The Great Turkes Defiance: On the History of the Apocryphal Correspondence of theOttoman Sultan in Its Muscovite and Russian Variants by Daniel Clarke Waugh; DmitriiSergeevich LikhachevReview by: Charles J. HalperinThe American Historical Review, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Feb., 1980), pp. 171-172Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1853554 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 04:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.160 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 04:43:24 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Modern Europe 171

RUSSELL. ZG .UTFA. Rusian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva- nia Press. 1978. Pp. xv, 160. $16.00.

The skomorokhz, or minstrels, have long been recog- nized as an integral part of medieval Russian cul- ture, but, as Russell Zguta rightly notes, they have, with few exceptions, been just as long neglected by historians. Any history of these enigmatic minstrels must of necessity include much conjecture, but Zguta's conclusions on their role in Kievan pagan ritual and as conduits of Kievan byliny to Novgorod and Muscovy are good working hypotheses. It is to Zguta's credit that what information there is has been brought together in this compact history.

Zguta traces the history of the skomorokhi from Kievan Rus' to their decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Zguta believes that the con- version of Kievan Rus' to Christianity forced the transformation of the skomorokhi from rural pagan priests to minstrel-entertainers. His basic assump- tion is that they were indigenous to Russian pagan- ism and not the offshoot of Byzantine mime or the German Spielmanner, although the former contrib- uted acrobatics and the latter the distinctive dress of Russian minstrels. As pagan priests, Zguta ties the skomorokhi to the occult arts of witchcraft, mar- riage ceremony, and the pagan festivals of the Ru- saliia and Koliada. Yet Zguta draws no connection between the skomorokhi and the volkhvy, who are credited with the pagan reaction of the eleventh century and are described as pagans or as pagans in the guise of Manichaeism or Bogomilism. He re- peats Vernadsky's conclusion that the volkhvy were an urban and upper-class phenomenon, but a sharp distinction between urban and rural paganism, par- ticularly in the pre-Christian era, is doubtful. This raises another serious problem in that the skomorokhi are often described as representative of residual pa- ganism and secular entertainment. The degree to which they are either pagan or Christian in medie- val Russia is not made clear, and if they continued the pagan tradition, what does secular culture mean in this context?

According to Zguta, the political fragmentation of Kiev in the twelfth century and the Mongol in- vasions drove the skomorokhi north toward Vladimir- Suzdal and Novgorod. Condemned in Muscovy by Maksim Grek, Metropolitan Daniil, and the Stoglav in the sixteenth century, the skomorokhi flourished in Novgorod, and the reasons for this Zguta ascribes to Novgorod's traditional liberalism and democracy. But this explains little. What is needed is an analy- sis of the complex historical role of Russian Ortho- doxy in Novgorod and Muscovy.

Zguta traces the impact of Ivan IV's devastation of Novgorod on the skomorokhz and their dispersal throughout Muscovy. He makes an interesting

analysis of the unregistered skomorokhz, who were seen by Muscovite authorities as lawless, and the registered, who ran the gamut from Ivan's personal entertainers to the strel'tsy and bobyli. The skomorokhi were proscribed in December 1648 as part of the spiritual reform, Aleksei's own piety, and perhaps also the urban riots. But Aleksei's motives are not fully explained, for, on the one hand, Zguta de- scribes him as pious and, on the other, as a sup- porter of secularization or Westernization.

The last two chapters show the minstrels' impact upon the byliny, music, dance, and theater (espe- cially puppetry). Zguta's work is a welcome addi- tion to the growing literature of medieval Russia.

LAWRENCE N. [ANGER

University of Connecticut

DANIEL CLARKE WAUGH. The Great Turkes Defiance: On the History of the Apocryphal Correspondence of the Otto- man Sultan in Its Muscovite and Russian Variants. Fore- word by DMITRII SERGEEVICHi LIKHIACHEV. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers. 1978. Pp. ix, 354. $18.95.

Through his publications in both Western and So- viet journals and his participation in scholarly con- ferences, Daniel Clarke Waugh of the University of Washington at Seattle has already acquired an in- ternational reputation as a specialist in the study of Muscovite manuscripts and literary monuments. Further testimony to his recognized expertise as a textologist and codicologist is provided by the laudatory foreword to this, his first book, by Acade- mician D. S. Likhachev (pp. 1-4). In this highly technical monograph Waugh analyzes one genre of Muscovite turcica (literary works concerned with the Ottoman Turks), apocryphal letters of the sultan. By investigating their origin and manuscript tradi- tion Waugh locates these texts within the context of Muscovite literary culture of the seventeenth cen- tury. On the basis of the most exacting manuscript analysis, extracted from Soviet (and non-Soviet) ar- chival repositories by prodigious labor, Waugh proves conclusively that all the Muscovite variants are translations from European prototypes, despite some assertions to the contrary. Moreover, scrutiny of the manuscript tradition suggests that as in Eu- rope the texts reappear in patterns that conform to political events in Muscovite and Ottoman history, most notably wars. In his brief conclusion (pp. 187- 98) Waugh identifies some implications of his study of the apocryphal correspondence of the sultan for our understanding of Muscovite culture.

