Moscow, Nauka Publ. 1984. 277 p.

Extensive literature is devoted to the study of the socio-political history, state system, and social thought of Russia in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Ivan IV. Nevertheless, it is necessary to state the absence of a generalizing work on the source study of the history of Russia of the XVI century, which would contain a comprehensive analysis of the entire set of handwritten monuments. Therefore, the monograph of Doctor of Historical Sciences S. O. Schmidt devoted to the most important documentary sources on state and political history and the development of public consciousness in the time of Ivan the Terrible cannot but attract attention. The new work is a continuation of the author's research in the field of source studies of the history of the Russian state in the XVI century .1
The book, like the previous monograph, is made in the form of historical essays, united by a common theme and research idea. If the first of them was based on the problem-thematic principle (through a comprehensive analysis of written monuments, it deals with such complex issues of the history of Russia of the XVI century as the uprising of 1547, the beginning of zemstvo councils, the essence and nature of localism), then the second is a study of large complexes of sources: the Royal Archive and the corpus of official chronicles. half of the XVI century.

A distinctive feature of the book is a multi-faceted, large-scale approach to the objects of study: a combination of source analysis with constant historiographic excursions, which allowed us to reveal the state of research of individual sources and highlight a range of controversial and unresolved issues, outline prospects for their further study. The work is characterized by polemic and thorough discussion with other authors. At the same time, S. O. Schmidt not only enters, as a rule, into a reasoned polemic with a number of his predecessors, but also does not hide from readers changes in his judgments on certain issues expressed in previous works, both as a result of their further study by the author and under the influence of convincing evidence from other historians.

The monograph has an extensive historiographic base. The author's field of view includes not only the works of domestic researchers (it is gratifying to note the influx of new creative forces, as evidenced by the books, dissertations and articles of young scientists presented in the scientific apparatus), but also the works of many foreign historians: German, Polish, Hungarian, Austrian, English, French, Danish, Swedish, American and Japanese - evidence of the great and continuing interest of foreign historiography in the Russian history of the XVI century.

Along with the consideration of specific source research issues, the author addresses important theoretical, methodological and methodological problems of source studies related to the specifics of the source as a carrier of information and at the same time a historical and cultural phenomenon, to the methods and nature of source research, methods for searching and identifying reliable historical information, etc.

The first section of the monograph is devoted to the Royal Archive, which was a state repository of official documents and narrative (descriptive) monuments. The complexity of the source study tasks for studying this complex consists primarily in the fact that it has not been preserved in a significant part, and only an inventory of its composition (70-ies of the XVI century) and a recently discovered somewhat later (late XVI century) list of boxes containing this manuscript have survived to this day. a meeting.

New prospects for research were opened after S. O. Schmidt published in 1960 the Inventory of the Tsarist Archive of the XVI century and the archive of the Embassy Order of 1614 and an attempt to reconstruct the archive made by A. A. Zimin2 . Getting out to the public-

1 Schmidt, S. O. the Formation of Russian samoderzhavstva (the study of socio-political history of the time of Ivan the terrible). M. 1973.

2 Zimin A. A. State Archive of Russia of the XVI century. Experience of reconstruction, Moscow, 1978.

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the development and appearance of new studies on the history of Russia in the 16th century and archival affairs prompted S. O. Schmidt to return to the history of the Tsarist Archive, clarify and justify certain provisions in a more reasoned way. The author decided to consider a set of problems related to the study of the inventory of the Royal Archive as a source, with the history and process of the formation of archival affairs and record management in the XVI century. However, in some cases, he went beyond the tasks set for himself and simultaneously highlighted the most important problems of the history of the state and political system of Russia at that time (in particular, the functions, competence and nature of the Boyar Duma, orders, the system of local government, etc.).

Having made a thorough palaeographic analysis of the original inventory, S. O. Schmidt made a number of observations about the nature and origin of litter on the manuscript - about the use of archive documents not only in the XVI century (including Ivan IV), but also in the XVII century, when they were exported during the Polish - Swedish intervention in Poland. It is noteworthy that this documentary collection was then included in the Lithuanian Metric. The author rightly raises the question of finding out the future fate of the archive documents, some of which were not returned and can still be stored abroad.

The essays are devoted to clarifying questions about the practice of recording and storing documentary wealth in Russia at that time, the composition of the archive and the use of its documents, the relationship between the tsar's and other archives of the Russian state of the XVI - early XVII century. The study of these issues has made significant progress thanks to the author's efforts. There is no doubt that the Tsarist Archive was, as shown in the monograph, "an active state-political archive" and at the same time "a historical and political arsenal in the preparation of official monuments of state-historical significance" (p.60). Its replenishment, as S. O. Schmidt convincingly proved, also took place after 1569 (p.61).

