characteristics turned her successful image of a pious ruler into that of a dangerous rival for Peter I's throne. Some broad conclusions based upon the composition of a single icon or artifact remain open to interpretation. Some readers will cavil at the author's occasional infer- ence that the realm as a whole participated in the understanding of the imagery and roles as they are presented here. Yet these concerns should not discount the worth of visual artifacts as valuable purveyors of information. Thyret has supported many claims with deft syntheses and documentary evidence. She has argued well for the en- gendered position of the tsaritsy and tsarevny as intercessors, although, of course, any Orthodox may send up petitionary prayers for others. Whether this places a royal fe- male in a higher spiritual position than the tsar, as is argued for Tsaritsa Mariia Il'inichna, may be overstatement. Nonetheless, by analyzing multiple images in a sin- gle context, Thyret has skillfully placed Irina Godunova in an empowering environ- ment. Whether these images were understood as they are presented here is hard to say, but this does not diminish the importance of Thyret's interpretations. Historians may disagree with portions of this text; however, they cannot ignore this work as a valu- able contribution to our understanding of the religious context of Muscovite court life in general and the role of royal women within it.

Jennifer B. Spock Eastern Kentucky University

Chester S. L. Dunning. Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty. University Park: The Pennsylvania State Uni- versity Press, 2001. xiii, 657 pp. $65.00.

Let it not be said Dunning lacks the courage of his convictions. Sprinkled through- out this excellent history of the Time of Troubles are such pithy and declaratory statements as "This is not true," "Nothing could be further from the truth," "This was definitely not the case." Dunning also likes to characterize his historical protagonists: "brilliant and self-effacing Prince Pozharskii," "ambitious and ruthless Zarutskii," "in- triguer [Vasilii] Shuiskii"; the first pretender "Dmitrii was a clement and forgiving prince." These remarks are marshaled with impressive research to offer nothing less than an ambitious reevaluation of the scholarship and history of what Dunning calls, Russia's first civil war. Dunning hopes to chart a post-Marxist methodology and reminds the reader, time and again, that neither the Bolotnikov nor cossack rebellions constituted class war or social revolution, an approach that in varying degrees of emphasis characterized pre- revolutionary Russian and Soviet, and even Western, scholarship. Dunning insists the Time of Troubles witnessed not a horizontal class division but a vertical split in which regional rebellion and civil war cut across class lines. Dunning offers a comparative approach, one that makes Russia a variant of the general crisis of the seventeenth- century fiscal-military state. Utilizing, among others, Jack A. Goldstone's "demo- graphic/structural" model of the destabilizing consequences of demographic growth, particularly upon the elite, who competed for scarcer positions at court, the military, or bureaucracy, Dunning places particular emphasis on the social tensions engendered from a doubling of the sixteenth-century Russian population and its conjuncture with price increases. Nonetheless, Dunning is aware that serfdom and economic catastro- phe, which deepened the upheavals of the Time of Troubles, have more to do with the demographic disasters from the 1570s and the great famine of 1601-1603. Dunning offers a multi-causal explanation of the Time of Troubles, whose features include the impact of the sixteenth-century military revolution; the effects of the "lit- tle-ice age" upon agriculture; an economic and fiscal crisis; a growing elite struggling over a declining fund of available land and peasant labor; the economic ruin of many deti 6oiarskie, who sold themselves as elite military slaves; impoverishment of towns; the enserfment of lower status military servitors; the spread of banditry; and the flight of fugitive peasants, slaves, bandits, escaped convicts, soldiers, and dispossessed landowners to frontier cossack communities. Dunning presents a remarkable reassessment of the first pretender Dmitrii as a popular, loved, enlightened, and charismatic ruler, whose interests in things Western pre-figured in some respects Peter the Great. He rejects the commonly held views that Dmitrii was the pathetic, unpopular, defrocked monk, Otrepev; a puppet of the Poles. Instead, Dunning entertains the possibility that Dmitrii survived his so-called death, or was secretly raised by the Nagoi clan to believe he was Dmitrii. Thus, Dunning is at pains to reject the idea that Marfa Nagoi (the mother of the true Dmitrii) joined in the plot to remove the pretender. The issue of the pretender Dmitrii raises interesting questions concerning Russian popular culture. Dmitrii's support cut across class lines because of the firm belief the Russian land needed to be purified from a "tsar-tormentor" (tsar' muchitel �, namely Boris Godunov, and the sacred ruling dynasty somehow restored. Yet the cossacks, who were among Dmitrii's most zealous supporters, Dunning describes elsewhere as only nominally Orthodox. Dunning also does not adequately explain why a "true" Dmitrii would have converted to Catholicism and would marry a Polish Catholic prin- cess, Marina Mniszech, or why the Muscovite elite, clergy (except notably Hermogen) and common people were not outraged by the violations of Orthodox custom in Dmitrii's wedding - as Dunning insists they were not - given the importance of Or- thodox belief. The riots that ensued and the murder of Dmitrii, Dunning believes, have more to do with the behavior of Dmitrii's Polish wedding guests and the unpopular plot hatched by Vasilii Shuiskii than with the threat of a Catholic couple sitting on the royal throne. Indeed, Dunning operates on the assumption that any assessment derived from the Shuiskiis concerning the pretenders, as well as Bolomikov and the cossacks, is to be dismissed as nothing more than propaganda. Given Dmitrii's extraordinary popularity, Dunning needs to explain further Vasilii Shuiskii's support in much of central and northern Russia. Dunning is right to emphasize that the Bolotnikov and cossack rebellions were not peasant revolutions and contained no program for radical redistribution of land, wealth, or power. Bolotnikov's army contained mostly cossacks, petty gentry, lower status military servitors, townsmen, but few peasants. Although runaway serfs and slaves joined the cossacks, Dunning stresses that cossacks should not be seen as peas- ants, but as a military organization in formation, seeking a status akin to the gentry,