Ivan Zabelin
Ivan Egorovich Zabelin is a whole era in Russian historiography, both in terms of the scale of what he did and in terms of life expectancy in science. He was born five years before the uprising on Senate Square, and died three years after Bloody Sunday. The son of a petty Tver official, who lost his father early and was sent to an almshouse, Zabelin, having only five classes of an orphan school behind him, became a famous historian and archaeologist, the author of two hundred printed works, including eight monographs. He happened to communicate with people of the Pushkin circle (M.P. Pogodin, P.V. Nashchokin, S.L. Sobolevsky), be friends with I.S. Turgenev and A.N. Ostrovsky, advise L.N. Tolstoy. For many years he headed the Historical Museum, where, after his death, the most valuable collection of ancient manuscripts, icons, maps, engravings, and books he had collected was transferred.
“The domestic life of the Russian people in the 16th and 17th centuries” is one of the main works of Zabelin. For it, he was awarded prestigious scientific awards: the gold medal of the Academy of Sciences, the large silver medal of the Archaeological Society, the Uvarov and Demidov Prizes. Zabelin explained his interest in the “everyday” side of history by the fact that the scientist first of all needs to know “the inner life of the people in all its details, then the events, both loud and inconspicuous, will be evaluated incomparably more accurately, closer to the truth.”
The monograph was based on Zabelin's essays, which in the 1840s and 1850s were regularly published in Moskovskie Vedomosti and Otechestvennye Zapiski. Collected together, systematized and supplemented, they amounted to two volumes, the first of which - "The Home Life of Russian Tsars" - was published in 1862, and the second - "The Home Life of Russian Queens" - seven years later, in 1869. Over the next half century, the book went through three editions.
The latter came out already in 1918, when the theme of "royal life" was rapidly losing relevance.
On the reason why the daily life of the Moscow court in the 16th and XVII centuries, the historian wrote: “The old Russian domestic life, and especially the life of the Russian great sovereign, with all its charters, regulations, forms, with all orderliness, ceremoniality and chivalry, was most fully expressed by the end of the 17th century. This was the era of the last days for our domestic and social antiquity, when everything that was strong and rich in this antiquity expressed itself and ended in such images and forms that it was impossible to go further along that path.
Studying the royal life on the threshold of a new era in a book under the general title "The Home Life of the Russian People", the author once again affirmed his favorite idea about the unity of power and society: "What is the state - such is the people, and what is the people - such is the state."
The Chronicle presents the last lifetime edition of Zabelin's work. Compared to the previous ones, it is supplemented with new information about the royal household items, floor plans of the Kremlin Palace and drawings made from the originals kept in the Historical Museum.
Zabelin Ivan Yegorovich (1820-1908)
Home life of the Russian people in the 16th and 17th centuries.[In 2 volumes.] 3rd edition with additions. Moscow, A.I. Mamontova, 1895-1901. T. 1: Home life of Russian tsars in the 16th and 17th centuries. 1895. XXI, 759 p., 6 folding sheets. with illustrations. Vol. 2: Home life of Russian queens in the 16th and 17th centuries. 1901. VIII, 788 s, VIII tables with illustrations. In two identical semi-leather bindings of the beginning of the 20th century. On the spines there are rosettes embossed with gold and a label with the title. In the lower part of the spines there are gold-embossed owner's initials: "G.S." Colored endpapers - chromolithography with silver. 24.3x16.1 cm. On title sheets. stamps: “Library of S.D. Ignatiev".
Sovereign's court or palace
Rite of sovereign life, room and day off
Inventories of courtyards in the 16th and 17th centuries
VOLUME I I. Home life of Russian queens in the 16th and 17th centuries
Women's personality in pre-Petrine society
The main features of the female personality in pre-Petrine times
Female personality in the position of queen
The rite of the queen's life room and day off
Palace amusements, amusements and spectacles
Tsaritsyn courtyard rank
Tsarina's outfits, attire and clothes
crucifix records
Life is living tissue history, allowing you to imagine and feel the historical existence in detail.
Ivan Yegorovich Zabelin (1820-1908) - an outstanding Russian historian and archaeologist, chairman of the Society for History and Antiquities, honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. His research concerns mainly the most ancient Kievan era and the Moscow period of Russian history. The works of the historian are characterized by an expressive and original language, unusually colorful and rich, with an archaic, folk touch. Exploring the ideological foundations of Russian culture, he emphasizes the important role of economic relations in history. The historian sought to find out the "roots and origins" of Russian life, revealed borrowings in culture from neighboring peoples. As a leading representative of the “everyday history” direction, Zabelin paid attention to any little things that made up the life of our ancestors.
