Certain Observaunt Touching the City and the Empire of Muscovia: неизвестное англоязычное описание России и проблема авторства

Quaestio Rossica. 2022. Т. 10. № 1. С. 255–272.

Rusakovskiy O.

This article publishes and analyses

Certain Observaunt Touching the City and

the Empire of Muscovia

(ca. 1634), a previously unknown anonymous English

description of Russia, and two letters from the National Archives, London,

related to it. The

Observaunt

includes eight paragraphs dedicated to printing

and education in Russia, the activities of Greek monks in Moscow, the country’s

geography, the organisation of the Ambassadorial Chancery, foreigners’ re-

baptising into the Orthodox faith, and Europeans’ trade and church activities.

The anonymous author of the text appears to have been an intellectual concerned

with the preservation and dissemination of bookish learning and a critic of the low

morals of the inhabitants of the city’s foreign quarters. Along with the

Observaunt

,

two letters are held in the same archival file. These were sent by a George Reade,

an Englishman, to his brother Robert from Moscow in June 1634. Reade informs

his correspondent about his life in Moscow and his unsuccessful attempts to

import pearls into Russia: he briefly mentions the Smolensk War, which ended

in 1634, and a great fire in Moscow the same year. Using the findings of Russian

and international scholars, the article identifies most of the foreigners mentioned

by Reade, both Englishmen and Germans. Based on Reade’s letters and studies

of British and American historians, the author reconstructs Reade’s biography. In

conclusion, the article discusses the hypothesis about Reade’s authorship of the

Observaunt

. The article contains the original English text of the

Observaunt

and

Reade’s letters with a Russian translation

Keywords: Smolensk War, Смоленская война, История России XVII века, Немецкая слобода, German suburb, Early Modern Russian history