The Double Standard: Livonian Chronicles and Muscovite Barbarity during the Livonian War (1558-1582)

The Livonian chroniclers considered atrocities committed by Russians to be the norm, so that Russian acts of compassion or humanity constituted rare exceptions which did not preclude interpreting the Russian national character as barbaric any more than Ivan's rare decent acts could mitigate moral condemnation of his tyranny. That genuinely honorable behavior by Ivan or Russians was the exception that proved the rule was too obvious to require articulation. Such behavioral anomalies were simply not worthy of discussion. They could be recorded but did not need to be taken into account. This implicit intellectual logic constitutes the unspoken rationale for attributing out-of-character decent actions to indecent people; such flukes changed nothing, so comment would have been superfluous. In effect, such incidents were included but ignored.

Livonian atrocities

The Livonian chroniclers demonized Russians as barbarians primarily because of the atrocities they committed during the Livonian War. However, these very same chroniclers did not present Muscovy's Livonian victims as angels, and described a very similar set of atrocities committed by Livonians, Swedes, Germans and even Scots (the Germans and Scots were usually mercenaries). The chroniclers sometimes justified such violence by the fact that the victims were native traitors, or barbarian Russians, and “deserved” it, but not always.

All three chroniclers, not just Lutheran pastor Russow, agreed that the Livonians themselves were immoral. Russow, although his noble critics disagreed, concluded that God had punished the Livonians for their sins by sending Russian armies to destroy their country. Renner wrote that Livonians deserved God's punishment because of their “drunkenness, lechery, depravity and corruption” (Renner, P. 2). Russow accused the Livonians of “complacency, idleness, arrogance, pompous display and ostentation, sensuality, and boundless debauchery and lasciviousness.” Members of the Order of Livonian Knights, as well as bishops and canons, committed incest and adultery, and kept concubines. The laity pretended that prostitutes were “housekeepers” (Russow, P. 51). Despite their treaty obligations, the Livonians turned Russian churches into arsenals, privies, and carrion pits. They desecrated and burnt images of the Savior, the Apostles, and martyrs (Russow's principled intolerance of icons obviously did not apply here). They confiscated the free Russian marketplace, trade, and warehouses to which Russian merchants were entitled, robbing them of their ancient rights and freedoms. They refused to pay tribute, although they had agreed to pay it (Russow, P. 80). (Russow thus condones the official Russian causus belli.) Henning criticized the Livonians as debauched drunks and boastful cowards (Henning, P. 28).

According to Renner, Livonians merely tortured Russian captives for information (Renner, P. 162), but tortured to death uncooperative Russian captives who did not provide intelligence information (Renner, P. 40), as well as all Russian captives (Renner, P. 180) and Livonians and mercenaries who collaborated with the Russians (Renner, P. 115), surrendered to them, or spied for them (Renner, P. 59, 60). Mercenaries looted the cities they were hired to defend (Renner, P. 68). Reval privateers burned and looted territory on the Gulf of Finland (Renner, P. 107). After torture, the Livonians executed these men (Renner, P. 180) by hanging (Renner, P. 87, 182), burning at the stake, drowning (Renner, P. 140), or being drawn and quartered (Renner, P. 140). The emissary of the treasonous bishop of Dorpat was captured and tortured. He confessed all and then hanged himself in prison (Renner, P. 59). A captured Livonian serving as Ivan's counselor was flayed with whips; he too hung himself in prison (Renner, P. 77). The Livonians slaughtered Russians who would not surrender (Renner, P. 87), and quartered a mercenary arquebusier in Russian employ (Renner, P. 87) When invading Russia they slew everyone they encountered, especially peasants, plundered everything in their path, and then set fire to villages and cities (Renner, P. 88). They burned a barn in which they had trapped Russians, despite frantic appeals from the Russians for mercy (Renner, P. 141). A native girl whose mother had been killed by Russians clubbed wounded Russians to death (Renner, P. 168). Native peasants who revolted against Livonian rule were all executed after their leaders were drawn and quartered (Renner, P. 187).

