This image functioned as an allegory for the tsars of the end of the 17th century who were under pressure from a wider public that criticized autocracy. In this way, I am writing a nonlinear history of late Muscovy in which a historical figure like Ivan figured as a distorted allegorical image of a tyrannical tsar destroying the ancient régime. This history is non-linear in the sense that it puts some of the sources claiming to be from the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584) into the context in which they were used in later times. ...
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Heinrich von Stadens Beschreibung und Angriffsplan auf Moskovien von 1579 greift auf die Vorlage der Eroberung Mexikos durch Hernán Cortés zurück: das Muster-Narrativ für koloniale Eroberung im 16. Jahrhundert. In seiner Beschreibung... more
Heinrich von Stadens Beschreibung und Angriffsplan auf Moskovien von 1579 greift auf die Vorlage der Eroberung Mexikos durch Hernán Cortés zurück: das Muster-Narrativ für koloniale Eroberung im 16. Jahrhundert. In seiner Beschreibung Moskoviens stilisiert er seine Begegnung mit Zar Ivan IV. (»dem Schrecklichen«) nach der Begegnung Cortés` mit dem Aztekenherrscher Montezuma. Cornelia Soldat untersucht diese Texte über Russland, die Teil eines groß angelegten Planes des Pfalzgrafen Georg Hans von Veldenz sind, die Herrschaftsverhältnisse im Baltikum grundlegend zu ändern. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Einschreibung Russlands in die Kolonialismus-Erzählung.
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The only surviving copy of a Testament of Ivan the Terrible stems from the beginning of the 19th century with a watermark from 1805. In January 1822 the director of the Foreign Office's archive, Aleksei Malinovskii, sent the testament... more
The only surviving copy of a Testament of Ivan the Terrible stems from the beginning of the 19th century with a watermark from 1805. In January 1822 the director of the Foreign Office's archive, Aleksei Malinovskii, sent the testament to the historian and novelist Nikolai Karamzin, who was working on his History of the Russian State, and who published it in the commentary to the ninth volume of the History. An analysis of Aleksei Kurbatov's and Vasilii Tatishchev's alledged authorship of the testament's preface and commentary leads to the conclusion that the testament displays the literary devices of a fictional text. The preface presents a story complete with the grammatically ambiguous signature ,,A. Kurbatova“, a host of conflicting dates and several lost copies of a lost original. The argument for Tatishchev's authorship rests solely on some peculiarities concerning the publications of his personal copy of the Sudebnik of 1550. The questions surrounding the t...