Recent Western Historiography of the Time of Troubles in Russia

Abstract

This article reviews some English- and French-language works about the Time of Troubles which have been published since the Second World War. The author notes that there are relatively few such publications, and that there are no distinct Western “schools” of scholarship on the Time of Troubles. Rather, a number of individuals have written about aspects of the Troubles which interested them for a variety of reasons. The theme of pretenders has been a popular one. Philip Barbour wrote a biography of the First False Dmitrii; while Yves-Marie Bercé and Maureen Perrie have written about the phenomenon of pretendership, and the popular attitudes associated with it, from a comparative perspective. Other scholars (Roland Mousnier, Chester Dunning) have approached the popular uprisings of the Time of Troubles as responses to a “general crisis of the 17th century”. Yet others took as their starting points parallels with more recent times. Paul Avrich presented the Bolotnikov revolt as the first of a series of “peasant wars” that continued into the 20th century; and Isaiah Gruber, in his monograph about the role of the Orthodox Church in the early 17th century, identified similarities between the Time of Troubles and Russia’s post- Soviet ills. Many of these historians were influenced in their approaches by current tendencies in Western historiography and scholarship: comparative history; peasant studies; the history of revolts and revolutions; the semiotics of cultural history; and the history of mentalités.