Russow recounts that the Duke of Artz, governor for the Duke of Finland, conspired to betray cities to Moscow, and was torn apart by hot tongs and broken on the wheel for his misdeeds (Russow, P. 104). After Duke Johann's successful revolt in Sweden to overthrow his insane brother, King Erik XIV, Erik's former first minister, who had invented tortures to use against his enemies, met his death on the wheel (Russow, P. 112, 114). Unpaid Scot mercenaries tortured and looted at will to recompense themselves (Russow, P. 148). The Duke of Saxony plundered Livonians who had been permitted by the Russians to take their money and silver with them when they abandoned a captured Livonian city and sent them as captives to Sweden (Russow, P. 162).

Livonian horsemen murdered each other and their own peasants worse than the Russians and Tatars (Russow, P. 156). The Livonians massacred captured Russians (Russow, P. 194), as well as the entire Russian population, including women and children, living in occupied Livonian cities, numbering in the thousands (Russow, P. 214).

Henning opined that beheading, being broken on the wheel, and having one's decapitated head on a spike constituted the proper punishment for a Livonian criminal (Henning, P. 39). Mutinous disloyal foot soldiers who surrendered their city because they had not been paid, after looting jewels and silver to pay themselves, suffered the wheel and impalement when captured by the Livonian Master (Henning, P. 62). Henning embellishes the story of Count Artz by recounting his cowardice in the face of death. He tried to save his life by volunteering to spend the rest of his life in iron chains, subsisting on bread and water (Henning, P. 84). Henning also mentioned Erik's minister and Magnus of Saxony (Henning, P. 102, 118). He characterized the Swedish campaign under Pontus de la Gardie to retake Narva as savage (Henning, P. 143). The Livonians reciprocated the Russian disrespect of the corpses of dead Livonian by leaving dead Russian bodies unburied, to be devoured by dogs, birds, and other beasts (Henning, P. 137).

According to Renner, Livonians also used deceit and violated the “civilized” rules of war. They arrested Russians who arrived at a city to announce a truce, and hanged one they recaptured after the Russians escaped (Renner, P. 104). Another Livonian city commander captured and hanged couriers asking for his city's surrender (Renner, P. 163). A third pretended to surrender his city, then opened fire on the Russian delegation approaching the city peacefully to accept the surrender. He then launched a surprise attack and massacred most of the Russian force (Renner, P. 188).

Nor did the Livonians let Russians monopolize the crime of sacrilege against churches. Livonian raiding parties on Russian soil burnt and looted Russian monasteries, killing monks in the process (Renner, P. 78, 88).

Historians of the Livonian War of course know that atrocities were committed by all participants, as in any sixteenth-century war, and that torture of captives and deceit were tools of the trade. What is a bit unexpected is that the Livonian chroniclers not only knew that, but chose to include illustrative examples in their narratives. The argumentative logic underlying this element of the Livonian chronicles is the reverse image of how honorable actions by Ivan and Russians could be included in the chronicles. The Livonian chroniclers, again implicitly, treat the atrocities by Livonians, Swedes, Germans or even Scots as exceptions. Even if most Livonians were sinful, not all of them were, and certainly all of them had not been sinners in the past. Calling upon them to repent and reform entails that the Livonians retained the capacity for abandoning sin. While Livonians, mercenaries from Germany, and Swedes sometimes commit barbaric acts of violence, the chroniclers never interpret such acts as evidence that Livonians, mercenaries from Germany, or Swedes, are barbaric monsters. They were sinners, but still human.

Livonian ignorance of Russian and Russians Unfortunately, the editors' annotations of Muscovite history have lapses. Muscovy did not impose serfdom on the peasantry until 1649. Ivan's coronation as tsar took place before he conquered Kazan' and Astrakhan', in that order. A letter dated February 15, 1558 in the Russian fashion, which

We have already seen several instances in which Livonian chroniclers, in their zeal to demonize Ivan and Russians, displayed gross ignorance of Russia, beyond a simple factual error like dating Ivan's birth to 1528 instead of 1530 (Russow, P 44)began with the creation of the world in 5508 BCE, was written during the year 7066, the sixty- sixth year of the seventh millennium, not in the seventh year of the sixty-sixth century. Magnus married Ivan's first cousin once removed, not his daughter or his niece. Johannes Renner's Li-vonian History, P. vi, 46 n. 54, 190 n. 228; Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Courland, P. xviii. Grand Prince Vasilii III, Ivan's father, conquered Smolensk, not Ivan. The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, P x, 134. That the death of his wife and son provoked Ivan's insanity confounds chro-nology. The only plausible wife-candidate died in 1560, the only plausible son-candidate in 1581. The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, P. xix. The editors failed to correct Russow's identification of Prince Vladimir Andreevich as the brother of Ivan's father, rather than the son of Ivan's father's brother. Prince Vladimir died in the same year as Ivan began his campaign against Novgorod, 1569, not “a few years” earlier. The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, P. 125 n. 61. Maria Sobakina was Ivan's third wife, not his second wife. The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, P. 125 n. 62. Grand Prince Ivan III was the son of Vasilii (Basil) II. The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, P. 300.

