The Russian Court Theater in the Late 17th Century and its Context in Trans-national Information Exchange

FAIN: RZ-51635-13

Claudia Jensen
University of Washington (Seattle, WA 98195-1016)

Research, writing, and preparation for print and e-book publication of a volume of essays, journal articles, and conference papers relating to diplomacy and theater in 17th-century Russia. (36 months)

Why did the Russian tsar create a court theater in 1672? In order to answer this, we turn to sources that have rarely been used in the study of early Russian culture: newspapers and diplomatic reports. As our work shows, the origins of Russia’s theater are embedded in the communications revolution that took place throughout Europe in the 17th century. Our project makes important contributions not only to theatrical history, but also to broader historical issues. These include gender (the roles of the Russian royal women); the relationship between official diplomatic channels and the newspaper presses of the West; and communications and information exchange between Russian and Western diplomatic networks. Finally, in revealing the true origins of Russian theater in the 17th century, our work makes important contributions to the debates about “Westernization” in Russia, and the extent to which this pre-dates the well-known reforms of Peter the Great, beginning in the 18th century.

Associated Products

: “Pickleherring Returns to the Kremlin: More New Sources on the Pre-History of the Russian Court Theater” (Article)
Title: : “Pickleherring Returns to the Kremlin: More New Sources on the Pre-History of the Russian Court Theater”
Author: Ingrid Maier
Author: Claudia R. Jensen
Abstract: This article, a continuation of “Orpheus and Pickleherring in the Kremlin: The ‘Ballet’ for the Tsar of February 1672” (Scando-Slavica 59:2), focuses on the second performance given for Tsar Aleksej Michajlovic by foreign residents of Moscow. This encore production, in May 1672, expanded upon the programme of the February event: it was longer, featured more characters on stage, and even included some female characters (certainly portrayed by male performers). In addition to revealing this May entertainment, we discuss the identities of the performers (largely drawn from the merchant population of Moscow’s Foreign Quarter), and we suggest that the author of the eye-witness account describing the February performance was Christoff Koch (ennobled von Kochen), a Swedish correspondent and commercial representative in Moscow. Almost simultaneously with the May performance, the Russian court began to make plans for a more permanent theatre; we trace the court’s attempts to contact the important German acting troupe headed by the Paulsen and Velten families. Finally, we discuss the impacts these two performances may have had on the plays offered by the tsar’s court theatre beginning in October 1672, with special focus on the character Pickleherring.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ssla20/61/1
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Scando-Slavica 61, no. 1 (2015): 7-56
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

: “The Best Connected Man in Muscovy? Patrick Gordon’s Evidence Regarding News and Communications in Muscovy in the 17th century,” (Article)
Title: : “The Best Connected Man in Muscovy? Patrick Gordon’s Evidence Regarding News and Communications in Muscovy in the 17th century,”
Author: Daniel C. Waugh
Abstract: NOTE: although this issue does not yet appear on the journal's website, it will be in: Vol. 7, Issue 2 (Spring 2014) (= The World of Patrick Gordon): 61-124. Note also that there is a Russian translation of this article: Daniel’ K. Uo [Daniel C. Waugh], “Rasprostranenie novostei v Rossii XVII v.: Epistoliarnyi opyt Patrika Gordona [Communication in Russia in the 17th Century: The Evidence in Patrick Gordon’s Correspondence], [ch. 1]” (tr. by Elena Galitsyna), Quaestio Rossica, 2015, No. 3: 119-140. Part 2 is to appear in the next issue. This is a condensed version of the article published in the Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies. The Russian version has a brief resume and title in English at the beginning.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/publications/journal-of-irish-and-scottish-studies-113.php
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies
Publisher: Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies

