Textology versus Textual Criticism: Donald Ostrowski and Attributing Texts to Ivan IV and Andrei Kurbskii

Abstract

The texts attributed to Prince Andrei Kurbskii, notably his correspondence with Ivan IV and his History of the Grand Prince of Moscow , and to Ivan himself, first and foremost letters responding to Kurbskii, have long been central to historical analyses of Ivan’s rule and reign, providing unequalled evidence of Ivan’s political ideology in particular. Karamzin’s conceptualization of the two periods of Ivan’s reign, the ‘good’ Ivan of the reforms (1547–64) and the ‘bad’ Ivan’s reign of terror, the oprichnina (1565–72)