Russia, from the earliest times to Peter the Great, 862-1682

• ACADEMIC CALENDAR for the whole term =
  1st Week ---- DIMENSIONS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY , with explanations of exercises one, two and three
  2nd Week --- BYZANTINE STEPPE FRONTIER, with exercise four and five
  3rd Week --- KIEVAN RUS
  4th Week ---  RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY, with exercise six
  5th Week ---  DOMINANCE OF THE GOLDEN HORDE, with exercises seven, eight and nine
  6th Week ---  RISE OF MOSCOW / FALL OF NOVGOROD, with exercise ten
  7th Week ---  IVAN "THE TERRIBLE" & THE "TIME OF TROUBLES", with exercise eleven
  8th Week ---  PEASANT CULTURE AND SERFDOM
  9th Week ---  "WESTERNIZATION" AND CHURCH SCHISM
  10th Week --- TSAR PETER I AND THE END OF MEDIEVAL RUSSIA
  Finals Week -- FINAL EXAMINATION, exercise twelve
• Numbered summary of 12 specific exercises =
  #1 -- Purchase and set up your journal (1st Week)
  #2 -- Website: technique and philosophy (1st Week)
  #3 -- SAC in particular (1st Week)
  #4 -- Tour UO library sites (2nd Week)
  #5 -- Compose brief draft essays #1 and #2 (2nd and 3rd Weeks)
  #6 -- Submit journal for first time (4th Week)
  #7 -- Become a regional historian (4th through 10th Weeks, ending in draft essay #6)
  #8 -- Become an ethno-historian (4th through 10th Weeks, ending in draft essay #7)
  #9 -- Compose draft essays #3 and #4 (5th and 6th Weeks)
  #10 - Take a mid-term exam (6th Week)
  #11 - Compose draft essays #5, #6 & #7 (7th through 10th Weeks)
  #12 - Take a final exam (Finals Week)

HIST 345: RUSSIA FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO PETER THE GREAT
Alan Kimball, 346-4813. Office hours: Tue&Thur 10:00-12:00, in McK 367
KIMBALL@UOREGON.EDU

Most course materials are in the Knight Library or the course webpage.  You will purchase a lab book, and there you will keep lecture notes, a record of library work and webpage work, draft seven take-home essays, & write your midterm & final exams.

Here is a basic calendar of the term's three dramatic deadlines =

!! oc20:------------------FIRST SUBMISSION OF JOURNAL, with draft essays #1 & #2
!! no05:----------------- MIDTERM EXAM IN JOURNAL, with draft essays #3 & #4 already in journal
!! de07:at 8:00am --- FINAL EXAM IN JOURNAL, with draft essays #5, #6 & #7 already in journal

First exercise = Purchase and set up your journal. Ask at the customer service desk in the basement of the UO Book Store for a blue lab book (the larger one, 11x9 inches; Stock # 43-581, JUST EXACTLY THIS ONE). The first thing I want you to do with your lab book (let’s call it the journal) is paste a white label securely to the outer upper right-hand corner of the front cover (a mailing label will do). Boldly inscribe your name there. Inscribe other personal contact info on the inner face of the cover, and leave the first 4-5 numbered pages blank for keeping your own table of contents through the term, indicating sources consulted. It is your responsibility here to provide a guide to each part of your journal. Leave page 120 blank for instructor comments & grading.

Second exercise = Locate this course on the following webpage:
   http://uoregon.edu/~kimball/courses.htm

Add this page to your web-browser "favorites" page. Click on HIST 345 for our specific extended electronic syllabus. You'll go there often this term.

These first two and ten further exercises are listed and explained in detail on that specific course webpage. Everything is organized in a weekly schedule of events.

ABOUT GRADES: Essays & exams are due at the time the class meets on the days specified. Late exercises are penalized one grade. Exercises AWOL 24 hours after due date are given a failing grade. Failure to complete any one of the essays or exams will result in a failing grade for the course. Unpenalized postponement of an exercise is possible only when documented illness or happenstance forces delay, or when arranged in writing beforehand. If you attend class regularly, keep a good lecture notes, devote eight or nine hours of your study-week to your reading & writing, & keep a good record in your journal, you may be sure that you are meeting course expectations.

