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Ritual and Social Drama at the Muscovite Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Nancy Shields Kollmann
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Extract

Some of the few moments of comic relief to be found in Muscovite historical texts are provided in Grigorii Karpovich Kotoshikhin's description of the Muscovite government. Kotoshikhin was an undersecretary (pod'iachii) of the Foreign Affairs Bureau (Posol'skii prikaz) who defected to Sweden and in 1666-1667 wrote an account of Muscovy's court and administration. He is the source of the dubious assertion that the tsar's daughters (tsarevny) were not married outside the country because they were stupid and illiterate and would bring shame on the tsar's family. Kotoshikhin also relates a comical episode in which a leading boyar refused to sit at a banquet next to a man he considered his social inferior. The protesting boyar was forcibly held at his assigned place while he kicked and screamed and finally wriggled out of the grasp of the tsar's attendants and slid under the table, rather than sit by a demeaning dinner partner.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , Fall 1986 , pp. 486 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1986

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References

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Convention of the American Historical Association in New York in December 1985. I am grateful for financial assistance that aided in this work; it was provided by a Mellon Research Grant from the Center for Russian and East European Studies at Stanford University and by a Fellowship for Independent Study and Research from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

1. Kotoshikhin, Grigorii, O Rossii v carstvovanie Alekseja Mixajloviča, text and commentary by Pennington, A. E. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 29–30, 59Google Scholar. His account is confirmed asaccurate by a historical instance of the same behavior: Dvortsovye razriady, po vysochaishemu poveleniiu., 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1850–1855), 3 (1852): col. 156.

2. See my “The Seclusion of Elite Muscovite Women,” Russian History 10, pt. 2 (1983): 170–187.

3. Dvortsovye razriady 1 (1850): çol. 130; KotoSixin, O Rossii, p. 59.

4. For discussions of precedence, see works by Markevich, A. I.: “Chto takoe mestnichestvo?,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, no. 204 (1879): 262–271 Google Scholar; O mestnichestve (Kiev, 1879); Istoriia mestnichestvo v Moskovskom gosudarstve v XV-XVII veke (Odessa: Tipografiia Odesskogovestnika, 1888); and Grigorii Karpovich Kotoshikhin i ego sochinenie o Moskovskom gosudarstve v polovine XVII veka (Odessa: Tipografiia shtaba okruga, 1895). See also Khmyrov, M. D., Mestnichestvo i razriady (St. Petersburg, 1862)Google Scholar; Shmidt, S. O., “Mestnichestvo i absoliutizm (postanovkavoprosa),” in Shmidt, , Stanovlenie rossiiskogo samoderzhavstva: Issledovanie sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii vremeni Ivana Groznogo (Moscow: Mysl', 1973), pp. 262–307 Google Scholar; Buganov, V I., “'Vrazhdotvornoe’ mestnichestvo,” Voprosy istorii, no. 11 (1974): 118–133 Google Scholar; Kleimola, Ann M., “Status, Placeand Politics: The Rise of Mestnichestvo during the Boiarskoe Pravlenie ,” Forschungen zur Osteuropaischen Geschichte [hereafter cited as Forschungen] 27 (1980): 195–214 Google Scholar; Crummey, Robert O., “Reflections on Mestnichestvo in the 17th Century,” Forschungen 27 (1980): 269–281.Google Scholar

