Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin

by Catherine Merridale

  49. David B. Miller, ‘The Viskovatyi affair of 1553–4’, Russian History, 8, 3 (1981), pp. 293–332.

  50. de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 126; Heinrich von Staden, The Land and Government of Muscovy, trans. Thomas Esper (Stanford, Calif., 1967), p. 44.

  51. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture and the West (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007), p. 148.

  52. Sigismund von Herberstein’s account, from the early sixteenth century, is vivid on this matter. See his Description of Moscow and Muscovy, ed. B. Picard (London, 1969), p. 60. For others see also Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, p. 131.

  53. Berry and Crummey, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, pp. 23–7.

  54. This was Jacob Ulfeldt. See Aida Nasibova, The Faceted Chamber in the Moscow Kremlin (Leningrad, 1981), p. 20.

  55. To get my own bearings in this account, I used the plan by K. K. Lopialo reproduced in Podobedova, Moskovskaia shkola, appendix. See also Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, pp. 70–74 and 103 (where there is another map).

  56. The wall was near the Borovitsky gates. As the requirements of the tsar’s stables and saddlery (and carriages) expanded in the next century, the space was eventually monopolized by the koniushii prikaz, the chancellery with responsibility for royal transport, mounts and caparisons. See G. L. Malitskii’s essay in Bogoiavlenskii, Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata, p. 556.

  57. This is a quibble with Daniel Rowland (‘Two cultures, one throne room’, in Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene, eds., Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars (University Park, Pa., 2003), p. 40, note 13). Chancellor indeed called the room where he dined the ‘Golden’, but this word was used, confusingly, for both chambers, and it is clear that his room had a central pier.

  58. For more detail, see Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, pp. 137–43. The Treasury was also used for ceremonies involving foreign envoys.

  59. A later visitor, Paul of Aleppo, attributed the lavish use of gold around the Kremlin almost entirely to Ivan the Terrible. See Travels of Macarius, vol. 2, p. 4.

  60. For a discussion of exactly when the process began, taking it back to the age of Ivan III’s enlarged army, see Marshall Poe, ‘Muscovite personnel records, 1475–1550: new light on the early evolution of Russian bureaucracy’, JbFGO, 45, 3 (1997), pp. 361–77.

  61. For a classic account of Ivan’s administrative reforms, see A. A. Zimin, Reformy Ivana Groznogo: ocherki sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi i politicheskoi istorii Rossii serediny XVI veka (Moscow, 1960).

  62. See Peter B. Brown, ‘Muscovite government bureaus’, Russian History, 10, 3 (1983), p. 270.

  63. Another prime example from this era consisted of the Shchelkalov brothers, Andrei and Vasily, who rose to eminence entirely through court service.

  64. For commentary, see Peter B. Brown, ‘How Muscovy governed: seventeenth-century Russian central administration’, Russian History, 36, 4 (2009), pp. 459–529. On the background of officials at this time, see also I. V. Rybalko, Rossiiskaia prikaznaia biurokratiia v smutnoe vremia i nachala XVII v (Moscow, 2011), pp. 442–5.

  65. Brown, ‘How Muscovy governed’, p. 487.

  66. von Staden, Land and Government, pp. 14–15.

  67. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pa., 2001), pp. 35–6.

  68. Prikaz prikaznykh del. See Brown, ‘Bureaus’, p. 313.

  69. The early term for many of these offices was izby, or ‘chambers’, but the more formal prikaz soon took over. For their location, see Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, p. 103, and G. S. Evdokimov, ‘K istorii postroek Kazennogo dvora v Moskovskom Kremle’ in Materialy i issledovania, vol. XIX, pp. 355–76.

  70. von Staden, Land and Government, p. 42. On pravezh, see also de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 246. There were other punishment sites in central Moscow, and as the Kremlin grew more secretive in years to come, Red Square and Nikol’skii street became the main theatres of public justice. The Kremlin ceased to be a site of official public punishment in 1685. See I. Snegirev, Moskva: Podrobnoe istoricheskoe I arkheologicheskoe opisanie goroda (Moscow, 1875), vol. 2, p. 16.