ACADEMIC CALENDAR

1st Week
DIMENSIONS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Our topic has three dimensions = (1) Concepts that underlie the mechanisms of the course itself, (2) Time, and (3) Space. Exercises 1 and 2 deal with the first dimension =

EXERCISE 1
Purchase and set up your journal

Ask at the customer service desk in the basement of the UO Book Store for a blue lab book (the larger one, 11x9 inches; Stock # 43-581, JUST EXACTLY THIS ONE). The first thing I want you to do with your lab book (let’s call it the journal) is paste a white label securely to the outer upper right-hand corner of the front cover (a mailing label will do). Boldly inscribe your name there. Inscribe other personal contact info on the inner face of the cover, and leave the first 4-5 numbered pages blank for keeping your own table of contents through the term, indicating sources consulted. It is your responsibility here to provide a guide to each part of your journal. Leave page 120 blank for instructor comments & grading.

Read the extended description of how to employ the journal

EXERCISE 2
The course website

• In the first days of the term, read through descriptions of all 12 exercises, including linkages to auxiliary explanatory pages. Get a feel for the larger shape of course requirements [about one hour]. The larger shape of course requirements is one of the most important "dimensions" of our history. It seems a lot when considered all together, but remember the old proverb: "inch by inch, life's a cinch; mile by mile, life's a trial".
• Read "Ways of Seeing History" (which links to three "sub-essays" = "Interests", "Dozen Categories", and "Taxonomy").  This is a discussion of the "philosophical dimension" of the course & provides a guide to some of the technical peculiarities involved in this course.
• Most of the technical peculiarities you will meet in this course are connected with what I call the Student's Annotated Chronology and Systematic Bibliography [SAC © Alan Kimball]
• Read this extended description of SAC and how to use it.
• You may print any part of the electronic material I provide this class. Keep these photo-copied texts in a separate place. Do not put them in your hand-written journal.

EXERCISE 3
You are ready to jump directly to the time period (the second dimension) of our course

Time is a universally significant dimension of all histories. Open the website SAC from the earliest times to 1682. Check it out [about one hour]. At first concentrate on the "Table of Contents" at the top of this first SAC webpage, beginning with the entry for the year 453 AD, titled "BYZANTINE STEPPE FRONTIER". Continue with the Table of Contents to the end. Then, click next SAC page and hop to the Table of Contents of the second great SAC page. Our chronology this term stretches down to the entry for the years 1689:1725, titled "Peter I, the Great". Establish a general personal sense of this table-of-contents chronology, the main periods or peak events in the epoch we are studying. You've got an hour, so click on a few of them just to browse a bit in what we will be doing later, but you need not go into the chronology too deeply right now. As we get ourselves launched, this HIST 345 syllabus web page will provide weekly guides to SAC and readings in several campus locations (see exercise four).

First Week Readings

In addition to five hours with numbered exercises 1-3 above, devote about four hours to one or more of the following readings =
\\
*--RRC1(1) & RRC2(16) (Sumner,"Frontier")
*--RRC1(15) (Obolensky on Byzantine heritage)
*--Website essay on Byzantium
*--Riasanovsky (chapters 1 &2) COPIES OF RIASANOVSKY ARE IN RBR & ON OPEN SHELVES
*--Vernadsky (chapter 1) COPIES OF VERNADSKY ARE IN RBR & ON OPEN SHELVES
The next two suggestions are for those enthusiasts who feel confident about their use of indexes =
*--Vernadsky,1 (This is a whole volume, so select passages about Slavs and various folk migrations)
*--Vasiliev, Byzantine Empire,1:300-74

2nd Week
BYZANTINE STEPPE FRONTIER & ORIGINS OF RUS’

Let's begin this second week by looking at one of the library tours you are asked to take in exercise four, the MAP ROOM

Read this long single entry [text between <> and <> In SAC] on the Byzantine Steppe Frontier
At the bottom of this long entry you could launch yourself on a 15-hop Byzantine LOOP [or take first hop here]

