V.O. Kliuchevskii - A Course in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century

V. O. Kliuchevsky

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
Natalie Duddington

INTRODUCTION BY
Alfred J. Rieber

The question of transliterating Russian proper names has never been resolved in a way to suit everyones taste. In order to standardize spelling in the translations in this series, I have adopted, sometimes to the despair of the translator, a uniform system based upon the Library of Congress model. The modifications include the use of a single i at the end of given names (Vasili) and a y at the end of family names (Kliuchevsky). By and large I have retained the Russian forms of given names (Vasili instead of Basil), but have given English equivalents to the less familiar ones, such as Metropolitan Job (instead of Iov).

Common usage and the absence of exact equivalents in English have also determined the choice of Russian terms such as Zemsky Sobor (Assembly of the Land) instead of translating them wherever they occur. An attempt has been made to keep these to a minimum, even at the cost of employing rather unsatisfactory translations, such as gentry for dvoriane.

The system used by W. E. D. Allen in The Ukraine has been borrowed for Ukrainian and Russo-Lithuanian (e.g., Orthodox as opposed to Roman Catholic) names in order to distinguish them from Great Russian and Polish.

A.J.R.

In the annals of Russian historiography, Vasili Osipovich Kliuchevsky occupies a central and dominant position. Indeed, he deserves to be counted among the great historians of the world. Since his death more than fifty years ago his reputation and influence, although not always publicly acknowledged, have continued to grow both in his native land and abroad. His magnum opus, A Course in Russian History, is the only multivolume history of Russia that has been translated into English. The Russian original has been reprinted twice in the Soviet Union, and when, after Stalins death, a project was begun to publish the collected works of prerevolutionary historians, it was only natural that Kliuchevsky was the first to be so honored. Until very recently some of his former students occupied important positions in the Soviet historical profession, and others, like Sir Bernard Pares at London and M. M. Karpovich at Harvard, imbued a generation of English and American undergraduates with the spirit of his work. What makes Kliuchevsky a figure of such enduring interest?

For more than three decades before the First World War, Kliuchevskys brilliant lectures packed the main auditorium of Moscow University and inspired some of the best historical brains of the succeeding generation. The beauty of his language and the power of his ideas held his audience spellbound. In a flash, this unprepossessing little man, looking more like a deacon than a professor, with his high-pitched voice, his stutter, and his myopic stare, could be transformed into Peter the Great, all seven feet of him striding across the stage of Russian history. Kliuchevsky was a consummate actor. His wit was a formidable weapon, admired by his students and colleagues, feared by his hapless victims. He once characterized a historian who praised Catherine the Great excessively as her posthumous lover. The poor fellow never lived it down. Moreover, Kliuchevsky gave what certainly must be considered the most learned introductory course in Russian history ever taught. Not only did every lecture resemble an elegant monograph, combining great erudition with superb writing, but the entire series was held together by several interconnected themes which, even as they unfolded, illuminated each part of the imposing structure. A happy marriage of formidable scholarship and stimulating teaching, these lectures, often reworked and rewritten over a period of twenty years, became the chapters of