  71. Bogatyrev, Sovereign, p. 204.

  72. For discussion, see Kollmann, ‘Consensus politics’, pp. 237–41.

  73. See Ann Kleimola, ‘The changing condition of the Muscovite elite’, Russian History, 6, 2 (1979), pp. 210–29.

  74. Sergei Bogatyrev summarizes the historical debate about marriage politics in his ‘Ivan the Terrible’, pp. 246–7.

  75. Edward L. Keenan, ‘Ivan the Terrible and his women’, Russian History, 37, 4 (2010), pp. 350–55.

  76. The questions of fecundity and female royalty are explored perceptively in Isolde Thyret, ‘“Blessed is the Tsaritsa’s womb”. The myth of miraculous birth and royal motherhood in Muscovite Russia’, Russian Review, 53, 4 (October 1994), pp. 479–96.

  77. This is the theme of Daniel Rowland’s essay, ‘Two cultures’.

  78. For a commentary, see Arkhimandrit Makarii (Veretennikov), ‘Makar’evskie sobory 1547 i 1549 godov i ikh znachenie’, in Materialy i issledovaniia, vol. XI, pp. 5–22.

  79. Daniel Rowland, ‘The blessed host of the heavenly tsar’, in Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland, eds., Medieval Russian Culture, vol. 2, California Slavic Studies (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994), pp. 182–99.

  80. The indomitable Andrei Batalov has recently questioned whether its architects were as purely Russian as legend suggests; in his view there may have been foreign masters involved. See I. L. Buseva-Davydova, Kul’tura i iskusstvo v epokhu peremen: Rossiia semnadtsatogo stoletiia (Moscow, 2008), p. 89.

  81. A useful discussion of the symbolic geography of the chapels is provided by Michael Flier in A. L. Batalov and L. A. Beliaev, eds., Sakral’naia topografiia srednevekovskogo goroda (Moscow, 1998), pp. 40–50.

  82. Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, pp. 126–40; William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 125–9.

  83. On holy fools in Ivan’s reign, see Sergey A. Ivanov, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond, trans. Simon Franklin (Oxford, 2006), esp. pp. 291–9.

  84. For a thoughtful statement of the ‘submission’ case, see Bushkovitch, ‘Epiphany ceremony’, pp. 1–17.

  85. Michael Flier, ‘Breaking the code: the image of the tsar in the Muscovite Palm Sunday ritual’, in Michael S. Flier and Daniel Rowland, eds., Medieval Russian Culture, vol. 2. California Slavic Studies (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994), pp. 213–42.

  86. On Ivan’s health, see Charles Halperin, ‘Ivan IV’s insanity’, Russian History, 34 (2007), pp. 207–18, and Edward L. Keenan, ‘Ivan IV and the King’s Evil: Ni maka li to budet?’, Russian History, 20 (1993), pp. 5–13.

  87. For a discussion, see Bogatyrev, ‘Micro-periodization’, pp. 398–409.

  88. The items were later specified by two German witnesses, Johannes Taube and Elert Kruze. See ‘Poslanie Ioganna Taube i Elerta Kruze’, Russkii istoricheskii zhurnal (Petrograd, 1922), kniga 8, p. 31. These two also allege that Ivan lost all his hair as a result of the stress of the 1564–5 winter.

  89. Skrynnikov, Velikii gosudar’, vol. 1, pp. 342–4.

  90. The reasons for it all are still unclear. Most historians, including Skrynnikov, see Ivan’s goal to be his own freedom of action and direct arbitrary rule. For a discussion, see Dunning, Civil War, p. 48 and de Madariaga, Ivan, pp. 186–8.

  91. de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 180.

  92. On the prayers, see Skrynnikov, Velikii gosudar’, vol. 1, p. 330. On Ivan’s view of his own divine burden, see Dunning, Civil War, p. 32, and Priscilla Hunt, ‘Ivan IV’s personal mythology of kingship’, Slavic Review, 52, 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 769–809.

