Stepennaia kniga tsarskogo rodosloviia po drevneishim spiskam: Teksty i kommentarii ["The Book of Degrees of the Tsars' Genealogy" according to the Oldest Manuscripts: Texts and Commentary], 3 vols., 1: Zhitie sviatoi kniagini Ol´gi, Stepeni I–X [The Life of Princess St. Ol´ga; Degrees 1–10], and: Stepennaia kniga: Istoriia teksta [The Book of Degrees: History of a Text] (review)

The Stepennaia kniga (hereafter SK ) long has puzzled historians. Compared to chronicles from which they have constructed coherent narratives of Russian history, the SK had the character of a secondary source. It offered a historical scheme of Russian history from the Christianization of Rus´ to the reign of Tsar Ivan IV, carefully constructed from passages from chronicles and the Russian chronograph. Its "story" was that of the continuous progress of the Orthodox faith and of a dynasty of rulers who were its guardians. Thanks to the books under review, we finally are able to appreciate the purposes of its creators and better assess its importance as a source. Aleksei Sirenov views the SK as the "first attempt to [create] a conceptualized account of Russian history" (3), a view to which the editors of the SK also subscribe.

In 1979, Nikolai Pokrovskii announced to a session of the Archeographical Commission (Arkheograficheskaia komissiia) the discovery of a previously unknown manuscript of the SK which he had uncovered in the museum of local lore (kraevedcheskii muzei) in Tomsk. Twenty-two years later, in 2001, after Sirenov uncovered another early manuscript, Pokrovskii demonstrated that these finds were not only the earliest versions of the SK but were the key to understanding its formulation and development.¹ Until this breakthrough, aside from Edward Keenan's acute evaluation of the SK in a 1974 article, the only serious studies of this important work since P. G. Vasenko wrote about and published a critical edition of the SK 100 years ago, have been V. V. Kuskov's candidate's thesis (1951) and this reviewer's monograph (1979).² Since 2001, there have been a plethora of studies, the crowning achievements of which are the books under review.

Pokrovskii and Ol´ga D. Zhuravel´ did the "final editing of the text" (5) of volume 1 (with two yet to come) of the SK. It consists of the Life of Princess St. Ol´ga and the first 10 (of 17) steps of the SK, with 24 illustrations of significant folios of the earliest manuscripts. Pokrovskii, Zhuravel´, and Sirenov contributed a prefatory description of the manuscripts used in the publication, Sirenov describes the 145 extant manuscripts of the SK, Pokrovskii has a chapter on the work's historical thematics, and Gail Lenhoff contributes a chapter about the SK's design, ideological themes, and intended audience. Sirenov's book is a tour de force. Chapter 1 is a historiographical essay. In subsequent chapters he describes the earliest manuscripts and how they relate to one another, the SK's purported archetype, and its evolution through the Petrine era. As a conclusion, Sirenov posits the significance of the SK and how it came into being. There are seven appendices, the last an invaluable reconstruction of the various editions with a stemma of the manuscripts for each, and indices of names and manuscripts.

The works under review are in substantial agreement regarding the SK's conception, initial form, and development to about 1600. The original SK, labeled the Short Edition, is in three manuscripts: the Volkovskii, which is a draft copy of its first sections, and the Tomskii and Chudovskii, which contain the full text. This SK consisted of an introductory Life of Princess St...