It did so that summer. Although élites usually went to Kolomenskoe to pass the summer, her real intent became apparent when the tsars failed to return to the Kremlin for new year celebrations on 1 September. The Streltsy were now blamed for having driven off the government. Shortly thereafter Sofia charged Khovanskii with high treason and had him executed without trial. The government finally returned to Moscow in November, but only after the Streltsy had begged for forgiveness and removed their column from Red Square. Security for the Kremlin was now assigned to a noble regiment (a step that inadvertently laid the foundations for the recurring palace coups by guard regiments in the eighteenth century). The Streltsy threat neutralized, Sofia now assumed the reins of power, with the ‘tsars’ appearing only for Kremlin celebrations.
The Regency of Sofia (1682–1689)
Her regency lasted just seven years, almost as brief as Fedor’s reign. V. V. Golitsyn, her leading official and probably her lover, continued his predecessor’s foreign policy and cultivated contacts with the West.
However, reform initiatives were now rare; because plans for domestic reform were, unfortunately, poorly preserved, much about her reign must remain speculative. The tensions between the Miloslavskiis and the Naryshkins apparently hampered decision-making, but Sofia did tackle three problems: she finally began the long-awaited land survey, intensified the search for fugitives, and gave the conditional service estate (pomest′e) the same juridical status as the hereditary family estate (votchina). The last reform thus eliminated any distinction between the two forms of landholding—something that the service nobility had demanded. But this concession also served to level the nobility—something that the autocracy itself had wanted.
Golitsyn’s tolerant attitude towards the West proved advantageous for the foreigners’ suburb and even Jesuits. This was in marked contrast to the vigorous persecution of Old Believers, who were even burned at the stake if they refused to recant. Such harshness derived from the government’s lingering fear of a new uprising of the Streltsy. But immolation failed to quell the religious dissenters and even impelled them to commit mass suicide—from apocalyptical fears that the Last Judgement was imminent, that they might somehow be ensnared in the service of Anti-Christ. As a result, some 2,700 Old Believers in Paleostrov Monastery and several thousand more in Berezov (on the Volok) burnt themselves alive in 1687–8 alone; after a year of siege another 1,500 in Paleostrov put themselves to the torch.
The infusion of Western culture also brought a major confrontation between ‘Latinizers’ and ‘Hellenizers’. The two chief protagonists included a monk Evfimii (a collaborator of Patriarch Ioakim) and Silvestr Medvedev (the Polotskii pupil who drafted the charter for the Slavonic-Greek-Latin academy in 1682). Under the patriarch’s direction, Evfimii revised that statute so as to replace Latin with Greek and to exclude teachers from Ukraine and Lithuania. The struggle, which lasted for several years, produced a number of learned treatises. When the academy finally opened in 1687 as the first school of higher learning in Russia, its curriculum nevertheless included Latin—as well as such subjects as grammar, poetics, rhetoric, didactics, and physics. Nevertheless, pressure against the ‘Latinizer’ Medvedev steadily mounted, for Sofia feared a new schism, particularly when many Old Believers—from anti-Hellenistic sentiments—expressed sympathy for the Latinizers.
By then Sofia had come to nourish her own ambitions. In 1685 she began to appear at public ceremonies that had traditionally been reserved for the tsar; in 1686 she affixed the title of ‘Autocratrix’ to her portrait. And, apparently, she sought formal coronation after signing the Eternal Peace with Poland in 1686, the greatest triumph of her regency. The agreement ratified the Armistice of Andrusovo (1667), for the Poles now realized the need to co-operate with Russia on the Ukrainian-Ottoman border. Therefore they now recognized the partition of Ukraine and approved Russia’s entry into an anti-Turkish coalition that had been formed as the ‘Holy League’ (Habsburg, Poland, and Venetia) in 1684. In addition, the rulers recognized each other’s title and granted freedom of confession to each other’s fellow believers—the Orthodox in Poland-Lithuania, Catholics in Muscovy. This religious policy had been preceded by subordination of the Kievan metropolitanate to the Moscow Patriarchate in 1685, a long-cherished goal of the Russian Orthodox Church. Moscow also obtained a stronger claim to a protectorate over the Orthodox Christians under the Turkish yoke, something which it had already asserted for several decades. However, the tolerance promised to Catholics alienated the distrustful patriarch and impelled him to embrace Peter in the next coup of 1689.
