Sergei M. Soloviev. Russia Under the Tatar Yoke 1228-1389. Gulf Breeze, Fla: Academic International Press, 2000. xxviii + 296 pp. $39.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-87569-219-7.

Reviewed by Charles J. Halperin (Visiting Scholar, Russian & East European Institute, Indiana University)
Published on H-Russia (February, 2001)

Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century East Slavic Political History

Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century East Slavic Political History

It took Sergei M. Soloviev twenty eight years, from 1851 to 1879, to publish the twenty nine volumes of his "History of Russia"; he began work on it in 1848. The first volume of Academic International Press' fifty-volume translation appeared in 1976. The volume under review is the twenty-seventh in print, and another fifteen are in preparation. Therefore, it seems probable that the translation project will exceed in duration Soloviev's time of composition.

The translator and editor, Helen Y. Prochazka, completed a PhD in Russian Languages and Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London in 1978 with a thesis on Old Russian military accounts. She cites her three articles on martial narrative tales (pp. 224 nn. 30, 36, 228 n. 70) in her commentaries.

The primary foci of this volume, devoted entirely to political and diplomatic history, are the Mongol conquest of the East Slavs and the rise of Moscow. Soloviev also deals comprehensively with the history of Galich-Volhynia, Pskov, Novgorod, and all the principalities of Vladimir-Suzdalia, and, to understand their foreign relations, with that of Poland, Lithuania, the Livonian and Teutonic Knights, and Sweden.

The book contains a table of weights and measures which is uniform for the series; three maps; a "Preface" (pp. xii-xiv) and an "Introduction" (pp. xv-xxviii) by Prochazka; the text, taken from Soloviev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen,from the standard Soviet edition, in this case, kniga II,tom3 (Moscow, 1963), chapters II-VII, pp. 124-311 (pp. 1-218); Notes (endnotes) (pp. 219-253); and an Appendix of princely genealogical tables. Since each chapter's notes begin with the number 1, it is very helpful to have headers in the endnotes indicating which chapter the apparatus applies to. However, since chapter endnotes, like chapters, can begin in the middle of a page, they are not entirely accurate for pages with notes from two chapters. The Index (pp. 261-296) is extensive.

In her "Preface," Prochazka describes the volume as an "unabridged" translation, the goal of which was to produce "as readable as possible" a text "consistent with accuracy". A "Russianized" text reproducing Soloviev's style and word-order was definitely to be avoided. English-language equivalents were sought for almost all technical terms except those already common in English. Because Soloviev's pages are "featureless and interminable," Prochazka breaks up his lengthy sentences and paragraphs into shorter ones, and inserts into the text both the sub-chapter headings found under the chapter title in the Soviet edition and additional sub-chapter headings of her own creation. (Prochazka does not observe that this is a standard operating procedure in the series.) The intended audience of the series are readers with relatively little familiarity with the subject (not specialists, such as this reviewer); therefore (again, as commonly in the series), both Soloviev's and the Soviet edition's technical footnotes have been removed.[1] Prochazka "painfully" concedes that "inevitable shortcomings" remain in the translation.

A translation such as this must keep the general reader awake, a daunting task given Soloviev's generally lifeless prose, and the annotation must anticipate the inquiries of absolute novices to the material. Prochazka has succeeded admirably in dealing with these primary tasks, for which she deserves considerable credit. Particularly praiseworthy is the thoroughness of her identifications in the Notes of peoples, places and events.

In the "Introduction" Prochazka discusses Soloviev's methodology and sources. She briefly adumbrates the main trends of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century which set the stage for the volume's narrative. She describes Soloviev's approach as chronological, not analytical. Extensive quotations enable the chroniclers to speak directly to the reader. The weakness of this device is that Soloviev often does no more than regurgitate the significance of events as ascribed to them by the medieval annalist, which is especially important since, by and large, he disregards the history of the texts themselves. In her annotation Prochazka seeks to compensate for this failing by utilizing the results of modern scholarship. She makes mention of the lack of much social history, the neglect of religious leaders, and the vagueness of military detail. She especially contrasts Soloviev's view of the appanages with that of Presniakov. Prochazka sees in the chronicles tacit approval of Alexander Nevsky's appeasment of the Tatars in the thirteenth century. Finally, she calls attention to the maturation of the concept of Russian nationhood at the end of the fourteenth century.

