Donald Ostrowski

• Harvard University

This article explores the gap between the scholarly literature, which touts a Riurikid dynasty in Rus' before the sixteenth century, and the primary sources of the time, which seem to be unaware of such a dynasty. The appeals to legitimacy in the primary sources for particular kniazi to rule in a town never resort to claiming descent from Riurik. I...

Historians are at times divided in their views by “closed circles” of arguments based on differently prioritized premises. An instance of this occurs in the responses to the early textual work of Edward L. Keenan and his challenges to the traditional dating, attribution, and textual relations of four Muscovite texts. Preference is frequently given...

Religion and enlightenment in Catherinian Russia. The teachings of metropolitan Platon. By Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter. Pp. xi + 193. DeKalb, Il: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013. $49. 978 0 87580 469 9 - Volume 66 Issue 2 - Donald Ostrowski

Attributions of original works, letters, and translations to Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Kurbskii (d. 1583) have been contested for almost 45 years. This article proposes that Bayesian or inferential probability be applied to a number of the main points of contention. Of central importance to the attribution question are the so-called Kurbskii misce...

The Life of Alexander Nevskii is written in two styles: a hagiographic style and a secular style. Scholarly views are divided over whether the Life was written by one person in two different styles or by two persons, either a hagiographic writer and secular editor or a secular writer and hagiographic editor. The present article hypothesizes that th...

One of the primary tasks of a reviewer is to tell the reader what the book being reviewed is about. Yet that task cannot always be realized in a clear-cut way. What the author may think the book is about may differ from what the reviewer thinks the author has written, and both may differ from the publicized description of the book by the publisher...

Saint Sergius of Radonezh, his Trinity monastery, and the formation of the Russian identity. By MillerDavid B.. Pp. x + 348 incl. 13 figs, 2 maps, 2 tables and 1 genealogical chart. DeKalb, Il: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. $45. 978 0 87580 432 3 - Volume 63 Issue 2 - Donald Ostrowski

The Letter concerning Enmities between the Kirillov and Iosifov Monasteries has been used since the middle of the nineteenth century as a major source for monastic relations of the early sixteenth century. It is a mid-sixteenth-century composition extant in a single copy. Most likely composed in the Volokolamsk Monastery by Vassian Koshka (d. 1568)...

Tsar Simeon Bekbulatovich was the nephew of Ivan IV’s second wife, Mariia Temriukovna. He was a Chingissid who had a remarkable career, first, as khan of Kasimov, then after entering Muscovite service, as head of the Muscovite army’s “main regiment”, as grand prince of Rus′, and as grand prince of Tver′. He also married Anastasia Ivanovna Miloslavs...

How Russia transformed itself from a relatively small principality on the steppe frontier in 1450 to a major Eurasian empire by 1800 is one of the fundamental questions of Russian historical study. The two main views posit a central role for Peter I (1682–1725) in that transformation either by singled-handedly “changing everything” and bringing Mus...

The Muscovite cavalry went over to carbines and pistols during the course of the 17th century, yet firearms were not better handheld weapons than the composite reflex bow that the cavalry had been using. The carbine was a light form of musket that could be used on horseback,1 but it had a very short range.2 To reload the carbine on a horse was tric...

How Russia transformed itself from a relatively small principality on the steppe frontier in 1450 to a major Eurasian empire by 1800 is one of the fundamental questions of Russian historical study. The two main views posit a central role for Peter I (1682–1725) in that transformation either by singled-handedly "changing everything" and bringing Mus...

State Service in Sixteenth Century Novgorod: The First Century of the Pomestie System. By Hammond Vincent E. . Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2009. iv, 341 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. Tables. $47.00, paper. - Volume 69 Issue 4 - Donald Ostrowski

Historical Background The Eight ParadigmsConclusion NotesReferencesFurther Reading

Latin books and the eastern orthodox clerical elite in Kiev, 1632–1780. By CharipovaLiudmila V.. (Studies in Early Modern European History.) Pp. ix+259. Manchester–New York: Manchester University Press, 2006. £55. 0 7190 7296 4; 978 0 7190 7296 3 - Volume 59 Issue 4 - Donald Ostrowski

Until Aleksei Aleksandrovich Shakhmatov (1864–1920) began his scholarly work in the late 19th century, the main goal of chronicle studies was to extract historical information from chronicle texts. Thus if two chronicles had basically the same information, it was thought unnecessary to publish the full text of the second chronicle. Likewise, it was...

Although the history of what David Christian has called "Inner Eurasia" may seem less than relevant to many who study Russia, being aware of steppe history and culture is of potential importance for understanding Russian history and culture. Russia existed in the context of Eurasian influence flows, not isolated from them. The books reviewed here c...

Without Abstract

During the period between 1462 and 1533, Muscovy underwent substantial growth in land and population, virtually tripling in size (see Map 9.1). The Muscovite state gained a significant amount of land and population to the southwest in treaties with Lithuania, and annexed the principalities and republics of Iaroslavl’ (1471), Perm’ (1472), Rostov (1...

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5.2 (2004) 383-385 The interpretive paradigm, or framework, that has most influenced scholarly understanding of Russian-steppe relations has been the Russian nationalist one, which emphasizes the destructiveness of the steppe pastoralists in relation to sedentary Russians. In this paradigm, the...

Muscovite Adaptation of Steppe Political Institutions: A Reply to Halperin’s Objections Donald Ostrowski The joke goes: how many scholars does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer is two—one to get up on the ladder, the other to pull it out from under him or her. Charles Halperin wrote a book that has become a classic on the influence of th...

Section 274 of the Secret History of the Mongols (Yuanchao bishi) tells us that Khagan Ögödei placed governors over the conquered peoples whose cities were ‘Asud, Sesüd, Bolar and Mankerman-Kiwa’. I present the entire passage, first, in the transliterated edition published in 1972 by Igor de Rachewiltz, then in two English translations, the first b...

The Secret History of the Mongols (Yuanchao bishi) tells us that, after the invasion and conquest of Qipchaq and Rus'lands in 1237–40, Qagan Ögödei placed ‘daruγačin and tammačin’ over peoples whose main cities were Ornas, Sasīn, Bulgar and Kiev.

Sources of the first half of the fourteenth century provide evidence that a sharp rift in institutional continuity occurred in Muscovy. This rift constituted a kind of "punctuated equilibrium" in the evolutionary development of the Rus' political system. The political institutional structure inherited from the Vladimir-Suzdal' component of Kievan R...

A gap exists between the philosophers of history and the practitioners. Both groups proudly encourage their splendid isolation from the other. The philosophers tend to consider the practitioners incompetent to philosophize about historical study; the practitioners tend to think that the philosophers engage only in “flimflam.” Insofar as one can jud...

The historical literature of the past two centuries testifies to disputes about what historical knowledge is and the relationship of the historian to it. The disputes have been fierce enough for each side to declare that any position other than its own is untenable. It would be futile to try to convince those who so staunchly defend their own groun...

Thesis--Pennsylvania State University. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 641-663). Photocopy of typescript. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1978. -- 21 cm.