THE CAPTURE OF KAZAN IN 1552: A QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT FROM A SOURCE CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

The article analyzes examples of scholars’ uncritical use of quantitative data from narrative sources concerning the siege and capture of Kazan by the army of Tsar Ivan IV in 1552. Since Karamzin, the prevailing belief has been that the Russian army was 150,000 men strong. This number, however, is the result of an error or of a deliberate correction made by the compiler of the Morozov Chronicle of the 1750–1760s. The information about the 740 captives caught by the Russians in the battle on the Arsk field near Kazan is also explained by a mistake of the scribe who copied the Voskresensky copy of «Posledovanie drevnim». The author of the article comes to the conclusion that an analysis of written accounts of the history of Kazan’s capture requires a comprehensive approach.