About author
Abstract. The purpose of the paper is to consider development of Russo-Iranian relations in their chronological retrospective from the time of Boris Godunov to the first two years of the reign of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov with the help of the published sources of the late 16th–early 17th centuries and the scientific literature, accumulated over the last two centuries. One of the main sources used in this work was the “Chronicles of the Carmelites”, published in English in the 1930s. The information presented in it, as it was in some degree observed earlier by other researchers, stands markedly in contrast with the information from the Russian sources. Equally, the appeal to the work of the court historiographer of Shah Abbas Iskander-beg Munshi, which was only partly translated into Russian, made it possible to compare its’ information on the Iranian politics in the Transcaucasia to the information in the Russian sources and scientific literature, as well as to take a fresh look at partially incorrect ideas about the situation of Kakheti in 1605–1608 in the existing Russian historiography. The authors conclude that the Russian-Iranian relations during the aforementioned period remained continuous, which is proven by constant delegations from Abbas to Russia and from the Russian rulers, alternating during the Times of Troubles, to Iran. That being said, the policy of the Iranian Shah towards Russia does not undergo changes in terms of content, while the Iranian direction of Russian foreign policy at the same time noticeably degrades in the midst of internecine war.
Keywords: Shah Abbas, Boris Godunov, Time of Troubles, False Dmitry I, Carmelites, Ivan Zarutsky, Kakheti, Robert Shirley, False Dmitry II, Marina Mnishek.
For citation: Andreev A.A. Shah Abbas and Russian Time of Troubles: Discussion in Historiography on the Development of Russian-Iranian Relations, in Novoe Proshloe / The New Past. 2021. No. 4. Pp. 156–173. DOI 10.18522/2500‑3224‑2021‑4-156-173.
The article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).