This page is no longer being updated. For the new Russian Research page go to http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~jdmiller2/russian.html

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Medieval Russia Links and Research

I don't exactly know why I decided to devote most of my free time (like I'm not busy enough as is) to researching old Russia, but these things happen. As a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (see my SCA page), I felt a need to choose a persona that I could re-create. I had taken Russian in high school before finding the SCA and it seemed a logical transition to take on a Russian persona. Little did I know what this minor interest would grow into.

These pages are devoted to researching Russia before Peter the Great came into power, what a number of people regard as the middle ages of Russia. For my purposes I define the Middle Ages of Russia as about 600 CE to 1650 CE. Here you will find links devoted to Russian costuming, culture, food, history and anything else I can get my hands on. The Slavic and East European part of my research is a bit smaller. Most of these links were found from the Slavic Interest Group page, but since I contributed a good deal of them and my husband runs the group, I don't think he'll mind. Anyway, I organize things better than he does.

Enjoy!!!!

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Index of Contents

Current Projects | Costuming | History | Culture and Religion | Food | Art and Music | Resources

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PROJECTS

Russian Wedding

• Right now, the project that is taking up most of my time is planning and preparing for the Russian Wedding my husband and I will be having in August of 1999 at Pennsic (a large SCA camping event). I am making a sarafan, pearled boots, and lots of little dowry items like embroidered towels and the like. I plan to post patterns for what I am making as soon as I have the items just the way I like them, which may take awhile. I am also slowly working on some other Medieval Russian related projects, which I might as well not list, I'll just put them here as soon as I can.

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COSTUMING

This has gotten way too large to scroll through, so I have moved it to a separate page. Travel this way to my new Russian Costuming Page
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HISTORY

• General History
  • Erik the Pale's Home Page: Start here for a nice Russian timeline, an introduction to the Kievan Rus', and a good list of sources.
    
  • Russian History: Click on the "history" link for time-lines, the family tree of the House of Rurik and many, many more links related to medieval Russia.
    
  • Illustrated History of Russia and the Former USSR
    
  • Russian History an Trivia
    
  • Belarus History
    
  • Kizhi Home Page
    
  • The Rus and the Polanians
    
  • Kamenets-Podolsky: A page devoted to this ancient medieval town, with lots of pictures.
  • Lectures on Russian History from 800 to 1800: These are RealAudio streaming downloads of a whole semester's worth of Russian History. The course was taught by Petrovich who was a former professor at the University of Madison at Wisconsin, which is where I now attend. Unlike most Russian History classes, these lectures do not in any way gloss over the early years. I have listened to these on cassette and they are absolutely WONDERFUL! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
• Military and Warfare
  • Medieval Russian Armor: Pictures and descriptions of medieval armor and pics of the Alexandr Nevskii Society (a Russian medievalist group who play with live steel). A MUST SEE!!!
  • History of the Russian Navy
  • a href="http://www.physics.mq.edu.au/~gnott/Miklagard/">The New Varangian Guard: A branch of a group that focuses on the interaction between Byzantium and the Kievan Rus' in the period 969-1015AD. A very nicely set-up and informative site.

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CULTURE and RELIGION

This section includes stories, folklore and other such topics

• Lectures of Maksim Kovalevsky: A series of lecture notes on topics such as matrimonial customs and social issues of Russia. Written in the late 1800's.
• Language
  • Russian Language and Alphabet: Click on the "alphabet" and "language" links on this page for a basic introductory tutorial for the Russian language.
    
  • Russian Alphabet: The Cyrillic alphabet including clickable audible pronunciations.
    
  • Dictionary of Period Russian Names: My husband's other love.
• Fonts and Calligraphy
  • Yamada Fonts:good download site with examples, mostly Macintosh
• Folklore and Holidays
  • Russian Folk Tales: Nice image collection of Russian Folk Tales and myths. Includes artwork by Bilibin! Check it out!
  • Russian Folk Tales
    
  • Dazhdbog in Russian Mythology: Mythology about ancient Russia
    
  • Russian Stories: Includes stories about Baba Yaga, Vassilissa Golden tress, and Finist the Falcon
  • Folk Stories including The Snowmaiden, The Golden Cockerel, Tsar Saltan, Alyonushka, Sadko and many others
    
  • Russian Folk Holidays and Traditions
    
• Paganism: Russia was not Christianized until 988 C.E.
  • Russian Mythology and Religion
    
  • Rusalje's Web (a Slavic Pagan Page)
  • Slavic Paganism and Witchcraft: Good listing of Slavic mythology figures and religious beliefs.
  • The Slavic Mythos: More stuff on Slavic myth.
  • Slavic Paganism Mailing List: A discussion group for those interested in Slavic Paganism. This will link you to information about subscribing and also their archives.
• Orthodoxy
  • On the Covering of Heads: An explanation of why the Orthodox Church requires women to cover their heads in Church
  • Old Church Texts online
  • Calculation of the Ecclesiastical Calendar: Medieval Russia followed a calendar different from the one in general use today.
    
  • Orthodox Church in America: Includes a Feasts and Saints page (not necessarily Russian).
    
  • Orthodoxy
    
  • Orthodoxy Links
    
  • Russian Christian Home Page: Lots of useful links
    
  • Saint of the Day Calendar
    
  • Orthodox Christians in America
    
  • Monastery of the Caves
    

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FOOD

This section has grown considerably and will continue to do so, so I have made a separate page for it. Journey over to my Russian Cooking and Food page.
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ART and MUSIC

• Russian Art: Graphics of Russian art from various time periods
• Icons
  • Novgorod Icon Page
    
  • Andrei Rublov Museum of Early Russian Art
    
  • Ukrainian Icons in the 11th to 16th Centuries
  • St. Issac of Syria Skete: Order icons online from this monastery
• Music
  • Orthodox Bard Home Page
    
  • Period Russian Music
    
  • Russian Choral Music Source
    
  • Slavonic Hymns
    
  • Musical Heritage of Eastern Europe
    
• Pysanky Pages (Ukrainian Easter Eggs)
  • Pysanky (Easter Egg) Page
    
  • More Pysanky
    
  • Still More Pysanky: This one is even better. It provides instructions as well as locations of suppliers
    
  • Pysanky Supplies (Brownie's Bazaar)
• Palekh Home Page: The pretty laquerware boxes.

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RESOURCES

My husband is the founder of the Slavic Interest Group, a resource for the research of all things Slavic, not just Russian. I love to tell people that if it weren't for me, he would never have gotten interested in Slavic things at all, and look what we all would have missed out on. It's true, his SCA persona is 13th century England!

SCA Based Resources

• Slavic Interest Group Discussion Group: Check here to find out more about this discussion group focusing on Slavic history.
• The Novgorod Handbook: Mistress Nicolaa's book on Novgorod in 1036 which she published for her SCA group's event. Great articles on many different subjects. You should also check out her other SCA articles at The Library of St. Nicholas

Non-SCA Resources

• International Directory of Librarians and Library Specialists in the Slavic and East European Field
• Slavic Review HomePage
  Slavonic and East European Collections of the British Library: Useful links and info.
• Rusophilia: A nice database for Russian related things.
• Treasures of St Petersburg: An online museum
• Russian Museums: One of the neat things I've found at this site is a list of all the museums in Russia and a link to:
  • Art in Ancient Novgorod. The page is in Russian and very slow, but it has nice pictures for those who do not read Russian.

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This page last updated December 21, 1998