Tatisichef, Vassili

, a modern historian, in 1720 began to collect materials for a complete history of Russia and continued his researches without intermission for the space of thirty years. This indefatigable compiler finished his account to the reign of Feodor Ivanovitch; and was bringing it down to this century, when death put a period to his labours. Part of this great work was consumed in a fire; and the remainder was published after the author’s death by Mr. Muller. It consists of three large volumes in quarto. The first contains several curious dissertations relative to the antiquity of the Sclavonian nation; while the second and third comprise the history of the Russian empire, from its earliest origin to 1237.

It can hardly be called a regular history, but is rather a connected series of chronicles, whose antiquated Sclavonian dialects are only changed into the Russian idiom; and the author is justly censured for not regularly citing the various annalists as he abridges or new models them, and for not assigning the reasons which induced him to prefer the writers whose relations he has adopted, to those which he has rejected. ²