Ivan Kirpichnikov (Moscow), Regional Integration in Early Modern Muscovy: The Case of Ryazan Elite
Oberseminar zur Geschichte Russlands und Ostmitteleuropas in der Vormoderne
19.05.2022 14:00 Uhr – 16:00 Uhr
Integration of regional communities into a single political entity was one of the key challenges for the Early Modern rulers. Just like the contemporary European states, Muscovy was created by the gradual acquisition of the surrounding independent duchies (knyazhestva). Traditional scholarship views the relationship between the Muscovite state and the regions as a zero-sum game. For a long time, researchers have considered state violence manifested in the forced resettlements of local elites as the only strategy for integrating the new territories.
This paper will provide the results of the first comprehensive prosopographical study of the social elite of the Grand Duchy of Ryazan, a territory to the south of Muscovy that was finally annexed in 1521. The case of Ryazan is a challenge to the traditional narrative about centralization since this community was integrated without the forced resettlement of the local elite. On the contrary, the Muscovite government consistently preserved the local social hierarchy. In the paper, I will analyze the transformations of the Ryazan elite over the course of a century and a half (from the 1480s to the 1620s). It will be shown that the Ryazan case is one of the clearest examples of “consensual” (non-violent) integration, a common phenomenon that was previously ignored in the historiography of Muscovy.
Die Veranstaltung wird über Zoom abgehalten.
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