Straßburger Mummenschanz im russischen Pleskau im Jahre 1644? Eine deutsche Schaustellertruppe versucht ihr Glück im Zarenreich (Article)
Title: Straßburger Mummenschanz im russischen Pleskau im Jahre 1644? Eine deutsche Schaustellertruppe versucht ihr Glück im Zarenreich
Author: Stepan Shamin
Author: Ingrid Maier
Abstract: Strassburg Maskers in Pskov in 1644: A German Strolling Troupe Seeks Its Fortune in the Tsar's Russia This interdisciplinary study deals with an unusual German-Russian cultural encounter: a group of strolling German artists who crossed the border of Russia in the Summer of the year 1644, on an extensive tour that had brought them to the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and the Baltic littoral (Reval and Dorpat). In Pleskau/Pskov, in the north-west part of the Muscovite state, they asked for permission to stay for some time, apparently in order to entertain the inhabitants and earn some money.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/fsv/jgo/2016/00000064/00000001/art00001
Primary URL Description: Journal website
Secondary URL: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:911553/FULLTEXT02.pdf
Secondary URL Description: Open access, full text (includes a longer abstract for the article)
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jahrbücher für die Geschichte Osteuropas
Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag

O nesushchestvovavshikh teatral'nykh postanovkakh v Rossii XVII st. [On non-existent theatrical productions in Russia in the 17th century] (Article)
Title: O nesushchestvovavshikh teatral'nykh postanovkakh v Rossii XVII st. [On non-existent theatrical productions in Russia in the 17th century]
Author: Stepan Shamin
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://www.academia.edu/12266837
Primary URL Description: Academia.edu for author Stepan Shamin
Secondary URL Description: n/a
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Istoricheskie distsipliny i istochnikovedenie (conference proceedings)
Publisher: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet

Nakry kak odin iz atributov gosucarevoi vlasti [Nakry (a kind of large drum) as an attribute of sovereign power) (Article)
Title: Nakry kak odin iz atributov gosucarevoi vlasti [Nakry (a kind of large drum) as an attribute of sovereign power)
Author: Stepan Shamin
Abstract: n/a
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://www.academia.edu/18273251
Primary URL Description: author's Academia.edu page
Secondary URL Description: n/a
Access Model: open access (Academia.edu)
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Kapterevskie chteniia 13
Publisher: Russian Academy of Sciences

“Pickleherring in the Kremlin: New Sources for the History of the Muscovite Theatre” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Pickleherring in the Kremlin: New Sources for the History of the Muscovite Theatre”
Author: Claudia R. Jensen
Abstract: n/a
Date: 9/5/2014
Primary URL: http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research/networkprojects/reports2012-16/Bowers2.pdf
Primary URL Description: This is a report of the results from the conference; individual papers were published separately.
Secondary URL Description: n/a
Conference Name: Information Technologies and Transfer in Russia, 1450-­-1850 Darwin College, Cambridge: 5-­-6 September 2014

“Muscovy and the 17th-­-century 'News Revolution': Translations of West-­-European Newspapers and Pamphlets ('Vesti-­-Kuranty')” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Muscovy and the 17th-­-century 'News Revolution': Translations of West-­-European Newspapers and Pamphlets ('Vesti-­-Kuranty')”
Author: Ingrid Maier
Abstract: n/a
Date: 9/5/2014
Primary URL: http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research/networkprojects/reports2012-16/Bowers2.pdf
Primary URL Description: This is a description of the results of the conference; individual papers were published separately
Secondary URL Description: n/a
Conference Name: Information Technologies and Transfer in Russia, 1450-­-1850 Darwin College, Cambridge: 5-­-6 September 2014

“Beyond the Kuranty: What was News and How was it Communicated in Muscovy? (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Beyond the Kuranty: What was News and How was it Communicated in Muscovy?
Author: Daniel C. Waugh
Abstract: n/a
Date: 9/5/2014
Primary URL: http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research/networkprojects/reports2012-16/Bowers2.pdf
Primary URL Description: This is a description of the results of the conference; individual papers were published separately
Secondary URL Description: n/a
Conference Name: Information Technologies and Transfer in Russia, 1450-­-1850 Darwin College, Cambridge: 5-­-6 September 2014

