To the problem of the Old Russian writing’s typology

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of Old Russian writing’s typology. Traditionally, it is presented as a sequence of three main types of letters replacing each other – ustav, poluustav and skoropis’. The article attempts to show the inconsistency and artificiality of this scheme, created in the science of the second half of the XVIII – the first quarter of the XIX century by A. L. Schlezer and E. Bolkhovitinov. The concept of poluustav seems unreasonably broad. It brings together incomparable phenomena: the ‘‘senior poluustav’’, which appears in the literature, in fact, as a reduced version of the modern Statute of the XIV century and the ‘‘junior poluustav’’, the ideas about which are not associated with the degree of negligence and simplicity of writing: it includes a solemn, large letter, and a smaller one. The set of features of the senior poluustav described in the literature does not justify its allocation as an independent type of writingassociated with the second half of the XIV century. As for the junior poluustav, its sharp separation from the previous history of the development of Old Russian writing seems to be unjustified. The new features peculiar to it are for the most part not replacing the old ones, but used along with them. It’s possible to talk not about a break with the previous tradition in the end of XIV – the beginning of XV century, but about its enrichment with new graphic forms. In the writing of the XV–XVII century there are not rare, but rather the predominant type of manuscripts in which new styles are used in a limited way, they are not style-makers.