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On the Authenticity of the Kurbskii-Groznyi Correspondence: A Summary of the Discussion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

R. G. Skrynnikov
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Six years ago Professor E. Keenan wrote a major study, refuting the authenticity of the correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Kurbskii. Keenan's book attracted great attention. In 1973 the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskii Dom) published my book Correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Kurbskii: Paradoxes of Edward Keenan. In the course of the discussion generated by the publication of Keenan's book, scholars of the most varied schools and tendencies have expressed their reaction to the subject of the controversy. Between 1972 and 1975 a series of articles summarizing the controversy were published, and the matter was thoroughly discussed. Edward Keenan's paradoxes have not received support among the scholarly community. Keenan's idea that, in view of the spuriousness of nearly all the writings of Ivan IV and several other significant compositions of that time, the history of Russia in the sixteenth century needed to be written anew might have served as a stimulus to an all-embracing discussion of a broad range of problems. In the absence of any serious proof of the fabrication, however, such a discussion did not take place. A number of works of Ivan IV and Kurbskii have been preserved to the present in copies indisputably compiled in the sixteenth century, and the controversy as to whether the persons in question were the writers goes by default.

Type
Review Article
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 107 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1978

References

1. Keenan, Edward L., The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha: The seventeenth-century genesis of the “Correspondence” attributed to Prince A. M. Kurbskii and Tsar Ivan IV (Cambridge, Mass., 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Skrynnikov, R. G., Perepiska Grosnogo i Kurbskogo: Paradoksy Edvarda Kinana (Leningrad, 1973)Google Scholar.

3. D. S. Likhachev, “Kurbskii i Groznyi—byli li oni pisateliami ?,” Russkaia literatura, 1972, no. 4, pp. 202-9; N. Andreev, “Mnimaia tema,” Novyi zhurnal, no. 109 (1972); Charles J. Halperin, “A heretical view of sixteenth century Muscovy: Keenan, Edward L.: the Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 2Z, no. 2 (1974)Google Scholar ; A. Kappeler, “Die Sowjetische Reaktion auf Keenans Häresie,” ibid.; Marc Szeftel, review of Keenan's book, Slavic Revieiv, 31, no. 1 (1972); Serge A., Zenkovsky, “The Prince Kurbsky-Tsar Ivan IV Correspondence,” Russian Review, 32, no. 3 (1973)Google Scholar.

4. A. A., Zimin, “Pervoe poslanie Kurbskogo Ivanu Groznomu,” Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoi literatury, vol. 31 (1976)Google Scholar ; la. S. Lur'e, “Pervoe poslanie Ivana Groznogo Ku'rbskomu,” ibid.

5. Fennell, J., review of R. G. Skrynnikov's book Perepiska Groznogo i Kurbskogo, in Russia Mediaevalis (Munich), 2 (1975): 188–98 Google Scholar. 6. Poslaniia Ivana Groznogo (Moscow-Leningrad, 1951), p. 535. 7. Abramovich, D. I., K literaturnoi deiatel'nosti mnikha kamianchanina Isaii (St. Petersburg, 1913), pp. 5-6 Google Scholar.

8. The vagueness of the citations from Isaiah and Kurbskii (one example is the slip vsim sim) can fully be explained by the difficulties in translation caused by differences in the grammatical structure of the Greek and Slavic languages.

9. Abramovich, , K literaturnoi deiatel'nosti, p. 5 Google Scholar.

10. Likhachev, “Kurbskii i Groznyi,” p. 206; Andreev, “Mnimaia tema,” p. 267. - 11. TsGADA, fond 79, dela pol'skogo dvora, book 12, fols. 289-289v. B. N. Floria was the first to discover this direct reference to Kurbskii's letter made in Ivan the Terrible's lifetime, in the original books of the Ambassadorial Chancellery.

12. The arguments concerning the appositeness of the expression “spilling of blood” in Kurbskii, and the inappositeness of the phrase in Isaiah, were expressed by Andreev at the very outset of the debate (Andreev, “Mnimaia tema,” p. 270)

13. Skrynnikov, , Perepiska, pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

14. Edward Keenan, review of Skrynnikov's Perepiska Groznogo i Kurbskogo, in Kritika, 10, no. 1 (1973): 162 Google Scholar.