It is very important for the source heuristics on various aspects of the internal and foreign policy history of the Russian state of the XVI century. grouping, establishing the origin and analysis of archive documents, including charters, drawings and lists of cities, materials on monastic and princely land ownership, cases of church councils against heretics, etc. These documents and materials could serve as sources for subsequent government documents and decisions taken by Ivan IV. S. O. Schmidt made an important source study observation: the documents of the Royal Archive served as the basis for compilers of official chronicles, when transmitting the contents of embassy documents and books (p.59), which, we note, were not preserved in the originals. It is also suggested, not without reason, that the Tsarist Archive could also contain foreign writings about Russia (in particular, the so-called flying leaves), sent or delivered from other countries. The hypothesis that official chronicles are kept in the Tsarist Archive, or at least their rough versions or chronicle blanks, seems convincing (p. 60). The fact that there were such chronicle monuments there is evidenced by the inventory of the Bed Treasury of Ivan IV, who, judging by the notes of the inventory, was provided with chronicle materials and translations of Polish and Lithuanian chronicles (p.135).

A series of essays is devoted to identifying the founders of the Royal Archive. Summing up the Research of other scientists and his own, the author showed the inconsistency of the ideas that the inventory of the Royal Archive of the XVI century. It was an inventory of the archive of the Embassy Order, since the Tsarist Archive was dominated by internal policy documents that were not related to the field of activity of the Embassy Order. The conducted research allows us to consider it proved that the Royal Archive had connections with a number of orders (Local, Embassy, Petition), the State Courtyard, the Kazan Palace, and the sexton's huts of cities. At the same time, the author outlined the prospects for further research in this direction in order to identify the circle of other institutions from which documents were received in the Royal Archive (p.78).

An essay on the relationship between the Tsarist Archive and the Boyar Duma is of interest (p. 90-126). S. O. Schmidt, based on a number of direct and indirect news sources, made a fairly reasonable assumption that the Duma appeared in the third quarter of the XVI century.

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one of the main funders of the Royal Archive (p. 112, 120, 121, etc.).

The second section examines the most important body of sources on the history of Russia in the 16th century - the Tsarist Chronicles, among which a part of the grandiose Facial Chronicle Set that reflected the events that took place during the reign of Ivan IV is highlighted. The study of the texts was carried out in a comprehensive way both in the source study and in the historiographical aspects, since, as the author rightly noted, the chronicle works of the XVI-XVII centuries contain both concrete historical facts and information about the state of historical thought, the peculiarities of the worldview of that time. Some of the essays included in the section contain continuation and development of the provisions contained in earlier articles and monographs published by the author.

The author turned to two important components and at the same time forms of source information in the Facial Vault - postscripts (lengthy text interpolations) and thumbnails. Their study made it possible to make a new "reading" of the chronicle texts, to make clarifications in the knowledge of the political struggle of the late 30s-mid 40s of the XVI century and the last decade of the reign of Ivan the Terrible - the time to which the author refers the compilation of chronicles and attributions. This part of the work is not only of cognitive importance for a more in-depth understanding of the essence of a number of events of the period under study, but also shows the great potential opportunities that lie in the comprehensive study of chronicles undertaken by S. O. Schmidt in relation to the text and miniatures, which makes it possible to increase the informational "impact" of narrative monuments.

The author pays great attention to definitions, but the book still contains definitions that require clarification. In the introduction, S. O. Schmidt writes that his monograph consists of essays "on documentary monuments of the time of Ivan the Terrible" (p. 3), although the work also examines narrative sources, which are called "descriptive" in the work (p. 65, 93, etc.), which, of course, contain documentary sources. data. There is no doubt that in such a multi-faceted work it was impossible to solve all the questions raised, and the author did not claim to do so. Some of them remained open - the original composition, genesis and prehistory of the Tsarist Archive, the extent to which Ivan the Terrible used the entire set of documents, the ratio of funders in the overall structure of the archive, the presence of a special archive under the Embassy order, etc.

In general, the book sums up a certain result of studying the state and political history of Russia in the time of Ivan the Terrible and significantly promotes its scientific development. The fruitfulness of the research was provided by the successful combination of source studies and historiographical analysis applied by the author, which can serve as an example for studying complexes of sources from other periods of Russian history.

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