Citation

Dunning CSL. Kritika Explor. Russ. Eurasian Hist. 2003; 4(3): 491-513.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Slavica Publishers)

DOI

10.1353/kri.2003.0037

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Russia's nightmarish Time of Troubles (1598-1613) produced, in addition to war and famine, numerous terrifying examples of political violence, atrocities, mass killings, and grotesque public displays of torture and execution that managed to surpass even the high level of violence associated with the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1547-84). Therefore, the Troubles ought to be a prime candidate for scrutiny by students of political violence in Russian history. Unfortunately, interested readers will encounter many misleading descriptions of "revolutionary violence" and "cossack terror" in the Time of Troubles that are inaccurate byproducts of a long-held view of the period as one of social revolution. Recent scholarship has decisively overturned the traditional class war interpretation of the Troubles; 2 nonetheless, it continues to haunt historical literature, source criticism, and studies of revolutionary violence in Russian history. The purpose of this article is to start moving beyond outdated Marxist explanations of the use of terror in early modern Russia by separating the study of political violence during the Time of Troubles from erroneous assumptions about the period found in traditional scholarship. Several examples of the unintended consequences of the use of terror will be discussed, and it will be demonstrated that rebel violence away from the battlefield, including Cossack terror, cannot be understood without simultaneously studying the state-sponsored atrocities that often provoked it. This article concludes with a tentative assessment of the impact on Russian society and political culture of the high level of terror associated with the Time of Troubles.