Reading Russian Sources

A Student's Guide to Text and Visual Sources from Russian History

George Gilbert, George Gilbert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351184151
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

Reading Russian Sources is an accessible and comprehensive guide that introduces students to the wide range of sources that can be used to engage with Russian history from the early medieval to the late Soviet periods.

Divided into two parts, the book begins by considering approaches that can be taken towards the study of Russian history using primary sources. It then moves on to assess both textual and visual sources, including memoirs, autobiographies, journals, newspapers, art, maps, film and TV, enabling the reader to engage with and make sense of the burgeoning number of different sources and the ways they are used. Contributors illuminate key issues in the study of different areas of Russia's history through their analysis of source materials, exploring some of the major issues in using different source types and reflecting recent discoveries that are changing the field. In so doing, the book orientates students within the broader methodological and conceptual debates that are defining the field and shaping the way Russian history is studied.

Chronologically wide-ranging and supported by further reading, along with suggestions to help students guide their own enquiries, Reading Russian Sources is the ideal resource for any student undertaking research on Russian history.

Part I

Contexts and approaches

1 Early medieval sources ¹

Monica White

The East Slavs entered the historical record relatively late.² Little is known about them before the tenth century, but archaeological evidence supports the scattered textual references to tribes living in remote northern forests, surviving by hunting, gathering and subsistence agriculture. Sustained contact with the wider world was precipitated by outside forces; in particular, the long-distance trade routes which began crossing through Eastern Europe in the mid-eighth century. The people to the north-west, known in English as Vikings and in Greek and Slavonic sources as Varangians, were desperate to obtain luxury goods from the distant Byzantine empire and Abbasid caliphate: in particular silk, spices, jewellery, and silver. The Varangians’ route to the southern markets took them across the Baltic Sea to the forests of Eastern Europe, where they gathered commodities for trade, including fur, slaves, wax, and honey, and shipped them south along the river system. As this trade intensified over the course of the ninth century, many Varangians established permanent settlements in what is now north-western Russia. By the early tenth century, they were settling in the mid-Dnieper region, between the resource-rich forests of the north and the markets of the south. One of these settlements, Kiev, became the base of a princely family which came to dominate the corridor between the Baltic and Black Seas. The members of this family are known to modern scholars as the Riurikids, after Riurik, their legendary Varangian progenitor. In order to consolidate their power, the Riurikids founded new settlements for defence and trade, improved systems for tribute collection, and flirted with organized religion. The regent Olga was baptized in the 950s, followed in c. 988 by her grandson Vladimir, whose actions established Eastern-rite Christianity as the official religion of the realm. The Riurikids’ support of the Church helped them maintain their grip on power, as did their ‘collateral’ succession system, in which every son had equal status and the right to rule a city. Younger brothers rotated up through smaller to larger cities in their patrimony as their older brothers died off and the next generation rotated in. Although this arrangement became exceedingly complex after a few generations and caused frequent squabbles, it was an effective way to keep a large and sparsely populated territory under the control of a single family. With a strong incentive to found new towns to accommodate the growing clan, the Riurikids expanded their territory steadily through the eleventh and twelfth centuries, forming the state known as Rus. This term, which can also function as an adjective, originally referred to the Varangians who made their home in Eastern Europe.³ The phrase ‘medieval Russia’ should be avoided, both because it is inaccurate and because of contemporary political sensitivities, since Rus is the common heritage of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. By the same token, the main language spoken in Rus was not Old Russian but Old East Slavonic, which is attested in a number of dialects.⁴

In addition to lively contacts with Byzantium and the kingdoms of Western Europe, the princes of Rus maintained close ties with the peoples of the western steppe. Relations between these groups and various branches of the clan were complex, encompassing trade, mercenary service and warfare in a constantly evolving web of alliances. This delicate balance of power was shattered by the Mongols, who conquered Rus and many of its neighbours between 1237 and 1241. The Mongols imposed various obligations on their subjects, in particular the requirement that each prince obtain a patent to rule his city from the Mongol khan in Sarai, the capital of the region of the Mongol empire known as the Golden Horde. Because the Mongols knew and cared little about local succession customs, they tended to promote princes whom they trusted ahead of those with a legitimate claim to a city according to the rules of collateral succession. Low-ranking princes could thus get ahead more quickly by ingratiating themselves with the khan than by engaging in traditional princely politics. The princes of Moscow were the ultimate winners in this process, gradually dispossessing the other princely families over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I have therefore chosen as the notional end point of this chapter the death of prince Iurii Danilovich of Moscow in 1325 (although the dates of many medieval sources are approximate at best). Known to history as the progenitor of the powerful grand princes and early tsars, he was in fact one among several princes in his generation who were roughly equally matched. Thereafter, however, the balance of power began slowly but surely to shift in Moscow’s favour, ushering in a new era in the history of the East Slavs.

Given the constraints of the present volume, it would be impossible to provide a survey, even in broad outline, of all of the types of sources which were produced in Rus over more than five centuries following the first appearance of the Varangians in Eastern Europe. Instead, this chapter will attempt to convey some sense of their diversity by presenting three categories of sources which were produced in different media and for different purposes. Birchbark documents were the text messages of their day: short, casual notes written by and for a relatively broad cross-section of the public on cheap and widely available material. Chronicles were the opposite: lengthy, formal historical narratives often commissioned by a local prince and composed by monks on expensive parchment. Non-written sources are also crucial to understanding a society in which literacy was restricted, and archaeological materials from Rus offer rich insights into its society and culture. Lead seals, which reveal much information about social and religious practices, will be explored in detail.

