Rasputin

An overview of the Time of Troubles, with a focus on the interplay between Church and State and their evolving relationship over the course of the period.

2012

Honorable Mention, 2012 Early Slavic Studies Association Distinguished Scholarship Award A pivotal period in Russian history, the "Time of Troubles" of the early 17th century has taken on new resonances in post-Soviet Russia. Current national narratives glorify the role of the Russian Orthodox Church during that torturous span of famine, war, and disintegration. But what was the actual history of the Church and of Orthodox Christian religion in crisis? For the first time, and just prior to the 400th anniversary of the end of the Time of Troubles, this book attempts to give a comprehensive picture of the topic on the basis of archival and other evidence. Beginning with Russia's posited status as "New Israel" and continuing to examine the business activities of monasteries, Gruber discovers the motivations behind key political and religious innovations of the period. New "voices" attributed to women and the people marked this as a unique epoch in the troubled history of one of the world's most enigmatic and influential countries. Both accessibly written and deeply scholarly, this book will appeal to a wide readership interested in history, religion, and culture.

In the post-Soviet context, various cyclical models of recurrent Russian ''Times of Troubles'' (smuty) have become increasingly popular. This perspective emerged first in Soviet dissident circles (Alexander Yanov, Aleksandr Akhiezer), who used it as a means to expose as mistaken the Soviet belief in continual historical progress on Russian soil. In post-Soviet Russia this critical approach has been continued by members of the ''Akhezier circle,'' the economist Egor Gaidar, and others. Meanwhile it was given an affirmative, conservative reinterpretation by Aleksandr Panarin, according to whom Russia has always managed to overcome its phases of devastating Westernization and state collapse. This idea of Russian history has become influential; even Vladimir Putin has talked about Russia as a strong state able to survive various ''Times of Troubles'' from the early seventeenth century to the early post-Soviet period. It also figures prominently among members of the neoconservative Izborsk Club. This article analyzes different conceptions of Rus-sian history as cyclical and their prominent place in the prevailing civilizational discourse of post-Soviet Russia. By means of postcolonial perspectives, this discourse is seen on the one hand as an attempt to question and reject Western hegemony, attempts that on the other hand nevertheless seem unable to liberate themselves from a normative dependence on the West.

This draft material seeks to answer the question: Why was the matter of succession from one ruler to the next in Russia from the 17th to the 19th centuries so often traumatic? by drawing comparisons with the generally much more stable system of succession for Japan's shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty in the same period. The paper examines relevant areas of social practise as well as the specific dynastic practises and principles and their outcomes.

A Short Account of the Russian Monarchist Councils of Karlovtsy (1921) and Vladivostok (1922).

A Study of the Criteria of the True Autocrat, in the Context of the Rise of Monarchism in Contemporary Russia

The Russian Review 66 (July 2007): 377-90, 2007

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2017

This article considers Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov in light of the outbreak of political violence in Russia during the 1860s and 1870s. Attempting to make sense of Dmitry Karakozov’s ideologically motivated attack on Alexander II in 1866, Russians sought parallels in literature—where authors such as Dostoevsky and Turgenev had begun to explore the psychology of ideological commitment—and in history, the Time of Troubles (1598–1613) serving as a particularly salient point of reference. Boris Godunov, on which Musorgsky began work in 1868, brought these two strands together: set during the Time of Troubles, the opera features the upstart Pretender Dmitry, a historical figure in whom some writers found an ancestor of the modern political terrorist. But Musorgsky’s treatment of the Pretender character diverges sharply in his two versions of Boris Godunov, suggesting shifting ideas about the role of this figure both in the opera and in history. Musorgsky’s first attempt at the character produced a Pretender every inch the undeterrable “new man” of Russian literature; evincing little subjectivity beyond his obsession with his cause, the Pretender of 1869 escapes out a tavern window in Act 2 and exists thereafter only as a musico-dramatic idea. In Musorgsky’s 1872 revision of the opera, however, the Pretender pops up again in Poland, where both his self-determination and his dogged recitative style are easily bowled over by Marina Mnishek’s triple-metered tunefulness. Like Ratmir in Ruslan and Liudmila’s enchanted garden, this Pretender forgets his cause—but par- ticipates in the opera’s most ravishing music. Drawing on a wide swath of literary and historical writings, this article explores Musorgsky’s participation in an urgent contemporary discussion about the personal ramifications of absolute commitment to an idea and the limits of individual agency.

An Examination of the Important of the Hereditary Principle in Russian History, and in Particular in the Time of Troubles