⁴² Of course the editors knew that this date was wrong, but chose not to correct the error in a footnote.. Ivan did not kill his father; if he killed one of his sons, it was Tsarevich Ivan, not a Tsarevich Dmitrii. He ordered his cousin, Prince Vladimir Andreevich, not his uncle or half-brother, to commit suicide during the same year he attacked Novgorod, not several years earlier. The Tatars in Muscovite service were Muslims, and would never have committed cannibalism; neither, obviously, would Russians had consumed human flesh.

Renner repeatedly described the Russians as burning their dead, so as to conceal the extent of their casualties from the Livonians (Renner, P. 43, 75, 185). The Russian Orthodox Christians in the sixteenth century believed in physical resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ. Therefore, dismemberment as a form of capital punishment was particularly heinous, because it doomed the victim to eternal suffering. The Russian Orthodox Church could not possibly have sanctioned cremation, least of all of Russian soldiers who died in battle against the “heretical” Lutheran Livonians; such honored dead were considered martyrs.

Compared to ascribing cremation to the Russian army, Renner's fictitious report that the Crimean khan had the noses and ears of two thousand Muscovite troops sent to Astrakhan' to collect tribute cut off seems to be no more than a minor fantasy, invented to demonstrate Russian weakness (Renner, P. 156)⁴³ Filyushkin A. Izobretaia pervuiu voinu Rossii i Evropy. P. 366..

However, it is in some ways typical and in others particularly intriguing that Henning once projects on to the Russians a common Livonian and European form of capital punishment, breaking on the wheel (Henning, P. 28). No Russian ruler employed this excruciatingly painful and gruesome method of execution until the great Westernizer Peter the Great⁴⁴ Kollmann N. Sh. Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia. Cambridge, 2012. P. 405..

Conclusion

If Ivan IV had not committed any atrocities - never executed anyone who was innocent, never used torture, never broken his word - he would have been unique among sixteenth- century rulers, a paragon of virtue almost worthy of the sainthood some Russian Orthodox extremists wished to have conferred upon him. Similarly, if Russian armies had never committed any atrocities when they invaded Livonia - never massacred civilians, never raped women, never sold captives into slavery - that would have made them unique among sixteenth-century soldiers, more akin to Boy Scots than soldiers. Neither excrescence of Russian exceptionalism is credible. However, that Ivan and Muscovite soldiers committed all the atrocities attributed to them by the Livonian chronicles also strains credulity. Following Soldat, many of these atrocities in the chronicles also occur in the pamphlets, where they are just projections of equally fictitious Ottoman atrocities. Common sense alone creates skepticism about some of the atrocity stories in the Livonian chronicles. For example, how did the Russians accumulate fifty children to throw down a well? Did they raid an orphanage or a school? Did they forcibly isolate the children from their parents in order to murder them collectively? The only documentary account of a Muscovite torture session shows Ivan supervising, but no more. I do not find the garbled story of Ivan stabbing an infant to death and throwing its corpse to be devoured by animals to be at all believable. Among other reasons for discounting it and many stories in German defector accounts such as Taube and Kruse is the fact that Ivan did not carry a knife. Livonian bias, not ignorance, explains the willingness of the Livonian chroniclers to accept such atrocity stories as true.