Much of this "Introduction" is extremely well-done. However, it could have been taken a much broader view. First, for the beginning reader it would have been useful to underscore Soloviev's prejudices, his Orthodox Christian, Russian nationalist biases and aversion to disobedient boyars, Roman Catholics, especially Crusading knights, and "barbarian" Tatars, no matter how "obvious" from his text.[2] Secondly, the reader should be informed that the standard terms of discourse about the Tatars, the "Golden Horde" and the "Tatar Yoke", are anachronisms. Third, unlike the maps printed here (pp. ix, xi) a current map of Eastern Europe would show Kyiv and Chernihiv, not Kiev and Chernigov. Readers are not well served by references to "Southern Russia" in the maps, introduction and translation, where Soloviev usually has "Rus". It is imperative to explain succinctly and clearly the historical and current relationship between Kievan Rus and the Ukranian, Belarusian and (Great) Russian states. The translators/editors of the first three volumes in this series will need to confront this problem head-on, lest they perpetuate Soloviev's Great Russian schema of "Russian" history. Finally, since Prochazka in her Notes cross-references not only other volumes in the series already in print, but some which have not yet appeared, it would have been fortuitous to inform the reader that Soloviev provided an overview of domestic social, economic, institutional, and cultural conditions from 1228-1462 in what will be volume six.

There are very few mortal sins in the translation and apparatus. A set of question marks rather than a page number is provided for the family tree of the Monomashichi and Olgovichi (p. 11, n. 44 on p. 225). Mindaugus was threatened by the (Livonian) Order (Orden), not the Horde (Orda) (p.67). In discussing Algirdas' negotiations with the Tatars, Fennell speculated he might have wanted assistance against the Livonians, not the Lithuanians (p. 150 n. 17 on p. 247). On p. 175, note 16 is missing; from its content (p. 251) it belonged at the end of the second whole paragraph.

There are some serious mistranslations. "Let them claim the whole land was Polish when" should be "Let the entire Polish land know that" (Pust' uznaet vsia zemlia Pol'skaia chto) (p. 73); "they grazed all the crops" should be "trampled" (potravili) (p. 122); "second cousin" should be "first cousin" (dvoiurodnyi brat) (p. 125): "Skirgaillo received a title from the Russian grand prince" should be "Skirgaillo received the title of Russian grand prince" (poluchil diplom na dostoinstvo velikogo kniazia russkogo) (p. 213);diak Kostroma was a "secretary" not a "deacon" (p. 166); "Spoils taken from Novgorod soil shall go to Novgorod without compensation" should be "Captives taken in the entire Novgorod district will be returned to Novgorod without ransom" (chto vziato polonu po vsei volosti Novgorodskoi, to poidet k Novgorodu bez okupa) (p.112).

In two cases the liberties Prochazka takes with the text lead to distortion: "[Daumantas] announced to the other leaders that his horoscope was unfavorable" (p. 70) replaces divination with astrology, since the original reads "the shamans (volkhvy) foretold bad things for him". That Voidyllo became the "homosexual favorite and drinking companion" (p. 179) of Algirdas misrepresents the functions of a gentleman-of-the-bedchamber, who made Algirdas' bed and brought him drink ([Algirdas]vzial ego{Voidyllo} k sebe posteliu slat' i pit' podavat'_).

Aside from these egregious errors, there are cases where awkward, hyper-literal constructions mar the translation, where a word seems to be missing, or where a comma or semicolon would have improved the sense of the sentence.

Translations of technical terms are a matter of choice. I would have preferred "Qipchaqs" (or "Kipchaks") rather than "Polovetsians," and I always cringe at "Snipe Plain" or "Snipe Field" (why both?) for Kulikovo pole (pp.189-190). Similarly, rendering okol'nichii as "lord-in-waiting" (p. 186) rings odd. "Tribe" for plemia seems orthodox, except that Soloviev uses it to describe princely lines, which produces "the tribe of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich" (p.87) and "the tribe of Riurik and Gediminas" (p. 210) where "clan" or "lineage" would grate less. Tatar terminology is always difficult. Yarlik is inconsistently translated as "entitlement" (most often), "accreditation" (e.g. p. 110) or even "charter" (p. 172) rather than "patent." "Tax collector" does not fully render the functions of the baskak (basqaq). Soloviev describes Mamay as a temnik (commander of ten thousand), for which Prochazka supplies "warrior chief" and "war chief" (pp. 164, 182, again, why both?), neither of which is adequate; "emir" might have sufficed.

