Abstract
In 1998 the author published an article ‘What Rus’ ‘letopisi’ were written for?’ (‘letopisi’ can be translated as ‘chronicles’ or, rather, ‘annals’). Here this article is re-published and then followed by a review of new scholarly ideas as well as some considerations on the possible ways of resolving of this problem. Among such ways the author suggests: a study of such aspects of the letopisi-writing as the process of annalists’ work, the circle of events written down in the annals, the status of the annalists and their patrons, the possible audience of the annals; an attention to comparative data (what was the purpose of similar texts in other countries); a study of the place of the annals among the other written texts in Old Rus’; a study of later texts which in the 15th–18th centuries probably took away some of the letopisi’s functions.
Keywords
Old Rus’, history, source sturdies, letopsis, annals, chronicles, historical writing, writing, comparative studies
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