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Hmm, I'm not terribly convinced by those comments that the letter never happened. The justification that it's "not historical" comes from someone saying it wasn

Hmm, I'm not terribly convinced by those comments that the letter never happened. The justification that it's "not historical" comes from someone saying it wasn't mentioned in a summary of Ottoman-Cossack diplomatic relations, but there were many letters between the two sides during that time. It simply wasn't mentioned in the summary, not explicitly mentioned as fake. Absence of evidence and all that. Furthermore, there's not a huge gap between the time of the incident in 1676 and the earliest version of the letter we've found so far, in the early 1800s. 100-some years sounds like a lot of time, but things happened slower back then; it took 11 years just to paint the painting. Finally, even if this particular letter is "not historical", we do have other, substantiated letters from the Zaporozhians to the Ottomans with various insults, and the painting was created with the help of historians, so the painting is fairly accurate even if the exact letter may have been a slight exaggeration of other contemporary letters.

tptacek 5y ago
It doesn't seem like there's major doubt that the Cossacks sent a rude retort to a surrender demand, but rather that these responses have become folkloric and are embellished over the generations to the point where there's little truth left in the actual words.
- shoto_io 5y ago
  Does the exact content really matter that much though? There was a letter, it was rude, they had a lot of fun writing it…
  - goto11 5y ago
    For historians it matter, which is why the discussion is on AskHistorians.
- owenversteeg 5y ago
  >It doesn't seem like there's major doubt that the Cossacks sent a rude retort to a surrender demand There's no doubt that they did that. We have multiple documented responses, some of which are quite witty I'll add. (If you remove the old-fashioned tone of voice from the translations and speak them as someone would today, even the drier ones can be fairly amusing.) There are also embellished or fabricated responses even in modern times. The question is - which of those is this letter? I don't think we can rule out any possibility based on the information we have available. We simply have a gap of a hundred-odd years in which we can find no surviving written evidence that people talked about it. I don't think that's evidence enough that it didn't exist.
  - jameshart 5y ago
    The issue here might be the fact that the Wikipedia article is about the painting, but includes a purported text of ‘the letter’ - presumably of the letter in the painting - but there’s no citation given for where that particular text is sourced or it’s translation.
    - owenversteeg 5y ago
      No, that's not the issue here. There are various texts for the letter going back to the 1800s. The issue is that there is no record of the letter between 1676 and the 1800s, causing some Redditors to believe it was a fabrication of that time.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        I mean, it's the issue I was bringing up with my comment, since the Wikipedia text of the letter seemed implausible, apparently for good reason. :)
        owenversteeg 5y ago
        Ah, my bad, I misinterpreted your comment.
  - stavros 5y ago
    > If you remove the old-fashioned tone of voice from the translations and speak them as someone would today I think that's almost wholly because of the the "thou", which was added to distinguish from the polite plural "you", but maybe it shouldn't have been. I doubt anyone would have mistaken "fuck your mother" for the polite plural.
reaperducer 5y ago
I'm not terribly convinced by those comments that the letter never happened. Agreed. There's a lot of unwarranted skepticism by both real, and wannabe history experts these days. Even events from last century that were heavily documented in books and scholarly texts are sometimes called fake by people on the internet because there isn't a web link to the material. It makes me sad when I see the library throwing out reference books, knowing that most of that information will be gone forever, and the people who know its contents will never be believed.
- goto11 5y ago
  Note that the people in r/AskHistorians are actual historians, or people knowledgeable enough of the subject to source their claims.
tasogare 5y ago
It's Reddit. There is no way to gauge user competencies and most of them suffer from acute Dunning–Kruger effect. I wouldn't trust anything read there as more than mere theories. It can be convenient to find serious resources (books, papers) but most of the content is garbage.
- goto11 5y ago
  It is AskHistorians, a very strongly moderated sub-reddit where comments get deleted if they can't show valid sources. The discussion is much higher level than here on HN.

tptacek 5y ago

It doesn't seem like there's major doubt that the Cossacks sent a rude retort to a surrender demand, but rather that these responses have become folkloric and are embellished over the generations to the point where there's little truth left in the actual words.

shoto_io 5y ago
Does the exact content really matter that much though? There was a letter, it was rude, they had a lot of fun writing it…
- goto11 5y ago
  For historians it matter, which is why the discussion is on AskHistorians.
owenversteeg 5y ago
>It doesn't seem like there's major doubt that the Cossacks sent a rude retort to a surrender demand There's no doubt that they did that. We have multiple documented responses, some of which are quite witty I'll add. (If you remove the old-fashioned tone of voice from the translations and speak them as someone would today, even the drier ones can be fairly amusing.) There are also embellished or fabricated responses even in modern times. The question is - which of those is this letter? I don't think we can rule out any possibility based on the information we have available. We simply have a gap of a hundred-odd years in which we can find no surviving written evidence that people talked about it. I don't think that's evidence enough that it didn't exist.
- jameshart 5y ago
  The issue here might be the fact that the Wikipedia article is about the painting, but includes a purported text of ‘the letter’ - presumably of the letter in the painting - but there’s no citation given for where that particular text is sourced or it’s translation.
  - owenversteeg 5y ago
    No, that's not the issue here. There are various texts for the letter going back to the 1800s. The issue is that there is no record of the letter between 1676 and the 1800s, causing some Redditors to believe it was a fabrication of that time.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      I mean, it's the issue I was bringing up with my comment, since the Wikipedia text of the letter seemed implausible, apparently for good reason. :)
      - owenversteeg 5y ago
        Ah, my bad, I misinterpreted your comment.
- stavros 5y ago
  > If you remove the old-fashioned tone of voice from the translations and speak them as someone would today I think that's almost wholly because of the the "thou", which was added to distinguish from the polite plural "you", but maybe it shouldn't have been. I doubt anyone would have mistaken "fuck your mother" for the polite plural.

reaperducer 5y ago

I'm not terribly convinced by those comments that the letter never happened. Agreed. There's a lot of unwarranted skepticism by both real, and wannabe history experts these days. Even events from last century that were heavily documented in books and scholarly texts are sometimes called fake by people on the internet because there isn't a web link to the material. It makes me sad when I see the library throwing out reference books, knowing that most of that information will be gone forever, and the people who know its contents will never be believed.

goto11 5y ago
Note that the people in r/AskHistorians are actual historians, or people knowledgeable enough of the subject to source their claims.

tasogare 5y ago

It's Reddit. There is no way to gauge user competencies and most of them suffer from acute Dunning–Kruger effect. I wouldn't trust anything read there as more than mere theories. It can be convenient to find serious resources (books, papers) but most of the content is garbage.

goto11 5y ago
It is AskHistorians, a very strongly moderated sub-reddit where comments get deleted if they can't show valid sources. The discussion is much higher level than here on HN.