Peter: Seizure of Power
This coup indirectly stemmed from the Eternal Peace itself. After the Poles and Habsburgs dealt a decisive defeat to the Turks at Vienna in 1683, the allies demanded that Russia launch an attack on the Crimea to ease the burden on the West. Under the supreme command of Golitsyn, Russian troops thereupon made two campaigns against the Crimean Tatars (in 1687 and 1689) and both times met with defeat. But in both cases Sofia—who needed success—suppressed the truth: to portray the military campaign as a victory, she lavished praise and gifts on Golitsyn and the returning troops. Her Eastern policy was no more successful: Russia established diplomatic relations with China (through the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689), but did so at the price of renouncing claims to the Amur region. The deception and disinformation generated growing tensions between Sofia and Peter, even to mutual suspicions of murder. Fearing a new Streltsy uprising, in August 1689 Peter fled to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery north of Moscow. The turning-point came in September when the troops came over to his side, enabling Peter to claim power in his own right and to place his half-sister under house arrest in Novodevichii Convent.
Although Peter had seized power, for the moment he changed nothing in his own life, as he himself continued to take more interest in sea travel than in state affairs. Nevertheless, the rebellious turbulence of the seventeenth century had come to an end; the Streltsy mutiny in 1698 was merely an epilogue. If one looks at the government of the great tsar in the light of the seventeenth century, it is clear that his reforms—which made so great an impression in the West—emerged directly from the traditions of the seventeenth century and hardly constituted a ‘revolution’. The seventeenth century had already signalled a major breakthrough—a self-conscious emancipation from the fetters of ‘Old Russia’.
4. The Petrine Era and After 1689–1740
JOHN T. ALEXANDER
Peter inaugurated an imperial, radically Europeanized period of Russian history. Building on seventeenth-century roots, he broadened reform to include virtually every dimension of the state and warfare, society, economy, and culture. His heirs, invariably invoking Peter as a secular icon to legitimize power and policies, continued (if less ambitiously) his efforts to remake medieval Muscovy into modern Russia.
PETER I is associated with many ‘firsts’ in Russian history. He was the first legitimate Muscovite ruler to have that name in Russian and European languages (Piter in Dutch), the first to use a Roman numeral after his name, the first to travel incessantly by land and water and to venture abroad, the first to be titled emperor and ‘the Great, Most Wise Father of the Fatherland’, the first to inspire radical change in diverse spheres of activity, the first to found urban sites sharing his name, the first to be buried in St Petersburg, and the first to imprint his name on an entire era encompassing the birth of modern Russia in an expanded, European context. His imperious personality impressed his world so emphatically that his impact remains vividly controversial even now. Inscribed ‘Great Hope of the Future’, the medal struck at his birth in the Kremlin on 30 May 1672 announced the dynastic sentiments vested in the huge baby, some thirty-three inches long. This label inaugurated a series pinned on Peter during his busy life (1672–1725) and long afterwards. Many lauded his personal attributes: warrior-tsar, artisan-tsar, tsar-transformer, Renaissance man, the great reformer who gave Russia a new ‘body’ primed for a new ‘soul’. Ot
hers deplored negative qualities: Anti-Christ, the ‘Bronze Horseman’, first Bolshevik, brutal despot, cult figure and personification of a totalitarian-style dictatorship bent on forcible expansion—a ruthless ruler likened to such melancholy fanatics as Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, and Stalin. His towering physique—six feet seven inches tall as an adult—overshadowed contemporaries much as his historical shade dominates modern Russian political and cultural discourse. His physiognomy and figure have been depicted in many media and languages over three centuries. Both his fame and notoriety have assumed legendary stature.
It is amazing that the initial offspring of Tsar Alexis by his second wife should have been so precocious and so long-lived in contrast to the sickly sons and multiple daughters of his first marriage. Indeed, this novelty proved crucial in the selection of 9-year-old Peter by an impromptu assemblage to succeed his half-brother Fedor on 27 April 1682. A mere figurehead for a regime of his Naryshkin relatives, Peter’s elevation evoked immediate resistance from his father’s first family, the Miloslavskiis, led by Sofia in defence of the dynastic seniority of Ivan, aged 16. Sofia and her Miloslavskii relatives exploited dissension among the Streltsy to channel animosity towards the Naryshkins; the result was the riot in May 1682, described in the previous chapter, as also are the events of Sofia’s regency.
