Abstract
The subject of legitimacy is well-trodden ground for political scientists, philosophers and sociologists, as the functions of myth are for anthropologists. Historians have also considered these subjects, not least in respect of Eastern Europe, though their contributions are scattered. But little attention has been paid to the broad issues of long-term changes and continuities in the methods of political legitimisation, and of the use of myths for legitimating purposes in eastern Europe. This chapter addresses the gap in the literature, offering a preliminary sketch of the major trends and tendencies since the Byzantine period.
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Notes
See N. Baynes, ‘Constantine the Great and the Christian Church’, Proceedings of the British Academy 15 (London: Milford, 1929; reprinted New York: Haskell House, 1975).
See the discussion in N. Baynes and H. St. L. Moss, Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 268–74.
See Ekaterina Dimitrova, The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander (London: The British Library, 1994).
D. Nastase, ‘Imperial Claims in the Romanian Principalities from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries’, in L. Clucas (ed.), The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1988), pp. 185–92.
See Philip Longworth, Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias (New York: Norton, 1984), pp. 233–4.
See J. P. Spielman, Leopold I of Austria (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977).
See A.S. Mel’nikov, Russkie monety of Ivana groznogo do Petra pervogo (Moskva: Finansy i statistika, 1989).
M. Szeftel, ‘The Title of the Muscovite Monarch up to the End of the Seventeenth Century’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, nos. 1–2 (1979), p. 61.
J. Tazbir, ‘Culture of the Baroque in Poland’, in A. Maczak, H. Samsonowicz and P. Burke (eds), East-Central Europe in Transition: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1985), pp. 167–80;
J. Michalski, ‘Le sannatisme et le problème de l’européisation de la Pologne’, in V. Zimanyi (ed.), La Pologne et la Hongrie aux XVI-XVIII siècles (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1981), pp.113 et seq.
See R.J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), especially pp.385ff.
M. Cazacu, L’Histoire du Prince Dracula (Geneva, 1988); also his ‘Aux sources de l’Autocratie Russe’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique XXIV (1983), pp. 7–41.
M. Perrie, The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). For an example of an embassy to Russia being persuaded to an accept an impressive image of Aleksei, see Longworth, op. cit., p.233 (the ambassador concerned was da Vimina from Venice).
See J.L.I. Fennel (ed.), The Correspondence Between Prince A.M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia 1564–1579 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955).
See S.M. Troitskii, ‘Samozvantsy v Rossii xvii–xviii vekov’, Voprosy istorii, 1969, no.3, pp.134–46
and Philip Longworth, ‘The Pretender Phenomenon in 18th Century Russia’, Past and Present 66 (1975), pp.61–83. For a fuller bibliography of the scattered sources, see ibid., notes 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8.
See Philip Longworth, ‘The Subversive Legend of Sten’ka Razin’, in V. Strada (ed.), Rossiial Russia (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1975), vol.II, pp.17–40; and Evans, op. cit., pp.395–6 and 398–9.
D. Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).
See T. Blanning, Joseph II and Enlightened Absolutism (London: Longman, 1970).
See Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monachy, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
On S. Muraviev-Apostol’s ‘Catechism’, which claimed that the Tsars acted against the will of God by usurping the people’s freedom, see Anatole G. Mazour, The First Russian Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), pp.186–8. For the Hungarian Jacobins see Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 139.
E. Weber, Varieties of Fascism (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1964).
See M. Otahal, ‘The Manuscript Controversy and the Czech National Revival’, Cross-Currents, 5 (1986), pp. 247–78.
See the proceedings of the International Congress of Historical Science, Bucharest, 1980. For a Hungarian rebuttal, see the new history of Transylvania, B. Kopecsi (ed.), Erdely tortenete, 3 vols. (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986–88).
E. Niederhauser, The Rise of Nationality in Eastern Europe (Budapest: Corvina, 1982).
Mickiewicz translated by M.M. Gardner, Poland: A Study in National Idealism (London: Bums & Oates, 1915).
See D. Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press, 1995).
I.M. D’yakonov, Puti istorii (Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura, 1994), p. 273.
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Longworth, P. (1999). Legitimacy and Myth in Central and Eastern Europe. In: Kirschbaum, S.J. (eds) Historical Reflections on Central Europe. International Council for Central and East European Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27112-2_2
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