A history of Russia

by Riazanovsky

  The Reigns of Alexis and Theodore

  Michael died in 1645 at the age of forty-eight, and his only son Alexis or Aleksei, a youth of sixteen, succeeded him as tsar. Known as Tishaishii, the Quietest One, in spite of his outbursts of anger and general impulsiveness, Alexis left a favorable impression with many contemporaries, as well as with subsequent historians. In his brilliant reconstruction of the tsar's character Kliuchevsky called Alexis "the kindest man, a glorious Russian soul" and presented him both as the epitome of Muscovite culture and as one of the pioneers of the new Russian interest in the West. Even if we allow for a certain exaggeration and stylization in Kliuchevsky's celebrated analysis, there remains the image of an attractive person, remarkably sensitive and considerate in his relations with other people, an absolute ruler who was not at all a despot. Alexis had been brought up in the Muscovite religious tradition, and he continued to be a dedicated and well-informed churchgoer and to observe fasts and rituals throughout his life. At the same time he developed an interest in the West and Western culture, including architecture and also the theatre, which was an innovation for Russia. The tsar liked to write and left behind him many fascinating letters.

  Alexis's long reign, 1645-76, was by no means quiet. Old crises and problems persisted and some new ones appeared. In addition, the tsar was a weak ruler, although an attractive person, and especially at first depended

  very heavily on relatives and other advisers, who often failed him. The boyar Boris Morozov, Alexis's Western-oriented tutor who married a sister of Alexis's wife, and Prince Elijah Miloslavsky, Alexis's father-in-law, became especially prominent after the accession of the new sovereign. Morozov acted with intelligence and ability, but his efforts to replenish the treasury by such means as an increase in the salt tax and the sale of the hitherto forbidden tobacco, to which the Church objected, antagonized the masses. Also, some of his proteges and appointees robbed the people. Narrow selfishness, greed, and corruption characterized the behavior of Miloslavsky and his clique. In May 1648 the exasperated inhabitants of Moscow staged a large rebellion, killing a number of officials and forcing the tsar to execute some of the worst offenders, although both Morozov and Miloslavsky escaped with their lives. Shortly afterwards rebellions swept through several other towns, including Novgorod and especially Pskov.

  Later in the reign, when the government was still in desperate straits financially, it attempted to improve matters by debasing the coinage. The debasing of silver with copper, begun in 1656, proved to be no more successful than similar efforts in other countries: it led to inflation, a further financial dislocation, and the huge "copper coin riot" of 1662. But the greatest rebellion of the reign, headed by Stenka, or Stepan, Razin and long remembered by the people in song and story, occurred in 1670-71. It bore striking similarities to the lower-class uprisings of the Time of Troubles. Razin, a commander of a band of Don cossacks, first attracted attention as a daring freebooter who raided Persia and other lands along the Caspian Sea and along the lower Volga. In the spring of 1670, he started out with his band on a more ambitious undertaking, moving up the Volga and everywhere proclaiming freedom from officials and landlords. In town after town along the river members of the upper classes were massacred, while the soldiers and the common people welcomed Razin. Razin's emissaries had similar success in widespread areas in the hinterland. Native tribes as well as the Russian masses proved eager to overthrow the established order. The rebel army reached Simbirsk and grew to some 20,000 men. Yet its poor organization and discipline gave the victory to the regular Muscovite troops, which included several regiments trained in the Western manner. Razin and some followers escaped to the Don. But the following spring, in 1671, he was seized by cossack authorities and handed over to Muscovite officials to be publicly executed. Several months later Astrakhan, the last center of the rebellion, surrendered.

  In addition to suppressing uprisings, the government took steps to improve administration and justice in order to assuage popular discontent. Of major importance was the introduction of a new legal code, the Ulozhenie of 1649. Approved in principle by the especially convened zemskii sobor of 1648 and produced by a commission elected by the sobor, the new code

  provided the first systematization of Muscovite laws since 1550. It marked

  a great improvement over its predecessors and was not to be superseded

  until 1835.

