The Folk "Myth of the Tsar": A Cultural Transfer From a "Caesar" to the "Venetian Imposture" of Yemelyan Pugachev

The article explores the features of "cultural transfer" as a methodology of scientific research. It is shown that the cognitive concept "cultural transfer" appeared in the 1980s in the works of Michel Espagne and Michael Werner. Later, due to its effectiveness, it became widespread in the humanities, including historical science. The article attempts to identify and test the epistemological possibilities of "cultural transfer" to study some important aspects of the Russian historical past. For this purpose, various links of evolution of the Latin concept "Caesar" in the domestic political tradition are considered. It is shown that in ancient times this concept was borrowed by the Roman neighbours as a designation of the supreme ruler. Later it entered our lexicon and was transformed through the Russian "Caesar" into the actual "Tsar". In the Russian political tradition, primarily in the Moscow period, through numerous forms of representation, this title was sacralized: the Tsar is the anointed of God on earth; God is the Tsar of heaven, the Tsar is the God of the earth. Reinterpreted by folk culture within the framework of the antithesis of true and false tsars, the cult of the monarch formed a stable folk "myth of the Tsar". Against the background of the crisis of legitimacy of the authorities of the early 17th century and later, the myth gave rise to a string of impostors of a monarchical type; their total number in the 17th-18th centuries reached almost one and a half hundred. Among the impostors, one of the most famous and successful was Yemelyan Pugachev. Under the name of Peter III, he headed the people's revolt, largest in Russian history. The colourful figure of the self-proclaimed "third Emperor", who raised and united many thousands of underclass people around him, aroused the enduring interest of Europeans and, in turn, became the object of mythologization. One of its bright fruits in European literature was the case of the "Venetian impostor" Pugachev. Made famous by the book False Peter III in French, this case had an impact on the Russian literature of the early 19th century. In 1809 a Russian translation of this book and a short extract in the form of Anecdotes about the Rebel and Impostor Emelka Pugachev were published in Moscow. It is concluded that the methodology of "cultural transfer" allows a better understanding of the features of the Russian political tradition. In particular, it provides an opportunity to successfully identify and analyse the features of the national "myth of the Tsar", widespread in the real historical past and in the literary process of our country.

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