L’Europe orientale, 1650–1730. Crises, conflits et renouveau. Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2010. 348 S., Ktn., Graph., Tab. = Cahiers du Monde Russe 50 (2009) 2/3. ISBN: 978-2-7132-2260-3

L’Europe orientale, 1650–1730. Crises, conflits et renouveau. Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2010. 348 S., Ktn., Graph., Tab. = Cahiers du Monde Russe 50 (2009) 2/3. ISBN: 978-2-7132-2260-3.

This interesting volume of twenty articles was selected (after rigorous review and revision) from thirty-four papers presented during a two-week conference at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in September 2005. The authors range from doctoral students to senior scholars and include contributors from Ukraine and White Russia – one of the volume’s most valuable assets – as well as from the Russian Federation, France, Germany, and the United States. Two thirds of the articles are in French, the rest in Russian and English. The majority of the contributions fulfill the conference organizers’ call – as outlined by André Berelowitch in a thought-provoking introduction – to “abandon the ways of thinking firmly anchored in tradition” (p. 284) and relish “the freedom to choose one’s model” (p. 285). Doubt of inherited truths, creative imagination, and the quest for new interpretations – scholarly virtues invoked by Berelowitch – have inspired most contributors.

Elena Rusina (Institute of History, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences) sheds light on the obstacles confronted by innovative historians in Eastern Europe. The essay is a tour de force that shows how post-1992 nationalist discourses undermined important archival research projects and produced pseudo-historians catering to public moods. Rusina’s courage to speak openly about these issues provides sobering insights into the “myth-making strategies” (p. 352) that the next generation of historians will have to confront. One historian who does so successfully is Alekh Dziarnovich (Institute of History, White Russian Academy of Sciences). His article on warfare and society demonstrates the importance of questioning the literary stereotypes of memoirs, journals, and chronicles. Inspired by the revisionist work of Polish historians (Andrzej Rachuba et al.) the author provides realistic insights into the trauma of warfare effectively refuting the Soviet standard view that downplayed warfare (postulating the existence of Russian-White-Russian friendship) as well as recent nationalist interpretations that drew on modern theories of total war to demonstrate the complete destruction of White Russia by the Muscovite army.

Other highlights include the articles by Pavel Lukin (Moscow) and Andrei V. Zakharov (Cheliabinsk). Lukin calls for a systematic exploration of the slovo i delo proceedings – a huge but hardly studied archival legacy – to provide new perspectives on Russian popular culture. Taking issue with current interpretations he formulates a number of important research questions: how did non-elite groups define their collective identity vis-a-vis other social strata? For example, how did Cossacks, posad dwellers, and Russian orthodox clerics see themselves? And how were they perceived by other segments of society? And how did ordinary Russians see the powerful? Was there a public opinion (opinion publique) that was critical of political power? And finally, how did the phenomena of pretendership and heresy – much more widespread than currently thought – fit into this equation? Lukin’s article should help to re-energize the much neglected study of Muscovy’s lower strata. By contrast, Zakharov calls for a renewed scholarly focus on the Russian aristocratic elite during the Petrine era. The author impressively outlines the possibilities of new prosopographic studies based on boiarskie povestki and boiarskie spiski, detailed serial sources that allow for the reconstruction of career paths. Zakharov demonstrates that the old boyar elite remained an important force throughout the Petrine reforms and he rejects age-old assumptions about the differences between traditional Muscovite and new Petrine elites as “mistakes and myths” (p. 589).

