The Tsars Happy Occasion

Author : Russell E. Martin
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501754866
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Tsar's Happy Occasion written by Russell E. Martin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tsar's Happy Occasion shows how the vast, ornate affairs that were royal weddings in early modern Russia were choreographed to broadcast powerful images of monarchy and dynasty. Processions and speeches emphasized dynastic continuity and legitimacy. Fertility rites blended Christian and pre-Christian symbols to assure the birth of heirs. Gift exchanges created and affirmed social solidarity among the elite. The bride performed rituals that integrated herself and her family into the inner circle of the court. Using an array of archival sources, Russell E. Martin demonstrates how royal weddings reflected and shaped court politics during a time of dramatic cultural and dynastic change. As Martin shows, the rites of passage in these ceremonies were dazzling displays of monarchical power unlike any other ritual at the Muscovite court. And as dynasties came and went and the political culture evolved, so too did wedding rituals. Martin relates how Peter the Great first mocked, then remade wedding rituals to symbolize and empower his efforts to westernize Russia. After Peter, the two branches of the Romanov dynasty used weddings to solidify their claims to the throne. The Tsar's Happy Occasion offers a sweeping, yet penetrating cultural history of the power of rituals and the rituals of power in early modern Russia.

Author : Russell E. Martin
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1609090594
Total Pages : 375 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Bride for the Tsar written by Russell E. Martin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1505 to 1689, Russia's tsars chose their wives through an elaborate ritual: the bride-show. The realm's most beautiful young maidens—provided they hailed from the aristocracy—gathered in Moscow, where the tsar's trusted boyars reviewed their medical histories, evaluated their spiritual qualities, noted their physical appearances, and confirmed their virtue. Those who passed muster were presented to the tsar, who inspected the candidates one by one—usually without speaking to any of them—and chose one to be immediately escorted to the Kremlin to prepare for her wedding and new life as the tsar's consort. Alongside accounts of sordid boyar plots against brides, the multiple marriages of Ivan the Terrible, and the fascinating spectacle of the bride-show ritual, A Bride for the Tsar offers an analysis of the show's role in the complex politics of royal marriage in early modern Russia. Russell E. Martin argues that the nature of the rituals surrounding the selection of a bride for the tsar tells us much about the extent of his power, revealing it to be limited and collaborative, not autocratic. Extracting the bride-show from relative obscurity, Martin persuasively establishes it as an essential element of the tsarist political system.

Author : Alexander Ivanov
Publisher : New Word City
ISBN 13 : 1640193502
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Tsars written by Alexander Ivanov and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tsars of Russia reigned as absolute monarchs long past the time when the authority of other sovereigns had been curtailed. Here, historian Alexander Ivanov reveals their fears and betrayals, privilege and debauchery, conspiracies and rivalries, love and tragedy as they forged Russia into one of the world's greatest empires. No ruler in history has embodied the oppressive domination of these rulers more vividly than Alexander Ivanov's opening subject, Tsar Ivan IV, the first of all the Russian tsars, known to history as Ivan the Terrible. Although a gifted ruler who did much to unite and improve the conditions in his primitive country, Ivan was also a notorious sadist who delighted in torturing and murdering anyone who displeased him. Ivan's death in 1584 ushered in the Time of Troubles, thirty-five years of famine, plague, and war that crippled the nation. A series of rulers attempted to cope with the devastation, beginning with Ivan's successor Boris Godunov. Finally, grasping for stability, Russia's nobles begged young Michael Romanov, the great-nephew of Ivan's beloved wife Anastasia, to take the throne. Michael successfully united the war-torn and ravaged nation and founded a dynasty that would rule for 300 years. The Romanov line produced Russia's most brilliant yet most unconventional sovereign: Peter the Great, a towering figure of a man whose restless, creative mind led him on an inexorable quest to modernize and civilize the still backward nation. The reforms he enacted so enraged nobles and peasants alike that Peter had to quash a series of rebellions to keep his crown. Ruthlessly stifling dissent and massacring rebels, he ultimately cowed the Russian people into submission, achieving a legacy that nearly equaled his ambitions. It was left to a woman - and a foreigner, at that - to lead the nation further out of the darkness. German princess Sophie Friederike Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst, known to the world as Catherine the Great, absorbed the principles of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and applied them to a country built on the backs of millions of serfs. However ineffective some of her policies, in the end, she made Russia a major player on the European stage. Serfdom was finally abolished in the nineteenth century, but it would be decades before Russian peasants could own land of their own and learn to farm it productively. The boyars and tsars clung to power until the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The sad fate of the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family, marked the end of the absolute power that Ivan the Terrible had so exploited. The abuses would continue but under a new and drastically different form of government.

Author : Daniel B. Rowland
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501752103
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book God, Tsar, and People written by Daniel B. Rowland and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God, Tsar, and People brings together in one volume essays written over a period of fifty years, using a wide variety of evidence—texts, icons, architecture, and ritual—to reveal how early modern Russians (1450–1700) imagined their rapidly changing political world. This volume presents a more nuanced picture of Russian political thought during the two centuries before Peter the Great came to power than is typically available. The state was expanding at a dizzying rate, and atop Russia's traditional political structure sat a ruler who supposedly reflected God's will. The problem facing Russians was that actual rulers seldom—or never—exhibited the required perfection. Daniel Rowland argues that this contradictory set of ideas was far less autocratic in both theory and practice than modern stereotypes would have us believe. In comparing and contrasting Russian history with that of Western European states, Rowland is also questioning the notion that Russia has always been, and always viewed itself as, an authoritarian country. God, Tsar, and People explores how the Russian state in this period kept its vast lands and diverse subjects united in a common view of a Christian polity, defending its long frontier against powerful enemies from the East and from the West.

