History Professor Participated in Slavic Conference, Published Book Chapter and Review

Dr. Russell Martin, Westminster College professor of history, served on two panels at an annual conference, authored a chapter in a book on Muscovite royal weddings, and published a book review.

Martin participated at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies conference Nov. 17-20 in Washington, D.C.  He served on a roundtable, "Portraiting Old Russia: Imagined Lives, 1300-1725," to discuss his contribution to Portraits of Old Russia, a book describing the life of Ivan the Terrible's fourth wife, Anna Koltovskaia. 

Martin chaired the panel "Muscovite Insults" on the politics and linguistics of early Russian insults.

Both panels included scholars from Harvard, Colgate, Southern Connecticut, Georgetown, Indiana, and DePaul Universities.

Martin authored "The Sovereign's Happy Occasion: New Sources and Textological Riddles in the Manuscript Descriptions of Muscovite Royal Weddings (Based on Materials in the Manuscript Division of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences)," a chapter in Modern Problems in Textology.

"This is a textological and codicological study of the surviving manuscript books that describe Muscovite royal weddings in the 16th and 17th centuries," Martin said.  "This is a very important book, with some of the most important scholars in Russia appearing in it.  I am the lone American scholar invited to contribute to this book that emerged from a 2009 conference in St. Petersburg, Russia."

Martin published a review of Barbara Skinner's On the Western Front of the Eastern Church in Canadian Slavonic Papers.

Martin, who has been with Westminster since 1996, earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a master's degree and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Martin appeared on A&E Biography in a broadcast on Ivan the Terrible as an expert on the controversial ruler.  He is the co-founder of the Muscovite Biographical Database, a Russian-American computerized register based in Moscow of early modern Russian notables.  The Neville Island, Pa., native is not only fluent in Russian, but also reads Old Church Slavonic/Russian, French, German, Latin, and Polish.

Martin continues to translate from Russian to English the official Webpage of Her Imperial Highness, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, the heiress to the vacant Russian throne.  Translations are available here.  Martin was awarded the Russian Imperial Order of St. Anna, second class, by the grand duchess for his work on behalf of the House of Romanov.

Contact Martin at (724) 946-6254 or email for additional information.

Dr. Russell Martin