Follow the LOOPS that outline the early histories of seven different Slavic (or semi-Slavic) populations important to our story. Notice how these histories require us to set aside our presumptions about "nation-states" and to adopt a "multicultural" perspective =
    Bulgars (12-hop LOOP to the time of tsar Samuel)
    Bolgars [NB! arbitrary spelling distinction] (9-hop LOOP to 15th-c. conquest by Moscow)
    The Rus' (local Slavs mixed with Scandinavian warrior merchants) (5-hop LOOP, to prince Igor & full assimilation)
    Lithuanians (6-hop LOOP to the time that Polish and Lithuanian stories flow together in an epoch of medieval grandeur)
    Poles (a 24-hop LOOP [first 6 hops through ca. 1000 years prior to union with Lithuania])
    Czechs (6-hop LOOP into the time of the Hussite controversy)
    Ukrainians (9-hop LOOP into the late 17th century)

The Byzantine Empire was not the only significant power in these earliest years =
    Muslim Arabia (8-hop LOOP)
    Khazars (8-hop LOOP)
    Pechenegs (Patsinaks, Patzinaks) (5-hop LOOP)
    Charlemagne (13-hop LOOP covers 800 years of German imperial intersections with East European History)

The website reading and note taking should take about four hours
Then devote about 2 hours to one or more of the following readings =
\\
*--Obolensky:42-68, 136-53, 184-7
*--Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantium and the Slavs, ch.2 and/or ch.3
*--Florinsky,1:1
*--Riasanovsky(3-6)
*--Auty, ch1:1-48

Then give 2 hours or so to exercise four =

EXERCISE 4
Tour UO collections [about three hours]

Hypertext links are to a special library page designed for this course.

First library location = KNIGHT Reserve Book Room
Second library location = KNIGHT Reference Division

------------------------------------------------------

Third library location = KNIGHT MAP Room
On this course website, open Geographic TABLE

If you print out this page, you could use it in the MAP LIBRARY to search out our most important river systems on any good map. For us, the important river systems are those listed from the top of the  Geographic TABLE down to the city Saint Petersburg.

Look at the four universally useful electronic maps on that page [ID]

MORE MAP ROOM EXERCISE = When you looked at the Table of Contents of the first two SAC pages (exercise 3), your goal was to get a general sense of chronology (time), the second dimension or organizational principle of our history. Here in the MAP Room your goal is to develop broad familiarity with the third dimension, geography (space), and with certain other visual/spatial aspects of our history

In the MAP LIBRARY, survey the range devoted to Russia, G2111.S1 C…, and G2111.S1 G…. Locate and leaf through the pertinent chronological sections of the atlases by Channon and Gilbert. Browse the first 100 or so pages of Cultural Atlas of Russia.... Also spend some time with Cultural Atlas of the Viking World

At first, concentrate on the geo-physical features of the territory sometimes called "European Russia" which lies within the space north of Constantinople (Istanbul), south of the White Sea, west of the Ural Mts., & east of the Carpathian Mts. Pay particular attention to the way major rivers drain the low, flat land.

Here is a series of maps on our SAC website, in chronological order (with three maps of broad compass in boldface) =
    814:"Europe" at the time of Charlemagne
    862:Viking routes
    1054:Kievan Rus'
    1095:+; western European crusades into the eastern Mediterranean
    1236:Conquests of the Golden Horde
    1294:Asia
    1300:1533; (200+ years) Russian expansion over two centuries
    1328:Mosoow in the reign of prince Ivan I Kalita
    1355:Moscow in the reign of prince Dmitrii Donskoi [NB! also map of Europe in 1360]
    1389:Moscow in the reign of prince Vasilii I
    1425:Moscow in the reign of prince Vasilii II
    1462:Russia in the reign of Muscovite tsar and grand prince Ivan III the Great
    1492:+; European overseas discovery
    1533:Russia in the reign of Muscovite tsar and grand prince Ivan IV the Terrible [2 maps]
    1596:1800; (200 years) Russia in the era of Siberian expansion [2  maps]
    1613:Russia in the reign of the new Romanov tsar Mikhail
    1645:Russia in the reign of the modernizing tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich

As you tour the MAP ROOM, you will want to be looking ahead to course exercise five and your choice for draft essay #1

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fourth library location = The Knight Library stacks
Fifth library location = Information Technology Center
Sixth library location =  All UO students ought at least once to visit the Jacqua Law School Library

------------------------------------------------------------------

Seventh library location = Take a walk to the Lawrence Hall Art and Architecture Library

Once at the Art and Architecture Library, browse the shelf-range N8187 through N8189.5
Here and in the encyclopedias learn something of the life and achievements of Andrei Rublev. This will follow up very nicely on what you see in the Art Museum. Look for other pictorial representation of medieval Russian art and architecture. Here are two specific recommendations =

Viktor Lazarev, ed., Early Russian Icons
Novgorod icons, with intro by Dmitrii Likhachev

As you tour the A&AA Library, you will want to be looking ahead to course exercise five and your choice for draft essay #1

----------------------------------------------------------------

Eighth (near the) library location = On your way back to KNIGHT, stop by the Art Museum.