The discovery of the first birchbark documents in 1951 caused a sensation, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that these modest texts have radically changed scholars’ understanding of Rus society.⁵ They came to light during archaeological excavations in Novgorod, now a small provincial city in north-western Russia, but for many centuries the northern capital of Rus and a prosperous centre of trade.⁶ The poor, anaerobic soil which made medieval Novgorod vulnerable to famine had the unexpected benefit of preserving organic materials. This feature has made it a beacon for archaeologists, who continue to organize digs in the city every summer. Among many other rare items, including clothing, leather shoes and wooden toys, archaeologists were astonished to discover strips of birchbark inscribed with Cyrillic writing. The corpus has grown steadily over more than six decades since the first document was unearthed and, at the time of writing, numbers over 1,200 individual items (Figure 1.1).⁷ For ease of reference, each birchbark is given a number based on the order in which it was excavated, preceded by an abbreviation indicating the city in which it was found (N. for Novgorod, Smol. for Smolensk, St. R. for Staraia Russa, etc.). Only a small number of birchbarks, some 3 per cent of the total, have been found outside of Novgorod and its dependencies. However, it is clear that birchbark writing was a widespread phenomenon since the authors of many documents excavated in Novgorod refer to sending their messages from other cities. Novgorod’s over-representation in the corpus is the result of its unique combination of anaerobic soil and intensive archaeological excavations.⁸ The current number of birchbarks is, no doubt, only a fraction of the total preserved, and much less of those originally produced, and there is every reason to expect discoveries to continue at a steady pace. In such a rapidly expanding field, at least some aspects of any summary will inevitably become outdated. Nevertheless, the availability of new tools for the study of birchbarks and the recent appearance of ground-breaking research in the field makes this a particularly exciting time to explore them.

Figure 1.1 Drevnerusskie berestianye gramoty, Gramota no. 9.

http://gramoty.ru/birchbark/document/show/novgorod/9/ (accessed 19 February 2019).

Although no two birchbarks contain the same message, certain patterns in their content have emerged. Most take the form of correspondence, and often have named senders and recipients. Most are, however, fragmentary, whether as a result of accidental or deliberate damage (often, seemingly, to preserve confidentiality). Of those which can be deciphered in whole or in part, the majority concern what might broadly be described as business and legal affairs: buying and selling goods, commissions for services, managing property, making and paying back loans, and so on. However, numerous other topics are represented, from marriage proposals to intelligence reports to children’s writing exercises to prayers.⁹ In the early years of scholarship about birchbarks, the breadth and mundanity of their subject matter caused much excited speculation about mass lay literacy. Closer analysis of a larger number of texts has revealed that many, but not all, concern the affairs of the elite. It now seems reasonable to assume that a large cross-section of people had some recourse to birchbark writing, although it was much more widespread at the higher levels of society.¹⁰

None of the texts includes dates, but the archaeological features of Novgorod allow many of them to be placed within twenty-year intervals.¹¹ This has shown that birchbarks are among the earliest surviving examples of East Slavonic writing, with the oldest known specimens dating from the 1030s – that is, within the first generation of the systematic introduction of writing following the official conversion to Christianity in the late 980s.¹² Birchbark writing increased steadily until about 1200, when domestic and international upheaval, followed by the Mongol invasion and famine, caused a steep decline in the number of texts produced. Thereafter the numbers increased again, although they did not return to their twelfth-century peak before disappearing entirely in the fifteenth century.¹³

One of the attractions of the medium of birchbark was its accessibility: it was a freely available material which could be easily inscribed with a stylus. By contrast, parchment was extremely expensive and paper was not widely available until the fifteenth century (in fact, the increasing availability of paper was one of the reasons for the decline of birchbark writing).¹⁴ However, birchbark’s ease of use for medieval writers does not imply ease of interpretation for modern scholars. The documents are often illegible due to damage, but even complete texts are difficult to read. They were written without spaces between words, usually by people who were not professional scribes, and often in the Novgorodian dialect, which differed significantly from standard Old East Slavonic. Even when the words of a text can be deciphered, their meaning is often mysterious. This is because most birchbarks had a pragmatic purpose, such as conveying urgent news, commands or changes to plans. The fact that they were unceremoniously discarded in the mud indicates that they were not intended to be read outside of their immediate context. It is thus understandable that they omit most or all of the context which would be necessary to gain a full understanding of the situation. In this respect, they are more similar to nineteenth-century telegrams or modern text messages than to formal business or personal letters.

Consider the following birchbark, N439, from 1200 to 1220, which is fairly typical of business-related messages:

[+ From Moise]j [to] Spirko. If Matej hasn’t taken the batch (of wax) from you, ship it to me with Prus; I’ve sold off the tin and lead and all the wrought wares. I no longer have to go to Suzdal. Of the wax, 3 batches have been bought. You have to come here. Ship some tin – about four lots, about two sheets of the red (copper) – and pay the money immediately.¹⁵

The abrupt, straightforward tone indicates that the sender and recipient shared a general understanding of their affairs, but needed to clarify certain details. As Jos Schaeken observes, Moisej must have been the proprietor of a business who was travelling out of town and wanted his associate, Spirko, to visit him and send some goods. Moisej’s brief message gives us a snapshot of the workings of these long-distance merchants on the eve of the Mongol invasion: the wares they traded and in what amounts, and one of the cities they regularly visited. On the other hand, there is a great deal we do not know: Moisej’s location, whether he traded in any other products, why he decided not to go to Suzdal, how much money Spirko needed to pay and to whom, and so on.

Despite such lacunae, the decipherment of the birchbarks by archaeologists, linguists and historians has increased our understanding of many aspects of Rus society. For example, of the birchbarks with named senders and/or recipients, Schaeken calculates that ‘dozens’ were written by o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• A note on names, translations and dates
• Introduction: Reading Russian sources
• PART I: Contexts and approaches
• PART II: Varieties of sources and their interpretation