The Livonian chronicles of Russow, Henning, and Renner display two levels of a double standard. Although they must be given credit for not portraying all Russian actions as bad and all Livonian actions as good, on the first level of a double standard their depictions of Russian and Livonian behavior are quantitatively and qualitatively imbalanced. Quantitatively the sheer number of atrocities attributed to Ivan and Russians far outnumber those attributed to Livonians or other Europeans. Qualitatively overwhelmingly the chroniclers do not project their gruesome and graphic depictions of the worst Russian practices - impaling babies, cutting off women's breasts and the extremities of members of both sexes, using naked captives for target practice, disemboweling victims, and so forth - onto Livonians. Livonian atrocities are justified by the behavior of their victims, who were traitors, spies, bandits, or rebels, more often than Russian atrocities. For example, Renner saw only justified revenge in a Livonian woman's murder of Russian wounded, although Renner and Russow found Russian or Tatar women in combat barbaric FilyushkinA. Izobretaia pervuiu voinu Rossii i Evropy. P. 369.. No evidence suggests that Livonian chroniclers felt the same outrage at Livonians who exposed Russian corpses to wild beasts, instead of permitting them to be buried decently, as they did when Russians exposed Livonian corpses to wild beasts. In addition, no Livonian bishop describes the Muscovites as fellow Christians deserving of mercy in spite of their religious differences as Ivan's leading bishop articulated concerning Livonians.

The second level of the double standard of the Livonian chroniclers concerns the conclusions they drew from the behavior of the Russians and Livonians and how they rationalized the seeming contradiction between blanket negative portrayals of Ivan and Russians in the narratives and the occasional positive portrayals of them in these same narratives doing good, the conundrum to which this essay is devoted. The chroniclers found an intellectual rationale to argue, to paraphrase George Orwell somewhat freely In George Orwell's Animal Farm the pigs who usurp power change “All animals are equal” to “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”, that all people are sinners, but Muscovites are worse sinners than anyone else. This line of reasoning began, in Urban's formulation, with Renner's insistence that if the Livonians repented their sins and united, they would regain divine favor and win the war, because the Livonians were “God's people” Johannes Renner's Livonian History 1556-1561. P. i.. For this reason,according to Paul Johansen, in 1578 Russow expressed the hope that Livonia would benefit from God's miraculous mercy, which, by 1584, had occurred. If nothing else, Livonia was free from the Russian menace Johansen P Balthasar Rьssow als Humanist und Geschichtsschreiber. Kцln; Weimar; Wien, 1996. S. 234-243.. Livonians had been and could return to being God's people; their uncivilized behavior was an outlier. Similarly, while Russians, even Ivan himself, could sometimes act with humane sensitivity toward Germans, the chroniclers never question that Ivan and the Russians are and remain barbaric monsters who would never be the beneficiaries of divine mercy or favor. Russow asserted that Ivan used German and Italian instructors to teach Muscovites military discipline, and Henning declared that Ivan was trying to civilize his barbaric subjects by importing European technology Filiushkin A. Izobretaia pervuiu voinu Rossii i Evropy. P. 396, 577.. Such efforts, while flattering to European arrogance, were implicitly doomed to failure. Military discipline and European technology could not alter the “nature” of the Russians. Therefore, the Russians were and would always remain barbarians, no matter how many “civilized” acts they performed, and the Germans and their European neighbors were and would always remain “civilized,” no matter how many atrocities they committed. The second level of the double standard of the chronicles consists in not letting episodes of “good” behavior by Ivan or Muscovites influence their identity as barbarians, and not letting episodes of “bad” behavior by Livonians or other peoples influence their identity as civilized. Therefore Russians who use deceit in warfare are cowards, but not Livonians. Such judgments did not derive from confessional exclusivity. All three chroniclers were Protestants, but even the Lutheran minister Russow defended all Livonians, Lutherans and Catholics, as virtuous or potentially virtuous, and no chronicler calls all Orthodox Christians barbarians, just Russians I did not find any comments in the chronicles on the Ukrainian or Belarusian subjects of Poland or Lithuania.. Warfare between Livonians and Muscovites was a contest between civilization and barbarism, between good and evil. Evidence of Livonian vice or Muscovite virtue by definition could not overturn the essentialist stereotypes, propagated without qualification in the anti-Muscovite pamphlets, underneath the chroniclers' perception of Ivan and the Russians. This essentialist argument finessed behavioral ambiguities and permitted the chroniclers to present in their narratives examples of virtuous behavior by Ivan and the Muscovites without sacrificing their prejudices. The bias of the Livonian chroniclers was more complicated than has been appreciated, but its two levels permitted the chroniclers to include in their narratives a modest number of episodes which show Ivan and the Russians in a favorable light. Just as these episodes do not make the numerous atrocity stories from the chronicles deriving from the same anti-Muscovite discourse that informed the pamphlets any more credible, they do not transform the chroniclers from biased partisans into unbiased objective observers.