EXERCISE 5
Over the final nine weeks of the term, you will research and write seven brief draft essays
[What is a "draft essay"?]
We begin here with a description of
draft essay #1
and
draft essay #2

Draft essay #1

Draft essay #1 should be completed by the beginning of the third week. I will read it at the time of first submission of the journal [ID]

Here are two choices of topic for draft essay #1 =

(1) Write an essay on some features of the geographic conditions on the Eurasian steppes ("European "Russia") and their impact on some features of the Russian historical experience prior to the Christianization of Rus' [ID].  This first choice would build on what you discovered of greatest interest to you on your tour of the Map Room.

OR

(2) Write an essay on some aspect of the great icon "writer" Andrei Rublev's achievement. This second choice would build on what you discovered of greatest interest to you on your tour of the A&AA library and the UO Art Museum.

Draft essay #2

Draft essay #2 should deal with some select aspects of the Byzantine impact on Russian and/or eastern European historical development up to the Christianization of Rus' [ID]. The issue is one of contemporary significance = How do great imperialist powers exert themselves in the lives of culturally, politically, militarily and economically weaker peoples on their borders? How do lesser powers protect themselves from, but also take advantage of, the looming presence of greater powers? The best guide to readings will be found along the Byzantine LOOP in SAC [GO].

Draft essay #2 should also be completed before the first submission of the journal [ID]

And just to look ahead =

Draft essays #3 and #4

Draft essays #5, #6 & #7

3rd Week
KIEVAN RUS

KIEVAN RUS' (9-hop LOOP on the morpheme "Kiev", with 2-3 instances in which hops include several entries)

Here is a summary of ten key moments =

The invitation to the Rus'
The Rus' took Kiev and established close relations with Byzantium
Prince Oleg and the trade treaty with Constantinople
Prince Igor and the Slavicization of the Rus'
His wife, princess Olga, moved Kievan Rus' toward a more sophisticated status
Rough-and-tumble prince Sviatoslav brought down the Khazars
Prince Vladimir Christianized Rus'
The glorious years of Yaroslav Mudryi
A final glow in the years of Vladimir Monomakh
Feudal dissolution [a 5-hop LOOP on the word "mestnichestvo"]
 \\
*--Kimball, Olga and Anna & Christianization of Rus' [TXT]
*--If you are interested in the place of Russia in the general history of the Vikings, see Jones
*--Florinsky,1(2)
*--Vernadsky(2)
*--Auty, ch2:49-77
*--Blum:1-56
*--ORC:36-83

4th Week
RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY & MEDIEVAL WORLD VIEW
(and first submission of journal)

*--Huge 45-hop Church LOOP =

(Five hops cover certain aspects of early church history)
(Four hops cover Byzantine missionary activities throughout the Pontic Steppe region)
{Six hops cover development of Russian Orthodoxy in Kievan Rus}
(Five hops cover the Russian Orthodox Church under the authority of the Golden Horde)
(Fourteen hops cover the Muscovite Church)
(Thirteen hops cover the the Russian Orthodox Church in its first Patriarchal century and its great crisis)
*--Cyril and Methodius
*--Kiev-Pechersk Monastery
*--Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery
*--RRC1(5, 9-11 & 16) RRC2(5,10 & 17) (Religion)
 \\
*-- Florinsky,1(6)