Author : Ludwig Steindorff
Publisher : Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN 13 : 9783447061162
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion und Integration im Moskauer Russland written by Ludwig Steindorff and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2010 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wie im gesamten mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Europa fiel der Religion auch im Moskauer Reich eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Legitimation von Herrschaft und Integration der Gesellschaft zu. Die Vereinheitlichung der Lebensformen auf der Grundlage orthodoxer Kirchlichkeit war ein Bindeglied für die meisten Gebiete des Reiches. Doch konnte religiöser Dissens die Integration auch fallweise in Frage stellen? Wie weit ging die Kommunikation über die religiösen Grenzen hinweg? Waren doch im Moskauer Reich neben der Orthodoxie auch andere christliche Konfessionen, Islam und Naturreligionen präsent? In welchem Verhältnis standen die protonationalen Integrationspraktiken der russischen Orthodoxie zu den Anliegen imperialer Herrschaft? Lässt sich beim Vergleich mit Westeuropa von 'Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen' mit Bezug auf Phänomene der religiösen Praxis sprechen? Können wir das Konfessionalisierungsparadigma auf die Geschichte des Moskauer Reiches übertragen? Autorinnen und Autoren aus Russland, Deutschland, den USA, Frankreich und Finnland geben hierzu Antworten. Der von Ludwig Steindorff herausgegebene Sammelband ist aus der X. Internationalen Konferenz zur altrussischen Geschichte her vorgegangen, die 2008 in Kiel stattfand.

Author : Catherine Merridale
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 0805098372
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Red Fortress written by Catherine Merridale and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial, richly detailed history of the Kremlin, and of the centuries of Russian elites who have shaped it—and been shaped by it in turn The Moscow Kremlin is the heart of the Russian state, a fortress whose blood-red walls have witnessed more than eight hundred years of political drama and extraordinary violence. It has been the seat of a priestly monarchy, a worldly church and the Soviet Union; it has served as a crossroads for diplomacy, trade, and espionage; it has survived earthquakes, devastating fires, and at least three revolutions. Its very name is a byword for enduring power. From Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin, generations of Russian leaders have sought to use the Kremlin to legitimize their vision of statehood. Drawing on a dazzling array of sources from hitherto unseen archives and rare collections, renowned historian Catherine Merridale traces the full history of this enigmatic fortress. The Kremlin has inspired innumerable myths, but no invented tales could be more dramatic than the operatic successions and savage betrayals that took place within its vast compound of palaces and cathedrals. Today, its sumptuous golden crosses and huge electric red stars blaze side by side as the Kremlin fulfills its centuries-old role, linking the country's recent history to its distant past and proclaiming the eternal continuity of the Russian state. More than an absorbing history of Russia's most famous landmark, Red Fortress uses the Kremlin as a unique lens, bringing into focus the evolution of Russia's culture and the meaning of its politics.

Author : Chester S. L. Dunning
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 9780271045139
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Short History of Russia's First Civil War written by Chester S. L. Dunning and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first major post-Marxist reassessment of the Time of Troubles.

Author : Chester S. L. Dunning
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 9780271043715
Total Pages : 682 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Russia's First Civil War written by Chester S. L. Dunning and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He shows that serfs did not actively participate in the civil war and that the abolition of serfdom was never a rebel goal. Instead, most rebels were petty gentry, professional soldiers, townsmen, and cossacks who were united in fierce opposition to tsars they believed to be illegitimate usurpers.".

Author : Peter Julicher
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 9780786416127
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Renegades, Rebels and Rogues Under the Tsars written by Peter Julicher and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2003-08-25 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Russia of the tsars, people who criticized or questioned the autocratic prerogatives of the sovereign were brutally suppressed and sometimes actively persecuted. So imbedded was this official hostility to anyone hoping to change or even influence government policy, that even the most high-minded reformers came to understand that the only way they could succeed was to overthrow the regime. The author describes the activities of the most important dissidents and agitators from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II and the Communist Revolution in 1917. Many of these fascinating individuals were serious activists endeavoring to improve society; others were opportunistic scoundrels and adventurers. The author explores the causes that provoked them and the consequences they faced, and explains how time and time again the tsars were goaded into mistakes and over-reaction.

Author : Claudia R. Jensen
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253003474
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia written by Claudia R. Jensen and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-05 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claudia R. Jensen presents the first unified study of musical culture in the court and church of Muscovite Russia. Spanning the period from the installation of Patriarch Iov in 1589 to the beginning of Peter the Great's reign in 1694, her book offers detailed accounts of the celebratory musical performances for Russia's first patriarch -- events that were important displays of Russian piety and power. Jensen emphasizes music's varied roles in Muscovite society and the equally varied opinions and influences surrounding it. In an attempt to demystify what has previously been an enigma to Western readers, she paints a clear picture of the dazzling splendor of musical performances and the ways in which 17th-century Muscovites employed music for spiritual enlightenment as well as entertainment.