{"title":"“I Remember the Days of Old; I Meditate [on All Thy Works]”","authors":"Russell E. Martin","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05801009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05801009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article analyzes the short book The Origin of the Law of Succession in Russia (1925) by St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco (1896–1966, canonized 1994) for its treatment of succession to the throne in Kyivan, Muscovite, and Imperial Russian history. In it, St. John makes the case for the gradual and intentional development of primogeniture in Muscovy and sees the Petrine Law of Succession of 1722 as a fundamental violation of customary norms about the succession. He also sees the Pauline Law of Succession of 1797 as a restoration of those norms and a step forward in the regularization of the succession. St. John discusses how the Russian Revolutions of 1917 affected the Romanov dynasty and concludes that the Pauline Law was and would continue to be a vital legal instrument for maintaining the dynasty in exile. He also recommended the elimination of the Law’s equal marriage requirement and the addition to it of a requirement that all members and spouses of members of the dynasty be Orthodox. St. John’s book became an important reference work for generations of surviving Romanovs after 1917, even if his suggested changes to the Law have yet to be implemented.","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":"22 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138591537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scholarship as Service","authors":"David M. Goldfrank, Carol B. Stevens","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05801004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05801004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":"110 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138590491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Borrowings from the Old Slavic Digenis Akritis in the Muscovite Buovo d’Antona (Bova Korolevich)","authors":"Robert Romanchuk","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05801011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05801011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Byzantine Greek “romantic epic” Digenis Akritis and the Venetian romance Buovo d’Antona, translated into different Slavic languages under different circumstances and traversing Slavic space by different routes, reached Muscovy in the sixteenth century – each undergoing significant editing there and ultimately becoming textually entangled. It has not been noticed before that the editor of a Muscovite redaction of Buovo borrowed a number of passages from an early redaction of the “formulaically styled” Slavic Digenis. The encounter of Buovo with Digenis may help explain the former work’s subsequent popularity in Russia, as it transformed the courtly hero Buovo d’Antona into the Russian folk hero Bova Korolevich. It also helps sketch a context for the direct ancestor of the most important extant manuscript of the Slavic Digenis.","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":"42 14","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138593573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shoes Too Big to Fill","authors":"Russell E. Martin","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05801013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05801013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":"97 51","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135091714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World , by Pamela H. Smith","authors":"C. Griffin","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05703015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05703015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48167550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attribution Gleanings","authors":"D. Ostrowski","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05703011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05703011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Those engaged in scholarly work might benefit from getting out of their silos of research from time to time and become familiar with parallel research in other areas of study. Very little of historical study involves 100 % certainty; it mostly involves degrees of possibility and probability. Finding out how scholars in other fields deal with similar problems can help us adjust the possibility/probability calibrations in our own field. For example, one can apply standards to determine degrees of certainty to works attributed to Nil Sorskii. One can then apply those standards to the works of other mid-second millennium authors. Meanwhile, the three criteria of historical study can beneficially be applied to questions of authorship, such as the controversies surrounding the attributions to William Shakespeare and to Andrei Kurbskii. No matter how frustrated one might get with one’s opponents, one needs to remember that ad hominem denigration does not advance the cause of scholarship.","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45562956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Russian Mass Suicides Reconsidered","authors":"G. Michels","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05703010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05703010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Mass suicides in late seventeenth-century Russia have typically been seen as desperate responses to Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms. Convinced of the imminent end of times ordinary men and women took their own lives rather than to succumb to the world of Antichrist. Michels argues that mass suicides can only be understood by probing into the specific religious, social, and administrative environments in which they occurred. He offers a comparative microhistory of self-immolations on both sides of the Russo-Swedish border with very different populations, one Finnish-Lutheran, the other Russian-Orthodox. Both scenarios had several features in common: apocalyptical preachers demonizing official church and religion; flight from village communities and isolation in remote locations; the preponderance of women and children; almost complete illiteracy; and a remarkable heterogeneity of motivations (ranging from enthusiastic embrace to passive obedience). The suicides occurred exclusively in peasant milieux traumatized by radical changes: the horror of the Swedish-Russian War (1656–1658); the fortification of the border (conscription, forced labor, and exorbitant taxes); church-led campaigns against paganism and traditional religious autonomies; and sudden integration into new administrative structures. Few of those who perished in the fires knew anything about Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reforms; as in the mass suicide of American cult members in Jonestown, Guyana (1978) many of the victims died involuntarily.","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47235525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Seductions of Kantian Idealism","authors":"P. Hunt","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05703012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05703012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study maintains that Dostoevsky’s monological short story, “Dream of the Ridiculous Man,” is a critique of the impact of Kantian philosophical Idealism on Russian university-trained intellectuals of his age. The protagonist’s discourse has explicit and hidden levels that Dostoevsky sets at odds. The resulting discordance underscores the protagonist’s ridiculousness and the reasons for his ultimate madness. On the explicit level, the narrator tells how, under the influence of a dream, he has given up the philosophical ideals that undermined his empathy for others and embraced brotherly love. On the hidden level, this same discourse reveals that he has rationalized “love” within the framework of Kantian philosophical Idealism as he understands it, so as not to have to experience empathy and act according to his conscience. By analyzing the poetic devices that point to this discordance, and thus to the protagonist’s self-delusion, this paper shows the morally corrupting influence of Kantian philosophy despite its claims to a higher morality. This analysis places the story in a continuum with Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, and with the problematics of Ivan Karamazov’s character in the Brothers Karamazov.","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46021711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Did the Rostov Church Collect Tribute from the Horde?","authors":"G. Lenhoff","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05703007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05703007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 A medieval narrative reports on unusual measures taken by the khans in response to economic and financial crises in Suzdalia after the Mongol census there in 1257/58. Correlation of the tale’s testimony with chronicles, charters and accounts of Mongol practices in conquered lands sheds new light on relationships between the Rostov bishops and the Horde that developed during the period of flux when the collection of tribute had not yet been regularized.","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47631649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Puzzles of the Plague in Rus’","authors":"E. Levin","doi":"10.30965/22102396-05703008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05703008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Recent historical and biological research on the Black Death in the Middle Ages has yielded new finds and spurred new questions. This article investigates how information about the plague in Rus’ lands fits with these emerging paradigms. Building on foundational research by Lawrence N. Langer from the 1970s, the article investigates the origin of the plague in Rus’ lands and its characteristics.","PeriodicalId":35067,"journal":{"name":"Canadian-American Slavic Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47668241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}