The Long-Awaited Book and the Bykovskii Hypothesis

The Long-Awaited Book and the Bykovskii Hypothesis

I must confess to having experienced a moment of nostalgia upon being asked to review the present volume by Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zimin (1920–80), one of whose earlier works was the subject of my first publication in this field, almost all of whose work I have read, with whom I once enjoyed a continued—if graphically exceedingly challenging—correspondence, and in whose footsteps I have repeatedly found myself treading.¹

What follows, however, is a review of his book as it has appeared, not an article about its scandalous history, its complex author, or the ongoing debates over the questionable authenticity of Slovo o polku Igoreve (the Igor´ Tale). Since these matters have been of such wide interest, however, a few words about them are probably appropriate as a preamble.

The story of this publication begins long before the first public presentation of Zimin's hypothesis at the "Pushkinskii dom" (Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR) in Leningrad on 27 February 1963. At that meeting, Zimin first presented his hypothesis: contrary to the long-standing and generally accepted view that the Slovo was produced by an unknown bard in the "Kievan" period, it in fact appeared late in the 18th century and was largely the work of a Ruthenian cleric, Ivan (in religion Ioil´) Bykovskii (1726–98). That session produced something of a sensation and triggered a series of events (Oleg Tvorogov calls them "scholarly and ethical confrontations"—nauchnye i eticheskie kollizii) that have led, after some 42 years, to the appearance of this publication (5).² The historical details of those events remain somewhat obscure, although much continues to be written about them.³ The recent (13 November 2006) "book party" (prezentatsiia) marking the publication of the present title demonstrates that the furor surrounding Zimin's hypothesis gives no indications of subsiding, in no small measure because he was by all accounts a historian whose energy, erudition, and dedication to his scholarship endeared him to a large number of colleagues—and exasperated a smaller number, some of whom wielded considerable influence in the old Soviet Academy of Sciences.⁴

Now to the book itself: in very general terms, it must be said that the volume is a fitting posthumous tribute to Zimin, and to the importance of his inventive and quite Herculean labors in the field of slovovedenie. For the general editorial quality and comprehensiveness of the edition, which has been carefully checked against numerous manuscript sources and provided with a comprehensive index and an updated (to ca. 1995) bibliography, the reader must be grateful to Zimin's widow, Valentina Grigor´evna, and to Oleg Tvorogov.⁵ Tvorogov, despite his dedicated and long-standing contribution to this publication, indicates in the last words of his introductory essay that he remains convinced—as he was in 1963—that the Slovo is a "major work of ancient Russian literature" (pamiatnik drevnerusskoi literatury [7]).⁶

Zimin's monograph consists of eight long and fact-filled chapters and five complex appendices, in which he proposes a reconstruction of the texts of two versions of Zadonshchina, reproduces the Hypatian Chronicle's account of Igor´'s campaign of 1185 and the Tale (Skazanie) of Mamai's Campaign, and offers his own reconstruction of the original text of the Slovo. His parting thoughts about the text and its sources precede the appendices (429–31).

It should be said at the outset that Zimin's knowledge and use of scholarly literature on the Slovo are throughout quite staggeringly comprehensive. Especially in his review of the opinions of others over the centuries...