Bajazet's Cage and Pickleherring's Rowdy Friends: Tracing the Muscovite Court Theatre (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Bajazet's Cage and Pickleherring's Rowdy Friends: Tracing the Muscovite Court Theatre
Author: Claudia R. Jensen
Abstract: In this paper I will explore new contexts for Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s court theater (1672?1676), using the kinds of communications other presenters will be discussing at this workshop: news and diplomatic reports, letters and official dispatches. By combining these accounts with less traditional kinds of communication—theatrical conventions, stage actions, and other court imagery—I would like to engage in a discussion of how these broader sources might offer new ways to look at the Muscovite court theater. I will focus on Temir-Aksakovo deistvo (The Play of Tamerlane), a play written in early 1675 and performed again later that year. This work will serve as a focal point, from which we can expand to consider the web of communication among many different participants: the playwrights, actors, and audiences in Moscow and their counterparts in the West. What can we learn from their interactions and are there broader implications for our view of late Muscovite culture? How does this approach give us new ways to understand the court theater as a continuum of influences and expectations?
Date: 6/12/2015
Primary URL: n/a
Primary URL Description: n/a; individual papers published separately
Secondary URL Description: n/a
Conference Name: “Newspapers and Beyond: Correspondence Networks and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe” held in Uppsala, Sweden

What the Posol’skii prikaz really knew: intelligencers, secret agents and their reports (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: What the Posol’skii prikaz really knew: intelligencers, secret agents and their reports
Author: Daniel C. Waugh
Abstract: The question of how much the diplomatic policy makers in Muscovy knew about political events beyond the Muscovite borders is still being debated, some scholars believing the level of knowledge was quite low, others asserting the opposite. The formal documentation concerning the relatively infrequent embassies sent abroad—instructions to ambassadors and their reports (stateinye spiski) on returning to Moscow—have been mined for what they reveal, but that is only a small part of the evidence that needs to be examined. Clearly over time between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the information level of the Muscovite Diplomatic Chancery (Posol’skii prikaz) improved substantially, thanks in part to the development of a regular means of acquiring foreign newspapers, which were then translated or summarized in what we know as the kuranty. This paper highlights other important sources from which foreign news was obtained: the reports of trusted agents, some of them resident abroad, reports submitted by border commanders based in part on the interrogation of merchants and others entering Muscovite territory, and the reports obtained by various clandestine means such as the sending of spies into other countries. A systematic examination of this kind of evidence is going to be necessary if a full picture of the information level of the Posol’skii prikaz is to be obtained and if we then wish to determine to what degree foreign policy decisions were contingent on the acquisition of foreign news.
Date: 6/12/2015
Primary URL: n/a
Primary URL Description: Individual papers were published separately
Conference Name: “Newspapers and Beyond: Correspondence Networks and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe” held in Uppsala, Sweden

Christoff Koch (ennobled von Kochen, 1637–1711) – Sweden’s Man in Moscow (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Christoff Koch (ennobled von Kochen, 1637–1711) – Sweden’s Man in Moscow
Author: Heiko Droste
Author: Ingrid Maier
Abstract: In our presentation, we will describe Koch's role as an informant about political and cultural news from Moscow. We will also try to determine whether the content of his lengthy reports, which were received by multiple persons both in Sweden's Baltic territories and at the court in Stockholm, can be traced in printed newspapers. Finally, we will try to answer the question of why Koch entered Swedish service at all, in light of his commercial activities in Moscow, which would have provided him with a steady income.
Date: 6/12/2015
Primary URL: n/a
Primary URL Description: Individual papers were published separately
Conference Name: “Newspapers and Beyond: Correspondence Networks and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe” held in Uppsala, Sweden

Pridvorniy Teatr V Rossii XVII Veka (Book)
Title: Pridvorniy Teatr V Rossii XVII Veka
Author: Claudia Jensen
Author: Ingrid Maier
Abstract: This volume traces the sources of the court theater of Tsar Alexander Mikhailovich (1672-1676), which arose from the founding of amateur productions of the European colony in Moscow in the 17th century. Out of these productions, performed for the Tsar’s court by European amateur actors in February and May of 1672, was born the Russian theater, whose official beginnings can be traced to a slightly later time. As shown by the research that was conducted, later plays, written for the Russian court theater, used many elements present in the first two Moscow productions.
Year: 2016
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Moscow: Indrik
Type: Multi-author monograph
ISBN: 9785916744170
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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