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BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS Omeljan Pritsak. the Origins of The BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS Omeljan Pritsak. The Origins of the Old Rus' Weights and Monetary Systems. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1998. xii, 172 pp. $29.00. A gap in the scholarly literature is filled by Pritsak's exploration of the devel- opment of the monetary sy em of Old Rus'. The primary focus is on coins pro- . duced in Old Rus' from the tenth through twelfth centuries, along with earlier ones minted by the Khazars and the Volgar Bulgars. Clearly challenged by Pritsak is the traditional belief that Byzantium was the sole inspiration of Old Rus' coinage in that West European, Khazar, Volga Bulgarian as well as native sources were also identified as inspiring selected aspects. As Pritsak writes, "The dependence of Old Rus' numismatic elements on Byzantine prototypes is to be expected, since Old Rus' accepted Byzantine Christian symbolism and its pictorial and literary ex- pressions when it accepted Eastern Christianity.... As it happened, the choices made by those who were responsible for minting coinage in Old Rus' were well considered, and assured the special national character of that coinage" (113). The text is divided into seven two illustrated tables chapters, appendices, and' twenty-' two of works cited. pages ' The first three chapters focus on the commonalties of the' European monetary systems and that of Old Rus' in terms of weight and symbols. Chapter 1 examines the Roman origins of the European monetary system, with subsections devoted to .. the coins produced from the seventh to ninth centuries by the English, Vikings, Germans, Byzantines and Muslims. Presented is an excellent discussion of their respective coins and weights that should be useful in authenticating coins. Lack- ing are pictures of those coins as well as the reasoning why different amounts of gold and ratios of gold to silver were used. In chapter 2 an overview is provided of the coinage system Pritsak concludes existed in the Khazar Empire. Demonstrated is the merging of Carolingian, Muslim, Jewish and Viking traditions in the form of Khazar coins, yet here again no pictorial examples are offered. A shorter, four page discussion follows in chapter 3 of the monetary system used by the Volga Bulgars and the influence of Muslim metrology. As in the preceding chapters no .. pictorial examples are provided. : Chapters 4 and 5 address Old Rus' coins in terms of the development of the givna serebra and a system of weights and measures. No pictorial examples of the givna serbra are offered. Of fundamental importance in these two chapters is the idea that money was linked in Western barbarian cultures to the value of a person, thus the term wergeld (man-value). In Russian society this was operationalized in terms of the givna serbra, which while never directly defined by the author, ap- pears to mean a unit of silver. Pritsak undertakes an interesting discussion of the origins of the weight of the givna serbra, looking at its connections to the weight systems used by Byzantium, the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars. Pritsak goes on. to 464 examine the development of Russian l'oinagé systems in Kyiv and Novgorod and how their neighbors influenced . The most interesting and readable portions of the study are chapters 6, 7 and 8, which concentrate on the iconography, epigraphy and classification of the Uld Rus' coins. In these .chapters Pritsak coni..,dose to replicating in the field of Old Rus' coins what David R. Sear's does in Roman Coins. Pritsak's conclusion is that "The majority of iconographic and epigraphic elements on the Old Rus' coins are of Byzantine Christian origin. They often are exactly datable, so that they can serve as a guide in establishing the chronology of the Old Rus' issues" (117). These chapters are set off from the other portion of the book by the modest amount of historical background, thus breaking the monotony of a series of weights and measures. These chapters are followed on pages 125 through 137 with a series of iillustrative tables' of Byzantine and Old Rus' coins minted during the tenth through twelfth centuries. The illustrative tables are a high point of the study, because this is the only meaningful opportunity to view a limited selection of the coins discussed in the previous 124 pages. This volume will disappoint historians and political scientists seeking to un- . derstand the context of the development of Old Rus' coinage. Ignored is the influ- . ence of political, social and economic doctrine and events on Old Rus' coinage ex- cept to a small degree in the final chapters. The text reads as an informational doc- ument rather than as a scholarly study, given the lack of a thesis statement, hy- potheses or a unifying introductory chapter. Chapters simply begin with no intro- duction of the subject or its relevance to the study. The strength of the study is found in the examination of cultural relationships. Pritsak makes a strong argument, albeit one that is not clearly laid out, that as- pects of Old Rus' coinage are borrowed primarily from Byzantium, and to a much lesser degree from other nations or cultures in order to adapt them to national re- quirements. Likewise those seeking to authenticate Old Rus' coins will be well pleased with the volume. Pritsak's emphasis on weights as well as symbols and inscriptions offers a valuable guide for distinguishing authentic from counterfeit coins. Jeffrey L Prewitt St. Andrews Presbyterian College Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire. Edited by Jane Burbank and David Ransel. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. xxiii, 359 pp. $39.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). This fine collection of on the cultural and exceptionally essays social, politi- ' cal history of modem Russia was chosen from the larger body of work generated - by. the "Imperial Russian History Initiative" in the early 1990s. This project, jointly sponsored by the Social Sciences Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, encompassed three workshops (held in 1991, 1993 and 1994) at which participants were invited "to re-envision Russian history" by .
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