The fundamental work of I. E. Zabelin “The Home Life of Russian Tsars in the 16th and 17th Centuries” is dedicated to restoring the foundations and smallest details of royal life, developing ideas about royal power and Moscow as the center of the tsars’ stay, the history of the construction of the Kremlin and the royal choirs, and their interior decoration ( architectural innovations and methods of external decoration, technical details of the interior, wall paintings, furniture, luxury items, clothes, pets, etc.), rituals associated with the person of the king and court protocol (that is, who from the royal environment had the right to come to the palace, how it should have been done, what household services and positions were at court, the duties of royal doctors, the appointment of various palace premises), the daily routine in the palace (the sovereign’s classes, which began with morning prayer, the solution of state issues and the role of the boyar duma in this, lunchtime and afternoon entertainment, the cycle of Orthodox holidays, the center of which was the sovereign's court).
The traditional splendor and isolation of the Russian grand ducal, and then the royal court invariably aroused curiosity among contemporaries, which was destined to remain unsatisfied - the entrance to the inner chambers of the palace, especially to its female half, was ordered for almost everyone, with the exception of a narrow circle of servants and relatives . It is not an easy task to penetrate this hidden world, to do it delicately, without being carried away by the inevitable romantic legends or fantastic gossip in such a situation. Historians, who are attracted by the general patterns of development of the state, economy and society, rarely turn to such topics. However, there are happy exceptions - the work of the outstanding Russian historian and archaeologist Ivan Yegorovich Zabelin (1820-1908).
The internal routine, everyday life of the Moscow Palace, the relationship of its inhabitants are traced by Zabelin in all their picturesque details, with a detailed description of various rituals and ceremonies, which are accompanied by an explanation of their ritual meaning and deep significance. All the stories of I. E. Zabelin are based on genuine historical material, which he had the opportunity to get acquainted with while working in the archives of the Armory of the Moscow Kremlin. “Home life of Russian queens in the 16th and 17th centuries” is the second part of Zabelin’s more general study “Home life of the Russian people in the 16th and 17th centuries”.
General features of the position of the female personality in pre-Petrine society. The judgment of Kotoshikhin and the judgment of idyllic researchers. The root principle of ancient Russian society. Tribal life. Idyll of family and communal life. The meaning of the clan and the meaning of the community. The generic idea is the idea of parental will - guardianship. The dignity of the individual was "fatherland". Localism and veche are expressions of the Old Russian community. essential character. - The generic idea is the educator of the Russian personality. Domostroy is a school of personal development. What was meant by individual independence? - The main character traits of the Russian personality. Domination of the will and childhood of the will. General characteristics of pre-Petrine society.
Kotoshikhin, in his famous essay “On Russia in the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich,” says that when Moscow ambassadors were at the wedding of the Polish king, they ruled the embassy and brought wedding gifts from the tsar and the tsarina especially to the king and especially to the queen. To govern an embassy meant to carry it out personally in the face of the potentate. Wanting to thank the Muscovite tsar in the same measure, the Polish king sent his ambassadors to the tsar and ordered the embassy to rule and bring gifts from himself and from the queen, I also give to the tsarina, also to each separately, as our ambassadors in Poland did. This, of course, was required by ordinary courtesy, ordinary etiquette in the mutual relations of two sovereigns. But, having celebrated the embassy and presented gifts to the king, the Polish ambassadors, according to Moscow custom were not admitted to the queen. “But they were not allowed to go to the queen of the embassy to rule and see her,” says Kotoshikhin; but they excused themselves: they called the queen sick; and she was healthy at the time. And he listened to the ambassadors of the embassy, that is, ordinary speeches, and the king himself accepted gifts for the queen. Exactly the same happened with the English ambassador who came to the king with gifts on the same occasion in 1663.
Why are they doing this? asks Kotoshikhin, wishing to reveal to the foreigners, for whom he wrote his essay, the true reasons for this custom, and for this purpose making this memorable answer.
