Chapter 25 - Russell E. Martin
Anticipary Association of the Heir in Early Modern Russia:
Primogeniture and Succession in Russia’s Ruling Dynasties
This chapter examines the customs of succession to the throne in Muscovy between the early 14th and the late 17th centuries. It explores the several strategies that were devised then to introduce primogeniturial succession in Russia, first with the use of testaments, then treaties between princes of different branches of the dynasty, surety oaths, public nomination ceremonies, and the association of the heir—crowning or otherwise designating as co-ruler the heir of the grand prince or tsar. These strategies were employed at different times by different rulers, alone or in combination, with the single purpose of establishing succession by primogeniture in the line of the descendants of Ivan I Kalita (ruled 1328–1341). The struggle to convert the collateral system of succession that largely prevailed in Kyivan times (from the 10th to 13th centuries), was significantly assisted by the adoption of the custom of anticipatory association, especially at times when there were other candidates for the succession in addition to the ruler’s son or grandson. Thus co-rulership (sopravitel’stvo) is a key focus of this study. The extinction in 1598 of the Muscovite house brought new families to the throne and new concerns about dynastic continuity and legitimacy. Anticipatory association would be employed by the first of these would-be new dynasties—by Boris Godunov (ruled 1598–1605) on behalf of his son, Fedor (ruled 1605)—but the Romanovs would not make use of the custom. Examining the Muscovite system of succession in these centuries and through the rise and fall of multiple dynasties reveals how anticipatory association worked in Muscovy and also how the practice there compares with the custom elsewhere in Western Europe, where co-rulership has been much more the subject of historical study than it has been in Russia.
By Russell E. Martin
Russell E. Martin
Dr. Russell E. Martin is professor of History at Westminster College (New Wilmington, Penn., USA). He is the author of A Bride for the Tsar: Bride-Shows and Marriage Politics in Early Modern Russia, which won the 2014 W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize, and co-author (with Wendy Salmond and Wilfried Zeisler) of Konstantin Makovsky: The Tsar’s Painter in Paris and New York, and editor or co-editor of six other books on early modern and modern Russian history. His more than seventy peer-reviewed articles and book chapters have appeared in Slavic Review, Russian Review, Russian History, Manuscripta, Kritika, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, and elsewhere, as well as a number of edited volumes and Festschriften. He is Editor-in-Chief of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, President of the Early Slavic Studies Association, and a member of the Chancellery of the Head of the Russian Imperial House of Romanoff (Moscow). He is presently finishing a book on royal wedding customs in Muscovy in the 16th through early 18th centuries.
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The Daniilovich Dynasty and Its Competitors, 1263-1462, Showing Incidences of Anticipatory Association
Key: Dotted boxes indicate possible cases of anticipatory association.
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The Daniilovich Dynasty, 1389-1533, Showing Incidences of Anticipatory Association
Key: Solid boxes indicate anticipatory association.
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The Daniilovich, Godunov, and Romanov Dynasties, 1533-1725, Showing Incidences of Anticipatory Association
Key: Solid boxes indicate anticipatory association; dotted boxes indicate other forms of co-rulership.
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