Desperate Magic

The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia

Valerie Kivelson author Vladimir Petrov translator

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Academic Studies Press

Published:1st Dec '20

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Desperate Magic cover

In early modern Europe, thousands of women were burned as witches during the period of the witch hunts. From the court records of seventeenth-century Russia a very different picture emerges. The great majority of those accused of witchcraft were men. Broadly comparative, Desperate Magic by Valerie Kivelson is the first sustained study of seventeenth-century Russian witch trials. The book uses trial evidence to illuminate some of the central puzzles of Muscovite history. The routine use of torture in extracting and shaping confessions raises methodological and moral questions with continuing resonance in the world today. A major finding of this book is that witchcraft was not a marginal practice in early modern Russia. It was practiced by all ranks of society, from serf to tsaritsa at the same time that it was severely condemned and punished. Testimony from these cases lets us see into the emotional lives of illiterate women and men of the Russian past. This analysis shows how the State and relations of power were inscribed into everyday practices, and magic was used as a defense by ordinary people scrambling to survive in a fiercely inequitable world.

ISBN: 9781644694503

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

482 pages