5. On these service ranks, see notes 9 and 11 below.

6. The Military Service Bureau (Razriadnyi prikaz) oversaw precedence cases; brief referencesto such cases were recorded in military service books (razriadnye knigi). Virtually all redactions ofthose books are published: Razriadnaia kniga, 1475–1598 gg., ed. V I. Buganov (Moscow: Nauka, 1966); Razriadnaia kniga, 1550–1636 gg., ed. L. F. Kuz'mina, 2 vols, in 3 pts. (Moscow: Institutistorii SSSR AN SSSR, 1975–1976); Razriadnaia kniga, 1559–1605 gg., ed. L. F. Kuz'mina (Moscow: Institut istorii SSSR AN SSSR, 1974); Razriadnye knigi, 1598–1638 gg., ed. V. I. Buganov and L. F.Kuz'mina (Moscow: Institut istorii SSSR AN SSSR, 1974); Dvortsovye razriady; Knigi razriadnye, po qfitsial'nym onykh spiskam, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1853–1855). Only the final parts and volumesof the “expanded” redaction are yet to be published: Razriadnaia kniga, 1475–1605 gg., ed. N. G.Savich, vol. 1 in 3 pts. and vol. 2 in 3 pts.; ed. L. F. Kuz'mina, vol. 3 in 1 pt. to date (Moscow: Institut istorii SSSR AN SSSR, 1977). Some transcripts of entire cases are published—M. P. Pogodin, ed., “Dela po mestnichestvu,” Russkii istoricheskii sbornik, vols. 2 and 5 (Moscow: Universitetskaiatipografiia, 1838 and 1842); Likhachev, N. P., ed., Mestnicheskie dela. 1563–1605 gg. (St.Petersburg: Sinodal'naia tipografiia, 1894)Google Scholar, but most remain in the archive of the Military ServiceBureau in Moscow—Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov, fond 210, books and rolls(stolbtsy) of the Moscow desk and other desks.

7. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, pp. 57–58.

8. Markevich, Istoriia mestnichestva, pp. 476–479 and idem, Kotoshikhin, pp. 157–159 n. 1; Malinovskii, A. F., Biograficheskie svedeniia o Kniaze Dmitrie Mikhailoviche Pozharskom (Moscow: Tipografiia S. Selivanovskogo, 1817), pp. 91–93, n. 9Google Scholar.

9. For works on the service class, including cavalrymen (sluzhilye liudi po otechestvu) andnoncavalry servitors (sluzhilye liudi po vyboru), see Kliuchevskii, V. O., Istorii soslovii v Rossi in Sochineniia v vos'mi tomakh, 8 vols. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1956–1959) 6 (1959): 276–466 Google Scholar; Pavlov-Sil'vanskii, N. P., Gosudarevy sluzhilye liudi: Proiskhozhdenie russkogo dvorianstva (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia tipograflia, 1898)Google Scholar; Sergeevich, V. I., Russkie iuridicheskie drevnosti, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg: Tipograflia M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1900–1911)1 (book 2): 331–521 Google Scholar; Vladimirskii-Budanov, M. F., Obzor istorii russkogo prava, 6th ed.(St. Petersburg: Izdanie knigoprodavtsa N. la. Ogloblina, 1909), pp. 147–226 Google Scholar; Novitskii, V I., Vvbornoe i bol'shoe dvorianstvo XVI-XVII vekov (Kiev, 1915)Google Scholar.

10. The exact social range of precedence remains to be established; my account agrees withMarkevich's: Istoriia mestnichestva, pp. 155–168, 210–212.

11. Kotoshikhin considered the stol'nik rank preliminary to duma position for sons of menalready in those ranks: O Rossii, pp. 37–38, 39. The number of stol'niki is difficult to calculate, since there were two types, court and military. Their total number in the seventeenth century (therank was used regularly after the Time of Troubles) ranged from about 250 in the 1620s to 500 byKotoshikhin's time ( Hellie, Richard, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971], p. 23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). See Benjamin P. Uroff's useful discussion in “Grigorii KarpovichKotoshikhin, On Russia in the Reign of Alexis Mikhailovich: An Annotated Translation,” Ph.D.dissertation, Columbia University, 1970, pp. 66, 68–69, 352 n. 12, 356–357 n. 21.

12. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, p. 57.

