A. Berelowitch, De Modis Demonstrandi in Septidecimi SAeculi Moschovia N. Boskovska, Muscovite Women during the Seventeenth Century: At the Peak of the Deprivation of their Rights or on the Road towards New Freedom? A. Bruning, Peter Mohyla's Orthodox and Byzantine Heritage. Religion and Politics in the Kievan Church Reconsidered P. Bushkovith, Cultural Change among the Russian Boyars 1650-1680. New Sources and Old Problems R.O. Crummey, Seventeenth-Century Russia: Theories and Models C. Dunning, The Legacy of Russia's First Civil War and the Time of Troubles D.M. Goldfrank, Paradoxes (?) of Seventeenth-Century Muscovy L. Hughes, Images of the Elite: A Reconsideration of the Portrait in Seventeenth-Century Russia A.S. Lavrov, Um seine Seele zu retten. Die Verhore der Gottesnarren als religiose Autobiographien, 1699-1740G. Michels, The Rise and Fall of Archbishop Stefan: Church Power, Local Society, and the Kremlin during the Seventeenth Century A.P. Pavlov, ocyape op c Pocc XVII (Gosudarev Dvor v Istorii Rossii XVII veka) M. Perrie, Pretenders in the Name of the Tsar: Cossack Tsareviches in Seventeenth-Century Russia A. Rustemeyer, Verrat und ungehorige Worte. Beobachtungen aus politischen Prozessen des 17. Jahrhunderts W. v. Scheliha, The Orthodox Universal Church and the Emergence of Intellectual Life in Muscovite Russia P.V. Sedov, Pocc: (Rossija na poroge novogo vremeni: Reformy Carja Fedora Alekseevica)

Der Sammelband mit 30 Beitragen zur Fruhen Neuzeit der ostslavischen Geschichte bundelt internationale Forschungsergebnisse, die - zum Teil unter Einbeziehung neuer Archivquellen - zeigen, dass die wichtigsten Phanomene der Moderne alle ihre Wurzeln in den hier behandelten Jahrhunderten haben. Dabei finden verfassungspolitische Themen ebenso ihre Berucksichtigung wie konfessionelle, ideengeschichtliche, wirtschaftliche, bildungs- oder aussenpolitische Fragen. Neue kulturgeschichtliche Ansatze finden ihren Niederschlag zum einen in geschlechterspezifischen Beitragen, zum anderen in Aufsatzen zur Erinnerungskultur (z.B. die national-ukrainische Geschichte des 17. Jahrhunderts im Spiegel der Publizistik Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts). Besonderes Augenmerk gilt der Auseinandersetzung mit dem fachlichen Vermachtnis des im Jahre 2000 verstorbenen Professor Hans-Joachim Torkes.

From the moment that Tsars as well as hierarchs realized that having their subjects go to confession could make them better citizens as well as better Christians, the sacrament of penance in the Russian empire became a political tool, a devotional exercise, a means of education, and a literary genre. It defined who was Orthodox, and who was 'other.' First encouraging Russian subjects to participate in confession to improve them and to integrate them into a reforming Church and State, authorities then turned to confession to integrate converts of other nationalities. But the sacrament was not only something that state and religious authorities sought to impose on an unwilling populace. Confession could provide an opportunity for carefully crafted complaint. What state and church authorities initially imagined as a way of controlling an unruly population could be used by the same population as a way of telling their own story, or simply getting time off to attend to their inner lives. Good for the Souls brings Russia into the rich scholarly and popular literature on confession, penance, discipline, and gender in the modern world, and in doing so opens a key window onto church, state, and society. It draws on state laws, Synodal decrees, archives, manuscript repositories, clerical guides, sermons, saints' lives, works of literature, and visual depictions of the sacrament in those books and on church iconostases. Russia, Ukraine, and Orthodox Christianity emerge both as part of the European, transatlantic religious continuum-and, in crucial ways, distinct from it.

Winner of the 2023 Marc Raeff Book Prize; A 2023 REFORC Book Award Longlist TitleThis book highlights the main features and trends of Russian “political” thought in an era when sovereignty, state, and politics, as understood in Western Christendom, were non-existent in Russia, or were only beginning to be articulated. It concentrates on enigmatic authors and sources that shaped official perception of rulership, or marked certain changes of importance of this perception. Special emphasis is given to those written and visual sources that point towards depersonalization and secularization of rulership in Russia. A comparison with Western Christendom frames the argument throughout the book, both in terms of ideas and the practical aspects of state-building, allowing the reader to ponder Russia’s differentia specifica.

This volume concentrates on the 'conceptual boundary' through Europe which is determined by Western and Eastern Christianity. The chapters show that the boundary has never been a stable and defined division, but that it was also subject to change and development and a place of encounter and exchange between religions and cultures.

This is a magisterial account of the day-to-day practice of Russian criminal justice in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Nancy Kollmann contrasts Russian written law with its pragmatic application by local judges, arguing that this combination of formal law and legal institutions with informal, flexible practice contributed to the country's social and political stability. She also places Russian developments in the broader context of early modern European state-building strategies of governance and legal practice. She compares Russia's rituals of execution to the 'spectacles of suffering' of contemporary European capital punishment and uncovers the dramatic ways in which even the tsar himself, complying with Moscow's ideologies of legitimacy, bent to the moral economy of the crowd in moments of uprising. Throughout, the book assesses how criminal legal practice used violence strategically, administering horrific punishments in some cases and in others accommodating with local communities and popular concepts of justice.

In this book on early modern diplomacy, Jan Hennings explores the relationship between European powers and Russia beyond the conventional East-West divide from the Peace of Westphalia to the reign of Peter the Great. He examines how, at a moment of new departure in both Europe and Russia, the norms shaping diplomatic practice emerged from the complex relations and direct encounters within the world of princely courts rather than from incompatible political cultures. He makes clear the connections between dynastic representation, politics and foreign relations, and shows that Russia, despite its perceived isolation and cultural distinctiveness, participated in the developments and transformations that were taking place more broadly in diplomacy. The central themes of this study are the interlocking manifestations of social hierarchy, monarchical honour and sovereign status in both text and ritual. Related issues of diplomatic customs, institutional structures, personnel, negotiation practice, international law, and the question of cultural transfer also figure prominently.

This book investigates Russia's transformation into a European Power by way of the activities of the tsarist translator and official Andrei Vinius, who became an important advisor to Peter the Great. Vinius emerges as an influential conduit of Western culture and technology, who played a key role in transforming Muscovy into Russia.