In 1621–2 Filaret considered a new attempt to reconquer Smolensk and compel the Poles to recognize the Romanov dynasty. On the basis of information from a council of the realm, however, he realized that the country was simply unprepared for such an undertaking. But the Thirty Years War soon afforded an opportunity for vengeance; as an important ally of Sweden, Moscow was later named in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Although Moscow did not directly participate in the conflict, from 1628 it delivered commodities such as grain (which, as a state monopoly, yielded a huge profit) and, more important, in 1632–4 went to war with Poland, which was forced to divert forces to the east. Meanwhile, with Swedish aid, the Russians built their military force into a standing army with approximately 66,000 soldiers (the so-called ‘Troops of the New Order’), which included approximately 2,500 Western officers under the Scottish colonel, Alexander Leslie. Nevertheless, Filaret, who died in 1633 in the midst of the war, had overestimated Moscow’s power: the campaign proceeded so badly that the commander-inchief, M. B. Shein, in the wake of mass desertion by his soldiers (which was hardly unusual at the time) and the futile siege of Smolensk, was found guilty of treason and executed. The two sides agreed to a new peace at Polianovka in 1634. Wladystaw did renounce his claim to the tsarist throne, but in exchange Moscow had to pay 20,000 roubles and to return all the areas that it had occupied.
The Final Years
Nevertheless, the war drew Muscovy even closer to the West. Besides the Troops of the New Order (temporarily disbanded for lack of funds), the most tangible sign of Europeanization was the influx of Western merchants and entrepreneurs. Dominance shifted from the English to the Dutch: Andries Winius obtained monopoly rights to construct ironworks in the towns of Tula and Serpukhov (the first blast furnace began operations in 1637); the Walloon Coyet established the first glass plant in the environs of Moscow. The driving impulse, as in other spheres, was the demand for military armaments.
For the time being, the Orthodox Church was able to contain Western influence in cultural matters. The main spiritual influence, instead, came from Ukraine—for example, a proposal in 1640 by the metropolitan of Kiev, Petr Mohyla, to establish an ecclesiastical academy in Moscow, and the import of books with the ‘Lithuanian imprint’ (which, because of their Roman Catholic content, were prohibited). The Church also denounced as ‘heresy’ the correction of church books, which had commenced in 1618 (in conjunction with the development of printing) and sought to compare Russian liturgical texts with the Greek originals.
The religious tensions were also accompanied by increasing social conflict. In 1637 the tsar’s service people filed their first collective petition and later persuaded him to reduce their service obligations by half. But as yet the government spurned their other demands—for a decentralization of the judicial system (to avoid expensive trials, corruption, and procrastination in Moscow) and for the total abolition of a statute of limitations on the return of runaway peasants. Michael did, however, extend the statute of limitations for the recovery of fugitives (from five to nine years). After another petition in 1641, he increased the term to ten years for the general fugitives and fifteen years for peasants who had been forcibly seized by other landowners.
In foreign affairs too the tsar had to make a difficult decision. In 1637 the Don Cossacks of Muscovy attacked the Turkish fortress of Azov and for four long years held out against the Ottoman army and fleet. A council of the realm in 1642, however, expressed deep reservations, and the tsar persuaded the Cossacks to abandon the fortress. War with Turkey would have certainly entailed immense losses, and the Sultan had already threatened to exterminate the entire Orthodox population of his empire. Similarly, Moscow continued to spurn the centuries-old urging of the West for a crusade against the Ottoman Empire.
By contrast, Muscovy’s eastward expansion proved far more successful. After the first penetration into Siberia in the late sixteenth century, the government had sanctioned—sometimes ex post facto—the conquests of Cossack units acting on their own initiative: they thus founded Eniseisk in 1619 and Iakutsk in 1632, and reached the Pacific at the Sea of Okhotsk in 1639. To the south Moscow established timid contacts with China, sending its first envoy to Peking in 1619.
In general, the first Romanov tsar achieved a certain consolidation, but could not quell mounting social and spiritual ferment that would soon explode into major upheavals during the next reign.