13. Participants included boyars, okol'nichie, stol'niki, and numerous senior military commanders(voevody). See n. 36.

14. The number of men in duma ranks at any one time was about 10 in the fourteenth century;it varied from less than 10 to no more than 15 until the 1530s; it was about 40 in the 1550s andranged from about 30 to about 40 from 1619 to 1645. From 1646 to 1676, it grew from about 40 toabout 70; from 1677 to 1690, it grew from about 85 to about 145. For fourteenth and fifteenth centuryestimates, see Zimin, A. A., “Sostav boiarskoi dumy v XV-XVI vekakh,” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1957 god (Moscow: Nauka, 1958, pp. 41–87 Google Scholar; Kollmann, Nancy Shields, Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, table 1; Alef, Gustave, “Reflections on the Boyar Duma in the Reign ofIvan III,” The Slavonic and East European Review 45 (January 1967): pp. I–II Google Scholar. For sixteenth centuryestimates, see Zimin, “Sostav “; Alef, Gustave, “Aristocratic Politics and Royal Policy in Muscovyin the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” Forschungen 27 (1980): pp. I—III Google Scholar; Kleimola, A. M., “Patterns of Duma Recruitment, 1505–1550,” in Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin, ed.Waugh, Daniel Clarke (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1985), app. I—III;Google Scholar Kobrin, V. B., “Sostav Oprichnogodvora Ivana Groznogo,” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1959 god (Moscow: Nauka, 1960, pp. 16–91 Google Scholar. For seventeenth century estimates, see Crummey, Robert O., Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613–1689 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 22–23 Google Scholar and app. A. On the size of the other ranks, see Hellie, Enserfment, pp. 22–24.

15. Two approaches characterize current opinions on how men achieved duma rank; I haveargued that the position was passed hereditarily in clans from the fourteenth through the midsixteenthcentury (Kinship and Politics, chaps. 2 and 3), while other scholars emphasize a multiplicity of factors, including the tsar's favor, family and marriage connections, service, and patronage (Alef, “Reflectionson the Boyar Duma” and “Aristocratic Politics “; Zimin, “Sostav “; Kleimola, “Patterns of DumaRecruitment “). Robert Crummey adopts the multiple approach in discussing boyar promotion in theseventeenth century: Aristocrats and Servitors, chaps. 2–4. On the service class in general, see n. 9.

16. I develop this interpretation in Kinship and Politics, particularly in the introduction andchaps. 4 and 5.

17. On the decline of the Council of the Land, see Keep, J. L. H., “The Decline of the ZemskySobor,” Slavonic and East European Review 36 (December 1957): 100–122 Google Scholar; Cherepnin, L. V., Zemskie sobory Russkogo gosudarstva v XVI-XVII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1978 Google Scholar, conclusion.

18. On changing patterns of service in the seventeenth century, see Crummey, Robert O., “TheOrigins of the Noble Official: The Boyar Elite, 1613–1689,” in Pintner, Walter M. and Karl Rowney, Don, eds., Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 46–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, chaps. 1, 2, 4; P. V. Sedov, “Sotsial'no-politicheskaia bor'ba v 70-kh-80-kh gg. XVII v. i otmena mestnichestva,” candidate dissertation, Leningrad State University, 1985, chap. 1.

19. Crummey notes that the Kremlin walls symbolized social barriers, distinguishing the veryprivileged court elite from other servitors and from commoners: “Court Spectacles in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Illusion and Reality,” in Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin, ed. Daniel Clarke Waugh, p. 131.

