Fedor Vasilevich Kuritsyn

Kuritsyn, Fedor Vasil’evich 

Died no earlier than 1500. Russian political figure.

Kuritsyn was a duma embassy official. He exerted a great influence on Russia’s foreign policy during the reign of Ivan III Vasilievich. In 1482 he was sent to the Hungarian king Matthias Hunyadi to conclude an alliance against Poland; in 1494 he was dispatched to Lithuania. He participated in negotiations in Moscow with the representatives of foreign states. In 1485 he created in Moscow a circle of heretics. Kuritsyn came out against monasteries and monasticism as an institution and expressed ideas on the freedom of man’s will (on the “soul’s authority over itself “), interpreting this freedom more broadly than orthodox theology allowed. The last mention of him is in 1500, when Ivan Ill’s policy toward the heretics underwent a change. Support was replaced by persecution, which culminated in the crushing of the Moscow circle.

REFERENCES

Lur’e, Ia. S. Ideologicheskaia bor’ba v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XV–nachala XVI vv. Moscow-Leningrad, 1960.
Klibanov, A. I. Reformatsionnye dvizheniia v Rossii v XIV-pervoi polovine XVI vv. Moscow, 1960.

V. I. KORETSKII