“In order,” he answers, that the Muscovite state female literacy unlearned, and it is not customary to have but with a different mind they are simple-minded and unintelligent and bashful for excuses: from infancy until their marriage with their fathers they live in secret chambers, and besides the closest relatives, strangers, none of them, and they cannot see people. And therefore it is possible to find out why they would be much more reasonable and courageous. Also, no matter how they get married, and therefore people see little of them. And if only the tsar at that time did so that he ordered the Polish ambassador to be with his queen at the embassy; but she would have listened to the embassy herself and would not have made any answer, and from that the king himself would have been ashamed.
The real case, why the tsarina did not go out to receive the embassy, Kotoshikhin explains not quite correctly, for the ancient custom was strictly forbidden to rule the embassy to foreign ambassadors right in front of the tsarina. The ambassadors could not see the tsarina, not because the tsar was afraid of shame from her unintelligent and bashful excuses, but because the tsarina’s mansions were completely inaccessible not only to foreign ambassadors, but also to her people, even to the boyars and the entire court, with the exception of those closest to her people, usually her close relatives or the most trusted servants of the Court. But, while incorrectly explaining a particular case, Kotoshikhin depicts very correctly and quite in detail the position of the female personality in our old society in general, depicts reality, over the gradual creation of which entire centuries and a number of generations have been diligently working. In short words, but very vividly, he draws at the same time the characteristics of society itself, for the characteristics of the female personality always serve as a completely faithful image of society itself. In vain we will reject the harsh, perhaps too harsh truth of this review, citing as evidence some names that have declared with their lives the mental and moral independence of the female personality; in vain we will soften the simple and perhaps too rude and harsh force of these incorruptible words, pointing to some idylls in which the family and social relations of the female personality were expressed, sometimes even very complacently, and which, to tell the truth, in the beauty that attributed to them exist only in the imagination of the good defenders of all that is good and moral in form. Not a single name, that is, a person who can always, under certain circumstances of life, push himself out of the general current, even with special glory; nor any benevolent idyll, which is exactly the same happens, as everything always happens and happens in human life, in a word, no particular and therefore random phenomena are able to obscure from us in these words the real light of life's truth, the real light of real, and not imaginary life. The recall of Kotoshikhin is justified not by any exceptional single phenomena, but by the whole system of pre-Petrine Russian life, general position and the mindset of the then life, the whole moral element of society. Some historical phenomena, some juridical definitions that gave woman an independent meaning, cannot shake the very foundation of the old views. Individuals such as Sofya Vitovtovna - Lithuanian, Sofya Fominishna - Greek, Elena Vasilievna Glinskaya - also a foreigner, who, as you know, enjoyed a certain amount of female freedom, at least sometimes personally received foreign ambassadors and did not hide in their mansions when circumstances required their participation in similar ceremonies; such personalities as foreigners cannot explain anything in relation to general characteristics. Some degree of independence belonged to them partly because they were strangers that their personality, due to their foreignness and the high importance of their family, by itself already acquired in the eyes of Russian society a special, independent position, which in no case could equate them with their, and therefore freed some of their actions from the usual restrictions of women's life. But, brought up in customs that gave greater scope to the female personality, they, however, in the Moscow palace, had to live as it was customary from time immemorial, that is, they had to obey those concepts and orders of life that prevailed everywhere in the Russian land. And these concepts were highly respected shameful any circumstance where a woman's personality acquired some kind of social meaning. These concepts recognized her freedom, and then to a certain extent, only in family relations and in the provisions of an exclusively family community. As soon as the hostel took on some form of publicity and from the domestic, family sphere passed into the sphere of public life, then it was discovered that the female personality had no place here, that without special clearance in a public hostel, she cannot get close to the personality of a man. The well-known development of ideas and ideas in this direction generally led to the fact that the female personality, by its appearance in society, violated, as it were, the chastity of a public community, not to mention the fact that her own chastity with such a feat, in the eyes of the age, perished completely. One man exclusively belonged to the interests of the public. He alone possessed the disposition to live in society, to live in society. The woman was left with the duty to live at home, to live as a family, to be an exclusively domestic person, and in the essential sense to be, together with the house and household members, only an instrument, a means for the life of a social person - a man.
In only one case, the independence of a woman was legitimate and indisputable, in the case when she became the head of the house; and this could only happen under the circumstance that, after the death of her husband, she remained mother a widow, that is, a widow - the mother of sons. And we see that materaya the widow in ancient Russian society plays in some respects a male role; we see that the type of this personality acquires strong independent features both in social life and in historical events, and next. and in folk poetry, in epics and songs. It also enjoys significant legal rights.