Информация о статье

Автор: Гальперин, Чарльз - доктор истории, внештатный историк, Университет Индианы, Блумингтон, США, chalperi@iu.edu

Название: The Double Standard: Livonian Chronicles and Muscovite Barbarity during the Livonian War (1558-1582).

Резюме: В этой статье анализируется образ Ивана IV (Иван Грозный) и московитов в хрониках, написанных ливонскими немцами во время Ливонской войны: «Ливонская история» Иоганна Реннера, «Хроника» Бальтазара Руссова и «Хроника Курляндии и Ливонии» Соломона Геннинга. Хотя эти авторы происходили из разных слоев общества, представляли разные политические круги и имели свой взгляд на происходящее в Ливонии, все они представляли Ивана IV и московитов в крайне отрицательном свете, негативных терминах, уделяя особое внимание зверствам, совершенным «деспотом и тираном» Иваном IV и варварами-московитами. Этот дискурс изображения Московии XVI в., который присутствует также в немецких памфлетах того времени, соответствует указанному Корнелией Зольдат стереотипу, скопированному из османского дискурса XV в., негативно изображающего турок. Каждый хронист редко упоминает аналогичные военные преступления, совершенные ливонцами, и еще реже на страницах их хроник встречаются случаи, когда Иван IV и московиты действовали добродетельно или честно. Такие позитивные изображения были бы несовместимы с дискурсом, определявшим оптику изображения Московии. Данный аспект составляет первый уровень двойного стандарта ливонских хронистов при описании Ивана IV и московитов. Второй уровень двойного стандарта хроник заключается в том, чтобы не позволить эпизодам «хорошего» поведения Ивана или московитов влиять на их сущность как варваров, и не приводить примеры «плохого» поведения ливонцев или других народов, имеющих цивилизованную сущность. Война между ливонцами и московитами определяется как противостояние между цивилизацией и варварством, между добром и злом. Свидетельства пороков ливонцев или добродетелей московитов по определению не могли отменить эссенциалистские стереотипы, распространяемые в антимосковитских памфлетах под влиянием изображения в хрониках русского царя и его подданных. Этот эссенциалистский аргумент примирял противоречия, и позволял в хрониках приводить рассказы и примеры добродетельного поведения Ивана и московитов, при этом не меняя стереотипа их восприятия как варваров и агрессоров. Предвзятость ливонских хронистов имела более сложную структуру, чем до сих пор считалось в историографии. Два уровня восприятия и трактовки событий позволили хронистам включить в свои рассказы скромное количество эпизодов, которые показывают царя Ивана и русских в благоприятном свете. Эти эпизоды не делают многочисленные истории о зверствах московитов, представленные в памфлетах, более достоверными, поскольку вытекают из того же анти-московитского дискурса, они также не превращают хронистов из предвзятых авторов в объективных наблюдателей.

Ключевые слова: Иван IV, Иван Грозный, Ливонская война, Иоганн Реннер, Балтазар Рюссов, Соломон Геннинг, Московия, московиты, балтийские войны

Список использованной литературы:

Filyushkin, Aleksandr. “Izobretaia pervuiu voinu Rossii i Evropy”. Baltiiskie voiny vtoroi poloviny XVI v. glazami sovremennikov i potomkov [Inventing the first war of Russia and Europe: Baltic Wars of the second half of the XVI century]. St. Petersburg: Dmitriy Bulanin, 2013. 880 p.

Filyushkin, Aleksandr. Osobennosti rasskaza o Livonskoi voine khroniki Ioganna Rennera [Distinctive Features of the Narrative of the Livonian War of Johann Renner] // Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 2011. No. 9. P. 93-100.

Auksi, Peter. Henry of Livonia and Balthasar Russow: the chronicler as literary artist // Journal of Baltic Studies. 1975. Vol. 6. No 2-3. P. 111-117.

Etzold, Gottfried. Die Geschichtsschreibung der polnish-schewedischen Zeit [The Historical Description of Polish-Swedish Times] in: Rauch von, Georg (ed.) Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtesschrei- bung. Cologne: Bцhlau Publ., 1986. P. 42-47 (in German).

Frost, Robert. The Northern Wars. War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558-1721. Harlow: Longman Publ., 2000. 401 p.

Halperin, Charles. Stepennaia kniga on the Reign of Ivan IV: Omissions from Degree 17 // Slavonic and East European Review. 2011. Vol. 89. P. 56-75.

