The Brides for the Russian rulers, 15th to 18th centuries: Russell Martin’s Contribution

The research of the American Slavist Russell E. Martin develops the Harvard School’s thesis about launching of the key symbolic and political mechanisms in Muscovy and Petrine Russia through Tsars’ weddings and matrimonial politics. These studies, and above all R.E. Martin’s two monographs (2012 and 2021), make possible to shed new light on numerous circumstances of the court struggle in Early-Modern Russia, to show the discontinuities and continuity with the Old Russian period and Revolutionary Russia of the 20th century. Innovative use of a wide range of sources, with the help of methods of cultural anthropology and historical source study, resulted in a detailed study of the development of marriage rites in the Moscow kingdom and later, up to the end of the 18th century. R.E. Martin’s works combine the “stock” method of total review of documentation with cultural-semiotic and historical analysis of the rites. The article attempts a step-by-step commentary on the works of the American historian and their critical reflection against the background of a number of historical disciplines — among them historical genealogy and dynastic history, historical chronology and political anthropology.