1.2.7 Man and Power in the Russian Middle Ages
Fyodor Uspensky
Project Leader
Project period
2020-2025
Context of Research Project within a Subject of Human Capital
Based on an interdisciplinary analysis of various primary sources, the project will allow to reconstruct one aspect of the human potential of the medieval and Early Modern Russia: the way in which the concepts of power and authority were embodied in the worldview of the medieval Russian man. . Project results will help to reassess the influence of the concepts of power and authority of a medieval man, treated as part of a wider notion of human potential, the formation and development of hierarchical structures and political institutions in the context of the global history of the country prior the 18th century.
Project Aim
The principal goal of the project is to form a comprehensive picture of the tradition and evolution of the language of power in Medieval and Early Modern Russia (10th through 17th centuries)
Project Objectives:
- Identify the principles of forming and developing of the “vocabulary” of political terminology ; studyi the structure of ideological utterance in the Russian medieval text
- Describr the tradition and innovation in commemorative practices and official texts of the time; study the rhetoric of conflict and the rhetoric of reconciliation
- Explore Western European and Byzantine concepts of representation of power in Russia
- Study the way in which succession and transition of power and authority manifested itself in the namgiviing of medieval elites noblemen
Key Findings
2020
The designation mechanisms and succession order of various lands through namegiving in pre-Mongol Rus’ have been reconstructed. The picture of the private and public life of the elite, as represented in the system of two Christian names received by a person at birt,h has been recreated. Preparatory materials have been collected for a comparative analysis of the system of polynomial multiple names in Muscovite Rus’ and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and a study of the mechanisms of coexistence and convergence of person’s multiple names in the 14th and 17th centuries
2021
A new explanation of the Old Russian term ‘shestnik’, which is of particular interest in the framework of the study of the Old Russian prince suite, has been proposed, linking it to the organizations of the Old Russian troops. The letters of the Kazan Khan Safa Giray to the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund the Old (dating from1537-1538), and the letters of the King to the Rada of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (dating from 1538-1539) on relations with the Kazan and Crimean Khanates have been prepared for publication. The date of the beginning of the minting of Novgorod quarters has been found out. The exact date of birth of Tsar Boris Godunov has been established
2022
Based on the birch bark certificates and the chronicle certificate of 1422 introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the system of the Novgorod monetary account of the beginning of the XV century and the sequence of stages of the Novgorod monetary reform of 1420 have been reconstructed.
As a result of a comprehensive analysis of sources (epigraphic, legislative, narrative), the hypothesis is substantiated that the Kiev Prince Vsevolod Yaroslavich was meant by the mysterious ‘Vsevolod the first’ in the ktitor inscription in the Church of the Savior on Nereditsa.
New sources on the history of the relations between the Russian State and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Kazan and Crimean Khanates have been published, they are dated and inscribed in the historical context, including due to the opportunity to clarify the dating of other sources of the same circle.
Publications
Preobrazhenskaya A. August, Augustin, Augustaliy: the History of Russian Monastic Names not included in the Monastic Lists (RU) // Questions of onomastics. 2021. Vol. 18. No 3. pp. 177-194. (Q2 Language and Linguistics)
Conferences
International Scientific Conference Ancient Rus’ and the German World in Historical and Philological Perspective (RU) (Moscow, Russia, June 9-10, 2021)