Free Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin by Catherine Merridale Page A

Relations in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1981). Omeljan Pritsak, The Origin of Rus (Cambridge, Mass., 1981) deals with important controversies about the traders from the north. On Bogoliubsky, see Ellen S. Hurwitz, Prince Andrej Bogoljubskij: The Man and the Myth (Firenze, 1980).
    A traditional survey of early Muscovy is provided by John Fennell’s two volumes: The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200–1304 (London, 1983) and The Emergence of Moscow, 1304–1359 (London, 1968). A bracing antidote can be found in D. G. Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier (Cambridge, 1998), which delivers a refreshing view of the lasting role of Mongol culture. Further grist to that mill appears in G. A. Fyodorov-Davydov, The Culture of Golden Horde Cities (Oxford, 1984), C. J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Russian History (London, 1987), and even Michel Roublev, ‘The Mongol tribute’, in M. Cherniavsky, ed., The Structure of Russian History (New York, 1970), pp. 29–64. For the role of trade, as well as a discussion of the region’s international networks, see Janet Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge, 1986).
    For an introduction to the sacred architecture of the Orthodox world, see Cyril Mango, Byzantine Architecture (New York, 1976). The impact of Mongol conquest on building in the Moscow region is traced in David B. Miller, ‘Monumental building as an indicator of economic trends in Northern Rus’ in the late Kievan and Mongol periods, 1138–1462’, American Historical Review, 94 (1989), pp. 360–90, and the same author has written on the most famous of Russian icons in ‘Legends of the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir: a study of the development of Muscovite national consciousness’, Speculum, 43, 4 (October 1968), pp. 657–70. The artistic connections between Byzantine and early Russian art are explored in Robin Cormack’s useful introduction, Byzantine Art (Oxford, 2000).
    RENAISSANCE
    The only biography of Ivan III in English is John Fennell, Ivan the Great of Moscow (London, 1961), and the period of his reign has not attracted large numbers of English-speaking specialists. For an overview of the era as a whole, see Robert O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613 (London and New York, 1987). For different aspects of the evolution of Ivan’s court, see Gustave Alef, ‘The adoption of the Muscovite two-headed eagle: a discordant view’, Speculum, 41 (1966), pp. 1–21, and G. P. Majeska, ‘The Moscow coronation of 1498 reconsidered’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 26 (1978), pp. 353–61.
    Ivan the Terrible has drawn a larger press, including Isabel de Madariaga’s biography, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (New Haven, Conn. and London, 2005). Today, the most thoughtful writing on Ivan the Terrible and his era is the work of Sergei Bogatyrev, and an introduction to it might be his chapter, ‘Ivan the Terrible’, in Maureen Perrie, ed., The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689. On the coronation, see also D. B. Miller, ‘The coronation of Ivan IV of Moscow’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 15 (1967), pp. 559–74. Ivan’s peevish correspondence with his former courtier Andrei Kurbsky was translated by J. L. I. Fennell as The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564–1579 (Cambridge, 1955), but see also Edward L. Keenan, The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) for the suggestion that the whole thing might be a fraud. 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; for his image and later reputation, see Maureen Perrie, The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore