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Ivan Peresvetov: publicist eller renässansfilosof? En granskning av den sovjetiska historieforskningen om en politisk skriftställare i Moskva på 1500-talet

Author

  • Vladimir Prazic

Summary, in English

The present study aims to give a critical revision of the Soviet historiography on Ivan Peresvetov, a 16th-century Muscovite political writer. The works of Ivan Peresvetov are characterized by ostensibly secular ideas, a circumstance that motivated comparisons of him with contemporary European Renaissance thinkers in the Soviet historiography of the 1950s. The legitimacy of such comparisons has been contested by subsequent historians, who mean that they are an aggrandizement of Peresvetov’s influence as a thinker. In this study, an analysis of argumentation and discourse is applied in order to revise the Soviet statements about Ivan Peresvetov’s influence. The view on one of Peresvetov’s works – the ‘Tale of Sultan Mehmed’ – is examined in particular, as this tale may have been used to aggrandize the importance of this writer. It is of interest to determine whether the concentration on this work in contemporary historical inquiry is scientifically justifiable, or if this is a legacy of the tendentious Soviet study of history. This study finds compromising tendencies in the Soviet historiography regarding the determination of Ivan Peresvetov’s influence as a thinker, but does not find indications that the focusing on the ‘Tale of Sultan Mehmed’ would be a scientifically illegitimate heritage from the historiography from Soviet times.

Department/s

Publishing year

2021

Language

Swedish

Document type

Student publication for Bachelor's degree

Topic

  • Languages and Literatures

Keywords

  • Soviet history
  • Soviet historiography
  • Russian political thought
  • Marxism-Leninism
  • Historical materialism
  • Marxist historicism
  • National Bolshevism
  • Muscovy
  • Ivan the Terrible

Supervisor

  • Johanna Lindbladh (FD)