A Muscovite bureaucratic graphosphere, where the administrative word became visible, took shape by the early sixteenth century. The existence of such a sphere cannot be taken for granted. Prior to 1200, Rusʹ princes relied little if at all on written texts as expressions of power or politics. Later rulers and their officials gradually incorporated documents into their administrative toolkit, eventually settling on the standardized form of the scroll. This article tracks the development and limits of Muscovite administrative texts through the visual evidence of miniatures in the late sixteenth-century Litsevoi letopisnyi svod (LLS, or Illustrated Chronicle Compendium), tracking the proliferation of the scroll as a means of communication and a symbol of command. Further, still drawing on the LLS, the article demonstrates that encounters with Siberian signing and oath-taking practices perplexed those schooled in the culture of the scroll and troubled Muscovite assertions of imperial power.
