An Unknown Work about Boris Godunov from the Post-Petrine Era

This article examines a new early manuscript containing two works by an unknown compiler in the 1730s: the story of the “tyrant Ivan the Terrible” and Boris Godunov “greedy” for autocratic power. The manuscript is kept in the State Archives of Ryazan Region as part of the collection of the Ryazan Provincial Scientific Archival Commission. The study demonstrates that its brief archaeographic description was given in 1892 by Aleksey Vasilyevich Selivanov, one of the founders of the archival commission in Ryazan. Relying on watermarks, he dates the collection to about 1727; in 2001, the manuscript was described anew in a review of the manuscript collection of the State Archives of Ryazan Region. The authors analyse the part of the manuscript collection containing an essay about Boris Godunov; this essay has not been introduced into scholarly circulation previously. The article reveals the compiler’s sources, which turn out to be translations of notes taken by foreigners about Russia between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, more particularly the works of Jerome Horsey, Jacob Ulfeldt, Adam Olearius, and some others. Also, the authors single out a whole series of parallel pieces of news from Jerome Horsey’s notes in a little-known version of the publication in Old German about Tsar Boris’ character. The authors focus on which notes would have been available to the alleged compiler of the collection in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The article contains data revealing the provenance of the work. Additionally, an assumption is made about the possible author of the published source, who was probably related to the circle of victims in the case of Artemy Volynsky. Finally, the appendix to the article contains the previously unpublished text of the manuscript about Boris Godunov.