I. Old and new paradigms about Muscovy.

A. Ideas of progress in Russian history.

1. Slavophiles and Westernizers.
2. "Modernization" theories.

B. The distorting lenses of nationalism, Marxism, Cold War ideologies.
C. New questions and new sources.
D. What we might learn about the processes of studying history.

II. The folly of youth? A 1960s perspective on Muscovite culture.

A. Finding the roots of Russia's Westernization.
B. The culture of the court elite and especially the Diplomatic Chancery.
C. Translated literature in late Muscovy.
D. All the news (but not for print).
E. The Great Turkes Defiance.

III. The wisdom of old age? Looking back at Muscovy from the early 21st century.

A. Academics at play-in the mountains of Central Asia.
B. Serendipity in scholarship-in the Uzbek National Library in Tashkent.
C. The History of a Book: a window into the culture of provincial Russia.

1. The world of Semen Popov.
2. Studying libraries and bookmen in late Muscovy.

a. Old libraries in modern times.
b. The methods of codicology.
c. Censuses.
d. Small town society.

3. Petrine innovation in the provinces.
4. The invention of local history: the "Tale of the Viatka Land."
5. Sacred spaces; popular religion; the icon of S. Nicholas Velikoretskii.
6. Viatka - a Holy City in a Holy Land.

D. Contexts: the world of the Stroganovs and the world of "Peter's nestlings."
E. Was Muscovy on the same road to "Non-Modernity" as the wider world?