EXERCISE 6
FIRST SUBMISSION OF JOURNAL [ID],
WITH DRAFT ESSAYS #1 & #2 [ID] ALREADY INSCRIBED IN THE JOURNAL

Consult hand-out syllabus for exact date

5th Week
DOMINANCE OF THE GOLDEN HORDE

*--Golden Horde (Tatars, Mongols) and Russia (18-hop LOOP)
*--Phase one, a century of destruction and dominance (two long-striding hops cover this busy Mongolian century)
*--Phase two of Golden Horde in Russia corresponds to phase one in the rise of Moscow (nine hops)
*--In phase two, the reign of Vasilii I (five hops)
*--In phase two, the reign of Vasilii II (two hops)
\\
*--Donald Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols:1-26, or, better yet, pp. 36-63 (institutional influence on Russia)
*--Halperin:7-11
*--Hartog
*--RRC1(14) RRC2(4 &15) (On Russian cities, and Vernadsky's assessment of the impact of the Golden Horde)
*--Florinsky,1(3)
*--Riasanovsky(7-8)
*--Vernadsky(3)
*--Blum:57-116
*--ORC:84-93

EXERCISE 7
REGIONAL HISTORY

Select a region & concentrate on its historical experience. Exercise 7 is a call to get started on a continuing, five-week project. I recommend that you begin now to prepare yourself to write draft essay #6 on the long-term significance of your selected region to the course of early Russian history [ID].

I strongly recommend that you select one of the following river systems described on the Geographic TABLE =

Danube
Dnepr
Volga
Oka
Volkhov.

Consult GSE and MERSH (particularly because we have on our website an electronic MERSH table of contents).

Also consult the various atlases you find in the MAP ROOM or listed on the website GLOSSARY.

Also consult the indexes of Riasanovsky and Florinsky.

EXERCISE 8
ETHNO-HISTORY

Select one non-Russian people and learn the main outline of their historical experience over the time period covered this term. Select a non-Russian people who have lived within the boundaries of Russian history. Become an ethno-historian of their fate in our period.

Exercise 8 is a call to get started on a continuing, five-week project. I recommend that you begin now to prepare yourself to write draft essay #7 [ID]

As you seek a non-Russian people to study, look away from the geographical area you chose in exercise seven above (regional history). This allows you to broaden the scope of your studies.

Think about the meaning of "national" history. Where do the two terms "nationality" and "nation" overlap and where do they describe different meanings? Here you start to become an "ethno-historian"

The following list is meant to be suggestive of some important groups of non-Russian peoples. I have created a hypertext link to SAC for several of these. While you will be specializing on one of these groups, be sure you have a general sense of the historical role played in our period by each of the following:

Germans
Varangians (Vikings, Rus, Dany)
Danubian Bulgars
Volga Bolgars
Khazars
Pechenegs (Patsinaks, Patzinaks)
Mongols (Tatars, Golden Horde)
Crimean Tatars
Lithuanians
Poles
Ukrainians
Cossacks
Ottoman Turks

Use the main textbooks and other appropriate readings identified in "SAC".  A few FIND searches for certain "key-words" in SAC would yield quick, brief chronologies and some reading suggestions.  For example, you could search for "Asia", "Siberia", "Bashkir", "Cossack", etc.  You may find, as the term progresses, that your readings on the group of your choice are scattered throughout your journal, but your table of contents can help pull them together.

The Knight Library Reference Room holds two helpful books on the peoples of Russian-dominated Eurasia =

An Ethnohistorical dictionary of the Russian and Soviet empires [1994]
Ronald Wixman, The peoples of the USSR : an ethnographic handbook [1984]

Toward the end of the term, you will write draft essay #4 on the significance of the people of your choice to the long-term history of early Russia.

EXERCISE 9

Compose draft essays [ID] #3 and #4 before the midterm exam [ID]

Draft essay #3

I strongly urge you to take up the following topic in your draft essay #3 = "How do the authors of the Russian Chronicles see the world?"

Click through this five-hop LOOP on the Russian Chronicles. I recommend that you select your own passages from the Chronicles, guided by the important entries in SAC.  There are several famous and fabulous accounts in the Chronicles relating, for example, to the following historical moments =

• 862:Novgorod. The invitation to the Varangians to return and rule
• 866:Constantinople attacked for the first time by Varangians
• 911se02:Constantinople signed trade treaty with Kievan Grand Prince Oleg
• 945:962; Kiev Grand Princess Olga ruled
• 988 or 989:Kiev Grand Prince Vladimir became Christian
• And there are many others

