In Ivan the Terrible: Free to Reward and Free to Punish, Charles Halperin brings together his many years of research, study, and reflection on Ivan IV, a ruler who presided over important and lasting reforms in Russia in the mid-sixteenth century and led the conquest of the Volga khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. Ivan is known for much more, however, as his reign also involved large-scale, often savage attacks on his own subjects, carried out through the mechanism of the variously defined and understood oprichnina. Historians have been prolific in their work on this most (in)famous of Russian tsars. This book is an important addition to the voluminous and still growing historiography on Ivan. As much a study of Muscovite society, economy, politics, and culture in Ivan's time as of the tsar himself, it situates him firmly in the Muscovy that had evolved in the century leading to his accession to the throne, a century of expansion and profound change affecting all segments and aspects of society. For Halperin, the attendant and deepening social tensions and malaise provide the context for understanding Ivan as a complex ruler and human being who was challenged by his times and responsibilities. They also, as Halperin persuasively argues, help explain the complicity of so many Muscovites alongside the ruler in the unleashing of "mass terror", which, in this book, is seen not as the product of Ivan's sick mind or thirst for unlimited power, but as an expression of "social pathology" run rampant, beyond the intentions of a tsar whose actions prepared the soil for such violence.
This article discusses the gift-giving behaviour of English merchants involved in the Russia trade in the Muscovite era. Drawing on a small, but growing body of historical literature relating to the role of gifts in the cultivation of mutually beneficial relations between people across the social spectrum in early modern Europe, it explores the various ways in which the English deployed the practice of giving to their advantage, both in England and in Russia. In particular, as ‘strangers’ in Russia who operated beyond the parameters of traditional kin- and community-based networks of support, English merchants (and other foreigners, such as their Dutch competitors) needed to both ‘befriend’ Russian clients on the ground in every-day trade and nurture relationships in high places to ensure smooth, profitable, and secure business. As the sources reveal, they engaged in a variety of gift-giving behaviours in building relationships with Russians advantageous to their enterprise.
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