The Time of Troubles: A Historical Study of the Internal Crisis and Social Struggles in Sixteenth- And Seventeeth-Century Muscovy

Sergei Feodorovich Platonov's Time of Troubles is a classic study of the years 1598-1613, a turbulent and decisive period in Russian history. This English translation is a valuable tool for students of the medieval as well as modern periods. Platonov, himself a tragic victim of the regimentation imposed on Soviet cultural life in the 1920s, was born in 1860 and attained immense public and professional recognition in Russia as a leading historian. In his work he synthesized, to a high degree, two major traditions of Russian historiography: the St. Petersburg school, which emphasized the collection and rigorous use of primary sources, and the Moscoe school with its socio-economic and geo-political approaches. Time of Troubles represents the finished product of a lifetime spent in research, writing and teaching. In broad terms it treats nearly a century and a half of Russian history (1500-1648); in detail it scrutinizes developments in the Muscovite State from 1598 to 1613. Some of the major issues covered in this volume are: the growing consolidation of Muscovite absolutism and the formation of a national state; the expansion of Muscovy to the west and southeast; the demise of the boyer class and the rise of the service gentry; the emergence of serfdom as the social basis of Muscovite society; the cataclysmic end of one dynasty, the House of Rurik, and the beginnings of another, the House of Romanov. For Platonov--who devoted most of his career as a scholar to the study of these dramatic years--the epoch marked nothing less than the great divide between medieval Muscovy and modern Russia, witnessing the downfall of an essentially patrimonial regime and its replacement, after fierce struggles, by a more modern state founded on a new constellation of social groups.