You can be guided by the guides to primary documentation attached to the most important chronological entries in SAC. You need not read all the Chronicles. That would be a daunting task [EG]. Make careful and intelligent choices. Russian Chronicles covered events of Russian history well into the 15th century.  For example =

• 1252:1263
• 1471:1474

Certain of the entries in the Russian Chronicles are translated and linked to our course on a special webpage where you can get some further suggestions about where to find translated passages = [TXT]

You will learn many "facts" about Russian history as you read the accounts in the Russian Chronicles, but I want your draft essay to concentrate less on the facts and more on the way the chroniclers [authors] see the world.  How do they describe (or gloss over) the qualities of the Prince, the nature of cause and effect, concepts of "national unity", the common people (peasants, craftsmen, etc.), the social hierarchy, how things are made and grown and how they are distributed, etc. How much daily life do you see there? Think hard about the nature of the world view of the authors of these texts. Look for what they see and consider what they do not see, or care about.  You might find it useful to compare the world view of the chroniclers with what you see in other sources from the early history, for example, folk legend [as in ZMR1 or ZMR2], or Arabic and Byzantine sources. The "Testament" of Kievan Prince Vladimir Vsevolodovich "Monomakh" was imbedded in the Chronicles, but does this crusty old prince, as seen in his Testament, "see the world" in the same way as the monkish authors of the Chronicle whose accounts surround his Testament there.

You might also get some ideas about how to analyze these authors from "Ways of Seeing History" and associated webpages =
"Dozen Categories" (do the chroniclers show a consciousness of social diversity? What distinguishes one people from another?),
Taxonomy of Historical Experience (what levels of our "taxonomy" are most emphasized by the chroniclers?) and
"Perceived Interests" (do chroniclers assume that individuals and groups pursue their own perceived self-interests? If not, what causes things to happen?).

Seek three additional sorts of help in the indexes of two or three secondary sources [ID]. First, you want to learn about the Russian Chronicles and the chroniclers themselves. When, where and by whom were they written? The Chronicle LOOP has some suggestions about where to go to learn more about the compilation of the Chronicles.  Second, you want to find out about the persons and events described in the chronicle texts. What’s emphasized in the chronicles that does not make it into the more contemporary secondary sources. And what’s left out of the chronicles that gets emphasized in the more contemporary secondary sources. If, for example, a great monastery or a wicked prince or a vicious invading army is mentioned, find out what Riasanovsky, Florinsky, Kliuchevskii, Vernadsky, MERSH and/or GSE have to say about them. Finally, you want to be alert to those points where the authors of the secondary historical accounts and/or reference works specifically amplify, augment, correct, or criticize the chroniclers’ accounts. Riasanovsky, for example, cites the 862 account of the invitation to the Rus and notes that he does not like the translation.  (The 862 entry in SAC presents a new translation.)

You cannot do all these things, but you are committed to 9 hours a week outside of class and thus can make some choices among the suggestions above. You should enjoy yourself as you try to put yourself into the medieval Russian world view.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Draft essay #4

Draft essay #4 should concentrate on a primary document (or documents) [ID] related to some aspect of our history since the coming of the Golden Horde [ID] and before the time of Ivan IV [ID]. This would include the history of the Russian Orthodox Church after the Mongol invasion [ID]

Remember, you find guidance to primary documents in brackets at the end of the sub-entries (individual lines) within SAC entries [EG]

A good organizational strategy would be to read about your topic also in some of the most important secondary sources on reserve (e.g., Florinsky or Riasanovsky) or in the reference division of KNIGHT library, for example, MERSH [ID]. Notice that MERSH has an electronic table of contents, available only on our website, where you can do a FIND search [ID] for your topic.

Your essay could offer an evaluation of what you learn from the primary document(s) that you do not learn from the secondary sources, and what your learn from the secondary source(s) that you do not learn from the primary document(s).

Next week you will write a midterm exam [ID] in your journal. In other words, as you begin the midterm exam, your journal will already contain draft essays #3 and #4 (as well as all previous work, of course).

