Introduction
the impact of scholars such as B. A. Uspenskii extended far beyond special-
ists in Russian history, as did that of Mikhail Bakhtin and A. Ia. Gurevich.
2
Nevertheless, varieties of Western post-modernism have provided the most
prominent new influences on both Russian and Western historians in the past
decade.
3
Along with new approaches, new themes have flourished. Some topics,
such as religion, which were previously obstructed by ideological constraints,
have subsequently attracted considerable attention in post-Soviet Russia. But
in general the newest themes which have appealed to historians of Russia, both
East and West, are not so different from those which have inspired historians
of other parts of the world. Women’s history and gender history have thrived,
particularly in the West:
4
and much interesting work has been done on ritual
and ceremony.
5
Witchcraft and magic, however, which have attracted so much
attention in the West in recent decades, have been relatively neglected by
historians of Russia, perhaps because the phenomena themselves were less in
evidence there (although that in itself is the subject of some debate).
6
At the same time, it must be noted that the problematic nature of the
sources for much of the pre-Petrine period, especially compared with the
2 English translations include: Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World,trans.H
´
el
`
ene Iswol-
sky (Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press,1968); Ju. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskij, The Semiotics
of Russian Culture, ed. Ann Shukman (Ann Arbor: Department of Slavic Languages and
Literatures, University of Michigan, 1984); The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History. Essays
by Iurii M. Lotman, Lidiia Ia. Ginsburg, Boris A. Uspenskii, ed. Alexander D. Nakhimovsky
and Alice Stone Nakhimovsky (Ithaca, N. Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1985);
A. Ia. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G. L. Campbell (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1985).
3 See e.g. Aleksandr I. Filiushkin, ‘Post-modernism and the Study of the Russian Middle
Ages’, Kritika 3 (2002): 89–109.
4 See e.g. Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900–1700 (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1989); N. L. Pushkareva, Zhenshchiny drevnei Rusi (Moscow:
Mysl’, 1989); N. L. Pushkareva, Zhenshchiny Rossii i Evropy na poroge novogo vremeni
(Moscow: Institut etnologii i antropologii RAN, 1996); N. L. Pushkareva, Women in Rus-
sian History from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Eve Levin (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E.
Sharpe, 1997; and Stroud: Sutton, 1999); Nada Bo
ˇ
skovska, Die russische Frau im 17.Jahrhun-
dert (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: B
¨
ohlau Verlag, 1998); Nada Bo
ˇ
skovska, ‘Muscovite
Women during the Seventeenth Century: at the Peak of the Deprivationof their Rights or
on the Road Towards New Freedom?’, FOG 56 (2000): 47–62; Isolde Thyr
ˆ
et, Between God
and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia (DeKalb: Northern
Illinois University Press, 2001).
5 See the works cited in Michael Flier’s chapter in this volume.
6 See e.g. W. F. Ryan, ‘The Witchcraft Hysteria in Early Modern Europe: Was Russia an
Exception?’, SEER 76 (1998): 49–84;W.F.Ryan,The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical
Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State Univer-
sity Press; and Stroud: Sutton, 1999); Valerie A. Kivelson, ‘Male Witches and Gendered
Categories in Seventeenth-Century Russia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45
(2003): 606–31.
13
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