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Micro-Periodization and Dynasticism: Was There a Divide in the Reign of Ivan the Terrible?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Sergei Bogatyrev
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Abstract

In this article, Sergei Bogatyrev offers new insight into the problem of continuity and change during the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible by focusing on the micro-periodization of dynastic history. In modern cultural and historical studies, periodization often includes micro-periods that are based on the perceptions of contemporaries. A micro-period can open a longer historical period, mark dramatic events, or reflect day-to-day activities. Bogatyrev argues that the 1550s was an important micro-period in the dynastic history of Ivan IV's Muscovy. The dynasty was in the center of many political and cultural projects of the 1550s, including the relations between the tsar and his cousin Vladimir of Staritsa, redefining the mechanism of succession, and formulating a dynastic vision of Muscovy's past. The micro-periodization of dynastic history reveals important developments that may be easily obscured by the traditional division of Ivan's reign into good and bad halves.

Type
Forum: Divides and Ends Periodizing the Early Modern in Russian History
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , Summer 2010 , pp. 398 - 409
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2010

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42. Ol'ga V. Novokhatko, Razriad v 185 godu (Moscow, 2007).

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44. The oft-quoted episode with granting the title of grand prince to Simeon Bekbulatovich in 1575–76 was in fact not abdication, but an exercise in dynastic politics with the purpose of lowering Simeon's dynastic status. See Bogatyrev, “Ivan IV, 1533–1584,“ 260–61.

45. Floria, Ivan Groznyi, 371–73.

46. See Sergei Bogatyrev, “The Book of Degrees of the Royal Genealogy: The Stabilisation of the Text and the Argument from Silence” in the forthcoming book edited by Ann Kleimola and Gail Lenhoff in the series UCLA Slavic Studies, n.s. 7.

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49. Ibid., 79.