6th Week
RISE OF MOSCOW / FALL OF NOVGOROD

*--Hanseatic League (Hansa, Hanse) LOOP
*--Sergei Eisenstein's movie "Alexander Nevsky"
*--Andrei Tarkovsky's movie "Andrei Rublev"
*--Teutonic Knights GO 1410
*--Livonian Order GO 1500
*--Survey the years of Ivan III (thirty hops cover the whole epoch)
\\
*--RRC1(6) or RRC2(6) (George Vernadsky and L.V. Cherepnin debate issue of whether there was a "Russian Feudalism")
*--RRC1(4) or RRC2(3, 4) (Novgorod)
*--Florinsky,1(4-5)
*--Riasanovsky(9-15)
*--Vernadsky(4)
*--Auty, ch3:78-120 (concentrates on rise of Moscow, Ivan III and Ivan IV)
*--ORC:95-111

EXERCISE 10
MIDTERM EXAM IN JOURNAL [ID],
WITH TAKE-HOME DRAFT ESSAYS [ID] #1 through #4

Consult hand-out syllabus for exact date
On the last page of your journal, I enter my evaluations, using what I call FOQs [ID]

In addition to lecture notes and notes on other course exercises and SAC readings, the journal at this time will contain draft essays #1 & #2 [ID] completed two weeks ago, and now draft essays #3 & #4 [ID]

NB! The midterm exam will cover the big Church LOOP only to 1589 when the Muscovite Metropolitan See was elevated to the status of Patriarch.

NB! The midterm exam will cover the rise, but not the fall (after 1494), of Novgorod as member of the Hanseatic League.

Exam form

Exam Topics Review =

Here are some suggestions and important terms on the basis of which I will construct the exam..These study guides are arranged here according to our taxonomy of historical experience [ID]

Remember that I will ask you to avoid duplication of choices in exam questions and draft essay =

  I. Mentalities (you have already written about the Russian Chronicles) =
Describe your discoveries of greatest relevance to our course in Cultural Atlas of Russia.
"Song of Igor's Campaign"
Cyril and Methodius
The Life of Saint Sergius
Andrei Rublev
"Third Rome"

  II. Institutions =
Invitation to the Rus'
"Golden Age" of Byzantium and its meaning for Kievan Rus
Danubian Bulgars and Volga Bolgar realms
Varangian Prince Oleg
Olga and Anna & Christianization of Rus’
Bulgarian kingdom and Byzantium
Kievan mestnichestvo in decline
Aleksandr Nevskii and his relations with the Golden Horde
Yarlyk [Tatar word for "license" from a superior authority]
Yasak [Tatar word for "tribute" or "tax" owed superior authority]
Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery
Grand Prince of Moscow as agent AND enemy of the Golden Horde, especially Vasilii II
Krewo Union
Ivan III as "tsar"

  III. Society =
Votchinnik and Votchina [patrimonial aristocrat and heritable noble estate and status]
Primogeniture
Novgorod and the veche [urban council] (5-jump LOOP on word "veche")

  IV. Economy =
Possessors and Non-Possessors (Think about what part of this might fit in taxonomic level I. above?)
Novgorod and the Hanseatic League (8-jump LOOP on word "Hanse")
Birth of market economics as policy of certain sovereign political powers
Rise of mercantilistic centralized national monarchy in Russia, and elsewhere in Europe

  V. Geography. Review the main hypertext terms mentioned in connection with exercise four, especially the following =
Valdai Hills (1138 ft., this the highest spot in European Russia) and
the rivers Dnepr [Dnieper] and
Volga. Also be able to locate the following =
Black Sea
Caspian Sea
Baltic Sea
White Sea 

7th Week
IVAN THE TERRIBLE & THE TIME OF TROUBLES

Suggested readings =
\\
*--Florinsky,1(7-9)
*--Riasanovsky(16-19)
*--Auty, ch3:78-120 (concentrates on rise of Moscow, Ivan III and Ivan IV)
*--ORC:112-26
*--Alan Kimball, Essay on the historical content of Sergei Eisenstein's movie IVAN GROZNYI
*--Dunning deals with the reign of Ivan IV as a causal factor in the Time of Troubles, pp. 13-60

*--Ivan's era summarized in SAC. Ivan's era contains about 40 SAC entries. It is important to read through them all in order to get a full sense of this 54-year era
 

Ivan's era arranged according to our taxonomy of historical experience =

I. Mentalities =
 *--Ivan Peresvetov 
 *--Does the correspondence of Ivan IV & Kurbskii signal a clash of religious and secular ways of thinking?
 *--First Russian printing press [LOOP]
 *--Domostroi tried to bring order to daily practices in the Russian family. Does it harmonize with the following? =
 *--Sudebnik [Law Code] compiled

II.A. Institutions -- the Church =
 *--Stoglav [Hundred Chapters Orthodox Church Assembly] met
      What does this assembly suggest about church/state relations?