Young Peter’s marriage to Evdokiia Lopukhina on 27 January 1689 forecast imminent maturity. Although the marriage was unhappy (the groom soon departed for nautical diversions on Lake Pleshcheevo), Evdokiia gave birth to the future tsarevich Alexis in February 1690—another blow to the Miloslavskiis’dynastic interests. Sofia, though styled ‘autocratrix’ on a par with her brothers, was never crowned officially, her authority waning as Peter’s partisans championed his cause anew. Who initiated the final showdown in August 1689 is uncertain, but Peter’s ‘party’ quickly gained greater armed support in ostensibly forestalling a new Streltsy conspiracy while Sofia had to yield Fedor Shaklovityi—her new favourite and head of the Streltsy—for interrogation under torture and execution. At the end of September she entered the Novodevichii Convent as a lay person. After another abortive Streltsy mutiny in 1698 she accepted political extinction by taking monastic vows and died in monastic seclusion in 1704.
Early Travels and the Azov Campaigns
Peter did not, however, immediately assume Sofia’s role in government, relinquishing the more prominent posts to his Naryshkin relatives and their friends, such as Boris Golitsyn, Tikhon Streshnev, and Fedor Romodanovskii. The tsar still resided at Preobrazhenskoe and in the autumn of 1690 participated in elaborate ‘play’ manœuvres featuring a scripted ‘defeat’ of the Streltsy by a combined force of noble cavalry, play regiments, and foreign-style troops. His shipbuilding and sailing on inland waters also continued, as did his fascination with fireworks in company with foreign mercenaries such as Franz Lefort and Patrick Gordon. He began to sign himself ‘Petrus’, to drink heavily, and to smoke tobacco. He ignored his deserted wife’s letters and openly pursued Anna Mons, the daughter of a German wine merchant in the Foreign Suburb. When Peter suffered bloody diarrhoea for two weeks in December 1692, fears of Sofia’s return to power fanned rampant rumours and, allegedly, plans for flight by Lefort and company.
Despite his mother’s misgivings, Peter left Moscow in July 1693 with a substantial entourage to spend seven weeks at Archangel. He became the first Muscovite ruler to see the far north and to sail the open sea. He also helped lay down a seagoing vessel for future voyages. His horizons were widening by the hour. His mother’s death in January 1694 only momentarily interrupted preparations for a longer sojourn at Archangel, from 18 May to 5 September. He made extended voyages; during one he barely survived a storm by landing on the island of Solovki where he planted a cross with a Dutch inscription and European-style date, ‘This Cross was made by Captain Piter anno Domini 1694’—evidence that he knew Dutch and already foresaw reforms in European terms. The budding fleet began using a white-blue-red flag based on the Dutch standard. Upon returning to Moscow, from 23 September to 18 October 1694 Peter organized grandiose military manœuvres involving over 7,000 men. A satirical pamphlet recorded the exercises along with exhibitions such as twenty-five dwarfs marching to military music. With the Streltsy again slated for defeat, ‘bombardier Peter Alekseev’ celebrated his last simulated engagement before real battle with Turks and Tatars. In concert with the Holy League of Austria, Poland-Lithuania, and Venice with financial backing from the papacy, the 22-year-old tsar aimed to mount the international stage by recouping Vasilii Golitsyn’s losses.
Overweening ambition was apparent in Peter’s choice of the primary target: the Ottoman fortress of Azov near the mouth of the Don river. A more difficult objective than the Crimea itself, Azov would require combined land and sea operations. Peter and his senior military advisers sought to avoid Golitsyn’s error of marching across barren steppes by bringing most forces far south by boat. The main attack was also augmented by a thrust westward under the boyar Boris Sheremetev to divert Tatar forces and capture Turkish border forts. Though the siege of Azov began by early July 1695, lack of a flotilla precluded any naval blockade; while the Ottomans reinforced and resupplied their garrison by sea, the attackers suffered great losses from Turkish sallies and the absence of unified command. Peter’s insistence on a desperate storm on 5 August brought huge losses; a mining operation on 16 September harmed only the besiegers; another costly assault the next day barely failed. Lifting the siege on 20 October, the Muscovites sustained further losses—from exhaustion, frosts, and disease—during the retreat.