The End of an Era: Tsar Alexis (1645–1676)
The New Tsar
The new tsar—father of Peter the Great—embodied the cultural confrontation of the seventeenth century: devotion to old Russian tradition versus attraction to the achievements of West European civilization. Tsar Alexis (Aleksei Mikhailovich) overcame this cultural conflict, which proved profoundly disturbing in domestic life, through success in foreign affairs. His eventful reign was marked by a fierce battle between the old and the new, which indeed was reflected in the personality of the tsar himself. On the one hand, he took Ivan the Terrible as the ideal model and understood old Russian autocracy as rulership that was simultaneously gentle and harsh; on the other hand, he was the first tsar to sign laws on his own authority, to permit realistic portraits of his person, and to receive and write personal letters in the real meaning of the word. Throughout his lifetime he sought friendships—for example, with Patriarch Nikon and the head of the foreign office, A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin, whose human individuality (like that of the tsar) for the first time is reflected in contemporary sources. Indeed, the pre-revolutionary historian Platonov suggested that the individual personality made its first appearance in old Russia.
The Moscow Uprising of 1648
The young tsar’s first friend, brother-in-law, and former teacher, was B. I. Morozov. One of many ‘powerful magnates’ (sil′ nye liudi), Morozov amassed enormous wealth by taking personal control of the most important and lucrative central offices (prikazy). By the time of his death, Morozov owned 9,100 peasant households (55,000 peasants) in nineteen districts—along with numerous manufactories, mills, and illicit distilleries. Tsar Alexis, following an order from his father, also empowered Morozov to investigate government administration and to conduct reforms to reduce social tensions. Morozov could in fact boast of certain achievements, but some of his measures aroused popular discontent. Thus, after being forced to cancel a new salt tax, in 1648 he attempted to collect arrears from the preceding two years—in effect tripling the tax burden for 1648.
This measure ignited a major uprising in June 1648, which together with the fires that swept through Moscow, cost approximately two thousand lives. Crowds murdered high-ranking, corrupt officials; with tears in his eyes, the tsar could do nothing more for Morozov than secure Morozov’s banishment. By the end of July the rebellion generated more than seventy petitions that led to some concrete changes, including the cancellation of tax arrears as well as monetary levies for the tsar’s bodyguards, the Streltsy. The latter, in fact, felt threatened by the new foreign troops and tended to support the rebels. Morozov did return in late October, but was never again to play a major role. The government faced the fearful spectre of a new Time of Troubles, especially when nobles and merchants aggressively pressed demands, sometimes even filing joint petitions. This solidarity, and the fact that Moscow itself was practically in rebel hands, forced the government in June 1648 to accede to an ultimatum that it convoke a council of the realm. The council, which convened that autumn, elected to compile a new law code (the Ulozhenie), which was promulgated on 29 January 1649 to replace the law code (sudebnik) of 1550.
At least 8.5 per cent of the 967 articles in this law code derived from initiatives of the population. It also drew upon earlier legislation and the Lithuanian Statute (from which came the first formal defence of the tsar and court). In general, it conceded many of the demands that had been raised during the preceding decades. The most famous was the establishment of serfdom, which at first only bound the peasant to the soil (i.e. restricted their mobility). The pr
eparations for enserfment had been laid by earlier decrees extending the time-limit for the search and return of fugitive peasants; as early as February 1646, the government indicated its intention to issue a total ban on peasant movement. The law code thereby satisfied the nobility’s demand to retrieve runaways without any time-limit. This initial bondage to the soil would evolve into a far more comprehensive ‘serfdom’ in the eighteenth century. Significantly, the prohibition on mobility also applied to the towns: anyone who owed taxes could not change their residence. The law code also forbade boyars to accept taxpayers as ‘bondsmen’ (kholopy); it also attacked the special interests of the Church by forbidding the clergy to accept landed estates and by reducing the competence of ecclesiastical courts. At the same time, however, the government still repulsed demands to decentralize the judicial system and to expand locally elected government.
Hence the victory of the petty nobility and townspeople did not mean a weakening of autocracy. On the contrary the uprising impelled the tsar to take measures that had been long deferred and that served primarily to strengthen the bonds between autocracy and the lower nobility.