  The extension of Muscovite jurisdiction to Ukraine in 1654 represented

  an event of still greater and more lasting significance. As we remember, that land after 1569 found itself under Polish, rather than Lithuanian, control. Association with Poland meant increasing pressure of the Polish social order - based on the exclusive privileges of the gentry and servitude of the masses - as well as pressure of Catholicism on the Orthodox Ukrainian people. The religious issue became more intense after 1596. That year marked the Union of Brest and the establishment of the so-called Uniate Church, that is, a Church linked to Rome but retaining the Eastern ritual, the Slavonic language in its services, and its other practices and customs. Although the Orthodox community split violently on the subject of union, each side anathemizing the other, the Polish government chose to proceed as if the union had been entirely successful and the Uniate Church had replaced the Orthodox in the eastern part of the realm. Yet, in fact, although most Orthodox bishops in the Polish state favored the union, the majority of the Orthodox people did not. Two churches, therefore, competed in Ukraine: the Uniate, promoted by the government but often lacking other support, and the Orthodox, opposed and sometimes persecuted by authorities but supported by the masses. Lay Orthodox brotherhoods and a small, diminishing, but influential group of Orthodox landed magnates helped the Church of the people.

  The cossacks also entered the fray. Around the middle of the sixteenth century the Dnieper cossacks, the most celebrated of all cossack "hosts," had established their headquarters, the Sech - Sich in Ukrainian - on an island in the Dnieper beyond the cataracts. They proceeded to stage unbelievably daring raids in all directions, but especially against the Crimean Tartars and Turkey - as described in detail by Hrushevsky and other Ukrainian historians. The cossacks developed a peculiar society, both military and democratic, for their offices were elective and a general gathering of all cossacks made the most important decisions. The Polish government faced difficulties in trying to control the cossacks. Stephen Bathory and his successors allowed them very considerable autonomy, but also established a definite organization for the "host" and introduced the category of registered, that is, officially recognized, cossacks to whom both autonomy and the new organization applied. All other cossacks were to be treated simply as peasants. The Polish policy had some success in that it helped to develop economic and social ties between the cossack upper stratum and the Polish gentry. Yet the same well-established cossacks retained ethnic and, especially, religious links with the Ukrainian people. The ambivalent position of the registered cossacks, particularly of their commanders, re-

  peatedly affected their behavior. An example is the case of the hetman, that is, the chief commander, Peter Sagaidachny, or Sahaidachny, who did so much to strengthen and protect the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, but in many other matters supported the policies of the Polish government. Nevertheless, as the struggle in Ukraine deepened, the cossacks sided on the whole with the people. And if the hetmans and registered cossacks, who after the expansion in 1625 numbered six thousand men, obtained certain advantages from their association with Poland and found themselves often with divided loyalties, the unrecognized cossacks, who were several times more numerous, as well as the peasants, saw in Poland only serfdom and Catholicism and had no reason to waver.

  From 1624 to 1638 a series of cossack and peasant rebellions swept Ukraine. Only with great exertion and after several defeats did the Polish army and government at last prevail. The ruthless Polish pacification managed to force obedience for no longer than a decade. In 1648 the Ukrainians rose again under an
able leader Bogdan, or Bohdan, Khmelnitsky in what has been called the Ukrainian War of Liberation. After some brilliant successes, achieved with the aid of the Crimean Tartars, and two abortive agreements with Poland, the Ukrainians turned again to Moscow. Earlier, in 1625, 1649, and 1651, the Muscovite government had failed to respond to the Ukrainian request, which, if acceded to, would have meant war against Poland. However, the zemskii sobor of 1653 urged Tsar Alexis to take under his sovereign authority Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky and his entire army "with their towns and lands." Both sides thus moved toward union.

