Russian Institutions And Culture Up To Peter The Great

368 Pages·1975·6.226 MB·English

by  Marc Szeftel

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(1913) Russian edition
Bdinski Zbomik. Old Slavonic Menologium A.D. 1360
Facsimile edition Codex Gandavensis 408
In the Collected Studies Series:
NIKOLAY ANDREEV
Studies in Muscovy: Western influence and Byzantine inheritance
DIMITRI OBOLENSKY
Byzantium and the Slavs
P. N. BERKOV
Literary Contacts between Russia and the West
since the Fourteenth Century
Russian Institutions and Culture
up to Peter the Great
Professor Marc Szeftel
Marc Szeftel
Russian Institutions and Culture
up to Peter the Great
Preface by Donald W Treadgold
VARIORUM REPRINTS
London 1975
ISBN 0 902089 80 3
Published in Great Britain by Variorum Reprints
21a Pembhdge Mews London Wll 3EQ
Printed in Great Britain by Kingprint Limited
Richmond Surrey
VARIORUM REPRINT CS39
CONTENTS
Preface i-iii
I The Vseslav Epos 13-86
In: Memoirs of the American Folklore Society,
42 (1947). In collaboration with Roman Jakobson
(Philadelphia, 1949)
II Review: The Russian Primary Chronicle:
Laurentian Text (S. H. Cross and
O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor) 257-267
In: Speculum, 30 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)
III Aspects of Feudalism in Russian History 167-182
413-419
In: Feudalism in History, ed. by Rushton Coulbom
(Princeton University Press, 1956)
IV La condition légale des étrangers dans la
Russie novgorodo-kievienne 375-430
In: Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 10 (Editions
de la Librairie Encyclopédique, Bruxelles, 1958)
V Pamiati A. A. Ekka 255-263
In: NovyiZhumal, The New Review, 52
(New York, 1958)
VI ' Some Reflections on the Particular Character­
istics of the Russian Historical Process 223-237
In: The Russian Review, 23 (Stanford, 1964)
VII Joseph Volotsky’s Political Ideas 19-29
In: Jahrbücher fur Geschichte Osteuropas,
Neue Folge 13 (München,1965)
VIII La participation des assemblées populaires
dans le gouvernement central de la Russie
depuis l’époque kiévienne jusqu’à la fin
du XVIIIe siècle 339-365
In: Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 25 (Editions de
la Librairie Encyclopédique, Bruxelles, 1965)
IX Les principautés russes avant l’ascension
de Moscou (IXe-XVe siècles) 613—636
In: Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 22 (Editions de
la Librairie Encyclopédique, Bruxelles, 1969)
X La monarchie absolue dans l’Etat moscovite et
l’Empire russe (fin XVe siècle — 1905) 727—757
In: Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 22 (Editions de
la Librairie Encylopédique, Bruxelles, 1969)
XI The History of Suretyship in Old Russian Law 841—866
In: Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 29 (Editions de
la Librairie Encyclopédique, Bruxelles, 1971)
XII La formation et l’évolution de l’Empire russe
jusqu’en 1918 422—432
In: Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 31 (Editions de
la Librairie Encyclopédique, Bruxelles, 1973)
XIII The Legal Condition of the Foreign Merchants
in Muscovy 335—358
In: Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin, 33 (Editions de
la Librairie Encyclopédique, Bruxelles, 1972)
Index
i-vii
This volume contains a total of 374 pages
PREFACE
Marc Szeftel is doubtless the leading scholar alive in the field
of medieval Russian history outside the USSR. His schooling
took place in Russia, Poland, and Belgium; his scholarly training
began at the University of Warsaw. ' At first his studies had
nothing in particular to do with Eastern Europe. At Warsaw he
attended Ignacy Koschembahr-Lyskowski’s seminar on Roman
law and Eugeniusz Jarra’s seminar on the history of the philo­
sophy of law. At the Université Libre de Bruxelles he enrolled
in the seminar in Roman and civil law of Maximilien Philonenko
and the seminars on Russian history of Alexandre Eck, on the
history of law of Jacques Pirenne, and on early modern history
of Michel Huisman; thus he studied in both the Faculté de Droit
and the Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres. His research began
with an investigation of the legal history of the French nobility
and in particular with the dérogeance à la noblesse. The result
was an article in the Revue de VInstitut de Sociologie (Solvay,
Bruxelles, 1936) entitled “La notion de vie exemplaire de la
noblesse et l’évolution sociale de la France de l’ancien régime,”
which earned the praise of Marc Bloch in the Annales.
In 1935 Eck and Jacques Pirenne took the initiative in
organizing the Société Jean Bodin pour l’étude de l’histoire
comparative des institutions, of which Szeftel was a charter
member. The purpose of the Society was to subject different
institutions of public and private law, one by one, to related