The law code itself did not address the long-standing grievances of the Russian merchants against foreign competition. But the government found a pretext to expel foreigners on 1 June 1649, when Alexis expressed his outrage over the execution of Charles I and banished the English from domestic trade in Muscovy. In 1654 he extended the prohibition to merchants from Holland and Hamburg. In general, the law code (published in a press run of 2,400 copies and distributed to all officials as the first law code) did more to bolster the old order than to build a new one. It was, consequently, already outdated by the time of Peter the Great. Remarkably enough, however, it officially remained in force until 1 January 1835, as Alexis’s successors found themselves unable to compile a new code or even to issue a revised edition.
Continuing Instability
After the bitter experience of 1648, the tsar never again let the initiative slip from his grasp during subsequent urban uprisings. New disorders erupted three years later in Novgorod and Pskov; located on the western border, the two cities had always held a special status because of their commercial relations and were especially opposed to the competition of Western merchants. The discontent intensified because of the government’s pro-Swedish policies, which, in accordance with the Peace of Stolbovo of 1617, required Muscovy to deliver grain to Sweden; that, however, caused higher grain prices at home and produced particular hardship for a grain-importing area like Pskov. The result was an uprising that erupted first in Pskov and soon spread to Novgorod. After Alexis’s forces occupied the latter city and carried out several executions, the people of Pskov peacefully surrendered, bringing the rebellion to an end.
In 1662 the tsar faced far greater peril during the ‘coppercoin uprising’ in Moscow. The unrest itself was due to the war begun in 1654 against Poland-Lithuania: to finance the war, the government not only assessed special taxes and loans, but also minted copper coins that the people deemed to be worthless. Meanwhile, the owners of copper kitchenware bribed the mint masters to make coins from their copper pots; when the guilty officials were given only a light punishment, popular anger only intensified. The copper minting also caused inflation: whereas one copper rouble was equal to one silver rouble in 1658, this ratio rose to four to one by 1661, and then jumped to fifteen to one two years later. Compounded by other hardships, popular discontent in the summer of 1662 led to the formation of mobs, which demanded to speak to the tsar himself and moved en masse towards his summer residence in Kolomenskoe, south of Moscow. After Alexis promised to investigate the matter, the throng headed back towards Moscow. On the way, however, they came upon other rebels and decided to return to Kolomenskoe, which once again found itself in peril. This time the tsar ordered his Streltsy to disperse the crowd (now some nine thousand strong) with force; in the aftermath sixty-three rebels were executed, and many others sent into exile.
The ‘rebellious century’ was not limited to urban revolts: in 1670–1 peasants joined the greatest rebellion of the seventeenth century—a mass insurrection that began on the periphery under the leadership of Stepan (‘Stenka’) Razin. The rebellion sprang from the ranks of the Don Cossacks, who lived south of Muscovy’s ever-expanding border and had their own autonomous military order (military council as well as the election of the ataman as chief and other officials). Through the influx of fugitive peasants, bondsmen, and petty townsmen, the Cossacks had multiplied to the point where they had their own ‘proletariat’—some ten to twenty thousand Cossacks who could no longer support themselves by tilling the land. Their plight was aggravated by Moscow’s decision to reduce its paid ‘service Cossacks’ to a mere 1,000 persons. War with Poland in 1654–67 increased the flight of people to the untamed southern steppes (dikoe pole). Although the government was not unhappy to see the strengthening of barriers against the Crimean Tatars, it promulgated a statute of limitations on fugitives and ordered the forcible return of 10,000 fugitives. Amidst this unrest, in 1667 Stepan Razin summoned Cossacks to join a traditional campaign of plunder and led some 2,000 Cossacks to the lower Volga, ultimately reaching the Persian coast in 1668–9. Over the next two years, however, the expedition turned into a popular rebellion against landowners and state authorities. With some 20,000 supporters, Razin prepared to strike at Moscow itself. Although he did establish a Cossack regime in Astrakhan and issued radical promises to divide all property equally, he had no coherent political programme and explicitly declared autocracy inviolable. In Simbirsk his forces attracted peasants, some non-Russian peoples, and petty townsmen and service people from the middle Volga. In the spring of 1671, however, Razin was betrayed by his own Cossack superiors: handed over to tsarist authorities, he was later executed in Moscow.
