Table Of ContentRussian Research Center Studies, 66
The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha
THOMAS J. WILSON PRIZE
The Board of Syndics of the Harvard University Press
has awarded this book the first annual Thomas J. Wilson
Prize, honoring the late director of the Press. The Prize
is to be awarded each year to the best first book by a
young author.
The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha
The Seventeenth-Century Genesis of the
"Correspondence" Attributed to Prince A.M. Kurbskii
and Tsar Ivan IV
Edward L. Keenan
With an appendix by Daniel C. Waugh
Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 1971
© Copyright 1971 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
The Russian Research Center of Harvard University is supported by grants
from the Ford Foundation. The Center carries out interdisciplinary
study of Russian institutions and behavior and related subjects.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 70-154501
SBN 674-50580-8
Printed in the United States of America
For Joan
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« floôpo, ΠετροΒΗΗ, HHO eme
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ABBaKyM, JKumue
Preface
Let us commence with a violation of scholarly convention and the
revision of a cliché: the error, if such it be, is mine alone. Those
whom I mention in gratitude have given much but bear no respon-
sibility for my use of their contributions.
This is a heretical book, but not a passionate one. Heretical it is,
in the word's primary sense, since I have taken or chosen for myself
a conclusion which is unorthodox. But as I search (myslenne obrash-
chaiasia, Semen Shakhovskoi would say) for the passions which move
the heretic beyond the defense of his own conclusion and into the
attack upon the belief of others, I am able to discern only a mild
indignation that so much has been so piously taken for granted for
so long. I cannot accept the fundamental assumptions of my col-
leagues, past and present, yet I admire and am grateful for their
scholarship. I have had no intention to debunk, or to deprive Ivan IV,
Andrei Kurbskii, or sixteenth-century Muscovy of achievements
rightfully theirs. But I could not be silent about information which
I consider vital, simply because my observations will be controversial.
Thus the personal predispositions reflected in this book; it is for
others to judge whether I have deceived myself. In order to aid
them, and perhaps to make the following exposition clearer, I think
it worthwhile to sketch the genesis of its major aspects.
I cannot recall when I began to have doubts about the history of
Preface [viii
the Correspondence, doubts originally based upon the considerations
discussed in Chapter 3 and, to a lesser extent, upon the linguistic
peculiarities of the texts. In retrospect it is clear that Professor
John Fennell's remarks at a Russian Research Center seminar held
on February 4, 1964, had a deep influence upon my thinking,
although I do not remember that the question of the authenticity of
the Correspondence was raised at that time.
Nor indeed was the problem of authenticity foremost in my mind
as I began to prepare a graduate seminar on the Correspondence in
the fall of 1968. But the simple procedures of planning the necessary
exercises—of gathering information on the extant manuscripts, on
the textual relationships among them, and on their literary
"convoys"—produced results very much like those set forth in
Chapter 1, and revived old doubts. The search for texts of the works
associated with the Correspondence led, with the help of a timely
bibliographical reference from my colleague, Professor Omeljan
Pritsak, to Isaiah of Kam'ianets' in Podillia and the first concrete
textual evidence that something was awry in the traditional attribu-
tion. I attempted to repeat the procedure, turning via the convoy
to Peresvetov, to the Muscovite Chronographs, and to Ivan Khvoros-
tinin, whom I considered for a time the probable author of Kurbskii's
first letter. But this identification was, as we shall see, forced, and
as I rejected it I quite suddenly realized that the man whom I had
been pushing aside in almost every source I consulted about
Khvorostinin—Semen Shakhovskoi—was more like the man por-
trayed in Kurbskii's first letter than was Khvorostinin or, for that
matter, any person of whom I knew. It was at this point that I could
no longer work with any other hypothesis. Here—in Shakhovskoi's
relationship to Kurbskii's first letter—lies the crux of the matter.
The outline of the later development of the Correspondence, which
follows directly from the history of the extant manuscripts, depends
heavily upon this identification. The relationship of Kurbskii's
History to Lyzlov's Skifskaia istorila is an independent matter, which
I have chosen to discuss only in passing, since it will require extensive
further study.
Many of the ideas and fines of argument to follow have emerged as
the natural result of conversations and collaborative work with
students and colleagues. In the seminar mentioned above, a number
of students produced original work which helped to shape my think-
ing. Most important was the stimulus which my students provided
ix] Preface
in forcing me to set forth and test my hypotheses as they developed.
For this I thank Messrs. Wayne Dowler, Lubomyr Hajda, Thomas
Owen, Orest Subtelny, and Donald Suda. For many helpful sug-
gestions and patient counsel I thank Professors John L. I. Fennell,
Oleksander Ohloblyn, and Richard Pipes. And for moral support,
countless wise hints, and that crucial reference to Isaiah, Omeljan
Pritsak.
I must acknowledge my special debt to my friend and colleague,
Daniel C. Waugh, who generously took time from his own work in
Soviet archives to copy texts and to answer a number of specific
queries about manuscripts, and who has since his return been a
constant source of accurate information, sound skepticism, and moral
support. This book could not have appeared as it is without his
tireless assistance and the many fruitful suggestions which find
reflection not only in his excellent appendices, but throughout.
Finally, I should like to pay my grateful tribute to Mary Towle
and Vicki King, who typed and retyped this difficult manuscript
professionally, attentively, and gladly.
Wheatley, Oxon., England
October 12, 1970
Contents
Introduction ι
ι The Manuscript Evidence 7
2 The Textual History of Kurbskii's First Letter 17
3 The Pseudo-Ivan and the Pseudo-Kurbskii ? 47
4 The Growth of the Correspondence 73
Afterword 95
APPENDICES
I. (By Daniel C. Waugh)
a. De visu Description of Manuscripts Containing the
Correspondence 103
b. The Writings about the Translation of the Savior's Robe to
Moscow in 1625 : Materials for Further Study 142
c. Notes on Seventeenth-Century Translations from the Polish
Kronika of Alexander Guagnini 149
II. Stemmata 152
III. Critical Text of Kurbskii's First Letter 163
IV. Texts
a. Khvorostinin's "Foreword" 171
b. Letters of Semen Shakhovskoi 172
c. Domashnie zapiski—Shakhovskoi's Autobiographical Notes 180
V. Genealogy and Curriculum Vitae of Semen Shakhovskoi 184