Kappeler, Andreas. Ivan Groznyi im Spiegel der auslдndischen Druckschriften seiner Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des westlichen Russlandbildes [Ivan the Terrrible in the Mirror of Western Publications of his Time. An Investigation of the History of the Western Image of Russia]. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publ., 1972. 298 p.

Kollmann, Nancy. Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 488 p.

Poe, Marshall. “A People Born to Slavery”. Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476-1748. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. 293 p.

Soldat, Cornelia. Erschreckende Geschichten in der Darstellung von Moskovitern und Osmanen in den deutschen Flugschriften des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts [Horrow stories in the description of Muscovites and Ottoman Turks in German pamphlets of the 16. And 17. Centuries] // Goldfrank, David (Ed. & Foreword). Stories of Atrocities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century German Pamphlets About the Russians and Turks. Lewiston; Queenston; Lampeter: The Edward Mellon Press, 2014. 424 p.

Taube von, Arved Freiherr. `Der Untergang der livlдndischen Selbststдndigkeit': Die livlдndische Chro- nistik des 16. Jahrhunderts [The Destruction of Livonian Indepedence: Livonian Chronicle-writing of the 16^th Century] // Rauch von, Georg (ed.) Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtesschreibung. Cologne: Bцhlau Publ., 1986. P. 33-36 (in German).

Thaden, Edward. Ivan IV in Baltic German Historiography // Russian History. 1987. Vol. 14. P. 377-394. Urban, William. The Nationality of Balthasar Russow // Journal of Baltic Studies. 1981. Vol. 12. No. 2. P. 160-172.

Voobus, Arthur. Notes on the Chronicle of Balthasar Russow and its Author // Yearbook of the Estonian Learned Society in America. 1968-1975. Vol. 5. P. 87-98.

Information about the article

Author: Halperin, Charles - Ph. D., Research Associate, Russian and East European, Indiana University, Bloomington, Unated states of America, chalperi@iu.edu

Title: The Double Standard: Livonian Chronicles and Muscovite Barbarity during the Livonian War (1558-1582).

Summary: This article analyzes the image of Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) and Muscovites in the chronicles written by Livonian Germans during the Livonian War: Johannes Renner's Livonian History, Balthasar Russow's Chronicle, and Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Courland and Livonia. Although these authors came from different backgrounds, supported different policies, and disagreed with each other in many ways, they all presented Ivan IV and Muscovites in extremely negative terms, focusing on the atrocities committed by the despot and tyrant Ivan IV and the barbaric Muscovites, consistent with the sixteenth-century Muscovite Discourse of German pamphlets identified by Cornelia Soldat, a stereotype copied directly from the fifteenth-century discourse about the Ottoman Turks. However, in addition each chronicler presents fewer and less graphic incidents in which Livonians committed atrocities and equally rare instances in which Ivan IV and Muscovites acted virtuously or honorably. Such positive portrayals of Ivan and Muscovites, were inconsistent with that Muscovite Discourse. This constitutes the first level of the Livonian chroniclers' double standard in describing Ivan IV and Muscovites. The second level of the double standard of the chronicles consists in not letting episodes of “good” behavior by Ivan or Muscovites influence their identity as barbarians, and not letting episodes of “bad” behavior by Livonians or other peoples influence their identity as civilized. Warfare between Livonians and Muscovites was a contest between civilization and barbarism, between good and evil. Evidence of Livonian vice or Muscovite virtue by definition could not overturn the essentialist stereotypes, propagated without qualification in the anti-Muscovite pamphlets, underneath the chroniclers' perception of Ivan and the Russians. This essentialist argument finessed behavioral ambiguities and permitted the chroniclers to present in their narratives examples of virtuous behavior by Ivan and the Muscovites without sacrificing their prejudices. The bias of the Livonian chroniclers was more complicated than has been appreciated, but its two levels permitted the chroniclers to include in their narratives a modest number of episodes which show Ivan and the Russians in a favorable light. Just as these episodes do not make the numerous atrocity stories from the chronicles deriving from the same anti-Muscovite discourse that informed the pamphlets any more credible, they do not transform the chroniclers from biased partisans into unbiased objective observers.

Keywords: Ivan IV, Livonia War, Johannes Renner, Balthasar Russow, Salomon Henning, Muscovites

Размещено на Allbest.ru