Technically and methodologically this mono- graph is simply a tour de force parallel texts in several languages, genealogical stemma, charts, graphs, and tables are ubiquitous. The body of the work (pp. 5-198) is followed by the "Apparatus

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.160 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 04:43:24 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

172 Reviews of Books

Criticus": sample texts of genuine and apocryphal letters (pp. 200-21); manuscript descriptions (pp. 222-77), at which Waugh is a master; notes (pp. 278-318); and a selected bibliography, index of manuscripts cited, and index. Waugh is quite mod- est in presenting the results of his research, honestly willing to revise his own earlier views on specific questions (p. 295, n. 86), frank in admitting gaps in his own manuscript notes (p. 266) and in the manu- script evidence, and insistent on the tentative na- ture of his conclusions pending definitive additional work. The impartial reader will find it difficult not to be overwhelmed by Waugh's evidence and thor- oughly convinced by his arguments. This is a valu- able contribution to our knowledge of seventeenth- century Muscovite culture.

Probably only specialists will want or need to fol- low Waugh's investigations step by step. The gen- eral reader can, however, fruitfully turn to the con- clusions of each part and the overall conclusion for fully accessible discussions of the results of the more technical analysis.

Waugh eschews more extended interpretation of the significance of the apocryphal correspondence with the sultan until all genres of turcica can also be taken into account (pp. 11-12), for each of which the same painstaking and meticulous spade work will be required. One is confident that Waugh will fulfill this need with the same skill and care he has lavished on the apocryphal correspondence. In the meantime Waugh whets our appetites for his future research by raising a host of wider questions about Muscovite culture: the degree to which it was in- tegrated into European culture in the seventeenth century; the processes by which literature entered Muscovy from the West and was then translated and circulated; the differing roles of turcica in Euro- pean and Muscovite culture; the relationship of this translated literature to the development of original "documentary belles-lettres" in Muscovy; and the connections between the importation and dissemi- nation of turcica and the cultural transformation of Muscovy in the seventeenth century that culmi- nated in the reign of Peter the Great.

As an extra bonus to the reader, the volume con- tains forty pages of illustrations of European and Muscovite texts (pp. 98-137, list pp. 335-36).

CHARLES J. HALPERIN

Indiana University, Bloomington

IA. E. VOI)ARSKII. Naselenie Rossii v kontse XVII-nachale XVIII veka (Chislennost', soslovno-klassovyi sostav, raz- meshchenie) [The Population of Russia in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Quantity, Class Composition, Distribution)]. Mos- cow: Izdatel'stvo "Nauka." 1977. Pp. 262. 2 r. 10 k.

This important book provides data about and ten- tative answers to fundamental questions about the size, structure, and movement of the Russian popu- lation. It briefly analyzes the historiography and character of the problems encountered in working with census and other demographic sources in the Russian context and describes the variety of sources themselves. Ia. E. Vodarskii has filled this text with tables that summarize his findings, not always with the greatest clarity or success. There are maps that define regions and uezdy of Russia, a particularly difficult and important accomplishment, and exten- sive appendixes of data on population in 1678- 1719. The administrative map showing boundaries of uezdy, stany, and volosti is a major contribution to our knowledge of Russia in the period. Vodarskii notes that it is the fruit of years of painstaking work. Certainly, it is on the empirical level that his work makes its most important mark, rather than in any new theoretical framework or insight.

This work presents no great surprises in its pern- odization or its classification of Russia's population. Instead, this is a compilation of Vodarskii's earlier work and a correlation with the analyses of other historical demographers, geographers, and histo- rians. The discussion of the urban population of Russia illustrates the strengths and a few of the weaknesses of this book.

Vodarskii includes an important discussion of the definition of a Russian town, following the "classi- cal Marxist criteria." He argues that Russia's towns fit this model as well as the European towns that initially provided the material for the model. His criteria for a town become rather narrow and exclu- sive, and, although he puts Russia into a European context, it is at some cost to the understanding of Russian urban development in this period. Towns without a trade and artisan population are found not really worthy of inclusion as part of the total ur- ban population of Russia. The author does not completely ignore other groups of the urban popu- lation, but tends to emphasize the townsmen (po- sadskie liudi). Thus, he notes that information on other social groups in the towns is scanty and in- complete but does little to estimate important non- townsmen populations. The result of this is a sys- tematic underestimation of Russia's urban population in the late seventeenth and early eigh- teenth centuries. His summary table (p. 134) pres- ents an urban male population figure of 2 percent. In fact, the data he presents indicate the level at 4 percent even without a closer estimate of all groups in Russia's towns. The figure may be as high as 6, not 2, percent if all residents are included rather than relying primarily on the juridically urban pop- ulation.

The discussion of migration is another area of im- portant new data in this work. Vodarskii's figures

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.160 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 04:43:24 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions