About the project

Project «The Courts of Russian princesses in Old Rus’ and Western Europe in the system of power structures in Middle Ages and Early Modern Times» is devoted to the almost unexplored problem in Russian Medieval studies. The aim of the project is to study the ways of development of the female part of the prince’s courts together with the formation of the main institutions and the structures of power on the way to the early Modern state.

Results of the research, the analysis of the new sources found in domestic and foreign archives will be reflected in articles in the Russian, French, German, English journals indexed in the Scopus / Web of Science databases.

Participants of the project plan to prepare for the publication in the form of the collection all documents revealed during implementation of the project concerning structure of the court of the Russian princesses and also some historical monuments of the XI th-XII th centuries, not published completely, and also to prepare for the publication the monograph «The Court of the Russian Princesses in the System of Power Structures of Ancient Russia and Western Europe in the period of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (the XI th–XVI th Centuries)».

Also in 2021 the electronic database (in Russian and English languages) devoted to members of the court of the Russian princesses, the biographic information about court of Russians princesses, containing detailed hyperlinks to domestic and foreign archival documents where information on the Russian princesses contains will be finished.

The project support

The project funded by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 19-18-00247 «Court of Russian Princesses in the System of Power Structures of Ancient Russia and Western Europe During the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (11th–16th c.)».

The aims of the project

The stuff of the Court of the princess to compare with that of the prince; The role (participation in the war, governing etc), especially when the prince himself was absent or couldn’t act normally (war, captivity, illness); The difference in the position of princess consort and dowager princess, how freely she could act along with her consort and without him; The changes in role and position of the prince’s courts accompanying the transformation of the state and the evolution of the political system in the XI–first third of the XVI century.

The chronology of the project

The research covers the time from the end of the reign of Vladimir the Saint (1015) up to the end of Basil III reign (1533), and also includes the regency of his widow Helen (1534–1538).

Project participants

  • Korzinin Alexander Leonidovich, Doctor of History, Professor, the Institute of History, St. Petersburg State University.
  • Milyutenko Nadezhda Ilyinichna, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, the Institute of History, St. Petersburg State University.
  • Konyavskaya Elena Leonidovna, Doctor of Philology, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of Russian Academy of Sciences, Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal «Drevnaya Rus’. Voprosy Medievistiki» («Old Russia. The Questions of Middle Ages»).
  • Matasova Tatyana Aleksandrovna, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of History, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University.
  • Shishkin Vladimir Vladimirovich, Doctor of History, Professor, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation.
  • Polekhov Sergey Vladimirovich, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of History, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation.
  • Polyakov Ivan Anatolyevich, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Researcher of the Department of Manuscripts, Russian National Library.
  • Domrachev Nikolay Evgenievich, Specialist of the 1st category of the department of Scientific information and publication of documents of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, postgraduate student of the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
  • Schmidt Gleb Aleksandrovich, PhD, Radboud University Nijmegen, Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH).

Acknowledgments

The performers of the project expresses sincerely gratitude to Tatyana Igorevna Pelipenko for the help in drawing up the forms for the princesses.

The translation of the princesses' biographies into English was made by Tatyana Dmitrievna Nikolaeva and Gleb Aleksandrovich Schmidt.

Site Administrator Dmitry Alexandrovich Sosnitsky.