Review of Russell Zguta, Russian Minstrels: A history of the Skomorokhi

Vexillum: the undergraduate journal of classical and mediaval studies. — Issue 2. — 2012.An exploration of the social and cultural history of the skomorokhi—East Slavic minstrelentertainers prominent in Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy between the tenth and seventeenth centuries C.E.—and their impact on Russian society and art at large, Russian Minstrels is of dire significance to scholars and lay people in a number of fields. Though Zguta’s work is principally meant for Slavicists, folklorists, oral literature specialists, music historians, and medievalists, selected sections of the study are recommended for art historians and classicists, especially those interested in comparative literature.
Just as Nikolai Karamzin set out to write the first definitive history of Russia during the early nineteenth century, Zguta has written the first comprehensive English-language analysis of the skomorokhi’s role in Russian cultural and social history, which is supported by a historiographical discussion and textual evidence from contemporary chronicles, registers, and literary works as well as artistic and toponymic evidence.