Donald Ostrowski, Marshall T. Poe

I: Members of Ruling Families; 1: Anna Koltovskaia; 2: Memoir of a Tatar Prince; 3: Gleb Vasilievich; II: Government Servitors; 4: A Dialogue Between Two Seventeentn- Century Boyars; 5: The Power of Knowledge; 6: Larka the Clerk; III: Military Personnel; 7: "My Brilliant Career"; 8: The Life of a Foreign Mercenary Officer; 9: Vasilii Zotov; IV: Church Prelates; 10: A Seventeenth-Century Prelate; 11: Vasilii Kalika, Archbishop of Novgorod (r. 1330-52); V: Monks; 12: Holy Images for the Grand Prince; 13: Three Scholars at the Kirillo-Belozersk Monastery; 14: Greeks in Seventeenth-Century Russia; 15: Akakii Balandin of Novgorod-Volotovo and Solovki Monasteries (1526-95); VI: Provincial Landowners, Artisans, and Townspeople; 16: Provincial Landowners as Litigants; 17: Artisans; 18: A Poor Townswoman Accused of Witchcraft; VII: Siberian Explorer and Trader; 19: S.U. Remezov, Cossack Adventurer, and the Opening of Siberia; 20: A Siberian Trader; VIII: Peasants, Slaves, Serfs, and Holy Fools; 21: The Parfiev Family; 22: Muscovite Lives; 23: Dunia, a Fool for Christ

This book introduces readers to a little-known place and time in world history - early modern Russia, from its beginnings as Muscovy, in the fourteenth century, through the reign of Peter I (1689-1725) - by portraying the lives of representative individuals from the major levels of the society of that era. The portraits, written by professional historians, are imaginative reconstructions or composites of individual lives, rather than biographies. The portraits are arranged into socio-political categories, and include members of ruling families, government servitors, clerks, military personnel, church prelates, monks, provincial landowners, townspeople and artisans, Siberian explorers and traders, free peasants, serfs, slaves and holy fools. Using these portraits, the book brings old Russian society to life in an interesting way.