Stones on the Prairie: Acculturation in Texas

News Sensations from the Front: Reportage in Late Muscovy concerning the Ottoman Wars

Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008, 491–506.       News Sensations from the Front: Reportage in Late Muscovy concerning the Ottoman Wars Daniel C. Waugh This   essay   concerns   the   ways   that   awareness   of   the   larger   world   may   be   shaped  by  news  about  current  events  and  by  retrospective  historical  memory.   My  inspiration  is  some  Muscovite  texts,  by  themselves  probably  insignificant,   whose  study  raises  broader  issues  about  early  modern  cultural  history.  There   is  growing  interest  in  how  the  emergence  of  the  modern  press  helped  create   in  Europe  a  sense  of  “contemporaneity”  as  one  of  the  hallmarks  of  the  tran-­‐‑ sition   to   “modernity.”   That   is,   through   growing   access   to   regular   foreign   news,  people  were  able  to  situate  themselves  in  an  expanded  world  of  human   action,  in  the  process  moving  away  from  providential  interpretation  of  events   to  a  more  “rational”  understanding  of  the  world.1  The  validity  of  this  inter-­‐‑ pretation  of  the  impact  from  new  media  and  communications  depends  to  a   considerable  degree  on  what  one  can  document  about  readers  and  their  re-­‐‑ sponses,  subjects  which  to  date  are  still  considerably  under-­‐‑studied.  Even  if   assumptions   about   the   growing   sense   of   “contemporaneity”   are   valid   for   Western  Europe—and  to  a  degree  I  question  that  argument—to  expect  to  find   synchronous  developments  in  Russia  may  be  unreasonable.  Apart  from  the   issue  of  contemporary  responses  to  current  news,  it  is  of  interest  to  examine   how  the  news  stories  of  one  era  might  look  to  later  generations.  It  is  very  easy   to  read  back  a  significance  not  felt  at  the  time;  similarly  the  emphasis  of  the   earlier  story  might  change  if  it  is  invoked  as  a  part  of  contemporary  political   discourse.                                                                                                                               1  This   was   the   subject   of   a   conference   in   Bremen,   “Time   and   Space   on   the   Way   to   Modernity:  The  Emergence  of  Contemporaneity  in  European  Culture,”  15–16  Decem-­‐‑ ber  2006.  Important  books  which  support  this  idea  are:  Holger  Böning,  Welteroberung   durch  ein  neues  Publikum:  Die  deutsche  Presse  und  der  Weg  zur  Aufklärung.  Hamburg  und   Altona   als   Beispiel   ([Bremen:]   Edition   lumière,   2002);   and   Wolfgang   Behringer,   Im   Zeichen  des  Merkur.  Reichspost  und  Kommunikationsrevolution  in  der  Frühen  Neuzeit  (Göt-­‐‑ tingen:  Vandenhoeck  &  Ruprecht,  2003).  The  paper  which  I  co-­‐‑presented  with  Ingrid   Maier  at  Bremen  questioned  this  emphasis.  See  also  my  “We  Have  Never  Been  Modern:   Approaches  to  the  Study  of  Russia  in  the  Age  of  Peter  the  Great,”  Jahrbücher  für  Ge-­‐‑ schichte  Osteuropas  49  (2001):  321–345;  and  idem  (in  Russian,  D.  K.  Uo),  Istoriia  odnoi   knigi:  Viatka  i  “ne-­‐‑sovremennost’”  v  russkoi  kul’ture  Petrovskogo  vremeni  (St.  Petersburg:   Dmitrii  Bulanin,  2003),  esp.  chap.  7.     492 DANIEL C. WAUGH My  specific  subject  is  reports  about  the  late  17th-­‐‑century  European  wars   against  the  Ottoman  Turks,  a  topic  which  first  occupied  me  as  a  graduate  stu-­‐‑ dent,  when  I  had  the  temerity  to  ask  Bob  Crummey  for  a  copy  of  his  Rude  and   Barbarous  Kingdome.2  The  importance  of  the  Ottomans  for  early  modern  Eu-­‐‑ rope  is  undoubtedly  still  underestimated,  despite  the  nearly  continuous  wars   against  the  Turks  and  large  volume  of  contemporary  publications  regarding   them.  The  Ottomans  were  often  central  to  the  concerns  of  the  Muscovite  gov-­‐‑ ernment  even  if,  until  well  into  the  17th  century,  it  had  largely  resisted  being   drawn  into  fighting  them.  Muscovite  priorities  lay  elsewhere,  and  there  was  a   distinct  lack  of  empathy  for  the  plight  of  the  sultan’s  Orthodox  subjects.3  It  is   somewhat   ironic,   therefore,   that   when   Muscovy   finally   plunged   into   the   Turkish  wars  in  the  1670s,  its  ambassadors  were  unable  to  elicit  much  sup-­‐‑ port,   since   the   major   Western   powers   then   had   other   concerns.4   What   ulti-­‐‑ mately  would  bring  together  a  coalition  of  Christian  states  was  the  Ottoman   siege  of  Vienna  in  1683.  The  dramatic  defense  of  the  city  was  followed  by  a   rolling  back  of  Ottoman  control  in  southeastern  Europe,  a  process  that  ended   only  in  the  20th  century.5     Reports  about  the  Turkish  Wars  continually  appeared  in  regularly  pub-­‐‑ lished  newspapers  and  in  hundreds  of  separately  published  pamphlets  whose   impact   as   sources   of   news   still   merits   study.6   Understandably,   the   Turkish                                                                                                                             2  This  work  resulted  in  a  dissertation  on  Muscovite  turcica  and  a  monograph,  The  Great   Turkes  Defiance:  On  the  History  of  the  Apocryphal  Correspondence  of  the  Ottoman  Sultan  in   Its  Muscovite  and  Russian  Variants,  with  a  foreword  by  Academician  Dmitrii  Sergeevich   Likhachev  (Columbus,  OH...