Prince Semën Shakhovskoi in the Archives

This article explores the nonliterary sources for the biography of Prince Semën Ivanovich Shakhovskoi (ca. 1585–1654 or 1655), one of the most prolific and accomplished Russian writers of the seventeenth century. Most attempts to understand Shakhovskoi’s thinking and life course rely on his vast literary corpus, including historical tales, liturgical services, prayers, and personal and diplomatic letters. But Shakhovskoi also had a long and prominent career as a diplomat, regional administrator, and courtier, aspects of his life best accessed by the trail of nonliterary, documentary sources he left behind in the chancery archives. This article takes two petitions ( chelobit’ia ) from 1643 that Shakhovskoi submitted to the tsar listing his many service assignments between 1613 and 1643, and compares them with the service biography he provides in his famed “Autobiographical Notes,” written in 1649. These sources, when read together, offer new details about Shakhovskoi’s biography and his role in several key events of the period, as well as insights into the ways literary and nonliterary sources can be combined to write biographies in the early modern period

Biography · Ivanovich · Key (lock) · Listing (finance) · Service (business) · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies · Soviet and Russian History