Maksim Belousov has written an index and analysis of the existing “boiar manuscripts” from the Razriadnyi Prikaz, a chancellery with sweeping responsibilities in the seventeenth century that controlled varied military and foreign policy concerns. By the mid-seventeenth century, the prikaz was one of the oldest and largest chancelleries, and it had interests in business, trade, personnel, local governance, inheritance, and land distribution, to name just a few of its areas of control. Belousov’s focus on the sources rather than on the issue of military development or logistical transformation of the seventeenth century presents the Razriadnyi Prikaz first and foremost as a Muscovite chancellery rather than only an army office. This decision brings the study into conversation with the scholars of the Muscovite government and its early modern bureaucratization^[1] more than with the historians who have focused upon the prikaz as an agency of military revolution.^[2] In this way, Belousov’s interest in the boiars’ participation in the government adds new information to the growing body of evidence that the Muscovite state relied upon building consensus between the tsar and his government to function politically, rather than the state being a product of autocratic dictates.^[3]
Belousov systematically discusses the many issues and topics raised in these boiar manuscripts, and, as a result, uncovers the broad sweep of the Razriad’s authority. The book begins with a brief discussion of the historiography of the manuscripts, followed by a critical guide to the contents of the individual works. Anyone using these sources would do well to consider Belousov’s work, as his analysis of the entire breadth of extant manuscripts helps to contextualize the various observations, policies, and ideas in the sources. Similarly, the third section makes considerable progress uncovering the communications between the Razriadnyi Prikaz and the other tsarist chancelleries, both creating a record of correspondence and uncovering the complexity of the relationship among the government agencies. This is no small achievement, as the Razriad’s records remain spread among numerous fondy in the archives, not to mention the varied and inconsistent published versions produced for more than a century.
The final sections of the book will be the most useful for scholars beginning work on the tsarist government. Belousov provides a complete bibliography of all of the published and unpublished manuscripts. This is followed by an index of individual boiars and their personal records. Taken alongside the earlier indexes of tsarist personnel created by S. V. Veselovskii and Marshall Poe, scholars now have the benefit of a sizable and systematic prosopography of the tsarist government.^[4] Whereas the work of Veselovskii and Poe was merely an index of personalities, Belousov’s guide to the sources adds a new dimension to the resources available for scholars.
Beyond the valuable index of texts and personalities, scholars will find the middle section of the book to be the most enlightening. Belousov approaches a set of different issues addressed in the manuscripts, and briefly evaluates the suitability of the sources to answer these questions. The varied concerns indicate the sweep of the Razriad’s authority, including correspondence with local voevody, diplomatic exchanges with foreign governments, runaway peasants, and relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. It is unfortunate that Belousov does not analyze these issues per se, but instead offers a critical summation of their appearances in the texts. However, scholars interested in these topics will certainly enjoy using Belousov’s research to begin their own work.
One of the most notable outcomes of Belousov’s research is his records of the correspondence within the tsarist chancellery system. The conflicting points of authority and decision making in a somewhat regimented system have led to ongoing discussions of relative power of the tsar, his government, and local officials. While Belousov’s work does not provide an answer to this question, his research does demonstrate the aspiration to power of the Razriadnyi Prikaz, which appears to consistently meddle in other chancelleries. This seems to be further evidence that competitive interests among the chancelleries made decisions rather difficult. This is not an autocratic government with an executive authority at work, but instead a ramshackle system held together with thin bonds of authority. Combining Belousov’s work with Poe’s early boiar index might provide insights into the power of personal and familial connections in the Muscovite system, only adding further evidence to the idea that the Russian government was ruled with the consensus of its bureaucrats. If anything is uncovered with Belousov’s study, it is that the tsar’s government was an unwieldy institution.
Though this is not strictly a history of the Razriadnyi Prikaz, Belousov has certainly come closer to accomplishing this task than the earlier historical works have. The confusing and overlapping authority among the tsarist chancelleries, in addition to the broad and conflicting powers exerted by individual agencies, has rendered this task nearly unmanageable. English-language scholars have yet even to settle on a consistent translation for the Razriadnyi Prikaz, which reflects the difficulty of rendering its multiple tasks into a single concept. Russian scholars have done well to translate and annotate Razriad documents and sources, but Belousov’s work marks the best attempt to pull together all of this work. Political, social, and military historians will find Belousov’s source analysis of great interest, as this approach presents the Razriad in a more microhistorical framework rather than one chancellery among many in a burgeoning empire.