  93. Sergey Ivanov discusses Ivan’s contradictory behaviour in Holy Fools, pp. 288–9.

  94. de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 183; Martin, Medieval Russia, p. 348.

  95. As did von Staden; see Land and Government, p. 121.
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  96. von Staden, Land and Government, p. 17.

  97. de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 231.

  98. Prince Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, ed. with a translation and notes by J. L. I. Fennell (Cambridge, 1965), p. 207.

  99. von Staden, Land and Government, p. 41.

  100. For a life of Filipp, see G. P. Fedotov, Sviatoi Filipp mitropolit Moskovskii (Paris, 1928).

  101. Bogatyrev, Sovereign, p. 220.

  102. Created in 1569 by the Treaty of Lublin.

  103. Taube and Kruze, ‘Poslanie Ioganna Taube i Elerta Kruze’, p. 48.

  104. von Staden, Land and Government, p. 27.

  105. Taube and Kruze, ‘Poslanie Ioganna Taube i Elerta Kruze’, pp. 49–51.

  106. G. N. Bocharov and V. P. Vygolov, Aleksandrovskaia sloboda (Moscow, 1970), pp. 7–8.

  107. The site, Pogannoe pole, had been used for the execution of conspirators accused of Andrei Bogoliubskii’s murder; a meat-market was held nearby in Ivan’s time. See P. V. Sytin, Istoriia planirovki i zastroiki Moskvy, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1950), p. 76.

  108. de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 258.

  109. Skrynnikov, Krest’, pp. 297–8.

  110. The zemskii sobor is a controversial institution, whose very name is anachronistic (the term was first coined by a nostalgic Slavophile in 1850). For more on its history, see Marshall Poe, ‘The central government and its institutions’, in CHR, vol. 1, pp. 460–62.

  111. See D. Ostrowski, ‘Semeon Bekhabulatocich’s remarkable career as Tatar khan, Grand Prince of Rus’, and monastic elder’, Russian History, 39, 3 (2012), pp. 269–99 (a discussion also follows this article). The coronation was mentioned by Jerome Horsey, whose description of it is noted in de Madariaga, Ivan, p. 298.

  112. Bartenev, Moskovskii Kreml’, vol. 2, p. 198; another Moscow residence of Ivan’s was located on today’s Petrovka.

  113. The description of his oprichnina palace comes from von Staden, Land and Government, pp. 48–51.

  114. Po trasse pervoi ocheredi Moskovskogo metropolitena imeni L. M. Kaganovicha (Leningrad, 1936), pp. 37–8.

  115. Skrynnikov, Velikii gosudar’, vol. 2, p. 101.

  116. von Staden, Land and Government, p. 29.

  117. von Staden, Land and Government, pp. 47–9; on the English craftsmen, see Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture, p. 148.

  118. Hans Kobentsel’ [Hans Graf Cobenzl], cited in Bogoiavlenskii, Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata, p. 517.

  119. The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, SJ, trans. Hugh F. Graham (Pittsburg, Pa., 1977), p. 11.

  120. Bogatyrev, ‘Reinventing the Russian Monarchy’, p. 284; see also his comments on the helmet in ‘Ivan the Terrible’, p. 243.

  121. For other grievances, see de Madariaga, Ivan, pp. 267–8.

  122. Panova, Kremlevskie usypal’nitsy, p. 63.

  123. Possevino, Moscovia, p. 12.

  4 KREMLENAGRAD

  1. M. V. Posokhin et al., Pamiatniki arkhitektury Moskvy: Kreml’, Kitai-gorod, Tsentral’nye ploshchadi (Moscow, 1982), p. 50.

  2. Copies were printed in successive editions of Joan (Johannes) Blaeu’s Atlas Maior (Amsterdam, 1663–5).

  3. The palaces are an exception, and seem to be in a semi-sketchy state, suggesting that the original artist had sought to represent more than the outsides of their walls.