studies made by specialists in different periods and countries;
that is to say, detailed and systematic comparative study was to
be devoted to the institutions in question.
Szeftel made the aims of the Society his own in significant
respects, but he chose to take as his own province of scholarly
inquiry the institutional and legal history of Russia, using his
Slavic background and experience. He did so with the help and
encouragement of both Eck and Pirenne, and from 1936 made
Russia his exclusive scholarly concern. A prerequisite to what
he wished to do was making accessible to the Western scholarly
world a series of major Russian legal sources, through translation
ii
and thorough interpretation based on close study of the texts
concerned. The culmination of this aspect of Szeftel’s work
came in 1963 with the publication of Documents de droit public
relatifs à la Russie médiévale by the Librairie Encyclopédique in
Brussels. The book consists of translations, with extensive
commentary, of Russian medieval codes - both recensions of
the Russkaia Pravda and the Pskovskaia Sudebnaia Gramota —
and of princely ecclesiastical charters. The comparative motive
incorporated in the activities of the Société Jean Bodin inspired
many of Szeftel’s studies on medieval Russia. A major example
was the essay on “Aspects of Feudalism in Russian History”
which grew out of the 1950 Princeton conference on uniformities
in history and was included in Rushton Coulbom, ed., Feudalism
in History, published by Princeton University Press in 1956.
Another was the volume on “Russia (Before 1917)” which he
contributed to the multi-volume series edited by John Gilissen
entitled Bibliographical Introduction to Legal History and
Ethnology.
In 1942 Szeftel came to the United States, where he became
professor of Russian history at the Ecole Libre des Hautes
Etudes of New York City, and from 1944 also professor of
French constitutional history there. There he was closely
associated with Roman Jakobson. A notable instance of their
collaboration was the work of the Faculty Seminar of the Ecole
Libre concerning the authenticity of the Slovo о polku Igoreve.
It resulted in a volume under the direction of Henri Grégoire,
Roman Jakobson, and Marc Szeftel published in New York,
1948, as volume VIII of the Annuaire de VInstitut de Philologie
et dHistoire Orientales et Slaves. Szeftel contributed to it a
detailed “Commentaire historique au texte du Slovo. ” His interest
in the Slovo о polku Igoreve developed subsequently and ex­
panded into a firm interest in the history of Russian culture.
In 1945 Szeftel accepted a position at Cornell University.
There he trained several Ph.D.’s in Russian history and continued
his research in all the fields mentioned above. In 1961 he came
to the University of Washington as professor of medieval Russian
history, where he worked until his retirement in June 1972. He
produced three or four Ph.D.’s specializing on medieval Russia,
all of whom have already published in that field and will doubt­
less continue to do so. Several of his studies in medieval Russian
legal and institutional history have appeared during the period
of slightly more than a decade in question, as well as essays and
iii
encyclopedia articles of broader scope and a good many book
reviews - of which he has published a total of forty-three in
fourteen different periodicals published in several different
countries. A notable milestone in his career will be his book on
the establishment of the political institutions of the Russian
constitutional monarchy (1905-07), on which he has been work­
ing for many years and on which he is just putting the finishing
touches. Another major study on the style and symbols of
Russian monarchy, ranging throughout the entire imperial period,
is well advanced.
The thirteen articles which follow, in French, Russian, and
English, illustrate rather than exhaust the many facets of Marc
Szeftel’s scholarly career — which is still far from being ended -
over a period of 34 years, from 1938 to 1972. They indicate
both his insistence on the necessity of thorough and painstaking
textual analysis of sources — from those on law to those on
literature — before broader generalizations can be defensibly
made and his readiness to attempt such generalizations, carefully
indicating the basis of evidence on which they rest. Those
qualities have served for many years to make him an effective
teacher and a deeply valued colleague, and I would like to end
these observations by paying tribute to the manner in which his
mastery of sources and his penetrating critical judgment have
inspired me and furnished a model for anyone who desires to
approach the study of Russia through the avenue of serious
scholarship.
DONALD W. TREADGOLD
University of Washington
Seattle