Old Russian literature contains works that the Russian people rightly cherish irrespec­tive of the extent to which they influenced the subsequent de­velopment of Russian literature. Such works, which are of great value, include, first and fore­most, The Tale of Bygone Years— the first Russian chronicle, the Instruction of Vladimir Mono­machos, […]

Russian literature of the eleventh to seven­teenth centuries developed in somewhat exceptional circumstances. It was entirely handwritten. Book printing, which appeared in Moscow in the mid-sixteenth century, did little to change the character and means of distribution of literary works. Even in the seventeenth century literary works continued for the […]

There is something else that Old Russian literature has in common with folklore. As in folklore, recurrent themes occupy a special place in Old Russian literature. A literary work of Old Russia seeks not to impress the reader by its novelty, but rather to charm him with its familiarity. In […]

The author of a literary work “robes” it in an appropriate “literary attire”. This not only brings literature closer to folklore, but, as in folklore too, introduces a special element of improvisation into Old Russian literary creation, giving it a collective, traditional nature. The more strictly the author follows the […]

What exactly is this mediaeval historicism? In Old Russia artistic generalisation is based for the most part on a single concrete historical fact. New works in Old Russian literature are always connected with a concrete historical event, a concrete historical figure. They are tales about battles (victories and defeats), princely […]

The mediaeval historicism of Russian literature from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries is connected with another important feature that has been preserved and developed in Russian literature right up to the present day: its civic fervour and patriotism. Called upon to examine reality, to investigate and assess it, the Old […]

The literature of Old Russia bears testimony to Russian life. This is why history itself to a considerable extent dictates the periods of literature. Literary changes coincide mainly with historical ones. What periods can we distinguish in the history of Russian literature from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries? The first […]

In this book we speak of Russia and the Russians of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, although during this period the three Eastern Slavic peoples, the Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russians, had not yet formed and were still a single ethnic unit—the Eastern Slavs, the “Rus” or “russkiye”, as they called […]

We shall discuss primarily those works that continue to interest us today, that have become part of the literary heritage, and that are the best known and most easily understood and accessible. Such a selection obviously results in a certain simplification of perspective, a simplification that is both permissible and […]

The main collections of Old Russian manuscripts containing Old Russian literary works are in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. There are also fairly large collections in Novosibirsk, Pskov, Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Rostov, Kostroma and some other towns. Small numbers of Old Russian manuscripts are scattered about in various museums of local lore, […]