II.B. Institutions -- the State =
*--Ivan IV's coronation and formation of Chosen Council
 *--First Zemskii sobor [Assembly of the Land] summoned [A century-long LOOP follows]
 *--The infamous Oprichnina
 *--Ivan killed his son

III. Society =
 *--Domostroi suggests much about daily practices in the Russian family
 *--Ivan IV and Kurbskii corresponded about rights and duties, touching on several significant social issues
      Think about the ironic parallel in the experience of patrimonial aristocrats and peasant villagers in this era

IV. Economy =
 *--English mercantilist intrusions into White Sea region and the rise of the Stroganov family

V. Geography =
 *--Victory over Kazan Khanate and expansion east and south
 *--After a promising decade, Ivan bogged down in the 25-year Livonian Wars
 *--Poland-Lithuania created a monarchical republic, entering their final years of early-modern grandeur [LOOP]
 *--Yermak crossed the Urals eastward into Siberia

The Time of Troubles summarized and analyzed in SAC. About 30 entries are broken into five phases.

The Time of Troubles (1587:1612) and
the reign of tsar Mikhail Fedorovich (1613:1645) taxonomized =

I. Mentalities =
*--As throughout Europe, religious traditionalism and innovation split Christian congregations, and all were now challenged by emerging secularism. Christendom was shattered and locked in brutal inter-denominational struggles. Over the shoulders of these struggling religious zealots, a new and powerful rationalism and empiricism arose to challenge all spiritual doctrines. This was an era when the technical demands of political and military rule brought accountants, rationalist-minded administrators, engineers and other technicians to the fore, into influential advisory positions earlier occupied by Church officials or feudal landowners

II.A. Institutions -- Church =
*--Russian Orthodox Metropolitan elevated to status of Patriarch
*--When other bulwarks of national identity & defense failed, the church united the Russian Orthodox people
*--Then came the unique event = Powerful Monk Filaret (who was the father of tsar Mikhail Fedorovich) become Patriarch

II.B. Institutions -- State =
*--Boris Godunov and dynastic instability
*--Old boyar rule
*--Narodnoe opolchenie and the greatest Zemskii Sobor

III. Society =
*--Go week eight (following)
*--Consult the 1649:Ulozhenie (Law Code)

IV. Economy =
*--Rural labor bondage (serfdom) expanded and intensified
*--Go week eight (following)

V. Geography =
*--Poland twice ruled in Moscow, then began a slow retreat and decline

EXERCISE 11
Compose draft essays [ID] #5, #6 & #7 over the next four weeks.

Draft essay #5 should be completed in the 7th or 8th week. The topic can be of your choosing from among the topics covered in the final five weeks of the term. Select a topic that shows off your breadth of learning. Your topic might relate to some aspect of the following = tsar Ivan III, Novgorod, Ivan IV, the Time of Troubles, the Zemskii Sobor, Westernization, the 1649 Law Code, Serfdom, or the Church schism (Raskol).

Draft essay #6 should be completed in the 9th week. The topic of this draft essay has already been defined by you under exercise seven

Draft essay #7 (the final "take-home" draft essay) should be completed in the 10th week. The topic of this draft essay has already been defined by you under exercise eight

I will read draft essays #5, #6 and #7 after you hand in your journal with the final exam [ID]

In these final three essays, seek primary documents [ID] that can illustrate important points. You find these documents among the many primary sources cited in SAC [e.g., VSB, DMR, RRH, etc., etc.]. Also compare what you find in your primary documents with what you find in some of our standard secondary sources = lectures, SAC, Riasanovsky, Florinsky, Vernadsky, MERSH, etc. USE INDEXES TO GET RIGHT TO THE TOPICS OF YOUR CHOICE.

Otherwise, draft essays #5, #6 and #7 are like draft essay #1. I insist only that you work to avoid duplication. To put this more positively, demonstrate the breadth of your learning.