Cossacks and Borderland Politics
Cossacks, certainly those on the Dnieper, exerted a major influence on Alexis’s foreign policy. Indeed, together with the Moscow uprising, their actions made 1648 a watershed in Russian history: under the leadership of hetman Bohdan Khmelnitskii, they rebelled against their Polish-Lithuanian authorities. They had several main grievances: the oppression of Ukrainian peasants by Polish magnates and their Jewish stewards, discrimination against the Orthodox Church by Roman Catholicism, and a reduction in Cossack registration (i.e. the number of Cossacks in the paid service of the Polish king). Khmelnitskii hoped to achieve his goal—formation of a separate Cossack republic of nobles—with the aid of the Moscow tsar. The latter, while sympathetic to the idea of protecting his Orthodox brethren, was nevertheless exceedingly cautious: support for the Cossacks clearly meant war with Poland-Lithuania. Although Moscow yearned to settle old scores (dating back to its defeat in 1634 and above all the forfeiture of Smolensk), as yet it did not feel strong enough for such an undertaking. It was the Orthodox Church, particularly after Nikon’s elevation to the Patriarchate in mid-1652, that induced Moscow to support the Cossacks in February 1653.
For Moscow, of course, this co-operation was conceivable only if it entailed Cossack recognition of the tsar’s sovereignty, and Khmelnitskii duly complied, taking a unilateral vow of loyalty in Pereiaslavl on 8 January 1654. Russian and Soviet historians subsequently portrayed this oath as a merger of Ukraine with Muscovy, even a ‘reunification’ of Muscovy with Kiev Rus. By contrast, Ukrainian historiography depicts this oath as the beginning of an independent ‘hetman state’, which lasted until the time of Catherine the Great. In reality however, the oath merely signified nominal subordination and guaranteed the hetman and his followers a social and legal order with a considerable autonomy, even in foreign affairs (except for relations with Poland and the Ottomans). Although Alexis henceforth proclaimed himself ‘Autocrat of All Great and Little Rus’, incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Empire did not actually come until the eighteenth century.
The anticipated war, which commenced immediately in 1654 and lasted until 1667, was waged in western Russia. The ver
y first year Moscow reconquered the long-sought Smolensk, and the next year its forces captured Minsk and Vilna as well. For Moscow, the only dark cloud was the fact that their quick victories had tempted the Swedes to intervene and attempt to seize the Polish ports in the Baltic. In 1656 Moscow opened hostilities against Sweden and by the following year had conquered most of Livonia. But Reval (Tallin) and Riga withstood the Russian siege; confronted with new military hostilities with Poland, Moscow concluded the Peace of Cardis with Sweden in 1661 on the basis of status quo ante bellum. In 1667 Moscow and Poland agreed to the armistice of Andrusovo, with a compromise partition of Ukraine: Poland renounced its west Russian gains of 1618, Moscow its claims to right-bank Ukraine (i.e. west of the Dnieper), with the exception of Kiev. The armistice was of considerable significance: it marked the beginning of the end for Poland’s status as a great power in Eastern Europe but also brought an epoch-making reversal in Moscow’s relationship to the Turks.
Initially, the driving force behind foreign policy was Ordin-Nashchokin, the Western-oriented ‘foreign minister’. As the district governor (voevoda) of Pskov in the first half of the 1660s he had excelled in reducing social tensions, and he was also responsible for the ‘New Commercial Statute’ (1667), which strengthened the merchant class on the basis of mercantilistic ideas. His Western orientation contributed significantly to the Europeanization of Russia, which now became still more pronounced. In 1671 he was succeeded as head of the foreign chancellery by A. S. Matveev, who had married a Scottish woman (Lady Hamilton) and who was still more open-minded about the West. In contrast to Ordin-Nashchokin, who was interested chiefly in the Baltic Sea, Matveev was far more concerned about the southern border. In 1672, in the wake of Andrusovo, Moscow reversed a centuries-old tendency and now urged the West to support Poland against the Turks. The reason for this shift was simple: Moscow itself now shared a common border with the Ottoman Empire.
Russia A History Page 11