20. For opinions on precedence, see references in note 4.

21. Robert Crummey sees the cooperative relationship of tsar and boyar revealed in iconographicdepictions in the seventeenth century (“Court Spectacles,” pp. 130–158, esp. p. 141.). DanielRowland sees it in ideology: “The Problem of Advice in Muscovite Tales About the Time ofTroubles,” Russian History 6, pt. 2 (1979): 259–283. Studies of Muscovite court politics suggest aninterdependent relationship: Alef, “Aristocratic Politics,” pp. 77–109; Edward L. Keenan, “MuscovitePolitical Folkways. Some Prolegomenla to the Study of Great-Russian Political Culture,” manuscript, Cambridge, Mass., 1981; Kollmann, Kinship and Politics; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors; A. P. Pavlov, “Praviashchie sloi Moskovskogo obshchestva pri Borise Godunove (1590–1605 gg.). Opyt sotsial'no-politicheskoi kharakteristiki,” Abstract (avtoreferat) of candidate dissertation, Leningrad Section of the Institute of the History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciencesof the USSR, 1979.

22. Zimin and Kleimola argue that precedence was founded in the 1530s: Zimin, A. A., “Istochnikipo istorii mestnichestva v XV-pervoi treti XVI v.,” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1968 god (Moscow: Nauka, 1970, pp. 109–118 Google Scholar; Kleimola, “Status, Place and Politics.” The first recordedprecedence case dates from about the 1460s, but Zimin has raised doubts concerning its authenticity: “Istochniki,” pp. 111–114. On the abolition of precedence, see M. la. Volkov, “Ob otmene mestnichestvav Rossii,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 2 (1977): 53–67Google Scholar; Sedov, “Sotsial'no-politicheskaia bor'ba. “

23. A good example of an entire clan's involvement in a precedence case is a 1598 litigation inwhich a man in the Nogotkov branch of the Obolenskii clan sued a man in the Repnin branch ofthe clan on behalf of all the Obolenskie princes. This was at a time when the clan had split intoabout twenty separate branches: Razriadnaia kniga, 1550–1636 gg. 2: 162; Razriadnaia kniga, 1559–1605 gg., pp. 316–318.

24. Markevich asserted that feuds among servitors endangered some major campaigns: Istoriia mestnichestva, pp. 494–495. Sedov provides examples from the 1670s: “Sotsial'no-politicheskaiabor'ba,” pp. 81–89.

25. On political groups as factions, see Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, chaps. 1 and 5; Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors, chap. 4; Pavlov, “Praviashchie sloi. “

26. Markevich, Istoriia mestnichestva, p. 236 n. 1.

27. Gluckman, Max, Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Rhodes-LivingstonePapers, no. 28 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1958), pp. 46–50, 54–55Google Scholar; Turner, V. W., The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 274 Google Scholar.

28. This is essentially Daniel Rowland's interpretation of Muscovite ideology: “The Problem of Advice,” esp. pp. 281–283.

29. See notes 45 and 46.

30. For fuller discussion of Muscovite ideology and practice, see my Kinship and Politics.

31. On favoritism in precedence cases, see Kleimola, A. M., “Boris Godunov and the Politicsof Mestnichestvo,” Slavonic and East European Review 53 (July 1975): 355–369 Google Scholar. On falsifications ofmilitary service books, see Likhachev, N. P., Razriadnye d'iaki XVI veka: Opyt istoricheskogo issledovaniia (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V. S. Balasheva, 1888), chap. 3Google Scholar.

32. For his general discussions of social dramas, see Drums of Affliction, pp. 6–7, 89–91, 269–283; Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1957), chap. 10; The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 1967), chap. 4; The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), chaps. 3 and 5; Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), chap. 1; Process, Performance and Pilgrimage: A Study in Comparative Symbology (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1979), chaps. 1–2.

33. Turner, Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage, p. 64. He took the definition from RonaldGrimes.

34. Turner, Drums of Affliction, p. 6.

35. All other references to the “surrender by the head” ritual occur in court cases where it is assigned as a punishment but not described. Kotoshikhin is considered a reliable source on contemporarygovernment institutions: Markevich, Kotoshikhin, pp. 50–56, 84–181. esp. pp. 180–181;Uroff, “Kotoshikhin,” pp. 4–29, esp. pp. 17–29.