The campaign taught the impatient tsar several harsh lessons, duly recorded in official journals (preserved for the rest of the reign). But retention of two Turkish watchtower forts (renamed Novosergeevsk) indicated that Peter was already countenancing a new compaign.
The new year began inauspiciously: Peter fell ill for nearly a month and his brother Ivan died suddenly on 29 January. Ivan’s death formally ended the dynastic dualism, affirmed Peter’s sole sovereignty, and cleared the way for an aggressively reformist militarist regime. Health restored, Peter hurried to Voronezh to assemble hundreds of barges and galleys for the new attack. If the first Azov campaign proved more difficult than anticipated, the second brought the fortress’s capitulation with stunning ease on 19–20 July 1696. Austrian engineers assisted in supervising the siege-works. Command of the land forces was centralized under ‘generalissimus’ Aleksei Shein. Ironically, Muscovite sea-power had predetermined the outcome by forestalling Ottoman relief efforts although Cossack boats did most of the fighting at close quarters—not the vessels built so feverishly at Voronezh. Sailing into the Sea of Azov, Peter sought out a site for a new naval station some leagues westward, at a point called Taganrog. Construction began at once as did rebuilding Azov itself; the Muscovites intended to stay permanently. Returning to Moscow in late September, Peter staged a Roman-style triumph with ceremonial gates—the first of many—decorated with Julius Caesar’s aphorism: ‘He came, he saw, he conquered’. A more menacing demonstration transpired at Preobrazhenskoe a week later: the Dutch deserter Jakob Jansen, whose betrayal had dearly cost the first Azov campaign, was broken on the wheel and then beheaded before a huge crowd.
The Grand Embassy to Europe
Amidst these celebrations Peter felt the fragility of Muscovite military and, especially naval power. Even before returning from Azov he began to plan a large diplomatic and recruiting mission to the naval powers of Venice and Holland. This ‘Grand Embassy’ engaged as many as 270 persons (Peter himself incognito among many ‘volunteers’) and huge amounts of baggage, all estimated to have cost the stupendous sum of 200,000 roubles. The main mission spent sixteen months away from Moscow, 9 March 1697 to 25 August 1698, the longest and grandest Muscovite embassy ever. It was related to other missions such as sixty-one courtiers sent to study navigation; it was the first instalment of some twenty-six groups totalling more than a thousand ‘volunteers’ sent abroad system
atically for study and training in the period 1697–1725 (other individuals went on their own). A parallel mission was undertaken by the eminent boyar Boris Sheremetev, who recruited foreign officers, lavished gifts wherever he went in Poland and Italy, and also visited the knights of Malta who awarded him the Order of Malta. The linguistically gifted Peter Postnikov, a recent graduate of the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy just completing MD and Ph.D. degrees at Padua’s famed university, joined the Grand Embassy in Holland.
Peter tried to keep the Grand Embassy strictly secret at home and employed special invisible ink for sensitive communications. These precautions may have sprung from apprehensions that ‘ill-intentioned’ persons might exploit the tsar’s absence, as earlier Streltsy had allegedly plotted to murder the tsar and restore Sofia and Vasilii Golitsyn. After an investigation by the Preobrazhenskii Bureau (the police organ given national jurisdiction over political crimes in late 1696), Colonel Ivan Tsykler and two supposed boyar accomplices were gruesomely beheaded over the exhumed corpse of Ivan Miloslavskii, dead since 1685. The incident occurred a week before Peter’s departure abroad. The Preobrazhenskii Bureau had also investigated a ‘Missive’ by Abbot Avraamii criticizing state fiscal policies. Though absolved of malicious intent, Avraamii was banished to a provincial monastery and three minor officials accused of assisting him were sent into hard labour. All these punishments were obviously intended to intimidate potential opposition while Peter lingered abroad indefinitely.
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