Moscow, Nauka Publ. 1984. 288 p. New monograph by Professor M. M. Freidenberg, Doctor of Historical Sciences (Kalinin University) It was the result of his long-term study of the medieval history of Dalmatian cities and further evidence of the interest of Soviet researchers in the history of the city in the feudal system. The author set himself the task of telling about Dubrovnik, "its historical destinies and how its relations with the Turkish state developed" (p. 6). This determined the breadth of the chronological and geographical scope of the work. Freudenberg focuses on the millennial history of the city from its foundation to its loss of independence in the early 19th century. The monograph traces the close relationship of Dubrovnik with the Bosnian, Serbian and Bulgarian lands, first independent, then under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, and reveals the dramatic situation of free Dubrovnik, surrounded by Turkish possessions. A special feature of the monograph is the brightness and expressiveness of the narrative about historical events, and the literary merits of the book bring it closer to a work of fiction. The introduction begins with a vivid, emotional description of the 1667 Dubrovnik earthquake, when a large number of inhabitants were killed and "mountains of stone and rubble"remained of the city. But Dubrovnik was gradually revived after this disaster. Among the sources, M. M. Freudenberg names only the main ones - the statute of Dubrovnik, notarial acts, testimonies of contemporaries about individual events. Historiography is presented in a different way: first, the abundance of the latest Soviet and foreign, mainly Yugoslav, scientific literature, which was attracted by the author, is surprising, and, secondly, the conclusions and observations of most modern researchers are included in the book; this makes it a kind of horizontal cross-section of historiography, reflecting that level knowledge of the medieval history of Dubrovnik and Dalmatia, which ... Read more