The articles by Petr S. Stefanovich (Moscow) and Il’ia Z. Zaitsev (Moscow) discuss important new evidence from western libraries and archives. Zaitsev carefully analyzes a manuscript convolute from the French National Library that elucidates diplomatic relations between the Ukrainian Hetman Petro Doroshenko (1666–1676) and the Ottoman Porte. The article is a masterpiece of erudition – Zaitsev is at home in both East Slavic and Ottoman sources – and demonstrates in unprecedented detail how important Doroshenko was to Grand Vezir Ahmed Köprülü’s design to expand the Ottoman Empire’s borders towards Poland and Muscovy. Stefanovich made a similarly spectacular discovery in the British Library: he tracked down the correspondence between a British merchant and his Russian teacher, a posad dweller from Pskov. The correspondents’ search for common religious values – which they found in personal and social ethics – shows a level of mutual respect, curiosity, and tolerance that is rarely found in foreign travel accounts. Stefanovich suggests that the posad man’s religiosity was typical for orthodox urban milieux (la culture citadine) but he might have considered that several Russian towns – including Pskov and Novgorod – had long been hotbeds of religious dissent and spiritually inspired individuals like the anonymous Russian writer became repeatedly targets of investigations (as demonstrated, for example, by Aleksandr I. Klibanov).

Alexander Lavrov (Paris) draws on unstudied reports by the Swedish resident Christofer Kochen to make new observations about the 1682 Moscow Uprising. According to Lavrov, the key for understanding the revolt was the Kremlin’s inability to pay the musketeers which had resulted from a profound fiscal crisis (Kochen reports that the Kremlin’s treasury was empty). In addition, the rebels issued demands for the reintroduction of the old liturgical rites. Whether these demands reflected a profound “religious crisis” (p. 549) in Russian society and the existence of an organized Old Believer opposition (p. 551) – as the author suggests – remains debatable considering the ease with which rebel leaders abandoned their calls for religious change after their fiscal grievances had been addressed. Lavrov is most convincing in his vehement rejection of the wide-spread notion that Muscovy was not subject to the “general crisis of the seventeenth century” (Eric Hobsbawm). His discussion of the dilemmas of military modernization and fiscal reform is instructive and sheds new light on the prehistory of the Petrine reforms.

The volume contains several other original contributions. Andrii V. Blanutsa (Kiev) meticulously reconstructs “the nobility’s real estate market” in Volhynia during the sixteenth century drawing on substantial evidence from the Ukrainian National Archives. Andrei Matsuk (Minsk) combines data from various archives and libraries (in Russia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine) to elaborate on the political games of the Sapieha clan at the Russian imperial court after the death of Peter I (especially Sapieha’s ambitions to win over Alexander Menshikov). Aleksei V. Sirenov (St. Petersburg) presents a synopsis of his new research about seventeenth-century redactions of the Book of Degrees (Stepennaia kniga) arguing that they reflected the Romanov dynasty’s quest for legitimacy. Brian Davies (St. Antonio, Texas) shows that the Pereiaslavl’ Treaty of 1654 did not result from rhetoric of orthodox unity but pragmatic military and geopolitical considerations. Most innovative are Davies’ observations about Ottoman-Ukrainian relations and the Kremlin’s “concerns about the Hetmanate saving itself by throwing itself upon the mercy of the Ottoman sultan and the Crimean khan” (p. 478). Last but not least one must mention the archival detective work of Sergei P. Orlenko (Moscow) who traced the violent conflicts and scandals caused by the English emissary John Hebdon, Jr. during his unauthorized stay in Moscow in the late 1670s.

One must congratulate the editors of this volume for having put together such an unusual array of strong scholarship. The contributions discussed here indicate that one can be hopeful for the future. Most importantly, this volume demonstrates that there is an impressive cohort of Ukrainian, White Russian, and Russian historians – including a new generation of scholars – who produce excellent work on the early modern period. These scholars dare to think outside the box, have an impressive command of archival sources, and strive to adopt new models of interpretation that undermine the dominant political discourses of past and present. The volume is a must-read for scholars of the early modern East Slavic world. It is also highly recommended to historians working on other European regions (e. g., Slovakia, Hungary, Romania) where the study of the early modern period remains under the sway of traditional national historiographies.

Georg Michels, Riverside, CA