  4. Jacques Margeret, The Russian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Moscow: A Seventeenth-century French Account, trans. and ed. Chester S. L. Dunning (Pittsburg, Pa., 1983), p. 30.

  5. Isaac Massa, A Short History of the Peasant Wars in Moscow under the Reigns of Various Sovereigns down to the Year 1610, trans. G. E. Orchard (Toronto, 1982), p. 95. As for Massa, two portraits, once of the merchant and his wife (1622) and one of Massa alone (1626), are in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, respectively.

  6. V. G. Vovina, ‘Patriarkh Filaret (Fedor Nikitch Romanov)’, Voprosy istorii, 7–8 (1991), pp. 55–6. Nikita’s grandson (who did not survive) was given the first name Boris.

  7. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pa., 2001), p. 60.

  8. For more on this, see Dunning, Civil War, p. 65.

  9. Massa, Peasant Wars, p. 94.

  10. Massa, Peasant Wars, pp. 36 and 94.

  11. For summaries of Boris’ personal qualities, see Dunning, Civil War, p. 91; S. F. Platonov, Smutnoe vremia (The Hague, 1965), p. 64; Ruslan Skrynnikov, Boris Godunov (Moscow, 1978), pp. 3–4.

  12. For a discussion, see A. P. Pavlov, ‘Fedor Ivanovich and Boris Godunov’, in CHR, vol. 1, pp. 264–7.

  13. In this version, I follow Dunning, Civil War, p. 61, but see also R. G. Skrynnikov, Krest’ i korona (St Petersburg, 2000), p. 313, which gives a different account, featuring Bogdan Belsky as one of the four.

  14. Platonov, Smutnoe vremia, p. 67.

  15. See Platonov, Smutnoe vremia; Maureen Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Modernism in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 12–13; Massa, Peasant Wars, p. 20.

  16. Dunning, Civil War, p. 61.

  17. Dunning, Civil War, pp. 15–16 and 55–7.

  18. Platonov, Smutnoe vremia, p. 61; Dunning, Civil War, p. 55.

  19. For an exposition of the economic plight of Russia’s population, including the pomeshchiki, see Platonov, Smutnoe vremia, pp. 9–61, esp. pp. 35–7.

  20. Dunning, Civil War, p. 159.

  21. S. F. Platonov, Boris Godunov (Petrograd, 1921), pp. 50–55.

  22. Vovina, ‘Patriarkh Filaret’, p. 56.

  23. Dunning, Civil War, p. 62 (which again differs in emphasis from Skrynnikov).

  24. Nevsky was one of the national saints canonized in 1547 by Makary’s commission. For Shuisky’s pedigree, see R. G. Skrynnikov, Time of Troubles: Russia in Crisis, 1604–1618 (Gulf Breeze, Fl., 1988), p. 42.

  25. Skrynnikov, Krest’, p. 314; on the Chudov, see S. N. Bogatyrev, ed., Khoziaistvennye knigi Chudova monastyria 1585–86 gg. (Moscow, 1996), p. 23, which also gives the date for Shuisky’s planned coup as 14 May 1586. Ivan the Terrible’s approach to Anthony Jenkinson came soon after the union of the Livonian and Lithuanian crowns in 1566.

  26. Skrynnikov, Krest’, p. 315.

  27. The measure involved suppression (temporarily) of their annual right of departure from their lord’s control after the harvest on St George’s Day. For more details, see Dunning, Civil War, p. 67, and also David Moon, The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1913 (London and New York, 1999), pp. 66–8; Robert O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304-1613 (London and New York, 1997), p. 174.

  28. Massa, Peasant Wars, p. 36; on the monks, see Bogatyrev, Khoziastvennye knigi, pp. 28 and 142.

  29. Skrynnikov, Krest’, p. 322.

  30. A. L. Batalov, Moskovskoe kamennoe zodchestvo kontsa XVI veka: problemy khudozhestvennogo myshleniia epokhi (Moscow, 1996), p. 257.

