1.3. ‘Of the russe commonwealth’

Giles Fletcher’s ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ is, as it has already been mentioned, the summary of the English experience in Muscovy. It is unquestionably one of the most important English works on Russia before the reign of Peter the Great.

The introduction in ‘Rude and barbarous kingdom’ mentions that Fletcher’s achievement is also remarkable because he spent only a little time in Russia.

In its aim and scope, Fletcher’s work far surpasses the other English writings on Muscovite Russia. Its author attempted to fulfill two complementary goals, ‘to note things of his own experience, of more importance than delight, and rather true than strange’ and to analyse the workings of the government and society of Muscovy in order to provide a systematic explanation of what he had observed. Such observations were not always agreeable and utterly veritable, as we’ll understand soon.

The Muscovite government, which had caused Fletcher so much grief and trouble, unwittingly made a significant contribution to his work when it expelled Jerome Horsey. On the long journey back to England Fletcher travelled with Horsey and seized an opportunity to question him about his experiences during his sixteen years of residence in Russia. How much he learnt from Horsey is not clear. In his own memoirs Horsey described Fletcher’s work and left no doubt about his view of his rile in its composition; ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ dealt with ‘the original nature disposition of Russian people, the laws, languages, government, discipline from their church and commonwealth, revenues, commodities, climate and situation, whereof it most consist, and with whom they have most league and commerce – with all which I did furnish him…’

Scholarly critics have been the least of Fletcher’s adversaries. On at least two occasions the published editions of his work suffered confiscation for political reasons. When the first edition appeared, the governors of the Russia Company complained to Lord Burghley that if the tsar’s government found out about the book, ‘the revenge thereof will light on their [the Company’s] people, and goods remaining in Russia, and utterly overthrow the trade forever’. ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ was finally published in 1591 and reprinted in 1643. Another issue of the 1643 edition appeared in 1657.

Over 250 years later, in September, 1848, Nicholas I of Russia supervised the confiscation of the first Russian translation of the work and meted out severe punishment to the officials of Imperial Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities in whose Proceedings it had appeared.

1.4. Analysis of ‘of the russe commonwealth’

The principal message of ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ is a dissection and interpretation of the ‘manner of government by the Russe emperor’. Fletcher’s opinions are clear from the very first page, the dedication to Queen Elizabeth in which he promised to describe ‘a true and strange face of a tyrannical state (most unlike to your own) without true knowledge of God, without written law, without common justice’. His only direct comment on England was the routine compliment that Elizabeth was a ‘prince of subjects, not of slaves, that are kept within duty by love, not by fear’. In this chapter I’m going to analyse each part in detail.