Counterblast to Keenan

While recently in Leningrad, I met with Ruslan Grigor'evich, and we conversed upon many matters of common interest, since we are both working in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Russian history. His two-volume study of Ivan IV's oprichnina is a cardinal work,1 and his monograph on the reign of Boris Godunov, which has already gone to the publisher, is eagerly awaited. Inevitably, the conversation came around to the controversy aroused by Professor Edward L. Keenan of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University. Keenan had become somewhat suspicious of the authenticity of the first letter in the celebrated correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbskii and Ivan IV, which in his opinion displayed characteristics which were out of place in a mid-sixteenth century context. At first he thought that the first Kurbskii letter might have been composed by the seventeenth century publicist Prince I. A. Khvorostinin, whose preface To the Reader (circa 1620) displays a marked textological similarity to the letter in question. Eventually he proved, at least to his satisfaction, that the letter was, in fact, written by Prince S. I. Shakhovskoi around the year 1623, and he further suggested that, in view of this discovery, the remainder of the correspondence is similarly suspect.2 I do not propose to set out Keenan's argument in detail, since this has already been done in the pages of this journal by R. O. Crummey.3 I shall confine myself to those aspects of Keenan's thesis with which Skrynnikov takes issue

Central European and Russian historical studies · German Literature and Culture Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Psychology