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Open any book, article, or encyclopedia entry that treats on popular performance in Old Russia and the term skomorokh will appear. The source will define skomorokh as an ancient Russian class or social group (often described in Russian accounts as a soslovie: estate, order, community) of professional performers-actors, singers, acrobats, storytellers, musicians, etc.-either coeval with or predating the official establishment of Christianity in Rus'1. This notion of a professional caste of entertainers interacting with other "estates" throughout the pre-Petrine period but remaining always distinct is one of a number of theses that exist like weeds in the garden of scholarship on Old Russian performance, reproducing and spreading avidly and choking out informed speculation on possible alternatives to this narrative. In the following essay, I will examine a single historical document from among the primary sources on skomorokhi in order to challenge established conclusions and suggest an alternate model for popular performance in Old Russia.
The document, a mid 16th century source, contains the following passage:
And jongleurs [skomorokhi] wander through faraway lands, gathered together in large bands of up to sixty and seventy and a hundred men, and eat and drink much in the villages at the peasants' expense, and steal their goods from the larders, and rob men on the roads. . . .2
"Faraway lands" accurately conveys the strange and perplexing (to modern ears at least) phrase: da po dal'nim stranam. These "lands," however, are not foreign countries, but the outer reaches of Muscovy, the far-flung provinces. A logical assumption is that this sort of lawlessness did not take place closer to the center. But the real problem with this passage is the number of skomorokhi given: sixty, seventy, even a hundred.3 Could this be possible; on the outer reaches of a sparsely populated 16th century Russia could such large groups be viable? Even if the local authorities in these "faraway lands" had no power to curtail the actions of such bands of marauders, could there possibly have been enough chickens and pigs to steal, enough travelers to mug, and enough locals to visit uninvited for dinner to sustain groups of sixty or more "wanderers?" This seems unlikely. Something else must have been going on. There must be some "back story" here.
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