Andrey Vitalievich Korenevskiy,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Ideologeme of Deferred Demand, or How Many Times the Theory of “Moscow as the Third Rome” Was “Invented”?
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-6-1
The article examines the circumstances of emergence and subsequent history of the theory of “Moscow as the Third Rome”. The author aims to comprehend the causes of fluctuations in public interest in of this religious-political concept: initially it was ignored by the authorities, but more than half a century later it acquired the status of an official state doctrine, then it was plunged into the periphery of public mind and, it would seem, was forgotten, but in the 19th century it was reborn from oblivion. After 1917, a taboo was imposed on this topic, but since the 1990s there has been a new surge of interest in the heritage of Filofei. Such sharp fluctuations in perception by the society and the authorities of the Third Rome idea are considered in the article through the prism of controversy about the so-called “invention of tradition”. In this article, the author refers to the historiographical anamnesis of the concept of “invention” of the theory “Moscow as the Third Rome”. Verification of this interpretation is undertaken through a comprehensive analysis of sources that reflected the existence of the idea of the Third Rome in the 16th century. The author concludes that the statements about “invention” of Filofei’s theory – its “accidental” (in the course of anti-astrological polemics) occurrence and “marginal” status – are unfounded: the absence of references to the Third Rome in official program texts of that time was due not to the indifference of society to this theory, but to the fact that the underlying concept of the symphony of the authorities fundamentally contradicted the autocratic ideology of Vasily III and Ivan IV. The change of political course at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries expectedly led to a radical change in the attitude of the authorities to the idea of the Third Rome.
Publishing: 28/12/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 01.12.2021
How to cite: Korenevskiy A.V. The Ideologeme of Deferred Demand, or How Many Times the Theory of “Moscow as the Third Rome” Was “Invented”? // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 6 (20), pp. 9–28. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-6-01.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2021
Keywords: Moscow as the Third Rome; invention of tradition; Filofei; Byzantine heritage; messianism