Horde titles pose a generic problem. Prochazka never fully elucidates the ambiguities of the word "tsar" in the medieval East Slavic sources of the Tatar period (see p. 108 n. 40 on p. 238) for Byzantine emperors, Tatar khans and rhetorically for East Slavic princes. Thus tsarUzbek becomes "Tatar prince Uzbek" (p. 127), although he is "khan" in the Index, and tsarevich translates as "princeling" or "Tatar crown prince" (pp. 84, 90).

Annotation in the Notes seeks to correct and update Soloviev's views.[3] For example, Prochazka identifies the contradiction between two quotations from Carpini which Soloviev missed (cf. p. 27 n. 80 on p. 228 with p. 32 n. 7 on p. 230); replaces Soloviev's censorship of the chronicles (Soloviev did not repeat the chronicler's pun that the Russian troops were drunk on the river Piane, p. 185 n. 30 on p. 251). Prochazka relies heavily on Fennell's works to suggest alternative interpretations of events and to supply textual histories of Soloviev's sources.

The quantity of modern English-language bibliography which could have been brought to bear upon Soloviev's text is considerable, far too much to incorporate without overburdening the volume. However, sometimes Prochazka's choices are puzzling. On the early history of Genghis Khan (readers should be provided with the proper form, Chinggis Khan) Prochazka cites an article in French by Grousset and the derivate Prawdin, instead of the superb and recent survey by Morgan.[4] Much of the bibliography Prochazka does not cite would shed new light on Soloviev's statements and conclusions. Soloviev recounts the various chronicle explanations of Gediminas' genealogy (pp. 140-141), but Rowell has concluded that the evidence he was the brother of Vitensis is incontrovertible.[5] Soloviev repeated as true the bogus Muscovite accusation that Mamay usurped the title of khan before waxing eloquent on the European significance of the battle of Kulikovo Pole for Russo-Tatar relations as a triumph of Christianity over Islam (pp. 186-191), an excessively optimistic judgment.[6]

The genealogical tables in the Appendix are not as user-friendly as they could be. Right-aligning the caption on p. 254 might have eased the difficulty of telling that pages 254-255 constitute a single chart. Small tables are buried in the midst of a multi-part larger table, and the tables are not cross-referenced.

But in the final analysis one can only agree with Prochazka's conclusion that "the real and lasting value of this volume of Soloviev's History is that it offers the reader a comprehensive and coherent compilation of the events of the period, and balances the many different perspectives of the wide variety of original sources to produce a harmonious whole which succeeds in both evoking and reflecting the spirit of the age" (p. xxviii).

Notes

[1]. The Hrushevsky translation project follows the opposite policy of preserving, verifying and supplementing all citations. See Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus', published by Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Volume 1, From Prehistory to the Eleventh Century and Volume 7, The Cossack Age to 1625 have been published as of 2000. See my review of the former in Kritika 1:1 (2000), pp. 195-202; my review of the latter is forthcoming in Canadian Slavonic Papers.

[2]. Recent studies of Soloviev include Ana Siljak, "Christianity, Science and Progress in Sergei M. Soloviev's History of Russia," in Thomas Sanders, ed., The Historiography of Imperial Russia: The Profession and Writing of History in a Multinational State(Armonk, NY and London, England: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), pp. 215-238, and Edward C. Thaden, The Rise of Historicism in Russia(New York: Peter Lang, 1999; American University Studies, Series IX, History. V. 192), pp. 117-118, 124-127, 143-155, 173-189, 193-197, 235-270, 276-278.

[3]. The organization of the city of Novgorod into "wards" (kontsy) should have been explained upon the first mention of the term (p. 84), not long afterwards (p. 161 n. 48 on p. 249).

[4]. David O. Morgan, The Mongols(Cambridge, Mass and Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1990).

[5]. S.C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 52-55.

[6]. Charles J. Halperin, "The Russian Land and the Russian Tsar: The Emergence of Muscovite Ideology, 1380-1408," Forschungen zuer osteuropaeischen Geschichte, 23 (1976), pp. 7-103; Idem, "The Six-Hundredth Anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo Field, 1380-1980, in Soviet Historiography," Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 18 (1984), pp. 298-310; Idem, "Russo-Tatar Relations in Mongol Context," Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 51 (1998) pp. 325-35.

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Citation: Charles J. Halperin. Review of Soloviev, Sergei M., Russia Under the Tatar Yoke 1228-1389. H-Russia, H-Net Reviews. February, 2001.
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