  31. A. N. Speransky, Ocherki po istorii prikaza kamennykh del Moskovskogo gosudarstva (Vologda, 1930), p. 41. See also N. N. Voronin, Ocherki po istorii russkogo zodchestva XI–XVII vv. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1934), pp. 35–7.

  32. Platonov, Smutnoe vremia, p. 46. As this great expert on the time observes, the tax-exempt groups could bankrupt local businesses.

  33. Speransky, Ocherki po istorii, pp. 95–126.

  34. I. A. Bondarenko et al., eds., Slovar’ arkhitektorov i masterov stroitel’nogo dela Moskvy, XV–serediny XVIII veka (Moscow, 2007), pp. 335–7.

  35. Speransky, Ocherki po istorii, p. 84.

  36. Bondarenko, Slovar’ arkhitektorov, p. 337; Batalov, Kamennoe zodchestvo, p. 81.

  37. The sense of passing through successive walls is conveyed in many foreign travellers’ accounts, and even in the memoirs of Frenchmen in the suite of Napoleon.

  38. Speransky, Ocherki po istorii, pp. 8, 36–9, 80–85; Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago, and London, 1971), p. 158.

  39. Platonov, Smutnoe vremia, p. 73.

  40. In the mid-
seventeenth century, a team of ninety was envisaged for the renovation of the same space. See RGADA, fond 396, d. 51293, ll. 3–6.

  41. Aida Nasibova, The Faceted Chamber in the Moscow Kremlin (Leningrad, 1981), p. 16; see also I. E. Zabelin, Domashnyi byt russkikh tsarei v XVI i XVII stoletiiakh (Moscow, 1862, repr. 1990), vol. 1, pp. 178–84.

  42. The consensus is fragile, however. Platonov (Smutnoe vremia, pp. 82–3) is prepared to believe that Dmitry may have survived, while Maureen Perrie, following the English witness Jerome Horsey, is among the more recent commentators to assert that Godunov had the child murdered after all. See Perrie, Pretenders, p. 18 and Dunning, Civil War, pp. 66–8.

  43. Dunning, Civil War, pp. 64–6; Massa, Peasant Wars, pp. 30–31. The English travellers Jerome Horsey and Giles Fletcher both shared Massa’s view about Godunov’s guilt.

  44. For the background, see A. L. Batalov, ‘Sobor Voznesenskogo Monastyria v Moskovskom Kremle’, Pamiatniki kul’tury: Novye otkrytiia (1983), p. 478.

  45. On the importance of the Archangel Cathedral, see Akty Rossiiskogo Gosudarstva: Arkhivy moskovskikh monastyrei i soborov XV–nachala XVII vv. (Moscow, 1998), p. 36.

  46. Batalov reconstructed the evidence from fragments, since the cathedral was destroyed in the 1920s. For plans and a description, see ‘Sobor Voznesenskogo Monastyria’, pp. 462–82. See also Batalov, Kamennoe zodchestvo, p. 257.

  47. Batalov, Kamennoe zodchestvo, p. 78.

  48. Batalov, Kamennoe zodchestvo, pp. 84–5.

  49. Massa, Peasant Wars, p. 43.

  50. On the throne, see Barry Shifman and Guy Walton, eds., Gifts to the Tsars, 1500–1700: Treasures from the Kremlin (New York, 2001), p. 76. For a discussion of the regalia, see Scott Douglas Ruby, ‘The Kremlin Workshops of the Tsars and Foreign Craftsmen: c. 1500–1711’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2009, pp. 64–5.

  51. Margeret, Russian Empire, p. 54.

  52. Dunning, Civil War, pp. 94–6.

  53. On the original, of 1508, see above, Chapter 2, p. 57.

  54. Massa, Peasant Wars, p. 55.

  55. M. S. Arel and S. N. Bogatyrev, ‘Anglichane v Moskve vremen Borisa Godunova’, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik (1997), pp. 439–55.