  The final step was taken in Pereiaslavl in January 1654. A rada, or assembly, of the army and the land considered the alternatives open to the Ukraine - subjection to Poland, a transfer of allegiance to Turkey, or a transfer of allegiance to Muscovy - and decided in favor of the Orthodox tsar. After that, the Ukrainians swore allegiance to the tsar. A boyar, Basil Buturlin, represented Tsar Alexis at the assembly of Pereiaslavl. It would seem that, contrary to the opinion of many Ukrainian historians, the new arrangement represented unconditional Ukrainian acceptance of the authority of Moscow. The political realities of the time, with the Ukrainians, not the Muscovite government, pressing for union, the political practice of the Muscovite state, and the specific circumstances of the union all lead to this conclusion. It should be noted, on the other hand, that in subsequent decades and centuries the Ukrainians acquired good reasons to complain of the Russian government, which eventually abrogated entirely the considerable autonomy granted to the Ukrainians after they had sworn allegiance to the Muscovite tsar, and which imposed, or helped to impose, upon them many heavy burdens and restrictions, including serfdom and measures meant to arrest the development of Ukrainian literary language and culture. After the union, the Ukrainians proceeded to play a very important

  part in Muscovite government and culture, for they were of the same religion as the Great Russians and very close to them ethnically, but were more familiar with the West. In particular, many Ukrainians distinguished themselves as leading supporters of the reforms of Peter the Great and his successors.

  The war between the Muscovite state and Poland, which with Swedish intervention at one point threatened complete disaster to Poland, ended in 1667 with the Treaty of Andrusovo, which was negotiated on the Russian side by one of Alexis's ablest assistants, Athanasius Ordyn-Nashchokin. The Dnieper became the boundary between the two states, with the Ukraine on the left bank being ceded to Moscow and the right-bank Ukraine remaining under Poland. Kiev, on the right bank, was an exception, for it was to be left for two years under Muscovite rale. Actually Kiev stayed under Moscow beyond the assigned term, as did Smolensk, granted to the tsar for thirteen and a half years; and the treaty of 1686 confirmed the permanent Russian possession of the cities. The Muscovite state also fought an inconclusive war against Sweden that ended in 1661 and managed to defend its new possessions in Ukraine in a long struggle with Turkey that lasted until 1681. In Ukrainian history the period following the Union of Pereiaslavl, Bogdan Khmelnitsky's death in 1657, and the Treaty of Andrusovo is vividly described as "the Ruin," and its complexities rival those of the Russian Time of Troubles. Divided both physically and in orientation and allegiance, the Ukrainians followed a number of competing leaders who usually, in one way or another, played off Poland against Moscow; Hetman Peter Doroshenko even paid allegiance to Turkey. Constant and frequently fratricidal warfare decimated the people and exhausted the land. Yet the Muscovite hold on the left-bank Ukraine remained, and the arrangement of 1654 acquired increasing importance with the passage of time.

  Significant events in the second half of Alexis's reign include the ecclesiastical reform undertaken by Patriarch Nikon and the resulting major split in the Russian Orthodox Church. Nikon himself certainly deserves notice. Of peasant origin, intelligent, and possessing an extremely strong and domineering character, he attracted the favorable attention of the tsar, distinguished himself as metropolitan in Novgorod, and, in 1652, became patriarch. The strong-willed cleric proceeded to exercise a powerful personal influence on the younger and softer monarch. Alexis even gave Nikon the title of Great Sovereign, thus repeating the quite exceptional honor bestowed upon Patriarch Philaret by his son, Tsar Michael. The new patriarch, expressing a viewpoint common in the Catholic West, but not in the Orthodox world, claimed that the church was superior to the state and endeavored to assert his authority over the sovereign's. Charged with papism, he answered characteristically: "And why not respect the pope for that which is good." Nikon pushed his power and position too far. In 1658

  Alexis quarreled with his exacting colleague and mentor. Finally, the Church council of 1666-67, in which Eastern patriarchs participated, deposed and defrocked Nikon. The former Great Sovereign ended his days in exile in a distant monastery.

  The measures of Patriarch Nikon that had the most lasting importance concerned a reform of Church books and practices that resulted in a permanent cleavage among the Russian believers. While this entire subject, the fascinating issue of the Old Belief, will be considered when we discuss religion in Muscovite Russia, it might be mentioned here that the same ecclesiastical council of 1666-67 that condemned Nikon entirely upheld his reform. The last decade of Tsar Alexis's reign passed in religious strife and persecution.

