Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia

For professional and amateur lovers of history, who already have a good sense of what Russia was all about, this book gives us some fascinating glimpses into a phenomenon that was not really on the periphery of everyday life in that puzzling and fascinating country. Well written and well researched, Professor Kivelson makes a solid contribution to a relatively new field of historical research about Imperial Russia. She makes the very noteworthy point that witchcraft and witch trials in Tsaritst times did not result from the same social pressures that sparked them in Western Europe or New England and did not involve such things as "pacts with the devil" or "treason to God." Instead, the Russians were apparently much more concerned with the practical matter of how much damage an evil spell might cause and not, as in the west, how magic "worked." And, when it came to witchcraft as a threat to social order, amazingly enough, even the Tsar could be called in to adjudicate.On the one hand, Kivelson has done quite a bit of research: she has ample support for her contention that the threat and application of witchcraft was a way to restore a kind of power to people who were otherwise utterly at the mercy of an oppressive and rigidly hierarchical society. But she does not really explore the issue of separating prayer from the casting of spells, or the difference between herbs and grasses used for bewitchment in contrast to the long, still extant Russian tradition of herbal folk healing. Finally, she alludes to historical figures who had a witchcraft connection -for instance Boris Godunov and the False Dmitrii -but does not quite hit the nail on the head. Boris would of course have had astrologers and perhaps like other medieval kings, herbalists, poisoners, soothsayers and alchemists at his disposal. Although their official roles at the tsar's court might not have been exactly the same as say in Henry IV's court in France. And Dmittii's corpse was left to decay and then cremated, pointedly to keep him from "rising from the dead." Which, of course, did not stop the Second False Dmitrii from claiming a miraculous escape from an assassination attempt and attempting a second match on Moscow.But - my quibbling aside, Kivelson's book, which demonstrates compassion for people who were subjected to prison and torture in the quest for "the truth" , certainly provides insight into Russian society during the early modern era. And it reminds us that social phenomena that seem similar to things we know about innthe west may nevertheless have a different realization elsewhere in the world when inspected more deeply. This book does look deeply into the subject of witchcraft in Russia. And I'm very glad I read it!

I am very pleased.