Inventing Ivan Fedorov: Imperial Historical Imagination in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.

Abstract

Purpose. The article examines how the image of Ivan Fedorov was constructed in the historiography of the Romanov Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century and what role this figure played in shaping the imperial vision of the past.

Methods. The methodological framework of the study draws on the principles of the Cambridge School of intellectual history, the approaches of the “new imperial history,” and Maurice Halbwachs’s concept of the social conditioning of collective memory.

Scientific novelty. The study demonstrates that the ideological mechanisms underlying the formation of Ivan Fedorov’s image in the historical thought of the first half of the nineteenth century have not yet been subjected to a comprehensive and systematic analysis.

Conclusions. The article shows that historians of the first half of the nineteenth century integrated Ivan Fedorov into the grand narratives of imperial history, endowing his biography with features of progressivism and statism. His activity was interpreted as a step toward overcoming the state’s “backwardness” in relation to Western Europe, while the emergence of printing in Moscow was closely linked to the figure of Ivan the Terrible, reflecting the overall state-centered character of the discourse. In the biographies of the first printer, Church and Enlightenment were symbolically combined, whereas opponents of printing were rhetorically distanced from Orthodox tradition. A significant role in these interpretations was played by the Romantic concept of the “national spirit.” Ivan Fedorov’s life was inscribed into a general scheme of imperial history in which the Fatherland was defined in religious, political, and ethnic terms. At the same time, notions of the boundaries of “Russianness” remained blurred, which influenced interpretations of Fedorov’s activities on Ukrainian lands. The convergence of the concepts of Slavdom and Russianness reflected the impact of Pan-Slavist ideas, and his activity in Ukraine was presented primarily within the context of confrontation with Catholicism.