36. Thirty-six instances of the “surrender by the head” ritual are recorded in published sources, plus seven instances in which it was threatened as a punishment. Twenty-nine cases occurred between1584 and 1633, in the following years (the number of cases in a particular year, if more than one. isgiven in parentheses): 1549 (an ambiguous reference), 1552. 1555/56. 1578/79. 1579/80 (2), 1584.1588/89 (5), 1590/91 (3), 1594. 1596, 1597/98 (3). 1613/14 (5). 1615/16 (2). 1618. 1620 (3), 1623, 1624, 1626, 1633, 1640, 1646, 1648. 1649. 1650 (2), 1653. 1668. 1674. Numerous references are madeto the “surrender by the head” ritual in archival precedence cases, but as of this writing I am stillconducting archival research and correlating archival data with published references.

37. I have developed this interpretation in Kinship and Politics.

38. Markevich, Istoriia mestnichestva, pp. 476–479, and Kotoshikhin, pp. 157–159 n. 1.

39. On boyar housing in the Kremlin and Moscow, see I. E. Zabelin, Istoriia goroda Moskvy, 2 pts., 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1905); Tikhomirov, M. N., “Moskva—stolitsa Moskovskogo velikogo kniazhestva(XIV v.—vtoraia polovina XV v.),” in Istoriia Moskvy (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1952), 1: 41 Google Scholar; Bezsonov, S. V., “Stroitel'stvo moskovskogo Kremlia,” in Istoriia Moskvy 1: 104–105 Google Scholar; Bakhrushin, S. V, “Moskva v period ukrepleniia Russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva XVI veka,” in Istoriia Moskvy 1: 187 Google Scholar; Bartenev, S. P., Moskovskii kreml v starinu i teper', 2 vols. (Moscow, 1912)Google Scholar, appended map; maps appended to Istoriia Moskvy, vol. 1.

40. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, p. 43.

41. See note 18.

42. See note 9.

43. For illustrations, see Gonchareva, A. A. et al., eds., The State Armoury in the Moscow Kremlin (Moscow: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1969)Google Scholar.

44. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii, pp. 43, 45; Uroff, “Kotoshikhin,” p. 375 n. 58.

45. For examples of petitions, see V D. Nazarov, “Zagadki istorii. Taina chelobitnoi IvanaVorotynskogo,” Voprosy istorii, no. 1 (1969): 210–218Google Scholar; Moskovskaia delovaia i bytovaia pis'mennost’ XVII veka, comp. S. I. Kotkov et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 1968), pt. 2. On the diplomatics and terminologyof petitions, see Volkov, S. S., Leksika russkikh chelobitnykh XVII veka (Leningrad: LGU, 1974 Google Scholar. On slavery in Muscovy, see Hellie, Richard, Slavery in Russia, 1450–1725 (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982 Google Scholar.

46. Olearius, Adam, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, trans, and ed. Baron, Samuel H. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 173 Google Scholar; Margeret, Jacques, The Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy: A 17th-Century French Account, trans, and ed. Dunning, Chester S. L. (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), p. 28 Google Scholar; Berry, Lloyd E. and Crummey, Robert O., eds., Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), p. 138 Google Scholar; Meehan-Waters, Brenda, Autocracy and Aristocracy: The Russian Service Elite of 1730 (New Brunswick, N J.: RutgersUniversity Press, 1982), p. 131 Google Scholar.

47. Sources do not show decisively whether petitioners actually prostrated themselves beforethe tsar. In diplomatic ceremonies they probably did not: Robert M. Croskey, “The Diplomatic Formsof Ivan Ill's Relationship with the Crimean Khan,” Slavic Review 42 (Summer 1984): 260–262.

48. Turner, Drums of Affliction, p. 7.

49. On liminality, see Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, chap. 1; Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage, chap. 1; Ritual Process, chap. 3; Forest of Symbols, chap. 4.

50. On these reforms see Sedov, “Sotsial'no-politicheskaia bor'ba,” chap. 1.