  Alexis's successor Theodore, his son by his first wife, became tsar at the age of fourteen and died when he was twenty. He was a sickly and undistinguished person, whose education, it is interesting to note, included not only Russian and Church Slavonic, but also Latin and Polish taught by a learned theologian and writer, Simeon of Polotsk. Theodore's brief reign, 1676-82, has been noted for the abolition of mestnichestvo. It was in 1682 that this extremely cumbersome and defective system of service appointments at last disappeared, making it easier later for Peter the Great to reform and govern the state. The mestnichestvo records were burned.

  XVIII

  MUSCOVITE RUSSIA: ECONOMICS, SOCIETY, INSTITUTIONS

  The debate concerns the issue as to whether the peasants had been tied to their masters prior to the Ulozhenie. As we already had reason to learn from the above, the gentry and the lower servitors did not ask for the repeal of St. George's Day. They, as well as the peasants, knew that it had been repealed, even if temporarily. The peasants hoped for the restoration of their ancient right and indubitably wanted that to happen; the landlords neither wanted it, nor thought it likely to occur. The Ulozhenie put an end to the hopes of the peasants and fully met the demands of the gentry and the lower servitors, not directly, however, but indirectly, by means of the recognition of the time-tested practice of forbidden years, which was not to be repealed.

  GREKOV

  The zemskie sobory in the Muscovite state represent a form of popular participation in the discussion and decision of some of the most important questions of legislation and government. But what form of participation it is, how it arose and developed - these problems have led to no agreement in historical literature.

  DIAKONOV

  One of the most spectacular aspects of Russian history is the unique, enormous, and continuous expansion of Russia.

  LANTZEFF

  To quote Liashchenko, and in effect the entire Marxist school of historians: "The agrarian order and rural economy again serve as a key to the understanding of all economic and social relationships within the feudal economy and society of the Moscow state during the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries." And while the term feudal in this passage exemplifies the peculiar Soviet usage mentioned in an earlier chapter, Liashchenko is essentially correct in emphasizing the importance of agriculture for Muscovite Russia.

  Rye, wheat, oats, barley, and millet constituted the basic crops. Agricultural technique continued the practices of the appanage period, which actually lasted far into modern times. The implements included wooden or iron ploughs, harrows, scythes, and sickles. Oxen and horses provided draft power and manure served as fertilizer. Cattle-raising, vegetable-gardening, and, particularly i
n the west, the growing of more specialized crops such as flax and hemp, as well as hunting, fishing, and apiculture, constituted some other important occupations of the people. Many scholars

  have noted a crisis in Muscovite rural economy, especially pronounced in the second half of the sixteenth century, and ascribed it both to the general difficulties of transition from appanages to a centralized state based on gentry service and exploitation of peasants and to Ivan the Terrible's oprichnina. Trade, crafts, and manufacturing grew, although slowly, with the expansion and development of the Muscovite state. Russia continued to sell raw materials to other countries, and its foreign trade received a boost from

  the newly established relations with the English and the Dutch. The Russians, however, lacked a merchant marine, and their role in the exchange remained passive. Domestic trade increased, especially after the Time of Troubles, and profited from a rather enlightened new commercial code promulgated in 1667. The mining of metal and manufacturing had to provide, first of all, for the needs of the army and the treasury. Industrial enterprises belonged either to the state or to private owners; among the latter were the Stroganov family which engaged in various undertakings, especially in extracting salt, and the Morozovs, so prominent in Alexis's reign, who developed a huge business in potash. Foreign entrepreneurs and specialists played a leading role in the growth of Muscovite mining and manufacturing, and we shall return to them when we discuss Western influences on Muscovy. As a result of intensified and more varied economic activity, regional differentiation increased. For example, metalwork developed in the Urals, the town of Tula, and Moscow, while the salt enterprises centered principally in the northeast.