The Book
As a result, Herberstein was able to produce the first detailed eyewitness ethnography of Russia, encyclopedic in its scope, providing an accurate (very accurate for the time) view of trade, religion, customs, politics, history, even a theory of Russian political culture.
The book contributed greatly to a European view held for several centuries of Russia as a despotic absolute monarchy. This view was not new, but previous writers presented an idealized view. Herberstein influenced the development of this view in two ways:
- he accentuated the absolute power of the monarchy even more than previous works had done. Writing about the Russian Tsar, Herberstein wrote that "in the power he holds over his people the ruler of Muscovy surpasses all the monarchs of the world."
- he presented a view of Russian political culture quite opposite to that argued by other writers. Where others claimed Russians were fanatically loyal to their ruler and treated in return with great fairness, Herberstein saw and wrote differently.
His investigations made it clear that Muscovy, contrary to the view of fanatical loyalty, had suffered a violent political struggle and that Muscovy had emerged only very recently as the dominant power in the region. What's more, the man who achieved the unification of Muscovy, Ivan III was characterized by Herberstein as a cruel tyrant, drunk, and a misogynist; far from being a ruler of great fairness and equity.
His description of Ivan's unification campaign was a series of banishments and forced relocations of whole populations to break the power of regional rulers. This culminated in, as Herberstein wrote, Ivan's "plan of ejecting all princes and others from the garrisons and fortified places" all the formerly independent princes of Russia, "being either moved by the grandeur of his achievements or stricken with fear, became subject to him." All very much at odds with previous perceived reality, but much closer to currently understood Russian history. Similarly the previously touted ideal of the fairness of the Muscovy monarchy was contrasted with Herberstein's depiction of peasants as being in "a very wretched condition, for their goods are exposed to plunder from the nobility and soldiery".
Read more about this topic: Notes On Muscovite Affairs
Famous quotes containing the word book:
“The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one’s intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.”
—Alan Bennett (b. 1934)